First let me say thanks for stopping by my site. My name is David Hanson-Graville and I am a IT consultant working in the UK. Let me make it clear, I am passionate about technology and specifically .net and its various forms. I've programmed in a range of langages, but I can say, I am now at my happiest when coding with c#. I hope my blog is an enjoyable & educational read and please feel free to email me at David.Hanson@OnTheBlog.net if you have any questions.
It seems .Net 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta are now available from Microsoft for download. This release brings a number of fixes for hundreds of bugs that have been reported by customers.
I’m just hoping that it resolves the constant OutOfMemory exceptions I get when working with the WPF designer. You can find the downloads here.
Slashdot poses an interesting question asking what is the oldest code still running today. Of the 600+ comments so far I have cherry picked a few that I thought were good choices.
I was catching up on some podcasts during my drive to work recently and came across an interesting topic on the BBC's Digital Planet podcast. The discussion was regarding the “impact” cosmic rays can have on our desktop computers and more importantly very expensive grid platforms such as IBM’s Blue Gene. Computer crashes can be annoyng to the average user but on grid platforms running simulations that require accurate data they can be very costly. During the podcast they had interviewed with an Intel researcher (who's name I have forgotten sorry) who was discussing his strategies for counter acting the effects these highly energetic particles can have.
If you get this error in your designer when working with XAML in Visual Studio 2008...make sure you dont have any visual elements that inherit from an abstract class. May seem obvious but can be easily missed.
Could not create an instance of type '{0}'
It seems every six months a new social network is on the scene. If I was to guess who currently reigns supreme I would imagine facebook is likely to be in there. Google trends provides us with some insights into this question.
facebook, myspace & bebo
I will run this graph in a year and see how its changed. Until then make your own minds up.
Firstly.... before you read this, I would really like feedback on this series of posts and the ideas it outlines. I wanted to get that request made on the first line as apparently most humans skip the next paragraph when searching for info. So with that out of the way I will outline what this post is really about.
Corrina Barber has a great post about her new Silverlight controls skins which provide a pencil drawn visual style for the common controls.
Click to see live demo
Its great to see these kinda resources being available online. It showns the power of the WPF templating model and makes us think differently about how user interfaces can be delivered. V cool.