Evil Galactic Empire invades Liverpool Street?
I remember Darth Vader being much taller! If you look very carefully you can also see an x-wing fighter pilot and C3PO in the background. R2D2 was hanging around somewhere too.
Live Mesh - my experience
I think that Live Mesh will be really useful. I think it provides great benefit to individual users, such as myself, and has great potential to be used by software solution developers . I'm presently using it to synchronise some files that I want to backup and be available wherever I am. I originally had a lot of web files being synchronised, around 700MB, but the synchronisation was taking ages and killing my CPU. CPU was sitting at 100% and there was no sign of things completing. I think it was having a problem with the volume of small files. To summarise: it's a great product with bags of potential but something needs to be done to reduce the CPU usage when dealing with the synchronisation of a large volume of small files.
How to make a cross domain web request with SilverLight 2
To make a cross domain web request with SilverLight 2 really isn't that tough. I did have some problems with RC0 but I have no idea why. I just tried writing a little app to do this and it worked straight away.
Google Chrome Nightly Downloader
Here's a link to a very useful tool that'll download the latest Google Chrome (well Chromium ) nightly build. I decided to use this due to the vertical scrolling issue with Google Chrome that was driving me mad. The bug was present in the release of Google Chrome but fixed in the nightly builds. Chromium Nightly Downloader Update: 02/10/2008 I've been looking into getting SilverLight to work with Google Chrome or Chromium and came across a post about something called Chrome Channel Switcher which looks like it automatically updates your Chrome install to either Beta or Development builds. Could be useful! There are links directly to the executable download from Jon Galloway's blog post .
.NET Obfuscators
As I was cleaning up the contents of my desktop I came across a text file containing a list of links to .NET obfuscator offerings. I created this list when researching options about six months ago. The main criteria was that the obfuscator could be executed as part of an automated build process. Here's the contents of the list: http://www.secureteam.net http://www.remotesoft.com/salamander/obfuscator.html http://www.smartassembly.com/ http://www.preemptive.com/products/dotfuscator/index.html http://www.9rays.net/products/Spices.Obfuscator/ http://www.wiseowl.com/products/products.aspx http://www.eziriz.com/comparison.htm
Colonsay Holiday 2008
I've been back at work a week now after my holiday on Colonsay and I still think that I could have done with another week on this beautiful Scottish Isle.
Holiday - Day 1: Bad design gives me an early start to the day
I was awoken on the first day of my holiday to a clattering sound and my girlfriend exclaiming "I can't get the top drawer open". I turned over and looked at the clock. It read 05:50! Something within the drawer has risen high enough so that when you try to open it it catches and the drawer can't open. I then had to spend 30 minutes taking the whole set of drawers apart with a screwdriver to get this drawer open. I don't know how many times I've come across this same problem but still the design of drawers, and more to the point their casing, stays the same. The drawer cavity always has space above the actual drawer to allow things within the drawer to move into this space and then catch when you try and open the drawer. My point here is that this has proven time and time again to be bad design with flaws yet this design does not change. The same problem can be seen in other engineering designs including software.
How to install Caplin Systems' Liberator Free Edition on Windows
Liberator FE I work for Caplin Systems who have recently released Liberator FE which is the Free Edition of their real time Comet server product. Liberator is the most performant and fully-featured server currently available for streaming real-time data to web pages. The technology behind many of the world's leading financial trading portals, it is now available FREE for evaluation and non-commercial use. In this post I will detail my experiences when installing Liberator FE on Windows with an aim to being able to create a RIA Client that consumes data from a Capin DataSource . Liberator Free Edition comes with a comprehensive client library for integrating with Ajax or Flex, RIAs, a Java server library for connecting to sources of data and building application logic, and full documentation.
Synaptics scrolling not working
I've just updated my Synaptics touchpad drivers and after a restart the scrolling no longer worked. I did the obvious, check the settings and "do a google" but could not find the solution anywhere. I then went back to the settings and then noticed a sub-settings option for the touchpad in the Device Settings tab. Select Synaptics TouchPad and then click the Settings... button. A further properties dialog will appear with a Virtual Scrolling option. Select this option and then enable your scrolling.
Train newspaper recycling
I recently took a job back at Caplin Systems in London and as a result have started commuting into the city every day by train. Once you've done the same journey a few times there's little new to see when looking out of the window so most people listen to music, read a book or read a newspaper. A newspaper doesn't generally take all that long to read - or generally only contains a few interesting articles - so people tend to leave their papers on the train when they alight. London has a plethora of free papers ( Metro , London Lite and The London Paper ) so people think nothing of leaving a free paper behind. "National Express have teamed up with Metro Newspapers" blah, blah, blah. This is a new message that is announced at most stops to encourage passangers to take their papers with them and keep the train tidy. Never mind recycling. In all fairness the London station I get off at does have a "Newspaper recycling team" that are occasionally seen making their way through the trains to collect the discarded papers. The train station must have hundreds of trains through it a day and there is no way that this team will have time to collect all papers for recycling. My solution to this problem would be to place newspaper bins or containers on each stations and encourange passangers to simply take their paper off the train with them and pop them in the newspaper bin on the platform. This is easier than having to take the paper to work or home with you and then recycling it. This would be a good idea for two reasons: 1) Most papers will end up in these paper containers and recycling teams can just collect from there at a given point in the day. 2) If you want a paper to read on the train you know exactly where you can get one from at each station. I'm surprised that this isn't in place as I think that the green and useful sides of this idea make it a winner. Maybe there's something that I've not considered?