Choice

A very nice little article on Vista shutdown choices (there are 15 ways to turn off your laptop!). It also quotes from The Paradox of Choice, which is an awesome book. Check out the article, then flip through the book. Good stuff.

Leek Spin

Leek Spin

Update: This is just too catchy for a number of reasons that I can't seem to explain, and I had to read more about it. The song is called Ievan Polkka. I now have an MP3 version of it (let me know if you want a copy!) and there's a full write-up at Wikipedia. And as with anything else on the intranets now, there's a You-Tube also. And here's what looks like the original source before there was a leekspin.com: www.wielkipor.prv.pl.

Editing

How important is editing?

Mary Poppins as a horror film.

The Shining as a feel-good family movie.

Office 2007 Micro Review

I love it. It took me a whole half hour with each application to get used to the new "ribbon" interface instead of the old menu bar. Outlook is slicker, Word is easier, Excel is more powerful and PowerPoint is smarter. The integration between the applications is excellent and generally things work the way you've wanted them to for years. Easier to format text, spell check, make diagrams, import pictures -- all the things you've always done with Office but through various menus or drag&drop that didn't behave as expected. Being able to "pin" recently opened documents is a great idea for those of us that open a ton of different files during the day, but have a handful you use all the time. So far I can't find anything to really complain about -- but I will.

There are 3 default color schemes: a light blue, silver and black. The light blue is just too soft & light (what's a nice way to say "girlie"). The black is too dark, especially with my black desktop. The silver is OK, but again a little light. This seems like something they should be able to offer 100s of choices for. Maybe I'm just being naive, but it looks like you just need to define a few different colors to use for the various background and gradients while all the buttons faces either have transparency or sit independently of the background. But the real point here is that the top bar of the application doesn't pick up your Windows XP theme. Maybe Vista is different here and these look better, but using the Royale XP (Media Center) theme, all other applications have a nice looking gradient blue title bar. All the Office apps look different and it's not easy to pick them up when you've got lots of windows open. But anyway, any of the 3 available are certainly functional, and I'm just nit-picking.

A note on PDF output: This was supposed to be a default output option, but was yanked back in June. But Microsoft is still making it available for download. Good idea. The PDF files are simple and fast to create, though the file sizes are a bit larger than using my Adobe 6 plug-in for Word 2003.

Blurry IE7 or Office 2007

If you've installed IE7, you may notice text appears fuzzy or blurry now. I'm only running IE7 on my laptop, so have been basically ignoring it becuase I usually use FireFox anyway. But I've just installed Office 2007 on my desktop, and it has the same problem. The answer lies in something Microsoft calls ClearType which is supposed to make text look better, more natural, and easier to read on LCD monitors. Of course, nearly everyone just complains that it's blurry or fuzzy. Turns out there is a calibration tool you can use to help. This did help on my laptop, but running a dual LCD setup on my desktop limits its help because each monitor is so different.

Credit where credit is due: while hunting around for this information (finding much of it on my own), I eventually fell across another blog that basically says all this and more, with examples.

Free Office 2007 and Vista Business

The Power of Together, Vista and Office 2007.
I've signed up for this, but can't view the webcasts. It looks legit, though. Basically, you register and listed to 3 webcasts each for Vista and Office 2007, then Microsoft sends you free software. Not a bad deal. If it would work, anyway. I'll keep trying.

Update (12/1/2006) -- this offer is Sold Out now. Turns out MSFT isn't trying to give away their software to everyone

Slots

I spent most of the day yesterday down at the Charles Town Races & Slots in West Virginia. While I've been to Atlantic City on occasion, I had never been to a place that was only slots. I could claim this trip was part of research into the pending decision to legalize slots in Gettysburg, but in reality it was just my neighbor and I escaping for a day. To begin, it was a nice drive down there from York: Over Canal, down 15 through Gettysburg to Frederick, then over 340 into Charles Town. A very pretty drive any time of year, passing through Harper's Ferry too. On the way back, I was on "deer watch", keeping a look out along the dark woods for the flash of an eyeball before something darts out in front of us (we didn't see any deer). Also on the way home we stopped at the Cozy family restaurant, apparently the oldest in Maryland.


