Speaking Seldom...

DNA for the Deluded Masses?

2008-03-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Wandering through the stumbleupon forest of linkage, I came upon this Peronal DNA site. I couldn't resist taking the test and obtaining my very own DNA Personality Profile. Fascinating stuff... click on the link and soak up the insights into my warped and fragile personality.

They appear to offer a number of ancillary services related to your DNA profile. Things like interactive dna charts and embedding widgets into your web pages to advertise your DNA markers.

One thing I am not at all clear on: Why would anyone want to do this? Why did I do it?

Perhaps my DNA profile will hold a clue...

Hellgate Straight-Talk

2007-11-12T00:09:00.001-08:00

VN Boards - How do you rate Hellgate:London out of 10?

Hellgate London Thread - nice discussion from "real" players

Well of Urd: Technique: The Magic of Yevaud's Name

2007-06-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

My main login ID, for a long time now, has been "Yevaud". I took this name from one of my favorite books of all time: A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin. She wrote the book back in the late 60's, and I stumbled upon it at the tender age of 12 in my 6th grade public library. I read those words like they were magic, and I felt transformed by her work to a world of wonder and fantastic possibilities. It meant all the more to me because I stumbled upon it myself - it was like a secret treasure i had uncovered that was mine, and mine alone.

I recently ran across this entry in someone's blog. It talks about the technique of naming things when writing fantasy stories, or creating fantasy settings. (Link, here) It brought back to mind one of my long-standing reasons for heaping so much praise on the novel. It seems every time I read it, a new insight comes through.

I have never really found another author who could write such profound words while at the same time keeping the narrative straightforward enough that a 12 year old could follow it. There have always been books that both kids and adults could enjoy together, from C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe", to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. However, none of them have, in my mind, matched the accomplishment of Leguin's work. Her novel manages to remain as deep and insightful at 35 as it was at 12. The difference is in the way I read it - and the concepts I focus on. The layers of this novel are amazing - even more so because it seems on the surface to be such a straightforward story. Yet, I am continually finding new insights when I return to the book throughout the years.

If you have not yet read this landmark fantasy story, especially if you're interested in reading fantasy stories with your children, or you are a young adult yourself, check this book out as soon as you can. I think you will find it quite enjoyable.

-Michael Moore (June 29th, 2007 - Seattle, WA)

Wired Reporter argues for phone interview, bloggers argue for email or blog-style format.

2007-04-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

I recently couldn't refrain from commenting on the bloggers vs. Wired reporter story wherein a wired reporter (Fred Vogelstein) requested a phone interview, and Jason Calacanis and Dave Winer both insisted on doing it either via email or directly in their blogs.

The article I was responding to was heavily-weighted toward the blogger's side of things - and while I do feel that the idea has merit - I felt the attitudes of the bloggers were reprehensible. Especially in light of the cost to Mike Arrington, whom was the topic of the Wired article the interviews were being requested for.

----------- Begin My Comment From BuzzMachine Log: ---------------

I have read each of the blog pieces from each of the major players in this story. The way I see it, Fred V. has been nothing but reasonable, and while he has a point of view that clearly differs from the bloggers in question, it is the bloggers who have been abrasive and abusive first.

True, other Wired journalists were more aggressive and abrasive, but Fred V. has been nothing but a gentleman in all the email threads i have read.

These Gods of Blogging also nearly tanked a Wired article on TechCrunch - which is a selfish act IMHO - doubly-so by the fact that they actually know Mike. Read his response and clearly he feels he got screwed by their need to parade a request for a phone interview into the blogosphere.

Think about how much that Wired article might have meant to Mike A. That's a huge loss for him - both in exposure and credentials. Even better, he has his "friends'" self-righteousness to thank for it. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

The tone of the whole coverage for this has been misleading, from my point of view. I found from the way the stories were presented on places like Techmeme that I was on the side of the bloggers - until I actually read the articles and found Fred V. to be the reasonable one.

I'm not saying Jason & Dave were not possessed of good points - I think they (and you) make a good case for doing interviews in more internet-aware ways - but the way the points were made, and at the cost of their colleague's article in Wired, showed a real lack of class in my book.

In closing, I would like to thank Fred V. for diligently posting the actual email threads that relate to the blog postings so that I could see the real facts of the case and form my opinion based on them. Rest assured, Mr. V., that at least in my case, it made all the difference in my understanding your true role and the respect you are owed.

-Michael Moore (yevaud42@gmail.com)

Editor Brain Modes

2007-03-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

I wound up tying in a long comment to "Coding Horror's" blog... so I thought I would post it here too since this is my official place for programmer musings and fun discussions.

From http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000563.html:

I am a big fan of using the keyboard as much as possible. I have found that over the years I have formed "modes" in my brain for the different types of editors I use:

Mode # 1 - "Everyman" Editing:

This is my brain mode for when I am in a standard windows text box, a notepad window, or editing something on someone else's editor and I want to have the best chance of things just "working". No fancy, feelin' cool editing tricks here. Just get the job done and use the experience to remind you of how much nicer the other mode's are.. (This message typed in Mode # 1).

Mode # 2 - "Faux Emacs":

Ah, old school emacs. This is my favorite, because if you are trained right you can keep both hands on the keyboard for just about everything. No lifting your hand up to search for arrow keys or the home/end. Just keep those palms flat on the keyboard ergo-bench and type away. Emacs uses the CTRL and ALT keys as modifiers for all the basic editing commands, and has no qualms about, say, using Control-F to mean "move cursor forward" and Control-d to mean "delete character". There are some interesting conflicts that arise when you bring the default emacs commands to windows. The one that really freaks people out is when I have Page-Down mapped to Control-V. Heaven help the poor soul who tries to use my Visual Studio while its emacs profile is still engaged. They go to paste a bit of text and the *entire screen changes!* Heh heh... if I had a dime for every time a coworker yelped in dismay...

