Jun 2008
Microsoft Validation Application Block
I first used one of the Microsoft Application Blocks
a few years ago, and needless to say, I wasn’t all
that impressed. We tried to use the caching
application block. It was more a pain than it was
worth. Because of this I was a little reluctant to
use any of the application blocks again, but after
seeing a quick presentation on the Validation
Application Block from a co-worker, I decided to give
it a shot. The application blocks have come a long
way. The code is a lot cleaner now, and it feels like
the overall design is better. I guess it’s like a lot
of Microsoft applications; version 1 sucks, but it
slowly gets better with each subsequent version.
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Fluid
Do you have a favorite website and often wish that,
while you enjoy it as a web site, it would be cool if
there was a way to have it as a desktop application;
that way you can just double-click the icon to start
the application, and there it would be. Instead, you
have to start up your web browser and navigate to the
page. I have a couple web sites I feel that way
about, one of them being Google Reader.
I enjoy using Google Reader as my RSS Feed aggregator, but I tend to use NetNewsWire on the Mac. The reason being, I like that I can leave the application open and it will let me know when new news feeds are available. Like Mail on the Mac, it will show you the number of new messages over the icon in the dock. If I didn’t use NetNewsWire, I would have to occasionally navigate to the Google Reader site to check for new items.
Well, now you have a way, if you have a Mac. There’s this great free application called ‘Fluid’. What Fluid does is it lets you set up a web site as an application. It’s known as a site specific browser. You can read more about it and download it from here. Once you download the small 3 MB file, unzip it and copy the application to your Applications directory. When you launch Fluid you are presented with the following screen:
All you have to do is type in the URL, give the application a Name, and choose if you want to use the Favicon of the site, or a custom icon. You can find custom icons in the Flickr icon pool located here. Once that is filled out just click Create and it will create the application for you.
I created one for Google Reader, using a Google Reader icon from the above mentioned Flickr pool. The great thing about it is it actually shows the number of unread items I have in the Dock, as you can see here.
So, now I have the best of both worlds. I have a web application I can use as a desktop application.
I enjoy using Google Reader as my RSS Feed aggregator, but I tend to use NetNewsWire on the Mac. The reason being, I like that I can leave the application open and it will let me know when new news feeds are available. Like Mail on the Mac, it will show you the number of new messages over the icon in the dock. If I didn’t use NetNewsWire, I would have to occasionally navigate to the Google Reader site to check for new items.
Well, now you have a way, if you have a Mac. There’s this great free application called ‘Fluid’. What Fluid does is it lets you set up a web site as an application. It’s known as a site specific browser. You can read more about it and download it from here. Once you download the small 3 MB file, unzip it and copy the application to your Applications directory. When you launch Fluid you are presented with the following screen:
All you have to do is type in the URL, give the application a Name, and choose if you want to use the Favicon of the site, or a custom icon. You can find custom icons in the Flickr icon pool located here. Once that is filled out just click Create and it will create the application for you.
I created one for Google Reader, using a Google Reader icon from the above mentioned Flickr pool. The great thing about it is it actually shows the number of unread items I have in the Dock, as you can see here.
So, now I have the best of both worlds. I have a web application I can use as a desktop application.
Lars and the Real Girl
Jun 22 2008 11:06 PM Filed in: Movies
Paige and I rented a great little movie Friday night
named “Lars and the Real Girl’. By the way, I am
really enjoying the fact that you can rent movies
from within Apple TV now. It is so convienent. Paige
and I sit down on my couch, we watch a couple
trailers to figure out what movie we are interested
in, then I rent it. After about 5 - 10 seconds enough
is buffered from the download that we can start
watching the movie. We’ve rented about 5 movies so
far, and every one has worked without a hitch.
‘Lars and the Real Girl’, revolves around the main character, Lars, his brother, Gus, and his brother’s wife, Karin. Lars is an extremely shy man. He lives in the garage of the house that he and his brother inherited after the passing of their father. Their mother died giving birth to Lars. Lars purchases a sex doll online and introduces it to Gus and Karin and his new girlfriend, Bianca. Gus and Karin make an appointment for Bianca to see the doctor, which of course is a way to get Lars to the doctor. The doctor notes that Lars doesn’t have any physical problems, and doesn’t seem to be a threat to anyone, so this must be a delusion, which is a sign that he is working through some sort or personal issues, and everyone should play along. The entire town plays along, inviting them to parties, church, giving Bianca a job, etc.
Paige and I both enjoyed the movie very much. It looked like more of a comedy in the trailer than it actually was, but that was ok, because the story and acting were great. I recommend it.
