September 2008 Entries
I've been mucking about with a little play app that solves sudoku puzzles. I know the first release is a bit naff but I published it on codeplex today. I needed some kind of source control before I evolve it further.
As a problem domain, it's quite nice for object-oriented programming and I've wound up using quite a few C# language features. I think the next step is to implement a Data Model - View - View Model pattern before trying out WPF animation.
One problem I've discovered working with a big monitor in a dark room is that white backgrounds kill your eyes. It's just blinding. The brightness is down at 10 out of 100 but it's still too much. I'm growing fond of dark backgrounds.
In Visual Studio 2008, I'm now using Dark Grey by Tomas Restrepo. Nice!
There's lots of talk about colour schemes around the 'net. Check out IDE Hote or Not?
Just finished building a new office PC for a friend. Follow the link to read about it. It's based on a Silverstone TMJ08 mini-ATX case with a Gigabyte Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H (780G chipset) and a Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz CPU that has a TDP of only 45watts. It's a very nice office machine and would be excellent as an HTPC too.
I've made it my goal to get back into hands-on software development. There's such a vast amount of software technology nowadays that the development choices are overwhelming.
There are three centers of gravity in development: .NET (Microsoft), Java (Sun/IBM) and Open Source (everyone else). You could add C++ and Flash (Adobe) in there too I guess. There's plenty of smaller communities. I'm sticking to .NET because I love the programming model, tools and choice of languages. And there's a good demand for contractors. Java and Open Source (eg. Ruby, Python and LAMP) have lots of great stuff too but you gotta start somewhere. I...
I am dead pleased with my new 24" LCD monitor that I got yesterday. It's beautiful.
I've been researching LCD monitors and their technologies for a few months trying to make up my mind what to get. The best website on the topic that I found was www.tftcentral.co.uk. I wanted everything: 1920x1200 resolution, fantastic colours, wide gamut, lots of inputs, low latency, wide viewing angle, good technical support, a nice design, no dead pixels and not too expensive. Not a lot, right?
I often buy stuff by getting under the hood and choosing the best technology that those products use. With LCD monitors,...
After checking the reviews on frostytech.com, I purchased both the Scythe Mine and the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 to replace the cpu coolers on two of my pc's.
Both coolers are very efficient and quiet tower coolers that weigh in at about 500g. There are better coolers like the Scythe Zipang but I wanted to avoid their excessive weight.
I like the Scythe Mine better. The build quality is excellent. It's very quiet. I believe placing the fan between two towers of fins is a better design. There are a couple of drawbacks. It's uses grooves on the edge of 12cm fans to hold them in...