Herman Duyker: Scratchpad

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 21:03:18 GMT

This article [Microsoft Knowledge Base - Article 224351] on the Microsoft support site gives a simple tool to read (and write) properties of OLE compound documents, without the server of the OLE document running or even installed. In more readable terms, this means you can get (for example) the Author, Title or Summary out of a MS Word or Excel document, without having to start (or even have available) Word or Excel. All through the magic of the IPropertySetStorage and IPropertyStorage COM interfaces.

Could be usefull in a webserver (.asp) application, where you don't usually want to start an application like Word or Excel.

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 09:34:11 GMT

Discovered a Haystack

It can be found at http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 00:54:02 GMT

"If you love somebody, set them free"

An idea from a bit of movie I saw on the telly today (Silent Tongue, 1994):

A dead Native American woman is bound to this world by her body. Her (white) husband / lover does not want to let her go, and keeps her body from the vultures who are supposed to eat the body, and feed it to their young.

There were a few things which made this "click" in my mind, and want to remember it:

make-up and costume: the body of the woman had white marks across the forehead. Her ghost (see picture) had similar markings, but one half of her face was disfigured. Costume was made up of strips of loose material, somehow held together.
Motivation: in her culture, her spirit could only be freed by destroying her body. Her lover / husband, however, had different "mores", and wanted to hold her close. Who is right?

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 00:36:25 GMT

The Scratchpad: a place to collect those wandering thoughts and loose notes, which get lost most of the time. Hopefully, they will now find a home here.