Mai 2006 - Posts

• Hard Rock Hallelujah

  I don't normally like the Eurovision song contest. In fact, I haven't ever watched one. I can name only two winners from the past 15 years or so (Insieme by some italian guy and Katharina and the Waves with (I think) Love Shine A Light), and people tell me that Belgium scored second place a couple of years ago. On Thursday I was leafing through the U-Bahn newspaper and saw a photograph from the semi finale: a heavily made up singer with talons and bat wings. This "Kiss meets Meat Loaf on steroids" concept immediately appealed to me, so I decided to watch this years Grand Prix de la Chanson. Unbelievable but true: Lordi, from the country that brought us Häkkinen, Räikönnen, Apycalyptica and Nightwish, won! Hard rock, masks and pyrotechnics won over chart-trash. I like it that the self-important Eurovision song contest has been put into place. A bad day for them, a great day for (rock) music! Posted Mai 21 2006, 11:56 by Dirk with no comments

• Enter the Personas

  A while ago I read The Inmates are running the Asylum. I wrote a couple of Personas (*) for my QuestMaster programs, but then the wedding madness took hold and QuestMaster went dormant again. It's still dormant, and the wedding madness is still reigning, but those sheets of paper with the personas are starting to irritate me so I decided to post the content on my blog. Jim, 28 years old Jim used to play Hero Quest when he was a teenager. He spent countless hours with the game, and has fond memories of it. He recently started playing HQ again with this children. Jim uses computers at work and while on the road. He's an insurance sales representative so he has a notebook with programs like Outlook, Word, Excel, and his company's propriatory insurance software. He knows his way around with the everyday things of the programs, but doesn't want to deal with any of the "complex computer stuff". Jim usually is GM when playing HQ. His HQ set is missing a few combat dice and cards. Jim thinks that "shuffling the deck of treasure cards before drawing one" is silly. Tom, 23 years old Tom is a hobby programmer. He downloaded Visual Basic 2005 Express, and he's impressed by the drag-and-drop ease of creating programs. He plays HQ once in a while, but setting up the board is so tedious. It woulbe be nice for him to have a computer program that takes care of all that. He thinks it shouldn't be too difficult to create one, but he doesn't have all that much time to  spare. Kyle, 12 years old Kyle loves to play games. He has an XBox, and plays things like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on it. His father recently introduced him to Hero Quest, which is sort of like a board game version of Elder Scrolls. Kyle loves to create things, and HQ's potential for creating your own missions sounds cool He wishes there were a computer program to help him with it, because cutting and pasting bits of paper is definitely uncool. Posted Mai 20 2006, 06:43 by Dirk with no comments

• Candle 2.0

  We are busy decorating the candle. At first, we wanted to add some intricate celtic knot borders, but then we realized that that would be far too much work. So we did a Candle "reboot" and decided to work on three or four "pictures". They are made from small strips of wax, for example a red broad strip bordered by two small yellow strip.  It all looks very Candle 2.0. Posted Mai 18 2006, 04:18 by Dirk with no comments

• The Two Rings

  This is actually old news, but hey: the rings have arrived. They are made from the red gold of Angarak, and they are very seductive indeed. My precious .... Ahum. Posted Mai 18 2006, 06:55 by Dirk with no comments

• GP of Spain: didn't see it? You didn't miss a thing

  The GP of Spain was a very frustrating thing for me. Nothing happened, I had stuff to do for the wedding, but couldn't tear myself away from the TV for fear of missing the one critical scene. That didn't happen though. Winner of the Day: the Spanish crowd. They wanted to see a dominant victory by their national hero Fernando Alonso, and they got it. Loser of the Day: everybody who wanted to see a thrilling race. Posted Mai 18 2006, 06:52 by Dirk with no comments

• My Garments have arrived!