‘Lars and the Real Girl’, revolves around the main character, Lars, his brother, Gus, and his brother’s wife, Karin. Lars is an extremely shy man. He lives in the garage of the house that he and his brother inherited after the passing of their father. Their mother died giving birth to Lars. Lars purchases a sex doll online and introduces it to Gus and Karin and his new girlfriend, Bianca. Gus and Karin make an appointment for Bianca to see the doctor, which of course is a way to get Lars to the doctor. The doctor notes that Lars doesn’t have any physical problems, and doesn’t seem to be a threat to anyone, so this must be a delusion, which is a sign that he is working through some sort or personal issues, and everyone should play along. The entire town plays along, inviting them to parties, church, giving Bianca a job, etc.
Paige and I both enjoyed the movie very much. It looked like more of a comedy in the trailer than it actually was, but that was ok, because the story and acting were great. I recommend it.
Fun at the Zoo
Jun 15 2008 11:07 PM Filed in: Personal
Paige’s work had a company function at Atlanta Zoo
yesterday. I haven’t been to the Atlanta Zoo since I
was very young, according to my mother, and from what
I am told the zoo really sucked back in the day
compared to now.
We had a great time. Paige recently purchased a Nikon D80 Digital SLR, and got to try it out yesterday. We got about 3/4 of the way through the zoo, a couple hundred photos, when she looked at some of the photos she had taken, and noticed she had the camera set on the wrong setting, causing the photos to be blue. Also, she wasn’t shooting in RAW format, which is one of the reasons for shooting with an SLR, you have a format that has all the information about the shot so you can work with the photo later in a tool like Aperature or Lightroom. We went through the zoo a second time (all in all we were there around 5 hours) so she could retake photos. I didn’t mind. Aside from it being very humid, it wasn’t overly crowded, and the kids that were there were very well behaved. We had a great time.
We had a great time. Paige recently purchased a Nikon D80 Digital SLR, and got to try it out yesterday. We got about 3/4 of the way through the zoo, a couple hundred photos, when she looked at some of the photos she had taken, and noticed she had the camera set on the wrong setting, causing the photos to be blue. Also, she wasn’t shooting in RAW format, which is one of the reasons for shooting with an SLR, you have a format that has all the information about the shot so you can work with the photo later in a tool like Aperature or Lightroom. We went through the zoo a second time (all in all we were there around 5 hours) so she could retake photos. I didn’t mind. Aside from it being very humid, it wasn’t overly crowded, and the kids that were there were very well behaved. We had a great time.
Faster *crack whip* Faster
Jun 15 2008 10:53 PM Filed in: Personal
The DRM project I am working on at work has been
going on now for about a year. We should have a
usable product in production, but we found that after
all this time in development, the application is
quite unusable. I don’t think there’s any one thing
or person to blame for this, but if I can think of
anything we could have done differently, I’d point to
us spending too much time working on polishing the
application up to look all pretty for the customer,
while neglecting the actual day-to-day use.
We got a pretty good talking too, and management went into crisis mode. Here they are selling the application to all the users, everyone wants it, but if the user were to sit down with it they would find it was very slow. The architecture and design we chose for our application just wasn’t suited for the amount of data that it would handle. We were told we had 3 - 4 weeks to get it working. We tossed around a couple ideas, and finally came up with spreading the saving of data out over time, instead of trying to save it all at once. It was a huge change, we would basically be redesigning a large portion of the back-end; but as of Friday, 3 weeks into the crisis mode development, all was working well. We have a couple things to take care of this week and next, but overall, the big work is done.
Hopefully management learns a lesson from this, and we can concentrate on getting the core functionality of the application working, instead of worrying about the window themeing and animated cursors, and pretty icons.
We got a pretty good talking too, and management went into crisis mode. Here they are selling the application to all the users, everyone wants it, but if the user were to sit down with it they would find it was very slow. The architecture and design we chose for our application just wasn’t suited for the amount of data that it would handle. We were told we had 3 - 4 weeks to get it working. We tossed around a couple ideas, and finally came up with spreading the saving of data out over time, instead of trying to save it all at once. It was a huge change, we would basically be redesigning a large portion of the back-end; but as of Friday, 3 weeks into the crisis mode development, all was working well. We have a couple things to take care of this week and next, but overall, the big work is done.
Hopefully management learns a lesson from this, and we can concentrate on getting the core functionality of the application working, instead of worrying about the window themeing and animated cursors, and pretty icons.