On to the slots! The first thing that struck me when I walked in was how empty the place was. For noontime on a Monday, I shouldn't be surprised at that I guess. The next thing I noticed was how quiet it was. I was used to the slot areas in a casino being a bustling area of bleeps, blips and clanging coins (more on this in a second). So the first thing we did was to get our Player's Choice cards -- these are the cards you stick in a machine while playing. Of course, it's primary purpose is data mining for the casino -- how much time, betting style, amounts, etc. at each particular machine. But on the user's end, it tracks "points" that you can leverage for meals and such. Definitely worth having unless you're "off the grid" for some reason. After an overpriced, yet average, sandwich for lunch, we sat down to play. I quickly realized my memories of Atlantic City needed to be adjusted for modern days. There was no clanging of quarters because there are no quarters. The machines accept $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills and tickets. You cannot put a quarter into a quarter slot machine. The tickets come in as you "cash out" of one machine with a balance -- it prints you a bar coded slip that you can insert into another machine or bring to a cashier for real money.

On the games side, I found a couple that I enjoyed for different reasons. While the core part of me likes the old school symbols (cherries and bars) and a single pay line across the middle, most machines aren't like that. The basic change is that they use fewer symbols with various colors. Most games pay out on fewer combinations, but pay out a bit more. On a typical machine, you have the option to play 1, 2 or 3 credits per spin (where a credit is whatever denomination the machine is -- we played mostly 25¢ and $1 machines). For all but the top one or two combinations, the scale is linear. Win 5x for three of any bar for example. But the big jackpots are usually non-linear, which a factor of 2.5 to 5 for the 2x line, and 5 to 10 for the 3x line. If you're going to win big jackpots, there's no argument for not betting the max every time.

But one of the machines I really liked actually changed what things it pays out on for the second credit. So betting one, you can score on the typical bar combinations only (and win your bet back on all blanks). But betting two also scores on various combinations of 7s (the game was called Sizzling 7s). Early on in the day I won about $125 on a spin on this one, which, even though I like the concept, is probably the real reason it's in my top few :)

One cool machine had up and down arrows added to some of the bars. This means that if a bar with an up arrow landed one position below the scoring line it would automatically shift up a notch to be on the line. This really gives you the impression of multiplying the winning combinations, but in reality even though a bar shift paid out $60 to me for 3 triple bars, I didn't win at this one.

Finally my favorite: In The Money. This was a typical 5-line game where there are 3 scoring lines across the middle and two diagonals. Unlike where there's a linear pay scale, you'll want to "bet max" each spin. The first cool part is this "5x bar" that acted like a wild bar and pays 5x, so two double bars and one of these wins 5 times the double bar payout. Nice. Just getting these once in a while on mixed bar lines pays decently. But the really cool part of this game turned it into playing the lottery at the same time. There was a blue symbol that if you get 3 of these showing up in the field (they didn't have to be in a line), it would start playing In The Money and start counting up winnings. Betting the max gives you a 5x multiplier here too. Sometimes the song would barely start and you'd win 25 to 30 credits. Not bad, really, and falls in line with many other scoring lines. But every once in a while, it would just keep singing and singing. About half way through the day (when I was almost out of the $125 ticket I had won early), I scored 750 credits on a 25¢ machine! That's a little over $185 dollars. The catch is that that machine was pretty hot, and I did well, but the odds are stacked against you. After experimenting with many other games, I went back to In The Money, and even though I hit three 7s across the top and 3 bars across the bottom on one spin (110 credits), I never got another big In The Money hit -- lots of little 25s and 50s that eventually eat away at your bankroll.

