To show you what I mean:

When I right-click on “coolbeans” it runs the following console app, which simply displays the path:

The C# app is pretty straightforward. Basically, once you have the file path, you can apply any operations on the file.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
namespace dan_rocks
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine(args[0]);
      Console.ReadLine();
    }
  }
}

So there’s nothing crazy going on in the above sample. You basically just have to add a few entries to the Registry.

If you want to pass a folder path when you right-click on it, and select the option in the context menu, create a new entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell

If you want to pass in a file, do the following:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

Let’s pass in the filepath to note.exe:

Do that and you’ll see the following:

It’s so handy that I have a snippet for it:

Anywhoot, here’s how you create a snapshot:

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-- CREATING A SNAPSHOT
CREATE DATABASE YourDatabase_snap ON         -- Name of new snapshot
(
  NAME = yourdb_data,                        -- Logical filename of source db you want to snapshot
  FILENAME = 'c:\YourDatabase_data_1800.ss'  -- Sparse file to create
)
AS SNAPSHOT OF YourDatabase;                 -- Source db name

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-- RECOVERING FROM A SNAPSHOT
USE master;
RESTORE DATABASE YourDatabase                    -- Source db name where the data resided
FROM DATABASE_SNAPSHOT = 'YourDatabase_snap';    -- Snapshot db name

Deleting a snapshot is just like dropping a database.

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DROP DATABASE YourDatabase_Snap

You’ll have to download Robocopy as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

What I used to delete this big directory:

robocopy /MIR c:\empty-directory c:\my-files-to-delete

"C:\Program Files\WinRAR\rar.exe" a -m5 -r -ep1 "C:\temp\Work\Upgrades\2010-02-06\111.rar" "C:\temp\Work\Upgrades\2010-02-06\Post-Upgrade\"

First path is the location of the rar file to create. The second path is either the location of the file(s) or directory to compress.

options used
 
  -ep1  Exclude base directory from names
  a     Add files to archive
  -r    Recurse subdirectories (will compress entire directories)
  -m5   Set compression level to maximum

You can even assign a password to it using the -p switch

So after I configured the UI settings on Win7 to the way I saw fit, I realized that this feature was gone. It would automatically start searching for text in all files recursively – very annoying. I asked how to turn this feature off in many forums and do what I wanted to do and no one knew.

I finally figured it out. It was a setting that I turned on accidentally. (D’oh!)

Explorer Window -> Organize -> Folder Options -> View Tab -> When typing
into list view -> Select the typed item in the view

That wasn’t checked. I suppose I did it instinctively without thinking. In WindowsXP, the area is used to trigger Advanced File Sharing, and I guess I didn’t realize this in Windows7. Also, I don’t think in XP this is an option you can control because it just works.

Windows7 Options

WindowsXP Options

I would give Chrome OS an 8.0 / 10.0 for computer beginners, like the grandmas of the world. It’s gets a 2.0 / 10.0 for techies. Why? Three reasons.

• Needs too many resources for what it delivers.
• Cannot run executables, not even virtually/sandboxed.
• Needs the cloud for storage.

Kind of annoying that I can’t just run it on any old laptop / netbook. System requirements are too demanding for what it promises and it seems it’s needed just to have that 2-4 second boot-up time, which honestly it doesn’t mean much to me. There’s never a time where I’m in such a hurry that I need my computer that fast, because I’m either doing something else, or I just use my phone.

I some people really care about boot-up time? I’d rather wait 10 more seconds and have the ability to run .EXE files and have it run on old PC’s. For a minimalist device, I have my table PC or iPhone already that can do all that stuff, and I don’t have to worry about malware on the iPhone. I don’t think techies have to worry to much about malware since they’re careful about getting them in the first place and have good Anti-viruses.

Lastly, an Internet connection is not ubiquitous yet. I’m on the subway a lot where there’s no WIFI and sometimes I travel to places without an Internet connection. I want to be able to at least read my latest documents without connecting to the cloud.

The OS is still in the works, so I suppose maybe they’ll address some of these features in the future.

Console2 is a great tool that provides tabbing (you can tab through multiple consoles) and several ways to customize the UI. Here’s an example:

I prefer this configuration:

How I Have It Setup

Download Console2:

• 32-bit Version
• 64-bit Version

I have the Console2 open up when I hit CTR+\ via AutoHotkey. Here’s the snippet for this to happen in AutoHotkey. I have this run when Window starts (it must stay in memory).

^\::Run C:\dan-local\dos-win\Console.exe

Change the CMD prompt by creating a PROMPT system variable:




Download the Console2 Config File

Other Tips

Autocomplete
Good tip about command console = CTRL+I
can select files in the current directory, kinda like autofill-in
you can also put in parts of the file and it autoputs it for you

Rename tab
CTRL+R

New Tab with default transparency
CTRL+F1

New Tab with lighter transparency
CTRL+F2

Switch to NEXT adjacent tab
CTRL+TAB

Switch to Previous adjacent tab
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB

CTRL+[NUMBER]
Goes to the tab instance. To make it easier, it’s best if you rename your tabs,

[INSTANCE NAME].[NAME OF TAB]

So for example,

1.Batch File
2.wget list
3.ftp the files

Let’s look at how some email clients process this tag:

Yahoo.com! Web Mail

Base tags are modified by their mail server and relative URLs are changed to absolute. So it works.

Gmail Web Mail

Base tags are modified by their mail server and relative URLs are changed to absolute. So it works.

Gmail Account via Thunderbird

Base tags are shown and its functionality is intact. URLs remain relative. So it works.

iMS Account via Outlook 2007

Base tags are shown and its functionality is intact. URLs remain relative. So it works. More info on iMS.

ShinyLight Account via iPhone

Can’t see the HTML, but all URLs worked.

Hotmail

Unfortunately, this is the ugly duckling. Hotmail servers remove the base tag and leave your relative links as relative. Big FAIL.

import os, os.path, stat, time
from datetime import date, timedelta, datetime
 
# Reference
# http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html
# http://docs.python.org/library/time.html
 
def getFileDate( filenamePath ):    
 
  used = os.stat( filenamePath ).st_mtime      
  year, day, month, hour, minute, second = time.localtime(used)[:6]
  objDateTime = datetime(year, day, month, hour, minute, second)
 
  return objDateTime
 
  # Ways to reference this DateTime Object
  # objDateTime.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %I:%M %p")
  # objDateTime.year
  # objDateTime.month
 
 
def isDaysOldFromNow( filenamepath, days ):
 
  # Checks how old a file is. Is it older than "days" [variable] days?
  inTimeRange = False  
  timeDeltaDiff = ( datetime.now()-getFileDate( filenamepath ) ).days
 
  # Check if the file's date is days old or less:
  if ( timeDeltaDiff >= days ):
    inTimeRange = True  
 
  return inTimeRange
 
fname = "C:/temp/decision2.pdf"  
 
# Set this variable to check if the file is this days old
howOld = 3
 
 
if ( isDaysOldFromNow( fname, howOld ) ):
  print fname, "is more than", howOld, "days old"
else:
  print fname, "is NOT more than", howOld, "days old"

Output: