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Take this quiz and find out.
And whaddaya know? Turns out:
 | I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction. |
Which science fiction writer are you?
I couldn't ask for a bigger compliment!
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Yesterday's Israel Visual C# Users Group meeting at Microsoft, Ra'anana featured a lecture from guest speaker Tomer Shamam and he gave a talk about Windows Presentation Foundation.
The meeting was a mess. Here are some highlights to show why I left yesterday's meeting disappointed:
- The invitation for the meeting said it'll start at 17:00. When we got there, we were told the lecture will only begin at 17:30. MS brought in pizzas for us while we waited - thanks for that!
- The lecture did not actually start at 17:30. It was delayed for a further 15 minutes because it took Tomer ages to boot his laptop.
- The lecture wasn't well structured. It was based on a PowerPoint introduction that was intended for a much longer session. Tomer skipped many slides and it was difficult to keep track of how things progressed.
- WPF demos did not work very well. One attractive feature - embedding video into a button control - failed because Tomer's laptop wasn't powerful enough for it.
To balance things a bit let me say that Tomer definitely knows his WPF and I've learned quite a bit from yesterday's lecture. But the points above require significant improvements on behalf of both IVCUG and Tomer himself.
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I just tried to register with Google Checkout - Google's shiny new payment service. To my surprise, I could not find my beloved country of Israel in the countries drop down list.
Turns out Google Checkout is only available in a few, select, countries. I learned this and little more in a support article buried deep inside the site.
Why isn't Google Checkout available in Israel and so many other countries? Google isn't saying.
Until then - Bad service Google dudes!
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I'd like to give a thumbs up to WikiSeek - a new search engine that indexes Wikipedia and is a well needed alternative to Wikipedia's inferior search engine.
Wikipedia have been taking their sweet time improving their search engine so SearchMe - a search engine company - was clever enough to fill the void and implement a better solution.
BTW, If you're using YubNub, I've added a command there for WikiSeek, called "week".
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Pete Stevens' neighbors were "stealing" his wireless internet access. So he decided to secure it in an original fashion.
First he mapped all their web requests to go to KittenWar (danger! high saccharin levels). Then he decided to hook them up to a proxy server that would turn their internet literally on its head:
Here are the technical details :).
Via MonkeyBites.
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Just had my first encounter with VSTO, trying to embed a C# macro in an Excel workbook. I fired up the ol' Visual Studio 2005, created a new "Excel Workbook" project and bumped straight into this:
"Programmatic access to the Microsoft Office Visual Basic for Applications project system could not be enabled. If Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Excel is running, it can prevent programmatic access from being enabled. Exit Word or Excel before opening or creating your project."
A quick google gave me the solution for Office 2003 (thanks go to Harry Miller - MSFT):
- On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Security.
- Click the Trusted Publishers tab.
- Select the check box next to Trust access to Visual Basic Project, and then click OK.
- Close all Office applications and try your project again.
But! I'm using Office 2007 beta. Where on earth is the Tools menu there? Yours truly spent well over 2 minutes digging through the menus and ribbons to give you the following instructions:
- Open Excel 2007.
- Click the Office Button (top-left most button in the window)
- Click the Excel Options button.
- Click Trust Center in the menu on the left.
- Click Trust Center Settings in the window on the right.
- In the new window that opens click Macros in the menu on the left.
- Check the box next to Trust Access to the VBA project object model.
- Click OK.
- Click OK.
- Close all Office applications and try your project again.
Works like a charm, as long as you accept the security implications of allowing Excel and Word programmatic access to the "Microsoft Office Visual Basic for Applications project system" mentioned above.
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Here's a wonderful Kodak ad found via the Feng-GUI blog. I just love crazy, raving rants when they're done so well:
When a company finally realizes it's lost its innovative edge years ago, that's the first step in getting it back.
PS - I'll be writing some more about Feng GUI once I actually get it to actually work for me :). It keeps giving me a "web request timeout" message for some unknown reason.
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You might recall my previous post about innovations in man-machine interfaces that bring us closer to the vision seen in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report - where Tom Cruise interacts with a computer by moving his hands in space to move 3D "objects" on screen.
That post was about a novel touch screen that supports multiple points of contact - allowing for 2D interactions that is much more intuitive than using a keyboard or a mouse.