On the way out, killing a few more 20s, I was playing one dollar machine and doing OK. I got up $20, but then started dropping again, so cached out $30. Hey, 10 extra bucks on the way out the door was OK with me. But Joe was still playing, so I hit one of the 5x/10x machines (another good idea that I liked a bit where symbols would modify the winnings like the 5x bar discussed above). This was just a quarter game, and I was playing standing up behind a stool. I was tired of sitting on those things and getting ready for the 2 hour sit going home. I got a couple dirty looks from a woman a couple machines down who I think felt like I was looking over her shoulder. Or maybe she didn't like my standing. She cashed out, but only moved on further machine down, so maybe she was just goind down this line and had just played the one I was on. Anyway, I don't even recall what hit now, but I won about $85. The thing dinged away for quite a while and I got a much, much dirtier look from the woman then. So I cashed out about $100 to head home. Basically I won back $80 with that last 20 on the way out the door. The gamblers creed says I was getting hot again and should play more. The engineer in me says I got lucky and we were about to leave, so we're leaving with an extra $100 than I would have had after losing the last sacrificial twenty. I bought Joe dinner on the way home.
A fun time. I have more stories, but already have written too much.

Allergies

So I have lived my whole life as one of those people with food allergies. Chocolate and shell fish. Since I've been a small child, I've had to watch out for these items. This means both Halloween and Easter sucked. The most chocolate I ever got was the black-coated Reese's Pieces; for Easter, it was white chocolate as the only option. What it also means is that every buffet style gathering - family parties, weddings, trade show events, etc. - I had to diligently stick to a couple of the items that I knew were safe from crab or shrimp contamination. When you live your whole life like this, it becomes a core part of who you are. Sometimes there's jealousy when you watch other people dig into various dishes or savor over desserts, but early on you develop a defense mechanism to deal with it. Shell fish are scavengers -- it's like eating seagull or rat. Chocolate makes you fat and gives you zits. Good riddance to both.

One more issue is that my wife is allergic to nuts. She ended up in the hospital in anaphylactic shock, ready to die without adrenaline. She carries adrenaline wherever she goes and avoided eating in a restaurant or even anyone else's cooking for nearly a decade. So I know the severe side too. The kicker here is that if both parents have food allergies, there's a 60% chance your child will have them too. So we were diligent with both our children. No wheat until 9 months. No milk until a year. No egg until 18 months. No nuts until 3. Watchful. Ever alert to what they might reach or someone else might offer them unknowingly.

We just took our girl down for her 3-year-old skin test, and she passed with flying colors like her brother did 2 1/2 years ago. Phew. We dodged that 60% bullet twice. We had actually considered not having kids for a while because we both knew what life was like as a person living with food allergies.

While we were there, I had myself tested too.

Negative.

For 5 different kinds of shell fish and for chocolate.

It's like living your life as a blind man then waking up one day and realizing your hat was just too big.

This has spawned a lot of thinking back, tracing down how it was that I was assumed to be allergic to chocolate and shell fish. When I was about 5 at Newark Days in the Mall at UofD, I think I had a brownie. I think I ended up in the emergency room with a swollen eye. But I don't know if I was ever actually tested for a chocolate allergy. And talking to an expert today, I found out that almost no one is actually allergic to chocolate. Many people will react to something in the chocolate, but they're not allergic to the cocoa itself, or to chocolate specifically. Then when I was 7 and we were house-hunting, we stopped at a Howard Johnsons somewhere (not our regular HoJos). My father had the all-you-can-eat fried clams, while my brother and I had whatever kid's meal (hot dogs?) with fries. Hours later while looking at a new-construction model, I was sick to my stomach. The catch was that the water wasn't on, so it made for an awkward time throwing up in this model home. The story is that I must have got into some of my father's fried clams. But how likely is that, really? I certainly wouldn't have dived into them, and I'm sure I'd have noticed the difference between that and a french fry. Isn't it much more likely that I got a bad hot dog? Or was wound up from house shopping all day that I had an upset stomach? Why did it jump right to "shell fish allergy"? I don't recall being tested after that event.

Now, I did and do have environmental allergies -- cut grass and cats come to mind. I got allergy shots for years. But cats still can bother me, and freshly mowed lawns make me sneeze. I may have tested positive for mold too. I don't recall when exactly, but I had slowly introduced chocolate into my diet since college. Never in large quantities, but enough that I began to convince myself that I probably wasn't really allergic. At least not violently. Similarly but accidentally, once I ate half a shrimp egg roll in college and also had many spoonfuls of Maryland crab soup. (Both were delicious, and I only found out what they were because each time I commented 'wow, this is great!' which prompted further investigation.)