I do have a somewhat hybrid set up for those apps that I can configure to use emacs key bindings - things like Shift + Control + F = Extend selection forward one char, Shift + Control + A = Extend selection to start of line, and Control + U = Page Up (took that from vi). I am actually more in tune with this "bastardized" hybrid than true emacs, but drop me in real emacs editor and I only start to choke when I have to remember those funky double-sequence commands like Control-X Control-S to save and the like. Or heaven help me if I need to remember how to manipulate kill regions or run a Meta-X search-for-string...

Mode # 3: "To The Pain" (g)VI(m) -

Long ago I lived in worlds where sometimes emacs was not available. I bit the bullet and learned VI. It is just as powerful as emacs in its ability to let you keep those palms flat on the keyboard, but it does it in a different way. VI is a "mode-based" editor - meaning that you press a key ('i') and then everything you type until you hit the ESCAPE key is treated as text input. If you are not in 'insert' mode, then you're in 'command' mode, which is where you can move around ('ijkl') and enter "colon" commands like ':w ~/myfile.txt', ':wq' (write file then quit), or ':q!' (quit without saving, dammit).

After literally years, I eventually reached the point where I could effortlessly switch into "vi" mode and do quie well. These days, I am even able to do basic search and replace without having to look it up. Don't believe me? Check this out:

':1,$s/foobar/Snickers/g'

Looks like Sendmail control codes, or Perl gone right, eh? No sir, it is my version of "Replace every occurence of the word 'foobar' with 'Snickers' in the file. My mind tells me that this command is essentially broken down like this:

':1,$s/foobar' // search for the string foobar anywhere from
// the 1st line to the end of file '$'.

'/Snickers/' // If you find a foobar, replace it with Snickers please...

'g' // Oh, and do it globally for all matches you find.
// (Snickers really satisfies...).

It turns out that depending on which vi you are using you may not need the 'g' part at all.. and frankly if you use me as your canonical reference for how to break down the vi command above you should have your brain checked for lesions.

Well, anyway, that's my brain on editors after well over ten years of programming in Unix, Windows, and other seedy locales. Thank you for listening :-)

Mouse scroll wheel too sensitive? This might work...

2007-03-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Mouse with A.D.D.

Recently, for no reason that I can figure out, my mouse scroll wheel suddenly became hypersensitive. I would scroll just a tiny fraction and the window in focus would scroll down as if I had spun the wheel harder than the burliest contestant on The Price Is Right. Reams and reams of virtual pages would careen before my eyes. I would try to barely move it - but it was like playing that Operator game -- and I kept touching the sides! BZZZZZZT!!! It was so sensitive that just the barest touch of my finger would send it down several pages. On several occasions, and I am not making this up, the damn thing would literally scroll UPWARDS after it hit the bottom of the page, as if it were bouncing back due to some kind of virtual scroll-wheel backlash.

It nearly drove me insane. I had to put a stop to it.

The problem was systemic to all applications, so it seemed likely a driver issue. After fiddling with the control panel, which didn't help because the slowest scroll speed was still 100 KPH or better, I went to phase two and upgraded the mouse driver. I installed the latest Microsoft Intellipoint mouse driver, and that fixed the issue without even requiring a reboot. Yay!

So the next time your mouse is giving you problems, try upgrading the mouse driver software. Or even just reinstalling the drivers you already have. Chances are good that this may fix your problem. If not, there's always tech support .

-Michael

Twitter Mania

2007-03-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

I have recently been checking out the new web-craze called Twitter. I heard mention of it many times on TWiT (http://www.twit.tv/twit) before I finally decided I would check it out. At first I was confused as to what the heck was the big deal - but I suddenly "got" it when I added Leo Laporte, the host of TWiT, to my friends list. Suddenly I felt I was connected with his life in a way that I've never experienced before. It seems silly, but knowing what he was up to during the day kept me somehow feeling closer to him. I didn't really feel like a stalker, though in truth there is definitely a stalker element to this, but rather as some kind of privileged friend that had Leo on my MSN account or something and I kept getting IM messages from him.

It is strange to know more about what Leo is doing during the day than my own wife, or anyone else in my life, other than my coworkers. Very interesting.

I think the other thing that I have come to associate with twitter is a sense of being in the midst of a maelstrom of web links and blogging and cool links. As soon as I added a few of the "popular" or "A-list" tweeters, such as Scoble & Calcannis (sp?) I found myself quickly overwhelmed with the amount of links they were posting and the sheer volume of information those personalities could shovel at the populace in a day. They seemed to have a capacity for reading and trolling and posting links that far exceeded my meager ability to read them.

In the end I can simply de-friend the ones that are to annoying/noisy. I liked Jason Calcannis' style, but the guy is hyperactive at a level I can't match - so I removed him from my friends list and suddenly the world seems a bit more peaceful now.

Now if I can just get the gumption up to drop Scoble from my list. ..

SetBrowser utility a lifesaver

2006-11-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pass on how I fixed Thunderbird recently when it ceased invoking firefox when I clicked on URL links.

I use the portable versions of Thunderbird and Firefox. I have been very impressed with how quickly the maintainers of those packages keep them updated. I think the 2.0 version of PortableFirefox was available before the regular version was! Unfortunately, after upgrading to Portable Firefox 2.0, Thunderbird ceased to be able to bring up Firefox when I clicked on a URL inside any email message.

I fiddled with this numerous ways but couldn't get it to work. I even tried installing the regular 2.0 firefox, but it still didn't work. I found a web page that described how to manually set the browser to use inside Thunderbird's config file. Still no dice. Argh!

