Ones and Zeros

FEAR 2 Mini-Review

2009-01-27T17:11:00.002-05:00

Downloaded the demo from Steam.
Hated it.
Seven things:

Slow motion is a stupid gimmick.
Even on “easy” I shoot a guy in the head from 20 feet away with an assault rifle and he not only lives, he gets back up and keeps shooting. Where do I get a helmet like that?
That fog…is that ambience or an enemy? ….ENEMY!!! Or not.
Man-like gooey figure on the wall. SHOOT IT! Hmm…it’s not a bad guy. Next man-like gooey figure on the wall. Not a bad guy obviously. WRONG!!! GACK!!
Coffee table blocks shots? Since when do bad guys shoot BB Guns?
WHEEEE!! Mouse too sensitive, I’m getting nauseous. Lower sensitivity all the way. WHEE! (notice 2 less E’s). Still way too sensitive. Lower sensitivity with gaming mouse. Doesn’t work at all. BARF!
I’m hallucinating and following this creepy kid. She disappears. In front of a flaming pit. I’m not jumping in there! 5 minutes later after realizing I’m being herded like livestock. *jump* Moo!

One a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a D+.

Visual WebGui Needs SERIOUS work!

2008-12-16T12:53:00.001-05:00

It seems like everywhere I turn, I keep seeing “Visual WebGui” and how to use it with Microsoft products. Just today I saw in the MSDN Flash email that they were promoting a webcast on the subject. I’d never looked at WebGui and I wasn’t even entirely sure what it was or anything about it.

So I headed on over to their site and poked around a bit. I’m not going to review it, but I’m going to point out some things that are obviously broken and need work. There’s no way I could ever put garbage like this on a client site!

The reason this is so important is that a demo should be the very best of what they can do with something as well as being representative of the kind of results you can expect. If the company that makes a product can’t even get it to work on their own demo site, what chance to I have of doing better?

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot about Visual WebGui that’s pretty cool. But I just can’t see myself ever recommending the product to a client or ever getting it myself.

(the above pictures were taken while browsing in IE 7 with no add-ons enabled, ad-blocking turned off, and all javascript and cookies turned on.)

Why Impulse Sucks and Steam Has Nothing to Worry About

2008-12-06T00:10:00.001-05:00

I own Sins of a Solar Empire, a great game, and I haven’t played in a while so I wanted to see if there were any updates. So I load Impulse and wait…

and wait…

but it never loads. There’s no process running for it and it never ran.

So I load it again and I get this:

Which wouldn’t be a problem if it ever said something else. The application is basically frozen. It doesn’t make me want to update Sins anymore. It makes me want to go play something else, which I will do after I finish this post.

Players want reliability more than anything. People wouldn’t really care about DRM if SafeDisc didn’t crap all over their computers. People actually like buying a game from the store on impulse (no pun intended) and installing it from a DVD. People just don’t like having to keep putting the stupid thing in the drive just to play a 2 year old game.

And Stardock, people wouldn’t mind Impulse if you would have a program that actually worked even semi-reliably. It only successfully loads on the first try about 1 out of 4 times. That’s not what I’d call a good track record. I’ve had the program crash simply by right-clicking on an icon. That part’s not rocket science.

Look, you’re a generally good publisher and some great games. Impulse was a good idea except the little part that the software is an unadulterated piece of crap.

SSRS WebForm ReportViewer settings with SharePoint Integration

2008-12-03T12:03:00.001-05:00

I’m currently in a project that requires I use ReportViewer in aspx pages that access an SSRS report server (2005) that is in SharePoint Integration Mode (MOSS 2007). What isn’t obvious is how to set the ReportViewer properties for the ReportPath and ReportServerUrl attributes.

What is most significant is that you can’t use the same settings that you used to deploy the report.

One would think you could take that information from your report project, but it’s unfortunately not that simple. If you do, you may get something similar to this:

Yeah. That’s bad.

I discovered that there are 2 keys to setting up your ServerReport variables when using SharePoint Integration:

ReportPath needs to have the full URL of the report .rdl file.
ReportServerUrl is the URL that SharePoint supplies.