Maybe I "grew out" of these allergies? But that's not likely either. The kinds of allergies one grows out of are like wheat and milk as an infant. Then they grow out of them by 3 or 4 years of age. A 7 year old doesn't grow out of a shell fish allergy. And as I mentioned before, it's unlikely I was ever allergic to chocolate.

I will be in Tampa next week for a trade show. I'm looking forward to trying out some shell fish and see what I've been missing the last 30 years. At least the last couple Halloweens have been better, but I'll still stick to jellybeans on Easter. Oh, and our kids only ever had a 30% chance, not 60%, which probably would have changed their early lives too. But at least they won't have 30 years of constant diligence and missed enjoyment to worry about.

Fatal Error CS0009

fatal error CS0009: Metadata file 'c:\Documents and Settings\ed\My Documents\VNI\conferences\SC06\tasks\ImslCS.dll' could not be opened -- 'There isn't metadata in the memory or stream'

I got this error for what I think is a known reason. We're actively working to support both .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 with IMSL C#, and it's proven to be quite a challenge. Many of our Acceptance Tests (ATs) failed under 2.0 because Microsoft decided to change the way they deal with double values. Anyway, we've got various working DLLs now and are moving onto a question of needing both 64-bit and 32-bit DLLs for .NET 2.0.
As part of this test, I took a 64-bit .NET 2.0 DLL and dropped it onto my system running 32-bit Windows XP and tried to build a very simple example. The error I got is what's quoted above. Reading around on the Internet, I see lots of people running into this because they're using COM DLLs rather than .NET Assemblies. And the MSDN Page is less than helpful. So while you may see this because you don't have a .NET assembly, you might also see this when you know you've got one. But now you need to find out if it's an assembly built with /platform:x64 while you're running on /platform:x86.

Vista Packaging

As word and images spread around the net this morning on the Vista and Office 2007 packaging, I have to say I'm less than impressed. While I understand the argument that some people feel that $400 software shouldn't come in a simple jewel case, they are basically missing the point. Packaging is marketing. Beautiful cereal boxes are important to catch your eye to make a specific selection over a similarly priced and equivalent alternative. Operating Systems are at the other end of the spectrum here. Over 90% of Vista and Office sales will be OEM, either pre-installed by a Dell-like vendor or bought online with new system hardware for home assembly. There's no need for a nice package here. It's a colossal waste that brings back memories of the "ban the box" days when CDs first came out and had that huge vertical box. There is an argument there because the art of album covers has basically disappeared from the old LP days, but that box was just a huge was of cardboard. Here we go again with a huge waste of plastic.

Another point is the space it occupies. It will take more room on the shelf and in the back room, and in shipping crates to haul these around. And then the box will take up more precious room on my bookshelf. In all likelihood, I'll end up tossing the package for a simple sleeve anyway to save space.

Finally, the point of needing a nice box for $400 software is fairly silly from my view. After all, our cheapest product (IMSL C# developer license) is $995 and comes in a simple jewel case with two ink colors on the label. The same holds for our $3000 or $12,000 CDs. You're paying for the content and license on the CD, not the pretty package. In fact, I'm sure you'd rather have your money flowing back into product development rather than to the marketing budget for fancy boxes.

Flying (or not)

A couple quick stories:

* A friend was flying to Houston too, but didn't have an indirect flight, stopping through Cincinnati. Basically on their approach there the pilot announced "we're going to fly around in circles for a while until the flaps start working." And that's what they did, and luckily the flaps did work. But they didn't land until all the runways and everything was cleared out of their way. He missed his connection, but only by a couple minutes -- they knew he was coming, knew the status of his flight, and left anyway instead of waiting 5 minutes. Scary. I've had my share of mechanical issues (starters, radios, etc.) but always on the ground (knocking on wood!).

