just an asterisk

This is a direct response to a question I received recently from Catherine (THANKS CATHERINE!). Anyone can post questions to posts@justanasterisk.com and I’ll do my darnedest to get a response out.
There are two parts to every file on your computer. There’s the stuff you put there (for example, your treatise on the application of gossip girl’s lessons in the middle eastern conflict) and the stuff the computer put there (a bunch of code). This division even exists in the titles, the name of the file is divided (by a little period) between your title and a little extension (EXE, DOC, JPG, GIF, AZK etc).

Now I’m going to hit you with a very obvious little statement.  Please bear with me.  Computers do not speak English.  Duh, you say.  Well I promise that there’s a good reason to bring this up:  that file extension is the language key.  If I were a file, I’d be alex.ENG – meaning that my title is alex and my language is ENG (english).   This is an important first step when another person (or system) encounters me.  A system that only speaks FRE (french) would never understand me.  These extensions are fictional (I think), but the idea works for every single file on your machine, mac or pc.

What you need to know:

Teaching your computer the language required for a file is as simple as installing appropriate program. It’s worth knowing that lots of programs speak MP3, so your computer is going to choose a default one.  You can easily change this with Windows or with a Mac!  If your computer doesn’t recognize a file, you may need to do some research.  Filext.com is a great place to start.  You can type in the extension and it will tell you what kind of program you need to open it.  Remember that there may be more than one possible option and that a program you have installed might just do the trick.  If you need help, post here in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

What you don’t need to know:

You may be interested in reading about some of history behind file extensions (wikipedia file extensions) or about common ones (wikipedia list of file formats).  You may also want to show/hide file extensions on your system.  Here are some links with instructions:

show/hide file extensions on a mac

show/hide file extensions on a PC

~ab

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Cocktail Party Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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