misc updates
weather: The sun's been up a short while, yet we still have -22F/-30C air temp (-38F/-39C windchill). I heard a loud pop come from the wall in my bedroom this morning. The cablemodem internet connection here keeps dropping out. After cycling power on the modem, it comes up with some packet drops, but then it eventually just fails completely. I don't know whether to think it's because of Comcast interfering with high usage (as they are known to do) or the cold weather messing up physical connections somewhere.
Darkfall: Speaking of high usage, the new Darkfall mmorpg will be about 18GB and will only be downloadable. I do use BitTorrent periodically (hello, Comcast) but I'll have to use it to get this game downloaded. No way is a tiny company in Greece going to be able to support tens of thousands of people trying to download 18GB from their web servers. I'll have to get it from a torrent. The game is supposed to release on January 22nd, but it's looking more like vaporware to me. *ignorant shrug*
Bears: I'm wondering if I should just walk away and let Bear Coffee die. I've attended for many, many years. I drove over to Saint Paul when it was held there, and I was one of only 2 people who showed up there one evening long ago. It goes through boom and bust cycles, I know that. But it'll soon be too expensive (again) to drive places unnecessarily. There's no great reason for me to keep showing up at Bear Coffee when nobody from Bear "management" bothers to show up any more, and last night we had only 3 people. A month ago there was a night with only 2 people. Maybe I'd be better off just declaring that it's moved to someplace closer to where I live. Who could disagree? Kind of a shame, though, since one of the people who (sometimes) shows up there I've happened to find increasingly interesting/attractive. (Great voice, even better eyes (dark brown), and he's a computer programmer.) It takes me ages to warm up to that kind of possibility though, so it'd be a shame to close the venue before figuring out someday if there's any mutual possibility there. Yeah, I know, I've had half a year to work on that already, but like I said I'm slow to warm up to stuff like that. *laugh*
conference: The Microsoft developer's conference was a big disappointment. No Windows 7 dvd. (It'll be mailed later. Microsoft hosted a developer conference when the beta is publicly available, but Microsoft doesn't have a dvd ready for attendees? Unimpressive planning, there.) The keynote address was horrible. It was addressed to somebody other than developers. It was supposed to start at 8:30am but was delayed until 9am because cold weather that day delayed most people on the roads. Even after the late start, it was supposed to last only 90 minutes, but it went on for 2 hours I think. I don't know why. It wasn't interesting.
I learned at a session that C#/Visual Basic are converging in their abilities. I learned at another session that F# is Microsoft's attempt to create their own language to sidestep issues that appear when programming in a multicore environment. If you have a language which contains no variables, then there is little need to semaphore when various data structures are being used. There are labels/pointers to data, but that data is constant. So either a "variable" exists (constant value), or it doesn't. Data synchronization problem avoided. Interesting idea. As it's slowly included in .NET and Visual Studio, I still wonder if it'll someday replace the converged C#/VB languages. I mean, it's getting hard already to tell what Microsoft is in the business of doing. Why confuse things even more with a basket full of programming languages? Something ought to go away.
My very condensed summaries:
keynoteMicrosoft discovers Facebook. This keynote was well-presented garbage. Total waste of my time. I learned nothing useful or interesting.session 1 on C# and VBThese languages will converge in their abilities with Visual Studio 10. It looks promising.session 2 on Women at MSLegos are always fun, and they easily promote creative thinking.session 3 on SilverlightMicrosoft discovers Java. I love programming, but watching a programmer code for an hour is BORING.session 4 on F#Microsoft discovers Rexx. (Well, not really, but list processing reminds me a lot of Rexx's great string processing abilities.) Partially applied functions are awesome!
No, I didn't win the Lego Mindstorm set. *SIGH*
Darkfall: Speaking of high usage, the new Darkfall mmorpg will be about 18GB and will only be downloadable. I do use BitTorrent periodically (hello, Comcast) but I'll have to use it to get this game downloaded. No way is a tiny company in Greece going to be able to support tens of thousands of people trying to download 18GB from their web servers. I'll have to get it from a torrent. The game is supposed to release on January 22nd, but it's looking more like vaporware to me. *ignorant shrug*
Bears: I'm wondering if I should just walk away and let Bear Coffee die. I've attended for many, many years. I drove over to Saint Paul when it was held there, and I was one of only 2 people who showed up there one evening long ago. It goes through boom and bust cycles, I know that. But it'll soon be too expensive (again) to drive places unnecessarily. There's no great reason for me to keep showing up at Bear Coffee when nobody from Bear "management" bothers to show up any more, and last night we had only 3 people. A month ago there was a night with only 2 people. Maybe I'd be better off just declaring that it's moved to someplace closer to where I live. Who could disagree? Kind of a shame, though, since one of the people who (sometimes) shows up there I've happened to find increasingly interesting/attractive. (Great voice, even better eyes (dark brown), and he's a computer programmer.) It takes me ages to warm up to that kind of possibility though, so it'd be a shame to close the venue before figuring out someday if there's any mutual possibility there. Yeah, I know, I've had half a year to work on that already, but like I said I'm slow to warm up to stuff like that. *laugh*
conference: The Microsoft developer's conference was a big disappointment. No Windows 7 dvd. (It'll be mailed later. Microsoft hosted a developer conference when the beta is publicly available, but Microsoft doesn't have a dvd ready for attendees? Unimpressive planning, there.) The keynote address was horrible. It was addressed to somebody other than developers. It was supposed to start at 8:30am but was delayed until 9am because cold weather that day delayed most people on the roads. Even after the late start, it was supposed to last only 90 minutes, but it went on for 2 hours I think. I don't know why. It wasn't interesting.
I learned at a session that C#/Visual Basic are converging in their abilities. I learned at another session that F# is Microsoft's attempt to create their own language to sidestep issues that appear when programming in a multicore environment. If you have a language which contains no variables, then there is little need to semaphore when various data structures are being used. There are labels/pointers to data, but that data is constant. So either a "variable" exists (constant value), or it doesn't. Data synchronization problem avoided. Interesting idea. As it's slowly included in .NET and Visual Studio, I still wonder if it'll someday replace the converged C#/VB languages. I mean, it's getting hard already to tell what Microsoft is in the business of doing. Why confuse things even more with a basket full of programming languages? Something ought to go away.
My very condensed summaries:
keynoteMicrosoft discovers Facebook. This keynote was well-presented garbage. Total waste of my time. I learned nothing useful or interesting.session 1 on C# and VBThese languages will converge in their abilities with Visual Studio 10. It looks promising.session 2 on Women at MSLegos are always fun, and they easily promote creative thinking.session 3 on SilverlightMicrosoft discovers Java. I love programming, but watching a programmer code for an hour is BORING.session 4 on F#Microsoft discovers Rexx. (Well, not really, but list processing reminds me a lot of Rexx's great string processing abilities.) Partially applied functions are awesome!
No, I didn't win the Lego Mindstorm set. *SIGH*