Chris May

http://www.codeplex.com will allow you to host your project on their servers, and apparently they are running TFS.

Here is a cheat sheet that shows some of the main items when using Regular Expressions (RegEx / RegExp)

regular_expressions_cheat_sheet[1].png (80.91 KB)

Here is another article on how to clean up your MP3 collection.  This time, it is on getting Album Art embedded intot he files.

Google is offering free processing on all orders through 2007 with their new Google Checkout service.

Here is a page showing some of the commands you can run when you want to shutdown or restart windows.  This works well when you are in a TS session or something where you don't have access to the normal shutdown buttons.

 

FreeNAS allows you to quickly convert an old PC into a NAS hosting machine for extra storage.

Well, maybe it would be BT-LR, but either way, it seems reporting services gives you 2 ways to align your text.

LR-TB, and TB-RL (Left to right, top to bottom, and top to bottom, right to left).

The problem with this is of course, that no one writes (english) top to bottom, right to left.   When you write text in a vertical fashion, it is always bottom to top, left to right.

In other words, you tilt your head to the left to read it.

I found this post on the topic where it sounds like someone might have come up with a creative way to rotate the TB-RL text 180 degress.

I haven't tried, it, but it seems like the only hope out there.

Alpha Geek has an interesting article on how to level the volume of your MP3 collection so that you don't end up with some songs being too loud and some being too quiet.

Basically they suggest you use MP3Gain and show you how it works.

I would like to try this, but I don't even own one any more.

I should see if they have one on ebay or the dollar store.

Here is a neat little collection of 10 different magic tricks and how to do them.

Pretty cool.

CoComment allows you to track your comments, and those that come after you, in the various blogs around the internet.

http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/CoComment/

I might see if I can implement this for fun.

Here is a list of dasBlogMacros.html">all the Macros built into das Blog.

Vasanth Dharmaraj has an article here showing how to create your own macros, as well as his out creation dasBlog Extra Macros.

"Karen's Replicator" was suggested by some site as being a good free backup utility.

I am constantly looking for something that will do a better job backing up files.  I wish there were something out there that really did it all, and didn't cost a ton of money.

I'll have to give this a try.

The Bears just squeeked out a win against the injury ridden Seahawks, 27-24 in overtime.

What did we learn from this game?

We learned that

• Grossman was able to play at a decent level.  i.e. He didn't throw up all over himself.
• The defense really has fallen off.  Some suggested that the Bears defense was on auto pilot the last few games, and that is why they had such bad performances.  We can now say for sure that this defense is FAR from the unit that was shutting out opponents early in the year.  The Bears now are frequently giving up 25+ points a game, and they couldn't stop the running game to save their life (not to mention the 8 yard passes that were available, and taken, all game long).
• Robbie Gould can come through in the clutch.
• Wesley is obviously trying to set the single season record for most obscure 15 yard penalities on punt coverage.  This week he interferred with the returner.  A few weeks back he refused to come back into the field of play (another 15 yard penality).
• Devon Hester shouldn't be on the field.  I don't care what up side this guy has.  His chance of dropping the ball, or making the dumbest play on earth (like touching the ball after deciding not to play it on a punt) is FAR greater that his chance for a good return.  This guy had 3 fumbles today!!!  If I were the Saints I would kick every ball to him.  He will drop at least 1.
• Bensen is not going to get much playing time.  I had hoped with the display he put on last week someone would wake up and realize that this guy needs to be on the field, but it looks like are sticking with Jones on the key plays.
• Bensen will continue to out perform Jones.  He had a higher yards/carry again this week, w/o the benefit of some of the nice big holes Jones had.  Jones can't move the pile.  He can't move individual players for that matter.  And in the open field, he is too slow to out run anyone, and does too much hopping around to pick up positive yards.  When given a chance, Bensen stays on his feet and pushing forward for extra yards.  Frequently Bensen would have what looked like a "poor" play.  No real hole, just running into people.  But when they spotted the ball, he had picked up 4 yards.
• The O-Line can't protect Rex.  When the other team is sending just 3 guys, the QB should have a little time before getting hit.
• Rex can't avoid the pressure.  Rex continues to not setup up in the pocket.  Being a short guy, you would think he would want to move up and get some better visibility of the field.
• Deuce McCalister and Reggie Bush are going to run all over this bears defense. 
• I should have bet on this game.  I thought the Seahawks +8 was a lock.  I would also take the points in the next game (+3 for the Saints).

Youtube provides a object tag that you can include on your site to show the videos directly, w/o making the user leave your site.

However, I noticed that this object tag was not being activated with the objectswap technique which makes it so you don't have to click on the flash object to "activate" it in IE.

To fix this you need to include the type="application/x-shockwave-flash" in the object definition.

I am not sure why you need this, but if you leave it out, somehow IE removes the object from it's DOM.

If you allow a page to load w/o this "type" and then try to find, using javascript, any OBJECT tags and it will tell you there are none.

 

UPDATE:  Still having some problems... thinking the trick above is causing some new problems.

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a way to "automate" things that computers are not quite able to do.

There really isn't enough info out there on it yet.  It seems like it could have some pretty interesting applications, but I don't think you can do anything realtime.

http://requester.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=15879911

SeaLand (not the one in Florida) is basically an old WWII fort that some guy claimed as his own "Country."

Now it is up for sale.

This site is getting hammered right now, but I will really want to check back later and see all the pictures.

Here is a good article on ways to get your blog noticed by more people.

Some of the more interesting sites mentioned include:

http://www.dmoz.org/

http://megite.com/blog/?page_id=30

MyBlogLog

http://blogcarnival.com/

I installed Vs.Net a few days ago... and so far I think I have had 4 complete crashes of VS.Net.

I am not sure that this is being caused by SP1, but it is crashing in ways it never did before.

I will give it another few days and then rollback if this keeps happening.

I really feel pretty stupid...

This weekend I read on a few tech blogs that Steve Jobs had invited his friends to attend his keynote address at MacWorld.

Obviously he was going to unveil something very cool, and obviously that "something" was probably going to be the long awaited iPhone.

It was at this point that I moved on to other things, instead of making the next "obvious" step.

Obviously this would cause Apple's stock to go up.

APPL was trading around 85 on Monday and 97 on Wednesday, an increase of 14%.

Maybe next time I will hear news like this and make the final connection :).