#wt writeup

[jesuisgourde]

Here is my Critical Analysis and Review of Withdrawn Traces. It's in 6 parts on WordPress for easier reading.

In it, I review, analyse, debunk, and critique Withdrawn Traces: Searching for the Truth About Richey Edwards by Sara Hawys Roberts and Leon Noakes.

Feel free to comment on the post, or comment here, or whatever you like. Enjoy!

[meta-squash]

is someone willing to read through JUST my final thoughts section of this withdrawn traces writeup? you don’t even need to have read the book i just want to know if i spend too much time talking about a specific subject  in this conclusion or if it sounds okay.

[philipholt]

Totally unsupported hacks - Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X Shortcut menu

You shouldn't do this and if you choose to do this you may hurt yourself or one of your beloved pets.

You have been warned.

The Windows+X hotkey has been around for many years as is a simple right-click style context list of Developer/Administrator stuff that your techies might need in the course of human events.

There's one obscure setting in Settings | Taskbar where you can set the main option for the Command Prompt to be replaced with PowerShell, although that was flipped to "on" by default many years ago.

I want Windows Terminal in that Win+X menu.

Fast Forward to a world with lots of alternative console hosts, Linux running on Windows natively, not to mention cross-platform open source PowerShell Core, AND the new open source Windows Terminal (that you can just go download right now in the Windows Store) we find ourselves in a middle place. We want to replace the default console with the Windows Terminal everywhere as the default but that's gonna be a while.

Until then, we can integrate the Windows Terminal into our lives in a few obvious ways.

Pin Windows Terminal to your taskbar

Train yourself to Win+R and run "wt" rather than "cmd.exe" at wt.exe is a shim that launches the store-based Windows Terminal.

Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X menu.

It is that last one that concerns me today.

The Win+X implementation is a totally bonkers thing that I just don't understand with its origins lost to the mist of forgotten time.

You can go check out C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WinX and find it full of LNK files. Just drop yours in there, right? Well, I say nay nay!

They didn't want just anyone dropping stuff in there so to add a new application to Windows+X you need to:

Make or find a LNK file for your application.

BUT! Your lnk file can't (today?) be a LNK to a Windows Store app - more on that later. They appear to be ignored today.

Store a special hash in your LNK file per Rafael's excellent writeup here so that they are considered "Approved Links."

Rafael's utility has the source at GitHub and the binary here.

Make a new Group 4 folder in the \WinX folder above OR update Group 3 and copy your link in there considering the numbering scheme.

Note the ordering in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ShellCompatibility\InboxApp

OR

Download a closed source utility by Sergey Tkachenko that promises to do these things for you, from WinReview.ru. More on that later.

Here's my WinX\Group3 folder . Note the shortcut at the top there.

I wanted to find a link to the Windows Terminal but it's harder than it looks. I can't find a real LNK file anywhere on my system. BUT I was able to find a synthetic one and make a copy by going "Win+R" and running "shell:AppsFolder" which brings you to a magic not-a-folder folder.

That is a folder of lies. I tried making a copy of this LNK, moving it to my deskop, hashing it with Rafael's util but it's ignored, presumably because it's a Windows Store LNK. Instead, I'll head out to cmd.exe and type "where wt.exe" to find the wt.exe shim and make a link to that!

C:\Users\scott>where wt.exe C:\Users\scott\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\wt.exe

These files are also lies, but lies of a another type. Zero byte lies.

Right-click wt.exe and Create Shortcut. Then drag that shortcut out of there and into somewhere else like your Desktop. You can then use hashlnk and move it to the WinX folder.

OR, you can use this scary and totally unsupported utility hosted at a questionable website that you have no business visiting. It's called Win+X Menu Editor and it was a chore to download. So much so that I'm going to hide a copy in my DropBox for the day in the near future when this utility and website disappear.

Be careful when you go download this utility, the site is full of scary links that say Download Now but they are all lies. You want the subtle text link that points to a ZIP file, just above the Donate button that says "Download Win+X Menu Editor."

In this utility you can add an item that points to your new WT.LNK file and it will use Rafael's code and copy the LNK file to the right place and re-number stuff if needed. Again, be careful as you never know. You might mess up your whole life with stuff like this. It worked for me.

And there you go.

Lovely. Now IMHO in some ideal future this should just happen out of the box, but until then it's nice to know I can do it myself.

Sponsor: Looking for a tool for performance profiling, unit test coverage, and continuous testing that works cross-platform on Windows, macOS, and Linux? Check out the latest JetBrains Rider!

