Every now and then my PC gets a little clunky. Windows will gets a little slower once an installation of it is a bit long in the tooth. One really handy application that a friend recommended to me was Belarc's Personal PC Audit software.

It will create a log of all the applications and serial numbers on your system, which is great if you keep re-installing your operating system (I'm always forgetting which applications I'm running).

Along the same theme Acronis have just released the newest version of their backup software. True Image Home 2010 is Windows 7 compatible, and gives you a wealth of backup options, from full disk images to specific files. What most interests me though is the 'Continuous data protection' option. I've been used to team members working on Macs using 'Time machine' online continuous backup software, and this appears to have very similar functionality.

I've been developing in more and more random locations recently, and finally got fed up enough with manually moving and synchronising my own (local) development code that I've switched to an online SVN repository.

I used to use Beyond Compare for file syncing different code bases, instead of revisioning. It is good, but it isn't particularly quick, and you have to be thorough as it is still very easy to miss a file.

I had an online repository provider recommended to me, http://beanstalkapp.com/.

I've been using them a few weeks now, and they seem really good. They are always 'up', and the connection holds a good speed. There is even a free account if you just fancy trying it out.

The problem I had then is that my code was nicely versioned, and synchronised, but it was not on my live server. Pushing files up to live still required me to know what files had been changed, which is not ideal.

As I use Eclipse I thought I'd search for an Eclipse based FTP client, I've had no luck though, I just can't find an Eclipse based FTP synchronisation tool!

Luckily I had previously used Beyond Compare, searching around in their documentation it turns out that it can also handle local-to-ftp file/folder comparisons.

So for now I've settled on these applications, they both seem to allow me to release stable complete code versions. It would be interesting to see what toolset other developers have arrived at. I've had some exposure to GIT and ANT, but this seems a more comfortable process.

I've been dealing with bulk data recently, CSV files of around 500mb or more. These can seriously stress out your pc. In the process of trying to write data import scripts I found an application that has proven its worth a few times over. This application allows you to split text files at points of your choosing.

File Splitter Pro, from wonderwebware. It doesn't look amazing, and it has a relatively simple interface, but after going through three or four alternatives that for the most part couldn't even open a 500mb csv file this has come through every time. What I really like though is the function that allows you to select N number of lines and move them to another file.

There is a trial version available too:

http://wonderwebware.com/file-splitter-pro/

(P.S I don't get commission or anything.)