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Windows 7 Secrets

14 Jan 2009
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Microsoft OS Technology

Yesterday, I posted my first impressions on the Windows 7 Beta. Today, I've bumped into a great informative post by Tim Sneath with his 30 favorite secrets in Windows 7. Much thanks to Tim! Back From Retirement I was happy to find among them a way to bring back the old Quick Launch Toolbar! (#13)

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar

In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.

Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

I just love the Quick Launch toolbar since it provides easy access the usual programs and folders I use without much clutter on the taskbar. No Shaking Required In my previous post, I also mentioned that the Aero Shake seemed impractical for non-touch/pen input. I guess Microsoft's answer to that is the shortcut: [Win+Home]. (#3) Hide and Go Peek When on keyboard intensive tasks such as writing and coding, I hate to move my right hand and reach for the mouse. Good thing there's [Win+Space] that reveals the Destkop like Aero Peek (#17), and [Win+1], [Win+2], ...[Win+5] for quick access to the first 5 items on the taskbar (#11), and [Win+T] to shift focus to the taskbar (#21). (Note: [Win+T] works on Vista, too) Still More? These are just my favorite "secrets" from what Tim Sneath posted. I can't help but wonder what Microsoft is intentionally hiding from us, especialy after reading this from the Windows 7 Beta 1 review on TechRadar UK:

The beta is feature complete; although there are "a couple of things that we're holding back", according to general manager Mike Ybarra. ... "all of the code is in the build, just the discoverability is not." ...

Very Interesting...

First Impressions on Windows 7 Beta

12 Jan 2009
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Microsoft OS Technology geek

Public Beta Release Last January 9, 2009, Microsoft released the Windows 7 Beta to the public. I don't think Microsoft expected much demand since the servers were facing technical difficulties. The put down the site to ensure a better download experience. The link to the ISO was shared by some helpful users and still worked. However, potential testers (including me) couldn't get a product key that would get past the 30-day limit. Fortunately, Microsoft more than made up for their overloaded servers by extending the key distribution until January 24. If you're interested, you can download the ISO, get a key and test Windows 7 yourself until it stops working on August 1, 2009. (By this time, maybe there will be another beta version / new key distribution...) To Test or Not I tried to resist beta testing Windows 7 but in the end, Windows 7 beta won. I finished downloading the Windows 7 x64 ISO (about 3.3 GB) & just got my product key yesterday morning (Sunday) and started testing shortly after. After a day of use, here's what I noticed, plus my comments/suggestions. I've tried to link to as much screenshots that I've taken to show what I mean.

Read the rest of this post »

Our Flag is Secure!

6 Jan 2009
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Tribes community free gaming

Shazbot!!! I'm so excited that the TribesNext project has stepped up to fill in the gap that formed since Sierra dropped the Tribes 2 online multiplayer servers last November 1, 2008. On the site they boast:

Robust, fully integrated and automated account system. No need to wait or worry, you can create and log in to your account to play right away!
High-grade account security. Your account is protected by a 512-bit (or higher) encryption key generated on registration.
Authentication server down, but you've already created an account? No problem! Just log in and play.
No waiting for a human to create your account; no need to alt-tab to fully use the game; no need to worry about account theft.
No need for a CD-Key! The game is completely free to download and play, so go ahead!

It's a FREE, ONLINE, MULTIPLAYER game people! An FPS/TPS game complete with futurisitc weapons, vehicles, classes, large scale maps, flags, bases and jetpacks! ...with 64-on-64 epic battles! If you were too busy playing Counter-strike in the summer of 2001, you might have missed this awesome game. And now, here's your chance! Oh Sierra, I just hope you don't away our dreams! If you do, we'll be going after you with our spinfusors!

Inverse Square Root

5 Jan 2009
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Programming Share Technical Technology gaming geek

I just bumped into a clever little code snippet used to find the inverse square root:

float InvSqrt(float x) {
    float xhalf = 0.5f * x;
    int i = *(int*)&x;   // store floating-point bits in integer
    i = 0x5f3759d5 - (i >> 1);  // initial guess for Newton's method
    x = *(float*)&i;  // convert new bits into float
    x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x);  // One round of Newton's method
    return x;
}

[ taken with comments from Kalid Azad @ BetterExpalined.com: Understanding Quake’s Fast Inverse Square Root. ]

Ok, it does not get the exact value but you get a good enough estimate, FAST!

There are two important things to note here:

Newton’s method (also known as the Newton-Raphson method)
The ‘magic number’: 0x5f3759d5, an optimized first guess

For a better explanation, I suggest reading Kalid Azad’s article and the paper by Charles McEniry.

Wait a minute, so why is this useful?

In graphics programming, this can be used to normalize vectors quickly. If you noticed the title on the first link, it’s used in the Quake 3 engine. So does that mean the legendary John Carmack wrote this code? If you’re interested, you can read the Origin of Quake3’s Fast InvSqrt() at Beyond3D.

What did I learn?

I usually forget one thing: there are times when speed trumps accuracy. A close quick estimate would be better and there are a number of optimations that can be made. Much thanks goes to Doc Mana who first introduced me to the Newton-Raphson method & how to apply it on code.

Loki's blog

Windows 7 Secrets

First Impressions on Windows 7 Beta

Our Flag is Secure!

Inverse Square Root

Wait a minute, so why is this useful?

What did I learn?

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