Fortunately, another web page mentioned some freeware apps that did fix things for me. I simply downloaded the SetBrowser app here:

http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/setbrowser/

installed the program, and then ran it. The application was very easy to use and it was straightforward to tell it to set my default browser to the location of the Portable Firefox executable. I clicked the "apply" button and suddenly, like magic, my links in Thunderbird were working again.

Yay!

One odd thing was that while Thunderbird was unable to open links for me, other applications were still working. For example, Directory Opus (my file browser of choice) was able to bring up firefox when I clicked on URL links. For some reason, Thunderbird was crippled and SetBrowser fixed it.

Hope this helps at least one person. if it does, email me to let me know!

-Michael

What makes a good game feature?

2006-09-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

We are doing some internal game design here at Snowblind, and as part of that I got to thinking about what makes a suggestion for a new feature worthy of inclusion into a game's design? The link I mention in this blog is an attempt to enumerate some of the more successfull mechaniscs used in games. I found myself wondering how you evaluate those mechanics for use in your game, and probably more importantly - how to evaluate new mechanics and game ideas for suitability.

Here's what I came up with, I'd love to hear what you all think. I bet there are some good articles on the web about this type of thing; if you know of any do share!

New Things (tm) should be:

1. Fun, fun, fun!
2. Fitting with the theme of the game.
3. Designed to avoid unbalancing the gameplay.
4. Inspiring to the player, urging them to play our game to experience it.
5. Enhacement of existing game design, resulting in a deeper and richer game experience. This is perhaps better said in consideration of its opposite: Avoid features that make the game overly complex or too disparate.

Bonus points for features that:

1. Distinguish the game from others in the marketplace.
2. Broadens the appeal of the game to a wider audience.
3. Can be expanded and explored more fully

What do you all think?

So what is a "thunk"?

2006-08-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

What is a thunk?

This question was posed to me recently by a fellow programmer at work. He expected that I would know, since I have been in the industry for a while, but though the term was familiar I had to admit I didn't know what it meant. He went on to explain that a thunk was that bit of code which redirected a function call from the standard address in memory to a "thunk handler" which did whatever business it wanted to do and then returned control of execution back to the original target address.

Looking things up, this seems to be not quite the case. Or at least, this definition of a thunk seems to leave out the main use it has been put to which is to (apparently ) redirect code properly when moving between 32-bit and 16-bit libraries, ala the PC programming world circa Windows 3.1 (early 1990).

So what are the "official" defintions? Wikipedia has a great page, as usual. The official Wikipedia blurb on a thunk is:

a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another, usually for compatibility reasons. For example, running a 16-bit program on a 32-bit operating system may require a thunk from 16-bit addresses to 32-bit. Thunk in this sense may also refer to mappings from one calling convention to another or from one version of a library to another. This meaning is similar to the first—the "delayed computation" can be thought of as the "update" from the old format to the new.

PCMagazine's Encyclopedia has a different definition:

In a PC, to execute the instructions required to switch between segmented addressing of memory and flat addressing. A thunk typically occurs when a 16-bit application is running in a 32-bit address space, and its 16-bit segmented address must be converted into a full 32-bit flat address. On the other hand, if a 32-bit program calls a 16-bit DLL, then the thunk is in the opposite direction: from 32 bit to 16 bit.

WikiDictionary has this to say:

(computing) a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another, usually for compatibility reasons, such as from 16-bit addresses to 32-bit to allow a 16-bit program to run on a 32-bit operating system

Audacity + Rhapsody (or Napster)

2006-07-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Did you know?: Using Audacity, you can record the music you listen to with Rhapsody or Napster. Install Audacity and then change your input from the microphone to the "Wave Out" device and you are ready to go. Then, queue up your desired playlist in Rhapsody or Napster and let it play. Hit the record button on audacity and let it run through the songs on your playlist. When it is finished, stop recording in Audacity and then go back and find the start and stop of each song. Select the proper portion of the recording and export that selection in either .wav, .mp3, or .ogg format. Do this for each song in your playlist and, Viola!, you now have a digital copy of the music you were listening to. The quality is as good as the service streams to your machine, which makes Napster the better choice for recording like this due to its higher audio fidelity. However, Rhapsody sounds pretty good too. I find either sounds good enough to crank up loud on my car stereo. I certainly can't tell the difference between these recordings and CD quality, though there doubtless is one. I have never had a terribly discerning ear when it comes to audio "quality".

It takes a bit of effort, but this is a great way to recover your long-lost music - especially if tracking it down through the traditional file-sharing methods has proven fruitless.

Now, naturally, this is not something they want you doing, and the legality is shakey at best. However, there are those who believe that they have a right to a digital copy of music they purchased on physical media. This holds true even if the music in question was John Schneider's Greatest Hits that they purchased in 1985 and lost in 1987. Such individuals feel quite comfortable procuring the music from that album in digital form by whatever means necessary.

I'm not saying I support such things (though I lean toward their side rather strongly). All I am saying is that you can do this, and it is really quite easy.

One importnat tip - turn off windows sounds by going to the Control Panel/Sounds And Audio Devices dialog in the start menu. Select the Sound tab and then select the "No Sounds" sound profile for windows sounds. This way you won't get windows beeps and blurps in the midst of your favourite song.

-Michael

Bringing you up to speed...

2006-07-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while, so I thought I would update you all on the latest achievements in my life:

1. Got a new PDA phone - the Sprint 6700. A nice review is here:

I chose this phone for several reasons. First, I wanted to ensure that I had a keyboard of some kind. I could have gone with the Motorolla Q or one of the older Treo-style keyboard devices, but without exception those PDA phones sacrificed some screen pixels to provide me with the keys. The slide-out form-factor of the 6700 allowed me to keep my precious pixels and get a better-sized keyboard to boot. The only cost was the thickness of the phone, which I must say is rather unweildy at something like 2-3" thick...