* The TSA now allows creams and such through security, but only in see-through baggies and less than 3 onces. I knew better, but went through with a 3.5oz aerosol anyway. But I didn't count on the attitude from the prick working there at Houston, Concourse E security, about 6:15 pm CDT on 10/26/2006. I of course didn't say anything then. Retorting to a TSA person nowadays is tantamount to making fun of a cripple in a wheel chair trying to get up a curb. What annoyed me wasn't so much that I wasn't allowed to keep the item, but the way the guy approached me. I had my clear bag in the bin with my laptop, all flattened out and not trying to hide anything. He saw the spray and obviously knew how big it was, and that 3.5 is larger than 3. But it's the way he acted that annoys me so much. It was all smug with a "hold on a second, let me check this one" and then pulling out and reading it like he had never seen it before, though a very bad acting job. And then telling me that it's too big and I can't take it through. What a prick. I know it's too big, but he knew it too. Don't act all surprised and condescending like he just discovered something we both didn't already know. The better action, and maybe if TSA spent 10 minutes training their people how to deal with the public (which they do 100% of their day), they would know this, would be to say directly: "I noticed that can there, and it's 3.5 oz. You have the option to check your bags, of course, or I can throw it away here, but you're not allowed to bring that through". Don't be a prick about it next time. I wish I had gotten his name. And if you don't think the next time I'm carrying on bags I'm not going to have the same 3.5 oz canister with me, you don't know me very well

Marc Adams and HeartStrong

Another fascinating person with a worthy cause that I met this nice Sunday. Here's the blurb from the UUCY Order of Service:

Marc Adams, the author of eight books including his award-winning autobiography, The Preacher's Son, five collections of poetry and The Do's and Don'ts of Dealing with the Religious Right.
Reared in a cultish, fundamentalist Baptist Christian home, aware that he was gay by the age of seven, and weaving his way through religious schools (including Jerry Falwell's university) and reparative therapy techniques, Adams started his journey to self acceptance at age 23.
Marc Adams is also the founder and executive director of HeartStrong, Inc. It is the only educational non-profit organization in the world with the mission to provide support and outreach to GLBT students terrorized at religious educational institutions. The HeatStrong Outreach Team has driven over 328,000 miles in the past nine years.

Interesting guy with an interesting story and excellent speaking skills. Buy his book; look into the HeatStrong mission. Find out more about what you can do to help in this crazy world.

42% Nerdy

How White and Nerdy Are You?

I'm pretty impressed. I didn't score as highly as I thought I would have after hearing about this.

Animated GIFs

I've always been a big fan of animated gifs. Of course, I have little talent in the art department, so a fan is all I've been. But I've seen some things on DVDs lately that I thought would make a cool gif. Since the work is already done on the artsy side, this looked like a project I could tackle.

If found a good resource to get started, and really this told me almost everything, but the DVD output to frames wasn't working for me. I have PowerDVD, and it will do screen captures, but nothing automatic. Instead, I had to use IrfanView. Anyone that's tried to capture screens before will know you'll just get a blank space (this is a DirectDraw 'feature'). The way around it is to open another video file with Windows Media Player. Just pause and minimize this. Then open your DVD player and play the movie (I used Ice Age 2 here). The configure IrfanView to copy with Ctrol-F11 and just save the file to a directory. Get to your scene and pause the player (turn off the heads up display to make things easier here). Do the screen capture (it should make a sound), then press T (for this player) to advance one frame, and do the next capture. Run through until you're done. Now go back to those directions and use ImageReady to open the folder of captures.

From there, the directions are good, but I wanted to reverse the sequence too to get a nice smooth loop. This meant copying all but the first and last frames to new layers. It wasn't obvious, but you use the little > in the animation preview (top left, not the 'play' button) to Copy a Frame. Then pick the last frame and Paste Behind that one using the same icon. You need to keep track well, but even with 30+ frames here, it wasn't too hard, just tedious.

Playing the animation, it didn't look quite right. Instead of a "0" second delay, I made it 0.05 seconds, and this improved things a good bit. I haven't messed with this value more, but it could have a big effect. I know bigger images with a story to tell should have much longer pauses, but with this little image, I'm just going for the visual effect.

