CodeToast

ToastControl

There are many ways to control a PC remotely and a plethora of programs for each option. However as an IT professional for the last gazillion years, I’ve never been truly happy with them, and often resort to the command line for VNC and Remote Desktop (rdp / mstsc / terminal services). Nothing wrong with that - but it is a pain to manage multiple hosts, and it seems I’m always scrolling through the terminal history to find the one I need.

Windows Server 2003 shipped with the Remote Desktops MMC snap-in - available in Administrative Tools or by running ‘tsmmc.msc’. It gives you a sidebar for managing multiple hosts, but that’s about where it ends. It is not particularly stable, is somewhat cumbersome, and doesn’t even allow you to reorder connections, let alone organize them in any way.

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The Zen of Operating Systems

I am a self-diagnosed O/S addict. If hardware is your computer’s body, then the Operating System is it’s soul. Makes you wonder what karmic mistake we made to deserve Vista, eh?

This vice of mine started with the various computers I use at home or work - I have an general rule that with all the choices out there, each system should use a different O/S. Sure, it’s a bit more administrative work - but it is fun, and gives me an excuse to keep up to date. And to read new posts on DistroWatch like a kid on Christmas morning. More…

About CodeToast

Welcome to CodeToast. I’m your host, Nick Brookins. During the day I’m Chief Developer at SAM Systems, a software company that specializes in video surveillance, compression, and streaming.

Beyond a blog, I envision a small community of programmers that create software to solve some real-world challenges, share the experience, and have fun in the meantime.

There are plenty of programming blogs with great information, excellent sites like CodeProject that provide tutorials and help, and open source software projects with people generously donating their time. The concept of CodeToast is to bring all of these aspects together. To build small open source projects, but share in the development with blog posts and articles on how and why they were created.

If you are interested in helping out with development projects or articles - or if you have an idea for software that should exist, but doesn’t - please contact me!