For the ReportPath, that should be pretty easy to find. I can’t speak for every installation, but on mine I was able to take the TargetReportFolder URL (see above) and concatenate the report name. For example:

http://rpt.example.com/Reports/yourReport.rdl

For the ReportServerUrl, you’ll need the help of your SharePoint administrator or someone who can run SharePoint Central Administration. It’s easy to find out the URL you need:

Run SharePoint Central Administration. On the left, there should be a bar similar to this:

Select “Application Management” and the screen it gives you will have a section like this:

Under “Reporting Services” select “Manage integration settings”. It’s the first option.

You will then be presented with a screen similar to this:

The parameter you want is in the first text box, “Report Server Web Service URL”

Using the sample data and parameters I’ve given in this example, your line in the markup page (under the ReportViewer tag) would look like this:

<ServerReport ReportPath="http://rpt.example.com/Reports/yourReport.rdl" ReportServerUrl="http://ssrs.example.com:8674/ReportServer" />

This may not work for everyone, but after many hours of struggling, it’s what I was able to get to work.

The main source for my solution is at this link where I took a blended approach from the various solutions offered.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,ssrs,integration,microsoft,reportviewer

Microsoft's faUX pas

2007-05-04T15:58:00.001-05:00

You would think that Microsoft would have User Experience people. I mean, that's the impression they want you to have with all of this hullabaloo about WPF and Silverlight (which are great products, mind you).

I am referring to the horrible opening to the Keynote at MIX07. It starts with a rather abstract background and then a bunch of stuff starts moving around, designs shift and so far. It's very snazzy. But there's just one problem. There's no sound.

Now, what happens when you're hearing a presentation without sound? Well, I checked the codec the wmv file was using. Nope, that's not it. I tried the silverlight version and the same thing. I'm wondering "what the heck?!" and then wait about 30 seconds and THEN the sound comes in.

Come on guys, this was just stupid. When people start a video, they expect to see video AND sound!

Tell me this. Do you think it's a good user experience to have to wonder if my hardware is working right or (as I saw it) more likely, the software isn't working?

And that's another thing. This really, really ticks me off!!! I have a nice 2Gb, 3.4 GHz machine with Vista Ultimate. Would it be too much to ask to have your free e-learning (good thing I didn't pay for it) actually work??? How about webcasts? I simply can't get LiveMeeting on the webcasts to work. If I want to view a webcast, I have to wait for it to show up "on-demand" and download it as a video.

Am I the only one who thinks it's silly that I can't watch a webcast about Vista since I got Vista? C'mon guys!

Firefox is starting to tick me off

2007-05-02T09:09:00.001-05:00

I love firefox in general. There are a few plugins that I wouldn't want to live without. But lately (lately = since I've installed Vista, it seems) Firefox has been hogging resources like Rosie O'Donnell at a, well, anywhere.

What happens is that apparently when I highlight something, it just sits there. All I can figure is that the browser is attempting to handle some kind of javascript and/or ajax event. Yes, I know it can only handle a certain amount at a time (I think it's two) and then it sits and waits. But that's just really annoying. Firefox becomes completely unresponsive and I see my Vista version of the hourglass going in circles for up to a couple of minutes. I keep google reader open, but that's really the only heavy ajax site I use. I'm going to start getting rid of some of my plugins (but never Adblock!) and see if that helps at all.

Silverlight needs work

2007-04-30T20:00:00.002-05:00

It's a good thing that Silverlight is still in beta. I couldn't even get the stupid thing installed. This is what I got:

Ooooookay. That's really helpful. I'll be sure to close all of my user-mapped sections next time.

Technorati tags: microsoft, silverlight, wpf/e, beta, error

Too True for Words

2007-04-11T16:21:00.001-05:00

Goodbye Old Friend

2007-03-14T13:46:00.001-05:00

Microsoft, after years of hinting, has finally decided that there will be no more FoxPro after version 9.

