Articles tagged 'el'
Icy Cold Apr 22 2006
Holy shit, how’d this one sneak up on us? Somehow we’ve been teleported back in time forty-five years to the Cold War. Russia supplying anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. I thought either naivety or a simple good-nature explained Russia’s involvement with Iran to help them with nuclear technology (they proclaimed that it was only going to be used for nuclear energy, and therefore peaceful purposes), however anti-aircraft missiles aren’t really dual-purpose and the intention is surely pretty clear. It’s quite an antagonistic move, and certainly one that doesn’t help the diplomatic process.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, politics, usa, russia, “middle east”, iran, war, “cold war”
More classic House Apr 20 2006
Another great episode of House tonight - and another classic House quip:
Henry: I assume you’ve been in love?
House: Is that the one that makes your pants feel funny?
Glad to see it’s been picked up for another series.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, house, tv
Intriguing Apr 18 2006
Catching up on some of the weekends tidbits, I noticed RSSBus - this looks quite interesting, and reading through the whitepaper brings up some intriguing ideas - however until I can play with the actual product, I’m not sure how useful it’ll actually end up being. Not sure I count as an “early adopter” or “influencer” either ;-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, rssbus, rss, “web services”, ws
Easter Apr 18 2006
I had an excellent Easter weekend away up north in Lincolnshire visiting relatives - and it was really enjoyable. Some photos from the weekend are up here and here. Anyway, Andie and I stayed at my grandmothers for the weekend, and spent the Saturday and Sunday visiting with various relatives I haven’t seen in a long while - and it made me realise I should make more time to see them more often. Sometimes they drive me nuts, often in fact - but it’s fun to see them and after-all, it’s family :-)
Came back Sunday, and yesterday had a nice relaxing day - back to work today though, feels like a bit of a drag as you’d expect. However, it’s only a four-day week, and I’m already looking forward to the weekend again!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, easter, family, relatives, holiday
scanR Apr 18 2006
This is pretty cool, with my 2-megapixel Sony K750i, who needs a scanner now? I might have to give it a go a little later, let’s see how I get on.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, scanr, scanning, “camera phone”, “sony k750i”
Photo overload Apr 13 2006
I’ve just stuck a load of photo’s I’ve been collating over recent weeks up on Flickr, in a photo uploading binge. As always, check out my photos here, or subscribe to the photostream here. Enjoy.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, photos
Review time Apr 12 2006
Ok listen up boys and girls, review time. I planned over the last few weeks to write reviews on a few things, however I haven’t yet gotten round to it - so here’s a start. They aren’t huge reviews, they are more like bitesize reviews to get straight to the point ;-)
The Vines - Vision Valley
The latest effort from Australia’s “The Vines” falls short. In a big way. When I say short, I could be referring to the track length. I got to about track six, when I suddenly realised maybe I’d been sent some kind of pre-order promotional CD by mistake - the longest track so far was 2m42s in length, with a number of the songs the wrong side of two minutes. Don’t get me wrong - if the music is awesome, it could be 30 seconds long, and I’d be happy to just stick it on repeat (The Hives are an excellent example of this) - but in this case, once I hit the end of the album, I was still disappointed. With the exception of perhaps the opening track, “Anysound” and the excellent “Gross Out”, the album was a big anti-climax for someone like me, a big fan of their previous work. Even with the “epic” last track, “Spaceship” at just over 6 minutes, the album only just tips 31 minutes, and all told, it’s 31 minutes that could have been better spent elsewhere.
