Steven Smith, ASP.NET ninja and tech blogger at stevesmithblog.com, writes in "Cool Games" about games he enjoys playing in his free time.Like Steve - and about a zillion other tech people in the world - I'm into good board games and definitely not averse to some XBox gaming.And probably like a lot of fellow geeks, I'm always on the lookout for good two-player games with a high Wife Acceptance Factor. Here's a couple of board games that my wife and I have enjoyed, as scored by my beautiful wife Olivia (thanks Wifey!):Stone Age: this one I bought Olivia for Christmas...

This is something I need from time to time, so I'm posting it right here - extracting files from an MSI installer using the command line: start /wait msiexec /a [MSI installer].msi TARGETDIR=[fully qualified folder, no trailing backslash] /qn Where [MSI installer] is the name of the MSI file, and [fully qualified folder, no trailing backslash] is the folder where the MSI contents are to be extracted to e.g. "C:\TEMP\Folder1". Thanks to Peter Bromberg's blog for this tip (and Google for helping me find it, again and again!) Tags: installer, extract, windows, msiexec

I develop software, and by extension write a lot of text intended for another person, ranging from on-screen labels, full-blown user manuals, FAQs, tips, e-mails, even comments in code. Having to write means that when I read, I do so with a critical eye.I'm not qualified to give a complete overview of writing styles for different situations, but I can tell you one thing I hate wherever I read it: anthropomorphism.Anthropomorphism is making something human (see the Wikipedia definition here) - for example, the way help text is presented using the Office Assistant (Clippy). Any text that describes a non-human...