And the end result:

Not bad for a first try. There's a few other things I'd like to work on next, but I think I've got a good handle on the technique. Certainly 30 or so slices is as large as I want to go. This is a 600k gif at the end!

Update (11/11/06) - my second attempt, from Boundin' (on the bonus DVD of the The Indredibles):


Update (2/12/07) - from last night's Family Guy:

Guns in schools

What's the solution to psychotic kids bringing weapons to school and killing other students, teachers or administrators? One suggestion floating around and getting some press recently is this: arm the teachers.

Can I ask that we think about this situation rationally for a minute, please? Consider one thing all of the recent school shootings have in common: pre-meditation. These kids had some deep-seeded issues, access to weapons, and plans. They had a goal that day. Now change tracks and picture an armed teacher or two in your high school. Sure, Mr. Jones is an experienced hunter and knows all about gun safety. He's even licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Great. I wholeheartedly trust Mr. Jones to handle that handgun he has in his desk drawer in your son's history class. We're on the same page now, but now picture a fight breaking out in the hallway. Mr. Jones runs to break it up with all the other able-bodied teachers. Maybe it spreads and a few more kids get involved and get heated. So Timmy says, "screw this" and kicks open Mr. Jones' desk drawer and starts taking down his antagonists. No premeditation, but ready access to solve a problem at hand. Bad, very bad.

There should be no guns in schools. Ever. Period.

My Aura

Your Aura is Red

You have a high level of emotion. This can mean passion, but it can also mean rage. Usually, you don't take these emotions out on others. You just use them as motivation - and it works! The purpose of your life: embracing all the wonders of the life, lots of travels, and tons of adventures Famous reds include: Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Jennifer Lopez Careers for you to try: Dancer, Boxer, Surgeon

What Color Is Your Aura?

Amish Shooting Update

OK, this gets stranger. On one hand you have a mentally disturbed lunatic with a lot of deep, long-term anger issues. He goes out and kills 5 little girls between 7 and 12 years old. What do the Amish have to say about this atrocity? Here's one quote:

"We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he said. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."

Hmm. OK. It was God's plan to have this guy molest his relatives 20 years ago, live a life full of hate and anger, and then shoot 5 innocent little girls.
That's some great God you got there, pal.

WTF??

Milk man kills girls at Pa. Amish school

This is what, the third school shooting in a week? When will the wake up call be? WTF is wrong with half the people in this country? Seriously. I'd like an answer here.

Yellow Underwear

Your Lucky Underwear is Yellow

You're an extremely happy, laid back, fun soul. And your lucky yellow underwear can help you get even more out of life. In life, you rather play than work. You're apt to quit any task that doesn't nourish your creativity and inner child. Sometimes your drive for freedom hinders your quality of life. You find it impossible to do anything unpleasant. If you want to have responsibilities and still have fun, put on your yellow underpants. They'll help you make a party out of the most mundane tasks.

What Color Is Your Lucky Underwear?

Poor Phillies

I can't really say I'm a Phillies fan any more for a number of reasons. The primary is one the time required to watch and keep up with 160+ games a year. But I will see some scores in the paper and generally follow their standings. Yesterday at a BBQ I did watch the 9th inning in Florida, and I knew they were still 1.5 games out of a playoff spot. It was an exciting bottom of the 9th, but they pulled off a 4-3 win. At least they were still alive, I thought, and had some hopes the west coast teams teams might lose and the Phils will live on. But alas, later on that night I heard that wasn't to be.

So the Phils haven't made it to the playoffs since they lost to the Blue Jays in the '93 world series. That's a pretty long dry spell, and about mid-season I actually thought they had a shot this year. One game left, but it's time to start thinking about next year.

My MySpace

Despite my best efforts not to, I have actually filled out my MySpace page. I'll keep doing the blog thing here, because I like the format and I use my Yahoo account all the time anyway. But if you're insanely bored or one of those MySpace profile snoops, have a go at my page.

