April 2005 Entries
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been infatuated with the Incom T-65 X-Wing starfighter from Star Wars. Maybe it had something to do with my parents both being in the Air Force. I remember playing the original X-Wing game for hours on end. Now I can have my own life-sized X-Wing! For an opening bid of $40,000 or a buy it now price of $80,000 a mock up of the famed X-Wing fighter can be mine. If I can only talk my wife into buying this instead of making home improvements but now I’m just dreaming. Via Engadget
BTW -...
Things like this make me so very glad that I never lived on campus at UM. This was taken straight out of The Hurricane, the University of Miami’s school newspaper. That same newspaper is sent to alumni around the country including alumni with a whole lotta moola. I wonder how those alumni will feel about this kind of stuff happening in the buildings that they helped built. What are some of the weird things that you have seen a roommate do? Let me know in the comment section.Now Playing: Jars of Clay - Tea and Sympathy
I caught this on Boing Boing. It seems that there’s a growing rise of teens in the UK using their cell phones to record themselves assaulting innocent bystanders. This phenomenon has been labeled “happy slapping”. Blogger Alfie Dennen has mashed together a few of these videos into one video. But be warned, this is some disturbing stuff. With people getting kicked in the head and being knocked off of their bikes. The UK really needs to throw these criminals in jail. Who’s with me?Now Playing: The Chris Pirillo Show - Interview with Mick Stanic
Since the last time I posted about my basketball team we’ve won one and lost the last three. To be more precise, we’ve barely won one and gotten spanked the last three games. But I did play decent last night. I was four for six and one of two from the arc a total of nine points. I don’t know what it is but we can’t seem to put a full game together. I truly believe that this team is better than its record. We need to play better transition defense and we need better ball movement. In other words...
I am:80%Republican.
"To you, Fox News really is 'Fair and Balanced'."
Are You A Republican?
A while back we (us VB devs) were told that there will be no refactoring support in Visual Basic 2005. Although disappointed, I was looking forward to edit and continue and generics. But low and behold Microsoft has surprised us! Refactoring will be supported via a FREE download. Carl Franklin shows off the new refactoring tools in a two part video (part one, part two). The implementation of these tools is impressive. Modal dialog boxes are a thing of the past replaced by an elegant flash-esque interface. The refactoring tools allow you to modify your code without getting in...
On Friday, April 22 at 5:15 PM Call FM signal was upgraded to cover all of Miami! After many a false start the upgrade was finally completed after five years of hard work. After the upgrade the Call FM staff, board and volunteers celebrated at Buca di Beppo and had a wonderful dinner. Congrats to all involved!
Somehow I missed this. I use the Component-based Scalable Logical Architecture (CSLA) to build business objects. We also use CodeSmith for object generation. Developer Cole Shelton has created a CSLA Object Generator that use CodeSmith on the backend to generate business objects. The generator allows you to create multiple objects and you can base your objects on more than one database table. I will be testing this guy shortly.
Recently, I had to rewrite this fairly large stored procedure. This stored proc aggregated a fairly large amount of data hence the reason we had to rewrite it. (Although, this was not the reason that was communicated to me about the rewrite. So, of course I went down the aggregated path then got into a heated argument about it. Talk to me people!) While rewriting it, it was clear that nested stored procedures would be the best approach to take. Of course while debugging it I ran into the "An INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested" problem. While researching...
My boy Jason from the U has opened a blog. From the look of things he’s going to speak his view on the political side of things. His first posts discuss Russia trying to honor Stalin and his take on the illegal immigrant issue. But liberals beware J’s views lean slightly towards the right. So if you have a hard time dealing with reason and logic you might not want to read J’s blog. But if you don’t subscribe already!
Now Playing: Michelle Branch - Everywhere
If you thought yesterday’s video was amazing then you’ve gotta see this. This video shows a kid playing Dance Dance Revolution while juggling three pins on one of the fastest levels. He’s simply amazing. With moves like that maybe he can get a job working for our government. Via Boing Boing.Now Playing: Earth, Wind & Fire - Reasons
It looks like I’m late for this. Star Wars tickets are already on sale at MovieTickets.com and Fandango.com. I guess I have to get my crew together for Star Wars sooner than I expected. Anybody interested in catching Star Wars: Episode III on Friday, May 21 or Saturday, May 22 let me know.
So I get this e-mail from a friend of mine, Brent, from the U. He now works for the government doing something-or-other for African countries. As far as I know he works to give American money away. Not that there is anything wrong with that… Anyways, the e-mail points to a video of the government signing. The video starts off pretty well. You can’t go wrong when Condi Rice is involved. It goes on for twenty minutes blah-blah-blah and then some thing goes horribly wrong. Right at the end of the video (21:20), a tall gangly, goofy looking white guy...
I just saw on the TechEd website today that TechEd is sold out! Whew! Got in just a nick of time! Those videos must of done some good...
Now Playing: Falling Up - Symmetry
I finally removed Virtual Server and installed Virtual PC. I also had the opportunity to install two virtual machines and SQL Sever 2005. I was also about to install Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 until I found out that Beta 2 was released on Friday. Looks like I'll be downloading a couple of DVD's very shortly.