Tech support
Jun 15 2008 10:51 PM Filed in: Personal
My mother called me this evening wanting the one
thing I dread: “Long Distance Tech Support”. Being
the member of the family that knows a lot about
computers, I am used to providing some form of tech
support a couple times a year, but I hate doing it
when it’s hardware support, and that piece of
hardware is not right there in front of me.
Apparently there was a pretty bad storm last night in Columbus, and the power flickered on and off a couple times. Even though my mother’s computer is hooked up to a surge protector, this afternoon, when she tried to turn it on, nothing happened. All of the other computer peripherals: the monitor and printer, worked perfectly. But not the computer. So she gives me a call. She’s hoping there’s some kind of fuse or reset switch on the back of the computer, but I tell her I don’t think there is, and without being able to get my hands on the computer, I don’t really think I can be of too much help. I tell her maybe the power supply got fried, and she may need to take it somewhere to have it looked at and possibly get that piece replaced.
After I got off the phone with her, I went over to the Acer support site. I find that her one year warranty expired June 12. Isn’t that the way it always is : ) I look through there knowledge base and come to an entry about the machine not powering up. I give my Mom a call back and tell her to try one of the steps they mention. She should unplug the power cord from the back of the machine. Next she should hold down the power button for 30 seconds. After that she should plug the machine back in and try to power on the machine. I told her that sounded weird, but possibly that’s a built in way to reset the machine after a tripped breaker. She gave it a try and it worked. She sounded so happy. My mother doesn’t use her computer much, it’s powered off more than it’s powered on. She checks e-mail every other day or so, and if she’s bored she may hop on and play some solitaire, free-cell, or go to one of her puzzle web sites. I’m glad this tech support call had a happy ending without any money needing to be spent.
Apparently there was a pretty bad storm last night in Columbus, and the power flickered on and off a couple times. Even though my mother’s computer is hooked up to a surge protector, this afternoon, when she tried to turn it on, nothing happened. All of the other computer peripherals: the monitor and printer, worked perfectly. But not the computer. So she gives me a call. She’s hoping there’s some kind of fuse or reset switch on the back of the computer, but I tell her I don’t think there is, and without being able to get my hands on the computer, I don’t really think I can be of too much help. I tell her maybe the power supply got fried, and she may need to take it somewhere to have it looked at and possibly get that piece replaced.
After I got off the phone with her, I went over to the Acer support site. I find that her one year warranty expired June 12. Isn’t that the way it always is : ) I look through there knowledge base and come to an entry about the machine not powering up. I give my Mom a call back and tell her to try one of the steps they mention. She should unplug the power cord from the back of the machine. Next she should hold down the power button for 30 seconds. After that she should plug the machine back in and try to power on the machine. I told her that sounded weird, but possibly that’s a built in way to reset the machine after a tripped breaker. She gave it a try and it worked. She sounded so happy. My mother doesn’t use her computer much, it’s powered off more than it’s powered on. She checks e-mail every other day or so, and if she’s bored she may hop on and play some solitaire, free-cell, or go to one of her puzzle web sites. I’m glad this tech support call had a happy ending without any money needing to be spent.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Jun 03 2008 09:31 PM Filed in: Books
I just finished reading another book. This time of
year, when the TV season that has a couple shows I am
interested in and have subscriptions to, has drawn to
a close, I tend to read even more than usual. I try
to get in a couple hours of reading a day, it helps
me relax before bed.
The book I just finished is 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid', by Bill Bryson. I read an earlier book by the same author, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', which I loved.
This book is a memoir of Bill's early life, growing up in the middle of last century in a town in Iowa. There are few writers that can make me laugh out loud when I read (Christopher Moore and Jasper Fforde come to mind), but Bill Bryson has written a hilarious story here.
While reading the story I couldn't help but think back to when I was younger. I don't remember too much from when I was really young, just bits and pieces, but I do remember some of the good times I had back then.
I should start ranking books. I'll give this one a 5 out of 5. Pick it up, it's a great read.
The book I just finished is 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid', by Bill Bryson. I read an earlier book by the same author, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', which I loved.
This book is a memoir of Bill's early life, growing up in the middle of last century in a town in Iowa. There are few writers that can make me laugh out loud when I read (Christopher Moore and Jasper Fforde come to mind), but Bill Bryson has written a hilarious story here.
While reading the story I couldn't help but think back to when I was younger. I don't remember too much from when I was really young, just bits and pieces, but I do remember some of the good times I had back then.
I should start ranking books. I'll give this one a 5 out of 5. Pick it up, it's a great read.