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Monthly Archives: September 2005

  • www.microsoft.com is running ASP.NET 2.0

    Microsoft is dogfooding their own go-live license for ASP.NET 2.0: > telnet www.microsoft.com 80 > GET / Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:17:52 GMTServer: Microsoft-IIS/6.0P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"X-Powered-By: ASP.NETX-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727Cache-Control: privateContent-Type: text/html; charset=utf...

    Published Thursday, September 29, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • A Tour of XAML by Chuck Jazdzewski

    Chuck Jazdzewski has a decent two-part primer on XAML on his blog. Today I begin a tour of XAML. As Chris said, I have been part of development of XAML. I came fairly late to the game, however, more closely to the end of the Avalon development cycle than at the beginning, and XAML was already fairly well defined when I arrived. I did work to push some changes into the language, primaril...

    Published Thursday, September 29, 2005 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Gift Registries

    A few folks have asked us where Melissa is registered for the baby. Here are the links: Nurtured Family : Natural fuzzi bunz cloth diapers and wipes. Please follow the instructions on registry page as they aren't quite as automated as other places. Babies 'R' Us : Lots of things, including car seats, toys, etc. You can also shop directly at the store; just select the registry that sho...

    Published Wednesday, September 28, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Dec VT180 and the Little Professor

    I first learned BASIC on a DEC VT back in 7th grade at Mary E. Wells Jr High School in Southbridge, MA. Mr Dragon ran the (usually empty) computer room there at the time. While I quickly tired of the monochrome display when I first discovered sprite graphics on the Commodore VIC-20 and C=64, the DEC terminal still holds a place in my heart for being the first computer I ever programmed. I...

    Published Wednesday, September 28, 2005 | Tagged: | 1 comment

  • Look Ma, No menus!

    Ok, so let's say you're not into WPF and all the neat UI changes that will come about from that. You're not the design type, you just want to write traditional battleship applications. Will you still be able to stay in happy File | Edit | View | ...| Help menu land? Nope. Microsoft Office has always been the UI innovator in Windows. Where it goes, developers of LOB applications must foll...

    Published Tuesday, September 27, 2005 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Sparkle - the 100% All-Managed, All-WPF Application

    In case anyone ever wonders if Microsoft produces any real apps (other than Microsoft Max) using managed code, here you go: Expression Interactive Designer (aka Sparkle) is a 100% .NET, managed code application.  The source is currently more than 1200 .cs files and about 140 .xaml files totally 210,000 some lines of C# and 23,000 some lines of XAML.  There is no unmanaged code dire...

    Published Tuesday, September 27, 2005 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • My Vote for Most Likely WPF Visual Cliche

    The simulated reflection effect in WPF (formerly Avalon) is ripe to quickly become a visual cliche, much like the aztec temple-like overuse of stacked 3d elements in the VB 3.0 Win3.x days. When done tastefully by someone with an eye for design, it can look good. In the hands of average Joe, though, things can quickly get ugly. When I did the Sparkle hands-on-lab at the PDC, the reflection eff...

    Published Tuesday, September 27, 2005 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Baby Gear

    Here's some interesting baby gear we intend to get: Slings We ordered a Maya Wrap for Melissa, and a larger one for me, from La Leche league of Annapolis. They sell them as a fundraiser. While we were down there, we saw a fairly slight woman with a very large baby in the wrap, hanging off of her front. She had no problems at all with moving around or using both of her hands. She also didn't l...

    Published Tuesday, September 27, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Kitchen Renovation Floor Plan and Appliances

    Here's the floor plan for our kitchen renovation. The opening between the living room and kitchen/dining area will be almost double in width (compared to current) to let in a lot more natural light as well as provide for a much more open feeling between the rooms. (click for larger image)Here's my rationale for the locations of the various items:The cooktop is angled out and faces the l...

    Published Monday, September 26, 2005 | Tagged: | 1 comment

  • Week 20 - 4d Ultrasound

    On Friday September 23, 2005, we had the 20 week ultrasound. Luckily, they were able to do the 4d ultrasound (4d is 3d + movement the fourth dimension is time) I was hoping for. Here is a shot of the 4d ultrasound. The baby is lying against the placenta here; you are looking at the side of the baby's face. Click on it for a larger version. 4d Ultrasounds tend to still be pretty noisy (a...

