September 2004 Entries
I can't quite believe that this is genuine, then again it does seem to be available in some online pet shops. It's the "Bow-Lingual Dog Translator." http://www.takara-usa.com/bowlingual.html
You attach this to your dog and when it barks, the thing analyses the bark to determine which of six emotions the dog is feeling, provides a relevant phrase and sends it your little display device.
Trouble is, I'd have thought that a dog would mostly say "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you", whereas a cat - that could be a different kettle of fish - much more on the lines of "Where's my dinner, now f*!k off!" (apologies to ace comedian Lee Hurst)
I'm sure most people update or have their machines updated by windows update. But that system of course only looks at Microsoft Windows components and does not include the Sun Java Runtime. And many people will be using Sun's JRE rather than one from Microsoft (since MS does not ship one anymore) Does Java have vulnerabilities? Of course it does!
For a recent one see http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-57221-1&searchclause=57221 which can "Allow an Untrusted Applet to Escalate Privileges"
So if you have JRE 1.4.1_03 and earlier you need to get it patched now! (Ony way to check is to select Tools > Sun Java Console in IE, and scroll to the top of the console window)
It would be nice if Sun or the Java community provided au automatic update service of the JRE just like windows update, or perhaps they already do. Anyone know?
Thanks to Phil Winstanley for highlighting this cool little app that you can run on Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, 98 & ME. (You must have Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher installed).
It docks on your screen and provides multiple panels to display useful info - eg. Outlook folders, newsfeeds, pc performance, time, weather, photo slideshow and of course there are many others to download and add. I have just installed it and am impressed so far - time will tell how long it lasts, but currently I feel positive about it.
And best of all it's freeware.
http://www.desktopsidebar.com/
Since blogging about how similar c# and VB.Net are I have been playing with BETA 1 of Whidbey a little more. The thing that struck me more than anything else was how useful the refactoring tools are in c# and how absent they are in VB.Net.
Although the refactoring tools are apparently not as comprehensive as other third party ones that are available, I can see how I would quickly come to rely on this feature - it fits in sweetly with the way I like to code - and it could be the deciding factor on choosing VB.Net or c# as my language of choice.
So will VB.Net get refactoring? Apparently it will, though it may be a subset of what C# gets and bizarrely it may be called something else. See http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2003/10/31/233.aspx for an interesting discussion on this, but don't the screenshot here too seriously!
I've always been motivated by money. Years ago I used to work for Happy Computers whose inspirational leader, Henry Stewart was always looking for ways to empower his employees. I think he was shocked when I told him once that he underestimated the affect more money could have for me! (Though being a thouroughly good boss, he didn't dismiss the idea, and did I think pay me more evenutally).
And recently, in a moment of solitude, I saw my goal in life. It's to get to a point where I have more money than sense. I think it would be great to hear people say "That Ian B, he has more money than sense!", and to have so little sense and so much money that I could spend my doe on all sorts of non-sensical things like fast cars and boats. It would be great for family life too - my kids love it when I am silly, and if I had more money than sense then I could be as silly as I liked and never have to stop being silly and skulk off to the office to actually do some work. I could do crazy impulse things like taking us all off for a weekend in lapland in the Summer, or putting an endless pool in my garage (whoops - already done that one, though I am still fitting it together, it's definately getting me fit though lifting those huge galvanised steel panels around)
There are of course two ways to achieve my goal - I could increase my money, or I could decrease my sense. I think I prefer the first option, though if that doesn't work out, maybe I'll try the latter...
Microsoft have released this SE of VS.Net 2003. This is a great deal if you want to get running with .net development using the best IDE there is. And the SE edition includes developer licenced versions of Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 too! Price? www.dabs.com are doing it for £608.99 inc VAT (£518.29 ex VAT) (http://www.dabs.com/uk/shopbybrand/microsoft/developertools/ProductView.htm?quicklinx=3FTK)
Details of the product here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/se/
l recently ran an asp.net course for ten people with a pretty even split of delegates - half who wanted to use VB Net and half who wanted C#. I usually let the larger group dictate which language I present in, then the notes and code examples are available in both languages so they can choose whichever they want.
However this time, since it was an even split I decided to present in both languages throughout the course. That may seem like a crazy thing to do, but it just highlighted to me how easy it is to switch - I created a single solution with a mixture of VB and C# projects, then I tiled my windows and typed code in both. One of my training issues is sometimes I go too fast - having to do both languages solved that at a stroke!
