- Posted by reggie on March 27, 2008
Finally got around to hacking in Slide.Show as my photo viewer. Yup, you need Silverlight installed to see them but with the way that Silverlight is growing that shouldn't be a problem.
Go check it out and let me know what you think!
- Posted by reggie on October 3, 2007
Well I've been pretty quiet for the past few days and for a very good reason. His name is Daniel Mitchell Burnett and at 9 lbs. 7 oz. and 21 " long he is larger at birth than our other 3 children. He was born at 11am on September 27.
So far it's been a wonderful time, just like with my other children. Elevated jaundice levels right after birth, lots of nursing, lots of dirty diapers, and lots and lots of fun and love.
- Posted by reggie on September 25, 2007
I knew the Halo 3 launch date had arrived last night when I look over and see my 1 1/2 year old putting on the headset and grabbing the controller. I had to take a a few quick snap. (never mind his dirty shirt -- he had just finished eating without a bib!)
- Posted by reggie on August 6, 2007
My SMT 5600 died two week ago. This is an awesome little phone. Much better than the Cingular 2125, runs Windows Mobile, small and fast. And two weeks ago mine had a lovely while LCD screen. You could vaguely make out what was happening on screen which means the phone wasn't entirely dead. You could still make and take phone calls. Just don't try using the menus or looking up a contact. And, yup, out of warranty.
So..... off to eBay I go. Picked up a non-working model on the hope that the LCD was still good. Cost me $24 after shipping but turned out to be worth it. I used these excellent directions for disassembling the phone and it took me all of about 30 minutes to swap out the screens. Man was I happy to see color when I powered it on.
- Posted by reggie on July 20, 2007
I have officially moved my blog from www.bytefx.com/blog to www.reggieburnett.com. Please update your links, bookmarks, readers, etc. I have attempted to preserve as many of the old dasBlog URLs as I can but I know of at least 3 URL types that are not working currently. I'll try to get those working over the weekend. If you find any old URL that is not working, please drop me a line so I can fix it.
Thanks!
- Posted by reggie on July 20, 2007
I had been thinking of moving my blog for some time now. I started my blog back when I was self-employed and operating under the corporate name ByteFX. I have been employed by MySQL now for more than 3 years and been blogging about all things .NET and MySQL at my ByteFX site. While technically there is nothing wrong with this, it always felt wrong to me to blog about my efforts at my current employment under a different corporate website. The domain name 'reggieburnett.com' was available so I jumped.
GoDaddy.com offers some very cheap Windows hosting so I decided to host my new site and blog there. They offer a very professional setup and the only real hang up was that my site had to be medium trust compatible. dasBlog, my current blog software of choice, is not. So I made the move to Subtext, a BSD-licensed fork of .Text. It's simple, SQL-based (soon to support MySQL), includes a photo gallery, and works under medium trust. Sold. Now I need to move my current blog to Subtext. Here's where the rubber meets the road.
While Subtext can import BlogML data, dasBlog doesn't support BlogML export. After asking on the dasBlog mailing list, I found a blog post here that includes a BlogML import/export tool. After a few tweaks, I managed to generate a fairly large BlogML file that imported cleanly into Subtext. I also found this page that I basically followed the rest of the way home.
A few support calls to GoDaddy.com, a few code changes to the IHttpHandler included on the referenced page, and I had my old blog moved over and most old dasBlog links working. I still don't have CategoryView, month view, or default.aspx#{guid} style urls working but I'll hack on those tomorrow.
I'll send out a separate (and more brief) announcement but my blog has officially moved from www.bytefx.com/blog to www.reggieburnett.com. Please update your bookmarks and reader subscriptions appropriately. Thanks!
- Posted by reggie on June 18, 2007
This is a post I've been thinking about for nearly a week. It started about the same time I downloaded Safari for Windows. I've never used Mac OS X for any extended period of time but I've tried to study how they develop their features. Coming from the Windows camp, I can tell you that neither Tiger nor Leopard really does much of anything that Vista doesn't do. And I'm not the only one thinking this either. However, that really is not the point. It doesn't matter how advanced a piece of software is; it only matters that the software does what the user expects and be easy to use. Both the designers and developers at Microsoft need to reread that last sentence again. Want some examples?
1) Take a look at this post by Scott Hanselman. I dare you to find any dialog box in Mac OS X that looks like this.