Overall? “Get Free”? If you can get this album for free, then it’s worth a cursory glance for the short but sweet “Gross Out”, but otherwise allow yourself three extra minutes and listen to The Hives’ last album, Tyrannosaurus Hives - more energetic, more interesting, more fun.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, reviews, music, “the vines”, “vision valley”, “the hives”
It's got a name Apr 12 2006
Give It A Name is back on again this year, and seeing as I mentioned it in my last post, I thought I’d give a quick shout out to say I’m going to be at both days, Earl’s Court London, this year. It’s just over two weeks away, and thanks to the brilliant “Kill Your Own”, I think I’m looking forward to seeing Hundred Reasons the most. Billy Talent come a close second, and LostProphets, Taking Back Sunday, and MCR all feature too - it’s going to be an awesome two days.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, “give it a name”, “hundred reasons”, “billy talent”, “lostprophets”, “taking back sunday”, “my chemical romance”
Kill Your Own, but buy this album first Apr 12 2006
Hundred Reasons - Kill Your Own
This album is a masterpiece. Right from the get-go, it grabs you by the scrotum in a way most bands can’t do, and it doesn’t let go until “Breathe Again” has finished, itself putting the finishing touches on an epic album. Previous Hundred Reasons albums were great, and I’ve been a fan since the first. The second album was good, if a little weaker, but I felt that after the debut effort they might always struggle to eclipse that. Since then, an extended break, and lead singer Colin’s efforts with his side project The Lucky Nine proved incredibly entertaining - I had the pleasure of seeing The Lucky Nine last year at Give It A Name, and they didn’t disappoint. If anything, I saw a heavier, slightly darker side to Colin’s vocals, that I wish could be brought to the table with Hundred Reasons. Well here’s my wishes come true - Colin has definitely benefited from being able to rock out that extra inch or two over the last couple of years, and this album is like a mixture between the delicate melodies of classic Hundred Reasons tracks, and the immediacy and downright rock that made up most of The Lucky Nine’s debut album.
Enough waffle - “Broken Hands” drags you in and sets the tone, with the first single, “Kill Your Own” following, and providing a slightly more melodic, yet still heavy track with which to advertise the new album on. The third track, “Destroy”, seems to tip it’s hat slightly to songs more reminiscent of “Ideas Above Our Station”, but that’s not a bad thing. The album does dip into a lull in a couple of occasions, but I’d say in no way were “Chance”, “Perfect Gift”, “This Mess”, and “Better Way” weak, they simply act almost as rest between the far better crafted songs - “Live Fast Die Ugly” is raw and sounds like a producer was nowhere near - and sounds awesome because of it. The superb “Feed The Fire” I just can’t get enough of, and “No Pretending” really is another perfect example of how to combine heavy, with harmonies and melody to provide a song that even your parents could listen to. By the time the last track comes around, you’ll need a break, but “Breathe Again” continues for six minutes, building up and down, until finally this crushing, awesome album comes to an end.
Overall? Superb. Hundred Reasons best work yet. Buy it now, and kill your own.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, reviews, music, “hundred reasons”, “kill your own”
It makes phone calls, too Apr 12 2006
Yesterday I took delivery of my new handset upgrade - the Sony Ericsson K750i. I had originally wanted a Nokia N70, but decided to go for the K750i because I realised I probably didn’t need the extra features the N70 had, and I certainly didn’t need the extra cost that goes with it. So after playing around with the handset last night, I’m pretty pleased. I was upgrading from a Samsung D500, which I enjoyed using, and my biggest gripe was that I couldn’t set the alarm to use mp3s that were stored on the phone - with the K750i, I can ;-)
On top of this, there are plenty of neat features. PC integration is a lot smarter, and while the usage of the Memory Stick Duo will annoy some people I’m sure - being as I own a PSP, and had a spare 1GB card lying around, I was most pleased. This is the first phone I’ve ever owned with over a gig of memory in it, and because it’s got a fairly nice media player in it, a decent set of headphones (that double as a hands-free kit) I’m tempted to use it as my portable music player. I don’t find time to listen to a lot of music out and about (well I do, but that’s why I bought a decent car stereo), but whenever I think “I could do with an iPod right now” I usually don’t have mine with me. However almost always I’ll have my phone on me - if I can remember to stick the headphones in my pocket, I’ll be sorted.
I’ve also tried a few apps on the phone, more on this later - but let it be said though that Opera Mini is pretty awesome, and I’ve got an SSH client on there too - I’m always pleased by the nice range of apps available for Java based phones, and whenever I get a new phone I tend to re-investigate - so I’m still playing with this side of things.