As one who used FoxPro since its MS-DOS days, before even Microsoft had purchased it, I have fond memories of some amazing applications I was able to design with it. It's been a long time coming and FoxPro is a dog that's too old to hunt, but it certainly had an impact on my career as well as the careers of many others.

Little known fact (unless you were a FoxPro user): Tom Rettig, fka Tommy Rettig who played Timmy on Lassie was a well-known and accomplished FoxPro developer.

Compression is not always necessary!

2007-02-20T17:11:00.002-05:00

I'm tired of having to unzip downloads that have one file in it that's already compressed.
Why do this?! That makes no sense to me! Look (to the left) and the download I just got. Uncompressed it's 92, 927 bytes. Oh gosh! That's too big! Let's compress it! WOW! Now it's only 86, 335 bytes!! I saved 6592 whole bytes. That's 52, 736 bits!
Look, folks, a PDF is already compressed!!! Why would you want to try to compress it again?? Do you really think that those 6,592 bytes are going to make a difference?!
Unless you have multiple files, don't freaking Zip your downloads if you don't get a big gain with compression!!!
(and if you try to come back with "I can't upload them to my blog in their native format" then get a new blog!!!
Really, folks. I shouldn't have to tell you these things. :)

Microsoft! It's 2007! Rant on downloads ahead!

2007-02-20T15:08:00.002-05:00

I checked my calendar there and yep, it's 2007. I wondered if I'd gotten lost in a time warp or something because when I went to down load Virtual PC from Microsoft, what did I see? What's wrong with this picture? Is this 1995? Didn't people learn sometime in the previous century that perhaps someone would want to actually keep a copy of the download and/or not overwrite the setup.exe that's already there? What genius came up with the idea to name the setup program "setup.exe"? It better have been an intern, because I would hope that Microsoft's actual employees are smarter than that.
Perhaps when Google is devising mottos around behavior of Microsoft's they don't want to emulate they should change "Don't be evil" to "Don't be stupid".
I've said this before. I absolutely love Microsoft and their products. But come on! It's 2007 (see calendar above). What's next, a Best Practices whitepaper suggesting we use variable names like "X" and "foo"?

Technorati tags: microsoft, rant, setup, virtual pc, best practice

Ready for a New Launch Tour

2007-02-12T12:58:00.001-05:00

Thursday, I attended the Microsoft event "Ready for a New Day Launch Tour '07" that was held in the Atlanta area. The purpose of the event is to get excitement building with developers and IT professionals about the two new products Microsoft has just released, Windows Vista and Office 2007. The idea is to get some solutions vendors together and some key customers, give away some software (Office 2007) and have sessions to show attendees the cool features of the software and some of the things they can do with it so they'll go home excited and eager to implement their solutions throughout the company.

This isn't the first major event I've attended by Microsoft, but my experience with this one leaves me to wonder if it might not be the last.

The Good

Realistically, Microsoft knows that most people go to these things to get a free copy of expensive software. Let's face it, it's hard to turn down a $499 fully licensed version of Office 2007 Professional for the cost of parking and tolls (if any). The hope going is that you'll also come back with some useful information, see some people in the industry you know, and have a decent time since you're not going to be at work. That's the hope, but the real reason is the software. On that front, Microsoft delivered, with one significant exception. In your packet, you get a bunch of CDs and DVDs that contain whitepapers, demos, and other useful information. You generally also get your software. Not this time. This time, you get a set of instructions and some registration codes so you can download Office 2007 and Groove on your own (better be) broadband connection. This isn't a major complaint, but let's get real. It's just lazy and it's cheap. They could have just as easily put it on a CD but they didn't. Instead, I had to download things myself and then (attempt) to install it (I still haven't been successful, but that's another story.) I don't like to have to burn my own CD if I want an actual copy of it just because Microsoft chose to save a few cents. As I said, that's minor compared to my other complaints.

The Bad

As I said, I'm not new to IT events. This is by no means my first and it's only been a year since my last Microsoft event (Ready to Launch for SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005). I'll be particularly contrasting these two events.

First there's the venue.