2. I bought an XBox 360.

Being a game developer by trade, this was an easier purchase to justify than it would be for ordinary mortals. ;) My fiance doesn't particulary believe that I really bought this for "research" purposes, and neither do I to be honest, but the bottom line is that I need to keep up on the latest gaming platforms and if that means iH ave to suffer through endless hours of exciting gameplay, well... so be it.

3. I bought 3 or 4 new hard drives.

I can't seem to stop buying hard drives. Every weekend some store is selling some hard drive for a rediculously cheap price. My last purchase was a 400GB hard disk for a measly 120 dollars. Whoa. How can I possibly pass that up? The result of purchasing several new drives is that I have displaced several smaller, older drives that had previousy been in my USB encolsures (of which I have four). I am getting to have quite a stack of hard drives on my computer hardware shelf.

4. I bought 2 new network-storage "units".

I bought a netgear network drive that can hold two separate hard drives and present them as a network share on your local area network. This was a good way to let me use some of those new hard drives I had purchased without displacing existing drives. I also bought a DLink network storage device that only holds one drive but can daisy-chain 2 additional USB enclosures shoudl I so desire.

5. I bought a Nintendo DS Lite

This little bugger is great! I don't know why I waited os long to get one - because it is a great handheld gaming platform. I just wish that they had used one large touch-screen instead of two separate screens. Whomever thought that was a good idea should be taken out and shot -- umm... unless it was the same bloke that fought for the use of the stylus and the touch screen - in which case he/she should just get a stern talking to.

6. I bought oodles of PSP games

I bought a PSP a long time ago, but I keep buying new games even though all I ever seem to really play is Untold Legends 2 (or whatever the second one is...)

7. I bought a room air conditioner that doesn't work.

Damn thing. I'm taking it straight back to Home Depot as soon as I get around to it....

Well, that's about all the major purchases I made. I am hoping to buy, in the future, the following:

A PSP LocationFree unit - to let me record, view, and manage television programs from my PSP or PC.
A PS3 when I can mortgage my home (I'll need a home to mortgage first).
A Nintendo Wiiiiiii (how many i's are there in that stupid name?)
A new PC - at least parts of one. My current PC seems to feel the need to reboot constantly and to turn off all my USB hubs and lock up. Annoying!
Get a media PC set up in the living room so that I can watch all those divx recordings of my DVD collections that I have gathered through my use of newzbin, giganews, and newsleecher.

That's all for now. Tune in for more frequent updates - after all there are at least 3 people that read this blog ... and for that mighty readership I must make certain sacrifices and keep things updated regularly.

-Michael Moore (Seattle, WA)

Keyboard recording software roundup

2005-10-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

I just finished looking around for a freeware program that could handle keyboard shortcuts that might be several keys in length. Here are the results of my research, I hope they are of some use to you as well. If they help you, do me a favour and leave me a comment to let me know.

Peace,

-Michael

Goal:

To be able to hit Control-F12 or something like that and have it execute a series of keystrokes. For example, to open a menu in the interface and select an item in that menu that does not have a keyboard shortcut assigned to it.

Note that there is not stated need for the mouse to be scriptable, but several of the products I list have that capability as well.

My Research:

Though somewhat limited, you should be able to do what you want with this utility:

http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html

It is freeware, though like almost all freeware you are encouraged to donate if you enjoy the program.

Another program that can do what you want is called Hot Key Pro, but it costs 30 dollars. I found it to be very easy to use and does a lot of powerfull things. It can be found here:

http://www.hot-keyboard.com/

The one I like the best, because it is the most flexible, is:

http://members.ij.net/anthonymathews/MacroMaker.htm

It is free, and can do mouse and keyboard recordings, and can do other things like insert delays in the commands, add system variable values, etc...

Finally, a great resource for all of the varous programs that do this sort of things I found here at tucows:

http://www.tucows.com/downloads/Windows/DevelopmentWebAuthoring/Hotkeys/

Afterthought

The program I also use that can probably do this is called "StrokeIt". (http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit"). I mentioned it in a previous email to the company waaaay back in June or May -- it allows you to perform mouse gestures to trigger actions. I use it for ease of use in navigating my browser windows and for opening and closing programs. For example, if I draw a letter C with the middle mouse button held down, it will close the current window I am looking at. If I draw a _| (inverted L) figured, then it will send a PAGEUP keyboard command to the current window, etc... I have mapped forwardnad back buttons in the web browser to left and right strokes, etc...

StrokeIt can also do keyboard shortcuts,a nd I believe it can send multiple keys, but I didn't bother to figure it out since I found so many other programs that worked and I figured you weren't so much interested in mouse stroke software as you were int he keyboard macros. If you change your mind about that, do let me convert you :)

Some devstudio tips

2005-09-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I sent this around at work yesterday. Its just a couple of tips about programming in Visual Studio .Net 2003.

When a project changes, dev studio offers to Reload it. This doesn't always work.
===============================================================

1. Most of the time the Reload button works fine when a vcproj or sln file has changed. However, in the case where a new file has been added to the project you will usually find that you have to completely close out the solution and then load it again to avoid link errors for code in the new file. Personally, I just restart dev studio in such cases.

Setting up Tool menu items to run perforce commands
========================================

2. To properly set up the Tools menu to have your perforce checkin, checkout, revert, and sync commands you need to set the following environment variable: "P4CLIENT=username". For example, I have set my P4CLIENT environment variable to "mmoore". Then you can set up commands like "c:program files\perforce\p4.exe" with arguments "diff -f $(ItemPath)". If you have logged in to perforce via p4win, you should have no problems. To be safe, I also set : "P4PORT=myperforceserver:1666", but I'm not sure if you need that.

