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June 2004 - Posts

I just had a disturbing realization while talking to Mikey. I was trying to convince him to buy me one of the new apple 30inch monitors, and he fine with that idea as long as I bought him one in return. During the conversation about how sexy these things Read More...
We've been hearing a lot of reports from customers that they're having trouble installing the express skus under pretty normal system setups. The setup team is working very hard to fix these issues and to get updated setups to help alleviate these issues. Read More...
I just had a profound “well duh” moment a minute ago. I started watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon because: I love the movie I wanted to have something on in the background while i made dinner for myself Of course, what i didn't consider Read More...
Yes, it's both a sounds made when hurting villains in Batman, and it's also an acronym. In this case “Platform Look And Feel.” I bring this up because Java announced a new LAF at their convention called “ Ocean .” It currently Read More...
It's been an amazing week so far from everywhere in the software industry. Each day keeps making it better and better. I was a little dissapointed with the bravado that apple presented, but I'm hoping that their final release will shape up to be a better Read More...
Well, i would have to say watching the beautiful sunrise that happens outside my apt every morning. I just finished watching it while listining to the entire rendition of Rachmaninov's Concerto no. 2 played by the unequaled Van Cliburn My best friend Read More...
Some silly person (with a silly name) had the audacity to make the following claim yesterday in the feedback section of my C# express post: "the vb and webdev express tools would be neat for our devs to try out. yes, smear vb all you want, it's still Read More...
Ok, so my gym apperantly closes after 2ish or something lame like that. So i'm back doing push-ups and crunches instead. As I rest I thought I'd talk to you about an interesting conversation I was having with Jay today. We were discussing some of the Read More...
The best seats in the house at the Seattle Cinerama are without question 6 rows back and dead center. (I know this; because Tyler knows this). It was there, with an unblocked view, and perfect positioning of the screen that I viewed the crap that was Read More...
C# Express ; born this day At 1 am PST. Although one of a set of fraternal quintuplets, it is clearly the most beautiful and the one with the brightest future in front of it. I hope the this is something everyone here can download it and try out. Another Read More...
WWDC is not being livecast this year. Guh!! Nothing like having decicated, devoted, fans, and then smacking them in the face. Glove slap, i don't take crap! Oh well. Guess I'll be hammering Ars and then i'll watch if it's put online afterwards. Read More...
Claims “Steve Riley” in his amazing presentation at TechEd called “SEC285 - Defending Against Layer 8: How to Recognize and Combat Social Engineering ” I can't express to you how much you want to watch this presentation. he's a Read More...
Fu-zu showed me a pretty cool site called PoliticalCompass.org . It came as no surprise to any of my friends that here's where I sit: I'm going to put this up on my door so that if anyone wants someone to argue with, or someone to agree with their views, Read More...
A very important milestone was met last week. It was not only an important goal for our team, but for our group, our devision, our organization, nay... even our company. I speak of course of Kevin now being able to view all his issues on just one screen. Read More...
iTunes, how i love thee. Did a search for “clouds” and instantaneously got back: Cloudscape - Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi Imperial Starfleet Deployed/City in the Clouds - John Williams /London Symphony Orchestra - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Read More...
Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (William Blake: 1757-1827) Two days until Tiger gets previewed. I'm excited. It does mean that I'll have to get up ridiculously early Read More...
The TechEd slides and video are now up!! There are literally hundreds of sessions you can watch (the exact same ones that you would have been sitting through if you'd been there), and the powerpoint slides are available to download. The slides look great Read More...
for ( long i = 0; parameters.GetCount(); i++) { What could be wrong with that?? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. Curse you C++!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't that at least be a warning? Read More...
Oh who the heck am I kidding. I wish I could make it to Tech · Ed (note the use of a middle dot, not a dash!)Europe. It's in frigging Amsterdam!! The week I spent there after I gradumacated was easily one of the best of my entire life. Anyone who Read More...
I've been having an incredibly interesting email conversation with Michail Arkhipov (a Dev lead on the Web.Net) team and I'm pretty torn on how I feel about it. A little background might be a little helpful to give some context to the discussion. There Read More...
