here are all the confusing mostly-incomplete zip file solutions:

• zlib THE lib; only does ONE file, knows nothing about .zip containers; gz uses zlib, works on ONE file (the tar file, hence .tar.gz)
• miniz some google code HACKERY that does exactly what i want (.zip handling in one header file) but DOES NOT WORK – erp, yes it does, id10t
• minizip a zlib-bundled addon package that allows for working with .zip files
• boost you can bake zlib into boost but again, it knows nothing about .zip files, MOTHER FRACK
• libzip ANOTHER library, supposedly handles .zip files – REQUIRES ZLIB DOH, might as well use minizip

In the end, miniz made it pretty easy (once I used it correctly). Remember, a .zip file is a container of compressed files, doh.

That was fun! 🙂

Awesome keyboard shortcuts

Some are old, some are new. Sum > parts. Ahh nice. 🙂

• Windows+X => Ahh all the good gooey stuff they hid!
• Windows+# => Switch to pinned app number #
• Shift+Windows+# => Run new instance of pinned app number #
• Ctrl+Shift+leftclick icon => Run as admin
• Ctrl+Shift+Windows+# => COMBO MOVE! Run new instance of pinned app number # as admin – awesome…
• Ctrl+Shift+Esc => Instant task manager
• Windows+up/left/right/down => Move current window to max/left/center/right/min – play with this one, it’s fun!
• Shift+Windows+left/right => Move current window to left/right monitor
• Alt+# => Switch to Dexpot virtual desktop number #
• Shift+Alt+# => Move current window to Dexpot virtual desktop number #
• Windows+Pause => Control Panel/System settings (then jump to device manager, adv system settings, etc., nice!)
• Alt+PrtScn => Put a snapshot of current window on clipboard

More Nice

• Another nicety, massively improved merge handling during file copying – although, c’mon, this should have been a Windows 3.1 feature… but it will compare source and destination, and let you hand-pick from a long list of file conflicts, with exact matches excluded. Pretty nice.
• I use Window’s “Extra Large Inverted” set of mouse pointers, they are fantastic to help me find my pointer in my 2 x 1080p sea of real estate.

Annoyances

And what would life be without an annoyances list…

• Sliding the pointer from one screen to another NO LONGER WORKS, doh! Win 8.1 “catches” the mouse if you are at the top or bottom edge of the screen (which you almost always are) and pops up the stupid lucky charms or whatever they call it. So you have to nervously ski the mouse through the middle of the screen as you go from monitor to monitor. THIS IS TERRIBLE BEHAVIOR. My favorite part: if you are sliding to the second monitor to click the window there and give it focus, when your mouse is caught, it will be right on the CLOSE BUTTON of the app on the first monitor… and… drumroll… you’ve now accidentally closed the app! Yay fun!
• (from Dan…) In win 8, Internet Explorer, the vertical scroll bar only appears for a few seconds. So if you put your mouse there and click to scroll down, then read and click again to scroll down more, nothing happens because the scroll bars have disappeared. You have to wiggle your mouse to get them to reappear and then click to scroll down again.
• Every. Tiley. App. Sucks. Fine, do your tiley app chooser thing. But Microsoft, you’ve had a lobotomy if you think people want apps THIS dumb!
• This is what happens when you model a desktop interface after a 3″ phone screen, DOH.
  

Annoyances

I always seem to forget how to fade the edge of an image in the gimp… so here’s a note-to-self:

select the area to preserve; IF YOU WANT THE EDGE TO FADEOUT, SELECT A BOX JUST INSIDE THE ENTIRE IMAGE; YOU CAN ALSO USE THE MAGIC WAND TO SELECT AN AREA, AND SHRINK AND GROW AS NEEDED
SELECT->FEATHER, GIVE IT ABOUT 5 PIXELS; THIS APPEARS TO DO NOTHING BUT PUT A BIT OF ROUNDED CORNERS ON YOUR SELECTION, WEIRD EH?
NOW, INVERT THE SELECTION, AND HIT DELETE – vioala, GIMP FADES OUTWARD. YEs, IT’s weird!

soRRY ABOUT THE caps, IT’S HONESTLY EXACTLY how the letters are spewing out on my macbOok prO, Now That i”ve Mananged to get it humming and then spill a full glass of water on it. AWESOmENEsS. AND that”s With another Keyboard attacheD. aPPARENTLY THE MAIN KEyboard is flicking THe shift KEy on aND OFF LIKE A CHRISTmAS TrEE. AND IT’S not EVen ThaNKSGIving Yet.

This problem turned out to be due to the very long relative paths that Visual Studio created to the gsoap-generated files. (continued…)

I just updated my Macbook Pro, removing the Super Drive and adding an SSD, following this awesome, concise and precise video.

It was as good a time as any to refresh everything.

Here’s the result:

These are a few of my favorite things…

And here is the partitioning to get it done:

Here are my highlights (cautionary tales, really) from the experience. I’m not taking the time to do a full writeup, since it was a specific upgrade, not a clean install, but add a comment if you have a specific question for me. (continued…)