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Monthly Archives: January 2006

  • Sparkle January 2006 CTP

    Expression Interactive Designer (Sparkle) is now available in CTP form. For a link and a good, quick demo, see Tim Sneath's blog.

  • WPF and UX Blogs and Sites

    As discussed in my recent Windows Forms / WPF session, these are some blogs I read on a fairly regular basis. There are a ton of other related blogs, but these have been the most helpful to me Manuel Clement's Space - WPF Karsten Januszewski - WPFJensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog - Office 12 UXUrban Potato (Geek) - WPF and OthersMHender Rambles On - WPF and OthersHalfbrite - WP...

  • Livingroom Flooring Complete

    Except for filling the face-nails along the edge, anyway. All that cutting made a lot of dust. I'm glad I have the saw out on the deck. The table with the saw has been blown off several times, and the bag emptied several times more. That flooring just produces a ton of dust. The pile under my table saw, just from ripping, is even deeper. Of course, now that I have the Oneida Dust Gorilla i...

  • Amby

    This is a photo of the Amby next to our bed. (click for larger version) It is basically a free-swinging padded hammock. Among others, this is recommended by Dr. Sears. It keeps the baby near by, and helps eliminate things like the flat head you sometimes get from a crib. Also, since it is free-swinging, the cats want nothing to do with it :-) The heater vent under it will likely be cl...

  • Week 37

    Week 37 starts tomorrow (Wednesday). We're almost there. Just like everyone says, these last couple months have been just a lot of waiting. I don't know where that baby is scrunched up, but Melissa is half the size of a lot of pregnant women we've seen. I pity her poor smushed guts :-) She still gets around quite well, she just doesn't get up from a chair as fast as she used to :-) It's a good...

  • Flooring Home Stretch

    The living room flooring is almost complete. The most difficult and time consuming part was routing grooves in the ends of all the boards that touch the stair nosing. I originally tried various router bits. In the end, what worked out best was to take two passes on my table saw. I set the fence so the blade would dado 2/3 of the groove furthest from the fence face. I then flipped the board and ...

  • Why Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Will Dominate Thick Client Development

    This PDF from Forrester Research is a nice high-level description of the role and importance of XAML. Pass this on to your decision makers. EXECUTIVE SUMMARYMicrosoft has unveiled a powerful weapon that will allow it to consolidate its control of the desktop by offering tools across development tasks and roles with high levels of integration. This innovation goes by the opaque acronym of XAM...

  • Baby's Room Ready

    Well, except for trim and for patching the nail holes in the floor, but that will be done at the same time I do it for the rest of the house. This is the first room to have the new flooring completely installed. I have to stay that I really like the look. The strand bamboo flooring has a unique character to it and really contrasts well with a light colored wall.   Melissa and I p...

  • Installing Strand Bamboo Flooring

    The flooring I'm installing in this house is a type of man-made flooring called Bamboo Strand. The flooring is made up of lots of bamboo fibers compressed together with an adhesive to form solid planks. These planks are harder than just about any other type of wood.Starting OutSince this is a split-entry style of home, we have an open stairwell leading up into the living room and hallway. A...

  • Siding Almost Done

    The siding is almost done. All that is left to do is some final fascia work on the back, some window casing on the back and the two dormers on the front. I'm very happy with how this came out.  Click the thumbnails for larger versionsFor comparison, here are some photos taken a while before the new siding was installed.