That's right, they're all named Cyrus. I knew about the first one because I was named for him. The second I unfortunately had to learn about when I was in HS. Oh that was a fun time. My nickname was both “The Virus” and “Billy Ray.” Read More...
Ok, one of the things I've enjoyed the most about blogging so far is the ability to learn about different ways people go about designing APIs and solving problems. It's opened my mind to totally new and interesting ways to do things. However, it's been Read More...
It's amazing how little the developers work around here. All i see around me are people making excuses in order to get out of a little work. Take Shon for example. Never gets anything done. What's his excuse this time? “I have a baby.” Well Read More...
It's all like twisty and stuff, and has far too much cytosine and not enough adenine. It holds me back and it's been driving my nuts recently. Oh wait... no, I love my DNA. It's a marvel of engineering and I'm constantly having to fight off the biomed Read More...
I'm in the middle of a massive refactoring and its going quite painfully. It's ending up as a massive change that hits a large number of files in our code base. The issue is that for a while we were passing around raw BYTE*'s around and I'm trying to Read More...
It's been a long day. Spent all day long writing up my yearly review (man it's difficult). I then was stuck in traffic for 90 minutes while I went to two stores to buy ingredients for dinner, then cooked up some Persion food for some friends who came Read More...
I thought i'd mention how interesting it is trying to type messages without access to the 'z' key. I'm using a toshiba laptop right now that's missing it. It's not a common character so it's not too tought to avoid using it. But it is rather interesting Read More...
We've been talking a lot about the suggestions everyone has been asking us to make. As you may or may not have guessed, many of the suggestions are things that have come up internally and have already been given a lot of thought. The reasons we don't Read More...
Ok, a day passed and there were very few updates made so I thought I'd push this forward. Now it's time for everyone to vote to help get an idea about how interested people are in these features. Use the contact link to send your votes in. I'll tabulate Read More...
I was pitching this idea to the team about a new feature we could have for the C# editor, but I wanted to get your ideas on it. Whether you think it's good, or bad, or things you think it might do instead. If you liked it I would add it to that list we've Read More...
I went out hunting to see if anyone had found pix from the storm from last week and I ran across a few amazing ones: (mmmmmmm... i love that shade of blue). Picture by Arin Strom. (It took me 3 times to not right that as 'Storm') (turn this one upside Read More...
I love origami and have spent much of my life learning about it and practising it. I've always been pretty interesting in Unit Origami and Origamic Architecture because of the mindblogglingly (hrmm... i think I have blogging on the brain) beautiful structures Read More...
I went through the entire list and collected all the features that people requested. I then filtered that down to things that aren't in our beta1 release. I've also left out things that i didn't understand, asked questions about, and didn't get a response Read More...
Well, he's no Einstein, but Eddie Izzard is hilarious. I got Circle and Dress To Kill for xmas and I've watched them many times and haven't gotten tired of it. I also recommend watching his commedy in french (with english dubbing if you don't understand Read More...
Well, based on the overwhelming feedback I got from the question I posed earlier, I think it's safe to say that one feature will have to be added to C# 2005 before we ship. Specifically: Haikus. There just aren't enough Haikus in C#. Haikus would serve Read More...
I asked What features would you like in the next version of Visual C#? and got an interesting response back from Duncan who asks for regular expressions to be treated as an operator as the are in JavaScript and Perl . I see there being two ways of accomplishing Read More...
Reason #2 6972593 -1 why I hate C++ development: Just fixed up some broken logic pertaining to binding names in the language service. All tests pass when running debug, but everything fails when running free. Normally when this happens it's due to me Read More...
It's 4:15 am and it's already light out here. In 30 minutes my room will be bright and hot and I'll be tossing and turning under the covers trying to fall asleep. Ahhhh the joys of Seattle in the summer. I'd be annoyed except that it's worth it given Read More...
I ask this question because C# 2005 is getting more and more solidified as we approach the release date. Adding new features at this point involves determing how much benefit the user will get out of it versus the cost to design, implement and test that Read More...
