April 2003 Entries
Got a full day of coding in yesterday. Mucked about with winform data binding and the IBindingList interface - very frustrating as I found a bug I couldn't fix. Got my list that implements IBindingList and a form with a listbox and three textboxes to which I bind my list. All works well except when I modify values in a textbox and then click on another item in the list. The changed values get saved but the modified item doesn't get redisplayed in the listbox. Did a bunch of tracing and found the calling sequences behind the databinding to be...
If you get a hard disk great than 137Gb you have to enable large hard disk support. Eventually figured this out installing my hard disk today. There's a registry key you have to enter named "EnableBigLba" in the ATAPI service if you have anything less than WinXP SP1. You should also install the latest version of the Intel Application Accelerator (currently v2.3) if your motherboard uses an Intel chipset. Anyway, one of those changes fixed it. I'm now reorganising all my files.
Hey cool. I've been googled. If you type "brain noodles" in google it finds this website. So I guess that makes my internet presence official! The first external link to this site has gone up at Microsoft Watch in their list of Microsoft Bloggers. I guess I better put some reasonable meta tags in my pages. I just checked and Yahoo can find me as well but MSN doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised if I get listed in health food or cooking searches at some point :-)
I get a really good statistic report from my ISP. I've had 127 unique visitors...
I've been mulling over a radical approach to software development and I recently wrote it up in the article Writing Code Is Stupid. It's not a rigorous discourse but I've passed it around my team without getting flamed. Today I sent it to Bill Gates. Heck, I can't get fired! He might pass it to someone who might find it interesting. A long shot. I'll tell you if I get a response but I'm not expecting it.
Ran across some interesting monitor solutions today: www.9xmedia.com and www.ergotron.co.uk Still searching for some new kit for setting up a home office. Let me know if of any great LCD monitors. Also check out the Alienware Area-51 Hybrid - a fast, water-cooled and small form-factor PC. Meanwhile, my new 180Gb hard disk arrived but it's going to take some fiddling to mount it.
"BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by inbound links." Neat idea. :-)
Just bought this new hard drive which seems to be the best one at the moment. A whopping 180Gb with an 8Mb buffer. In the UK, I find dabs to be the best place to buy.
Sad but true. Microsoft technology helping one of the most evil companies in the world. Just do a google search for Monsanto and evil. No, I don't like genetically modified food thank you very much.
Nice place for dotNet weblogs
I don't get it. Why bother?
Very interesting discourse on "markets as conversations". Almost the antithesis of the branded corporate world described in Naomi Klein's "No Logo". It frames how blogging might evolve and the role it might play.
I recently discovered the blogging community within Microsoft (http://blog) if you're internal and there are of course public blogs up on http://www.gotdotnet.com. There's also an internal email discussion alias on blogging with people discussing where it might go. I haven't looked into the BlogX code yet that Chris Anderson has written and that's getting use.
One simple way I explaing blogging is that with newsgroups, we order things "by...
Windows Server 2003 registration key is leaked. The volume license key, leaked and posted online, allows Windows Server 2003 to be installed on multiple systems without the activation process required for single licenses. [Computerworld News]
I proposed a revamped home computer network to my home financial controller (Jenny). Yippee! It got approved. Her observation was "looks like a small office". True - laptops, server, DMZ, Internet gateway, WiFi and maybe a domain controller. It'll take sometime to research it and start implementation.
First steps is a new laptop for Jenny based on the Centrino (Pentium M) chipset. Top contenders are Dell Latitude D600, Toshiba Portege R100 and IBM Thinkpad X31. Also looking for a good 17" LCD monitor.
This is Ray Kurzweil's site - very much a futurists' site. I read his Law of Accelerating Returns article quite some time ago but it's worth mentioning here. The abstract is as follows:
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a...
Sad. So software is a dirty industry after all and Microsoft contributes by targeting only the latest spec machines.