September 6, 2003
@ 12:58 AM

I picked up a 30GB iPod from BestBuy on my way back from work only to get home and find out I need an iPod Dock Connector to FireWire and USB 2.0 Cable. So my iPod is currently a $500 paper weight until I swing by either BestBuy or the Apple store in Bellevue and spend even more money on overpriced but sexy Apple products. I am particularly irritated by the "helpful" BestBuy staff that hovered all around me while I picked out the iPod and escorted me to the checkout line but didn't point out that I might require accesories if I was a Windows user. Of course, I should have done my homework. Impulse buys are always a bitch.

Some thoughts below on corporate outsourcing of IT workers, the futility of Free Software or Open Source projects that attempt to clone large proprietary software systems that are basically moving targets, and a look at the OPML spec used by a large number of blogging software.

 


 

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Yesterday I noticed via Mark Pilgrim that Microsoft has launched Microsoft.com Web Services that enable you to retrieve information from various Microsoft developer related websites such as MSDN. The first XML Web Service they've exposed is GetTopDownloads. Of course, my first instinct was to expose the XML Web Service as an RSS feed so I could keep track of the MSFT Top 10 downloads in RSS Bandit. Unfortunately, on installing the necessary bits that were supposed to plugin to Visual Studio.NET so I could program against the XML Web Service it turned out that the install broke my existing Visual Studio setup.

Undaunted I decided to borrow a leaf from Sam Ruby and Phillip Pearson who coded against the Microsoft.com XML Web Service without fancy SOAP toolkits. Below is code that retrieves the Top 10 downloads for the "en-US" culture from the Micrsoft.com XML Web Service then generates the Microsoft Top 10 Downloads (en-US) RSS feed using just the vanilla .NET Framework 1.0 without any fancy XML Web Service plugins.

Enjoy the code, subscribe to the RSS feed and hang loose.

 


 

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September 3, 2003
@ 12:58 AM

I picked up Soul Calibur II for the XBox last week and I have to admit it is still the greatest fighting game of all time. I haven't been impressed with many of the new characters (Spawn was particularly dissappointing) except for Talim who has the most innovative weapon of the new entrants. The ability to buy and thus alternate between weapons is an interesting new feature and I've already found my favorites for the characters I use. In combination with the announcement that Vice City will be coming to XBox it looks like my XBox may be coming out of retirement now that I've stopped playing Halo, DOA 3 and Brute Force.

Thoughts below on violating NDAs, software patents, Bumbershoot and more on the lucrative lifestyle of the authors of computer books.

Poll: Would you put software patents on your resume?

 


 

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Raymond Chen is an old school MSFT guy (as in from the Windows 95 days) and he has a bunch of entries on his blog gives the history behind some common and not so common Windows annoyances. My favorites have been Why isn't my time zone highlighted on the world map? and Why do you have to click the Start button to shut down?. The entry on Hardware backwards compatibility is another good one.

I'm now inspired to do my part to give "why" behind an annoyance that faces Windows users. A number of people have emailed me to complain that when they try to download RSS Bandit they end up with a 0Kb zip file on their hard drive at the end of the download attempt. Well, this is due to a bug in Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0. The workaround for this problem is described in Microsoft KnowledgeBase Article 308090

More below on the growing iPod mania on my team, an XQuery birds-of-a-feather at the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference, writing technical books and blogs being quoted by the press.

 


 

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The major news services (e.g. Reuters) are agog with the news that the deaths of two U.S. soldiers in Iraq on Tuesday pushed the death toll to 140 since May 1, when Bush declared major fighting over. This is greater than the U.S. toll of 138 dead between the March 20 start of the war and May 1. Some would have expected this news to encourage the current US administration to keep a low profile with regards to comments about the War On TerrorismTM but in fact not only is GW's resolve as strong as ever he has hinted at more preemptive strikes against "known enemies". Definitely someone from the "The Best Defence is a Good Offence" school of thought.

Random observations below on Yahoo and Rolling Stone's adoption of RSS, supposed Outlook viruses, Python on the .NET framework and more.

 


 

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August 24, 2003
@ 12:58 AM

Download it here. New features and bug fixes described below.

 


 

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It's been an interesting weekend so far. Yesterday after watching hundreds of people walk past my bedroom window I decided to investigate and found myself at the Seattle Hempfest which bills itself as the planet's largest marijuana policy reform rally. I half expected to see people surreptitiously hitting blunts or rolling up joints but instead it was more like the typical Seattle festival with lots of people milling about and lots of people selling cheap crap. Only this time the cheap crap had a hemp theme (pipes, hemp clothing, weed leaf jewellery, etc).

I also went to see the show, Puppetry of the Penis: The Ancient Art of Genital Origami last night. It was a pretty entertaining show and was a lot funnier than I expected. It was amazing just how many different shapes those guys could bend themeselves into (the Loch Ness monster, a hamburger, roller skates, the baby kangaroo, etc) and there even was some audience participation. Before the show started there was a comedienne who warmed up the crowd for about 30 minutes and there was a heckler behind me who made a wise ass comment after almost every joke she cracked. I was worried that I'd have to clock him if he continued when the actual show started but the "dick tricks" were entertaining enough to shut him up for the duration of the show.

More below on the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, flies in urinals, and interviewing with Google.

 


 

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August 17, 2003
@ 12:58 AM

I was browsing Clay Bennett's editorial cartoons and came across a few images that are definitely instances of a picture being worth a thousand words. The one that resounded with me the most was this cartoon about Affirmative Action.

More below on Christina Aguilera's newest video, Idi Amin's death, more RSS Bandit sightings on shareware sites, thoughts on using job listings for industrial espionage and other stuff.

 


 

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August 14, 2003
@ 12:58 AM

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I just lost a few weeks worth of changes to RSS Bandit because I overwrote one of my files with one I got from Torsten without realizing Torsten had modified an old version of the file. If I was still using Emacs all I'd have to do is grab the RssHandler.cs~ file and I'd be back in business.

 


 

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