Am I a Light Cycle
I took the “What Video Game Charater am I?” quiz and it said I am a Light Cycle, which is cool since I really like the movie Tron. However it also said that if I am not a Light Cycle then I’m an Asteroid. This is also also cool to me. I remember staying at my cousin’s house once and playing a single game of asteriods for 18 hours straight. We took shifts to keep the game going.
So which am I, a Light Cycle or an Asteroid?
<table border="0"><tr><td>
I am a Light Cycle.
I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game Character Are You?
</td></tr></table>
<table border="0"><tr><td>
I am an Asteroid.
I am a drifter. I go where life leads, which makes me usually a very calm and content sort of person. That or thoroughly apathetic. Usually I keep on doing whatever I’m doing, and it takes something special to make me change my mind. What Video Game Character Are You?
</td></tr></table>
Xbox 360 Games
From the Microsoft site: <div class="quote">What’s even better than reading about the latest E3 news and games? Seeing it! Here’s your one-stop destination for video coverage of the biggest gaming event of the year - straight from E3 to you.</div>
Click here to see the videos.
Using 3rd Party Components
Knowing when to use a 3rd party component is a key to developing a software product. The use of a 3rd party component can save count hours and allow your developers to focus on the core product. However, the selection of the wrong component can cause many headaches and cut into developer productivity.
Problem Accessing NTFS for Other OSes
I was asked to look at my sister-in-law’s PC over the weekend. Apparently it was having problems. I typically avoid helping others with their PC problems but thought I would since she and her boyfriend were great hosts.
Somehow a nasty, little virus-like program was installed on her PC. I tracked down the source of the problem to the winik.sys, which isn’t in fact a Microsoft driver. This little puppy loads other programs that appear to be tracking activity on the PC and reporting information out to somewhere.
The simple solution to the problem: delete the winik.sys file along with the directory of other programs it launches and clean up the registry. Unfortunately the winik.sys loads as a driver and cannot be deleted while Windows is running. No big deal I thought. I would just boot up into a different OS and manually delete the files. This turned out to be harder than I thought. And harder then it should have been.
Not having any “tools” with me, I decided I would boot up in safe mode with a command prompt. Unfortunately this still loads the winik.sys driver. Note that my sister-in-law is running an OEM version of Windows XP Home without any updates on it…no service packs, etc. When this attempt failed, I created a DOS bootable disk from Windows. I booted up the computer from the disk and to my surprised learned that the version of DOS I was running did not recognize NTFS.
I tried using the OEM recovery disc, but that didn’t help either.
My next thought was to use Linux. I found a list of floppy based distributions, but to my surprise none of the distributions I tried supported NTFS. After spending hours trying to find ways to read an NTFS volume from another OS, I finally had to give up. After all, I needed to get on the road and head back to NYC.
I did learn a lot from the exercise even though I wasn’t able to remove the file from the PC. For instance,
1) Sysinternals has a NTFSDOS utility that will mount NTFS volumes and provide read/write access from DOS. Unfortunately the freeware version is read access only so it didn’t help me solve the problem. And I didn’t want to buy the Administration Pack just for this one problem.
2) While the idea of a Linux distribution on a floppy is cool, there are limits to what you can do. I realized I need to know more about Linux and possibly make my own distribution that would allow me to help family and friends clean up infected machines. But I’ll never take the time to make a floppy distribution.
3) I should buy this t-shirt.
Nintendo World
I had no idea that Nintendo opened a store in Manhattan called Nintendo World. I’ve been thinking about buying a couple of new Gameboy titles. Maybe it’s time for a visit.
Change ExpressScheduler Labels
Looking to change the label caption in the DevExpress ExpressScheduler? It is as simple as setting the resource string for the label caption. Here’s the code snippet and a screen shot of the changed label.
<pre>
// Delphi
uses
cxClasses,
cxSchedulerStrs;
procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
cxSetResourceString(sEventLabelCaptions[3],’Money Maker’);
end;
</pre>
Click image to enlarge.
NewsGator Acquires FeedDemon
If you haven’t heard, NewsGator acquires FeedDemon, TopStyle, and Nick Bradbury. I have been a huge fan of Nick’s products dating back to the first release of HomeSite many, many years ago. And I now use FeedDemon on a daily basis.