Safeway has been stocking these great summer treats. Watermelons the size and shape of a canteloupe: They're fantastic (although don't get me started on the quality of fruit in Washington over the summer) and they come in such a useful container. I generally Read More...
AKipman proposes a very interesting idea . He says: "Lastly *I think we should be posting check-in mails* and I will be doing so in the future. I already do so internally every time we post an LKG (last known good) to our internal partners, and I will Read More...
I've been having an interesting talk with Doug McClean about appropriate locations of methods. We're discussing if the ICollection<A> interface should include the Transform method. Specifically should the interface look like this: public interface Read More...
Neil got to go to a very interesting talk on Thursday by Cory Dotorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation presented by Microsoft Research . The subject was on DRM and how it really served no useful propose to anyone nowadays. Not the studios, not the Read More...
I got a pair of posts from people asking me if I favored multiple monitors and what my office looked like. I figured I'd just answer that with a few shots: I'm going to put up more of my posters later and I'll let you know what it looks like then. Read More...
In my case a big fat gaping hole in my knee that was literally gushing blood earlier today. But hey, I caught the disc, got the point and major ultimate brownie points. I'm eschewing the pictures so that the faint of heart won't be too disturbed. But Read More...
So I'm adding more functionality in the collections classes that I've written in order to work on what I want to be a one day project this weekend. I want all my infrastructure in place so i can focus on the task at hand. The functionality that I realized Read More...
'Eating Paste' is #1 seeded in Seattle's Verns Hat League . Last game is tonight. Wish us luck! Read More...
and I may get pneumonia, but it's worth it to sit outside watching the most amazing thunderstorm I've seen in a long while. I was wondering why it was getting so warm in my apt and I suddenly noticed flashing outside. It was so rapid that I thought maybe Read More...
I was in the middle of the best blog post ever. It was amazing. It was inspirational. It was going to knock your socks off. Tenacious D would have cried after reading this blog. Unfortunately, that post's life was cut short thanks to: Date/Time: 2004-06-17 Read More...
I'm currently downloading a humongous file from a server thousands of miles away. Expected time was about 4 hours with my DSL connection. All of a sudden my wireless connection was dropped. I had no idea why and I was only able to bring it up again by Read More...
My lucky night tonight. One of the best episodes of Cowboy Bebop is on (ok, that's unfair, they're all amazing). It's one of the few shows that I don't even mind being dubbed considering the excellent quality in both english and japanese. The haunting Read More...
I've recently converted a value type over into a reference type. I.e. i've converted a C# struct into a class. I've been able to write tests to measure the CPU performance overhead of using the reference version rather than the struct version. I did this Read More...
After the initial graph implementation i started looking more at the the specializations and cabilities that were added to graphs to make them appropriate for certain situations. Two of those that came up were the directed and undirected graphs. So far Read More...
Went to an interesting talk about C5 (The Copenhagen Comprehensive C# Collection Classes). It had some very interesting idea presented, but I was dissapointed to see that there were no implementations of graphs or trees in the library. These types come Read More...
Java had it first with 1.5 (CodeName Tiger) Then OSX came along with 10.4 (CodeName Tiger) I'm happy to announce Visual C# 100.3 Tiger Edition We may be last to this party, but we're certainly going to enjoy it. Long live the year of the tiger! Read More...
I'm writing down the API for my IMap<A,B> interface. In other systems it has the name Dictionary, Associative Array, or Map. I prefer the latter because it seems to be just a way of mapping a domain (A) to a range (B). The basics of the interface Read More...
Not only is it a great word (better than "eureka!!" when you're excited {but not quite as good as "pygmies!!"}) but it's also a delicious dish . I finished off a whole bowl tonight easily and it was definitely yummy++. However, when i looked back on that Read More...
Watched side 1/disc 1/box 1/season 1 of Sports Night tonight. Really really quite excellent. The laugh track is quite disconcerting (is it even a laugh track? I can't tell), and I think i would prefer it iff it didn't have it or if it wasn't filmed in Read More...
