Thursday, June 22, 2006
San Diego Code Camp this weekend
If you're in SoCal and are interested in brushing up or your skills, or learning about something totally new, this weekend is your big chance.
San Diego Code Camp is a two day event being held at the UCSD Extension Campus in La Jolla. To learn more about the sessions being offered, and get directions go here:
http://www.socalcodecamp.com/
Did I mention, its FREE!
I will be doing a few things:
On Saturday at 4:15pm in room 160 I will be part of a panel answering questions on Smart Clients vs. AJAX. If you're currently evaluating both and would like some advice, this is a great place to bring your questions.
On Sunday I will be I will be presenting the same two talks I did at the Desert Code Camp in Tempe a couple of months back.
At 1:15pm in room 107 I will be providing an Introduction to Object Builder. Object Builder is the really cool, little understood library that forms the foundation for all of the parts of Enterprise Library 2.0, as well as the Composite UI Application Block.
Immediately after this talk at 2:45pm I will be talking about Composite UI Application Block (known as "CAB"). Come and find out how to get started with CAB and find out why its such a big deal.
San Diego Code Camp is a two day event being held at the UCSD Extension Campus in La Jolla. To learn more about the sessions being offered, and get directions go here:
http://www.socalcodecamp.com/
Did I mention, its FREE!
I will be doing a few things:
On Saturday at 4:15pm in room 160 I will be part of a panel answering questions on Smart Clients vs. AJAX. If you're currently evaluating both and would like some advice, this is a great place to bring your questions.
On Sunday I will be I will be presenting the same two talks I did at the Desert Code Camp in Tempe a couple of months back.
At 1:15pm in room 107 I will be providing an Introduction to Object Builder. Object Builder is the really cool, little understood library that forms the foundation for all of the parts of Enterprise Library 2.0, as well as the Composite UI Application Block.
Immediately after this talk at 2:45pm I will be talking about Composite UI Application Block (known as "CAB"). Come and find out how to get started with CAB and find out why its such a big deal.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
New Steve. Not like the Old Steve
One of the side effects of changing jobs has been the effect on my income. While I took a cut in salary to come and work at Neudesic (the "cost of a better life" if you will), the more significant loss was the 30% of my salary I used to make in bonus each year, and the stock options that I got with Dell being publically listed.
While my old job was interesting, I was basically unhappy there. So I used to buy a bunch of stuff I didn't need to try to make myself happier. But I found owning a lot of stuff made me unhappy too.
The new me doesn't have the kind of money to do that. In fact, the new me looks at ways to save money. I'm not quite clipping coupons, but I'm getting there.
Case in point: when we sold our house in Austin, we conveyed the decent refrigerator, and kept the low-rent one we had in the garage. When we moved to the new house I didn't want to splurge on a refrigerator, because they're expensive, so I was trekking out the garage every time I needed milk for me tea, etc.
Anyway, I found the nearby mall has the only Sear Appliance Outlet in the whole of Arizona. I measured the space in the kitchen and found the refrigerator I wanted online. Turns out this store had several of that model (a Kitchenaid side-by-side in stainless steel), so I went ahead and got it. Coming from an outlet, it was a bit scuffed up on the door handles, but I got a $2800 refrigerator for $1150.
Old Steve would have gotten a GE Monogram refrigerator for $6000, said "this is the only refrigerator I'll ever need", and conveyed it again when we move house the next time. Old Steve was a bit of a dick.
Hopefully New Steve won't go bankrupt because some old habits die hard.
While my old job was interesting, I was basically unhappy there. So I used to buy a bunch of stuff I didn't need to try to make myself happier. But I found owning a lot of stuff made me unhappy too.
The new me doesn't have the kind of money to do that. In fact, the new me looks at ways to save money. I'm not quite clipping coupons, but I'm getting there.
Case in point: when we sold our house in Austin, we conveyed the decent refrigerator, and kept the low-rent one we had in the garage. When we moved to the new house I didn't want to splurge on a refrigerator, because they're expensive, so I was trekking out the garage every time I needed milk for me tea, etc.
Anyway, I found the nearby mall has the only Sear Appliance Outlet in the whole of Arizona. I measured the space in the kitchen and found the refrigerator I wanted online. Turns out this store had several of that model (a Kitchenaid side-by-side in stainless steel), so I went ahead and got it. Coming from an outlet, it was a bit scuffed up on the door handles, but I got a $2800 refrigerator for $1150.
