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April 30, 2004

Now Playing, in a SCHOOL near you... (this tripe is not yet rated)

News flash: In a new twist on trying to teach kids how to behave, Hollywood has moved from the big screen to the classroom. As if it wasn't enough to try and teach your kids via the big-screen that violence was COOL, and that screwing anything with legs is EXCITING... now they're 'taking it to the schools' to make sure that kids aren't 'TEMPTED' by those immoral P2P denizens of the underworld. (Despite, of course the fact that a mounting body of evidence is showing that P2P networks may actually HELP sales)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mpaa.htmltw=wn_tophead_5

So....where the HELL was Hollywood's moral guidance after the 'role-play' of Hollywood nurtured, glorified violence that was Columbine

(And can just any corporation gain access to our children Cuz boy that would sure be swell... Imagine being able to provide curriculum for tomorrow's masses.... mmmm, mmmm, mmmm! If it weren't for the fact that big-business was footing the bill, I bet Marx, Stalin, and Hitler would all be JEALOUS of our institutional 'learning' facilities.)

Posted on April 30, 2004 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 28, 2004

ToolPanel Control Suite is now Feature Complete

Well, I'm finally feature-complete on my up-and-coming ToolPanel Control Suite. No, it's not available for download JUST yet....  (And yes, feature creep has taken its toll to a decent extent, but I think that has made for an outstanding product in the end.)

At left is a screenshot of the 'Suite' of controls that will be available. It doesn't look like much, but you'll notice that there's a control called the DynamicToolPanel. That's a control that you drop on your webform, and then tell it which control to 'Panel' (with an interface similar to how you tell a validator which control to validate). So, in the end you'll be able to 'Panel' any control on your page... which is quite spiffy.

Some highlights Well, skinning is the bomb... but you'll have to see that in action rather than take my work on it. I've shown a skin in my preview page.

Another killer aspect of the Dynamic ToolPanel is that you can use it to put ToolPanel's on the validation messages that your validators throw out.... i.e. so that if you have a validation error message you don't have to worry about cramming ALL of the explanation into the validator message, you can instead put detailed instructions into a ToolPanel that activates when somebody mouses over the validation error message.

Sadly, I'm QUITE burned out on this control right at the moment so I probably won't make my end of April release date. Right now I'm just tweaking the docs (they're a major drag)... once I'm done with that I'll start work on a really quick video that provides an overview of how the controls work. From there I'll build a skins gallery as well as some other info and throw these controls up on my site...

Posted on April 28, 2004 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

April 27, 2004

Still Perturbed

This one STILL bugs me no end... Anybody with a solution (other than adding all this crap to my path... I can do that) feel free to chime in.

1) Windows2003 is the bomb because it ships with .NET 1.1 baked into it.
2) If that's the case why don't I get access to all of the .NET command line tools automatically In other words, why can't I just hit start - run - cmd and then be able to run instalutil or gacutil etc I can't because they're not added to the path by default.... which seems strange if they're part of the .NET Framework, and the .NET framework is 'baked-in' to Windows 2003.

Stooopid marketers...

Posted on April 27, 2004 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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The spammers are getting stupid. No really. Filtering looks like it's working to the point that spammers now need to cram as many bogus words into an email, or into an email's subject line as possible.

Hopefully this trend continue and spammers really get in the habit of keeping the 'length of their members' BIGGER'. You see... size DOES matter... cuz if they keep it up I can safely set up a rule that says if the length of the subject line is longer than 120 chars... send it to hell. (And if any of my friends sends a 'legit' email with a subject line that long, I really won't care if it gets deleted because one of my pet-pieves is when people put an entire email message into just the subject line).

Posted on April 27, 2004 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 21, 2004

Insane Internet Speeds on Internet2

Quote from CNET:

The record, announced Tuesday at the Spring 2004 Internet2 member meeting in Arlington, Va., was for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record reaches from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland.

And allz I want is DSL to my house in North Idaho...

Posted on April 21, 2004 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 20, 2004

AngryPets .NET Tools Update

I've made a few updates to the AngryPets .Net Tools page. One big change I've made is a sneak-preview that's been added for the ToolPanel Control Suite. Go check it out. As it mentions, I'm hoping to release the Control Suite to the world within just a few days.

I also provided a crappy example of how the R-DOS component will work... feel free to test it out if you'd like (but be warned it looks like I need to tweak with my web.config in that directory a little bit to get the time-outs right (the real RDOS component won't be subject to such limitations because it's implemented much differently)).

Posted on April 20, 2004 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Blogs.SQLAdvice.com & REPEATABLE READ

Well, right now I'm choking down some lunch and configuring one of my latest ventures: http://blogs.sqladvice.com/repeatableread/ which will be my SQL Server Blogging Focus going forward. I'll continue to drop the occasional SQL Server entry on to this blog, and will occasionaly comment on entries I've posted to REPEATABLE READ, but otherwise, look for my SQL Server content with the sqladvice folks (I'm pumped to be able to blog with David Penton... i've idolized that boy for years (and still do)... and now to think I get to blog in the same sphere... it's a tall order, but I'm sure I'll be able to keep up in my own way).

As for my SQL Server Tools on AngryPets (which currently are nothing more than a bunch of robust, but ugly, scripts, but which will eventually come to be wrapped by GUIs for the most part)... I'll continue to work on those as well as time permits. (I'll begin working on www.port1433.com here shortly...and boy will that be a cool/fun ride).