Nick has been some what of a role model for many developers and micro-ISVs including me. As I take steps towards producing my own product I am borrowing from tips I have learned from watching Nick grow a successful micro-ISV. While I am a long way away from reaching the level of success Nick has achieved, I can’t help but wonder if I could allow myself to be acquired.
When I say this, I’m not saying I would not consider selling rights to my product to a larger company. Actually that might be the only way I can fulfill the full vision I have for my product. What I’m saying, though, is I wonder if I would go to work for a company that acquires my product. This is exactly what Nick has done with the acquisition of FeedDemon and TopStyle. He will be the Architect of Client Products for NewsGator.
My problem with this is I believe you give up certain freedoms when you work for a larger company as compared to running your own shop. A hint of this can be seen in the Q&A; between Nick Bradbury and NewsGator found Greg Reinacker.
<div class="quote">
Q: Is Nick going to work for NewsGator? Is he moving to Denver? What will his role be?
Greg: Nick is indeed coming to work for NewsGator, as Architect of Client Products. I’m personally very excited to add Nick’s vision and expertise to our company. He’ll continue to work on FeedDemon, but will also add his considerable expertise to our product and platform strategy moving forward. Some of his focuses, other than FeedDemon, will be on user interface and interaction design across the platform, and some of the rich media development we’re working on. And I think he’s moving to Denver.
Nick: Umm, no, I’m not actually moving.
Greg: Oh. There I go again - heh. Ok, Nick’s not moving…but he’ll be spending a lot of time with our team in Denver moving forward, and as I said, we’re all looking forward to working closely with him.
</div>
But this process if nothing new for Nick. When HomeSite was acquired so was Nick, and I’m sure he learned a lot from that experience. In the same Q&A; mentioned above, Nick says:
<div class="quote">
Look, I can’t predict the future, and I certainly couldn’t have predicted that HomeSite would be acquired by companies that weren’t sure what to do with it. But I don’t sell my products just to see them wither and die. If anything, this acquisition breathes new life into my software - let’s face it, there’s a limit to what a one-man company can do, and I reached that limit a long time ago!
For at least the past year, I’ve spent far more time doing support, marketing and sales than I have doing actual design and development. Joining forces with NewsGator enables me to focus more on development again, and I’m really excited by that.
</div>
I hope he is able to stay in Tennessee and focus on development again. I hope a repeat of HomeSite does not happen. But regardless of what will happen I have to offer a big congratulations to Nick. He continues to achieve what most others only dream about.
BrowserCap for FireFox
| Something I didn’t realize until today is that ASP.NET does not generate proper HTML 4.0-compliant code for certain modern, non-Microsoft browsers such as FireFox and Safari. For instance setting the width property of an will not render the style attribute needed to set the control width in FireFox. The problem is easily fixed by including the section in your web.config or machine.config with the appropriate user agent pattern for the particular browser or browsers. The guys at 4GuysFromRolla.com have a nice article explaining this in more details. The article also includes a sample section that you can copy |
paste into your .config file that supports GECKO (Netscape 6.0+, Mozilla/Firefox, …) and AppleWebKit (Safari, …) based browsers. |
Disable Trillian Hotkeys
| Recently I downloaded Trillian Basic 3.1 and noticed it was interfering with hotkeys I commonly use in other applications. Settings for Trillian hotkeys can be found in Trillian Preferences | Advanced Preferences | Automation. Note you may need to scroll down to see the hotkeys. Even though I un-checked the Trillian hotkeys, they were still interfering with my other application. I found the only way to stop the interference was to delete the hotkeys from Trillian. After doing so I had to exit Trillian and re-launch it for the changes to take effect. And now I am able to happily use specific hotkeys in other applications. Disable Trillian Hotkeys Recently I downloaded Trillian Basic 3.1 and noticed it was interfering with hotkeys I commonly use in other applications. Settings for Trillian hotkeys can be found in Trillian Preferences |
Advanced Preferences | Automation. Note you may need to scroll down to see the hotkeys. Even though I un-checked the Trillian hotkeys, they were still interfering with my other application. I found the only way to stop the interference was to delete the hotkeys from Trillian. After doing so I had to exit Trillian and re-launch it for the changes to take effect. And now I am able to happily use specific hotkeys in other applications. |
Xbox 360
The new Xbox 360 looks sweet. I can’t wait until it is release. I believe it will be available by the end of the year in time for the holiday season.