Logaan’s Site

I use the Run app in windows an awful lot. I know the new start menu in Vista/7 offer a more advanced indexed version of the run command but I just can’t shake the habit. Also it doesn’t do the common folders a developer is looking for, such as Desktop, Temp folder etc etc.

The main problem with it after you have moved all of the profile folders to another drive, is that you cannot get to folders like the desktop, Windows just cannot find them anymore. I know you could probably go into the registry and start hacking around and telling Windows where else to go for the user folders but that just never sat quite right with me.

So here is a neat little trick I found, goto the user folder (C:\Users\Logaan) and create a shortcut with the same name as the folder you wish to get to.

Its so simple and I cannot believe that I found this years ago.

Its so cool you can even create links to other folders that you cannot usually get to in this fashion.

Enjoy.

Read a fantastic article on Life Hacker on how to teach yourself computer programming: http://lifehacker.com/5401954/programmer-101-teach-yourself-how-to-code

My only comment would be pick a language that is based on C-like syntax (rather than use Python or VB) because although the syntax may seem harder, the syntax is more transferrable to other languages and it would give you a head start.

In my personal experience, a book only served as a reference. I found books that taught me how to do something soon became too basic for my needs and often there are plenty of guides on the internet that is a good replacement. Instead you will find much of my library consists of reference books, hint, tips and advanced topics.

This technique allows you to define all of your parameters in a single file and not have to pass them all in on the command line.

This command reads in all of the tokens from the settings file and sets a series of environment variables

for /f "eol=# tokens=1,2 delims==" %%i in (settings.ini) do SET %%i=%%j

The settings file looks like this

# Comment
FirstVariableName=A value

# Comment
AnotherVariableName=A value

Just repeat those blocks. You can then do some validation on the enviroment variables if needs be.

I learnt this technique a little while ago, but I cannot remember where, so I cannot give credit where it is due.