Folder Manifest is a utility linked into the Windows Explorer context menu. It builds a manifest of a folder’s contents. See the project page for more details.

I was creating a Visual Studio solution with a Setup project, and needed to add a set of custom installation steps to the setup. The process for this (Custom Actions) is easy to find in Microsoft’s online documentation, and in many forums. Yet one thing is common: the level of failure and frustration expressed in […]

Windows applications often add an icon to the system tray to remove themselves from the task bar when minimized, and use that icon in the system tray for a context menu and/or changing image to represent application state.  Unfortunately, it is common for the system tray icon to be “left behind” after the application terminates.  […]

My friend Matt Owen posted a snapshot of the stock results on his Facebook wall today, which showed some interesting results on NASDAQ. It’s amusing to see little math slip ups appear from time to time like this on commercial web sites.  Seeing this error reminded me of other experiences I have had in coding […]

Moderator: “Login number one, what is your identity?” Number one: “I am known as jsmith” Moderator: “Login number two, what is your identity?” Number two: “I am known as jsmith” … and after all the contestants would make the same claim, the moderator on “To Tell the Truth” would then give some background on the […]

BREAK and CONTINUE are two forms of loop control, which I have seen under-used lately.  I think it is time to revisit how these two statements can help you make more maintainable and readable code, with some basic comments where needed. BREAK is used to prematurely exit a loop sequence, be it a WHILE loop, […]

Console applications fit nicely into the batch processing paradigm: take some parameters, do the work, write your progress and/or notices to the console, report an exit code and terminate.  Occasionally, doing the same work in a Windows form provides a better visual interface into the data and activity. A good example of this is the […]

I received the adapter cable in the mail yesterday, and did a full test with the iPhone headsets.  The cable adapter works just fine, and I’m happy with it. My only gripe about the iPhone microphone is that it tends to produce a bit of muffled sound, probably due to the smaller opening than on […]

I recently received an advertisement for boom headphones from a retailer via email.  Since my old boom headphone broke, and the price was decent, I thought this might be time for a replacement. But I had a thought: I have an iPhone, which has headphones that are comfortable to me, and they have a built-in […]

I encountered some strange behavior in Windows XP and Media Center versions, where hibernation or shutdown would hang after the system had serviced RDC connections.  It took a while to solve it. RDC into a computer that hibernates?! Before jumping to conclusions, it is just a technique I use to access a mobile laptop from […]