Properly handling an environment variable change
=====================================

3. Note that when you make changes to environment vairables via

"My Computer/Properties/Advanced/Environment Variables...",

you are not going to see those changes in any programs that were already running prior to that point. This can bite you in many ways, but one of the more apropos in this case is the need to restart devstudio after changing an environment variable, such as the P4CLIENT mentioned above.

* SIDE NOTE: Those who might use a filebrowser program instead of the default explorer folder browsers have to be especially cautious on the environment variable changes. If you're used to running devstudio from Directory OPUS or Explorer XP and you change an environment variable to a new value in the windows shell, you'll need to restart your file browser program so that new programs launched with inherit the updates to the environment variables.

MINIDUMPS
===========================

4. Devstudio added minidumps to the mix in 7.0, which makes it easy to set up a crash handler that takes a snapshot of the stack, registers, and associated information such that the call stack can be reproduced faithfully at any time in the future. A minidump may decide to include the entire heap if desired - doing so allows you to view all aspects of memory including the values of variables not on the stack. Heap minidumps also do not need to be pointed to the original binary to load symbols - the heap info is enough. Minidumps without the heap, on the other hand, must be pointed to the original binary and its associated pdb file.

To use a minidump, you simply open it in devstudio and open it as if it were a project file. You'll see a callstack as if the program had just crashed, though of course it hasn't. :)

Hope these tips help somebody,

-Michael

program to find which process is using a file windows

2005-09-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today I was trying to delete a file on my hard drive and it came back and told me that, although it bitterly regretted it, the operating system would not be able to comply with my request because another process had the file opened and was restricting access to it. Without the proper access, the operating system cannot delete a file.

I tried my first trick, which works a good percentage of the time: I renamed the file. Or, I tried to. Instead, I got a similar message indicating even this approach of renaming the file was not possible. Often it works because the owner of the handle that has the file opened can continue to access the file so long as you simply rename it and do not attempt to delete it. I think, though I am not sure, that this method works so long as the owner of the handle does not have that handle opened for write access.

At that point, the question that is the title of this blog entry came into play: "Is there a program out there that will tell me which program or programs has a specific file opened?" If I know which process has my file held hostage I can use task manager to terminate that process and thus free up the file's permissions so that I can safely delete the file.

I did a few google searches but didn't turn up much. Disheartened, I started scanning with my good friend 'procexp.exe' - or Process Explorer - to see which one it might be. Procexp can show you which handles a given process has open, including files. As I did this manual hunting, I noticed the Find menu, which turns out to be the perfect tool for the task. Using its Find Handles... dialog, you can type in the substring to search for - which can be a portion of the filename, or the type of resource in general. For example, type 'ntuser' and you'll find all the handles opened on your system that touch anything with ntuser in it, such as the ntuser.dat log file, which every user has in Windows XP.

This feature was so usefull and cool, I just had to share. If anyone is even reading this out there, and you have a good tip of your own, please do share!

Update:

There is now ( perhaps always was) a command line utility also available at sysinternals.com called Handle that provides a very rapid way to find open files and other handles on your system. I recommend it above procexp.exe unless you're already running procexp.exe. It is also nice, if you are like me and use a suite of unix commands for dos. Then, you can pipe the results from the handle command to whatever other command-line programs you like. For example: 'handle | grep -i insight" will show me not only what files are opened that have the word insight in their title but also all handles opened by my editor, Source Insight, because its executable name is insight.exe.

-Michael

Aaron Toponce : Change Your Windows XP Command Prompt Font

2005-08-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Aaron Toponce : Change Your Windows XP Command Prompt Font

Here's how you can change the fonts available in the command prompt properties dialog. Handy

The various music services.

2005-07-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Music Services: MP3.com

Found this chart to be interesting -- its a comparison of each of the major music services. I've personally tried napster, rhapsody, musicmatch, and itunes. Many of these do not do subscription-based on-demand streaming, btw..

Jaron Lanier

2005-07-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

Voices from the Edge- Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier was mentioned in the book "Programmers at Work" an old book by Microsoft Press circa 1986. Its interesting to read about the people they chose in this book as the leading programmers of the day. Checking up on this guy -he appears in the book as a geeky, overweight programmer with big ideas and a fun-loving personality. Then I see this picture:

and its pretty scary. :)

2005-07-06T19:44:00.001-07:00

Lynda and Michael share a smile
Posted by Michael Moore

Mystery Solved: How to fix the problem where Windows no longer recognizes your removable hard drive

2005-07-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

New drive or mapped network drive not available in Windows Explorer

If you cannot seem to find your removeable drive anymore when you connect it to your computer, the article above may have your answer. I know it did for me.

The gist is this: Check out Disk Manager (Right click My Computer and click Manage, then click on the Disk Manager item). If you see your drive there and it doesn't have a letter, then that's your problem. Right click on it and assign it a drive letter and all is well with the world again.

You would think windows could help you out with this problem!

I don't even want to contemplate how many frustrated occasions I have had to experience this problem without knowing that the solution was right under my nose. Argh!

I think this problem is pervasive enough that it deserves a hotfix from Microsoft that percolates through windows update to provide far more effective and obvious warning messages to help the user fix this problem.

-Michael

John Carmack: Mac/PPC Peformance Gap for Gaming "Not a Myth" || The Mac Observer

2005-06-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

John Carmack: Mac/PPC Peformance Gap for Gaming "Not a Myth" || The Mac Observer

Carmack speaks. I am not that up on the Mac world, but I have no reason to doubt Carmack knows whereof he speaks.

