Tales from the Evil Empire

Jeff Atwood has an interesting post today where he says his current laptop may be the last one he buys. The argument is that tablets are a better option now, with longer battery life, less lap overheating, and a nicer form factor. But well, tablets are not for me. I always need a keyboard, a full version of Windows, I rarely need to run on the battery for very long, and the tablet form factor just doesn’t work for me. I like my screen to stand on its own, even on my lap, and having a separated keyboard is just clumsy. The surface looks like an interesting compromise, but the lack of a robust hinge makes it a no-go for me. Also, I want a single machine that works for everything I do.

To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question.

With the imminent release of Orchard 1.5, the number of built-in modules in the default distribution is getting quite impressive, if not intimidating. Now may be a good time to give new and old users a tour of what comes out of the box. Who knows, we may discover a hidden nugget or two along the way…

By default, when Orchard displays a content item such as a blog post in a list, it uses a very basic summary template that removes all markup and then extracts the first 200 characters. Removing the markup has the unfortunate effect of removing all styles and images, in particular the image I like to add to the beginning of my posts.

It should be quite obvious: drawing requires constant visual feedback. Why is it then that we still draw with code in so many situations? Of course it’s because the low-level APIs always come first, and design tools are built after and on top of those. Existing design tools also don’t typically include complex UI elements such as buttons.

A quick tip for all you new enthusiastic users of the amazing new Azure. I struggled for a few minutes finding this, so I thought I’d share. The Azure dashboard doesn’t seem to give easy access to your FTP credentials, and they are not the login and password you use everywhere else. What Azure does give you though is a Publish Profile that you can download:

Netduino Go is designed for much more than toy projects, but one has to recognize that toy projects are fun and also great learning experiences. Today, I want to take you through the process of reproducing the behavior of a famous toy that you will surely recognize. That toy, that has helped many of us realize what poor motor skills we possess, has two knobs that control the horizontal and vertical coordinates of a pen that draws into the dust on the back of a simple screen. It’s a great mechanical device that is part of western culture.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could build your own stuff? Microcontrollers let you do that, but they usually require dealing with a lot of complexity and unknowns. If you’re a software developer, chances are you don’t really know how to use a capacitor, or how a transistor works, even though it is at the heart of all computers.