    Published Monday, September 26, 2005 | Tagged: | 1 comment

  • A Guided Tour of the Windows Presentation Foundation

    Check out the new guided tour of WPF on the MSDN site. Summary: Get an overview of Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named "Avalon") and a context for this new graphics subsystem. Survey the architecture and major components available within this release for developers. (37 printed pages)

    Published Monday, September 26, 2005 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • WinFX Hearts

    Check out WinFX Hearts. This nifty WinFX / WPF / Avalon / XAML app was demonstrated at the PDC as part of the "Light Up on Windows Vista" bits.

    Published Tuesday, September 20, 2005 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Windows Vista UX and .NET Framework Design Guidelines

    The Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines are definitely worth a read. In addition, if you haven't already ordered your own copy of the .NET Framework Design Guidelines (I picked up mine at the PDC), do so now. If you're using the naming conventions posted on my site, I have validated them against the FDG, and have found no inconsistencies or violations.

    Published Monday, September 19, 2005 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • PDC Day 2: Ooh Shiny!

    Sparkle, Quartz, Acrylic. Those are definitely some of the more unique product names I've heard in a while. As these are targeted towards the usual hip "own a mac as a spare" types of folks, you won't find any ".NET" or "2006" or similar in the names. Just like the apps and their purpose, the names are simple and clean, and conjure up crisp images of diamond-honed user interfaces. First, a lit...

    Published Thursday, September 15, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • More Swag, and Tablet PC 101

    Yes, more PDC swag :) I spent a half hour in a hands-on lab today, learning how to program for the tablet PC in Windows Vista and Visual Studio 2005. In return for doing something which I considered to be enjoyable and enlightening, I received a refurbished Wacom Graphire 4x5 Tablet, and a 256mb memory stick with all the labs. Pretty nice! It is much easier to program for ink and handwriting ...

    Published Wednesday, September 14, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Microsoft PDC Day 1 Recap

    Microsoft PDC Day 1 Everything Looks Different The first thing that became clear to me today was that we're in for another user interface revolution, one even larger than the change from Windows 3.x to Windows 95. Windows Presentation Foundation (aka Avalon), Windows Vista, and Office 12 turn your UI world upside down. A la Carte Office 12, in its current form, completely does away with the...

    Published Wednesday, September 14, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • More on Comparing Nullable Types and Generics

    If you recall from yesterday's blog entry, I was having some problems trying to find a way to compare some generics which may contain nullable types. My thanks go to Dinesh and his colleagues for solving this problem for me. Here's the new code; it's much simpler than the old code.   protected void SetProperty<T>(ref T currentPropertyValue, T newValue)  { &...

    Published Friday, September 9, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Nullable types and IComparable in the VS 2005 August CTP

    By now, you have likely read Somasegar's blog entry on nullable types in VS 2005. You know that nullable types are now recognized by the CLR and no longer implement INullableValue. What you may not have realized is that nullable types no longer implement IComparable. The problem this introduces is that there appears to be no way to refer to value, nullable, and reference types gener...

    Published Thursday, September 8, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • House Appraisal Results

    All the emergency priming and trim work paid off.The house appraised for over the amount I needed, and they only took off $1000 for the paint and trim. Had I left it as it was, we'd be looking at a failed appraisal, or at a minimum, a much larger hit. As it is, the house appraised for 85% more than I paid for it back in October 2001. That's a pretty good investment considering we didn&#...

    Published Tuesday, September 6, 2005 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Week 18 - Unecessary Roughness

    I guess now is the time we get to practice our sleep deprivation exercises. I don't recall reading that in the manual. Every morning, the baby (fetus/future person/avocado/whatever you want to call it right now) body checks/kicks/wiggles my wife awake between 4:30 or 5:00. That's probably not the most pleasant way to wake up, especially if the baby manages to boot her in the bladder. Th...

    Published Tuesday, September 6, 2005 | Tagged: | 1 comment