For those who know me, there is the understood depravity that I am a fanatic fanboy of John Carmack. He was my inspiration to get into video game programming back when I was writing unix software for the computer science department at Ohio State University. I'll never forget the quote from that first Wired Magazine article (still on the net if you look for it at wired.com... someday I'll have to put a link to it here). Anyway, the quote was something like (I'm paraphrasing):

"Anyone can succeed as a video game programmer if they are willing to put in the hours. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week."

At the time, Carmack was living that mantra. He pretty much lived at Id Software. And as we all know, the fruits of his labors have had a significant impact on the games industry. My idol has since cut back a bit on the hours at the office, and his once myopic focus has since broadened to include everything from rockets to macro economic theory.

Who shares the chaos of my life?

2005-06-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend, Lynda:

And her cat, Emma:

What do I look like?

2005-06-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

What do I look like?

Here ya go - thanks to Blogger's new picture support.

Aren't they just thoughtful.

-Michael

Performance 3D Video Cards

2005-06-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

Performance 3D Video Cards

Here we have a nice list of the current Top 5 Performance 3D Video Cards. As someone who just can't seem to keep anywhere near up-to-date on what the latest and greatest graphics cards are, this kind of list is useful.

It was recently updated to reflect the most recent releases by NVidia so for the moment (June 29th, 2005) it is current and valid.

What Video card do you have in your best system? Mine is a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 128MB of ram. I got that about two years ago. Its amazing how long we can hang on to graphics cards before we feel that the latest games demand our purchasing a new one.

Back to business,

-Michael

The Numbers - Star Wars Box Office Performance Comparison

2005-06-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

The Numbers - Star Wars Box Office Performance Comparison

The-numbers.com is a great site to track the trends in the box office. I must admit that I am a bit of a media whore, and I love reading now and then about the big block-busters and just how much money that big budget movie is raking in.

Here's a look at the fate of the six star wars films. It is interesting that the Phantom Menace did better overall than the Attack of the Clones. This time around the Revenge of the Sith (revenge for what, exactly?) is looking to be the King of them all - Revenge of the Bad Movies Making the Box Office Tremble. This is just US sales, so one has to wonder just how close this will come to the #1 movie of all time: Titanic.

I do hate that we keep talking about records for most dollars earned, but it is so misleading because the price of tickets have been going up and up so the same number of tickets sold today would be like a 3rd or a 4th of the amount of money if it were sold in 1977. So why don't these losers go by Number of ticket's sold? I do have to ding this site for not providing that kind of data, though they do make an attempt to at least adjust for inflation in some charts, like this one : Top Records.

I blog to myself, I want you to blog me,
When I lay down, I want my laptop above me,
So I can type, those keys, those keys, those keys.

I want to... I want to blog with Divinlys.

Ah, someone stop me! :-)

-Michael

Google Earth - Home

2005-06-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

Google Earth - Home

This type of application has been available for at least five years now... I believe the original work to put this stuff on the web was done by Microsoft as proof of technology for their "Terraserver" (tm) software or whatever... they were trying to show how well Microsoft servers dealth with a database that was terrabytes in size.

A terrabyte used to seem so incredibly huge. I remember a friend of mine back when I was working at Ohio State University's Computer Science department, name of Eric Osborne, astonished me to the core when he told me that while working at the now defunct Digital, he had personally worked on a database server that had over a terrabyte of disk space. I remember grilling him fiercly when he told me that because I thought for sure he was pulling my leg.

Fast forward seven or eight years and I almost have a terrabyte of disk space for my home PC network. Times are changing, and I like this kind of change.

Google seems to be branching into a vast number of projects, none of which are necessarily forced to tie in with the rest. Its as if google has its software engineers pick a project they think is cool, and then they find some kind of monetary angle, however nebulous or tenuous, and then the team goes to work and makes it so.

I think it must be really great to work at google. I have a few friends at Microsoft who talked about their friends at google, and from those conversations I have the sense that google is about as hip and geek-friendly a company to work for as exists on this planet.

Well, enough of this blogging to myself, back to work....

-Michael

6200 NVIDIA Introduces GeForce Go 6 Series for Thin and Light Notebooks New Delivers Award-Winning Multimedia Technology to the Mainstream Notebook Ma

2005-06-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

6200 NVIDIA Introduces GeForce Go 6 Series for Thin and Light Notebooks New Delivers Award-Winning Multimedia Technology to the Mainstream Notebook Market Corporation announced reg gra

I recently purchased a new laptop from BestBuy, and it uses this as its graphics chip. I confess that when I purchased it I was only concerned with ensuring that the graphics chip could do DirectX pixel and vertex shaders. I didn't pay attention to how new the chip was, but fortunately it appears that my purchase was a wise one. The 6200 seems to be the perfect blend of power and portability. I find the same is true of the laptop - it weights only a little over 3 pounds, and yet it has almost 2GHz of processing power and a nice 1280x800 widescreen display that is not impossible to read. It isn't the fastest thing out there by any means, but it is more than ample power to meet my needs and gives me a good amount of portability in the bargain.

I bought this laptop for programming video games, and it seems to be a good choice for that provided the video game I am working on is not trying to push the hardware envelope. If you're developing for the XBox then you can bet you're going to be able to handle the game on this laptop (assuming, of course, that your xbox game can also be compiled to run on windows).

-Michael

Homebrew Air Conditioning

2005-06-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Homebrew Air Conditioning

Now that's an air-conditioner. This guy built an air-conditioner using a garbage can, some copper tubing, a fan, and a lot of ice-water. Apparently normal water would work too, but it would take a lot longer to cool the room.

