TechnoMagician's Weblog
(aka Tim Aiello)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke.


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Thursday, January 29, 2004
 
.NET Framework and VB Runtime

From Joel On Software:

For some reason, Microsoft's brilliant and cutting-edge .NET development environment left out one crucial tool... a tool that has been common in software development environments since, oh, about 1950, and taken so much for granted that it's incredibly strange that nobody noticed that .NET doesn't really have one.

Apparently nobody noticed this about Visual Basic either. Many many moons ago when I wanted to compile a stand-alone EXE without requiring the VB runtime I went through the same motions as Joel. I don't see Microsoft doing anything about this since they haven't done anything about VB yet.

 
5:36:44 PM    

Wednesday, January 28, 2004
 
US Democratic Nomination Dean Campaign Hype

I don't know what to make of the US Democratic Nomination Race going on at the moment. If you're in the blogosphere you'll have heard the hype about the Dean Campaign. In fact it was sounding like Dean was an absolute shoe in. Don't even bother with the vote, he is in. I have to think that this is due to an extremely small number but high profile bloggers actually supporting Dean and turning the hype machine big time.

Yes there is some sort of grassroots thing going on here and that is exactly what it is. Its grassroots, very small and largely unknown in the real world.

What it emphasizes to me is that the blogging community is still a far ways away from being mainstream. Yes, most of us knew that blogging is becoming mainstream but I think this shows we have a much further way to go.

 
1:28:52 PM    

Aluminum duct work needs a technology upgrade

I don't understand why in this day and age aluminum duct work is still being used in homes to push air from the furnace to all over the house. Everywhere you turn the experts are saying that you have to seal the joints to prevent air loss. I can attest to this as my basement used to be the warmest room in the house before I taped up just about every joint I could get my hands near. The builder (Mattamy Homes) taped maybe a few joints horribly and obviously did an absolutely horrible job of the duct work leaving all kinds of air loss throughout the entire basement. I can't imagine how much is being lost in the runs in the walls where I can't get at the joints.

In the larger picture though I have no idea why the industry doesn't use some sort of PVC piping or some other material that can be sealed and leave 0% air loss at the joints. Baffles me as to why this wouldn't be standard practice. I'm sure the cost is a little more but very unlikely over the top.

By the way, the stuff called duct tape is not what you want to use for this. You want an actual aluminum foil tape. Ironic that duct tape is very good for just about anything but this.

 
11:27:04 AM    

Wednesday, January 21, 2004
 
Blueshore RBL (Remote Black List) down

For any people using the Blueshore RBL (bl.blueshore.net) for spam checking might want to know that it is currently unavailable. I have no idea why but I noticed it stopped responding about 9am EST this morning and continues to be down now.

 
12:37:29 PM    

Monday, January 19, 2004
 
Bloglines for connected PDAs

And another great feature from BlogLines. Finally an aggregator that works on the iPAQ and doesn't grind to an absolute halt with the lousy IE that is on that thing. Actually the first time I tried it didn't detect I was on an iPAQ and gave me the regular view. After refreshing for some reason it picked it up. Just a minor glitch I would think. Would be nice to have an aggregator that works on it without being connected to the net. I'm sure there are some out there but I haven't bothered. I rather keep to a single aggregator or at least one that syncs between machines. At least with Bloglines I can more easily read my aggregator without lugging the laptop around the house. Much easier when outside too.

We are pleased to announce the beta version of Bloglines optimized for connected PDAs. Simply go to www.bloglines.com using your Palm or Windows CE powered PDA, and you will automatically be transferred to the optimized version of Bloglines. You can also access the PDA version directly by going to http://www.bloglines.com/mobile. The optimized version of Bloglines contains fewer graphics and simpler pages for fast loading and easier navigation on PDAs. Now it's easy to stay up to date with your Bloglines subscriptions while away from your computer. This new feature is in beta; please let us know if you have any issues accessing the new PDA optimized version of Bloglines.

 
2:49:17 PM    

Tuesday, January 13, 2004
 
Toronto WiFi Meetup

I'll be at the Toronto WiFi Meetup tomorrow (Wednesday) at sometime around 7pm EST. I'm planning on bringing the Linksys WVC11B Wireless Camera with me and will have it broadcasting out to the net so stay tuned here. I'll update this post with the details on where you can browse to with Internet Explorer (yes, unfortunately it requires some lame ActiveX control ane IE) to see the video. Brent and Wireless Bandit will likely be blogging this as well so you may want to check there too in case for some odd reason I can't update this blog entry.

Update: Brent tells me that he has everything in place to have the cam appear at http://meetup.megahuge.com so hit that after 7pm tomorrow night. If things change I'll update this post. Also note that the cam is probably unlikely to handle a bunch of simultaneous viewers so it will likely be first come first serve and the rest are unfortunately out of luck.

Update: I also forgot to mention that I'll be hanging around in BlogChat if people want to drop in a chat. If the diamond at the top of this page is green click on it to enter the chat. No need to install anything.

Update (Jan 14th, 4:42pm): Looks like I'm not going to bother slogging through this snow to get to the Meetup. Probably take 3 hours so I'd have to leave now to even be late!!! Anyway, I may hang out in BlogChat. Brent is going to try to make it down there as he is closer at the moment.

 
9:36:50 AM    

Thursday, January 08, 2004
 
OSX's Mail App
Brent Simmons comments that OSXs built in spam filter for Mail was getting less and less effective. In speaking with MAC people about SimpleFilter they would say that the built in spam filter works fine. I knew this wouldn't last very long. It is a full-time job in keeping a spam filter solution that works well. Thats what we do at SimpleFilter so that the user doesn't have to.
 
8:47:19 AM    


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