Convention Center, College Park, GA

The bottom thumbtack shows where the event was held. The top thumbtack shows Microsoft's Atlanta area offices, actually in Alpharetta. Yes, the event was near the airport, but there's a reason why airports are put where they are. Nobody wants to live there and nobody wants to go there unless they have to. They're never centrally located in an area, and in Atlanta, it's even worse. There are a lot of businesses that are in Midtown so it's inconvenient for them anywhere except midtown and midtown is inconvenient for everyone else. But there are a whole lot of businesses to the north and to the east of atlanta, particularly in the Norcoss area (where I work) and around Roswell and Alpharetta (where I'm sure Microsoft put their offices for a reason). The simple fact is that North and East Atlanta is where the money is and people tend to put businesses where it's not difficult for them to commute. Hardly anyone in the industry will want to go to College Park, East Point, Hapeville or anywhere in South Atlanta. They're crime-ridden dangerous and depressing places. And yet, Microsoft had their event there. I can only assume that this was because of its proximity to the airport.

So based on that assumption, allow me to rant. Boo Freaking Hoo! Some Microsoft people can't bear to take a cab or rent a car to go to the other side of the city from the airport. Someone call the Waaaaaahmbulance because a Microsoft VP can't be in traffic for a little bit to make things easier on their developers and customers!

Unfortunately, the problem wasn't just the location of the venue, but also the venue itself. I've been in a lot of convention halls and sites and this is one of the worst. Every room, including the ones where we had the breakout sessions, had extraordinarily high ceilings and girders like a warehouse. Worse yet, it was cold like a warehouse. This hall honestly reminded me of one of the buildings at a fairground, the type where they have D-grade has-beens performing. It certainly isn't one worthy of a high-tech product launch that Microsoft supposedly considers to one of their most important.

The layout of the event was just as bad. I naturally went on the developer track, being a developer. I wasn't particularly pleased to find out that I had to go all the way to the other end of the building to join the developer breakout sessions. This wouldn't be too bad except that we would have to return to where we started for lunch and then back for the afternoon sessions, and back again if we wanted to snack or see the vendors' booths in that time. It was a lot of unnecessary walking that I frankly didn't appreciate. You'll notice I said "would" a couple of times. You see, I ended up leaving at lunch.

What? You mean I didn't stay through at least some free food? Well, that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. I was looking forward to having a nice relaxing lunch and talking on the phone to my wife Julie. I was due to take some medicine anyway so I needed to have some food so I could eat before the appetite suppressant effect kicked in. I was optimistic that it was going to be a good lunch because after the keynote they had a bunch of fruit and sodas laid out that was just excellent. The choice of fruit was great (different kinds of apples, pears, bananas, etc.) and was fresh and of good quality. There were even all different kinds of cereal bars to munch on, brand names and everything. The beverages were plentiful, the typical coffee and tea (which I can't drink, being Mormon) as well as nearly the full line of canned Coke products. This is Atlanta after all.

Now, I don't expect gourmet food and my tastes are broad. There's a lot that I can eat and that I will eat. So I go into the ballroom and at the first table are a bunch of box lunches marked "Veggie". That was awful. I'm not eating a veggie meal. So I go to the next two tables and find the same thing. Veggie. At the fourth table, there is finally something different. Veggie and Chicken Salad. I absolutely hate chicken salad. I've tried chicken salad. I've tried what people say is very high quality chicken salad. I hated it. So those are my choices after schlepping from the other end of the building for food. Veggie or Chicken Salad. Naturally, the fruit was gone. I was irritated but I also needed to take a pill so it was then that I also noticed that there was literally nothing cold to drink unless I wanted to put my face down in a bucket of ice (that people were putting their hands in from time to time instead of using the scoop). I could have had coffee or tea but a) I already said I can't drink it for religious reasons and b) you ever try to take a pill with a hot beverage?. I was thoroughly mad by this point, figuring I would have to take my pill from a fountain which 3 out of 4 times causes the pill to get stuck in my throat. But I didn't want to leave because I took a day off work and drove clear to the other side of the Atlanta metro area (I live in Marietta, see map above) and paid for parking and I wanted my software.

