Friday 23 July 2010

Turn any program into a Windows service

Today, Oisin Mulvihill introduced me to his company's open source product, Service Station. It's very simple, very effective and stunningly useful. I am really surprised that it isn't much better known. With one short shell command, you can install any script or application (headless, command-line or GUI) as a Windows service that can be started, stopped and managed through the Services control panel. As a bonus, Service Station restarts programs that have crashed, cleans up all spawned processes when stopping a service, and provides comprehensive logging via the Windows Event Viewer - it really could not be simpler for the system administrator. It is suitable for every version of Windows from 2000 onwards.

Great Music Venue

Last night my friends and colleagues from the Zuhlke office and I, collectively known as Karma4Sale, enjoyed playing to a packed house at Peter Parker's Rock'n'Roll Club in Denmark Street, London.

Thanks to everyone who came along to listen and encourage us, to drummer Chris Sluman (sorry Chris, this is the best photo I have and you're completely invisible in it!), to the brilliant support act of young musicians from the Brit school, and not least to the incredible Mr Peter Parker, who made the evening possible in the first place and gave hands-on support throughout. I sincerely recommend his excellent club if you fancy a great night out either as a listener or as a performer.