Dev::Blog

So today I got lured into a Yahoo News link to some video. I can’t remember what the video was about, but golly whiskers, it sure seemed important at the time, so you could imagine my disappointment when instead of streaming video, I got a message saying that something was wrong with my browser configuration. I’m running Vista Ultimate on a 5 month old PC with 4 gigs of RAM.

Of course, the 30 second pre-roll ad played just fine, but the content itself, well, that must have been pretty hi-tech stuff.

This seems to be the theme this week. I tried to download a ringtone, from a company I work for even, and when the WAP push came along, it told me that my phone wasn’t compatible. I actually paid a significant premium for a phone that was extra-super compatible, to the point that the major carriers weren’t selling it in favour of its less-featured successor, but it’s just not compatible.

This reminds me of the earlier days of the internet and computing, when I would run Linux and whatnot not for the freedom, but because it was all I could afford, and I was willing to sacrifice some compatibility to get stuff done. Today I’m paying extra for the same level of service. You know, if I’m going to get screwed at the low and high ends, I think I’ll be a lot more comfortable in the cheap seats.

I’ve been out with deadlines and (possibly) the black plague, so I might have missed this when it first made the rounds: Stripe Generator. Web 2.0 actually has a “funny because it’s useful” category…

Rick Segal writes a bit on how he says no:

It is the “for now” part that I believe may confuse people. I don’t say, I’d be interested in hearing about your progress, let’s continue the dialog, keep in touch, write often, etc. I don’t do that because the smart folks will do that anyway. They will send email with an update, I’ll respond with congrats, they ask if there is an opportunity to re-open the discussion, and there you go.

(That quote makes more sense with the surrounding context, but you already clicked on the link and read the original post, right?)

We’re not investing in companies much, but we are hiring, dealing with client inquiries and various 3rd party proposals. I knew it was time to toughen up my language, but the why of it has never been clearer.

Inspired by CodeCamp and frustrated by the limitations of a blog post when it comes to producing code, I’ve started a new website (running ASP.NET! W00t!) to host code demos at the appropriately named demos.thrustlabs.com

There are only two in there so far:

Wrapping arbitrary web content in Javascript: sometimes you need to make a widget in a hurry. This shows probably the most basic technique to wrap web content in Javascript for dynamic inclusion (more to come!)

Data Binding a DropDownList control in ASP.NET: Unlike the Repeater and other more versatile controls, the DropDownList is pretty limited in its databinding capabilities, especially when trying to bind against complex objects. This demo shows 2 techniques to work around this, and 1 technique that doesn’t work.

I love using TortoiseSVN for easy source control on Windows, but on my Vista build (still RC) I’ve had a few instances of blue screen during commits, which is bad. In the last case, my repository got a little mangled, and I couldn’t do anything with it without the error “object of the same name is already scheduled for addition” appearing and aborting the operation.

The trick seems to be to do a revert operation on the directory, then an update. You may need to rename the original files/directories that are having a problem, and then diff/merge them back into whatever comes up, depending on what state the repository was in during the crash.

Then you might want to upgrade your OS and TortoiseSVN to the latest versions, and let me know how that works out for you - I see a day not far off where I’ll be like those people still running MacOS 9 when X has been around for years…

Technorati Tags: Subversion, TortoiseSVN

So there are 31 million homes in the USA without internet access. Actually, there are more homes than that, but these homes in particular have no plans to get online in the next 12 months, according to a recent survey.

I’m gonna put on my Richard Dawson hat for a moment and ask what you think the top reasons for this is.

Who here thinks it’s a question of availability? Well, since this is access of any kind, and dial up still exists, somewhere, you’re wrong. Only 3% of the respondents gave this as a reason.

OK, then it’s got to be affordability of ‘net access, right? Well, while 8% said they couldn’t afford ISP fees, a larger 14% couldn’t afford a computer.

It turns out the number one reason people aren’t going online if they haven’t already, with a score of 44%, is that the internet isn’t very interesting.

Wuzzah?

I remember my dad buying his first computer in the late ’90s simply because there were URLs showing up at the end of car commercials and he thought he might have been missing out on something - that’s right, more advertising was a killer app once upon a time. It seems that the hold outs have higher standards.

Hmmm, maybe DRM-free music downloads from EMI will be the lure that finally brings ‘em in. (What, it’s not like I was going to spend a whole post echoing what everyone else was saying about EMI, but I had to participate somehow…)

Wow, it’s like my Twitter drop-off extended to this blog or something. (I’ll be back on Twitter when AIM integration is working again, or when I can get around to finding a desktop client, honest!)

One cool thing I can talk about is Toronto Code Camp which went down swimmingly this past Saturday. This was my second time, and the first one gave me so many tips and tricks that it probably saved me a week or two or three of work over the following year. This year the seminars I chose were more refreshers than brand new things, which can be good too - it’s sometimes really helpful to review material that you’ve already been exposed to, and I’m not at all trying to suggest I knew more than the presenters.

Best in show (and first of the day… hmmm…) for me was probably Shaun Hayward’s talk on building plug-ins and inspecting classes with reflection. I’d done some work with plug-ins in my last job, and a few situations have popped up recently where they could be helpful, so I was grateful for the chance to review the technology. Of course, I didn’t get any breakthrough ideas because my brain always asks “what’s the stupidest thing I can do with this API,” and hopefully I’ll have a worthy answer for this later in the week.

I also enjoyed Mike Culver’s talk on Amazon S3 (and other APIs) - we’ve used them a bit already, but I’ve booked some time to take further advantage. Conference co-ordinator Chris Dufour gave a great talk about WCF that I termed my “medicine” talk - I wanted to go to the XNA session, but I knew this would be better for me in the longer term. Chris did a great job presenting some material that’s often pretty dry.

Probably the biggest thing I got from the day (besides winning a copy of Essential Grid) was confirmation that Microsoft technologies are alive and well. Most of the meetups and shows I go to focus on open source linux stuff, and while MS still skews heavily towards the enterprise, I did manage to find one or two people who did something other than Sharepoint. Encouraged by this, I’ve promised myself I’d spend more time on C# and ASP.NET outside of the office, and I’ve secured some hosting to play around a bit. What fun!

Technorati Tags: Code Camp