And then I saw my reprieve! They were accepting the evaluation forms and giving away the t-shirts and software. So I filled out the form (You can guess how I rated the event), stood in line, and got my software and shirt. I decided to take one last look at the beverages and saw that they'd just put out a couple of cases of warm diet coke and that's it. No water, no other soda, nothing. I just took my software and left. Capping things off, I had to step over and around a bunch of people eating in the hallway (which was packed) because there was hardly any room in where the "food" was. It looked like a homeless shelter for geeks down on their luck.

The Day After

The next day at work, I was asked three seperate times how the event was and I told them that aside from the software it was a waste of time. Two of those who asked me said, "they always are".

The bottom line about this post is two-fold. For starters, Microsoft needs to pull it's collective head out of its butt when it does these events. There is literally no excuse for this. The venue and the catering were both inexcusable and were awful to the point that no inducement would have caused me to stay once I had my Office 2007 Professional (which is absolutely wonderful, by the way). There were so many people heading to their cars at lunch that it looked like rats fleeing the titanic. There literally was a line of cars exiting the parking lot. Nobody should come out of these events thinking it was a waste of time. If it weren't for over $500 worth of software, nobody would attend. Even with the software I regretted the time lost. Second, they should consider just sending out the software and a bunch of webcasts. The result would be the same and it would be a lot cheaper. I also wouldn't have lost a day of work (even though the cost of the software is more than a day's wages for me) and I still would have had the information.

If they don't want to do that, they need to try giving some thought to the venues and where most of their developers will be coming from. Give some thought to the catering so we don't get so irritated by all of the little things that suck to the point where we regret having gone. Pay attention to the minutae. I don't mind all day events at all, but don't make me bring my own food if I want to eat something other than chicken salad or rabbit food. If we're as important as that VP said in his keynote, treat us like we are important. Don't treat us like we're coding cattle.

Technorati tags: microsoft, event, atlanta, office, vista, ready for a new day, software, giveaway

Vista upgrade in progress

2007-02-08T23:38:00.001-05:00

I've been upgrading my XP MCE to Vista Ultimate. I started about 5 hours ago and the last hour it has been "Completing Upgrade" with a slowly (very slowly) rising percentage.

I'm going to bed. This is ridiculous.

Technorati tags: microsoft, vista, ultimate, upgrade

Advertisements in Help

2007-01-15T08:19:00.001-05:00

I hate ads. I hate them with a passion.

Ok, I'm a hypocrite. I have adsense on this blog. Let me clarify. I hate intrusive ads. I've actually used adsense (as a consumer) quite a bit. Sometimes there genuinely is something I'm interested in, even in my own ads.

Aaaaanyway...

I hate ads that go out of their way to get a response out of you. Usually these are javascript or flash. That's one reason I use Firefox. It allows me to eliminate those annoyances. I don't have that option with Visual Studio Help though. The integrated help in VS 2005 naturally uses IE, which says "ads? we love ads!". What does this have to do with Help?

One of the nifty features of the help system is that it also searches certain sites when I enter a help query. I can then get to those without having to do a seperate websearch. Neat, huh?

Well, it's neat until you get this annoying "WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THIS SURVEY?" box that follows you all over the page and is clearly a javascript box so I don't want to click ANYTHING because I don't want to encourage it. Eventually the stupid thing disappeared, but it annoyed the crap out of me nonetheless. Can you tell?

What I would like to see is that when companies/websites like Developer Fusion (the offender I'm referring to here) put intrusive ads on their pages, that Microsoft drops them from help searches and puts that in an update as well as a developer advisory. And by "intrusive" I mean anything that moves itself in front of something else without a click. That includes mouseover ads.

My company pays good money to Microsoft for its licenses and I have personally as well. Microsoft is directing visitors to these companies' pages and thereby driving revenue. It ticks me off that they're taking advantage of this redirection by putting intrusive ads in our faces.