Old Steve would have gotten a GE Monogram refrigerator for $6000, said "this is the only refrigerator I'll ever need", and conveyed it again when we move house the next time. Old Steve was a bit of a dick.
Hopefully New Steve won't go bankrupt because some old habits die hard.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Using Tile view with ListView in WinForms 2.0
Just posted on the company blog about a wierd issue I found using Tile view with ListView controls in WinForms 2.0
http://blogs.neudesic.com/blogs/steve_saxon/default.aspx
In a nutshell, out of the box the secondary text on the item will come out black by default, not grey like Explorer, as shown below:
Turns out there's a wierd Owner Draw trick to making it work. Follow the link to learn more.
http://blogs.neudesic.com/blogs/steve_saxon/default.aspx
In a nutshell, out of the box the secondary text on the item will come out black by default, not grey like Explorer, as shown below:
Turns out there's a wierd Owner Draw trick to making it work. Follow the link to learn more.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
After lamenting my inability to find an England World Cup shirt anywhere in Phoenix, I ended up ordering one from Amazon.com.
I was a little bothered at paying $80 for a football shirt, but I'm very impressed with the quality of it. There are lots of nice touches. For one its made with X-Static, a silver-impregnated fabric which is supposedly a Good Thing™
But there are nice touches in the design too. It has side ventilation, nice embossing around the English cross at the shoulder and even a little gold star above the England logo, which takes me back to being the class swot in elementary school.
The fourth pic is the piping and small silver England logo button found in the bottom of the left side of the shirt.
I was a little bothered at paying $80 for a football shirt, but I'm very impressed with the quality of it. There are lots of nice touches. For one its made with X-Static, a silver-impregnated fabric which is supposedly a Good Thing™
But there are nice touches in the design too. It has side ventilation, nice embossing around the English cross at the shoulder and even a little gold star above the England logo, which takes me back to being the class swot in elementary school.
The fourth pic is the piping and small silver England logo button found in the bottom of the left side of the shirt.
 |  |  |  |
If you vin ze game you vill be taken out unt shot repeatedly in ze head
So, England are through to the second round of the World Cup, though in no way would you say it was through playing attractive football.
Perhaps the most interesting part of our last group-play match against Sweden will be that Sven-Goran Eriksson (the England coach) is Swedish. Win or lose he's not going to be too popular.
It also looks like we'll be facing Germany in the next round (aka. the quarter finals), which seems about right, because traditionally its Germany or Argentina that knocks us out, usually through penalty shootouts after drawing the score at 90 minutes.
I guess its some kind of revenge thing for kicking their butts on the battlefield. Allegedly.
Perhaps the most interesting part of our last group-play match against Sweden will be that Sven-Goran Eriksson (the England coach) is Swedish. Win or lose he's not going to be too popular.
It also looks like we'll be facing Germany in the next round (aka. the quarter finals), which seems about right, because traditionally its Germany or Argentina that knocks us out, usually through penalty shootouts after drawing the score at 90 minutes.
I guess its some kind of revenge thing for kicking their butts on the battlefield. Allegedly.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Its so funny being in the US during the World Cup. Seems the majority of Americans could care less. Its so interesting when you see the US trying to export its form of democracy to other countries, yet it is not on the same wavelength in this one important regard - almost every other country in the world loves football (aka. soccer).
In the commentary for the Argentina vs. Ivory Coast game they were talking about a quote from Pele about moments that he was most proud of, and he talked about how there was a 4 day cease fire in the Nicaraguan Civil War so the country could come together and watch their team play in the World Cup! (The quote was relevant, because you might expect a similar effect in war-torn Ivory Coast).
Another case in point about how America could care less about the World Cup ... Yesterday I decided to head to the mall to get an England shirt. I ended up visiting 10 stores in total, drove around 40 miles, and the only soccer shirts I found were knock-offs (how can you tell? They were $30, where licensed shirts are closer to $80). I was stunned. Of the 5 Sports Authority stores I visited, none of them had any soccer team shirts of any kind - not even USA or MLS teams.
They were talking on the Tom Leykis show on Free FM about why Americans don't like soccer. Tom's contention was that its boring and Americans like high-scoring sports, but I can't believe anyone could complain about the last 9 minutes of the Argentina/Ivory Coast game, where Ivory Coast scored after being 2-0 down and had those 9 minutes to try to equalize.
