I’ve often wished I could use Unix style symlinks on Windows for easing path problems while developing software. I wasn’t aware that in fact NTFS does support symlinks but only for directories. Confusingly though, Windows doesn’t ship with ANY tool to actually create them!
Apparently Microsoft intended that you could only use this feature by purchasing an extra set of utilities. However, there is a freeware tool on sysinternals.com called Junction which can be used to create them.
The advantage of symlinks over Windows’ Shortcuts is that they can be navigated transparently from within other software e.g. the command shell or scripts. Whereas Shortcuts are really just files with link data which is interpreted by Explorer (as far as I can tell).
Just spotted a very interesting looking Windows GUI MySQL administration tool: MySQL-Front.
I’ve been using the excellent Java based SQuirreL for a while now because it provided me a database-independant interface for administering databases . Plus it has a good selection of useful plugins. However, I think I’ll try out MySQL-Front and see if it offers any advantages for working with MySQL on Windows.
Here’s a link to a David Heinemeier Hansson’s (creator of Rails) list of resources for getting started with the Ruby programming language:
Getting started with Ruby (Loud Thinking)
I agree with him that it’s not spectacularly easy right now how to get started learning the language although I’m sure it’ll improve quickly. There is an excellent online book but the API docs seem to lack a lot of examples which makes learning more about it a bit dry.
