We're still waiting to be blown away, aren't we? Is it beta 2? Seems I haven't heard much about this lately..
Trying to find hockey on TV is like, well, even worse than it used to be. Much worse. The
national coverage is pretty awful, even among five networks. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to go to one of the neighborhood Red Wings bars if I want to catch the Wings. I don't have a cable box, and I'm not about to get one just to watch one game per week on the Outdoor Life Channel. (Yes, non-hockey fans, that is the channel that carries the NHL these days. Hey, at least they're playing this year.)
Still, just having hockey on in the background is comforting. I'd almost given up when I remembered that
Comcast.net shows games
live over the internet for Comcast subscribers. This is awesome. Even better is that they have at least one game on every day! (2/3 of the days have two games.)
A Windows Media Center computer drives my TV, so making this happen is incredibly easy. Launch IE, click the link on the Comcast.net front page, right-click the video feed, select "Full Screen" and I'm enjoying NHL hockey in all of its compressed glory.
The video quality is surprisingly good. If HD is a 10 and normal TV is a 5, I'd say this is a 4. I'm just happy I can stream live TV over wireless without a single blip.
Nice job, Comcast. Now how about a Media Center plug-in and HD-quality? That I'd pay for.
You'll probably have a few extra minutes on your hands while
waiting for VS Express to download. Do yourself another favor and check out the
breaking changes in .NET Framework 2.0 [
BradA]. The list is pretty small, considering the breadth of the framework, but you'll probably find a favorite in there.
It's old news that the
Visual Studio Express Editions are out, and free for a year. You, with your fancy MSDN subscription, probably looked right over this good bit of news. I don't know how many times I've needed VS while away from my computer, but didn't have the time to download the 3+ gig image and install it.
Do yourself a favor and grab the
CD images right now, burn them to disc and throw them in your bag. Each image includes:
- C# or VB or J# or C++ or "Web"
- SQL Server Express
- .NET Framework 2.0
- MSDN Express
Good stuff.
While doing my first ASP.NET 2.0 "publish" tonight I was presented with the following dialog box:
Assuming that apps delete as few items as possible, I assumed that "existing files" meant files that matched those that were being copied. I was wrong. It does indeed delete everything.
I've salvaged most of the site from local copies, but most of the images that I've posted to the blog (that aren't app-related) were lost. Nothing drastic, but it is kind of funny that the one thing I've never backed up was lost.
Moral of the story: Don't be a dope.
Place: Rock Bottom @ State & Grand
Time: 6PM
All kinds of new stuff to chat about. One lucky party person will get a
free .NET Power Pack: JetBrains' ReSharper and dotTrace. Two of my favorite tools, hands-down.
Please
let me know if you think you'll be stopping by.