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Oooh dear, I think Disney might have just hit rock bottom. They've been falling for awhile now but this is just trying too hard.
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
The Code Project
Pope Pius II said
"The only prescription is more cowbell. "
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Hi Michael. Thought you might like to know the first episode of Battlestar Galactica is available here. It's totally legal, though you need RealPlayer (though you can use RealPlayer Alternative).
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
The Code Project
Pope Pius II said
"The only prescription is more cowbell. "
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Paul Watson wrote:
Hi Michael. Thought you might like to know the first episode of Battlestar Galactica is available here. It's totally legal, though you need RealPlayer (though you can use RealPlayer Alternative).
That's pretty sweet. Thanks for the link. I haven't seen that episode since it was first shown last year. Plays pretty well too. Must have a decent server on the end or nobody else knows about it yet.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Damn damn damn. I just watched the whole thing and I have to say I am impressed. I really want to see the next episode. Isn't being shown down here though, argh.
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
The Code Project
Pope Pius II said
"The only prescription is more cowbell. "
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Whilst searching for something completely unrelated, I happened upon Emma Kennedy's blog/diary[^]
Emma is one of my favourite comedy performers/writers. I loved her in The Smoking Room[^], not to mention her wonderful work on some of my favourite radio shows (The Now Show, News Quiz and Think the Unthinkable)
Another one to add to the ever growing RSS feed of "famous' people.
Michael
CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Having finally got broadband, I've been able to catch up with some of the streaming movies that my 64k line couldn't cope with.
Recommended viewing for those with a decent internet connection
Pink 5[^] - Ever wonder how the Rebel Alliance would have fared if a Valley Girl was at the controls of an X-wing fighter during the daring raid on the Death Star?
and the funnier sequel
Pink 5 strikes back[^]
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Whilst these forums on CP provide a good blogging resource and even though my 2004 attempt at blogging at mpbutler.net[^] didn't meet much success. I have created a new blog for 2005 over on Wdevs.com[^]
I like the work that Anders and team are doing over there and in an ideal world, I'd like to see a CP/WDevs partnership as they both seem to compliment each other.
I'm not abandonding my CP blog though, I'll use it for things I don't want the search engines to find and for my thoughts which don't fall into the software world.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Paul Watson wrote:
Wow, I did not even know of your mpbutler.net blog. When did you announce it?
I didn't really. There are a few links on the MyXaml forum and in the Wiki, I also use it for urls when posting on other peoples blogs. It was a half-hearted thing that never really took off.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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You won't be missed.
2004 has been a bad year for me, both personally and professionally. I've worked hard and not got a lot to show for it. Of course, recent news events puts a lot of things in perspective but from my own point of view - I've had a bad year.
Still 2005, holds a lot of promise. I've got a few interesting work-related items lined up and my personal defeats have only left me stronger and wiser.
Plus 2005 is the year of Star Wars:Episode III and a new series of Doctor Who. Two of my childhood companions who still leave me with a warm, fuzzy feel inside.
So, goodbye 2004 and hello 2005.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Paul Watson wrote:
All the best for 2005, Butler.
And you too Paul.
Looks like your cricket boys have got lucky with the weather 
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Bugger, I hate rain intefering in a game even to the enemies detriment. I like to win or lose on merit, not luck or weather. Brilliant come-back of Englands after that horrendous first innings.
So down to the match here in Cape Town. I'll be shouting from the grass on Sunday 
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
The Code Project
South-East Asia Disaster: How you can help
Pope Pius II said
"The only prescription is more cowbell. "
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Channel 9 videos[^], my new addiction.
Since I got my 2mb DSL line last week, I've spent a lot of my free time watching the Channel 9 videos. There are some cool things shown and discussed, plus I enjoy the peek behind the scenes at Microsoft.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I've spent the last few days struggling to get Crystal Reports to give me the report layout that a client has requested. What a nightmare. For once, Crystal isn't totally to blame. The data structure of the Symposium Phone System (Sybase) database is ill-suited to my clients demands. I think I've persuaded my client to reduce his requirements until I work out a plan to extract the data into SQL Server and transform it into a more suitable format.
I then get back to my email (I'm on-site and don't have full pop3 access) and find a message from one of my other clients telling me that they want to discuss their reporting requirements too. Argh!
Hopefully next year, I'll get back to writing real code because all this reporting is starting to suck the life out of me.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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It has been a tough couple of weeks recently. Doing a very boring reporting contract has pretty much sucked all the life out of me.
However, this small teaser[^] for the new series of Doctor Who has given me a warm feeling inside.
There is very little content in the trailer but just hearing the words "I'm the Doctor by the way" followed by "Run for your life" , brings back so many enjoyable childhood memories.
The Doctor was always one of my biggest role models and along with the Star Wars movies was a constant companion through my childhood years. Good to see it coming back and I hope it can inspire a new generation of children just like the original series did for me.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Fred Dibnah[^]
When I was growing up, Fred was a big fixture on the television set. My Dad, was also a steam enthusiast. Whilst I don't share the same love, watching the process of taking down an industrial chimney was fascinating viewing. A real eye-opener, given that my home town had and still has the same kind of chimneys. Fred, himself did some work on one of them some years ago.
Fred's catchphrase "Did you like that" in his wonderful Bolton accent, after the chimney had fallen gracefully, will always stay with me.
His recent TV exploits of building a mine-shaft in his back-garden using Victorian Engineering principles was great educational viewing too.
One of our country's great characters, he will be missed.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Just saw a it.
Wow.
I think I finally understand why the Emperor is feared so much. A scary bad ass by the looks of it. Anakin has lost his whiny teen look and certainly has the dark side about him.
Roll on May 2005.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I'll take this as a good thing. Girls like footballers yeah? 
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
Michael Dunn wrote:
"except the sod who voted this a 1, NO SOUP FOR YOU"
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
I'll take this as a good thing.
Yeah, you should. Freddie is a big hit with the ladies. Search for him in the google image search and see how you really compare 
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Longhorn to help restrict USB device use[^]
About bloody time. I have had this problem at one of my clients for whom I do IT administration.
As they are a 24hr call-centre, there is very little control over what happens on the night shift. It turns out that one of the call-centre operatives, who thinks he knows a bit about computers, has been plugging in a USB memory stick to work on his own projects.
As standard a Win2k group policy environment, doesn't support locking down the USB port. This means we have to rely on the operative's own good behaviour. Beyond disabling USB in the bios, which isn't supported on the workstations in use, there isn't a lot I can do - apart from disable access to drives via the explorer group policy. It probably won't take long for somebody to work around that.
Good to see Microsoft are taking note of the problems we IT administrators have to cope with.
Of course, it would be better if this was added to Win2k as I can't see my clients upgrading their workstations anytime soon.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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A reassuring demo[^] from Microsoft, showing the power of WinForms2.
Maybe .NET is maturing faster than I'd thought.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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As I've said before, I like the BBC News[^] website layout. It looks good and is very functional. Whilst investigating possible layouts for a client's site, I had a look at the page source code and was disappointed to find all those table tags, not to mention that it totally ignores the browsers text size.
In my search for information on CSS, I came across this article[^] about CSSifying the BBC News site. The article is fairly old and there may be a newer one I haven't found yet, but all very eductional (well to me anyway)
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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