TED Talks: Josh Silver demos adjustable liquid-filled glasses

Interesting idea:

Josh Silver demos adjustable liquid-filled eyeglasses | Video on TED.com

TED Talks: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss

James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss | Video on TED.com

TED Talks: How we read each other’s minds

Worth watching:

Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other’s minds | Video on TED.com

(also available in high resolution as mp4)

.NET – Discoveries

ApplicationContext Class (System.Windows.Forms)

.NET Framework Class Library
ApplicationContext Class

Specifies the contextual information about an application thread.

Namespace: System.Windows.Forms
Assembly: System.Windows.Forms (in system.windows.forms.dll)

Even after several years of heavy C# / .NET – programming, I occasionally stumble upon something I have long since implemented a replacement method, only to discover that there is a class and and a standard method to do this. This standard method often proves to be a one-to-three – liner whereas I have hacked together a class hierarchy of several hundred lines-of-code.

And hey, sometimes it even works and if not, I have always learned quite a lot.

I know, sometimes people consider this trial and error method “Cargo Cult Programming”, but if I afterwards discover how it should be done, and realize that I’ve hacked in the right direction and have learned the “standard” method.

Does any of that make any sense to anyone?

P/Invoke the easy way

pinvoke.net: the interop wiki!

A wiki for .NET developers

PInvoke.net is primarily a wiki, allowing developers to find, edit and add PInvoke* signatures, user-defined types, and any other information related to calling Win32 and other unmanaged APIs from managed code (written in languages such as C# or VB.NET).

.NET developers worldwide can easily contribute to the community, sharing their valuable knowledge, whenever they have time to do so.

Aporkalypse Now!

… (w/o words …)

Ok, I’m convinced … or converted, rather

Any accidental reader of this blog can from now on consider me an “ex-subversion-user”, because of this:

Just like Torvalds, I hated cvs from the instant I had to use it the first time. Nevertheless, I forced rcs on my colleges at some point, later someone forced svn on me and I thought, “this is it.” Bitkeeper I don’t know.

From now on, I’ll be using git, and I have already started doing so.

I urge anyone seriously interested in a really distributed system to have a look at the video!

(gefunden auf Fefe’s Blog in diesem Eintrag)

Y.

Back again

I have been seriously ill lately, but I’m recovering.

So, after this rather involuntary pause, this blog will be more active again. Planned for the immediate future is a short series on the pros and cons of religion (I decidedly don’t use the word “faith”, because it isn’t as strongly linked to fear as is religion).

Stay tuned …

Neu! Jetzt auch auf Deutsch!

Da mir einige bloggenswerte Sachen in den Sinn gekommen sind, bei denen es keinen Sinn hat, die auf Englisch zu veröffentlichen, habe ich mich entschlossen, ein deutschsprachiges Blog – ebenfalls hier auf WordPress – anzulegen. Bitte hier entlang!

Because some things I consider worth blogging have absolutely no impact to the anglophone world, I decided to create a secondary blog in German.

I will still mostly blog here, though.

Vacation Reading List

I have been on vacation for the last three weeks now, thus the decline in my posting frequency …

The first thing I usually do when I know that I have a few weeks to spare, is to go out and buy a heap of books (mind-fodder, munch, munch).

Following is the list I purchased two and a half weeks ago – in no particular order, if I get the time, I will comment on one or the other when I have read them (I’m already through some of them … they’re written in green, the one I’m reading at the moment is in red):

• Bjorn Lomborg
  Cool It! The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global warming.
• Michel Onfray
  Traité d’athéologie. Physique de la metaphysique.
  (Wir brauchen keinen Gott. Warum man jetzt Atheist sein muss.)
  (We Don’t Need A God. Why One Has to be an Atheist Now. – re-translation of the German title)
  (Treatise on an Atheology. Physics of the Metaphysics. – direct translation of the French title)
• Ray Bradbury
  The Martian Chronicles
• Philip K. Dick
  A Maze of Death
• Harald Lesch and Harald Zaun
  Die kürzeste Geschichte allen Lebens
  (The Shortest History of All Life – translation of the German title)
• Julia Friedrichs
  Gestatten: Elite – auf den Spuren der Mächtigen von morgen.
  (May I Introduce Myself: Elite – On The Trail of The Powerful of Tomorrow - translation of the German title)
  
• Dietmar Wischmeyer
  Logbuch, Das Schwarzbuch der Bekloppten und Bescheuerten.
  (Logbook, The Black Book of The Nutty And The Crackbrained - translation of the German title)
• Douglas Adams
  Mostly Harmless – Part Five of The Trilogy
  (Einmal Rupert und zurück - German title)
• Elie Barnavi
  Les religions meurtrières.
  (Mörderische Religion – Eine Streitschrift - German title)
  (Murderous Religions - translation of the French title)
• Manfred Geier
  Kants Welt – Eine Biographie
  (Kant’s World – A Biography - translation of the German title)

Yeah, I know, I read a lot, maybe too much at times …