© 2019 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

      Totally unsupported hacks - Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X Shortcut menu published first on http://7elementswd.tumblr.com/

[suzanneshannon]

Totally unsupported hacks - Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X Shortcut menu

You shouldn't do this and if you choose to do this you may hurt yourself or one of your beloved pets.

You have been warned.

The Windows+X hotkey has been around for many years as is a simple right-click style context list of Developer/Administrator stuff that your techies might need in the course of human events.

There's one obscure setting in Settings | Taskbar where you can set the main option for the Command Prompt to be replaced with PowerShell, although that was flipped to "on" by default many years ago.

I want Windows Terminal in that Win+X menu.

Fast Forward to a world with lots of alternative console hosts, Linux running on Windows natively, not to mention cross-platform open source PowerShell Core, AND the new open source Windows Terminal (that you can just go download right now in the Windows Store) we find ourselves in a middle place. We want to replace the default console with the Windows Terminal everywhere as the default but that's gonna be a while.

Until then, we can integrate the Windows Terminal into our lives in a few obvious ways.

Pin Windows Terminal to your taskbar

Train yourself to Win+R and run "wt" rather than "cmd.exe" at wt.exe is a shim that launches the store-based Windows Terminal.

Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X menu.

It is that last one that concerns me today.

The Win+X implementation is a totally bonkers thing that I just don't understand with its origins lost to the mist of forgotten time.

You can go check out C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WinX and find it full of LNK files. Just drop yours in there, right? Well, I say nay nay!

They didn't want just anyone dropping stuff in there so to add a new application to Windows+X you need to:

Make or find a LNK file for your application.

BUT! Your lnk file can't (today?) be a LNK to a Windows Store app - more on that later. They appear to be ignored today.

Store a special hash in your LNK file per Rafael's excellent writeup here so that they are considered "Approved Links."

Rafael's utility has the source at GitHub and the binary here.

Make a new Group 4 folder in the \WinX folder above OR update Group 3 and copy your link in there considering the numbering scheme.

Note the ordering in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ShellCompatibility\InboxApp

OR

Download a closed source utility by Sergey Tkachenko that promises to do these things for you, from WinReview.ru. More on that later.

Here's my WinX\Group3 folder . Note the shortcut at the top there.

I wanted to find a link to the Windows Terminal but it's harder than it looks. I can't find a real LNK file anywhere on my system. BUT I was able to find a synthetic one and make a copy by going "Win+R" and running "shell:AppsFolder" which brings you to a magic not-a-folder folder.

That is a folder of lies. I tried making a copy of this LNK, moving it to my deskop, hashing it with Rafael's util but it's ignored, presumably because it's a Windows Store LNK. Instead, I'll head out to cmd.exe and type "where wt.exe" to find the wt.exe shim and make a link to that!

C:\Users\scott>where wt.exe C:\Users\scott\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\wt.exe

These files are also lies, but lies of a another type. Zero byte lies.

Right-click wt.exe and Create Shortcut. Then drag that shortcut out of there and into somewhere else like your Desktop. You can then use hashlnk and move it to the WinX folder.

OR, you can use this scary and totally unsupported utility hosted at a questionable website that you have no business visiting. It's called Win+X Menu Editor and it was a chore to download. So much so that I'm going to hide a copy in my DropBox for the day in the near future when this utility and website disappear.

Be careful when you go download this utility, the site is full of scary links that say Download Now but they are all lies. You want the subtle text link that points to a ZIP file, just above the Donate button that says "Download Win+X Menu Editor."

In this utility you can add an item that points to your new WT.LNK file and it will use Rafael's code and copy the LNK file to the right place and re-number stuff if needed. Again, be careful as you never know. You might mess up your whole life with stuff like this. It worked for me.

And there you go.

Lovely. Now IMHO in some ideal future this should just happen out of the box, but until then it's nice to know I can do it myself.

Sponsor: Looking for a tool for performance profiling, unit test coverage, and continuous testing that works cross-platform on Windows, macOS, and Linux? Check out the latest JetBrains Rider!

© 2019 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

      Totally unsupported hacks - Add Windows Terminal to the Win+X Shortcut menu published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[jesuisgourde]

more richey rambling, as usual

and also as usual about the car and the statements about it made in this book

because they talk about how weird it was that the steering lock was on

and my first thought was well if he was living in the car it would make sense for him to put the steering lock on when he left it to use the service station facilities or whatever

but then i was thinking about how the authors talk this whole time about how richey was planning his disappearance and how it was all premeditated blah blah

and if it was premeditated, whether he was planning to disappear or planning to kill himself, then it makes perfect sense that he’d put the steering lock on

because putting the steering lock on means that a stolen vehicle is one less thing his family would have to deal with.

