September 2005 Entries
The answer is yes of course it is, but why do I ask? Well, over here Scoble says give me OPML support. James Robertson replies saying why'd you want OPML 'cos it's a crappy format (which it is). So why is this little spat interesting? Well 'cos Scoble said he'd move to a the first blogging tool that supported what he wanted. I say call him out James. Scoble blogging from a Smalltalk tool, now how cool would that be?!
I coded up a little app last night that sits in the system tray. You can select RSS feeds from the BBC and the app will go off and get them and then read them out to you using SAPI. It uses WebClient to fetch the feeds, XPath to parse them and SAPI to read them out. If that sort of thing floats your boat you can download a zip of the project here.
4 people died this weekend running the Great North Run, a half marathon from Newcastle to Gateshead. Now I don't know these people, nor do I know what actually killed them. Early indications are that it was the hot weather. I've mentioned here how hot it's been on race days this year, so my advice is to keep hydrated and wear a heart monitor. Use the Karvonen formula to calculate your training zones and stick to a comfortable zone during the run. And above all remember cardiac drift is not your friend.
I've been messing around with Mono on Monoppix just lately. It's great fun. Check it out here.
You can tell your daughter has been doing too much outward bound stuff with the Army Cadet Force, when she comes away with statements like this Thomas Crapper he invented the toilet. The flushing kind, not the normal kind.
We came across an error the other day where we were saving an Excel spreadsheet across the network and a service on the server, utilising the FileSystemWatcher, would then process the spreadsheet. The error we were seeing was a sharing violation from Excel and a processing error from the service.
It turns out that when Excel saves a document it creates it first then fills it. So the FileSystemWatcher was waking up and trying to process the document before Excel had finished saving it. This caused the service to fail, as the document was empty, and it caused the sharing violation in Excel as Excel couldn't finish writing the document as the service had opened it. :(
The work around was to save the file locally first and then copy it across the the server.
Val and I completed the Aberfeldy half marathon a few days ago. We finished in a time of 2h:22m which is pretty dreadful but it was another blisteringly hot day. If we could just get a day to race where we don't have mediterranean tempratures then I'm sure I could do it in under 2 hours. Anyway, I've got another 9 months or so before the full marathon to try and get fit enough to run a sub 4 hour marathon ;)
My eldest daughter was out walking our dog (Arwen) the other day, in woods behind our house, when she flushed a deer. I don't know who got the bigger shock, the deer or Arwen :)
Valve Names Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition the Preferred Development Environment for “Half-Life 2” Modifications. GOLD COAST, Australia — Aug. 31, 2005 — Today at Microsoft® Tech•Ed Australia, Microsoft Corp. announced that Valve Corp.®, creator of award-winning game franchises “Half-Life®” and “Counter-StrikeTM,” has named the upcoming Microsoft Visual C++® 2005 Express Edition as the preferred development environment for hobbyist Windows® developers creating modifications for SourceTM, the engine on which “Half-Life 2” is built. In addition, during Tech•Ed Australia, attendees will get to hear how Team Dystopia created its modification for “Half-Life 2” with Visual C++. [ More...]
Microsoft is shelving the standalone version of its Services for Unix (SFU) product, with no plans to do future enhancements.
[Via Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
I have never been a big computer gamer, that is why I have an XBox, but this announcement yesterday is pretty neat.
Numerous folks here at Microsoft have been working with Valve, the creators of Half Life and Counter-Strike, to make Visual C++ 2005 Express work for creating mods and enhancements to their games.
Check out the new Half Life 2 Mod Corner on Coding 4Fun for more details.
[Via Brad McCabe's WebLog]
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