Avalon Jan 25 2006
I ordered this book the other day, as I regularly read the blog of Chris Sells, which drew my attention to the book, and I really wanted to push on and learn the latest and greatest way to write good-looking Windows apps. WPF (Avalon) certainly looks like an amazingly powerful framework, and it’s potential is huge. It’s a shame there are a few setup issues where other pre-release versions of .Net are concerned (it itself is still in beta, but the latest WPF CTP requires the final 2.0 framework/sdk etc, and I was running an old beta 2.0 framework and SDK. Even now after much uninstalling, updating, reinstalling, I’m not sure it’s running right. But I’ll get there when I have a bit more time, and when I do, I’ve got the right book to prepare me to use Avalon effectively :-)
CommentsWe salute you Pandora Jan 25 2006
Oh yeah, I forgot to say - guess where I discovered Samiam? Why it was on Pandora of course! I’m currently discovering music at a rate of knots far quicker than I ever could have imagined using Pandora, that site fucking rocks.
CommentsSparkley Jan 25 2006
Microsoft unveiled yesterday the first CTP of their Expression Interactive Designer, Sparkle. I got it downloaded, but trying to install it proves my .Net 2.0 framework, SDK, and WPF components combination is most definitely borked :-( Might need to uninstall everything, clean it up, and then re-install to fix this one! Once I do it’ll be nice to play with Sparkle, as it’s being described as Microsoft’s answer to Flash.
CommentsBye bye Jan 25 2006
Goodbye George, here’s hoping that now your out of the Big Brother house, the calls for your resignation can begin, seeing as you deserted your constituency for three weeks, all so you could reach a bigger audience. I know if he was my MP, I’d be angry. Hell, he’s not my MP, and I’m still angry.
CommentsEl on Rails, continued Jan 25 2006
So I figured I can’t be the only one who is a competent programmer and computer user, but finds themselves wanting to learn Ruby on Rails. I don’t want to wade through a 20-page tutorial of step-by-step instructions, starting with:
1) Boot up your computer
2) Logon to Windows
3) Press Start
… you get the idea. I want the meat, I want “this is where I get it”, “this is how you compile it” where necessary (possible pitfalls are nice to read here, some packages can be a pain to compile and install, others are bliss), and then I want to know what it can do. I’m not even bothered about learning the Ruby syntax straight off, I assume I’ll pick it up by forcing myself to develop something with Rails. Anyway, in an effort to combat stupid tutorials, and really acting less as a guide, and more as a testament to my experiments in Ruby-land, you can read all about it here. Specifically, here is the introduction, and here is part one, which lays out how to get the software needed for development. Tomorrow I start developing, and part two can’t be far away… ;-) Watch that space!
Album of the week Jan 25 2006
So at the minute I’m listening to Samiam, and specifically, their album Astray. Really good album, really good band, but I didn’t realise until I did a bit of digging a few minutes ago, that that album in particular is now over five years old, and that the band haven’t done much new material recently… until now. New album planned for some time this year, which is excellent news. Also while digging around their site, I found this band linked to and mentioned a lot - I think this might be what some members of Samiam have been getting up to recently, although I’m not totally sure of the history, either way you can listen to some tracks on the site, and they sound pretty good.
CommentsMad Mac Jan 12 2006
More Mac related madness - first up, the official press announcement to go along with yesterdays super-duper keynote, available here.
And now for the bad news: looks like Windows XP may not run on the Intel-based Macs afterall. While Apple won’t restrict the Mac’s from running Windows, hardware incompatibilities may scupper plans for the dream dual-boot setup. We’ll have to see how this one pans out. Hmm, I wonder if my favourite Linux distro will be able to cope with the Intel-based Macs?
The Chau Project Jan 12 2006
While browsing around the ‘net yesterday, I came across Left of Zed. This is a band fronted by a guy named John Cho, who among other things, was in Harold and Kumar, American Pie, 2, 3, and my favourite sitcom possibly of all-time, Off Centre. Off Centre was tragically cut midway through its 2nd season, but I still think it was hilarious - possibly just too risque for WB primetime. Anyway, take a listen to Left of Zed, he’s got a pretty good voice, and the music is good stuff - now I’m on a quest to get a hold of the CD…
CommentsNice package, Steve Jan 11 2006
In his keynote to kick off the Macworld conference in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs announced a slew of cool Apple stuff. Standing out was ofcourse the brand new Intel-based Apple computers, with new iMac’s, and a new notebook, the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro certainly looks impressive, and the idea of being able to run Windows or OSX on the hardware is another key feature for me.
It’s excellent the way the Apple site updates as soon as the announcement is made, and it’s good that the UK gets these products at the same time as our US counterparts. But here’s what I don’t get - take a look at both sites, and check the prices. For the 1.67Ghz MacBook Pro, expect to pay $1999.00 Stateside, equivalent at today’s rates to around £1056. Looking at our own order site over here however, for the same notebook, I’m looking at paying £1429 ($2447)! What’s the deal here, Steve? Not content with making us Brits pay 79p ($1.35) for each song on iTunes, compared to $0.99 across the pond? And while I’ve nicely moved on to the topic of iTunes, why is it also assumed that no-one over here likes Saturday Night Live, or the NHL? Big distribution deals for video content over iTMS are signed, but all us UK users of the iTMS see are music videos. I understood there must be numerous legal and licensing issues, but there must be some decent content that Apple could secure worldwide!
Plain and simple, I *want* to buy Apple, but they are not making it very easy for me. I think I’ll wait til I’m next Stateside before looking at these new additions to the Apple computer family. And I’ll keep hoping that the UK iTMS is improved so it can stand shoulder to shoulder with its bigger American brother :-)
Migration Jan 10 2006
I have now migrated my blog software, Scrawl, across to my new dedicated server, running the latest version of Mono (1.1.13), and I have also switched from using PostgreSQL to MySql (5.0.18). This decision was three-fold really, first of all, MySql I think is easier to setup and maintain than PostgreSQL, and secondly, it is far far speedier, making the applications that use it much quicker also. Hopefully this, combined with the fact that the new dedicated server is a much beefier box, should make the blog a lot lot faster :-) Thirdly, and finally, MySql 5 now has stored procedures, along with a raft of other features, and so finally it can really hold its own against other enterprise databases.
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