and if he was feeling like a burden to his friends and family and it was part of his suicide ideation then trying to do something to make his death slightly less of a burden (making sure the car doesn’t get stolen) makes sense

[jesuisgourde]

Wow I haven’t made one of these posts in a while

WT Writeup Edits To-Do:

-add in “know the truth” source segment -add in comic book etc source segments, including The Chairs “imitate February” -look again at Jo section and add in edits if desired -read at least the intro to Sayers’ Dante to see if anything to add/edit in summary -add new Yeats/Nietzsche source -add in all the newly discovered sources (including waybackmachine finds?) -double check if any other quotes were transplanted from Triptych

[jesuisgourde]

Just for fun I posted a little segment on my Wordpress that I cut from my WT writeup because it strayed too far from the subject of the book. It's a little digression about psychiatrists Ernest Becker (whom the authors of Withdrawn Traces referenced repeatedly) and R.D. Laing (whom Richey referenced), comparing some of their theories.

[jesuisgourde]

yet more richey rambling

back to the joseph campbell/richey was deliberately trying to become rock myth/richey’s life fits into the hero’s journey blah blah complete bollocks section

like something nicky talks about all the time in regards to richey’s feelings about how he was treated in the press or how the band were treated in the press as a whole, even from early on was that he felt as though he was being prostituted and used (although early on it was more tongue in cheek and nicky seems to imply that by the end it was very much serious which is why yes is the way it is).

and to turn someone, a living person (or once alive), someone you’re allegedly attempting to humanise, into a myth is to do exactly what the music press were doing before. it also shows an awareness on richey’s part of that sort of mythologising, and more specifically a discomfort with it. so to do it again when he’s gone feels so gross and exploitative.

by saying his life fits the joseph campbell hero’s journey it turns his life into a story rather than a life, into something unreal, it turns him into a fictional character to be played with in all the what-if scenarios that happen later on in the book, like a paper doll or a barbie or something. it sets the reader up to be okay with wild speculation and weird interpretations, with treating richey like a genius of esoteric knowledge and superhuman planning, to totally accept this idea that he’d been planning his disappearance for years and years despite the impossibility of doing such a thing considering the fickle nature of the industry and the randomness of life.

but life isn’t random in a story, and that’s the whole point of campbell’s theory, that these hero’s journeys are the same over and over. but that’s a story, not life.

[jesuisgourde]

.....i think i am finally starting to truly understand why this book took like 3.5 years to write

[jesuisgourde]

I'm so excited to go home and eat soup and then finish getting my wt writeup into wordpress drafts and ready to go.

[jesuisgourde]

aside from 3 sources that i need to retrieve a proquest login in order to get the full thing, my citations are done.

now i need to number everything on the citation document and then divide the writeup into sections and put it all in wordpress drafts and manually generate all the superscripts and things

my brain is tired so i might take a nap first

[jesuisgourde]

Holy Shit. Unless something else major somehow comes up, I am DONE writing my WT writeup, it has been fully edited, and now all I have left to do is make the bibliography footnotes. Which means I will probably be posting it this weekend!

[jesuisgourde]

the more nietzsche i read, the more i feel like the nietzsche-related commentary/interpretations in withdrawn traces massively oversimplified things. not that nietzsche's ideas are extremely difficult to grasp, but that i think when considered with richey's obvious religious conflict and confusion and internal struggle towards the end, making such a straightforward and specific claim as "richey overcame his self and acquired a dionysian state by pursuing asceticism as a positive state of being" is ridiculous because it disregards all the things richey was grappling with that were taking him in precisely the opposite direction, and that pretty much everything he wrote or talked about after the priory is a fairly clear expression of those two conflicting states of being -- the desire for christian purity and ascetic behavior (nietzsche's "slave mentality") and the desire to accept every experience, to interpret suffering as progress, the whole idea of amor fati. again it's just the conflict between two opposing moralities but i think the entire point isn't that richey 100% agreed with nietzsche and wanted to become dionysian but that he was struggling with wanting aspects of both types of completely opposed philosophies/moralities.

[jesuisgourde]

finished my response to the retrospective and added it in to the writeup

wordcount is now 117544

i still have a small bit on nietzsche left to add and maybe another tiny edit after that

then i have to put together all the bibliography for my footnotes

then i will be done (hopefully)

[jesuisgourde]

responding to this retrospective is gonna add another 2k words at least to my fucking writeup

i still have a little section on nietzsche to add as well

[jesuisgourde]

This WT writeup project is really an "it takes a village" type effort. Every single person who I've discussed it with at length, who has read a segment of it or read the whole thing to edit, has pointed out some other ridiculous problem or discrepancy or inaccuracy or bad theory on the book that I missed.