SuperJason’s Personal Blog

Yesterday I went to a Packer tailgate party at the stadium with some people from work. It was a lot of fun, and there was a great turnout. We had around 15 people there, including employees from Denmark, Manchester, and Costa Rica. We played a few games, ate some food, and watched the Packers beat the Vikings. John had brought a 27″ tv, and hooked it up to a deep cycle battery with an inverter. It worked out fairly well. I ended up going home around the end of the first quarter, which is when it really started getting cold out.

This afternoon Melissa and I went out to visit my parents, and help them move some office furniture around. Mike and Maria were also there, so of course we all had a great time. We introduced everyone to the game of Swap!. Everything was going well until I spilled my drink while trying to slap the slap card. It was all downhill from there. Right after cleaning up the entire mess, Mike decided to show me up and spill his drink also! His drink got over all the cards so I had to dry a lot of them out individually. We then decided to play a much more tame game of Uno. After playing that for a while, Mike decided to spill his drink yet again.

While playing Swap!, we figured out that if we moved our hands the right way, and make the right sound, we could get the card we needed to show up. It ended up working 6 times in a row. I’m sure you are curious about the probability of that happening, so I decided to calculate it out for you. In order to do so, we can’t count the first time that it worked. That is because we had to try a number of different techniques before we found one that worked, so the first one was a given. So the probability is calculated as the number of possible outcomes each time, raised to the power of the number of times it happened successively. Since we were trying to get a specific color each time, and there is only 1 correct color out of 4, it ends up being 4 to the 5th power (4×4x4×4x4), or 1 in 1024.

I also caught an opposing team member trying to cheat again. Of course they try to deny it every time. One time I caught Melissa pointing to her blue shirt. The last card that she had was blue. They tried to convice me that it was only a coincidence. Tonight, I caught Maria pointing to the red in her remaining Uno card. Of course her last card was red, another coincidence supposedly. So while we are calculating probability, lets take a look at this one. The probability of me guessing which card someone has each time is 1 in 4. If you take 2 successive cases, it is 1 in 16. 3 successive cases would be 1 in 64. It quickly becomes apparent that it is unlikely that I did not break their code each time. Yet they still deny it.

Here is a list of software that I use on my Pocket PC. I’m hoping it will help other people get started with their Pocket PC’s. Let me know if there are any others you recommend!

• Remote Display Control For Pocket PC - Allows you to control your Pocket PC remotely from a desktop machine. This is pretty cool for working with your Pocket PC with a mouse and keyboard. It could also be useful for software development and debugging.
• Stocks & Weather Today - Great program that works with your today screen to show you the current weather and weekly forecast. It does a great job for weather. It also has some nice graphical icons for a visual display. I don’t use the stock functionality, so I don’t have anything to say about that.
• Pocket Informant 5.5 - My favorite program for managing tasks, appointments, and contacts. It has a ton of features, many of which I don’t use. 95% of the time, I use the agenda view. It’s gives me a list of the days appointments, as well as the tasks I need to complete. You can set up different profiles such as “Home” and “Work” that configure different displays.
• GSPlayer - Freeware application for listening to different audio formats. It’s main feature is that it supports streaming radio from the internet. It can be used to stream ShoutCast streams. It’s pretty impressive.
• Resco File Explorer - Excellent applications for managing your files. It has all the features that the built in file explorer has. It also has a registry editor. It’s a must have for development uses.
• Resco Audio Recorder - Excellent program for recording and playing audio. It supports direct encoding to multiple formats including MP3.

I’ve reviewed an application called SourceGear Vault. Their tagline is “A Compelling Replacement for VSS”, and it is just that. It’s file versioning and control system.

Background: Microsoft Visual Source Safe is a file based system managed entirely by its clients. Each client is responsible for security, reading, writing, etc.

So what is different about SourceGear Vault? Instead of a file based system, it uses a SQL Server 2000 database to store the file versions and changes. The client’s are written in C#. To outline the advantages and disadvantages, I’ve listed them below.

Pros:

• Looks and feels just like Source Safe
• Uses a SQL Server 2000 backend
• Corruption is less likely
• Speed is better
• Easier custom searching capabilities
• Can convert source safe database directly
• Written in C#, so their API’s could potentially be used for quick access, and avoid command line parameters.
• Source Safe is not recommended by Microsoft for large databases
• Integrates into Visual Studio 6/.NET 2003
• Visual Build Pro has built in support
• I believe it has a compatible command line interface

Cons:

• Not Free (about $100/developer in bulk)
• Would have to update existing build process

I set up a virtual machine and installed the trial version of Xamlon. Basically it’s a product that was developed by a company that decied to make Microsoft’s Xaml specification available in a product today. Microsoft plans to support Xaml in the next version of Windows (Longhorn).

It took me a little while to figure out how it worked and how it fit in to Microsoft’s technology path and vision. It appears that it is a system for replacing graphical design in your code, with XML, called XAML. It’s kind of like how web applications use HTML or XHTML to define the graphical presentation layer. Beyond that, there is support for cool things like vector based graphics. Their sample applications are fairly impressive at showing off the graphics capabilities. They have some demo’s that have a pure .NET dll for the control, and an XML file that creates the graphics. The forms can be resized to any size, and still look excellent.

So how does it work? From what I can tell, if you want to embed Xaml into a form, you can use the control that they developed as a container. Their control processes the XML and handles the graphics. If you want it to work in your browser, it works nearly the same. There is a .NET control that hosts the XAML application. Xamlon applications can also have embedded .NET controls.

So is it worth using? Maybe. I’m not sure it adds a lot of value to every application, but there are probably some specific applications that could benefit. This puts them in a position to give Flash some competition. When Longhorn gets released, you’ll be able to compile your XAML applications with the supplied compiler, and run their natively without Xamlon. That makes it pretty compelling to purchse a license to Xamlon to be ready for the future.

My mom stopped by today and gave me a new backpack. This thing is awesome. It’s got a compartment to secure my laptop, and compartments for the power supply and accessories. It’s also has elastic in the straps to make it more comfortable. The back and straps have padding and vents to keep cool. It’s pretty amazing. It’s the SwissGear Maxxum by Wenger. It’s from the makers of the genuine swiss army knife. Those guys really know what they are doing.

Thanks mom and dad!

To the rest of you, remember that the backpack is no longer on my christmas list.

The 1.0 release of firefox is here! Download it here: http://www.mozilla.org/firefox. You may have to wait a little while because there are so may people downloading it.

Yesterday morning, Melissa went shopping with her family. Later that evening, we got to meet Carly’s new boyfriend Chuck. He is a very nice guy. Melissa and I have both approved him. We ate supper at Perkins, and then played Fact or Crap, and Swap!. I uploaded some photos here.

As requested, here is my christmas list, version 1.0:

• Roller Stand - Search for “Ball Bearing Roller Stand” at HomeDepot.com
• Coaxial Cable Stripper
• Coaxial Cable Crimper
• Automatic Wire Stripper
• Microsoft Money 2005 Deluxe - Can be purchased at OfficeMax, Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Depot, or online
• Gift certificates to Home Depot, Fleet Farm, Menards, etc.
• Gift certificates to Perkins, Gippers, etc.
• Laptop backpack - Something like this. Doesn’t need to be that exact one. Can be any one that is a backpack and holds a laptop. Nothing too large.

Note: The links are just for reference. Most of the items can be purchased at multiple places.

Thanks!

Adam and Jeni came over so I could fix Jeni’s laptop and play some games. I’m working on reinstalling everything on her laptop so that it runs like it should. We played a few games of Swap! and Sorry!. The rabbit came out to play also. I uploaded a few photos here.