I needed to make 2 subfolders in every directory in a particular folder. It was going to be a lot of copy/pasting of empty folders and then it dawned on me… I could use the Windows command line!

All you need to do is open up a command prompt and go to the folder that contains all the directories that you want to have subfolders made in. Then copy paste this command:

for /f "tokens=*" %G in ('dir /ad /b') do cd %G & md "New Folder 1" "New Folder 2" & cd ..

and sit back and watch the magic. If the subfolders already exist, no problem, it will get skipped. Change the “New Folder 1″ to whatever you need, and if you need a bunch of folders, its just a space delimited list.

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I came to a startling realization today: Buying an album on iTunes is not the same as buying a CD! Why not? Lets say 6 months after buying a CD,  I get bored with it. I can sell the CD on eBay or to a buddy of mine. I challenge you to do that with an iTunes album. Well, because of Digital Rights Management (DRM), the only way to “sell” your iTunes collection is to authorize their computer to play your music; this requires you to give them your username/password–not a very good idea. From a business perspective, this is brilliant. Every sale of a digital song is money in the studios’ pocket. When someone sells a used CD to another person, the recording studios see no financial benefit from that. I was surprised to learn that CD sales are still the driving force behind music sales, even though it is decreasing (Source: NPD). Over 65% of all music sales are via CD. iTunes alone accounts for 25% of all music sales.

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As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I want to share something new that my church is doing that embraces technology–something that is open to the public. The Public Affairs Department of the LDS church has started a YouTube channel (MormonMessages). This channel publishes inspiring messages which are appropriate for any audience. You don’t need to be LDS to appreciate the videos. I’d like to take this opportunity to share a Mormon Message with you. This message is especially appropriate during the holidays as it encourages everyone to remember the things that are important in their lives or, more specifically, who is important. In this video, you’ll hear from a man named Thomas S. Monson, a man whom Latter-day Saints believe is a prophet of God or God’s mouthpiece here on earth today.

Take a moment and enjoy this Mormon Message

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After reading an article written by my professor, my boss, and my friend (all the same guy) about online gaming,  it caused me to reflect on gaming in my own life. There are times, while growing up, that I have probably spent too much time playing computer games. My interest was always First Person Shooter (FPS) games rather than Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). The four FPS games that I have played the most are: Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Unreal Tournament, and Tactical Ops–I never really got into Counterstrike. I do enjoy playing the Command and Conquer series, but as a general rule, I suck at strategy games.

Unfortunately I rarely have time anymore to play games and haven’t for several years now. To be honest, I miss playing games sometimes. It is surprising what kind of adrenaline rush you can get when playing a computer game. I have never felt like I was addicted to a computer game (seriously, this isn’t some sort of denial). I know there are times when I neglected other things at the expense of a game, but one can do that with books, hobbies, and even exercising. I don’t think the issue is how much time you spend playing the game, but what priority does the game have in your life? Occasionally interrupting your life is one thing, constantly is another. I’m grateful that (a) I don’t have an addictive personality and (b) I have never gotten into games that are purposefully addictive (i.e. Everquest or World of Warcraft).

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This is my hope to get on Google with the following search term: asdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjkl which I shall shorten to: asdf…jkl for the remainder of the blog (its kind of an obnoxious phrase really).

I was googling for no reason today. While my mind was trying to think of what to Google, my fingers got bored and typed asdf and the suggested search results intrigued me. It turns out that there isn’t a whole lot of Google stuff for asdf…jkl

asdf autocomplete with Google

So I’m hoping that some day when someone else google’s asdf and sees asdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjklasdfghjkl, they will find me!

12/16/2009 – I’m surprised at how many people have “found me” by leaving a comment on the blog. Keep it up, it’s very fun.

1/11/2010 – It is insane how many hits this site is getting per day. I’m in the process of making something even cooler for everyone who does do this search, on a different domain. Its on http://www.digil.net, but there isn’t a whole lot there yet.

1/28/2010 – When I first started this, the huge asdf…jkl autocomplete was the third suggestion for asdf and not even a suggestion for asd. It’s now the first asdf suggestion and the 3rd asd suggestion. Rock on!

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Ever since I was a 13, I have always been intrigued by fiber optics. My first exposure was a Christmas gift, my parents gave me one of those fiber optic spray lamps.

