PowerGUI -- extensible PowerShell admin console plus PowerShell IDE (puff & screenshots)
Resources for clean and compact CSS
DEP/NX APIs added to XP SP3 and later
Native threading API improvements in Server 2008 -- includes a read/write lock out of the box
PartCover -- free coverage tool for .Net
The last vsvars32.ps1 I'll ever need -- PowerShell niftyness
Foundations of functional programming (in F# and C#) - Part 0, Part 1
Polyglot, not panglot -- it's all about choosing the right tool for each job
Design by Contract and C# (without Spec#)
A range type for Java -- and the same trick should work in C# if the language hasn't grown one when you need it
Kamina discovers the coat-stand
Yoko is less certain
With friends coming to see the new arrivals over the weekend, Kamina has been fairly shameless, and he has certainly latched on to me (literally at times). Yoko is being less forthcoming, though she has come to sit on my lap if Kami is already there. She is very attached to her brother and will wail at times if she can't see him (perhaps because he's gone to refuel).
Jemima is being scandalised. Kittens have violated the sanctity of her basket, one of them (Yoko) just ignores her, and the other beats her in staring matches (except when distracted by "Ooh! Shiny!). She spent most of the weekend outside in protest. Have to see how well she integrates when shut in together.
This morning I had to scoop the kittens out of their little corner and take them to breakfast. By the evening, they were confidant enough to climb on me while I was sitting the the armchair, and then go to sleep. And stay there even when I had to get up.
Yoko has even explored a bit upstairs, wailing piteously all the time as she did so.
Jemima is just being outraged at this home invasion, and if she plucks up the courage to come in, she moves around the place like it was hostile territory.
Yoko and Kamina in a chair
Two new Tonkinese kittens, with an unusually low level of incest in their pedigrees. Still in the hiding in corners stage.
Yoko (top) and Kamina
New DLR Blog -- view from the inside
ASP.NET + FePy -- and all in Visual Studio Express, even
TDD antipatterns -- do your unit tests contain any of these bad boys?
Blue Drop -- The Angel's Play
One of my top 5 titles of 2007, good for reasons I can't really explain. On the surface, it's really just Mari-mite with spaceships…
Wakatake Mari is an amnesiac orphan, sent to a girls' bording school after her elderly aunt (grandma?) can no longer look after her and home-school her. She is roomed together with the class president, Senkouji Hagino, whose presence triggers memories of the disaster that killed her parents.
But Hagino is really Commander Ekaril of the 5th investigative ship BLUE, and a renegade from an alien scouting fleet which is undertaking preparatory reconnaissance for an alien invasion.
This is a story of school life… Will Mari reconcile with Hagino? Will dormitory head Funatsumaru Hiroko manage to KEEP WEIGHT? Can Michi finish writing the script in time for her play to be performed at the school festival? Or will the curtain be brought down prematurely by the Arume invasion?
All done in a very engaging style of animation, and with an impressive soundtrack, with both OP and ED (below) being spot on for atmosphere.
Bottom right of the top image is, of course BLUE Drop -- in the style of an Adama Drop, that is.
Copied and pasted, regarding FLoser episode 9:
Haali media splitter doesn't split this mp4 container version correctly so you will get only video. So in mplayer classic press O (options) -> internal filters -> source filters ( tick mp4 ) -> ok and it plays it back perfectly, OR use VLC
Girls in aerial frames blowing stuff up -- what's not to like?
After devastating global conflict against autonomous machines called WORMs, reconstruction has begun, with the 20-40 age group decimated after the conflict, leaving teenage girls in the front line when the WORMs return, in this title which builds upon (and modifies the continuity of) the 2006 OVA.
A little bit slice of life meets monster of the week, with a blink and you miss it somewhat confused environmental moral. Not an enduring classic, but a bit of good harmless fun with girls blowing stuff up, and one of the better titles from 2H07.
The new guy (a new graduate) on my team loaned me his copy as about the only book in his library that I hadn't already read, after I had pointed him in the direction of a lot of SF and said "read that" to his counter-suggestions.
Nothing dates so quickly as the future…
From the viewpoint of 14 years after, it's easy to see that his vision completely missed out blogging (and user generated content in general) -- the tacit assumption throughout is that the MSM would still be the main source of content; and the mobile phone (and wireless in general) -- like the pre-wired house of the future (when I laid cabling at home about 10 years ago, that was bleeding edge; in '06 when I ripped it out, it was an embarrassing anachronism), or the home system that would detect that you were out and answer the phone without waiting to ring-out (rather than the call being expected to go to you at your mobile rather than the fixed location, your house). And he only vaguely got something in the neighbourhood of search engines.
Overall, an interesting read from a perspective of history, but that is all that remains.
The Majesty of the Mythical Man-month
Immutability in C# -- a review
StopwatchWriter -- a neat use of the using(IDisposable) idiom, which really is the C# equivalent of a destructor
Powershell and inner exceptions -- hooking into WinDbg
Collection.Each -- Ruby-like idiom for C# 3.0
System.AddIn scenarios -- why you will want to use this new feature
Software Transactional Memory for F#
F# Fast Guide -- documentation links
Building your own literals in Java -- a neat trick, that could probably be made to work in C#
The Myth of Creativity -- Thinking about thinking about problem solving
Is Programming Like Music or Engineering, and Must it Be Unintuitive
It starts off with an offbeat premise -- a boy who can see microbes, and whose family has associations with the brewing trade, going up to agricultural college; such plot as there is generally involves weird and wonderful fermented foodstuffs from around the world (like kiviak, illustrated on the right); and the intricacies of sake production.
It's only 11 episodes, and could have been fluffy and slightly educational with it; and after 6 episodes, I was willing to rate it as "unexpectedly good". But then the next two episodes got subbed...
Alas
-- after the half-way point, the gross fermented foodstuffs give way to frat-boy antics, sophomoric ecchi humour, and bolt-on by-the-numbers fan-service (trap? check. lipstick lesbians? check.) -- which literally loses the plot. It wasn't about the people, it was about fun with fermentation, and related bio-industrial or similar processes.
Verdict: Disappointing.
A first look at Parallel FX -- a .Net concurrency management framework (interesting ideas to try and use it in an Erlang-like idiom here)
Python vs C# 3.0: Tuples vs. Anonymous Types (Redux)
The 51 Core Abilities of Successful Software -- and we wonder why Business Software is Messy and Ugly
Start of a holiday round-up:
What I admire about professions like Engineering and Medicine -- Software Engineering still has a long way to go
You can't measure what you've never seen before -- usability and novel interfaces
Design by contract in .Net 3.5 -- a series of articles
Why designing Surface apps is different -- another series
Watin -- ASP.Net unit test framework
Design Patterns -- the controversy continues
Functional -- A functional programming library for JavaScript
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Code snippets released under the WTFPL