My personal feeling is the blame lies in the changes that TV made to mould US sports to their commercial schedules, even going so far as adding "TV Timeouts". I think American sports watchers have been trained to only have a 3-4 minute attention span when it comes to sports, and its just too much to ask them to sit through a 45 minute stretch. Even the Olympics tends to come in short bursts.
Puts me in mind of this urban myth that was going around just before the US hosted the World Cup in 1994. The story was that FIFA was going to change the rules for this world cup to introduce commercial breaks at every free kick and throw in. As ridiculous as that sounds to someone from a football (soccer) nation, I can't help thinking that that's what it might take to make it popular here.
In the commentary for the Argentina vs. Ivory Coast game they were talking about a quote from Pele about moments that he was most proud of, and he talked about how there was a 4 day cease fire in the Nicaraguan Civil War so the country could come together and watch their team play in the World Cup! (The quote was relevant, because you might expect a similar effect in war-torn Ivory Coast).
Another case in point about how America could care less about the World Cup ... Yesterday I decided to head to the mall to get an England shirt. I ended up visiting 10 stores in total, drove around 40 miles, and the only soccer shirts I found were knock-offs (how can you tell? They were $30, where licensed shirts are closer to $80). I was stunned. Of the 5 Sports Authority stores I visited, none of them had any soccer team shirts of any kind - not even USA or MLS teams.
They were talking on the Tom Leykis show on Free FM about why Americans don't like soccer. Tom's contention was that its boring and Americans like high-scoring sports, but I can't believe anyone could complain about the last 9 minutes of the Argentina/Ivory Coast game, where Ivory Coast scored after being 2-0 down and had those 9 minutes to try to equalize.
My personal feeling is the blame lies in the changes that TV made to mould US sports to their commercial schedules, even going so far as adding "TV Timeouts". I think American sports watchers have been trained to only have a 3-4 minute attention span when it comes to sports, and its just too much to ask them to sit through a 45 minute stretch. Even the Olympics tends to come in short bursts.
Puts me in mind of this urban myth that was going around just before the US hosted the World Cup in 1994. The story was that FIFA was going to change the rules for this world cup to introduce commercial breaks at every free kick and throw in. As ridiculous as that sounds to someone from a football (soccer) nation, I can't help thinking that that's what it might take to make it popular here.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Yikes - spoke to soon on the ABC feed!
I decided to go add Favorite Channels to my Slingbox, and found that no sooner have I opened my mouth, then the ABC HD feed isn't working after all. Strangely their SD satellite signal is coming through but not the HD one.
Looks like I may be stuck relying on streaming via the anonymous UK-based proxy server after all :-(
Looks like I may be stuck relying on streaming via the anonymous UK-based proxy server after all :-(
Score! The local ABC affiliate got its HD feed working just in time!
It was a good thing that the Germany vs Costa Rica was on today, as it made me realize that its not going to be easy to see the game from work.
The BBC is streaming the games, but it only works if you have a UK-based IP address. I found a couple of anonymous proxy servers, but that seems like a hokey solution, as all the video stream data makes two hops and performance could be shockingly bad.
Parsa, our CEO was showing me the Slingbox player on his new Motorola Q phone, and it occurred to me that perhaps a Slingbox is the answer.
I stopped off in Best Buy but couldn't find Slingboxes in the Home Theater department where I expected to find it. Lots of DVD players and Satellite receivers, but not Slingbox. So I ran over to Circuit City across the street. No luck there either, so I asked, and was directed to Home Networking. Er... OK, I guess.
So, I found the Slingbox, but it was $249 at Circuit City. Ouch... I decided to trek back across the street to Best Buy, looked in Home Networking and found it for $199!!
Anyway, I got it hooked up. Now, I know about home network setup, and I have to say that the Slingbox setup is totally simple! Just plug it in, connect it to your router and run through the wizard. It used UPnp (Universal Plug and Play) to talk to your router and open the port it needs, and wham! TV via my PC!
Coolest of all, you get a remote up on screen that lets me control my DVR from wherever, including all of the recording functions! Amazing.
Its a pity it only uses S-Video, but it would lag pretty badly if it had to do HD. Still, an Ultimate version sampling Component video would be sweet. (You wouldn't want it to use DVI or HDMI output because of the HDCP copy protection, which would render some channels unviewable). I also wish it did video/audio pass-through, but luckily my Dish 622 DVR had enough outputs.