Assault Weapons

So the ban on assault weapons expired a while ago (article) pretty much because of GW. Clearly this doesn't affect my daily life in suburbia, but it kind of makes you wonder sometimes what you might be able to buy.

Well, an acquantence recently purchased the above for about $1500 total. Yes, that's an M4. Something most people if they ever see, it's only in a video game. So if you've got a little cash (and what drug dealer or terrorist doesn't?) then you can legally own one of these bad boys too. Nice. I guess.

Where's the outcry?

C'mon. All you people like to ban Barbie because she's so perfect. And then ban video games because of bad parenting in the Midwest. And sue teachers for bringing kids to museums where there might (gasp) be a nude statue.

Now I'll appeal to you -- please ban this crap. And all the toddler-sized shorts that say "sexy" too. And about 90% of the printed Ts at Old Navy now.

GPLv3

I appreciate the concept of the GPL license and even the FSF. However, I'm often at odds with some of this now because I work for a software vendor. We have to be very careful about working with GPLed code. We also have to face it every day as competition. But the concept is good.

With recent talk about version 3 of the license (version 2 has been the mainstay for quite a while now) that will address DRM and patents and lots of other needless things, I was very happy to read this article that includes Linus Torvald's comments on why version 2 was so great. Good news. I worry that a version 3 of the license could be even worse for commercial users; after all, it's the devil you know against the one you don't. At least we all know the ramifications of GPLv2 well.

A good day for football

I only got to watch most of the Eagles game, but here were the good things:

• Eagles beat the 49ers (well)
• Giants lost to Seattle
• Pittsburgh lost to Cincinnati
• Ravens beat Cleveland, after being down most of the game
  

Of course, not all is great. I was rooting for Houston over the Redskins, but Washington won. Not a big surprise really, but it would have been great to see them start 0-3! It was good to see Denver beat the Pats also. Dallas was off, so they didn't win, which is good too

Eating cockroaches

What is this world coming to? An interesting marketing idea -- eat a live cockroach and get line-jumping rights. Kudos to the idiots who do this, but I plan to die an old man never having eaten a roach, thank you very much.

John Rocker

I don't want to advertise for this idiot, but I just saw this on Fox News. I can't even verbalize it right now, but I find this so completely offensive on several different levels. Yet another way to identify the close-minded idiots of this country.

Thomas Starr King

Wikipedia page

This is somebody everybody should know, but nobody does. It's a shame. His statue is about to be taken down and replaced with Ron Reagan.

Go Eagles

Working for a company based in Houston doesn't typically affect my limited watching of sports. I was able to jump on the Astros bandwagon last year, so that was a plus. But this week the Eagles handendly beat the Texans in Houston (no big surprise, really). So I suddenly have to be careful about giving my boss and CEO too much of a hard time

By the way, I love this "anti-TO" thing they've been saying about Stallworth (who wears #18 opposed to TO's #81).

First day of kindergarten

We've done a couple orientation sessions, but this is the first real full day of school for Jake. I walked him down to the bus stop this morning (a first for me too!) and finally his #3 bus showed up and took him away.

Now I can't wait for this afternoon to go down and pick him up and hear all about his day!

Cleaning Windshields

I read online recently about this and thought I'd pass the info along after trying it out.

First get some decent glass cleaner. I've been using this ammonia-free foaming stuff from GUNK that works well. The world of cleaning products is certainly one where you get what you pay for.

So spray the cleaner on your windshield and then take a piece of newspaper and loosely crumple it up. Work in circles to clean the glass until there's no more cleaner (i.e., the glass should be dry). You'll need to use a little effort to remove bug marks, but they should come off.

Now look at the finished product -- no streaks and no fuzzies. Compared to the traditional Windex and papertowels, using a good cleaner and "lint-free" newspaper makes a world of difference. Even better, do the inside and out and even at night oncoming headlights won't show off all the streaks you couldn't see during the day using traditional methods.

Helping the world...

How often can you say products that you work on are really used to help save lives? (I'm not talking to you EMTs, etc. out there; I'm talking to the software people!)

Check out this DMReview article.

