May 2007

Store Wars and the Meatrix

Raymond Chen May 17, 2007 May 17, 2007 05/17/07

Store Wars is a propaganda video for the Organic Trade Association, starring vegetables and bad puns. ("Darth Tater" indeed.) Yes, it's a propaganda video, but at least it's an entertaining propaganda video. The same company also created The Meatrix, in conjunction with (deep breath now) the Global Resource Action Center for the ...

We're all in this together: No good deed goes unpunished, redux

Raymond Chen May 17, 2007 May 17, 2007 05/17/07

There were several suggestions as to how I could avoid being tagged as the owner of an issue because I helped route the problem. Many of them involved assigning the bug back to the testers to "teach them a lesson". Punishing the tester doesn't help the product. Remember, we're all in this together. The goal is to fix bugs and ship a quality...

Please refer to the instructions that don't exist

Raymond Chen May 16, 2007 May 16, 2007 05/16/07

I bought myself a wireless mouse and was setting it up. Step 1: Insert the batteries. Check. Step 2: Position the receiver. Make sure the distance between the mouse and receiver is within the wireless range specified on the packaging. I wanted to put the receiver on the floor, off of my desk, so I had to make sure it would still ...

Why are console windows limited to Lucida Console and raster fonts?

Raymond Chen May 16, 2007 May 16, 2007 05/16/07

In Windows 95, we experimented with other fonts for the console window, and it was a disaster. In order to be a usable font for the console window, the font needs to be more than merely monospace. It also needs to support all the characters in the OEM code page. Testing this is easy for SBCS code pages, since they have only 256 ...

Get Sea-Tac flight information (including gate and baggage claim) via email

Raymond Chen May 15, 2007 May 15, 2007 05/15/07

There are lots of flight status sites out there. (My favorite is FlightAware because it's the geekiest of them.) Many of them will send you email alerts when flight information changes, but the one from the Port of Seattle is the only one I know of that will also tell you when the arrival gate and baggage claim carousel number change, which ...

Command lines need to be quoted; paths don't

Raymond Chen May 15, 2007 May 15, 2007 05/15/07

While it's true that one category of problems comes from failing to quote spaces in command lines, it is a false statement that "path names in the registry should have quotation marks around them for obvious reasons." In fact it's the opposite. Path names should not be quoted. Think about it: Quotation marks are a parsing issue, not a file ...

Service required * Brewer error *

Raymond Chen May 14, 2007 May 14, 2007 05/14/07

Last year, one of the fancy-dancy iCup devices (yes that's its name, I kid you not) in the kitchen of my building went on the fritz. Things break, that's to be expected. The screen which normally guides you through the selection process instead displayed an error message. The problem was not that it was out of coffee; when that happens, a ...

Evergreen Philharmonic Baroque Festival 2007

Raymond Chen May 11, 2007 May 11, 2007 05/11/07

The Evergreen Philharmonic Orchestra is a student orchestra consisting of the best high school musicians in the Issaquah School District.† Last weekend I attended their annual Baroque Festival, although there was only one Baroque piece on the program. (False advertising, maybe, but I'll let it slide.) Why was I at a high school student...

Performing an operation in each subdirectory of a directory tree from batch

Raymond Chen May 11, 2007 May 11, 2007 05/11/07

To execute a command in each subdirectory of a directory tree from a batch file, you can adapt the following: (If you want to play with this command from the command prompt, then undouble the percent signs.) The /F option enables various special behaviors of the FOR command. The most important change is that a string in single-quotation ...

Email tip: Don't ask the same question multiple times in different groups

Raymond Chen May 10, 2007 May 10, 2007 05/10/07

If you have a question and you want to ask multiple people or groups, do not send the question individually to each group. Just send the question once with your recipient list on the To line. If you send it individually, then each recipient will not know that you asked the question to other groups as well. This in turn creates wasted effort ...

The Old New Thing

May 2007 - Page 3 of 5 - The Old New Thing