I like the "My Network Places" functionality in Windows XP. The way I use Windows Explorer is to have mapped drives for high-use locations. "My Network Places" becomes a psuedo-"favourites" - linking to, for example, a folder where a third-party extract is dropped, or a shared folder from another department, or a folder used for backups but rarely accessed. With that in mind I thought it would be handy to keep a copy of the UNC paths contained in "Network Places". There's a few tools that will allow you to print folder contents ("Network Places" is stored in the "NetHood" folder...

I love the DailyWTF blog and recently had a WTF moment of my own while signing up at the Blockbuster (Australia) website:   In my case the password wasn't long enough, but Blockbuster effectively "threw the book" at me and dumped all the password error text onto the screen. I read and re-read the highlighted text but it still didn't make sense, especially considering I didn't use any non-alphanumeric characters. If something should "contain at least zero" then it could also be written "should not contain" which might have come off better. Tags: wtf, blockbuster, design, ui, error

Inspired by Martin over at gHacks, here's my list of Firefox browser add-ons that I consider essential: Mouse Gestures RedoxNavigate back and forward, close windows, and more with just the mouse. I turn on "mouse trails" to make it easier to see what I'm doing. Easy DragToGoDrag a link to open it in a new background or foreground tab. Adblock PlusBlocks ads, and is very configurable. Having a little "block" link I can click next to images and flash is extremely handy. FirebugIndispensable for web development, especially the...

The other day my PC started beeping at me. Every "Are you sure?" message box was accompanied by a "beep". I don't know how or why this started...I only wanted to make it go away. First check, Control Panel -> Sounds. I confirmed that I had my sound scheme set to "No Sounds", but the beep stubbornly refused to budge. Next, Google. Did you know there's a "Beep" driver? Neither did I! The HowToGeek has a nice article on disabling this driver on XP, only issue is you have to be admin. I rolled up my sleeves, ran an elevated command prompt using...

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

Although it's easy enough to paste code samples into a PRE tag in a blog post, I reckon it's worth using one of the many tools available for formatting or "prettifying" code so the code is more readable - as long as it's not too much effort. My number one criteria for any tool that "prettifies" code to HTML for posting to a blog is that the tool is free. Secondly, that it's easy to use - I can do without hundreds of options. As for the output HTML, my current preference is for inline styles as it makes posting code...

I've been holding off upgrading my Subversion repository and tools, until last week or so when the "perfect storm" of source control arrived: VisualSVN Server with Subversion 1.5, TortoiseSVN 1.5, and the last piece of the puzzle, AnkhSVN 2.0. If, like me, you've been waiting for the right time to upgrade your Subversion source control to the newly-released 1.5, then the free VisualSVN Server is one official (and dead-simple) way to do this as CodeBetter's James Kovacs recently noted. My older 1.3 repository was upgraded painlessly using VisualSVN Server, although I could have also called svnadmin upgrade from a command line...