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July 27th, 2005

1080p media available on Amazon

Not that anyone can afford a 1080p TV/ Projector yet, but the media is now available:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/102-7338215-1038535?index=dvd&field-keywords=WMVHD

Microsoft is finally catching up and providing movie trailers, though strangely not
using h.264 ;)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx

Posted by Paul Lockwood as HDTV at 1:07 PM MST

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July 20th, 2005

Tabbed Browsing in IE6

This news is at least two weeks old: The latest MSN Toolbar allows tabbed browsing
in IE6. It works great and I have not used Firefox since installing it:

http://toolbar.msn.com/

One installed your tabs will look like this (sweet):

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 3:17 PM MST

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July 19th, 2005

LCD not quite in focus? Use DVI

Boring post I know: Today I used an Acer
AL1914 19″ LCD Monitor
with a DVI compatible video card (it was purchased for those
contracts where contractors are provided whatever hardware was about to be sat on
the curb). The difference is night and day - as one may expect
you loose controls to set focus etc . If you are looking to buy a low
end LCD go with DVI
- the expensive LCD Monitors probably all have
decent ADC components but this sub-$300 19″ unit’s ADC is pretty lousy.

Arriving back from Austria I can use my own hardware in the Atlanta office and am
hence happy as Larry (apart from the workload). When time allows I’ll post more
about the setup in a post on workstation ergonomics, or more poignantly why I have
not had a stiff neck or bad back since 2001 despite having done little but write code
for the last 23 years.

Posted by Paul Lockwood as HDTV, Technology at 5:39 PM MST

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CDATA Section means nothing? You should read this post

This is super simple but amazingly few developers know CDATA exists. About a year
ago I asked Burr Sutter what was all this CDATA
garbage in messages we were receiving from an (IBM) MQ feed. He told me and I
was stunned I had never heard of it before, I soon said “wow that’ll make my
XML driven interface so much easier in terms of having readable XML”. The XML in question
was full of &lt; for < and &gt; for > - in some cases I was storing
XML inside XML and that can get messy! Take a look at the little example below.. pretty
sweet eh?

<PaulsCDataExample>
  <HardToEncodeString>Paul
Lockwood”
&lt;paul@d0tnetworkaholic.com&gt;</HardToEncodeString>
  <EasyToEncodeString><![CDATA["Paul
Lockwood"
<paul@d0tnetworkaholic.com>]]></EasyToEncodeString>
</
PaulsCDataExample>

This is why contracting rules - there are always fresh faces to learn from. Last
night it dawned on me that casting a working ArrayList to an array [via ToArray(typeof)] 
after parsing an input message/ config file is better than my
usual ’smart’ approach of creating a strongly typed collection (assuming you are only
reading the data). A Thoughtmill guy educated me there - a few months back the use
of Factories really clicked thanks to an Innovative Architects employee. Now should
I feel stupid or educated?

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 5:18 PM MST

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July 3rd, 2005

Wo sind Paul und Richard?

Roughly 24 hours after arriving at Atlanta airport Saturday morning Richard Rubin
and I arrived ready to begin at our client site tomorrow. The view from my hotel window
is rather good and I though y’all might appreciate it:

We are in Zell am See in Austria, speaking mostly German so far with the locals. Luckily
Richard’s Deutsche is far better than mine otherwise we’d still be in a random Bahnhof
between Munich and here. It is 8pm local time and other than two shorts naps I have
not slept for 32 hours so am about to crash hard. Our client’s English skills are
superb so I am looking forward to an easier day in the office tomorrow - yes we are
working the 4th of July while everyone else is celebrating kicking some English butt.

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 1:15 PM MST

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