Technorati tags: advertising, intrusive, spam, microsoft, visual studio, help, developer fusion, rant

Recycling Box

2007-01-12T07:45:00.002-05:00

Like many businesses, my employer (well, I'm a contractor so they're technically my client) has a big box to put scrap paper to be recycled. Of course, one of the restrictions is no paper clips, staples, wires, etc.
So tell me. Is it wrong to throw away paper because a) I don't have a staple puller and b) I don't feel like searching for one and c) I'm probably too lazy to pull the staples anyway?

Technorati tags: recycling

Some things hit a bit close to home

2007-01-08T23:34:00.001-05:00

A Different Take on the Ferrari/Vista Giveaways

2006-12-28T15:58:00.002-05:00

I've been reading a lot of noise on the recent giveaway that Microsoft & AMD did to a number of bloggers. For the one of you who doesn't know what I'm talking about, that's pretty much what happened. They gave away some high-end laptops to a few bloggers that were pre-loaded with Windows Vista. And now a bunch of people are up in arms criticizing Microsoft for doing it and bloggers for accepting it.  By the way some are writing, you'd think that they were covering up the slaughter of babies. There's talk of "ethics" and "credibility" and "disclosure" and frankly, it's sickening.
This is what happens when a bunch of geeks get too full of themselves and begin to believe in their own importance. They begin to believe that they are journalists and in spite of their many protests to the contrary, they still try to act like them. People need to be reminded of a few very pertinent facts.
1. No, your not journalists. You're not the media, the press, reporters, nor anything of the sort. You're intelligent and passionate regular people who happen to have opinions on something.
2. The internet isn't like the regular media where people get a paper or watch a news program or read a single magazine. The internet is a melting pot of milions of people all with their own opinions and beliefs. Nobody on the internet reads a single source. It's the very idea of the internet that there are a variety of sources and the reader will pick and choose which ones he/she believes or doesn't believe.
Stop going on and on about what the ethical responsibilities of bloggers are. There aren't any. It's the internet. Anyone can say anything about anyone at any time.   The onus is on the reader to discern what is valid and what is not. The reader can decide if a person is to be believed or not.
Stop talking about bias. Everyone has bias. Let me say that again. Everyone has bias. It affects everything we say and write. But then, that's another reason why blogging works. You can see bias for yourself and ignore it or account for it.
Stop overrating your influence. You're not a congressman, you're not a purchasing agent for a Fortune 50 company.   It's not important that you maintain a wall around you to avoid appearances. You becoming a Microsoft fanboy (which wouldn't happen anyway or you wouldn't be widely read) won't cost people jobs or money. Industries will not rise or fall based on your blog posts.
Stop treating everyone like they're stupid. It's a common assumption by many that "most people are stupid except me". Another way of putting it is, "those people need protecting". It's insulting to anyone that might read your blog. I trust that my readers are intelligent enough to decide for themselves if I'm full of crap about something. I don't need to have some phony standard (and yes it is phony) that I will try to hold myself up to in order to assure my readers that I'm following some mythical guidelines of ethics or accountability. I'm not. I'm a guy in Georgia who knows what he's talking about. That's all. You can believe me or not. You can like me or not. The beauty is that you get to decide that. There are millions of other blogs you can read if you think I'm biased or just nuts.
Stop with the sanctimony. What's the purpose of this self-righteous posturing that I keep seeing? This isn't some lofty position you hold. You're a guy (or a gal) with an opinion. That's what blogging is! You don't have a responsbility to "not be tainted". What purpose does it serve (other than to boost your own ego) to tell everyone that Microsoft asked if you wanted one but you turned it down and bought your own. Does that make you better or smarter? No! In my opinion, that makes you a sucker. You turned down a valuable piece of equipment simply so you can tell people that you weren't going to be influenced by "The Man".
And please shut up about "credibility" for crying out loud! You're credibility is not based on disclosure or a set of ethical standards you claim to follow. Your credibility is the sum total of your writings and your behavior, nothing more. If you won't let your loyalty be bought, then it won't be bought and no "gift" will change that. That's why you're being read. You don't have a relationship or a "trust" with your readers and stop thinking you do. You're just a guy who can write well enough to get people to read and you make reasoned arguments. That's why your opinion is valued (by both readers and Microsoft).
Here's the bottom line. If Microsoft wants to send me one of those computers with Vista that the sanctimonious crowd refuses, I'll take it in a heartbeat. I'll give it a fair shake and I'll say the good things and the bad things about it. And I'll keep it or give it to my wife who's gonna be bedridden in a few months anyway for a few weeks. I won't refuse it. I won't pontificate about not being influenced or bought off.
And if Steve Jobs wants to send me an Apple or an iPod, I'll take those too. And I'll review them honestly and as fairly as I can.
I won't stop with those. I really don't like Linux (and I've used it a lot), but if someone wants to try to convince me that a Linux box can make a decent desktop machine or a laptop with Linux on it, I'll look at that. Any electronic equipment, cell phones, DVRs, you name it.
And let's not forget software. I'll look at games, productivity software, development software and tools, educational software, and anything else you want me to take a look at.
And why am I doing this? Am I not "selling out" by taking something? Heck no! If a company wants me to evaluate something of theirs, I'm not going to spend my money doing them a favor! I'm not going to buy a computer or software just so I can try it out unless I have a specific and pressing need for that software. If they want me to take my time to shake it down, then it is they who will be footing the bill and not me.
I can't promise a review would be negative but I can't say it would be positive. All I can say is that I will do a genuine evaluation. That's the only guarantee I give and the guarantee is only as good as the person making it, regardless of how much disclosure there is. To pull a quote from Tommy Boy, "I can take a [crap] in a box and put a guarantee on it but then all you have is a guaranteed piece of [crap]."
So shoot me an email (gazelem67(at)gmail.com) if you want to send me some stuff. I promise I won't turn you down, but I also don't promise I'll say what you want about it. I think anyone reading this is smart enough to figure out for themselves that I'm not bought off.

