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I don't know how many people are still reading this blog but a very Merry Christmas to all of you. Hope Santa brings you something nice.
And for those of you in the UK, don't forget to watch 'Doctor Who' Christmas special[^] 7pm BBC1 Christmas Day
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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My littlecatdevelopment domain has been down for the last 36 hours... but it is back now and the email has started flowing in.
206 of the messages were spam to the email address I used in the Industry contacts here at CP. I've known for a while this address had be farmed from the CP page, but just let the spam get filtered into the junk-mail folder of Outlook.
Most of the emails are complete garbage, unreadable rubbish. 206 in 36 hours is a little excessive though, so I guess it is time to expire the email address. I didn't use it for a lot anyway, I just need to change my website's backend to use a different address in the email script.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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All the presents are bought and wrapped. The tree is up... even if it only has the lights on at the moment. I wasn't in the mood for adding the other decorations.
I've got a busy week ahead. Lots of work to be done before I take a Christmas break. My contract has been extended till the end of Jan now. (Or at least that was what I was told in a drunken conversation last Thursday night)
I'm looking forward to having a break from going out to work. I've got some ideas I want to add to my LxFramework (workflow/state machine driven input forms). Plus I've got a lot of WDevs coding to catch up on.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Home from Christmas party at 1:30am
Up at 6am
In work at 8am.
Still, a good time was had by all... even if my dancing wasn't up to scratch.
Is it time to go home yet?
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Amen. Now, please tell me when it is Saturday so that I can open my eyes.
(I am sure your dancing was fine.)
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Colib and ilikecameras.
K(arl) wrote:
oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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Paul Watson wrote: (I am sure your dancing was fine.)
Nah. It was very drunk dancing, but I was too wasted to really care. Still had plenty of beautiful girls to dance with though, so I couldn't have been too embarrasing. 
Paul Watson wrote: Amen. Now, please tell me when it is Saturday so that I can open my eyes.
I've left work early. I'm going back to bed for a bit.
I'm starting to recall in more detail my exploits of last night.  I'm really glad Christmas parties only happen once a year. Luckily my friend was pretty wasted too, so she doesn't remember the things I said to her... but least I stopped short of proclaiming my undying love for her.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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As you grow older, Christmas Day tends to lose the excitement that you feel when you are a child.
Having just watched this trailer[^], I'm starting to feel a little of that old Christmas magic coming back.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I can't stop playing Madonna's latest album. I don't buy much music anymore but this one was well worth the purchase. (Actual cold hard CD rather than buying in a pure digital form online)
It certainly gets my coding juices flowing. Whilst 'Hung Up' is the star of the CD... ripping off Abba is always a good thing, the rest of the album is very good too. It certainly bears up to repeated plays other the course of a day without becoming stale.
Almost makes me want to get up and dance 
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Michael in tight, spandex pink gym shorts. Woot!
haha. Good to hear that the whole album is good and not just that one now-overplayed track.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Colib and ilikecameras.
K(arl) wrote:
oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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Doesn't time fly when you are having fun.
Civ 4 hasn't proved as addictive as feared... apart from one Saturday night a couple of weeks back when I had a bout of 'just one more turn' syndrome. To be honest, the game is very good but I've just been too busy with work to really get into it.
My current "employeer" is proving to be a late payer, taking the 30 days to the limit and then beyond, so I haven't had chance to buy an MSDN subscription yet for VS2005. But as Microsoft seem to have used the same marketing strategy as the XBox360, it probably won't be March till I can't find somebody to supply me with the new Visual Studio.
Lots of work to be finished by Christmas, my current DBA role has turned more into DBA/Developer/Report Writer and all round get it sorted guy. It is a lot of fun and the kind of thing I do get off on. Very tiring though. I need to work on getting a better balance of paying work vs personal projects.
Despite my reservations, I've placed a Google Adsense block on my WDevs blog. More as an experiment really. The WDevs server is costing me more and more in bandwidth and I need to try and offset some of the costs. I'm reluctant to place advertising on other people's blogs but may need to try and see if Google ads on the WDevs main page and the open-source hosting pages bring in any revenue. I need to get a solicitor to look at the terms and conditions first though. I just need to get some money together first. I've got a lot of things I want to sort out on WDevs before the New Year, but finding the time is difficult due to a heavy workload elsewhere.
I've also been trying to dig through the mire of open-source licencing, trying to find one that suits my needs but can co-exist with the GPL'd MyXaml, the free version of SandBar not to mention numerous controls that I use from CP. Any advice would be welcomed.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Going out to work everyday is taking up a big chunk of my time at the moment. I'm behind on my WDevs projects and my day-to-day administration of the site has slipped a little.
But I'm going to have to get caught up in the next day or so, because I can foresee a lot of time-wasting happening in November.
First Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith DVD gets delivered on Monday. I only got to see the movie once at the cinema so I want to watch it once again on its own and then do the full 6 movie marathon and see how my perceptions of the story change. And also see all the parallels between Anakin's and Luke's stories. Somebody told me that the position and movements of Padme calling out to Anakin in Anakin's nightmare are exactly the same as what Luke does at the end 'Jedi' when he's being toasted by Sidious and that is what finally makes Vader save his son. I look forward to seeing if that is true because it wasn't something I picked up on when I saw the movie earlier this year.
Then the biggest time-waster of all is out in early November, Civilization IV So I expect that will take up a lot of my free-time.
And then finally at the end of the month, Doctor Who - The Complete First Series Boxset is released.
So I'd better get on with my work-load today, otherwise the projects are going to slip another month.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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[warning personal post without any details because I don't know who may be reading this]
I was looking forward to today. A few things were starting to fall into place and it looked like I might have a second chance at something I blew two years ago.
Sadly, things didn't work out as I'd hoped and a much wanted event got hijacked by others.
I just feel so low, drained, tired and defeated right now that I'm struggling to remain positive. Yesterday I was on-top of the world and now I feel the darkness pulling me back.
I need to go home, switch on the music and forget about today.
After all, this is the long-game and there may be another chance.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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As I signed out on the fire-log today at work, it suddenly struck me that I've been working 10hr days for the past three weeks. No wonder, I've felt so tired.
I think I'm going to have to cut that down by a couple of hours, otherwise I'll never get anything productive done at home.
Both WDevs and my LxFramework projects have remained untouched for the last few weeks too. I really want to get on with these but by the end of the working day I'm too brain-dead to even start thinking about them. I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of going out to work everyday.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I see CP has been hit pretty hard by trolls and troublemakers. From the Lounge to the poll's alternative answers. I feel sad about it. We have a great community here that has policed itself well for so long now. I've always been proud to call myself a CPian and so this kind of behaviour really does disappoint me.
I feel for Chris and the team having to try and clear up this mess of the past few days.
I need to have a think about how I can start posting some more positive content to the Lounge to try and drown out some of the noise. Working fulltime on-site has meant that I don't get to visit CP as often as I used to when I worked at home. But only the community can beat the troublemakers, so lets see what we can do.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Yes, Michael, CP has taken quite a hit in the last 3-4 months. Now we have a troll posting with other people's names, a couple of idiots littering every post of theirs in the Soapbox with profanity, a coward who votes a number of posts a 1 and doesn't bother to leave a comment, massive flame wars, and a surge in programming questions in the Lounge. I miss the old days. 
Cheers,
Vikram.
http://www.geocities.com/vpunathambekar
Google talk: binarybandit After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.
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Whilst I'm very interested in the 'web as a platform' idea. I think this post by David Hayden [^] makes a good point.
I think the comparison of 'DoubleClick' with 'Google Adsense' is very funny and to my mind, scarily accurate.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Star Wreck[^]
Only mildly amusing and the subtitles take a little of the humour away, but some of the best special effects I've seen in an amateur movie.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Apart from in the fx dominated scenes what are the production values like? 554m is a bit much for me to download and then find crap production values.
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
Colib and ilikecameras.
K(arl) wrote:
oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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Paul Watson wrote:
Apart from in the fx dominated scenes what are the production values like? 554m is a bit much for me to download and then find crap production values.
The production values are pretty good. It suffers a little from being a foreign language film. The parody is well observed but you'll need to have a good working knowledge of 'Trek' and 'Babylon 5' to get all the jokes.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I never really got into poetry at school but occasionally I come across some verse that I really like and that resonates with me,
Here's one by Philip Larkin
They f*** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f***ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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As well as having a paying job, FireFox has actually updated itself without me having to manually go to the web page and download the latest version!
Will wonders never cease. I guess the competition from IE7 has got them running scared
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Well almost nothing. I'm really enjoying going out to work again. It's nice to be working alongside other people again. Even if there internal development processes make me want to cry. (i.e the complete lack of them)
However, the one thing I do miss is being able to listen to music whilst I work. I'm sat here, with my WMP going through the songs and music I haven't listened to in the last 30 days. Happily coding away to some my more diverse elements of my eclectic collection of songs, movie and tv soundtracks.
Its a real buzz to be writing some C# for the first time in about 9 days. SQL is okay but I'm still a software developer at heart and not a DBA.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I've been busy working a lot this week and so my visits to CP have been restricted. I've just been trying to catch up with this week's 'lounge' postings.
Damn. The forum has gone down hill really fast hasn't it. What happened to the good old CodeProject spirit and etiquette. I hope it was just a one off, otherwise CP will start to lose its appeal very quickly. 
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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