I own an Xbox 360 games console. I enjoy playing online with fellow gamers, it really enhances the experience and I like the idea that I'm part of these mini-communities of like-minded gamers.

There's one thing about the current online gaming experience that bugs me: hardware lock-in. Let me give you an example: if I'm playing a game online on my Xbox 360 and a friend of mine is playing the same game on a PlayStation 3 or on a PC, why can't we hook up and play the game together in the same way as if we were playing World of Warcraft?

I'm sure the console manufacturers could agree on a common standard that would make this possible. However, hardcore gamers are passionate about their consoles and tend to be very disparaging of rival consoles. Does this mean that an Xbox 360 gamer would be resistant to the idea of playing online with someone who was using a PS3? Possibly, but if they're enjoying the game, does the choice of hardware matter?

Comments or feedback welcome.

I haven't posted in a while, as right after my holiday in the Lake District, I started a new job and it's been a steep, but enjoyable, learning curve leaving little time for blogging.

I've been working on a personal project involving some old-fashioned Microsoft Word VBA. In this project, I needed to be able to distinguish between a Word document (*.doc) and a Word template (*.dot). Helpfully, the Microsoft Word object model exposes a Document.Type property, which returns one of the  WdDocumentType values. The values of this enumeration are:

• wdTypeDocument
• wdTypeTemplate
• wdTypeFrameset

I quickly ran into an issue where one of the templates I was working with returned a value of wdTypeDocument for the Document.Type property even though the file clearly had a .dot file extension. After a bit of research, I found out that just because a document has a .dot file extension, it is not necessarily a valid template. This can happen if for example, you save a Word document, then change the file extension from .doc to .dot.

To ensure a document template has the correct Document.Type value, you need to select the "Document template (*.dot)" type in the Save As dialog box.

If you do any work at all with Word templates, it's worth bearing this little "gotcha" in mind.