Auto-scrolling Visual Studio Output Window..

Instead of initiating a Firefox build from the command line , I have a script that I use to get Visual Studio to build and pipe the output to the Output window.  Chalk it down to being too lazy to switch windows and enter the build command at the console. Often warning errors flash by and clicking them just stops the output auto-scroll. It can be re-enabled with [Ctrl] + [End]. I just wish it could have been built into the context menu of the window.  Oh, well….probably will get it in the upgrade to VS 2012.

Error CXX0017: Symbol not found….yes it’s there, numpty!

While inspecting a global variable to ensure that a specific library had been loaded and properly initialized, for some reason after adding it to the debug Watch window, its symbol still couldn’t be loaded. It so happens that when such variables are within nested namespaces they can’t be detected and it’s up to the developer to manually qualify them.
Before:

After:

A Kibibyte…. anyone?

So here i am after a pretty long hiatus. I somehow forgot i had a blog to maintain - no it was not due to amnesia or any form of dementia. A sudden onset of acute procrastination was the diagnosis; a disruptive trait  for which i am still strictly following the prescribed treatments. For obvious reasons, i decline to state what they are  as they are highly addictive for the curious minded.  Sheesh! I should have been a doc.

Hmmm, a while back,  helping do bug triaging for the KDE app Dolphin, i came across a  feature request for an option to change the unit of measurement for the various folder & file sizes per the user’s preferences. Whereas most are familiar with the good old kilo, mega, giga SI decimal prefixes; binary prefixes for digital data: kibi, mebi, gibi etc,  are totally off-radar.  Wikipedia does an excellent job explaining what they are here.  Although, this is really simple to implement –monkeying around with Dolphin’s source to produce a solution is fairly straightforward- KDE’s  maintainers were just not going to make changes to the trunk to satisfy those of us weaned on the SI Units. A 6 year long thread on this subject follows the arguments for/against including it.

Despite their best intentions, until  my granny can use a Linux distro without me on hand to explain what’s going on or the ‘apocalyptic’ event of Microsoft doing an Enron/Lehman…i pretty much have my shirt on folks not knowing what a kibibyte is. Say what?

Project Gutenberg: books for leisure

After watching my weekly dose of the BBC’s Click, Kate Russell as usual presented a list of interesting sites for us dumb end-users who only use Google search results to find a website. I found the Gutenberg Project  to be intriguing and resourceful depending on what an individual’s interests are. For the more literary inclined, it contained a wealth of book catalogs on various topics, in different languages and by a lot of authors; with the catalogs searchable by author and/or title. Of course my favorite author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection is included. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the creator of the legendary Sherlock Holmes.

Remember all those comic detectives with a magnifying glass and smoking a pipe? Yep, … all clones of Sherlock. Hercule Poirot does have a strong case but Sherlock reigns as the greatest detective ever – fiction-wise that is. At least now that I’ve got my hands on Sir Arthur’s digitized collection, after a hard day’s work of changing 1’s to 0’s and 0’s to 1’s , i  do have something other to relax with at night…