Blue Onion Software

Friday Links #75

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:07:28 GMT

Programming Computers

WiX v3.5 <3's Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 - RobMensching.com /Blog
10 Awesome Techniques and Examples of Animation with jQuery
Dynamic Method Bags
Jeff Wilcox – The Silverlight Toolkit – now in the Microsoft Web Platform Installer

Using your Personal Computer

Mozilla releases first beta of Firefox 3.6 | Deep Tech - CNET News
Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Windows 7 with BitLocker and Still Booting To VHD
The "Font smoothing" feature has no effect in Windows Server 2003 terminal sessions
Microsoft Security Essentials rated best free antivirus for Windows
LiveBrush – A Versatile Freeware Image Editor That Lets You Draw Like An Artist

Science and the Environment

The Greenest Museum on Earth - Video – Wired
Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really) | Popular Science

On the Web

Readability 2 Makes Web Pages Even More Minimalist - Reading – Lifehacker
Chrome and others nibble away IE usage | Deep Tech - CNET News
Coding Horror: Stack Overflow Careers: Amplifying Your Awesome
Google Chrome Beta Adds Bookmark Sync, Speed Boost - Google Chrome – Lifehacker
Space Hotel Reportedly On Track for 2012 Opening, Already Has Paying Guests | Popular Science
Official Google Blog: Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard!

Stuff I just Dig

20 Most Hilarious (Yet Unfortunate) Company Names On Earth | Curious?
Slashdot Science Story | Low-Energy Laser Etching May Replace Fruit Labels
Auto-Sealing Insulated Mug Keeps Your Drink Toasty, Won't Spill - Drinks – Lifehacker
Why crutches may soon be relics of the past | Health Tech - CNET News

Desk Drive 1.8 – Windows 7 Compatible

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:25:50 GMT

Perhaps you’ve heard about an announcement from Microsoft about some new Operating System or such? Well, it’s here, it’s cool and it broke some of Desk Drive’s cooler features.

While the shortcuts still appear on the desktop, other features like locus effects, remembered icon positions and opening Windows Explorer were broken. So much for backward compatibility.

In fairness to Microsoft, maintaining compatibility with every application that ever was is perhaps a bit unrealistic. But breaking Desk Drive? Clearly this is one the most important Windows program today. How could they? I feel so jilted (just kidding Microsoft).

In the end it was a pretty easy fix and Desk Drive is running like a champ on Windows 7 now. I’m working on some Windows 7 specific features for future releases so check back often.

Available on the downloads page.

tweetz Update #10

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:55:32 GMT

Every time I think I’m coming to the end of a software project, someone rains on my parade with some “weird” bug. Turns out many of you like to run multiple instances of tweetz to monitor multiple accounts. Being a casual twitter user, it seems odd to want to have multiple twitter accounts, but hey, it’s a free country.

The “bug” is that updates sometimes show up in the wrong panel or even the wrong instance of the gadget. At first I thought this was just crazy talk, but then it happened to me with updates appearing out of order. WTF? How can this be?

The problem is that I had some silly notion that if I make an Ajax call, the response I get back is actually for the call I’ve made. Oh, how wrong I was on that assumption. There is no guarantee as to the order of the replies or that they will match the requests. In other words, the second Ajax call can get the first Ajax calls’ response.

Now I would have thought that the browser stack would do this “house keeping” for me. After all, it has to for image links and other resources. Apparently not.

One solution is to queue up the Ajax requests and call them serially. This is what I’ve done in this release. Ajax requests are added to a central queue and then “drained” in the order they were added. The next Ajax request in the queue is executed only after the previous Ajax request has completed.

As to updates showing up in other gadgets, I’m not sure how to proceed. The “Gadget” framework runs all gadgets in a single process which is the reason why updates sometimes “hop” gadget instances. Queuing the requests should “reduce” the opportunity for cross-talk but there are not guarantees. Suggestions on how I might mitigate this issue are definitely welcome.

The User page now includes your rate limits. Twitter only allows 150 API requests per hour. Tweetz stays well below that threshold but if you’re running other gadgets or hitting the web site, it’s possible to exceed this limit.

I’ve also fixed the home page link so it doesn’t trash the app when the users’ profile does not include a home page link.

Friday Links #74

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:50:44 GMT

Programming Computers

Refact your C# Code: Fluent LINQ to SQL
Did it with .NET - Naming Anonymous Types with Generate from Usage
Testing Tool Tour : QuickNet Preview « Search And Destroy
Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework – Home
.Net Framework 4.0: System.IO.File supports now IEnumerable - Gunnar Peipman's ASP.NET blog
XAML Power Toys for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 « Karl On WPF – .Net
WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series) - ScottGu's Blog
Service Trigger Events (Windows)
Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET
Underscore.js

Using your Personal Computer

tweetc – A Windows command line twitter client | Blue Onion Software
Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps - windows 7 – Lifehacker
Six free antivirus programs made for your Windows 7 system
Adjust Aero Peek's Display Speed in Windows 7 - Aero Peek – Lifehacker
ASP.NET 4 Web Server Here Shell Extension

Science and the Environment

Fastest Supercomputer in the World Models Dark Matter, HIV Family Tree Simultaneously | Popular Science
Tesla breaks record for going the distance | Green Tech - CNET News

On the Web

If you want to be green, get rid of your dog | Technically Incorrect – CNET
Google Voice Offers Voicemail Without a New Number - Voicemail – Lifehacker
Google's Turn-By-Turn Maps for Android 2.0 Kicks Pricey Nav Apps to the Curb | Popular Science
BBC NEWS | Technology | Google opens OneBox music service
Los Angeles Moves To Gmail And 'Cloud' Computing : NPR

Stuff I just Dig

Carve a Candle-Friendly Pumpkin Hatch - DIY – Lifehacker
ThinkGeek :: Vers Wood iPhone Case
Liquavista's E-Paper Plays Full-Color Movies | Popular Science