Technology ramblings from a dilettante of all things digital

This is just a minor thing, but there were some assemblies I needed in the GAC and wanted to reference them with minimum hasslehoff, so I just copied them out of the C:\windows\assembly\gac folder using the command prompt.  I got the solution from this post

Strategy

Notes:
shove dynamic behavior into interfaces.  have the main base compose the behavior interfaces.  Then you can dynamically assign the behavior interface instances in the child classes of the main base class.

Decorator:

Basically think of an abstract class like a vehicle.  Then you have a couple of classes inherited directly off of it: truck, bike broken down Chevy, etc.  Then u have a base decoration class, which inherits off of vehicle and also contains a member instance of vehicle, so it both "has a" and "is a" vehicle, and has a constructor that takes a vehicle type.  Next, you've got a bunch of decorations, each of which inherits off of the root decoration class, such as pimped out, racing striped, washed, waxed, painted pink, etc. 

So in code, you can create any of these decorations and pass them in a vehicle or a decorated vehicle.  This way you can have pink truck just as easily as you can have a pimped out-washed-waxed-racing striped broken down Chevy, without having to create a complicated inheritance tree for each possible combination.

• Some Notes:
  sort of define your own inheritance tree on the fly
• defines an "is a"/"has a" relationship between the decorations and the object they're decorating
• one possible use:  to dynamically aggregate functionality of semi-heterogenous items
• composition + inheritance

As good of a computer science education that I think I received, when I was an IROC (Idiot Right out of College) I was definitely lacking huge in certain areas.  Chief among these were software engineering (which I think I'm a lot better at now) and beyond basic OO, the fine art of Design Patterns.  I've managed to read about half of Head First Design Patterns and actually implement a few at work.  However, I still feel way behind on them overall, so I started a study group with some coworkers.  We'll attack 2 patterns a week.  I'll post notes about them and links to examples in my svn repository.

Enjoy!

I just wanted to thank this guy for providing an easy way to import my old blog posts from blogger.

Okay, so I've finally setup my blog!  This is a simple plain install of dasBlog.  I reserved the domain back in April and now in late July I FINALLY get it up and running.  It took me a whopping 10 minutes to setup, too.  Phew!!  I almost went with Subtext, based on a friend's recommendation, but I didn't want to pay the extra money for a sql instance, so here I am.  That's it for now.  Check back soon for updates on my digital exploits (or attempts thereof).

Notepad is pretty basic. There are several better text editors out there. Below is a short list.

Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Textpad (trial, free if you don't mind the reminders)
http://www.textpad.com/

Vim
http://www.vim.org/

others can be found at download.com or sourceforge.net


Now to add your new text editor to the right-click menu for various file types: (if you want to add it for all files types, follow these steps for the '*' folder ( HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/* ) ).
http://www.jfitz.com/tips/rclick_custom.html

abbreviated instructions:

1. open regedit.exe
2. Open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT "folder"
3. go to the extension you want to modify (use * for all)
4. right click on the shell key or create it if its not there
5. create a new key for your command to create
6. create a new key below that called command and enter the path to the exe without quotes and add "%1" with quotes to the end, so it looks like
   C:\Program Files\Notepad2\Notepad2.exe "%1"

And then to use your new text editor in IE's View Source feature, see my other post.

On your desktop, quicklaunch or the right side of windows explorer, if you alt+dblclick a folder or file, it brings up the properties dialog for that object.

I've come across a couple of nifty shortcuts and ways to make stuff easier and quicker that I thought I'd share.

File Dialog - The file dialog, the one you get when you do a file->save as or download something from IE (or Firefox ) has a list of locations on the left. Usually its not that helpful, like my recent documents or my network places, but you can customize this list. There's 2 dialogs and each is modified differently. For the main one, you have to download the windows xp powertoy, tweakui. Open it, expand the common dialogs and select the places bar and customize the 5 locations. The other dialog is used in office 2003. Open the dialog, right click the places bar and switch to small icons if you want. To add a folder to it, navigate to that folder, then click the tools menu and select 'add to my places'. Then you can right click it in the places bar and move it up or down in the list.



Windows Key + E open my computer, but you can create shortcuts somewhere, desktop, quicklaunch, etc and assign keyboard shortcuts to it.



Then there's the combo keys:



Ctrl + Shift + Esc = windows task mgr

WinKey + D = show desktop

WinKey + M = minimize all

WinKey + L = lock workstation

WinKey + R = open run dialog

This is a neat tool to sync 2 folders.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en