Excel requires an internet connection

I've seen Microsoft Office 2010 do many bad, and even stupid, things. But this one really tops them all:

Right, so I can't open Excel 2010 because there's something wrong with the internet connection (or so it thinks - I'm actually writing this blog post so I have no idea what Excel smoked). But seriously, why the hell does Excel need the internet to open a spreadsheet?

Downloading Microsoft Office?? Dude, it's installed on my machine.

This is the single most annoying 'feature' I have ever encountered in a piece of software. A close second is having to open Excel twice, because it doesn't open the spreadsheet I double-clicked, the first time.

A new category of facepalm needs to be invented for Microsoft. The silly bugs encountered in LibreOffice are nothing in comparison. Goodbye, MS Office. Hello, LibreOffice.

Finding and deleting Thumbs.db in subfolders

I found this post really useful for recursively locating and deleting Thumbs.db files in subfolders. This comes in handy especially when you're checking whether two folders are equal, based on size, but there are lots of Thumbs.db files running around that make life difficult.

In a nutshell, first go to the folder you're inspecting in cmd. Then, locate Thumbs.db files like this:

dir thumbs.db /a /b /s

...and delete them like this:

del thumbs.db /a /s

Read the whole article for full details (including PowerShell commands).

LibreOffice blows... its chance at credibility

I have long believed that the open source movement tends to produce higher quality software than commercial companies. However, many people seem to think that LibreOffice sucks. I wonder why?

Recently, Andreas Grech posted the following screenshot of the LibreOffice updates window, on Facebook:

Then, just yesterday, I uninstalled LibreOffice because I wasn't using it, and got this:

What this means is that the folks behind LibreOffice don't even bother to test their software. Now seriously, are we really supposed to trust our precious essays, theses, and shopping lists in the clutches of such abysmal software? Hell no.

Programmer's Ranch

I have recently started another blog called Programmer's Ranch, featuring short, daily, concise and practical articles for programmers of all levels. It is accompanied by a Facebook page for updates, questions, and discussion. So far the articles have focused on C# for beginners using SharpDevelop, but more variety is intended in the future.

Follow Programmer's Ranch for daily programming articles, and like the Facebook page. Random encounters in the IT world will still be posted to this blog (Gigi on IT) as they happen.

C++ Templates: Separating declaration from implementation

I found out the hard way that it isn't as easy to separate declaration and implementation of template classes (via .h and .cpp files) as it is for regular classes. In fact, it's not even possible to do so. The following questions and answers on StackOverflow shed some light on why this limitation exists:

• Why can templates only be implemented in the header file?
• Why should the implementation and the declaration of a template class be in the same header file?
• Splitting templated C++ classes into .hpp/.cpp files--is it possible?