Mad Props!

Just caught this news (a couple of days old now) on xpmediacentre.com.au.

epgStream.net is a small group of coders based in Sydney who are putting together a free EPG solution for Australian users of Windows XP Media Center Edition. They're already supporting a bunch of capital cities, and it looks like regional centres are on their list too.

The product is really slick - you run a small installation program (which itself is ClickOnce deployed), and then set up MCE exactly the way you'd expect: Type in your postcode and let it do the rest.

If you're using XP MCE and you're looking for an EPG solution, definitely give these guys your support. Looks like they're looking for advertisers, too, so keep that in mind if you want some publicity and have a few bucks to throw their way.

This weekend I installed Community Server 2.0 on our new site for AWDNUG.

Originally I wanted it to run under ASP.NET 2.0, but the host enforces medium trust, and I had problems doing a few things (like adding feeds to the Reader), so we have reverted to ASP.NET 1.1 for now. I hear that CS 2.1 fixes a lot of these trust issues, so we may yet look at upgrading to ASP.NET 2.0 when CS 2.1 is released.

Anyway, if you've been coming along to the meetings so far, or if you plan to, or if you're one of those people who likes visiting .NET user groups' web sites, you can come visit us at http://awdnug.org. See you there!

I just read about this nifty idea on Xboxic.

There's an Xbox Live Arcade came coming out soon called Small Arms. One of the game's achievements is called "Six Degrees of Small Arms", and it's a unique achievement in the Xbox Live world.

The idea is that four guys who work at Gastronaut (the game development studio) will start off with this achievement. Anyone who plays Small Arms against them online automatically gets the achievement themselves. Then, anyone who plays those guys gets the achievement too.

It's a viral achievement. Very interesting - it'll be cool to watch how it spreads (if it spreads at all) as a gauge of how people play each other online.

Hi gang,

I've been lax in blogging of late because I've been ridiculously busy at work. The project that my co-worker Julie and I have spent the last two years on shipped at our largest site this week (it was supposed to be last week, but that's another story). So ... about a dozen PC clients and thirty mobile clients on Psion/Teklogix Workabout Pros are attacking our Sql Server 2005 database and finding lots of little niggles and (let's face it) bugs for us to fix. I want to make a post that details some of the more interesting parts of the project later on.

Don't forget that Wednesday night (July 12th) is the night for our next AWDNUG meeting. This month we're meeting at the Riverina Institute of TAFE, which is in Albury. It's the "second floor in E block", apparently. Drop me a message if you want to come and don't have detailed directions - I can forward you a map.

In other news: After two viewings I can confirm that Superman Returns is the best movie of the year. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was also great fun. Seen 'em? Disagree? Leave me a comment!

I'm a big fan of screencasts. As helpful as blog posts can be when learning about new technologies, it's hard to beat seeing the stuff in action.

So when Steve Lasker posted a screencast about the installation story for SQL Server Everywhere (including ClickOnce deployment), I was first in line to watch.

SQL/E looks like a pretty compelling product. It's about 1.4MB of DLLs that effectively give your application a SQL Server engine running in-process.  No need for a separate server application (or Windows Service) to be running full-time on the PC. That's very neat.

Anyway, give the screencast a look. And Steve? My next request is a screencast where you put together an application. Even if it's just a data grid showing a single table or something.

Update!

Steve's been really busy! He's gone SQL/E Bananas!!! Check out the other two screencasts he has put together!

This afternoon I played a bit more Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. I finished it on normal difficulty a while back, and have been playing it through on hard difficulty. The end is in sight, but I have to say it has been a great game.

Having said that ... I'm starting to tire of the first-person-shooter genre. I'm very much looking forward to Will Wright's Spore (assuming it'll be a 360 title - not sure about that yet), but very few of the titles in the current round of 360 releases excite me.

So I was thinking about what kind of game I want to play on the 360, and today I worked it out.

I want Elite.

I want a game where I can fly a spaceship, buy and sell commodities, take part in space dogfights etc. However, it has to be a game I can pick up and play at any time without needing to worry about how far I am through it, or whether I need to "finish" it.

How cool would it be if Elite was released for the 360, updated with modern graphics and AI? I'd buy that for a dollar (or $115 or whatever the hell they're charging for Xbox 360 games out here).

Great news for fellow denizens of the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as Albury/Wodonga! Google Maps (and Google Earth) now has detailed satellite imagery for our fair city.

Check it out here. My house is on that map. :)

The photos themselves are a bit out of date. There are changes to streets around my place that aren't on there (roundabouts that have since been added etc). My house is still in the process of being built in these photos, which makes them at least three years old.

Now we just have to wait for Windows Live Local to catch up.

This neat little pictorial reminds me a lot of the Total Perspective Vortex, so if you are prone to bouts of insanity, you may not want to visit:

The Size of Our World.

Shyam Pather just posted a couple of screencasts on the Data Access blog.

The screencasts (part 1 here) demonstrate the new features of "ADO.NET vNext" (or ADO.NET 3.0) like the new "Entity" framework and the accompanying "Entity SQL", as well as LINQ.

Well worth watching if you're a database-application developer. I'm very interested in the "n-tier" application of this technology ... how it'll work if, say, I want to pass Entity classes to and from a web service.

A description of fixes and a link to the download is available on the .NET Compact Framework Team Blog.

I'm particularly happy about this fix:

• For the HttpWebRequest method, an uncatchable ObjectDisposedException could occur when exiting an application with asynchronous requests.

You wouldn't believe how frustrating it has been that my application crashes when you exit and there was nothing I could do about it. :)