Font Blog

Microsoft's font gurus have their own blog and are sharing lots of good info at http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/. One cool thing I found there was a tool to improve your windows fonts. The improvement was phenominal on my screen. Install and run this ASPX app: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

Why I Prefer RSS Bandit over FeedReader

RSS Bandit features missing in FeedReader:

• Multiple Templates
• Drag and Drop
• Easy removal of all the default feeds
• Ability to share feed list between home and work via FTP site

Command Line Trick

Command Line Trick

Here's a neat trick for you BAT file or CMD file. Searching and replacing inside environment variables. Here's an example:

@echo off
set fred="This is a test. This is only a test."
echo %fred%
rem Remove the quotes.
set fred=%fred:"=%
echo %fred%
rem change This to That.
set fred=%fred:This=That%
echo %fred%
rem Change . to !
set fred=%fred:.=!%
echo %fred%

Produces:

"This is a test. This is only a test."
This is a test. This is only a test.
That is a test. That is only a test.
That is a test! That is only a test!

I tried to find this in Microsoft's documentation but was unsuccessful. Here's a few good links for more command line syntax:

• Microsoft Command-Line Reference


• Batch File FAQ