I am glad to have installed a real air-conditioner in my home, but at a price tag of nearly 6000 dollars, I can't say I am not thinking I might have been smarter to invest in a few buckets of ice water for the fifteen days it really gets hot in Seattle. The rest of the time, windows are good enough.

Ah well, I still feel its worth my investment on those days when its 95 degrees outside and everyone in my neighborhood is sweltering whilst I lounge in cool air-conditioned bliss.

:-)

Signing off,

-Michael

Tabs vs. Spaces: What's a good programmer to do?

2005-06-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Tabs or spaces? Which to use? Do you set that option that says "Insert X spaces instead of tabs" in your editor, or leave it turned off?

This argument came up again for me recently at the company I work for (Snowblind Studios). I had been told to stop inserting spaces where tab characters belonged, and an all-to-common scene ensued wherein I espoused the tabs-are-evil mantra but had little memory of why that mantra was with me.

So I did a bit of research to put the matter to bed once and for all. Or, so I thought. Hah! What a joke. This is a religious issue if ever there was one. Want to see just how religious this argument is? Just check this out:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2001-December/thread.html#75335

I mean, just look at all those posts? That's a flame-war if ever there was one!

A good clinical overview of this tabs vs. spaces can be found at this URL:

http://www.answers.com/topic/tab-1

An excerpt from that article:

Tabs in programming

computer programming

, the use of tabs for code formatting and

indentation

is an ongoing debate. Programmers are generally divided into two camps - those who use hard tabs in their code, and those who configure their editors to insert actual space characters when they press the tab key. When tabs are replaced to spaces in this way they are referred to as soft tabs.

There are many arguments for and against using hard tabs in code. What can be said without doubt is that one early benefit of tabs, i.e.

compression

(see above), is now less relevant as storage is so cheap, and sophisticated compression algorithms can provide much greater benefits.

External links

Tabs versus Spaces: An Eternal Holy War by Jamie Zawinski (http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html)
Why I prefer no tabs in source code by Adam Spiers: (http://adamspiers.org/computing/why_no_tabs.html)
Why I love having tabs in source code: (http://www.derkarl.org/why_to_tabs.html)

Other argument summaries:

Pro Tabs:

Pro Spaces

And yet more from the why_no_tabs page:

Someone who didn't give his name sent me a whole bunch of related links. I'm relieved to see that these pages mostly agree with me :-)

Possibly the best pro-tabs page I've seen so far. I agree with most of what he says, except the bit about diffs looking fine. He also forgot to consider quoting code in e-mail.
Indentation/Tabs/Space Policy in a C++ coding standard
Style guide for Python code
http://www.rudbek.com/Code_gui.htm#Guideline_No_Hard_Tabs
http://babbage.cs.qc.edu/courses/cs101/Coding_Guidelines.html
FreeBSD style guide
How To Write Unmaintainable Code
http://xarg.net/writing/tabs
Coding standards for the Jakarta Project

PodcastAlley.com -- The place to find Podcasts

2005-05-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

PodcastAlley.com -- The place to find Podcasts

It was inevitable, I guess, that I would stumble upon podcasting. It was right under my nose all along, but I didn't pay it much attention until I was using NPR radio and found that old sessions of a local show were only available as "podcasts". Following the links that show provided for obtaining podcasting software I watched as the vista of sound and blogging copulated and gave birth before my very eyes.

Now there's an image. *wince*

Podcasting is basically audio blogs. With a twist, the twist being that you are creating blogs that are presented as MP3 files and intended to be placed upon your portable media player - most notably the IPOD - thus the name of this medium "podcasting".

So the way it is supposed to work is that you subscribe to a series of podcast "feeds" or "shows" that are interesting to you. Using one of several podcasting software packages you then set it up to download new installments from those feeds and automatically place it on your ipod.

Now myself, I don't bother with that last part. Instead, I use podcasting more like Tivo - i.e. I download them using the windows podcasting software and I listen to the sessions "on demand" as my whim takes me.

I would be surprised if this were not the main way this stuff is used. I find it hard to believe that more people bother to put this stuff on their IPOD every day when they can just listen to it on their PC and save themselves the trouble.

Programmer's Tools List

2005-05-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of a few programmer tools, and some misc tools I find useful/fun/cool. I hope you find it useful too.

-Michael

Programming:

SourceInsight
http://www.sourceinsight.com

SourceInsight is an amazing code browser and all around great editor. Its killer feature is the call graph window that lets you interactively browse source code by examining function call chains.

Beyond Compare
http://www.scootersoftware.com

This is the best comparison tool I have found. It does side by side comparisons, and shows differences down to the character. It is great for doing diffs and merges, and I have it replacing the default perforce diff program. It is also great for diffing two folders, and can produce web-format difference reports that are useful for emailing around.

windbg
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

This tool is a lightweight debugging tool that lets you debug on a machine that may not have dev studio installed. The debuggers provided also included a command line debugger and a kernel debugger. The debugging capabilities exceed those of dev studio in many cases, but the knowledge curve is steep and these debuggers cannot match the convenience and contextual info that dev studio provides. I only pull this out for on the spot debugging, when I need one of its advanced features, or when DevStudio isn't available.

Dev Studio plugins:

Workspace Whiz
http://www.workspacewhiz.com

This plugin provides a powerful file-open command, header flipper, and tag browsing. Lightweight and cheap.

Visual Assist
http://www.wholetomato.com

This is the uber, kitchen sink plugin. It is basically an improved version of intellisense with smart file-open command, header flipping, symbol browsing, code templates, and more.