It was a good thing that the Germany vs Costa Rica was on today, as it made me realize that its not going to be easy to see the game from work.
The BBC is streaming the games, but it only works if you have a UK-based IP address. I found a couple of anonymous proxy servers, but that seems like a hokey solution, as all the video stream data makes two hops and performance could be shockingly bad.
Parsa, our CEO was showing me the Slingbox player on his new Motorola Q phone, and it occurred to me that perhaps a Slingbox is the answer.
I stopped off in Best Buy but couldn't find Slingboxes in the Home Theater department where I expected to find it. Lots of DVD players and Satellite receivers, but not Slingbox. So I ran over to Circuit City across the street. No luck there either, so I asked, and was directed to Home Networking. Er... OK, I guess.
So, I found the Slingbox, but it was $249 at Circuit City. Ouch... I decided to trek back across the street to Best Buy, looked in Home Networking and found it for $199!!
Anyway, I got it hooked up. Now, I know about home network setup, and I have to say that the Slingbox setup is totally simple! Just plug it in, connect it to your router and run through the wizard. It used UPnp (Universal Plug and Play) to talk to your router and open the port it needs, and wham! TV via my PC!
Coolest of all, you get a remote up on screen that lets me control my DVR from wherever, including all of the recording functions! Amazing.
Its a pity it only uses S-Video, but it would lag pretty badly if it had to do HD. Still, an Ultimate version sampling Component video would be sweet. (You wouldn't want it to use DVI or HDMI output because of the HDCP copy protection, which would render some channels unviewable). I also wish it did video/audio pass-through, but luckily my Dish 622 DVR had enough outputs.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Birth of the Antichrist? Not so much
A couple of days ago was June 6th 2006, 6/6/6, which had quite a few people expecting the Antichrist to come knocking on their door or bringing the world to an end, etc. There were even folks on the radio trying to have a serious debate on the subject.
Come on people!
It is widely believed that the Book of Revelation was written in the first century, or possibly the second. Back then the Julian calendar was in use. While this calendar established the use of 12 months, years were still measured in terms of the reigns of Roman Emperors.
This system remained in used until the 8th century, when the modern Anno Domini system was introduced, which measured back through the Dark Ages to establish the most likely year of Jesus' birth, and establish a new baseline.
In the 16th century it was realized that the Julian calendar was out of whack, and the modern Gregorian Calendar was introduced, with its complex system of leap years. This led to an approximately 20 day adjustment being made to compensate for the accumulated error in the Julian calendar.
In any case, all this happened hundreds of years after the Book of Revelation was written, and the Anno Domini system itself is fairly arbitrary, as there were no exact records to base the year of Christ's birth upon.
So, whatever you may believe about the Book of Revelation or the interpretation of the number 666, I think its fair to assume it is not a date in our modern calendar.
OK, thats it. I think its safe to come out from under the bed now.
Come on people!
It is widely believed that the Book of Revelation was written in the first century, or possibly the second. Back then the Julian calendar was in use. While this calendar established the use of 12 months, years were still measured in terms of the reigns of Roman Emperors.
This system remained in used until the 8th century, when the modern Anno Domini system was introduced, which measured back through the Dark Ages to establish the most likely year of Jesus' birth, and establish a new baseline.
In the 16th century it was realized that the Julian calendar was out of whack, and the modern Gregorian Calendar was introduced, with its complex system of leap years. This led to an approximately 20 day adjustment being made to compensate for the accumulated error in the Julian calendar.
In any case, all this happened hundreds of years after the Book of Revelation was written, and the Anno Domini system itself is fairly arbitrary, as there were no exact records to base the year of Christ's birth upon.
So, whatever you may believe about the Book of Revelation or the interpretation of the number 666, I think its fair to assume it is not a date in our modern calendar.
OK, thats it. I think its safe to come out from under the bed now.
What do you call a broadcaster with no broadcast feed?
The World Cup starts tomorrow, and I'm getting a little nervous.
The England vs. Paraguary game is scheduled to be on at 6am Phoenix time on Saturday on ABC. However, the local ABC affiliate, ABC 15 has manage to toast its HD feed. It wouldn't be so bad, but that feed is what is driven to cable and satellite, who then downsamples it for SD too, so all told, no ABC meaning no game.
Their website has this message on it:
Still, while I may be worried about missing the game, I'm thinking that must be nothing next to all the crazed soccer moms that are now unable to watch Lost and Desparate Housewives. The horror!
