Can’t Select Multiple Files in Windows Vista

Today I was trying to copy files in Windows Explorer and ran into a rather nasty little bug. Explorer wouldn’t let me select multiple files. I couldn’t Shift+Click to select a range or Ctrl+Click to select individual files. Keyboard shortcuts didn’t work, and the Edit | Select All menu option was disabled.

This appears to . . . → Read More: Can’t Select Multiple Files in Windows Vista

SciFi Classics

One of my friends presented me with a completely unexpected Christmas gift: a 12-DVD set called SciFi Classics. If you believe the hype on the box, this is “An instant library of some of the greatest science fiction features.” We’re talking quality films such as Mesa of Lost Women, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, . . . → Read More: SciFi Classics

Source control and formatting standards

Things get so much more complicated when your development team grows larger than one person. Not only coordinating the efforts of two or more people, but also agreeing on data structures and naming conventions, designing interfaces so that you insulate developers as much as possible from others’ work, and a whole host of other problems. . . . → Read More: Source control and formatting standards

Boom!

This morning I was sitting in my office, listening to music and banging away on the keyboard like a good little programmer, when I heard a very loud BANG. The first time I heard that–a couple of weeks ago–I was running the dishwasher and thought something in there had made the noise. It wasn’t . . . → Read More: Boom!

Can I really ignore that warning?

When you build 64-bit .NET applications with Visual Studio, the Assembly Linker issues warning messages of the form:

Assembly mscorlib.dll targets a different processor.

It will issue that warning for each of the .NET runtime assemblies that your project references. The warning occurs because the linker checks the 32-bit runtime assemblies for type information, and . . . → Read More: Can I really ignore that warning?

Some useful utilities

I’ve run across a few utilities lately that I thought others might also find useful.

ISO Recorder is a very handy way to create CDs or DVDs from ISO files. No frills: just a Windows shell extension that works. Right-click on a .ISO file, select the drive you want to burn it to, and go. . . . → Read More: Some useful utilities

Vista Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications

The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista include a component called Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications, or SUA. This subsystem is also available in Windows Server 2003 R2, and will be available in Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn). SUA by itself is just a Windows component that provides platform services for UNIX_based applications. You get UNIX . . . → Read More: Vista Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications