Why is my Documents hijacked?

Remember that scene in Red Alert 1 where Albert Einstein goes back in time to kill Hitler? Remember how satisfied he must have felt to prevent untold suffering in the future. Its the same feeling I'd have if I could go back in time to kill the guy who started the trend to put application specific files in My Documents. (Lets ignore the fact that in C&C:RA1 that Albert's actions led to the soviets invading..).

My 'My Documents' had 3 folders which I created and maintained, and 15 that were created by other applications. I have Work, Home, Archives. Other applications have made C&C3, My Shapes, Visual Studio 2005, Battlefield 2...the list goes on. My Documents are files which are meant for viewing and editing by user. Often these applications are putting things there which are neither. It is usually save games, configuration files and templates, all of which are edited VIA THE application, not directly by the user.

Unless the files are meant for regular edits by the user, I don't see why the application developers can't do any of the following over putting its junk in my space.

1) Put all user specific files in the "home" directory, i.e. C:/Documents & Settings/, rather than //My Documents.
2) Make it an option either at startup or reconfigurable as to where to put the specific files and hence the application will move these files around.
3) In combination with the above, maybe developers can agree to a standard way of storing. For instead of your typical egotistical Adobe/photoshop/saves directory, maybe they can do /graphics/adobe.photoshop/saves. They can even use shortcuts if they think that'll help, for example /image-viewing/adobe.photoshop symlinks back to the above graphics folder.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of having user specific data in the user space rather than the application space, but there are better ways to do it then blindly clutter "My Documents". Let me reclaim my space!

Episode 1: The social networking Menace.

Its funny how much modern society has become more closed off in some ways, and yet so open in others. The average person probably barely knows their neighbour, has minimal contact with their relations outside of their immediate family, yet opens up all sorts of details about themselves elsewhere. And where is that elsewhere? You guessed it, the Internet.

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In*, the list goes on. All of these sprung up from nowhere and just exploded in popularity. BUT WHY? I've signed up for a few of them and I still don't fully understand the attraction. I'll go through them in turn.

Myspace is a social networking site catered for the teen, early twenties level. It just shows a profile, a blog and a place for people to leave comments for that person's friends. A homepage with a guestbook from 1998 with a template is effectively what it is.

Facebook is similar, but it focuses even more on the relationships between people. It wants to know who you know, how you know them, when you knew them and so on. Again you fill out your profile and theres a place for people to leave comments. It is funny how quickly people find you on Facebook. Within 2 days, I had 8 friends add me without me telling anyone about it. I remember in the old days of ICQ that everyone wanted to be on each others lists so you could say you had the biggest set of friends. Facebook is similar in that it keeps a tally of how many friends you have and it feels like everyone is trying to increase that number.

LinkedIn is effectively the "business" version of Facebook. It tracks who you worked for, and who also worked for that company and its meant to help "career networking". I say all this in inverted commas, for as important to your career as Linked In propents to be, in reality, its the social equivalent of a chain letter. This article by Jeff Atwood from codinghorror.com sums up my feelings about how useful LinkedIn is. I encourage you to read it.

Twitter is...quite possibly one of the dumbest fads I've seen on the Interweb. Its bite sized snippets of what people are doing. I stared in naked fascination at the idea of people posting what they are getting up to... For about two minutes before I realised that people who 'twit' to a internet site are essentially boring.

prozach Cleaning the house, less than 10 seconds from web
hawaii5 Sleepy. less than 10 seconds ago from txt

I cannot entirely understand the Twit phenomenon, but I'll endeavor to analyze. I believe we all like the idea that others are interested in us. Its that small narcissistic side that must be satisfied by the possibility that someone is interested in what we are doing.

We Bloggers aren't immune from this trend either. After all, we all blog to be read, to be heard and loved for our 'insight'. But I hope to think that most bloggers attempt to at least impart something back to the community who reads them, more than "oh man, I got so wasted last night but I scored with that spunk Ray. Anyways gtg sleep, xoxoxo".

What frightens me is how invasive these sites are. Wake up and smell the roses people. You're freely depriving yourself of your privacy! Wouldn't it scare you if a random person came upto you and they knew everything about you from your interests, to who your friends are, to where you work. This is an advertiser's paradise. Each time you sign up for one of these sites, who are you really benefiting?

I know there are meant to be benefits to social networking. Maintaining friendships, meeting new people and so on. But think, for each person who finds love on Facebook, there are hundreds of thousands of lonely hearts without any hits, and probably a few thousand nutbag stalkers reading your profile. I'm going for the vast majority of all the encounters you'll have on LinkedIn will go nowhere useful for you.

People are social beings and we thrive off feeling loved and important. Hell this might explain why I still have a Facebook account. But this isn't the way to do it. Real relationships are those in real life and they are hard, and require more effort than hitting "Confirm this person as my friend". For each moment you spend in updating your Facebook profile, maybe spend a few minutes ringing a old friend. It'll take you a lot longer, but you'll feel better about life guaranteed**.

*Its not accidental I didn't link ANY of these sites. They ain't getting any page rank from this site.
** disclaimer: guarantees not guaranteed on this website.

Command and Conquer 3 - The good, the hot and the meh.

You know what they say about riding a bicycle? It completely applies to C&C3 in so many ways. Here is a game which clearly knows its limitations, and doesn't care.

