Agent Ransack 2012

In the UK there’s a very funny comedian by the name of Will Adamsdale. He wrote a song about a man standing at a traffic light pushing the Stop Traffic Button, the chorus went something like:

I’m pushing a button
That I think does nothing
Just to say I’m here

As I was becoming increasingly annoyed with a non-functioning app the other day I couldn’t help but wonder whether I was pushing the Cancel button just to say I was there? It obviously wasn’t doing anything so why did I keep pressing it? I guess I was just desperate for an acknowledgement from the app that it ‘knew’ I was trying to do something. I just wanted some feedback.

Feedback is critical. Whether it’s an app providing feedback to a person or a customer providing feedback to a company, feedback is empowering in so many ways. I vividly remember the early days of Agent Ransack. As a lone developer releasing a new app into the big wide world of April 2000 I had no idea that what I was doing was truly worthwhile. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that without the compliments, suggestions, and feedback from users around the globe Agent Ransack wouldn’t have survived.

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Windows 7 – Command Prompt Here

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of days now and really like it. However, there was one small niggle… my ‘Command Prompt Here’ folder context menu option had disappeared.

It seems that Command Prompt Here has been added as a standard ‘Extended’ option in Windows 7 and that’s where my option had gone… onto the folder’s Extended context menu, which is visible if you hold down Shift while right-clicking on a folder. Since I use that option so often I wanted it back on the regular context menu. Fortunately this is very simple:
1.
Open RegEdit

2.
Go to HKCR\Directory\shell\cmd

3.
Delete the string value ‘Extended’

And Hey Presto it’s back!

My issue with Vista

One of the first things you learn as a child, apart from how good chocolate tastes, is that if you do certain things without asking your mother first you’re going to be in trouble. Not all things but some. This is a lesson I think Windows Vista needs to learn.

What are you doing?

My development machine is just that, mine. I use it for at least 8 hours every day and, without sounding too weird, have a close affinity with it. When performing a task I have a pretty good idea how much pain the machine will be in, I can hear the hard drives working, I can see the CPU temperature increasing, I can feel the responsiveness of the machine slow. It’s all cause and effect. However, when I hear the computer working without my instruction, like a mother who’s just found her ever helpful toddler trying to put the carving knives away, I have to ask “What are you doing!?”.

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Blogging

In one way or another I’ve been planning a blog for years but since my passion has always been for writing code rather than prose I’ve procrastinated writing blog entries in favour of coding just one more feature. One of the factors that prompted me to write something today rather than ‘Tomorrow’ was reading two blogs of very different quality.

I was reading some recent posts by Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com), who most of you probably already know, and Marc Andreessen (http://blog.pmarca.com), who you’ll almost definitely know but not necessarily for his blog. Joel’s blogs defined the quality standard in blogging and they’ve been good enough to turn into books. However, over the last 12 months or so they’ve, more often than not, regressed into pure company marketing hype or self-promotion. On the other hand Marc’s blog is a refreshing insight into the setting up and running of companies, large and small. The big difference between the two is that Marc’s blog has only been running for a couple of months while Joel’s has been running for almost seven years.

Which leads to the interesting question: Is it inevitable that a blog writing about interesting topics which are, on the surface, non-profitable will mould into something that can more directly be seen as profitable? There’s definitely an analogy to the freeware software world where few closed-source products stay free forever. Or is it simply that after a given amount of time any one person will run out of interesting things to say? (I know what my wife would say to that!)

It’ll be interesting to see where Marc goes with his blog. As an accomplished business person I just can’t see him resisting the temptation to start using the platform for self-promotion.

One things for sure, it’s got me wanting to write, and in so many ways I’ve got Joel Spolsky to thank for that.

PS Another great blog I keep an eye on is by Eric Sink (http://software.ericsink.com).