Windows Key + R

From the run dialog in Windows XP you can open folders by using the following shortcuts.

.	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\
..	C:\Documents and Settings\
\	C:\
Assembly	C:\WINDOWS\assembly
Cache	C:\WINDOWS\system32\Cache
Desktop	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Desktop
Favorites	C:\Documents and Settings\Me\Favorites
Fonts	C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
My Documents	C:\Documents and Settings\Me\My Documents
SendTo	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\SendTo
Start Menu	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu
Tasks	C:\WINDOWS\Tasks

*The folders may vary depending on your windows configuration.

As far as I can tell, you can open directories that exist in the following directories by just typing in the directory names (without the full paths):
· C:\WINDOWS\
· C:\WINDOWS\system32
· C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\

This got me to thinking. If you are like me and would like to quickly go to different directories, you can creat shortcuts to those different directories in your “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\” directory. Give this a try. Hit Windows Key + R to bring up the run dialog and type “.” to go to the “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\” directory. Right click in the directory and select “New\Shortcut” and create a shortcut to another directory. Now hit Windows Key + R to bring up the run dialog again and type in the name of the shortcut that you just created. You should be taken to that directory.

ASCII Art

I was searching for some ASCII art and I found some cool sites.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AsciiArt

http://www.chris.com/ASCII/

http://www.won.nl/dsp/usr/mvketel/Internet/Asciiart/linemain.html

http://www.messhits.com/ascii-text-art.html

Google Calculator

www.google.com has become more then just a search engine. It is a phone book, it looks up local movies, it looks up stock quotes, it can tell you the weather, and more. One thing that I thought was interesting was that it can be used as a calculator and can perform conversions between different units.

Example
- 1 + 1 in hex
- 10 + 10 in roman numerals
- 1 metric ton in ton
- 5 cubits in feet
- 20 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit
- 30 degrees C in F
- 6 fortnights
- 6 fortnights in weeks
- pi + 10 / 2
- 100 miles in kilometers
- 0b1100101*0b1001 (Binary math)
- 0x7f + 0x7f (Hexadecimal math)

I can't seem to find a full list of valid units, but it does seem to support quite a lot.

Also, google has patent searches (http://www.google.com/patents), source code searches (http://www.google.com/codesearch), and blog searches (http://blogsearch.google.com/).

Stereograms

My last name in Stereogram.

(Click the image to see at full size.)








Create your own at http://www.eyetricks.com/stereograms/onlinetools/stereocreator.htm

Zune XP Theme

Yes, a free XP theme from Microsoft (and it’s not blue).


You can download it from here. Or, you can download it from the Zune website.

Happy Birthday Google

Google turns 8 (not seven as previously posted) today. Google's official birthday is September 7, 1998. Unfortunately, the folks at Google did not make their usual birthday doodle this year, so we had to take matters into our own hands...
You can read about Google's history here. And, if you are looking for the September 7 date, you will just have to google for it.

Maintainable Software

In looking at some code today, I was reminded of Billy Hollis’s 2005 Grok Talk. If you haven’t seen it (or want to see it again) it can be found on Google Videos here.

I think the real point is that building maintainable systems is more important then just cranking out reams of code. Software spends most of its life in the maintenance phase and not in the creation phase. This is a very important lesson for developers to learn. Although it is not easy to do, there must be a conscious effort to build maintainable software.

Some things that I have found:
- Inheritance can be very useful when you are trying to create things quickly, however inheritance can be very difficult to maintain. Form inheritance is one of those things that can make development very fast, however will ultimately make it very difficult for someone else to maintain. I am talking about the case where you have a base form that tries to do some logic and then you inherit off of it and try to extend it in a way to add or change the logic.
- Another thing to think about is how many classes you have to touch in order to add a new field. You should try to keep the number of classes as low as possible. Try to separate your objects so that they don’t rely heavily on each other. Adding a new field is one of the most common ways software is grown.
- Something else that should be obvious is that less code is better and the more straight-forward your code is, the easier it will be to maintain. Of course that is easier said then done. But none the less, it is something to strive for.