Whilst scripting today, I chanced to be working with regular expressions. I use The Regulator to hash out an expression, because it has syntax highlighting, intellisense, and can search Regexlib.com via web service. This helps a lot, but it doesn't have the ability to test the expression with a client-side regex engine - it's .NET or go home. Still, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as mother says.

The script? Makes an Inmagic search box more Google-esque. Single words, and phrases marked with quotation marks, are automatically demarcated with a boolean operator, like... ["Land Cruiser" Toyota] to ["Land Cruiser" & Toyota]. Existing boolean operators are respected, so... ["Land Rover" Toyota ! "Range Rover"] to ["Land Rover" & Toyota ! "Range Rover"].

IIS Admin is a beautifully simple tool to use when doing web-based developing on an XP workstation, and it makes my life bearable some days. It's a blessing to be able to create a directory structure for each client project that actually replicates their real-life site from the web root down. Nathan told me about it. Thank you Nathan Mayr, I'm naming my children after you. Yeah, all of them.

From the website: "IIS Admin is a small tool for for use on Windows XP Professional. As you may have noticed, Windows XP Professional's IIS installation only allows one running website at a time. This is where IIS admin enters the picture, it allows you to easily create multiple websites on Windows XP Professional and quick switching between them."

I like the very understated "as you may have noticed" bit. It's more like, "as you may have wept tears of bitter frustration into your keyboard such that the individual keys rusted shut."