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CommunityTechPreview.GetDocumentation() == OpenSourceProject.GetDocumentation() == null

I’ve started giving some serious attention to the Tech Previews Microsoft put out for .NET 2.0 and VS 2005. I’ve mostly been using VC# Express: overall, I think it’s worthy of having around, even given the state it’s in. It’s like Snippet Compiler on steroids…and wolverine thyroid gland. If they’re retailing it for $20, I’d consider getting it.

There’s a lot I like about the new framework, and I know I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s in there. Lately, I’ve been playing with the new Uri classes, or trying to. The whole point of this post is to point out the complete lack of documentation for the new BCL classes. That’s not correct: there are plenty of articles on using the sparkly new features of the framework: generics, anonymous delegates, etc; but there are absolutely no examples for the new classes added to the BCL. For instance, UriFactory is a new abstract class that, from what I can tell in Reflector, can parse new uri schemes that come along, thus making Uri a little more future proof.. And yet: I have no idea how to use it. Seeing what the code does in Reflector doesn’t help me with how I’m supposed to use the class in my code.

I’ve found the MSDN docs to be pretty good about providing examples, at least a good starting point. But with these Tech Previews, it’s quite similar to an open source project. There is almost no documentation, so you have to stumble around and discover what you can on your own. Sometimes, that’s fun, but other times, like now, I just want to get on with it and do some work. Part of me likes the new, transparent Microsoft with their tech previews and their blogs (actually, all of me likes the blogs), but I have my doubts if it really helps anybody except consultants and writers and makes MS look good. With VS and Longhorn, all we’ve seen is, I’d say, MS more transparently push the dates back further and further.

Hopefully, with Beta 2 coming out in late January late March, the docs will be up to the quality we’re used to from Microsoft.

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Ray – A Review

I watched Ray on the weekend as part of an effort to see all the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars.

I enjoyed the movie but I can’t figure out if I liked the movie or the life and the music of the man the movie tried to portray. I’m tending to the latter, implying that this is not Best Picture material. I suspect the same thing with The Aviator. I watched this movie knowing almost nothing about Ray Charles or his contribution to music, so I don’t know how much of the story is accurate, but if half the shit in there is true, Ray Charles is the man. The music is great. The movie’s plot is pretty standard rock’n’roll movie stuff: talented artist has meteoric rise to the top, starts getting used to perqs of the lifestyle, becomes drugged-out shell of former self, recovers, surpasses his past successes, fade to black, roll credits the end. But the music’s great.

The outstanding thing about this movie is Jamie Foxx’s performance. Absolutely phenomenal. You don’t know it’s him at all, much like Charlize in Monster last year, or Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufmann in Man on the Moon. There’s a special on the DVD talking about what Foxx had did for the part: he would get prosthetics over his eyes to look like Ray Charles so he would go blind for 10 to 12 hours a day: talk about commitment. With his performance in Ray and Collateral getting nominated, if he doesn’t get the nod this year, he will soon.

Recommended if you like musical icons, great acting performances, Ray Charles, and Willow.

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RssBandit Wolverine Beta

I was going to wait until the full release, but I couldn’t help myself. This is an app that I use multiple times, daily, so I just had to find out what was coming. The little improvements in the UI really make this a compelling release. The newsfeeds are great and work with feeds or categories. I think that’s by far the best new feature; especially useful for link feeds or bloggers who post quick, funny posts. I usually only check them when there’s some down time, ’cause it involves so much clicking or typing. Well, not anymore! I think if I hadn’t been running the beta, I would have missed this hilarious site [via SideShow’s link blog].

Other improvements include ordering of comments by time in ascending order (they were in descending order before, so it took me a while to figure out that they had switched it). There are still a few bugs with the new column layout tools but it’s looking pretty kick ass. Hopefully they’ll pull the NNTP UI elements; I think that’ll just confuse users, given Dare’s announcement of the beta.

This thing rocks though. If you’re not an RSSBandit user yet, I encourage a look. Download it! I command you!

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It’s Alive! It’s Alive!

ScottWater has a very informative post about the state of .Text, my blog engine of choice, that, quite frankly, should have been posted months ago. Every time I’d search for more info on the status .Text, I’d get stuck in this link loop to sites that had no info whatsoever about .Text. I’m glad he posted it though; I’ve been thinking that a good way to learn the ins and outs of ASP.NET (I’m one of the few that uses .NET for Windows dev) is to change the things that I don’t like about .Text. It’s a big, complicated app; whenever I go looking around, I get intimidated by how much code there is. I’ve also been itching to resdesign this site ’cause it’s, um, fugly.

According to the post, Community Server Blogs is the answer to all my problems. Scott also asks that we not build our own versions of .Text, to instead wait for CS::Blogs and contribute to that.

I think I can do that.

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The System Of The World – A Review

Well I finally finished The System Of The World by Neal Stephenson. The System Of The World is the third and final book in The Baroque Cycle. I finished on the plane on the way to Australia. I say finally because I started it in October when it came out. Since I bought it I read a couple technical books and maybe one novel while TSOTW sat on my bedside table feeling sorry for itself.  By the time Christmas came around I was about half way through the book and determined to finish it before I left. Well I almost did it. Had about 80 pages to go when I had to leave for the airport. I couldn’t wait three weeks for that last little bit.

The latter half is far more entertaining. I think it was about half way through before a certain Shaftoe finally made an appearance. When I read Cryptonomicon the first time (I’ve read it twice, I’ve only read a handful of books more than once), I was in Physics and Math, so I loved Lawrence Waterhouse and couldn’t wait for his “turn“ in the narrative. The second time I was in Computer Science so I could appreciate Daniel Waterhouse more, though he still wasn’t my favourite (Bobby Shaftoe, this time), because I understood the lingo better. The Baroque Cycle has a few characters like that, but only Jack Shaftoe truly shines. So I enjoyed the second of the three books, The Confusion, the most. However, I like how all the characters aged in the third book: Daniel Waterhouse was WAY more interesting the third time around.

The first I’d heard about the Baroque Cycle was that it was about the feud between Newton and Liebniz. There is a conversation between the two that takes place in TSOTW that I speculate Stephenson made up that could well have been the first thing written. I’m glad, though, that that wasn’t the topic of the books. That would have been boring. Instead the Baroque Cycle is a mixture of genres: swashbuckler, cyberpunk, historical fiction. While I can’t say it entirely worked, I’m glad I read them all. I rate historical fiction on the interest I take in the period generated by the novel. For instance, The Masters of Rome Series by Colleen McCullough, an epic, and accurate, account of the fall of The Roman Republic inspired me to read at least three non-fiction books and countless other fiction about the period (She’s the best, don’t bother reading others about the Romans). So if I rate The Baroque Cycle on strictly that, then I have to recommend it. I enjoyed it enough that I want to read more about Marlborough, Newton, Louis XIV and I want to at least try to sort out the royals of that period.

But as a Stephenson novel? I don’t know if I’d recommend the Baroque Cycle if someone were interested in starting his work. As you can probably tell, I agree with the rest of the world: Cryptonomicon was a masterpiece and his best work. He would have been hard-pressed to repeat it, and none of The Baroque Cycle does it. But you won’t be bored. And you may learn a thing or two.

Recommended if you like Stephenson; like the Scientific Revolution; want three big, pretty books with which to impress people on your book shelf.