Clear IE cache from command line

Turns out you can avoid the awkward series of menus to empty Internet Explorer's temporary internet files, history, cookies, etc by typing the following in the command line:
rundll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351

Very useful for automated testing!

More details here.

Easy iPhone landscape orientation

Put one of the following in your AppDelegate's applicationDidFinishLaunching method:

• application.statusBarOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight;
• application.statusBarOrientation = UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft;

This has several benefits:

• The status bar, keyboard, and alerts are oriented properly
• The iPhone simulator will orient itself properly

Some quick cocoa notes

In documentation such as this: "Convenience Constructors" do not seem to require alloc, like so:
NSDate *now = [NSDate date];

"Initializers", on the other hand, require alloc:
NSDate *since = [[NSDate alloc] initWithTimeInterval:0 sinceDate:someOtherDate];

My Windows Extras

A list of software I use to make me feel more at home in Windows:

AutoHotkey Customize keyboard shortcuts and automate common actions. (Apparently advanced window management is possible...KDE Mover-Sizer is based on this).
CDBurnerXP (iso and gap-less Audio CD burning)
Filezilla (SFTP)
Firefox (web browser, can be extended with plugins)
- Vimperator (vim bindings, link numbering/hints)
- Adblock Plus (blocks ads)
- Custom Download Manager (stop download window from popping up)
- Colorful Tabs (tab colors)
Foobar2000 (minimalistic/functional media player replacement; never mind, I like WinAmp better)
GMail Notifier Plus (checks gmail, displays with Windows 7's jump lists)
GVim (programmer/admin's text editor)
KDE Mover-Sizer (move and resize windows by alt-clicking anywhere in window)
Notepad++ Coder/Admin text editor with a less...unique...control-scheme than GVim. Also, handles working off of UNC shares better (gvim frequently locks up for half a minute or so).
Paint.NET (somewhere between Paint and Photoshop)
Pidgin (AIM, GTalk)
Process Explorer (a much better Task Manager)
PuTTY (SSH)
SMplayer (video player; linux's mplayer w/GUI)
Steam (Games)
Sumatra PDF Viewer (no-nonsense PDF viewer)
TortiseSVN (SVN)
VirtualBox (virtualization: lets you run other OSs at the same time as Windows; supports 3D acceleration!)
WinAmp (watch folders, jump to file, global hotkeys...everything I want in a music player)
WinRAR (zip,rar,tar,etc; nag screen, but never expires)
WMP Keys (global hotkeys for Windows Media Player; since rendered unnecessary WinAmp)

My mac extras

A list of software I use to make me feel more at home in OS X (for next time I reinstall...):

Adium (AIM, GTalk)
Cyberduck (SFTP)
DarwinPorts (UNIX apps for Mac; from source)
Display Sleeper (immediately put iMac display to sleep)
DoubleCommand (fixes some annoying keyboard issues, such as enabling PC-style home/end)
Firefox (web browser, can be extended with plugins)
- Vimperator (vim bindings)
- Adblock Plus (blocks ads)
- Custom Download Manager (stop download window from popping up)
Google Notifier (automatically checks gmail)
Perian (codecs for quicktime, make it usable)
Quicksilver (many-featured launcher, including a plugin for iTunes)
Spark (bind hotkeys to applescripts, iTunes actions, and application launches)
Terminal
- Terminal.app Tab Namer (Change tab names)
- Terminal Colours (fix that unreadable blue, adjust other colors to liking)
- Visor ("quake-style" terminal summoned/dismissed via hotkey)
TinkerTool (misc hidden OS X preferences, including disabling 3D dock effect)
VLC (play/stream video)

Global hotkeys in Windows Media Player

The main reason I used to use Winamp was for a feature called "global hotkeys". This let me assign arbitrary keys to play/pause, fast forward, etc, while Winamp was minimized (it even worked while playing full-screen games!) Turns out you can do the same thing (for my purposes, at least) in Windows Media Player with something called WMP Keys. (Instructions on linked page.)

Matrix transformations and gluLookAt in Cg

OpenGL has some nice helper functions for matrix manipulation: glTranslate, glRotate, and glScale.

GlRotate is especially involved, so I made a version in Cg (based on the matrix in the spec):

float4x4 getRotateMatrix(float theta, float3 axis) {
float x = axis.x, y = axis.y, z = axis.z, c = cos(theta), s = sin(theta);
float4x4 matrix = float4x4(
x*x*(1-c)+c, x*y*(1-c)-z*s, x*z*(1-c)+y*s, 0,
y*x*(1-c)+z*s, y*y*(1-c)+c, y*z*(1-c)-x*s, 0,
x*z*(1-c)-y*s, y*z*(1-c)+x*s, z*z*(1-c)+c, 0,
0, 0, 0, 1
);
return matrix;
}


Another especially useful function is gluLookAt, which lets you specify camera position and tell it to look at a specific point. I downloaded the Mesa3D code and made the following Cg function based on it:

float4x4 getLookAt(float3 eye, float3 center, float3 up) {
float3 forward = normalize(center - eye);
float3 side = normalize(cross(forward, up)); /* Side = forward x up */
up = cross(side, forward); /* Recompute up as: up = side x forward */

return float4x4(
side.x, up.x, -forward.x, -eye.x,
side.y, up.y, -forward.y, -eye.y,
side.z, up.z, -forward.z, -eye.z,
0, 0, 0, 1
);
}