I’ll be trying my hand a skinning DotNetNuke this weekend. Here are some links: Skinning Guide Post Skinning Whitepaper Post
I have installed Virtual Server 2005 thinking it was the upgrade for Virtual PC 2004. I guess I was wrong. Brian Randell (who is an excellent speaker) has written a post describing the differences between the two products. Let the uninstalling commence! …I wanted to post a few differences between the two products. The biggest difference is purpose. Virtual PC is designed primarily for running desktop operating systems & applications in interactive mode. Can Virtual PC run server operating systems? Yes. Will Microsoft support you? No. Virtual Server is designed to run server operating systems & server applications in...
I saw this and I did a double take. It looks like that there is a team of developers that will be unifying the N-tools (NUnit, NAnt, etc) under one project called NTeam. It sounds like a good idea after the blogsphere blew up (see Rick LaPlante, Eric Sink, and Eric Bowen) one the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) pricing announcement. I just can’t see NTeam 1) replacing Visual Studio 2) replicating the VSTS feature set. The major problem that I’ve had with the N-Tools is the documentation. When MS releases VSTS it will have numerous knowledge base articles, magazine articles, a...
My attending Tech-Ed this year has just been approved. I’ll be there…
And don’t miss Rory and Scott’s Tech-Ed promo videos.
Episode 1Episode 2Episode 3Episode 4
After seeing that last one maybe I should rethink this Tech-Ed thing.
Now Playing: Sixpence None the Richer - I've Been Waiting
I really need to look into Google’s AdSense. Pirillo talks about how he loves AdSense. And this guy, Joel Comm, proclaims how he makes $500 a day with AdSense. He’s even written an e-book on how you can earn more with AdSense. You just might see context sensitive ads on Jorriss.com very shortly.
Update 4/14/05 11:23 PM: Chris Pirillo uploaded a podcast where he interviews Mr. $500-a-day.
Now Playing: Third Day - Sing a Song
Cory Smith has developed a VB.Net game Checkers Solitaire. It’s a game of skill involving jumping checkers diagonally over another. It’s free so try it! Via Duncan.Now Playing: Rich Mullins - Ready For The Storm
Scott Hanselman writes about a new task switcher called TopDesk. It uses the corners of the screen as “hotspots” to scale all of the windows to fit on to the screen. All in all it works well. An for $9.95 I might purchase it. Scott has also made a video of TopDesk in action.
Yesterday, Tiger Woods hit an incredible chip that ever so slowly dropped into the hole (“it’s in the hole!”). Today, I find out that someone has already created a fan-produced Nike commercial of “The Shot”. Via Scoble.
Too many of my friends have no idea what RSS is. So here's a definition that I found off Goggle, RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication. There is also a FAQ that will answer the rest of your questions. Recently, Scoble has posted a nice write up on RSS and news aggregators that should clear things up even more. So read up an join the world of syndication!
Here are some articles on how to encrypt connection strings in .Net.
Encrypting Connection Strings in Web.configINFO: Usage of Strong Credentials to Store Connection Strings in the SessionState Element
Lately, I’ve been completely infatuated with Google’s Gmail. It’s fast, free, and you get 2 GB of storage space. It also handles spam pretty well. I was using iMail that my web host provides and Microsoft Outlook. But that was cumbersome since Outlook wouldn’t let me open multiple instances (I always have my work e-mail open). Also, iMail wasn’t the most user friendly interface that I’ve ever seen. So, I decided to link my Digital Visuals e-mail account with my Gmail account. This turned out to be easier that I thought. First, I forwarded all of my e-mails to my...
Asynchronous JavaScript + XML or AJAX is a new model for programming web sites. It uses JavaScript to call XML from a server to load data onto a page dynamically. One of my favorite sites, Gmail, uses AJAX to grab data from an e-mail server. AJAX is an interesting bit of technology but I don't see much growth for it unless better tools are made available to develop AJAX application in. JavaScript is a decent language but I hate debugging it. It's a pain. If Microsoft jumped on the AJAX bandwagon then maybe it could be a viable way of...
Those crazy Star Wars fans are at it again. For the third time in six years they are lining up in front of Gruman’s Chinese Theater for a Star Wars movie. When I read this in April 1st I thought this was an April fool’s joke. Guess not. You can call the members of the line via a pay phone at 323-462-9609. If you do call please ask them why they are doing this? I’d love to know. Via Boing Boing.
Now Playing: Stickman Jones - You Will
The guys from stuffo has unearthed an extended dining room scene from The Empire Strikes Back. Microsoft shows its new software that analyze code and create documentation in PowerPoint. Chris Pirillo uses MSN search and gets some weird results.Now Playing: Bleeding Charity - A Lament
The Cub Reporter previews the ’05 Cubs. It’s an interesting read. I was two paragraphs into it before I realized that he was writing about the 1905 Cubs! I fall prey to another April Fools joke. Stupid bloggers.Now Playing: MC Rob Base - It Takes Two