Technorati tags: microsoft, windows, vista, amd, giveaway, laptop, edelman, bloggers, blogging, product reviews, reviews, journalists, ethics, disclosure, software

Wired, Irony or Stupdity?

2006-12-27T14:47:00.002-05:00

Bruce Sterling at wired.com in his column Beyond the Beyond linked to an article called "The 2006 top ten mistakes in web design" and then commented on the article himself. I can't decide whether I find it ironic or stupid that Bruce specifically mentions "teensy teensy horrid little type" at the same time his entire entry appearing in the aforementioned "horrid little type".

Technorati tags: wired magazine, bruce sterling, beyond the beyond, web design, horrid, irony

Recharge Your Programming Batteries

2006-12-27T12:05:00.001-05:00

Scott Mitchell from the excellent site 4GuysFromRolla wrote a Blackjack game in an afternoon, but it was the introduction that caught my eye:

Every now and then I like to give myself a fun little programming challenge. I'll randomly pick some enjoyable task, like programming a game or blogging engine or what not, and impose a time limit, anywhere from an hour to an afternoon. Such little challenges keep the fun in programming and help me mentally recharge. After spending a week of programming boring data entry forms, such toy projects help remind me why I enjoy computer science and programming!

Source: ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Creating a Quick and Dirty Online Blackjack Game

I can't recommend this enough. Computer programming is unlike most careers. On one hand it is creative, on the other it is structured. It is something that we need to enjoy to do best. How many careers are there where you will do for fun on your own time what you do for money at work? Let's look at a few common jobs:

Factory worker: "wow, I just assembled 2,000 auto parts. I think I'll go build something at home"
Doctor: "When I'm bored on my day off, I will often do exploratory surgery on one of the kids"
Accountant: "You know what I should do on my vacation? The budget."

I realize that we're not unique in this regard, but we all need to remember that programming can and should be fun. Take time out to do what you want and find something to write that interests you, not your customers or boss. A good place to start for ideas is Coding 4 Fun. Also you can just keep notes on your PDA or computer (real men don't use paper ;) ) and any time you think, "that would be fun to write" jot it down. Remember that it's important to charge your programming batteries so you continue to be a creative software developer or engineer and not just a code monkey. That's what seperates the good programmers from the adequate ones.