The thing I use my phone most for is probably txting (just shades actually making calls) and it’s intuitive to use and feels nice and easy. Unlike before, where seemingly every time I changed my phone I had to re-learn where all the symbols and special txting keys were, the layout on the K750i is almost identical to the D500 (space key, caps key all in the same place). As such it feels right at home, and the actual interface for writing a text is much much nicer.
Overall, it’s a sweet sweet phone, even if I do have to get used to locking the keypad again! It even allows me to make and receive calls which is a bonus ;-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, “sony ericsson”, k750i, samsung, d500, “mobile phone”, “cellular phone”
May the farce be with you Apr 11 2006
Maybe I’m behind the times with this one, but this is fucking cool.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, “star wars”, lightsaber, “the force”, awesome
Building blocks Apr 10 2006
So before I get cracking with a few ideas I’ve got going on, I wanted to get my base framework and build environment sorted. After taking xFramework offline and turning all of the useful code I wrote into a more condensed, useful set of libraries, I then decided to work on a few build tools.
First up was to refine the unit-testing libs and console tool that was part of xFramework. Re-named, and re-built, I made it leaner and faster. Previously, there was one core library - this was the same one the console tool used to execute tests, and the client library containing the unit-tests referenced to tag unit-test classes. Now, it’s two separate libraries - a client framework lib referenced to mark up unit-test classes with attributes, and a console tool with core library (and a reference to the framework lib) to execute unit-tests themselves.
Secondly, I wanted a build server. I searched a while back, and came up short. There are plenty out there, but the criteria I’m after is:
- Automated build setup, with an easy-to-use configuration structure
- Plugin interface for a totally extensible build and reporting process
- Cross-platform, runs on both Linux and Windows, and preferably Mac OS X too
- Checkout a working copy from a Subversion repository, either using the “file” or the “svn+ssh” protocol. I’ll write further SCM support as and when I need it.
- Build the project, so far the only supported plugin is an MSBuild plugin, for building MSBuild project files such as Visual Studio 2005 solutions and projects (of course the API should be fairly similar to the XBuild tool for Mono, which was a port of MSBuild, and I’m thinking about a NAnt provider somewhere down the line)
- Run some code metrics, so far just a simple line counter for each file meeting the configured criteria, and a total line count
- Run unit-tests on the code, using my unit-testing framework, and a bridging plugin for the build system
- Generate some documentation, using my own documentation engine (see below)
- Cleanup after itself
Now that this is done, and tested, there are a few other plugins I want to write for it, but on the whole it’s good enough for me to develop with now. The build reports are also extendable - an interface is defined so that plugins can be written to deal with the build report, and so far I’ve written one provider that saves this report to file, and one that mails it to me, both of which I use. This means I now have my project building nightly, with everything automated, and me being notified of the results.
The third and final tool I’ve written, is a documentation engine. This came about purely because I tried writing an NDoc documentation plugin for my build system, to no avail (it didn’t like my .Net 2.0 assemblies). I browsed around, and found two things: 1) there is little or no activity currently occurring on the NDoc project, and 2) a few users are starting to modify the source themselves to provide a source distribution of NDoc with support for .Net 2.0. I took one look at the Xml documentation files that the C# compiler outputs (the ones that NDoc uses) and decided instead of using unsupportable, possibly unreliable user hacks to get my documentation needs accomplished, I’d write my own little engine, and in this way I’d get exactly what I needed. And so my third development tool in my toolchain, a core library defining a plugin interface for document generation, was born. It allows project files to be configured (defining the Xml document input files to use), and it allows plugin documentation generators that handle the actual output - I wrote one simple plugin to provide Html output for now, more advanced output could be Linux style man files, a Windows style help system, MSDN docs, or a multi-page Html documentation web site solution (currently it chews out one Html file, using JavaScript to allow expanding/collapsing of elements). I have written a console tool to build documentation from the project file, and of course the build server plugin is used to generate documentation directly from within the automated build process.
I now have an end-to-end build process, which, while some tweaking and a bit more code writing is necessary, does the job more than adequately for me. I feel far more confident going on to build upon a lot of my ideas, knowing I have the building blocks in place to write and develop applications more reliably.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, framework, “build tools”, “unit-testing”, “build server”, xframework, subversion, msbuild, xbuild, nant, ndoc Comments
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