Busy end of year!

It's been a CRAZY couple of weeks! Pressing demands at the day job, ongoing work with Change Round-Up.

I took the past several days, however, to take a mental break. Sure, to some people, that means not writing code, maybe not even staring at a screen. For me, that meant exploring new technologies and environments, and knocking out the building blocks of a new open source .NET project.

In the past four days I have written what I believe to be the first .NET client for Pownce, and integrated its status-posting capabilities with Twitter as well. I've explored Python via IDLE on my Vista machine, and within Eclipse via PyDev on my Ubuntu desktop. I finally installed TortoiseSVN (necessary in order to interact with my PownceNET project on Google Code).

Busy few weeks, even busier few days! But fun and rewarding. Looking forward to more of the same in 2008.

PownceNET

I've published the Pownce API .NET client source code. It's available courtesy of Google Code at:

PownceNET

Very much a work in progress.

Flipowitter - a .NET Twitter and Pownce API Client

Flipowitter: alpha stages of a simple Windows Pownce-Twitter+ client. Current version simply posts a note to either Pownce or Twitter, or both in sync. (Will post to whichever service has credentials provided.)

Plan to add Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, LinkedIn? tie-ins.

No, I'm not publishing source just yet, I have a bit more work to do, but the assemblies are service-oriented, and can be used to authenticate to Pownce or post a note from any .NET client.

Flipowitter 0.1

As far as I'm currently aware, this is the first public .NET client for Pownce ...

A New Language for a New Year

I've been a Microsoftie for years.

I don't worship at the altar of Microsoft, but as a pragmatic programmer and entrepreneur, I've utilized the tools most accessible to me to advance my art and my career.

I've run Linux -- RedHat 6, 7 servers, VectorLinux as a firewall/router box, Ubuntu on a desktop, Xandros on my Eee PC. I wrote multi-threaded networked Java applications (albeit fairly simple ones) before I ever wrote a line of C#.

All that said, I'm a Microsoftie. I run Vista x64 on my notebook, XP x32 dual booting with that Ubuntu desktop, 2003 x64 as my fileserver. I work as a .NET engineer for a fairly large corporation that is transitioning from a mainframe architecture to a mostly .NET, WinForm and web apps supported by a service oriented architecture. I also work for a startup that is centered around an ASP.NET website and a webservice API. I write C# day in and day out.

There's nothing wrong with C#. It certainly pays my bills, and the technology moves fast enough to keep me somewhat entertained. (Wish I had more opportunities to work on mobile devices; I'd really like to nail an MVP, after my unrequited nomination earlier this year.) My perspective, however, has become somewhat hampered by tunnel vision.

So one of my resolutions for 2008: learn a new non-Microsoft language. Maybe more than one. The candidates are Python (which of course has IronPython crossover), Ruby (also with .NET crossover), Erlang (which has some support for being compiled for .NET) or Haskell (which also has a .NET complement I believe).

I'm thinking Haskell ... coming from a web and BASIC background, I need something concurrency-oriented to really smoke my noggin.

Input appreciated.


Edit: and while I'm at it, I need to learn a foreign language. Thinking Chinese. China is certainly a large and growing influence in the world. I have two co-workers who immigrated from China in the past decade. My dad does a lot of business in China.

Chinese it is.

Wow, Merry Christmas

Scumbags!

Kaspersky AV choking machines

Kaspersky forum thread

My Vista notebook, running 64 bit Business, sucked it up and is running strong.

Now, if only Firefox 2.0.0.11 didn't freeze every 20 minutes ...

I need a logo

craigslist ad

I'm in need of a logo for my software consulting company. Details available in the listing linked above.

Time for a New NUnit

It’s the Tests » Blog Archive » Time for a New NUnit

Charlie Poole announces the new NUnit 3.0 Extended Testing Platform, expected in alpha in early 08.

pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

On the DotNetDevelopment mailing list we often bitch about the lack of ability to post formatted code. One member made the effort to create a wiki for this purpose, but it never really caught on.

Today, in the midst of making fun of code-beggars in an older Java thread elsewhere on the web, we discovered pastebin.com.

1000% pure awesome!

WeatherBonk -- rockin' Google Maps and realtime weather data mashup

Excellent weather mashup courtesy of WeatherBonk

Richly-featured, with optionally-animated realtime radar, cloud and temp overlays. Ties in with local taffic cams, offers a weather blog by metropolitan area.

I was just on the verge of giving a paid weather.com account a try ... but no more!

Happy mashing!

Santa poster, where have you been all my life?

forwarded by a CDAA member, found on fukung.net.

Microsoft publishes detailed Vista SP1 changelog

Microsoft publishes detailed Vista SP1 changelog

FINALLY! A detailed changelog for Vista SP1. I'm looking forward to a lot of inconvenience being eliminated. Vista is usable -- I've been working in 32 bit since March, 64 bit for two+ months -- but there are certainly nagging performance and reliability issues I could do without.

A quick glance doesn't show me anything re: 2003 domain-joining issues ... I hope MS isn't relying on people to go 2008, and avoiding the Vista-2003 issue entirely :-/

Full support for the latest 802.11n draft ... perhaps my Dell-Linksys DHCP and occasional wireless drop issues will go away?

Lots of network fileshare/transfer improvements -- about time!

Utterz - Not the first of its kind

So I gave in to one of the new services making its round through the Twitter crowd, Utterz. Utterz allows you to phone in a quick message ... I think they tie in other media too, not sure yet.

Interesting little toy service. Not sure how much value it has, but I'll play with it. I'm pretty sure there are other services out there already doing similar things.

My first inane Utterz

Caffeinated soap

A friend pointed this out to me this morning, a little caffeine by osmosis by way of morning shower:




"Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning coffee to brew? Are you one of those groggy early morning types that just needs that extra kick? Know any programmers who don't regularly bathe and need some special motivation? Introducing Caffeinated Soap, the caffeinated soap from Xoxide...

Engraved with a glorious "C" for Caffeine, scented with peppermint oil and infused with caffeine anhydrous, each caffeine soap bar contains approximately 15 servings per bar with 250 milligrams of caffeine per serving. No, we're not kidding and no you don't eat it. The caffeinated soap is absorbed through the skin...

Warning: Not recomended for children, pregnant women or persons sensitive to caffeine"

7A vs 7B Eee PCs :)

There has been some question over what Eee PCs ship with the internal Mini PCIe connector. It's been determined there are 7A and 7B machines -- the first two digits of the serial number.

7A models have the connector, 7B models do not.

Rushing over to unplug my Eee PC from the wall, I flip it over to discover ...

7A :)
eeeuser.com news