  My garments have arrived. They came from the USA where they were tailor-made, based upon the clothing worn by a secondary character from a well-known fantasy movie trilogy.  I'm not going to give any details or photos because I don't want to spoil the surprise.  I will of course publish photos after the wedding.  Let's say for now that I look very stately in my garments. Posted Mai 10 2006, 08:35 by Dirk with no comments

• GP of Europe: a typical Schumacher victory

  I watched the GP of Europe at the Nürburgring, which was reasonable OK. I was quite sure that Schumacher would win again, and the facts did not let me down. Schumacher took the win in typical fashion: keeping up with the leader until the leader makes his second pit stop, then putting the hammer down for a few laps and emerging from the pits in the lead. Or virtual lead in this case since Räikönnen who still had to pit was still in front of him. Winner of the Day: I'd say Ferrari but that's a repetition and possibliy boring. Why not go for Nico Rosberg? Loser of the Day: Yuji Ide. I think the FIA did the right thing by advising Aguri to replace Ide. Ide made the impression of being overwhelmed by F1 at all times, and his mistake at Imola (where he send Albers flying into the graveltrap) made it painfully obvious. He made his way into F1 because he's Japanese. Now he'll have to fight his way back by being good. Time will tell. Posted Mai 08 2006, 01:02 by Dirk with no comments

• Frodo is healthy again, Sammy takes a tour

  Frodo contracted Chlamydia (the cat version), probably while still in the Cat Care Home. The vet gave us antibiotica and eye drips, which is a real battle to administer to a cat. The antibiotica cure lasted for four weeks, resulting in diarrhea. So we had to give him bioflorin as well. After a week of diarrhea, the vet decided to stop the antibiotica treatment and do another Chlamydia test. Since then Frodo has become increasingly happier, turning back into the (slightly over-)active and inquisitive cat that he was when we received him. On wednesday we finally got the result from the test, which confirmed what we believed: Frodo is healthy again!  Now we need to feed him a bit extra so he doesn't look so skinny anymore. Sammy on the other hand needs to be fed a bit less because he gained weight during Frodo's antibiotica trip. Frodo didn't eat that much, and Sammy ate the rest. By the time we were on to that, Sammy had already gained 500 gramms! Sammy was not happy at all when we took him to the vet last time to have a chip implanted. When we came back home and were only one meter or so from the house door, Sammy's cage sprung open (we have since fixed that defect), Sammy jumped out and immediately jumped at the house door: he wanted back into his home. So I thought he was cured of his tendency to lurk at the house door when we come home, hoping to catch a glimpse of the outside world. For a week or two, things were indeed so. On Tuesday, however, Sammy decided that The House Is Not Enough and when Tatjana came home, Sammy made a run for it. Tatjana shouted "Sammy is out of the house", but by the time I got to the door, Sammy was back inside: apparently he decided after one meter of freedom that the world is not all that it's cracked up to be and went back home. Posted Mai 05 2006, 06:58 by Dirk with no comments

• Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0 - Programming Smart Client Data Applications with .NET

  I just finished reading Brian Noyes's book Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0 - Programming Smart Client Data Applications with .NET. A highly informative book that does a good job of introducing you to all that is new in data bindings in Windows Forms 2.0.  Brian Noyes talks both about self-written and designer-generated code, about typed data sets and business objects, about standard controls and self-made controls. There's also a chapter about the interfaces that contribute to databinding - one of the most interesting chapters in the book to me. After a day of playing around with all this new knowledge, I came to a few conclusions. The book is highly recommended to any windows forms programmer worth his salt. You need to know about the new data binding in Windows Forms, and this book is a compact way to get it. My expectations of Windows Forms databinding are still too high. There is not yet designer support for complex hierarchical or down-drilling databinding. I would even settle for declarative, xml-based databinding with full Intellisense support for all the levels of data binding. No such luck, I'll have to wait for WPF it seems. There is no kriffing Repeater control in Windows Forms!  Or even a template-able data grid or list view. Overal: I can either achieve what I want to achieve with a lot of self-made code. I neither have the spare time nor the inclination to write that. I want to write my UI and databinding code using a few point-and-click or xml declarations, and reserve the real programming for the interesting stuff: the business layer.  It seems that I will have to wait for WPF to achieve that. When will Beta 2 come? Posted Mai 04 2006, 06:37 by Dirk with no comments