Not that anyone can afford a 1080p TV/ Projector yet, but the media is now available:
1080p media available on Amazon
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Monthly Archives: July 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:
One installed your tabs will look like this (sweet):
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.
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 < for < and > 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” <paul@d0tnetworkaholic.com></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?
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.