I also felt that the delegates got a good appreciation of the languages similarity and differences in a natural and easy way to understand. And it dissolved any mystique that VB coders may have about C# and visa-versa; and just to reassure anyone who is wondering - I covered exactly the same content as I usually do, and got great evals.
I was an early adopter of the Tablet PC - buying a Toshiba Portege 3500 when it was first released. It was a pretty neat machine at the time, a little underpowered, but it generated the required WOW factor when I used the Pen in presentations and training sessions (half way through a presentation, I would swivel the screen round and start drawing a diagram with Corel Grafigo, and watch the audience's collective jaws drop). My kids loved it too - drawing using Alias Sketchbook Pro and fighting over whose turn it was next (not sure if that is a sign of it's success or just the usual sibling rivalry). Moreover I enjoyed sitting in my lounge and browsing the web with the tablet in slate mode, and at work I took judicious ink notes in meetings using OneNote.
But there came a point when I stopped swivelling that screen around and just started keeping it in normal laptop mode. That might have been after I tried to read my notes back from a meeting, and realised that leaving them in ink, rather than trying to convert them to text might have been a mistake, since I could hardly read a word. It might have been the slowness of that machine to change the orientation or display the input panel and the frustration of waiting the screen to redraw (the 3500 has a slow graphics chip with shared memory). It could have been something to do with the fact that I didn't have a wireless projector so switching the screen around in a presentation could cause the projector to go flying, or at least move the image 5 foot to the left, if I wasn't careful. Or it could be that the geeky trendiness and wow factor just faded away...The 3500 was given to my wife and children and I moved on to a powerful Acer laptop instead - enjoying the fast graphics card, and tons of processing power.
Of course I recently decided it would be a good idea to put SP2 on all my machines, particularly ones used by my family. So on it went to the 3500, and with a Tablet PC, SP2 gives you a new o/s - Tablet PC 2005 for free! So suddenly my interest was revived in pen input. And there are some good improvements that have made me want to start using it again. Firstly and most visually the Input Panel is much improved. I mean really really really improved. Instead of it being docked at the bottom of the screen which made for a frustrating experience (click into a text box, display the input panel, wait for the screen redraw, check focus is still in the textbox, start writing, pause during writing, the damn panel puts the text in but I hadn't finished, now it thinks I am writing two words not one and it got the first part completely wrong - this was particularly true with things like uk email addresses - Ian@bbits.co.uk for example - it would most often come out as Ian@bbits conk - which I hope was faintly offensive - so delete the text in the textbox, start over, oh sod it, switch to keyboard!) it now floats a little icon near textboxes, or anywhere you can enter text (including things like a Word document, and the IE adress bar) and when you click the icon the panel appears right there, and you can start writing. Secondly the panel is much better designed, it shows the words it has recognised as you type in the panel, and it's easy to edit them by clicking on them if it gets it wrong. And thirdly the recongnition seems to be very much improved (and I am still using the US recogniser rather than the UK one which I haven't downloaded yet).
In fact I have written this entire post using the pen input and it has been a reasonably pleasurable process. The input has not got in the way of my creative thought (if that's what I can call it) and I also had a go at writing a page or two in Word which was even better because of the better integration when editing text. Moreover input of email addresses and URL's seems to work effortlessly now and that's a major benefit to me.
So now I have decided that I would like a slate model to use for presentations, wireless browsing, and note taking, together with a possible dabble in arts things like drawing in Sketchbook Pro or editing in Photoshop. Trouble is which one to get?
I didn't realise it until recently but John Carmack, founder of id software, producer of the Doom games, has another project: he is running a team in the X Prize. If you haven't heard of this then visit the web site which states: "The ANSARI X PRIZE is a $10,000,000 prize to jumpstart the space tourism industry through competition among the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world.", and John Carmacks team, Armadillo Aerospace is right up there in the running.
Well at least he was until a recent crash, although recent news is still positive, and all in all it makes fascinating reading. I recommend you take the time to have a look.
I have just had an article on TDD for asp.net accepted by aspnet pro magazine (www.aspnetpro.com) - should be the cover article in the November or December issue.
TDD is gaining in popularity as project managers and developers start to realize the benefits of producing verifiable, reliable and robust code using this methodology and related techniques. This article will show you how to start using TDD for asp.net projects and how those benefits can be realized.
I am currently writing a follow up article that will go into more detail on refactoring, mock objects and testing the UI.
If you are interested in TDD and would like to get up to speed on using it in .net see the bbits course here: http://www.bbits.co.uk/Services/training/default.aspx?tdd and the community site here: http://www.testdriven.com/