When used you can take them of their bags and use them for all sorts of other stuff!

Here are the used Elvis Presley and John Lennon:

When you use it, it looks something like this:

As you can see, there are lots of other celebrities as well, but unfortunately I drank most of my collection.

And just in case you are wondering, Yes I do actually have all the crap items shown in the nerd-gasm posts at home.

This is usually a problem that windows users come across, so let’s review a few steps you can undertake to keep your computer clean after deinstalling software.
There is one thing I would like to get straight right away, a good installer asks you how you want to uninstall. If you select uninstall all including settings and preferences, it will as a matter of fact do just that, without leaving any leftovers on your hard drive. Sadly, installers like this are hard to come by. Most of the time you are on your own. So here is what you do…

1. Check your program files
Go to the location where the software was installed, the default install software of most windows software is program files, open this folder (probably under the c:\ drive) and check if the folder where you initially installed the software still exists. If you did already delete the program via the uninstaller, you can just delete this folder.

2. Check you profile folder
Since windows vista you have a hidden folder in your profile folder called appdata. Make sure your windows explorer is set to show hidden files (file >> extra >> folder options >> display >> show hidden files and folders). To open the appdata folder, click start, click your username and there it is, a hidden folder called AppData. Open it and you’ll find 3 sub folders, Local, LocalLow and Roaming. Check in all 3 of these folders if there is a folder which contains the name of the software or the name of the publisher of the software. You can probably delete this as well

3. Check the registry
Push the windows key + r and type REGEDIT, then hit enter. On the left hand screen you’ll see a folder structure. There are 2 folders you need to check: HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. These both have a software folder, open them and check if there is a subfolder there with the name of the software you’ve just uninstalled. If it is you can most likely delete it.

Once you’ve done all this, you can be rather sure that you got most of the software leftovers.

Captain fatman to the rescue!

It’s the exact same with computers, the concept of backward compatibility in the world of the computer has existed for quite some time. The basic idea is that new technology can still interact and work with older technology. The most common example we probably all know are the new office versions. Since MS Office 2007 there is a new version of office documents, for example the DOCX, this is a word document. In older versions of word this extension didn’t exist, the only available format was DOC.
Yet the new version of word still manages to open and edit older word documents.

You can imagine the importance of backward compatibility. Specially for companies, it would be a total disaster if, after the upgrade of a software package, all data would be gone, documents could not be opened, source code could no longer be compiled. It would takes months to recover from this and that is of course impossible for a company.

Backward compability has always been a feature of operating systems, if you are a windows user you have been confronted with this multiple times I’m sure. Specially the newer versions of windows try to make your old programs work again with the compatibily feature. Because, let’s face it, not all files and programs are by default backward compatible. Although it sounds very logical and simple to create something that keeps on working, even in newer versions (because those software developers have the old code, right!?), this is not always the case.

There are several reasons why, in some cases, backward compatibility doesn’t work. The first is the technology itself…

Sometimes technology changes so drastically that it’s virtually impossible to make sure the old files and source code still works. Think of new standard, which sometimes just needs to be created in order to make everything work better, more performant. But if you are a bit handy, most of the time you can find a way around this limitation. Dosbox is a nice example. Even though old video games will no longer work on your fancy new computer, dosbox can emulate the “good old times” and make your old computer games work again on the new machine.

Secondly, some hardware or software can not be backward compatible because of “economic” reasons. A few years back, when the playstation 3 came out, there was still a very limited choice of PS3 games. But even so, a lot of people bought a PS3 no matter what, because the playstation 3 was backward compatible with PS2 and PS1 games. So if you still had games for the previous consoles, you could still play them on the new PS3.
But what happened was, because of the high prices and the limited choices of the PS3 games, a lot of people just kept on playing and buying the PS2 games available. Sony noticed this and also noticed that the sales of the PS3 games did not go as they expected. So this is what they did. ..
They brought out a newer, cheaper, version of the PS3 which was only compatible with the PS1 games. No longer could you play the PS2 games on the new PS3 console.

So you see, it’s not always because of “dumb programmers” (because that’s what most people think when something doesn’t work the way they want it to, right?).

>>>Clicky<<<

Here is how it works:

You know you want it…

We will be discussing computer file extensions. This is one of those things that you’ve probably came across hundreds of times but never noticed. Almost all files on your computer have an extension.
This extension is whatever follows to the last . of a file name. For instance, you can find a file on you computer that is called notepad.exe. The .exe is the extension of the file. This tells the operating system what type of file this is, for instance, in this case it is an executable file.

The most common extensions are .TXT (text file), .DOC (word file), .LNK (shortcut), etc. If you are not an advanced computer user, chances are that you have never noticed this. The reason for this is simple. Windows, for example, hides the extension of all “known” files. So if windows knows what to do with a file, it won’t show the extension any longer. Mac for instance does this too.
I’m guessing that this is a security measure, since you can change the extension of a file to anything. Which can be dangerous sometimes. If a program is, for example, looking for a file options.dll, but you’ve changed it to options.exe, the program will not work any longer, since it seems that the file is gone. So it’s best to leave file extensions for what they are.

You may wonder why I’m telling you all this, since you better don’t touch the extensions. It’s because the use of extensions is one of the oldest tricks in the book to get a virus on you computer. Many malware developers will create a file that is, for instance, named sales_report.xls.exe. They want you to think it is an excel (.xls) file but in reality it’s an executable (.exe) file. Remember, the extension is whatever follows to the last . of a file name.
You would be amazed how often this works, simply because there are a lot of operating systems that hide the extensions. Of course you can always enable file extensions. (We’ll get back to that in a later post)

Bottom line, always be careful ;-).

Notepad ++ is free to download and use, as the programmers call it themselves: “it’s a free (as in free speech and also as in free beer) source code editor”.
And there you have it, that’s what it is. Write whatever code you can imagine and notepad ++ is able to make it more readable for you.

Notepad ++ will highlight keywords, show you the beginning and end of a statement between parentheses, makes collapsible text blocks of loops and nested code blocks, etc. This is a Valhalla for every coder.
This tool also allows you to write macros, so you can automate recurrent text editing tasks. And for those who want to print (and frame) their code as they have written it. Notepad ++ is a WYSIWYG, (what you see is what you get)..

In case notepad ++ doesn’t offer you enough features, not to worry, it also accepts plugins. For example, I need to compare test results on a regular basis. Yet these result sets can be very large. After some googling I found out that someone wrote a file compare plugin for notepad ++. I downloaded it, put it in the notepad ++ plugin subfolder, restarted notepad ++, et voila! It works.

Also, the company that made notepad ++ also has an online shop. Here you can buy mugs, bears and, I kid you not, notepad ++ thongs.
Don’t believe me?