Other Tools:

Directory Opus:
http://www.gpsoft.com.au/

This is the best of the explorer replacements. I use it for its dual-pane file browsing capabilities, and its integrated support for ftp. It has a file viewer built in and even shows me my msn messenger contacts list in a side pane. :)

Google Desktop
http://desktop.google.com

This program indexes all the files on your hard drive, including email, using the same engine that google uses. It integrates with google web searches and the indexers only run when the machine is idle. Nice way to find stuff on your machine that you may not know you even had.

Stroke It
http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

This is a mouse gesture program that I find useful. Lets me use mouse gestures to close and invoke applications, perform browser operations like Back and Forward, etc... Once you get used to mouse gestures in firefox you need this tool to feel comfortable using the rest of your windows apps.

Picasa 2
http://www.picasa.com

This program is a great photo indexer. It is a free google software program that will index all of your photos and movies and let you view and organize them in creative ways. It is worth the install alone for its ability to produce a web site for a photo album. Provides standard features for edting like red-eye removal, cropping, scaling, color manipulation, and more. Export function makes it easy to resize a folder of images in one fell swoop, along with other fun stuff.

Firefox:
http://www.firefox.com/

This one is probably well known by all. I am using it for its tabbed browsing and extensive collection of extensions. My key reasons for using this are tabbed browsing, shared bookmark support, and mouse gestures.

Process Explorer
http://www.sysinternals.com

This site has a ton of useful tools. I point out the process explorer because it is a very useful tool for finding things like the command line that was used by a process, what open handles it has, and even goes so far as to provide you interactive callstack peeks at running processes. Useful also for its tree view where you can see the hierarchy of processes and thus understand which processes invoked what. Also check out: DbgView (see all debug output spewed on the system), FileMon (monitor all file access by all processes on the computer), and Regmon.

Speaking Seldom...

2005-05-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

DiskState Info

The link above points to a brief review of the DiskState tool that I wrote up a while back. I wrote the article in response to a request from someone who was looking for a tool that could find duplicate files on their hard-drive. Finding duplicate files can save you a lot of disk space if you have multiple copies of your music and/or picture files on your hard drive.

There are, naturally, many other tools that can help you to find duplicate files on your computer. Programs like google's free Picasa 2 and Microsoft Office's Picture Manager are able to find duplicate photos for you, and there are countless little utilities devoted to finding duplicate mp3 and wma files on your computer.

The Code Project - Free Source Code and Tutorials

2005-05-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Code Project - Free Source Code and Tutorials

This website is an absolutely amazing resource for programmers. I have found it to be useful for answering basic questions such as "just how does the foreach construct look in C#" to "Is there anything Office provides that will let me programmatically access an Excel spreadsheet file (i.e. a .xls file)"?

You can't always count on the code you find being correct or that what you are reading is necessarily the best answer to the issue. Sometimes clear amateurs are writing articles that would be best ignored. However, CodeProject articles are correct enough most of the time to be extremely useful as a resource. The wide range of topics covered is directly a result of the less-stringent filter they use when allowing an article to be posted on the site. One simply needs to be sure if you're going to count on something you read about within its pages that you have double-checked the validity of it.

Adventure - Gaming for Old Folks

2005-04-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

>look

In A Valley
You are in a valley in the forest beside a stream tumbling along a rocky bed.

>north

At End Of Road

>look

At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.


Back in the good old days there were countless hours wasted as people typed in quaint text commands to their computer. In this way, they played a game. Really, they were living a story. Making their way through a hand-crafted, fictional game universe designed by gamers for gamers. Imagination was key to these games, and they were the precursor to the MUD games that rules the online world of the eighties and early nineties.

There was something magical about typing text at your computer and having it seemingly understand you. The mini-game of just figuring out exaclty how you could convince the game to let you perform the action you had in mind was often a joy in and of itself. When you finally figured out a way to tell the game to let you take a drink from the stream in Adventure there was trickle of excitement that ran up your spine. That small thrill that worked its way to your cerebral cortex and convinced you that, somehow, this was more than just a game. You were having a conversation with your computer -- no... you were having an adventure with it. :)

Ah, the good old days.

Now you can't seem to have any fun unless the graphics on your screen are so realistic that you are dazzled. Even the more retro-games still require a graphical representation to give us the visual feedback our over-stimulated and under-nourished minds have come to expect to derive maximum enjoyment from our "games".


All the text adventure fun you can shake a stick at.

Then I wondered just hwat that xyzzy referred to... so here ya go:

http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/c_xyzzy.html

Everything you ever wanted to know about the magic word xyzzy... in the words of the author of the page.

its from the Adventure game... which I was referencing in an earlier blog.

Snowblind Studios and such

2005-04-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

On Monday I started at Snowblind Studios, and I have to say that this company is a lot of fun to work for. Everyone here is very laid back, and I have not had this much fun coming in to work in a very long time.

The last few nights after most folks have gone home I have spent some time wandering around the halls of the small studio offices and examing the articles that have been framed and posted on the walls. I love reading the articles in national magazines that talk about Champions of Norrath or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I sit back and think about the people I have met since I started here and it sinks in with a kind of warm glow that I now know these people. I am in touch with the creators of these games that I have enjoyed playing from afar for many years now.

To be sure Snowblind is not Blizard (at least not yet). There is plenty of room for improvement and the studio is very small and spare. However, I am reminded to some degree of the relative success of Id Software which, while a mile away from the same feeling that we have here at Snowblind, did share one thing in common: A small staff and a reluctance to grow beyond a certain nuclear size.

Introducton

2005-04-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hello, and welcome to my first blog post. In this corner of the web I plan to explore the things that are currently catching my interest. This will often include things such as my girlfriend and software. I tend to love to expound upon the latest software packages and even more so the greatness that is my girlfriend Lynda.

So join me as I journey into the well-populated land of blogging. My little corner of cyberspace begins anew....