Technorati tags: programming, coding, fun

Zeitgeist includes being pretentious

2006-12-20T16:17:00.001-05:00

Ever since Google posted their Google Zeitgeist, I've been seeing this word all over the internet being used by people who are petending like the word is a part of their vocabulary. It's not.

So apparently part of the Zeitgeist is using the word Zeitgeist as though you knew what it meant before you looked up the definition.

Technorati tags: google, zeitgeist

Search for Patents

2006-12-14T12:04:00.001-05:00

I suppose if I think hard enough, I could say that this is useful, but I'll grudgingly admit that it's mostly fun (unless you're doing research...hey, that's a use!). Google is releasing the beta (isn't everything by Google beta?) of its new US Patent Search engine. Until now, if you wanted to search the patent database (which is public anyway) you had to do it from the PTO site and their interface ... um ... well, sucks.

Google to the rescue!

You can now search patents, and I mean any patent, as easily as you can search for a web site. Give it a try. Pick a word, any word. When you're done playing with that, check out the Advanced options and start looking for older patents. You'll be surprised (and probably amused by) what you find.

And yes, it even has the drawings.

There is a little quirk, though. Sometimes, it will say "Image Not Available" when trying to display a page. Try zooming out or in. Most of the time it will display the screen correctly after a couple of clicks.

Have fun! (oh, and it's useful, too. Honest. ;) )

Technorati tags: useful, google, patents, research, cool, tools

Huge Feature Missing in Expression Designer

2006-12-12T16:18:00.002-05:00

I was working some style sheets in the beta of Microsoft's Web Expression Designer and I couldn't believe what I ran into. Before I tell you what it is, let me say that in spite of its minor nature, it really is a big deal because a productivity/convenience feature. It's one of those features that should just exist and should just work.
I'm speaking of tab reorganization. At the top of the workspace (which looks very similar to Visual Studio, thank you) are tabs, one for each file you are working on. I like my tabs in a certain type of order. What I don't like is my tabs put in whatever order it happens to decide. It may have some logic to it, it may not. I really don't care, because it's not how I want it. So I reached up with my mouse and started to drag one to a different place and it didn't move. None of them did. I right-clicked the tab hoping to see something that said I could unlock the tab, but there was none. To be completely honest, I was completely shocked! This is a very basic usability feature. I don't know how this could be overlooked, particularly when a) other products have this feature and b) it's aimed at designers who tend to want to have things "just so" anyway.
Another missing feature along these lines is the inability to control Split windows. I don't want my code on the top, I want my code on the bottom. Having your code on the top lacks symmetry. When I look at my computer, I see the keyboard at the bottom and the screen at the top. When I look at a split development screen, I should see letters at the bottom and visual elements at the top.
It's basically a good product, but it appears that Microsoft has let a completely new group write this, for better or worse. If this is in fact the case, they've missed a few of the good practices that have been built into the other tools. Yes, designers need to be treated differently than developers. I get that. But many people will either move back and forth between roles and others will migrate from one to the other. It would stand to reason that you'd want each to be familiar with some basic functionality of the interface.
Maybe they'll get this solved before release.
And I still haven't heard a satisfactory explanation as to why this isn't included in MSDN. Office is. Studio is. Servers are. But this is strangely missing. Again, it's like another company is driving this part of the ship.

Technorati tags: microsoft, software, expression designer, features, missing, beta

New Google Finance Launched

2006-12-12T11:42:00.001-05:00

Take a look at this animation for Google's new Finance product. If you're into investing, this is something definitely worth checking out.

Technorati tags: google, finance, investing, video, useful

Even Microsoft Makes Stupid Mistakes

2006-12-12T11:39:00.001-05:00

So I decided I'd go look for something on the MSDN Wiki, something I'd not looked at in a while. When I hit my bookmark, I briefly saw the following before I was redirected (via javascript for some reason) to an invalid page.

Gee, can you guess why???

Technorati tags: microsoft, mistake, msdn, wiki, bugs

Steve Ballmer's nuts!

2006-12-10T17:49:00.001-05:00

He may be a billionaire, but he's still crazy as a loon!