Brian Hampson - Life and Other Things

Inspired by the Nerd Protester (and some of the comments) with his </bush>

There’s:

Kerry = Min(Evil1,Evil2) [Kerry is the lesser of two evils)

I’m open to others.  What have you got?

Over at Theo’s page, he has a post with links to the download for SP1 for .Net Framework 1.0 and 1.1

Thanks!  It sure would be nice if they showed up on the SUS soon.

Some things seem like no-brainers, others quite nice additions.

Jon Flanders has done a nice summary of the top 10 things (in his opinion) that ASP.NET 2.0 will be bringing to the table.

Finally - Master pages, WITHOUT having to code to it!

And one that always confused me…. Why couldn’t I ever update my config file programatically, without writing raw XML.  No more:

9) Programmable Configuration.

This is really a .NET runtime improvement, but it is still a big win for ASP.NET. The web.config file contains all the configuration information for an ASP.NET application. In ASP.NET 1.0, in order to change something (like a database connection string in the AppSettings element) you have to open the web.config file in the text editor of your choice.

With the new version, you can go into the configuration programmatically (without having to resort to manipulating the XML directly) and change the settings of your ASP.NET applications. This makes building things like installers, administration modules, and pages much easier.

Thanks Jon and ServerSide.Net for the excellent summary.

Yes, computer nerds even get out now and then.

The US Repuplican National Convention (RNC) has brought out all kinds of protesters.  Here’s a link to a very tech savvy protester in the picture! <well done/>

Have you ever had one of those weekends where you did nothing, and slept most of it?  That was this weekend for me.  I needed it.  I slept until noon on both Sat and Sunday, and then had a few naps on Sunday.  Man, what a difference.  I’m not feeling like I’m going to fall asleep if I stop moving.  How often do you need this kind of weekend?  I find about once every 4 or so months.

Weird, plain and simple.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia man who drove home with a friend’s headless body after a truck accident then went to bed while the remains dangled out the window faces charges including vehicular homicide and drunk driving, police say.

And from the description given by Janice McDonald, on the Christian Science Monitor Olympic Blog (EVERYONE seems to have one these days), it would seem that it is a continent wide thing.  She has a hillarious account, complete with pictures, regarding driving through Athens…Sounds like fun!

Dave Winer just posted a note over at Scripting News about not being able to send mail.  He is trying to send via HIS mail server, while using someone else’s connection (a hotel).  Generally, I have to say this is a bad thing.  When you are using someone as an ISP, use THEIR smtp server.  It shouldn’t be a problem.  If they don’t have their server misconfigured, they have traceability in case something foul goes out from their systems.  The other way - not so much

Dave - you need some sort of comments section on your blog

That earlier blog entry about the coup keeps on getting better….

Now, we have the son of Margaret Thatcher - Mark Thatcher, involved.

New Scientist has an article about Alexander Yuvchenko, at the time a 24 year old engineer, who was at work the night that Chernobyl exploded.  He has lived, and mananged to “Cheat Chernobyl”.  From the story:

The place where I was told he’d been standing was in ruins. The huge turbines were still standing, but everything around them was rubble. He must have been buried under that. From where I stood I could see a huge beam of projected light flooding up into infinity from the reactor. It was like a laser light, caused by the ionisation of the air. It was light-bluish, and it was very beautiful. I watched it for several seconds. If I’d stood there for just a few minutes I would probably have died on the spot because of gamma rays and neutrons and everything else that was spewing out. But Tregub yanked me around the corner to get me out the way. He was older and more experienced.

The Morning News has got a column of handy tips for your chosen trade….

Some of the best:

Attorney

Do whatever it takes to fit your contracts onto a single page: Format with single-spacing, use a 10- or 9-point font, and reduce the margins to less than an inch. Most people assume any contract that fits on one page will be simple and straightforward, and even sophisticated negotiators can be charmed by the lack of a staple.

Forester
Never walk behind another person in the woods, because yellow jackets build their nests underground. The first person in line will disturb the nest when they walk over it, but it’s the poor suckers trailing behind who catch the wrath of the stirred-up bees. You can generally tell the more experienced forester in the group because he’ll be the one in the lead.
The senior forester also will be the one either driving the truck or sitting in the middle seat; it’s the guy who riding “shotgun” who has to get out to open and close every gate they encounter.

Photographer

When taking family portraits that include a dog, don’t use the dog’s name or say “doggie, doggie” to get its attention, because it might trot over to you. Instead, call out “kitty, kitty, kitty.” The dog will perk up and look around for a cat, and you can get a great shot if you time it right.

School kids in South Africa have been able to listen in on Vodacom’s customers by dialing into a tech line, and entering a code.  They can hear a random conversation within a 15km radius, with neither of the two parties on the line being aware of it.  Probably another case of security by obscurity.  These type of things need to be locked down - AND people need to be aware of when they are being tapped.

On Thursday, 702 and the Pretoria News were able to tap into the conversations of scores of people.
They ranged from businessmen discussing sensitive deals to a mother talking to her son, and even two people discussing a drug transaction.

From IOL.co.za via Engadget

Reuters is carrying a story about 14 mercenaries on trial, led by a man who used to work for “Executive Outcomes”, that were planning to overthrow Equatorial New Guinea’s Government.  Wow…they still do this stuff.   They had a group of 70 men that were going to go in and perform the coup, ala “The Dogs of War“.  Seems so far and so unreal.  Apparently the attempt was back in March.  Makes you wonder how often this kind of thing goes on.  Also, how exactly do 70 guys take on an entire army…I gues you have to hope that the majority don’t like the hours or the pay, and are waiting for a chance to revolt…Yikes.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article on the timing technologies in use at the Olympics.  In it, the official timing guy describes some of the cool tech, and some of his low points in timing….

…at the 1987 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia, Huerzeler became a pariah when he disqualified the Canadians three times and the Australians four times for jumping the gun. Spectators threw chairs at Huerzeler’s control room and later, on their way back to the hotel, an enraged Aussie tried to drive into the timekeepers, forcing them to jump out of the way, he said

Sounds like a fun job

Server Error

“Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

I love it!   Cross my fingers :)  That’s funny.

Google has released a beta GMail notifier application, and can map it so that outgoing mail goes via your gmail account as well.  Sweet.  No more back and forth checks at the gmail page to see if you have mail all the time now!  I hope this doesn’t keep my system from screen saving, like the 3rd party one that I tried before.

Coool….I just got a gmail, and it makes the “new mail sound“ and gives a little XPish pop up.  Slick!

Just like the folks at eWeek a while back, the Athens Olympic Games people, are a bit anal retentive regarding having links to their site.  Check out their policy here (oops I did it - and didn’t write a letter first)  So they want me to get permission to send you to a link about Judo (oops - there I go again!) or some of the cool shots they got during the competition. (and yet again!!)  Crazy… harumph.

Thanks to Basileios for the info.

Are YOU violating the policy?

This is cool…a step beyond what your old Unix or mainframe account did when it printed Snoopy in ASCII text art.   Eagle is also good.  Of course, you gotta love Canada. Any others particularly cool?

Toogle.

You’ve proabably heard the transcript of the Onstar guys helping someone who’s locked their keys out, but you definintely haven’t heard these ones.

The graphics guys at MS, when drawing a world map coloured India one colour and Kashmir a different colour.  India said “You get our country wrong, we’re not letting your software into the country”  MS promptly recalled a whole whack or Windows 95 which had this wrong.

Another gaff had them referring to Spanish women as “Bitch”  Ooops.  Need new translator

For more MS fun, see this News.com article.