2) Take a look at these option pages from Safari and IE7.
I realize that IE7 has more capabilities than Safari (add-ons, etc) and thus more options, however this first page of each browser's options dialog just shows the difference in thinking. The only thing I can do directly from this dialog in IE7 is set my home page. With Safari, I can do tons of things. I can set what browser is default, what search engine is default, what my home page is, where my downloads go, etc, etc. Microsoft shows a complete inability to try something radically new in user interface design.
It seems that Microsoft is just one letter away. Instead of Keep It Simple Stupid, they must think it stands for Keep It Simply Stupid. With that said, this post starts my 10 days of Microsoft UI stupidity.
- Posted by reggie on June 15, 2007
We live in a world full of truly lousy people. I know this based on the amount of porn pingback and trackbacks I'm getting on this blog. I don't yet know how to solve this so, for now, I'm turning those off.
- Posted by reggie on December 1, 2006
All this time I was under the impression that boatloads of spam in our inboxes help promote porn but now I learn that hard drives promote porn. Huh? Well, I guess by that same logic the driveshaft in my car promotes car accidents. Don't believe me? Take the driveshaft out of your car and see how many car accidents that car is involved in.
It's really sad that we've come to a point where noone is responsible for themselves. Everybody wants to be on Oprah and blame the neighbor, the dog, the parents, and the teacher. Anyone but themselves.
And now it is apparently not your fault if you watch porn. After all, the monitor just kept showing it long after you wanted to stop watching. That damn hard drive just kept holding on to it long after you wanted it gone. And let's not excuse Internet Explorer (insert your favorite browser here). I believe you when you say you entered www.google.com and the browser took you instead to the porn site of the day. They're sneaky that way.
I guess I just think things are simpler than that. Guns don't promote gun violence, pointing and shooting them at another person does. Cars don't promote car accidents and deaths, drinking alcohol and then driving them does. And your hard drive doesn't promote porn. Now, if you'll excuse me I've got about hundred porn-promoting spam messages to go delete before my hard drive wakes up.
- Posted by reggie on October 21, 2006
The wires are ablaze with news that some Los Angeles members of the Boy Scouts of America can earn the "Respect Copyrights" patch. Apparently this patch is a product of teamwork between the BSA and the MPAA and involves such activities as learning about P2P file sharing systems, attend a movie and sit through all the credits and later list all the people that might be hurt by stealing the movie, along with several other requirements. There has been a steady stream of negative comments about this story including one along the lines of "the MPAA is recruiting the BSA to do it's dirty work".
First, this story is not an attack on the BSA and so I will not dwell on my many years of service in the BSA except to say that I have been an assistance ScoutMaster and currently serve as ScoutMaster and know the BSA to be the finest club for young men on the planet.
Second, I want to say that I agree with the stories I've read that make the case that the requirements of the patch leave out several key areas including fair use, public domain items, as well as legal use of P2P file sharing system. Apparently one of the requirements of the patch involves encouraging friends to run some "Parent File Scan" on the home computer. While I know very little about this software, it apparently lists all the file sharing tools that are on a computer along with media available to these tools whether legally obtained or not. This amounts to asking the kids to spy on their parents or siblings and is completely wrong and cannot be defended.
My main reason for commenting is that I find this whole scenario reflecting a certain prevailing feeling that any form of DRM is wrong and should not be allowed. I agree that current DRM forms fail completely and violate fair use in a number of ways but that does not change the fact that an artist who works hard to create an album or movie has a right to protect that content and expect a return on their investment. What's unbelievable is that people are honestly outraged that we are teaching our children that taking something that doesn't belong to them is wrong. Ripping a CD or movie that you don't own is absolutely no different than walking into a Wal-Mart and pocketing a CD off the rack. We would never allow our children to do this and yet we scream and yell when the RIAA and MPAA try to stop the same thing.
Moreover, how many people do you know that buy a CD , rip the music to a computer in the house, and then download that music to one or more portable music devices. At some point, the music might be playing on the home computer and in all of the portables at the same time which is a clear violation. And yet so many never even consider that.
I have as much dislike for the RIAA and MPAA as the next man and it does seem like this patch is slanted more to the goals of the MPAA and less to actual teaching of all aspects of file sharing. Nevertheless, being outraged that some Scouts are out there teaching each other that it's wrong to steal is just stupid.