Posted on April 20, 2004 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 19, 2004

Why I didn't learn math in High School

This is positively one of the most insightful reads I've had in a while (man did it made me crave Anthropology again).

I'm hideously tempted to spout oodles of endless commentary on this article. But I'd prefer that everyone read it themselves without all of my babbling tainting their opinion. Feel free to 'spout-off' in the comments, I may end up doing so before long ;)

Posted on April 19, 2004 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

April 14, 2004

It's Official... Lucas is a dink.

My kids convinced me to pop in Return of the Jedi. They've only seen it once, and that was a long time ago.

So I watched parts of it with them. In the end, all I could do was end up being slightly peeved... I mean really, how did I ever allow myself to think that RotJ was acceptable/ on-par with Star Wars or the Empire Strikes Back Ewoks fighting storm-troopers (but they're soooo cudly)!. Jabba the Hutt being attracted to a naked Carrie Fischer (That's so assinine I can barely fathom it. I so abhor inter-species sexshual atraction in films ... seriously, I can SAFELY say I've NEVER been turned on looking at a slug... so why would a slug be turned on looking at a human).

Truthfully, there are too many things to piss and moan about in that movie... but now that I've said it I feel a bit better.

Imagine me standing in front of a large group of gen Xers and saying: "Hello, my name is Mike Campbell and for a long time I thought RotJ was okay."

You may have noticed that the title of this entry was something to the effect that Lucas was a dink, not just RotJ. Let me answer that implied discrepancy with The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. 'nuff said.

What really bums me though, is that if he wasn't able to do it correctly with 6, 1, and 2... how'd he get 4 and 5 to work so well. It really bums me to think that the first two films he made may have been good on ACCIDENT And yeah, i KNOW, they're not brilliant pieces of film... but they're still damned awesome movies, and they worked VERY well. (I still remember sitting as a slack-jawed 5 year old in the theater watching the opening scenes of Episode IV (that and literally watching it 100+ times a few years later when it came to HBO/Cinnemax/Showtime)... but I digress. I mean really... how did he get everything (especially the force) to work so well in the first two movies

Joseph Campbell's influences must have been what caused the first movies to be so good And perhaps that's the problem: for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (this is all conjecture on my part) Lucas was the learner, the apprentice-- looking to a master to guide him. For Jedi, Menace, and Clones Lucas had become the 'master' and had surrounded himself (probably inadvertantly) with lackeys who tried to please him instead. (I still wonder what the HELL was going on during the story-boarding of Clones when Lucas said something like: "then R2-D2 will sprout wings and fly around the foundry after pushing 3P0 onto a conveyer belt...". WHERE was somebody bold enough to say: "Hey, um, think of the continuity issues here... if R2 had had boosters all along, do you really think he'd've been eaten by the swamp-thing on Degobah"... but no, instead an entire room of kiss-ups said: "Yeah, wow... great idea George... we'll get to work on that right away...").

And don't get me started on RUINING the force with midichlorians. Before I could happily suspend my disbelief ... the force was real/tangible/noble/powerful. Now it's just a bug that has been quantified, empiricized, and rationalized away. Come on... what cynic out there didn't immediately think... hmm, an organism eh What's to stop somebody like Darth PinHead from concocting a midichlorian cocktail/steroid-injection to make himself into a total bad-ass i.e. no need to build character, seek for what is noble, practice, become one with something greater than yourself (or take the quick route, and tap into the dark-side)... no, now you just need to have the right dna/bug-quotient.

So hey Lucas... why not make all the Clones clones of somebody with more midichlorians Or for that matter, if they've already been 'altered' why not fix'em up good with lots o' good midichlorians

It's the destruction of the force that bugs me most. And NO.. I NEVER entertained the notion (well, maybe as a pre-Ten-year-old) that Star Wars was Sci-Fi... I love Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back because they're space operas with DAMN cool special effects and a BELIEVABLE Sci-Fi-esque backdrop.

Anyhow, that about sums up my frustration, and my strange -- yet pointless -- need to expound upon it. Well, I think the other thing that STILL kinda bugs me is that I I still want a REAL Speeder-Bike too (damnit). (that and it makes me a bit Verklempt (in a bad way) to call Lucas a dink)

Posted on April 14, 2004 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Back From Vacation

Well... I'm back from vacation. All'z I can say about that experience is that it has convinced me that I'd rather be independantly wealthy than go to work like a schmoe day in and day out. It was pretty groovy to go for an entire week without phone calls, work, church, commutes, blah, etc... (though in the end I did start missing my computer -- I'm such a geek).

We took a family vacation for a week to the Washington Coast, and to Seattle. Jessamyne had school off due to spring beak, so it was a great time to just get away for a while.

I'll be back to posting regularly here in a day or so. I've got a somewhat big announcement that I'll be making shortly about a new endeavor I'll be undertaking. Suffice it to say that http://blogs.sqladvice.com and I will be getting a bit more friendly in the next few days.

I also have a few announcements I'll need to make about some AngryPets Tools. I'm about ready to release the ToolPanel Control Suite -- I'm just working on finishing touches with the Docs, then I'll have to build pages to pimp/distribute the Tools... etc. I've also got a couple other Tool ideas I'll probably allude to in the next few days... so stay tuned.

Posted on April 14, 2004 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)