Dr. Richard Gray and of his staff of six used PV-WAVE, a sophisticated visual analysis tool from Visual Numerics, to build a "first of its kind" research application for identifying fibrillation.

Serialization in .NET

I had a Java example to work from, but had to do this in .NET. In this case, my class basically had a Hashtable that I wanted to serialize. On the Java side, there really isn't much more to this than creating an ObjectOutputStream and then calling writeObject(this). If you add implements Serializable and add a couple UIDs, you're all set. Actually very easy.

Well, not so much on the C# side. First, you class needs to have the [Serializable()] attribute set and you also implement ISerializable. All fine so far, but implementing this interface means you need a GetObjectData method too. Visual Studio drops the skeleton in your class, but that's were my general clue of what I was doing stopped.

Instead of going through all the crap I went through, in the end you need to simply add a couple lines in GetObjectData to add whatever local variables you want to serialize. In this case, it was just that Hashtable, so my method looks like:

public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
info.AddValue("hashSeries", hashSeries);
}


So that's all and fine -- but you need to realize now that you've only got a way to get the data serialized. The part they don't really tell you is that now you need a special ctor for your serializable class that's used when you call Deserialize on the input stream and cast it back to your original object. This constructor needs the same parameters as that GetObjectData method and basically just does things in reverse:

protected StockDatabase(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
hashSeries = (Hashtable)info.GetValue("hashSeries", typeof(Hashtable));
}


Simple as pie right? I really didn't spin my wheels too long on this one, but I did do some real research trying to find a good example and piece together the bits from the various things I saw on the way to something that works. The best example ended up being the one for the Deserialize Method even though it doesn't serialize a class object.

M.I.T. CSAIL building

A very strange place. We had a meeting there on Tuesday and got an unofficial tour. Officially, it's the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and it's functional as a lab. But it's one of the strangest buildings you'll ever find yourself in. Apparently the idea is to now really know if you're on an inside wall or not. So lots of sunlight, but apparently some acoustical problems too. I have a bunch more pictures from my Treo, but it looks like you're only allowed one picture per blog. So I'll probably just add a few more on future slow days.

Boston

I do have pictures of the new stuff for the Mini, but it'll have to wait a few days. In a couple hours, I'm picking Weaze up from work and we're driving to Boston. Kind of a long drive for a couple days of meetings, but work pays for gas and I don't have to worry about flying/airport security for a another week. Ciao.

Car for sale

I should mention that I have a car for sale. It's a fast TBird SuperCoupe with a good amount of aftermarket mods. It's a rare (1 of about 500) 1995 5-speed. See my SCCOA page for more info. Nothing wrong with it, just wanted to have a car the wife could also drive (so we got the MINI).

PS3 vs Wii

PS3 vs. Wii
Best Video Ever.

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Turbo Borland

I just read in an SD Times announcement "Turbo Brand Returns to Borland". You know, I thought Borland went out of business 3 times already. Now they're back with their 20 year old brand names. They need to learn this tidbit: No matter how much marketing you have, you're not going to beat Microsoft at the IDE game. Period. Give up and find another source of revenue (or stay out of business next time!).

By the way, I spend too much of my time answering things on "Yahoo! Answers". I'm at a meaningless "Level 2" right now with something like 900 points. The only pride I have in that is that 1/3 of my answers get selected "Best Answers" -- compare that to all the chaff out there of people with 2000 points, getting 2 points each time they say "um, I don't know".
My stats page

1000 Miles

So the wife flipped 1000 miles on the MINI last night -- I was looking forward to this milestone, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Maybe I'll be the one to flip 1500 and end this annoying break-in period where we're supposed to keep it under 4500 rpm (which is getting harder and harder to do!).

.Not

Writing a lot of C# code lately. While you really appreciate Visual Studio quickly, there's some things about .NET that aren't that fun to learn. An interesting page on what's bad about .NET in general: .Not, the .Net hall of shame. Delegates and event handling are another odd can of worms. Maybe it makes sense if you know C++ (I don't), but to a Java hack, it takes some getting used to. And if you're coming from Java, Microsoft of course wants you to drink their Kool-aid: C# for Java Developer.