Why Eccentra?

Way back in the mid-1990s, it was an overheard mispronunciation of Encarta, and I just liked the idea. I wouldn't pay for Encarta; in fact, if you gave me a copy I'm not sure I'd even install it. What I really wanted was Eccentra: an encyclopaedia that would go off on interesting tangents. Type in "Henry VIII" and, instead of getting a tedious list of dates, wives, and so on, you'd be presented with instructions for starting a religion, a recipe for roast swan, and a list of syphilitic celebrities. Now that I'd pay for.

Of course, now we have Wikipedia and Google, and filling in the blanks is just a Simple Matter of Programming.

Mind the Gap

Hours of fun.

Command Completion

It irks me that the Windows command prompt doesn't do command completion with TAB (like, say, bash). I usually fix it with TweakUI, but why use a GUI when you can hack the registry directly? Like this:

310530 - How To Use Automatic Completion with a Command Prompt in Windows XP

The Weetabixes of Gdansk

Is it just me, or do other people enjoy the bizarre names generated by spam mailers? Just this morning, my webmail account has had messages from "Addicted Q. Redrafting" and "Gigged M. Aqueducts". I like my daily peek into the alternative worlds of, in this case, A.Q.Redrafting and Partners, the world's least productive architects. I'm not keen enough that I actually open the emails, of course.

Which reminds me that back in the distant days before spam, even before Canter & Siegel and their wretched Green Card Lottery, I used to sign my own emails "Sebastian P. Weetabix". You couldn't do it now, of course. Anyway, I stopped doing it when an Israeli friend asked me why I'd adopted a Polish pseudonym.

Using Virtual PC Without Going Mad

So let's have something geeky but useful in this blog: how to fix the "stuck-control-key" problem in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. This bug drives me nuts, and even at TechEd the lab assistants seemed to have no idea how to fix it. So here's the answer. (I didn't find this out myself, but I must have passed it on to about two dozen people so far, so it can't be widely known...)

Problem: With a UK keyboard, Virtual PC will occasionally behave as if you're holding down the control key. So every mouse click becomes a control-click, every keypress a shortcut command of some sort, and so on. VPC seems to have a problem distinguishing left-control from right-alt on a UK keyboard; I have no idea why.

Quick One-Time Solution: Tap the left-hand control key once.

Better Permanent Solution: Change the host key in Virtual PC, to anything other than the default right-alt key (to change it, go to Virtual PC Console, then File, Options, Keyboard). I generally use the right-control key.

Much more useful VPC information is available here.

As I Was Saying on LiveJournal...

It's traditional to explain why you've bothered to start a blog. Or, in this case, why I'm starting again, having already got a perfectly good blog at LiveJournal (admittedly, that blog has exactly six entries, all from mid-2002).

Well, it's peer pressure. Not having a blog is becoming almost like not having an email address. Plus, I could do with a place to leave notes for myself, since I'm constantly finding useful things and then forgetting them. And I've been meaning to create a new website, since I no longer have write access to my old one (warning: very old website, unchanged since 1997 and now suffering severe link-rot). So I may as well combine the website and the blog, and make some use of this personal web space.

Expect posts about .NET, SF, and random odd stuff I found on the web. Nothing too exciting. Really, I'd hit the back button right now, if I were you.

Woo. Yay.

And, indeed, hoopla.

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