Friday, August 31, 2007

Mono 1.2.5 is out.

So, the necessary changes to support the DLR at all are in place.

Alas, it still has some limitations -- (bug 82650)

fails in the import statement with

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File __main__, line unknown, in Initialize
  File WinUI, line unknown, in Initialize
TypeError: Argument cannot be null.
Parameter name: type

which is not quite "at the first hurdle", but does make it useful to keep the WinForms import in a single file, so if I need to explicitly enumerate, I only have to do it once.

A pity that Python isn't quite as malleable as Ruby so far as stringname-to-symbol matching goes. The next best thing, this

doesn't fare any better. *sigh*

Links for 31-Aug

Ruby Superators -- Always wanted a "-~+~-" or "===~-+~++" operator? Now it's within your grasp!

Anonymous functions inside JavaScript functions

Primary and Secondary actions on web forms

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Autumn

Yesterday I did my usual August Bank Holiday cycle ride, ambling along country lanes near the Herts/Essex border. And though the sun was shining, the air was chill, almost raw, in a persistent northerly breeze.

This morning, under leaden skies again, there was a distinctly autumnal feel to the air; and it's still August.

The rain last week did not help the plum harvest, such as it was. We got enough for a pie, after discarding the thoroughly wasp-eaten ones (about half the crop). We have more of last year's still in the freezer than we got this year.

Links for 28-Aug

Ruby Sadist -- "The time has come to show your code who’s boss."

Certificate-based authentication in WCF - Message Security; Transport Security; Mode Independent -- 4 articles

Towards more bottom-up programming with JavaScript

Friday, August 24, 2007

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Friday, August 17, 2007

Links for 17-Aug

JRuby-in-a-jar -- code in one jar, add jruby-complete.jar and get a better deployment model. Jython's -jar <jar with a __run__.py> is OK but leaves .class file litter; and IronPython doesn't yet have zipimport

9 JavaScript Gotchas

Blueprint CSS -- Google Code CSS framework

IE JavaScript console -- because it needs one

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Can we fix it?

So, all that was left above the gum-line of the tooth that went yesterday was the large (2/3 of the tooth), old, amalgam filling of great antiquity. Plastic has been applied to make it tooth-shaped again, but now I'm in line for 2 crowns this autumn.

Those old-time 1970's dentists sure knew how to set themselves up with work for the future.

Links for 14-Aug

CSS Vertical Centring of known height blocks

C# extension methods -- asymptotically approaching JavaScript?

Who is the customer for an Enterprise product?

Monday, August 13, 2007

Cheese is hazardous

For the second time in 10 days, half a tooth has become detached while I was eating some soft cheese. Camembert the first time, and now brie. You don't expect that.

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Links for 13-Aug

A better Symbol#to_proc -- iterating and refining collections with less "yellow code"

JVM languages group -- Virtualisation works at the code level, too.

Python IDE in the browser -- Silverlight proof of concept

JavaScript debugging in Orcas -- work on client-side code in your server pages

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Psychic Felines

When I came downstairs this morning, Jemima was lying sprawled on the picnic table, in that half melted dead cat basking position they take up, blissed out expression on her face. So I snuck back upstairs and got the camera.

And returned to find no sign of a cat anywhere.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Teeth

Oh qualified joy! Oh modified rapture!

An hour in the dentist's chair today. A few minutes cleaning up the surface where the tooth broke at the weekend, and slapping some Fuji-9 temporary on.

And the rest going from looking at a sore patch on the gum opposite to spotting that the tooth that had been root-canalled six months ago, and had had the filling patched once already, had cracked, thus inflaming the gum.

Tons of epoxy later, it's sort-of glued back together, and I can eat something more demanding than soup or runny porridge so long as I take things carefully especially on the latter side. But now I have a series of appointments for getting crowns.

Le *sigh*

The 21st century and I can't even get new teeth either by subtlety (coercing new buds to appear and shedding the old) or brute force (by A-gate or equivalent nanoscale rebuild). What is the future coming to?

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Crazy or what

After all the wet weather, a couple of days of hot summer weather. And after only a week or so since the last heavy rains, already the agricultural sprinklers were out in some of the fields I cycled past -- despite comments on the news about the moistness of the soil encouraging bumper truffle crops.

Also, another tooth has fallen apart, so first thing tomorrow, to the dentist. *sigh*.