Blue Onion Software

Friday Links #92

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:07:36 GMT

Programming

John Resig - Simple "Class" Instantiation
Raphaël—JavaScript Library
Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE
FluentPath: a fluent wrapper around System.IO - Tales from the Evil Empire
Javascript: Function scoping at Mark Needham
Sharp Things : Neat Samples: MEF in F# Scripts
Code Bubbles Project: Rethinking the User Interface Paradigm of Integrated Development Environments
A Visual Look At The LINQ SelectMany Operator

Science and Technology

New Plastic Conducts Heat Better Than Metals, But Only in One Direction | Popular Science
Technology Review: Ultra-Efficient Gas Engine Passes Test
Mysterious cosmic 'dark flow' tracked deeper into universe

On the Web

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - We moved your ASP.NET website cheese, in a good way
Why a salad costs more than a Big Mac - Chart Of The Day - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Stuff I Just Dig

You Built What!? A Closer Look at The Jet-Powered ATV | Popular Science
It's 2010 - finally my jet pack is here!

Tweetz 2.1 Update

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:25:06 GMT

Now that the rewrite is done, I’m adding new stuff. It’s much easier to do so with the new code structure. Here’s what’s new in this release.

No focus tool tips – hover over a link and you’ll see the full link, or the the reverse lookup of the link if it can be found, regardless of whether the gadget has focus or not. I had to implement my own tooltips to do this. Hopefully, they’re not too ugly.
Show links in post – By default, tweetz displays links as “[link]”. Since most links are shortened, seeing the actual link text has little meaning. The “[link]” notation uses less screen real-estate. Still, some have asked to see the actual link in the post, so now there’s an option to do just that.
Notification of new versions – A surprising number of you asked to have the program notify you when newer versions of tweetz are available. Personally, I’ve always found these reminders annoying but hey, it’s a free country (or at least a free program). Checks for new versions are made every 24 hours if you choose to opt-in.

There have been lots of other requests for features. I’ve kind of lost track of them. If I’ve left your request out it’s likely because I forgot, so don’t hesitate to remind me.

Available on the downloads page.

Friday Links #91

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:34:14 GMT

Programming

Quirks in dot NET Part 1 | Thycotic Software Ltd. | Team Blog
Jeff Wilcox – Column guides for Visual Studio 2010: An extension
Lester's WPF blog : XAML Power toys add-in for VS2010
Is it possible to consume .asmx with jQuery (POST method, not JSON)? - ASP.NET Forums
MEF instead of PRISM for Silverlight 3 Part 2 of 2: Region Management
Dan Rigsby » XmlSerializer vs DataContractSerializer: Serialization in Wcf
Thread Diagnostics - Performance Tuning with the Concurrency Visualizer in Visual Studio 2010
Daniel Cazzulino's Blog : How to quickly setup the best free Diff/Merge tool with VS 2010
1 Simple Step for Commanding in Silverlight - Christopher Bennage

Applications

FlightGear Flight Simulator
Prezi - The zooming presentation editor
Notepad2 Free Download and Reviews – Fileforum (recently upgraded)

Science and Technology

World's Most Sensitive Neutrino Experiment Launches, To Seek Answers About Matter's Origins
NASA's Project M Puts Scientists' Avatars On the Moon | Popular Science
NASA Finds Millions of Tons of Water Ice in Lunar Craters, No Moon Bombing Necessary | Popular Science

On the Web

After Digital Switch, Basic TV Offers Cable Alternative : NPR
Consumer Reports Electronics Blog: Buzzword: What makes a TV "3D-ready"?
The Man Behind MacGyver: Swiss Army Knife or Duct Tape?

Stuff I Just Dig

Video: In Attempt at True VTOL, F-35 Makes Shortest, Slowest Landing Yet | Popular Science
I'm Sad Speed Skiing Isn't an Olympic Sport | Popular Science
Apple Sues the World for Patent Infringement

Visual Studio 2010 RC and Tablet PC’s

mike@blueonionsoftware.com — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:12:40 GMT

I’m one of those lucky blokes that got a tablet PC at PDC 09 last year. It’s a nice little laptop with good battery life and a bright screen. I’ve not used the touch interface much. Windows applications feel a bit too uncomfortable on a small touch screen.

I’ve been running Visual Studio 2010 RC on my laptop for a while now. It seems to have a somewhat strained relationship with the tablet features.

One issue I was having was that I could not open several dialogs including the File Open Dialog and the Add References Dialog. The former was annoying but the later was down right intolerable. Whenever I tried to open any of these dialogs, all I got was a brief flicker of the program frame. No dialog. Total bummer.

I’ve come to find that the issue had to do with the Tablet PC Input Services. I had disabled this service (Microsoft’s recommendation) to work around a crash in intellisense. Later on the dialog issues started. I didn’t connect the two events because of the lag between the time I disabled the service and the dialogs not working.

Enabling the Tablet PC Input Service fixed the issue with the dialogs. I’m sure there’s a logical connection to why this should be but it’s certainly not obvious from an end user perspective. Anyways, I thought I would relay my experience in case anyone else encounters this issue.