Sunday, July 27, 2003 Pictures from our weekend in Vermont on online in the gallery.
posted by Kirby | July 27 09:06 PM | comments (0)
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 One additional last minute New Orleans highlight for me...Matric Reloaded on IMax. It was awesome seeing it on the really big screen. posted by Kirby | July 23 02:06 PM | comments (0)
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 My New Orleans trip is almost over. Events are winding down and people are heading home. The trip highlights for me have been [in no particular order and aside from the primary reason for me being here]:
- Acme Oyster House
- Krystal
- Bourbon Street of course
- Events at the Super Dome and Louis Armstrong Park
- The Brian Setzer Orchestra
- Catching up with friends, especially Norm from St. Louis
- And lastly beer and the open container ordinance
Saturday, July 19, 2003 I'm in New Orleans this weekend and having a great time. Last night I ran into 4 or 5 buddies from St. Louis, which was cool. Talked about old times. Unfortunately I have had very little sleep over the last few days but I have had many, many beers. After all, it is New Orleans.
posted by Kirby | July 19 01:28 PM | comments (0)
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Looks like the server hosting thecave.com's mail server is off the AOL blacklist, which means I can once again send e-mails to AOL and CompuServe members.
posted by Kirby | July 16 09:05 AM | comments (0)
Monday, July 14, 2003 Bad news for my friends, family and others on AOL and CompuServe. Apparently my mail server and/or service provider has been blacklisted by AOL since Friday, July 11. What this means is I am unable to send e-mail to members of AOL and CompuServe. My service provider is working hard to resolve the issue but AOL is saying it will take another 5 to 10 business days. AOL is claiming they are backlogged, which is the reason for the delay.
Maybe if AOL wasn't busy blacklisting legitimate mail servers, there wouldn't be a backlog. On the other hand, if the spammers would simply fall off the face of the Net there wouldn't be a backlog either. And I would be able to send e-mail to AOL and CompuServe members, specifically my friends and family.
My e-mail address is all over the Internet, so it is no surprise to me that I receive spam mail. I receive around 250 spams per day. With Eudora Pro and Spamnix, I have been able to control it and it does not require me to devote a large amount of time each day parsing through useless e-mails. But this latest problem as a result of spam is the worse. I can't even send e-mail to Melanie.
Anyway, if you are a AOL or CompuServe member and you are expecting a reply e-mail from me, you may not get it for a while. Don't blame me. Blame AOL.
posted by Kirby | July 14 07:27 PM | comments (0)
Last night I published a rather lengthy blog entry only to find out that I was mistaken about the interworkings of the XmlSerializer infrastructure. Based on some resent code I started to believe that the XmlSerializer would gen a temp assembly each time a new instance was initialized even when the same type was used. Simon Fell posted a comment correcting my assumption. And after writing with a quick sample that iterated through initialization of XmlSerializer instances with the same type, I saw that Simon was in fact correct. For that reason, I have pulled my fault posting from the site.
Thanks Simon for the correction. posted by Kirby | July 14 02:09 PM | comments (0)
Friday, July 11, 2003 Weapons of Mass Destruction 404 posted by Kirby | July 11 10:07 AM | comments (0)
Thursday, July 10, 2003 The Making of Amped 2: "Chris Gunnarson of Snow Park Tech and Brenner Adams from Microsoft AMPED II offer insight about one of the most anticipated Xbox video games of this year!" posted by Kirby | July 10 05:01 PM | comments (0)
The date for WASTED 2004 has been set. January 24, 2004 through February 7, 2004 at Whistler-Blackcomb of course. posted by Kirby | July 10 02:14 PM | comments (2)
The Robots are robotfood.com have named their name movie "Lame" due out in September. Be sure to check out the new teaser video. posted by Kirby | July 10 02:12 PM | comments (0)
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 .NET class structures defined in the CLR can have public fields and public properties among other things. On the surface, a public field and a public property appear to be the same. The .NET Framework Glossary even says a property "is like a public field." However the two are not same. The most obvious difference is in the declaration of the two. For example, consider the follow class:
public class Person
{
public string Name;
private string _email;
public string Email{ get{ return _email; } set{ _email = value; } }
}
In the code snippet above, Name is a public field while Email is a public property. However if you were to use an instance of the class Person, you would not be able to tell what is defined as a field versus property. The two appear to be the same. Example:
Person p = new Person();
p.Name = "Kirby";
p.Email = "kirby@thecave.com";
A property has many advantages over a field and I personally rarely, if ever, use public fields. And today I learned yet another reason for using a public property over a public field.
Some functionality built into the .NET Framework relies on reflection to perform specific tasks. For example, within ASP.NET you can use DataBinder.Eval() to reference properties of a class instance stored in the Container.DataItem. Example:
<asp:Repeater ID="repeater" Runat="server">
<ItemTemplate>
<%# DataBinder.Eval( Container.DataItem, "Name" ) %
<%# DataBinder.Eval( Container.DataItem, "Email" ) %><br/>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>
Using the Person class defined above, the DataBinder.Eval() call to retrieve the value of Name will fail. The exception message will state that the property Name is not defined in the class Person, which is true. Name is defined as a field not a property. Another area where the difference between a property and a field is realized is within custom components that have design time properties. Visual Studio.NET's Designer expects properties to be defined as properties and not fields.
So as you can see a field is in fact different from a property. My preference is to always use property declarations, but if you need to use a field declaration, beware of the possible limitation. posted by Kirby | July 8 04:32 PM | comments (0)
Sunday, July 06, 2003 Our pictures from this 4th of July weekend in NYC have just been posted. Enjoy.
posted by Kirby | July 6 11:19 AM | comments (0)
PhotoRoom v1.3 has finally been released and is available for download. I hope to have the gallery @thecave.com updated with the latest version within the next few days.
posted by Kirby | July 6 10:59 AM | comments (0)
Thursday, July 03, 2003 I know I have been slow to post tech talk on this blog lately. The ironic thing is that I have been doing more .NET work over the last couple of months than I have done over the last year. I even completed my MCSD for .NET last week. Although I took all the .NET exams last year I needed to pass my one elective, which for me was the SQL Server exam. I previously took the 4.2 and 7.0 SQL Server exams and I was worried about the 2000. But it turned out to be the easiest of the three, the most developer focused, and I was able to pass by not studying, playing Xbox, and drinking beer the next better. Go figure.
Hopefully I will get back into posting on this blog soon. My customer work is very exciting and gives me lots to talk about. For example, we have extended WSDL to support our own binding, written tools for generating a proxy class to our own services, and are building out a framework by which developers do not need to write code for middle-tier component that most retrieve information from various backend resources. Exciting stuff. posted by Kirby | July 3 11:13 AM | comments (0)