Fiber Optic Spray Lamp

The notion that light could bend — I don’t mean slight refraction, I mean 180 degrees of bending — was just fascinating to me. Later on, in high school, I attended a lecture by Cisco on the future of fiber and learned how fast data moved through fiber. In my CS 404 class, we have been learning much about the history of computing and of the internet. While many view the “dot-com” bubble of 1999 as a bad memory, it did have at least one powerful consequence: the urgency to install a huge fiber optic infrastructure throughout the world. Luckily for the world, nobody tried to get a refund on the fiber networks after the dot-com bubble burst. The ability to send data internationally at super-fast speeds has helped to “flatten the world.” For companies that are based on information and services, distance is now a irrelevant. Does it really matter if the person who is processing your order is in Texas or in India? Not really!

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The beautiful thing about open source is the ability to look at the source files. The ugly thing is that I don’t really care to. As I have progressed through the Computer Science program at Brigham Young University, I have come to realize this simple fact: I don’t want to be a programmer. I find myself with little motivation to read other people’s code and try to make improvements on it. This is probably why I am trying to switch my major from Computer Science to Information Systems; although I’ll still get a CS minor since I have done so many classes. There are many who swear by open source software, and they prefer open source over their commercial equivalent. Such an example is Sun’s Open Office (open source) vs. Microsoft’s Office (closed source) for office productivity software, or The Gimp (open source) vs. Adobe Photoshop (closed source) for graphics editing. In most cases, I find the open source software to be usable, but less user friendly, slower and sometimes downright ugly. I am not bashing all open source products by any means, I use Linux based web servers running Apache and PHP–all of which are open source applications. I just think that commercial (usually closed source) applications have their perks as well. In conclusion, despite my love of computing and my knowledge of programming, I don’t think open source is the solution to all things. To me, open source is to socialism while closed source is to capitalism.

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I was driving to school last week and I saw something that made me do one of those TV-like double takes. That is where you look at something, look away, and then immediately look back once you’ve realized something is not quite right. It was a girl lying under her car—doing maintenance, probably changing her oil. She looked like a normal girl and it was a normal car, and I immediately felt bad for thinking it wasn’t a normal thing. This situation reminds me of taking math, science and programming classes. I have had semesters where I walk into the classroom and a quick scan shows 3 out of 140 students to be female. I used to think “so much for finding my future wife in one of my classes!” Almost all the women in my math classes were going for a math education major or math major, none that I knew of aimed to be physicists, engineers, computer scientists, etc. The worst part is that more often than not, the women in those classes are the hardest working students who got the best grades. We need them in engineering! We need them in computer science! Paul De Palma, on writing about why girls avoid computer science, suggested that we teach girls how to program simple, functional, logical programs at a young age. I think this a great idea. If I have any daughters, I’ll give this one a try and I’ll let the world know my results in whatever social media platform is popular in 15 years.

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A Facebook application titled “We’re Related,” produced by FamilyLink, had over 20 million people use the software this month alone. This summer they hit a milestone of over 50 million links; that is, 50 million people have established family relationships with one another. While this is not a “family tree” per se (it doesn’t really account for those are not on Facebook), it is becoming a very effective tool at linking the human family to one another. Without even realizing it, those who participate in defining their familial relationships with one another on Facebook are subtly becoming genealogists. Being an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints automatically associates me with genealogy, because of our peculiar belief that everyone has a chance to hear the Gospel—including those who have passed on. The Church has some of the world’s largest genealogical resources available to the public, and most of it is now accessible at FamilySearch.org.  One cool part of FamilySearch is Ancestry File, which allows individual genealogists to upload his or her own family tree. The main goal of Ancestry File is to provide a single, universal family tree. I believe there is a lot of potential to combine FamilyLink’s collection of living, breathing links to Ancestry File’s database of those who have passed on. Not only would you be able to see your distant relatives, you would also learn much about your family history, all with providing relatively little information. This, I believe, will help ignite the spirit of family history in millions more people.

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I did it, I created my very own blog. Frankly, I have always been skeptical of entering the blog world (aka the blogosphere) on a personal basis. My wife and I have a family blog that we use to periodically update our family — but that is different. Why? Because on that blog I have a known audience that I know is interested in what we have to say. According to Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere,” Bloggers collectively create close to one million posts every day. Do I really feel like I can say something to actually contribute?

However, this semester I am taking CS404 at BYU and the majority of the grade in the class is related to my blog. Assignments will be turned in via the blog, which I think is brilliant. The professor, Dr. Charles Knutson (who happens to be my boss as well) is on to something. He has observed that the general quality of writing is much higher when you have to turn your homework in via blog instead of printing it out on a piece of paper and turning it in? Why? Dr. K calls the old fashioned method “writing for the trash can,” and I couldn’t agree more. There isn’t much motivation to write your finest quality work when its just a TA that is going to read it. But if the general public and future employers have the opportunity to read it? Bingo.

And just so we’re clear, I am not being graded for this particular blog

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