Screen Capture (Screenshot) under Android 4

The TL;DR version of this post:

Depress as simultaneously as possible, and keep holding down for about a second, both the home button and the power button.

The order in which the buttons are depressed does not matter, but simultaneity matters: from the moment that one of the buttons has been depressed, there is an extremely small window of time, perhaps as small as one tenth of a second, within which the other button must also be depressed, or else no scweesho fo joo!

You will know that you have managed to take a screenshot when your phone will emit an oh-so-vintage camera shutter sound, a bright white frame will momentarily appear along the borders of the screen, and a "picture" icon will take seat in the notification area.

The oh-how-much-I-love-writing version of the post:

A pristine Windows Registry

The following files were exported from a pristine installation of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 living inside a virtual machine created by VMware Player.  So, they represent a default (clean) copy of the registry of that windows system before installing any software on it.  (Well, except for VMware Tools.)

Here is the .ZIP file containing all the .REG files. (9.5 MB)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The location of these files may change in the future, but the location of this blog post will not, so if you want to provide links, please make sure to link to this post, not to the actual .reg files.

Explanation:

For reference purposes, I needed to get my hands on a default (clean) copy of the registry of Windows. I could not find anything on the interwebz, so I had to load Windows into a virtual machine and extract the registry from it.  I figured that this may be useful to many people out there, so I have posted the results of my labor.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 (up until update 2) is lame!

If I knew there are no macros in VS2012 I would have saved myself the trouble of upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 and reinstalling all my stuff from scratch. The all caps menu is fixable; the awful colors are fixable; the dreadful icons I can live with; the rest of the god-awful ugliness I can live with; but the macros? I cannot work without macros! So, I am reverting to VS2010 and sticking to it for now.

Aside from that, the operating system upgrade means that I am now 64-bit!  Going up in life!  C-:=

tattoodavie's woes

This is so funny I had to share it.

Somewhere in some troubleshooting forum (it does not matter where) a certain technical issue is being discussed (it does not matter what) and user 'tattoodavie' leaves the following comment:

i have the same problem but i have windows 7 ultimate 7600 installed on an asus X83Vb-X2 notebook, but i also have another problem... i cant get into the bios and set the clock, change the settings... nothing...its password protected. it was my ex-girlfriends, she bought the laptop, but gave it to me for me for my birthday, turns out it came from a pawn shop, which one i will never know, seeing as how we cant talk to eachother any more (court order) i have no clue how i can clear the password. I have had it for some time now, and have grown too attached to it to. i just installed windows 7 and the new NVIDIA 182 driver for its GeForce 9300m GS 512mb graphix card. and now every time i restart this thing it sets the time and date back to 12/05/2008. I assume thats the date it was built. any ideas what the he** is going on?

Okay, it is from here: social.technet.microsoft.comWindows 7 64 bit and Asus P5Q BIOS issue

My notes on "Clean Code" by Robert C. Martin

These are my notes on the book "Clean Code" by Robert C. Martin from Prentice Hall.

I am in agreement with almost everything that this book says; the following notes are either quotes from the book which I found especially interesting and/or especially well written, or they point out issues that I disagree with, or errata which objectively need correction. If some point from the book is not mentioned below, then I agree with it.

C# Blooper №14: Weird / annoying interface method visibility rules.

Before reading any further, please read the disclaimer.

As it turns out, an explicit interface method implementation in C# must be tied to the base-most interface to which it belongs; it cannot be tied to a descendant interface.

namespace Test14
{
    class Test
    {
        interface A
        {
            void F();
        }

        interface B: A
        {
        }

        class C: B
        {
            void A.F() //OK
            {
            }

            void B.F() //error CS0539: 'B.F' in explicit interface declaration is not a member of interface
            {
            }
        }
    }
}

Well, sorry, but... it is.

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C# Blooper №13: Stack and Queue do not implement ICollection

Before reading any further, please read the disclaimer.

This is a blooper of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), not of the language itself: Stack<T> and Queue<T> derive from ICollection, but not from ICollection<T>, so they do not support the Remove( T ) method! Why, oh why?

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C# Blooper №12: 'Where' constraints not included in method signatures

Before reading any further, please read the disclaimer.

When writing generic methods in C#, it is possible to use the 'where' keyword to specify constraints to the types that the generic parameters can take. Unfortunately, these constraints cannot be used for resolving overloaded methods. Case in point:

namespace Test12
{
    class Test
    {
        public static bool Equals<T>( T a, T b ) where T: class
        {
            return object.Equals( a, b );
        }

        public static bool Equals<T>( T a, T b ) where T: struct //error CS0111: Type 'Test' already defines a member called 'Equals' with the same parameter types
        {
            return a.Equals( b );
        }
    }
}

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C# Blooper №11: Zero to Enum conversion weirdness

Before reading any further, please read the disclaimer.

When you assign an enum to int, you have to cast it. That's good. When you assign an int to enum, you also have to cast it. That's also good. But if you assign zero to an enum, you don't have to cast it! Go figure.

namespace Test11
{
    class Test
    {
        public enum myenum
        {
            a, b, c
        }

        void test_myenum( myenum f, int i )
        {
            i = (int)myenum.a; //need to cast; that's good.
            f = (myenum)5; //need to cast; that's still good.
            f = 0; //wtf? no need to cast?
        }
    }
}

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C# Blooper №10: Switch statements are not properly formatted.

Before reading any further, please read the disclaimer.

This is rather a Microsoft Visual Studio blooper than a Microsoft C# blooper: When formatting source code, Visual Studio offers an "indent case contents" option, but you will only find it useful if you happen to have a crooked notion as to how switch statements should be formatted. The one and only normal form of formatting switch statements is not supported.

namespace Test10
{
    class Test
    {
        void statement() { }

        void test( int a )
        {
            /* with "indent case contents" option selected: */
            switch( a )
            {
                case 42:
                    /* this is not properly indented */
                    {
                        statement();
                        break;
                    }
                default:
                    /* this is properly indented */
                    statement();
                    break;
            }

            /* with "indent case contents" option deselected: */
            switch( a )
            {
                case 42:
                /* this is properly indented */
                {
                    statement();
                    break;
                }
                default:
                /* this is not properly indented */
                statement();
                break;
            }

            /* the normal way of indenting cannot be achieved: */
            switch( a )
            {
                case 42:
                {
                    statement();
                    break;
                }
                default:
                    statement();
                    break;
            }
        }
    }
}

I know, you might disagree that my way of formatting switch statements is in any way 'normal'. So, in your case, let us agree on this: my way of formatting switch statements, whether you like it or not, is in perfect accordance to the way I format the rest of my code; and since Visual Studio allows me to precisely describe my coding style, it should also allow for a switch statement style that matches the rest of my code.

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