The England vs. Paraguary game is scheduled to be on at 6am Phoenix time on Saturday on ABC. However, the local ABC affiliate, ABC 15 has manage to toast its HD feed. It wouldn't be so bad, but that feed is what is driven to cable and satellite, who then downsamples it for SD too, so all told, no ABC meaning no game.
Their website has this message on it:
On Friday June 2, ABC15 experienced a system failure on our HDTV transmission path, which took our HD signal off the air. We are working with the equipment manufacturer to facilitate the repairs as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and thank you in advance for your patience.It seems kind of strange that a broadcaster would lose its feed and let it stay lost for 6 days.
Still, while I may be worried about missing the game, I'm thinking that must be nothing next to all the crazed soccer moms that are now unable to watch Lost and Desparate Housewives. The horror!
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Those of you feeling gung ho enough to install Windows Vista beta 2 might want to hold off just a little longer.
I installed it on a spare PC I had at the house. It used to be in the Media Room at my old house and used to play World of Warcraft, but my new house has no place for it, so it was sitting idle. Still, being a gaming rig, its fairly l33t - 3.4GHz proc, 4GB SDRAM, 2x 150GB drives in RAID 0, nVidia 6800 Ultra video card ...
I figured with all that, it would probably just about run Vista, and as I wasn't using it for anything else, I jumped in.
Vista runs ok on there. It chugs every now and then and sometimes freezes up for a minute or so, but it runs.
I wanted to put Office on there, so I got the .iso file and wanted to used ISOBuster to open it. I opened the ISOBuster ZIP file (just downloaded) and the system froze. Even Task Manager wouldn't open. Yikes!
So, I forcibly re-booted the machine and CHKDSK came up during the restart. Fair enough. Then I get a message about how the D: drive's Master File Table (MFT) is damaged. Uh oh. Then it says it can't fix it. Oh dear - no more D: drive.
Worse still, Vista itself won't start anymore - I'll probably have to reinstall from the DVD, and along the way I'll have to reformat the D: drive to make it usable again.
So, the lesson is:
If you are going to install Windows Vista beta 2, do it on a machine that either:
a) you don't care about, or
b) you have totally backed up all the stuff you do care about
Thankfully this wasn't a primary machine, so I'm not too bothered. It just tedious. I want to get Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Office 2007 on there, but now I'm not sure the machine will remain stable long enough to even install them.
I'm having trouble believing that Vista will launch in the next 12 months. I've been through the beta programmes for the last 2 versions of Mac OS X (Panther and Tiger), often installing a new build every week or two, and have never had a problem like this with either of those betas. Scary to think MS has been working on this for 6 years and it still has problems like this.
I installed it on a spare PC I had at the house. It used to be in the Media Room at my old house and used to play World of Warcraft, but my new house has no place for it, so it was sitting idle. Still, being a gaming rig, its fairly l33t - 3.4GHz proc, 4GB SDRAM, 2x 150GB drives in RAID 0, nVidia 6800 Ultra video card ...
I figured with all that, it would probably just about run Vista, and as I wasn't using it for anything else, I jumped in.
Vista runs ok on there. It chugs every now and then and sometimes freezes up for a minute or so, but it runs.
I wanted to put Office on there, so I got the .iso file and wanted to used ISOBuster to open it. I opened the ISOBuster ZIP file (just downloaded) and the system froze. Even Task Manager wouldn't open. Yikes!
So, I forcibly re-booted the machine and CHKDSK came up during the restart. Fair enough. Then I get a message about how the D: drive's Master File Table (MFT) is damaged. Uh oh. Then it says it can't fix it. Oh dear - no more D: drive.
Worse still, Vista itself won't start anymore - I'll probably have to reinstall from the DVD, and along the way I'll have to reformat the D: drive to make it usable again.
So, the lesson is:
If you are going to install Windows Vista beta 2, do it on a machine that either:
a) you don't care about, or
b) you have totally backed up all the stuff you do care about
Thankfully this wasn't a primary machine, so I'm not too bothered. It just tedious. I want to get Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Office 2007 on there, but now I'm not sure the machine will remain stable long enough to even install them.
I'm having trouble believing that Vista will launch in the next 12 months. I've been through the beta programmes for the last 2 versions of Mac OS X (Panther and Tiger), often installing a new build every week or two, and have never had a problem like this with either of those betas. Scary to think MS has been working on this for 6 years and it still has problems like this.
