The Old New Thing

October 2005 - The Old New Thing

The Hallowe’en-themed lobby

October 31, 2005 Oct 31, 2005 10/31/05
Raymond Chen
During the Windows 95 project, the window manager team stayed late one night and redecorated the lobby. They suspended a variety of Hallowe'en-themed objects from fishing lines: spiders, ghosts, witches, jack-o'-lanterns, that sort of thing. The fishing line went up and over pulleys, rigged so that the objects spookily rose and fell ...

Without a doubt, the world’s worst online Swedish lessons

October 27, 2005 Oct 27, 2005 10/27/05
Raymond Chen
Lesson 3: Schomething schtranger (mp3) is part three of a series of four (so far) horrifically bad Swedish lessons. (Warning: Off-color content and copious swearing, but nevertheless very funny.) Boz has been living in Sweden since June, and two of his so-called friends have been putting together Swedish language tapes for him. Listen along ...

When programs assume that the system will never change, episode 1

October 26, 2005 Oct 26, 2005 10/26/05
Raymond Chen
An example, all too frequent, of ways programs assume that the user interface will never change is reaching into system binaries and sucking out undocumented resources. In the shell, we have fallen into the reluctant position of carrying "dead" icons around for the benefit of programs that assumed that they would always be available. However, ...

It’s like being at the PDC, but without the lines or the tote bag

October 25, 2005 Oct 25, 2005 10/25/05
Raymond Chen
Michael Swanson announced last night that the arduous process of assembling the PDC 2005 DVD content is now complete and the results are now online. For free. For six months. You can choose a session and watch it via streaming video, or you can download the video itself for offline enjoyment (!). Michael also has links to the order ...

Seattle Twenty-Five for $25 November 2005 restaurant list is available

October 25, 2005 Oct 25, 2005 10/25/05
Raymond Chen
A regular restaurant promotion in the Seattle area is called Twenty-Five for $25 (The "$" is silent). Other cities have their own versions of this. New York's is called Restaurant Week, for example, and Toronto's is called (I am not making this up) Winterlicious. The common theme is that participating restaurants offer a prix fixe menu ...