August 2007 | Page 5 of 5 | The Old New Thing

Probably the most expensive Harry Potter viewing I'll ever attend

Raymond ChenAugust 3, 2007Aug 3, 200708/3/07

Last week, I arranged to meet a friend downtown to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Traffic across the 520 bridge during the evening rush is always a disaster, so whenever I have to head into the city by myself after work, I usually take the bus, and today is no exception. It is a sunny day, which makes for pleasant weather but horrible ...

It was not one of Explorer's design goals to provide a Turing-complete interface for bulk file renaming

Raymond ChenAugust 3, 2007Aug 3, 200708/3/07

Somebody wanted to append an extension to all files in a directory and couldn't find a way to do this type of bulk rename in Explorer. On the other hand, it's pretty simple from the command prompt: The person then asked, "Can we get this and other multi-file operations added to Explorer?" "There should be a way to rename a large number ...

But now I'll never know which politician that alien backs for the next election

Raymond ChenAugust 2, 2007Aug 2, 200708/2/07

It has been reported that everybody's favorite mock tabloid The Weekly World News is ceasing publication. Seeing as this is The Weekly World News we're talking about, I'm not sure how much of this I'm going to believe, but people seem to be taking it at face value. I remember seeing a WWN article clipped out and posted on the door to a ...

What is the difference between the Folder and Directory (and other special) progids?

Raymond ChenAugust 2, 2007Aug 2, 200708/2/07

When you're installing your shell extension, you need to know which progid to hang it off of inside HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. We'll start with the title question and then move on to other predefined (but perhaps not well-known) progids...

Note to locals: Lincoln Center is in New York City, not Bellevue

Raymond ChenAugust 1, 2007Aug 1, 200708/1/07

In downtown Bellevue there is a mall named Lincoln Square, but I hear people refer to it with some frequency as Lincoln Center. Just a reminder: Lincoln Center is in New York City. Nitpicker's corner There are many other places in the world with the names Lincoln Square and Lincoln Center...

Footnotes in Win32 history: VLM (Very Large Memory) support

Raymond ChenAugust 1, 2007Aug 1, 200708/1/07

A long-forgotten footnote in Win32 history is the set of functions known as "VLM" for "Very large Memory". To understand VLM, you first need to understand the Alpha AXP. The Alpha AXP was a wonderful architecture and I was sad to see it go. Partly because it meant that the years I spent learning the ins and outs of the processor were now just...

The Old New Thing