January 2007 | Page 2 of 4 | The Old New Thing

Unexpected consequences of writing a book: Public appearances

Raymond ChenJanuary 23, 2007Jan 23, 200701/23/07

One of the consequences of being a minor book author is that you can't be a private person any more; you're automatically a public personality. If somebody asks you for an interview, you can't just reject it as a matter of principle. You're now doing it not for yourself but in the service of your book. (Major authors might be able to get awa

Non-psychic debugging: If you can't find something, make sure you're looking in the right place

Raymond ChenJanuary 23, 2007Jan 23, 200701/23/07

This isn't psychic debugging, but it's the sort of dumb mistake everybody makes and which you can't see when re-reading your code because your brain shows you what you want to see, not what's really there. I'm trying to respond to the PSN_QUERYINITIALFOCUS notification, but it's not working. What am I doing wrong? You can stare at this c

The cost of continuously-visible affordances with dynamic states

Raymond ChenJanuary 22, 2007Jan 22, 200701/22/07

Serge Wautier asks, "Why are the copy/cut/paste buttons not disabled when there's nothing to copy/cut/paste?", noting that the back/forward buttons do disable themselves when navigation is not possible in that direction. To get to this question, we'll first go back in time a bit to a world without toolbars. In those early days, these dynamic

2006 storm aftermath: A look back

Raymond ChenJanuary 19, 2007Jan 19, 200701/19/07

It's been about a month since the windstorm that brought the Seattle area to a standstill. Puget Sound Energy has posted a recap of the storm, including what I consider to be a wonderful euphemism: We thank those customers who called to update us with valuable outage status information. Translation: "We would like to acknowledge all the p

What does the fCreate parameter to SHCreateStreamOnFileEx mean?

Raymond ChenJanuary 19, 2007Jan 19, 200701/19/07

The documentation for the fCreate parameter for the SHCreateStreamOnFileEx function covers the issue, but since people seem to really like charts and tables, I'll present the same information in tabular form.

Email tip: Choose a subject line that is meaningful to the recipient, not to the sender

Raymond ChenJanuary 18, 2007Jan 18, 200701/18/07

Presumably you want the recipient to read the message. That's why you sent it. It would behoove you to select a subject line which conveys to your reader the purpose of your message. Otherwise your reader is likely to ignore it for being too vague and uninteresting. Here are some actual bad subject lines I've seen. Suppose your Inbox had a

Iced-over roads + people who can't drive = very expensive (and dangerous) game of billiards

Raymond ChenJanuary 17, 2007Jan 17, 200701/17/07

Unbelievable video of people in Portland, OR who should know better trying to drive down an icy road. (Direct WMV link. Interview with the person who shot the video, but you're going to have to put up with the inane local news-anchor chatter. That last link includes images of cars that, yup, struck the fire truck.) It's as if these people h

Should all windows appear in the taskbar?

Raymond ChenJanuary 17, 2007Jan 17, 200701/17/07

No new content today, just some follow-up discussion on the topic of windows that don't appear in the taskbar. The rules for which windows appear in the taskbar have been documented in MSDN for years, so changing the rules now would mean doing so after the game has ended. Consequently, this is not the sort of change that can be made lightly

One Armstrong = 13.5 mph

Raymond ChenJanuary 16, 2007Jan 16, 200701/16/07

Out of curiosity, I wanted to know how fast Tour de France riders go up l'Alpe D'Huez, the legendary mountain climb. Using information from the Wikipedia page, I calculated that Lance Armstrong's 2004 ascent had an average speed of approximately 13.5 mph (22 kph). Consequently, I invented the Armstrong, a unit of bicycle velocity, w

EnumChildWindows already enumerates recursively