Karls Blog

This is a classic :) Type the word 'failure' into Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky"...

Well, those innovative guys with a bucket of cash from MS are at it again. I wonder what this is all about?

http://origenxbox360.com/

Slashdot has some guesses:

"Gamespot has posted an article related to the adver-teasement Microsoft has set up at Origenxbox360.com. It seems that the counter will be hitting zero in less than 12 hours. It is speculated that once the zero-hour is reached, the site will open up with puzzles and riddles which may give away information or even prizes pertaining to the 360. Also from an article on xbox.ign.com, "In a somewhat shocking discovery, there is a Latin message written into one of the tree's lower branches. To view the message, zoom in a few times on the furthest left root near the bottom of the tree. The message reads 'in hoc spatio arbor noster floruit, fecundus pomis Elysii ignoti, quo in loco ludent electi, ab Originis angelis circumdati'. We consulted the IGN annals of ultimate intelligence and wisdom and came up with the following rough translation: 'In this place may our fertile tree bloom with fruits in strange elysium, where in the place of the chosen, angels surround the origin'." Something big is about to happen."

Well, I've been using the Firefox Developers Toolbar since it was launched, and being a web guy (so much so, my old number plate was 'WEBBOY', but didn't have the female pull you'd think :)) I was wrapt to see the IE guys eventually agreed it was a great tool and released the IE Developers Toolbar. Been using for almost a week now, and its VERY nice - love how you can really drill down into the DOM with the DOM Explorer - makes tweaking CSS / XHTML / DIVs etc super duper easy :)

PS This post goes out to Dave who thinks a quality post a few times a week just isn't worth it :)

Breaking news

Hall free despite murderous rampage
by STAFF REPORTERS

---

Sydney forward Barry Hall is free to play in the AFL  Grand Final this weekend despite having killed three people before last week's preliminary final against St Kilda.

It has been discovered that Hall stopped off at a  7-11 last Friday night and ruthlessly gunned down three people who were holding  him up in the queue by taking too long to pay for a packet of Mentos.

But the AFL Tribunal ruled last night that because  Hall had been on his way to the game at the time of the incident, contact could  be deemed to be 'in play'.

They further ruled that his conduct could not be  considered 'deliberate', only merely 'reckless', insofar as it was reckless how  he had pulled the gun from his pocket and fired off about 30 rounds. Finally, they also ruled that because the bullets struck the victims mainly in the chest, contact was not head-high and should therefore be considered at the lower end of  the scale of offences.

This still left Hall with a total of 1,674,265  points, or a total suspension of 12-15 years, with time off for good behaviour.  But there was a 25% reduction for Hall's guilty plea, and a further 74.9% reduction because of the AFL's naked determination to give Sydney the best possible chance of winning the Premiership.

The end result is that Hall will not only lead the  Swans onto the field this weekend, but has also been promised several  unwarranted free kicks - to be taken at a time of his choosing - to compensate  him for pain and suffering.

An AFL spokesman said they were happy that justice  had prevailed.

"Nobody wants to see a Sydney player ... errrr,  sorry, any player miss an AFL Grand Final," the spokesman said. "Unless, of course, it's a Collingwood player, in which case it's just funny."

"But we think in this case it's a good result for  football. It's certainly a good result for Sydney, and therefore a good result  for us. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and help the Swans cheer squad with their banner."

The spokesman did concede, however, that the Hall  decision had caused problems for the League.

"Hell yeah, it meant we also had to let Gaspar off  for his blatant elbow as a square-off. So don't think we haven't  suffered."

HERE COME THE FINALS :)

Well, I eventually got time to play with a few of the new bits of MS goodness tonite. Thanks to Dave for asking me a few things I hadn't yet worked out, I felt it was time to download and play with the new Sept CTP of VSTS 05.

My first and only issue was getting the other beta / ctp / non release bitz off my play dev box. After a few gos, I found this link to a tool that definately made life much easier! After that tho, I was in for a treat!

Given I live and breathe the Interweb, I was especially interested in how XHTML compliant the ASP.NET controls render, and how they play cross browser.

I found that while the controls used are VERY nice, and WAY better than the ASP.NET 1 guff, they are still not 100% how I'd like them. On the Ford site we recent developed, not 1 table is used - its all DIV layouts and CSS which made it VERY easy to reskin. While XHTML does technically allow for the use of tables, in my experience using a pure DIV/CSS layout is a) easier to maintain and b) degrades much nicer in older browsers / pocket pc / printers etc. I'm going to spend some more time over the next few evenings trying to see if I can hack any of the controls as I'm starting to get into some proper ASP.NET 2.0 dev. All in all tho, I'm DELIGHTED with the way MS is moving towards better cross browser compatability - I even noticed the MSDN subscriber downloads now works in Firefox and Safari - SWEET :)

Now, if someone gave me the Beta 3 for Foundation Server, my life would be a much happier place :) Oh well, suppose I've got beer and Foxtel until then ;)

BTW Dave, Clarry is getting more love than you AND I! I wish I was a 6 inch high plastic doll sometimes!

Umbraco, you are my new best friend! For those who dont know Umbraco, its an Open Source C# ASP.NET CMS solution and man, does this thing ROCK!

We do a lot of enterprise CMS deployments using a variety of CMS products like FatWire, RedDot and Sitecore to name a few. These are all well and good for larger clients that have the ability to invest heavily in an enterprise CMS solution with features like workflow and revision tracking. But given the breadth of our clients, we also have the need for a good low to mid range CMS solution, and Umbraco is it!

Its build entirely in managed code, has a great extention engine (you can use .NET controls or XSLT), solid templating and a fantastic UI. Oh, and Frank would be delighted to see how easy it is to implement an RSS feed :) I'm going to do a sample build for an internal project over the weekend / early next week just to get a feel for it, and will post my experiences when I'm done!

I should actually thank the Scobleizer for pointing me to this lil bewty! ;) Thanks mate!

This is VERY kewl - LINQ - Language INtegrated Query - bringing query and set operations to the C# / VB world. This will be way fun :)

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2005/09/13/464904.aspx

using System;

using System.Query;

using Danielfe;

 

class Program

{

    static void Main(string[] args)

    {

        string[] aBunchOfWords = {"One","Two", "Hello",

  "World", "Four", "Five"};

    

        var result =   

            from s in aBunchOfWords // query the string array

            where s.Length == 5     // for all words with length = 5

            select s;               // and return the string

       

        //PrintToConsole is an Extension method that prints the value

        result.Print();

    }

}

 

This application prints the following result

Hello

World

Since everyone you meet these days asks for a blog link, thought I'd get one up and running. dasBlog seemed like a simple choice, and after an average installation (if I had RTFM I'd be sweet, but if I RTFM all the time, I'd spend 10 hours a day RTFMing :) seems to be running nicely. Drop me a comment if you think I made the wrong choice in 'blog enablement' software ;)