Firstly the good. Its C&C. I know that sounds lame, but C&C is like quake. There is a certain charm to it that cannot be disputed. The campaign is probably the single best part about it. Its got the same over the top acting, but this time its got some well known actors such as Lando Calrissian, the guy from Starship Troopers, the guy from Lost who always has his shirt off and most importantly a host of hot girls from Battlestar Galactica and Farscape including the delectable Grace Park. Its campy, its predictable and its damn awesome.

The meh is the gameplay. For a game which has a raft of different units, it becomes a megaunit crunch in most larger games. The concept of combined arms doesn't apply in this game, especially for the GDI and their cheap and totally unbalanced Mammoth tanks. Tactics aren't as important as getting more resource gatherers out to fund your megaunit army. For me, C&C games always becomes rather old rather quickly. At least in Generals, combined arms was reasonably important, so that lasted somewhat longer.

So why do you ask do I bother playing this game? Simple, because my mates are playing it. Any game automatically doubles in its playability when you have friends to play with. Its not the type of game I'd ever play online with strangers simply because its far too boring.

Fear the Emperor's boxes

In the search to get Dawn of War going again on my machine I made this lovely error occur.
Note to self, stop replacing the main engine library.

Synergy for Dual Monitors/Dual PCs

You know what is cool? Synergy!

No not the team/department/company relationship crap that has been flouted by marketers and execs for more years than it deserves. I'm talking about the application Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net). For a while now I've been running a windows and Ubuntu setup at home where I have both machines and operating systems running side by side.
Unfortunately they were also in all practicality in isolation. There was no way to copy paste things between the screens, no way to even move the keyboard or cursor. I've been doing the two level keyboard and mouse combo.

I've heard of using an application called Multiplicity by Stardock for such problems, but alas its only for Windows and also costs $30*. So I was stuck with a pretty lame deal.

No longer! Synergy runs a TCP connection between the two systems and it seamlessly allows control between the two systems to proceed. Its so beautiful I could cry.
If you run a dual monitor/dual box setup, you GOT to use this. Its easy to setup, its fast and offers all the features you want and most importantly.....its free!


* That said, Stardock is a pretty cool company so I'd check out some of their other products. The only reason I endorse them is because they had the BALLS to release Galactic Civilizations, one of the finest space 4X games I've played, with no cd-keys and no copy protection or any of the other rubbish that companies make us do these days. Any company that puts the consumer first should be exalted!

Dawn Of War in Programming languages

DoW and Programming, together at last! The next logical step when all one does is program and play DoW. How DoW fits into the world of programming. Some of these comparisons are a long shot, but hey its all for fun.

The imperial guard is Java: Theres hordes of imperial guardsmen just like there are hordes of Java programmers. Its bulky, rarely elegant but effective enough to get the job done. I like to think of consulting companies like Accenture to be the Emperor. Who cares how many tired programmers we cut down to make these apps, theres plenty to fill the void. Like the Imperium's tanks, the many prebuilt libraries come in very handy and will work well with the guardsmen to put down any programming foe. Your baneblade equivalent is something like Weblogic or any other application container which does everything in one, like serving apps, providing security, logging, annihilating all the Ork hordes etc.

PERL/TCL/Bash Scripting is Chaos. Powerful in its own right, but so filled with insanities that you'll sell your soul to the dark gods to understand whats going on. The Warp in this case has to be the OS which provides Chaos all its applications for bash. And just as the Warp is fickle, so tends to be the OS. I find PERL's regex statements to be like possessed space marines. Fast, effective, but hideously ugly and something you hope you never have to really touch.

FORTRAN is the Necrons of programming world. Older than most languages, rather monolithic and very obscure. If you know what you're doing, you can solve basic problems like KILL EVERYTHING, but don't try and do anything more complex with it. It'll probably not be worth it.

C++ are easily the Eldar. If you know what you're doing, you're solving problems in a brutally efficient hail of coding fire. Its very flexible, to the point where you can by accident shoot yourself in the foot. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're basically Fleet of Foot running around in circles dying horribly, before everything comes crashing down on your head. Attacking something head on in C++ is unwise. Just like the Eldar, attack, destroy one part of the problem, then run away. Trying to take it all on at once will get you killed. And just like the Eldar are a dying race, C++ is becoming a shadow of the power it once was.

Just like Tau are the new kids on the block in the WH40k universe, Ruby comes new to the programmers stable of languages. Just like Vespids and the Tau commander makes Tau incredibly quick off at harassing, programming in Ruby results in quick code which gets the job done. Unfortunately just like their vehicle support is generally pretty woeful, Ruby's development support is also pretty hopeless. Just like much of their history is undocumented, much of Ruby outside of the core is also undocumented.

Orks is definitely C#. Just like Java and C# have a lot in common, the IG and Orks have a lot in common. Both rely on sheer size and both languages have plenty of boiler plate to go. I like to believe the Squiggoth is like Windows. Its huge, its kinda ugly, but no ones going to mess with it and its mostly stuck in its own base due to its size.

Space Marines...has no real equivalent. We're talking about a race that is dedicated, flexible yet has hard hitting prowess, and is strong all the way from the beginning to the end. I don't I know any programming language which is that good.