Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from .NET programming using WPF, Silverlight, XNA, and Windows Phone, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, to woodworking, CNC and generally "making real stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
Archive for tag:
General
-
If you’re on twitter or otherwise follow Codinghorror, you know he suffered a complete loss of his blog. My site and blog both have nightly database backups, but I’ve never tried to restore them, so they’re untested and therefore only slightly better than useless. I also get concerned sometimes that those backups are of a really old blogging engine’s data, an engine I’d never use again if I we...
-
Fellow Silverlight enthusiast (and great author) Chad Campbell called me out on this, so now it's my turn :) How old were you when you first started programming? That was either 6th grade or 7th grade, so I was around 12. I often question the people who tell you they were hacking systems at the age of 6, but who knows? :) How did you get started in programming? The first time I ever wrote ...
-
I like to mess around with computers. Every primary computer I've owned since my first 486 has been built by me (my previous computers, a 286 and a Commodore 128 were purchased). I also run a moderately complex network at my house which I realize I have never fully described anywhere. So, thought I'd tell you about it here. Why My first server was a linux box I had in our last apartment. It w...
-
The three of us (me, Melissa and Ben) all went to the National Air and Space Museum - Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA (not the one in DC) this weekend. This is where the Smithsonian keeps all the really big things like the Concorde, the Enola Gay, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise. It turned out to be less exciting for Ben than we thought (he's really into airplanes and spaceships, but only ...
-
Cool! I made it on the Tech-Ed Bloggers Daily Highlight for today. Thanks to Kathy and the folks at Tech Ed Online for recommending me and and for mashing up all the info on my sites to create a great bio.
-
Was looking for hand tools from places other than my usual suppliers (like the always excellent LeeValley) just to look around. Did a search and this sponsored ad came up: When you get there, this is what is on the front page, above the fold: You either need a really well-fed hamster to power the motor on that power carver, or they aren't quite living up to their ad. (it's also amusing...
-
Follow me (when twitter's back up) at http://twitter.com/Psychlist1972
-
While it isn't ready to roll out just yet, I've decided to convert my blog and main site over to Graffiti CMS. The folks at Telligent have put together quite a platform for individual blogging and content management. Despite that, the "CMS" in the product name stands for "Content Made Simple", not "Content Management System". If you've ever used a full-blown CMS, ...
-
Effective immediately, I am moving the RSS feed for this blog over to FeedBurner. The new URL for my feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PeteBrown Most decent feedreaders should redirect to that and update the feed URL. If they don't, please plug the new URL in there. I plan to migrate to a new blogging platform sometime in the near future (I'm considering several right now including Sha...
-
Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer. Microsoft was originally late to the browser game, but eventually won out over other browsers. Think of that what you may, but I have to admit that the competition at the time was made up of some pretty crappy browsers. It wasn't until the battle was pretty much lost that the alternatives started getting interesting. The IE folks sat on the browser fo...
-
I finally decided to take a pop at using Windows Live Writer to write for my blog. While Community Server has a reasonable editor, it is an online in-browser editing experience and can suffer from the usual shortcomings that architecture has. Creating thumbnails and uploading images was definitely a chore, and Live Writer takes care of all that junk for me. Below is a random photo from my file...
-
When I got back to my house from the Silverlight 2.0 TAP event in Redmond last week, it was about 4:00 am (love those airline delays). I dumped most of my stuff in a pile, and went to bed. The next day, I remember asking for my jacket to be washed as it picked up a lot of airplane cooties <g> I used the Zune on all four flights (connections each way) and really enjoyed it. I was...
-
I was in Redmond all last week for a Silverlight meeting. My connecting flight from Denver to Baltimore was delayed so many times that it was around 3:00am when I exited the concourse at BWI and passed through security on my way out. I always like to see the various applications running on the big screens at the airports. The ones at BWI are typically pretty boring, but I've seen ...