Unsurprisingly I've been watching a lot of my new Samsung Hln437w TV recently :-) It's a pretty looking TV: and it's 43 inches which makes it superior to all those 42 inch wannabees out there! It started out looking pretty awful but after borrowing Jay's Read More...
Had a long talk with Renaud today about nullable types and the interesting ideas they've been pushing through the language. Specifically we've added a few nicities in teh compiler to make using nullable value types as easy as using the actual value type. Read More...
One of my best friends Fu-zu is visiting this week. We've been having a lot of fun, and thanks to her my credit card bill will be enormous this month. We stopped by the comic book shop around here to see what new/old/fascinating/underappreciated works Read More...
It's definitely shower time. My clothes are starting to smell rather ripe. I'm tempted to just throw them out now that I have all the swag that I picked up at Tech-Ed. But somehow I don't think it will help my social agenda if my wardrobe contains lines Read More...
I posted a earlier blog about wanting support for managed co-routines in the next version of VS. Interestingly enough, that didn't garner much interest. Instead, what seemed to pique people was the fact that i really don't use a debugger when developing Read More...
I was reading the C# 2.0 language spec and trying to wrap my brain around the new support for System.Nullable<A> in the C# language. There are just a couple of parts that I keep running into and not quite getting. The first is the following set Read More...
Sigh... Apperantly I have serious problems and I should be getting myself some help post haste :-). At least according to Steve and Gregg I do. They're two debugger devs and they gave me the following legitimate advice when I said I wanted to dable in Read More...
Felt like upgrading my entertainment center today. Took off from work and went out to a local Magnolia Hi-Fi shop. Ended up getting the 43" Samsung HLN437w box: Unfortunately, my puny honda could not handle the load so I must wait for it to be delivered. Read More...
A while back I posted about my issues in C# when I was trying to write out an extensible collections API. From the high level perspective I wanted to provide useful concrete implementations of many structures that would solve most peoples needs, and I Read More...
The Seattle International Film Festival is going on right now and it's been playing some really interesting stuff. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get tickets for either Ghost in the Shell 2, or Hero. Oh well. However, there's an interesting movie being Read More...
Local flavor story: Last night I got to see Captain Smartypants do a performance of their new CD Undercover . The entire performance was excellent. Amazing voices singing pieces that ranged from lough out load comedy (an acapella rendition of Sir Mix-a-Lot's Read More...
Last night i got a chance to see the new son james of one of my friends from school and work. He's all of 4 days old, but he's completely adorable and i wish the entire family a wonderful future. I thought that while I was on the topic of cute, adorable Read More...
I just stopped over at Amazon to order the dvd collection of Sports Night based on the feedback I was getting after talking about West Wing. I was about to add it to my shopping cart when what did I notive below? The option to get this and the first season Read More...
Many people were intrigued at Tech-Ed when Anders revealed the deep language integration we were giving to the new System.Nullable<A> type. I could go more in depth into how it works, but for now I'll just to briefly explain it. Nullable<A> Read More...
Neil (begin lisp (an awesome MS intern (who always gets to work on amazing projects (lucky bastard)))) has been letting me watch his season 2 DVDs of The West Wing. My favorite episode 'Noel' is on right now. It's an amazing episode and i've loved it Read More...
Another interesting issue came up today with a C# IDE feature. It involved the following piece of code: interface IFoo<T> { void Bar<U>(U u) where U : T } class MyFoo : IFoo<int> { } We have a feature called "implement interface" which Read More...
An interesting issue came up today that many people on the C# team had a passionate discussion about. It was about the following code: class C<T> { void M(T t) { t.ToString(); Console.WriteLine(t.ToString()); } } Where the user was extracting the Read More...
We got the results of the user feedback about the Tech-Ed session on C# IDE enhancements. The session was run was run by Joe and Anson and was the ranked the 3rd best session by the attendies. The 1st and 2nd best were the pair of talks by Scott Guthrie Read More...
I love SharpReader and it's fantastic system of showing you a threaded view of posts/responses/referrers. Is there anything like that available for OSX? Read More...
 
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