Now comes a brilliant project from Microsft Research's Andy Wilson. He's written a program that utilizes a simple 30$ webcam to monitor his hand movements, in space, to interact with his computer.
He calls his system TAFFI (Thumb and Forefinger Interface). You can see a video he posted below and you can read more about it in a paper he published titled Robust Computer Vision-Based Detection of Pinching for One and Two-Handed Gesture Input (Requires Registration :( ).
TAFFI is very impressive considering the humble hardware it relies upon and the potential it has to be extended from relying on a 2D view from one webcam to a 3D view by two or more high definition cameras.
I've had the pleasure of experiencing something similar at the Adidas store on Champs-Elysees in Paris about a week ago. In addition to highly overpriced Adidas sportswear the store also invites the users to interact, using their hands, with commercial presentations displayed on big screens. Adidas calls it their "mi Innovation Center".
One at a time, a shop visitor can step up to such a screen and put his arm forward. Something like a green laser scans the area of the wrist for about a second and then the user can move his hand pointing at different parts of the screen and an on-screen cursor follows. When the cursor is made to rest on one of several thumbnail pictures floating on screen, that is considered a "click" (in old-fashioned mouse terms :) ) and the thumbnail opens up into a picture or a video.
It was a lot of fun to play with for a few minutes, but it's not quite "there" yet. This toy only supports one point of interaction at a time and you need to be careful not to move too fast or out of a certain zone in space otherwise calibration is lost.
And here's a video of the thing from YouTube (Careful, loud soundtrack):
Partially via Gadgetopia
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It makes me somewhat sad to write about the Linux community's latest attempt at bringing their product to the wider public.
MakeTheMove.net is a website dedicated to spreading the word on why Linux and other FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) are the right choice for average Joes and Joans and not just for the ubergeeks.
Ironically, the website looks like a parody of Linux' user unfriendliness. It is a failed attempt at being communicative. The layout of graphic elements and text is downright bad and unattractive. The long (and wide) paragraphs are difficult to read and worse - downright boring. The "Why Should I Move?" section is a depressing example of this.
I am a fan of Linux as a concept, I guess. Nut as much as I admire the development of a powerful and robust open source OS, the last time I installed Linux on my machine was back in the days of RedHat v5.2. MakeTheMove.net certainly doesn't make me want to give it another try.
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StreetTech just ran an item about a website called LibraryThing. It lets you populate an online catalog of your books by scanning the barcodes on the covers into your computer.
The interesting question is - How do you scan a barcode into a PC and onto the web? Gareth from StreetTech suggests using something called a CueCat. This is an old barcode scanner gadget that was distributed freely to magazine subscribers a few years back (all Wired subscribers received them at some point).
These things are no longer manufactured - the company went bust after it was discovered that the company kept track of what specific users had scanned violating their privacy. Buying a standard barcode scanner like the ones you see at your local supermarket is somewhat expensive (starting at ~100$). Problem.
The solution? Barcopedia! This website connects to your webcam and if you point it at a barcode, it will scan it in real time and give you the full details for the item (provided it's is in their DB of course).
I can tell you I was as excited as a little boy the first time I scanned a book, the website pinged and the details showed up on the screen.
I wonder what other magic can be done to barcodes via Barcopedia and how extensible it is. If it has a decently open API, I can imagine myself cataloging my entire library through their service.
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I'm having a debate (with myself mostly) concerning the proper way to name private methods in C# projects.
For some forgotten reason, I have been accustomed to use camel casing when naming private methods - as opposed to using Pascal casing for public methods. Example:
private int getBlockInfo(int memberID) {...}
public int GetBlockInfo(int memberID) {...}
For me this seems very comfortable for differentiating between private "secret" methods within a class and public methods that are visible outside. This is similar in my mind to using camel case for private members while using Pascal case for matching public properties.
private int memberID;
public int MemberID { get { return memberID; } set { memberID = value; } }
Still, feeling somewhat insecure concerning the origin of this habit of mine, I consulted the C# "Naming Guidelines" document buried deep within the MSDN. To my surprise the "Method Naming Guidelines" sections ignored the issue of private vs public methods and instructed that all methods should be named in Pascal case.
There is not doubt in my mind that I should follow Microsoft naming guidelines at all times. And yet there's this nagging feeling that my current habit rises not from whim but from logic. I must've seen this convention somewhere and adopted it. Do any of you, my trusted readers, know where it came from?