Not long ago, I read a post or heard a podcast (it’s hard to remember where information is coming in) that mentioned the blogger was no longer using categories, because he did not want users to gain only a subset of his posts. Categorizing blog posts can be very difficult to get right and I want to make sure that users get as much out of my blog as possible.

To that end, I’ve removed categories from this blog… I’ve also updated the category feeds (which no one was really using) to redirect to the main feed. You shouldnt have to do anything.

I hope this provides a much more fulfilling experience for the people that were using categories.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming…

Not long ago, we bought an HP Color LaserJet 2605dn printer for our home office. Our experience with this printer has been absolutely fantastic, with one exception. If the printer had been sitting inactive for a while, and you send it a print job the printer would make this horrible squealing noise while printing the first page.

I was so baffled by what was causing this noise that I ended up calling HP about it. Their recommendation was that this was very unlikely, and that I should return it to the vendor for an exchange. I did this, and you can imagine my surprise when the new printer exhibited exactly the same behaviour.

After looking around the support forums and finding nothing, I thought that maybe this was some sort of a warning indicator noise. All at once, it hit me… It must be a power warning. This made sense, as all my peripherals were plugged into the same surge protector.

Eagerly, I moved the printer into its own outlet and sent a print job. There was no squealing. In fact, there has been no squealing from the printer for the past 3 or 4 weeks since I stumbled on this.

Now, this printer is absolutely perfect. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this printer to anyone that is looking for a high powered, network-ready color laser printer.

Dan Wahlin is my hero… Ever since I’ve installed Vista, I’ve noticed that using Firefox to debug my VS.NET 2005 solutions was painfully slow (like 10-15 seconds per page). I’ve never bothered to take the time to figure out what was causing it. Instead, I’d just fire up Internet Explorer and go about running the application.

Dan, however, went the extra mile and figured out what was causing the issue. In short, the slowdown is caused by an IPv6 issue with DNS. The solution is turning off IPv6, which can be done by typing about:config in the address bar, finding network.dns.disableIPv6 and setting it to true.

As it turns out, this is not just a Vista issue, but rather an IPv6 issue. If you have IPv6 installed on XP, you’ll like encounter the same issue.

After listening to the recent Hanselminutes podcast with Martin Fowler and David Heinemen Hanson, it dawned on what the difference between the two camps really was.

Microsoft is attempting to be all things to all people, and so therefore, they are creating tools that can do everything for you in the easiest way possible. The Ruby on Rails guys have decided on some best practices that preserve the aesthetics of the code and expect that you will conform to that standard. I think both are very admirable things to accomplish.

The point at which this diverges though is that while Microsoft’s plan is to be on every developer’s desktop, the RoR guys could care less if you use their framework. If you don’t like having to put your model classes in the model folder, then don’t use their framework. If you dont like having convention over configuration, Ruby on Rails isnt for you and you should go find something else. Guess what, the RoR community doesnt care.

The RoR community is not going to sacrifice the aesthetics of the code just to appeal to more developers. The people that are drawn to Rails are the developers that do care about these things, and I think thats why a lot of the alpha geeks are looking at and working with Rails. The RoR community has grown to where it is because of the grassroots efforts of the people that are passionate about code and what it looks like, not by drag-and-drop coders.

As most people know, I absolutely adore Apple and the work that’s been coming out of there as it relates to the iPhone and (gasp) HTML/Javascript as a web development platform.

I went so far as to try install Safari for Windows on my Vista machine. Not really because Im a huge Safari fan; I use Firefox on my iMac. However, I read a lot about the speed increases and just had to see it for myself. The first thing that the installer wanted to do was install the Apple Software Update service. Sure, why not? If a new version of Safari comes out, it’d be nice if I would be auto notified of it’s existence.

That part seemed to install fine, however, there were some major problems trying to install Safari on Vista. I didnt really have the time to try and investigate what was causing the problem, so I pretty much just forgot about it.

Until this morning… When I logged on to my computer, I was presented with this screen:

This screen really pissed me off. The reason I’m so annoyed by this screen and am calling out Apple on this is that my Vista machine has no other Apple software on it. I do not have QuickTime or iTunes on my machine, yet I’m being asked if I want to update it. This could be considered increasing your user base by deceptive methods. Shame on you, Apple.

A partial stack trace of Resharper build 351 on Visual Studio 2005:

JetBrains.ReSharper.Util.InternalErrorException: Shit happened
Shit happened ---> JetBrains.ReSharper.Util.InternalErrorException: Shit happened
 
at JetBrains.ReSharper.Util.Logger.LogError(String) in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\Util\src\Logger.cs:line 389 column 7
at JetBrains.ReSharper.VS.ProjectModel.WebProjectReferenceManager.ProcessAssemblyReferences(AssemblyReferenceProcessor) in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\VS\src\ProjectModel\WebProjectReferenceManager.cs:line 415 column 9
at JetBrains.ReSharper.VS.ProjectModel.WebProjectReferenceManager.PopulateReferences() in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\VS\src\ProjectModel\WebProjectReferenceManager.cs:line 449 column 7
at JetBrains.ReSharper.VS.ProjectModel.WebProjectReferenceManager.UpdateAssemblyReferences() in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\VS\src\ProjectModel\WebProjectReferenceManager.cs:line 207 column 7
at JetBrains.ReSharper.Shell.<>c_DisplayClass1.<Invoke>b_0() in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\Shell\src\Invocator.cs:line 225 column 33
at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object, Object[], SignatureStruct&, MethodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle)
at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethodFast(Object, Object[], Signature, MethodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object, BindingFlags, Binder, Object[], CultureInfo, Boolean)
at System.Delegate.DynamicInvokeImpl(Object[])
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackDo(ThreadMethodEntry)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackHelper(Object)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.runTryCode(Object)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.RuntimeHelpers.ExecuteCodeWithGuaranteedCleanup(TryCode, CleanupCode, Object)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext, ContextCallback, Object)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext, ContextCallback, Object)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallback(ThreadMethodEntry)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbacks()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr, Int32, IntPtr, IntPtr)
at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.CallWindowProc(IntPtr, IntPtr, Int32, IntPtr, IntPtr)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DefWndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.WndProc(Message&)
at JetBrains.ReSharper.Shell.VSIntegration.MyMainWindow.WndProc(Message&) in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\VSAddin\src\Shell\VSShell.cs:line 136 column 15
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr, Int32, IntPtr, IntPtr)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DefWndProc(Message&)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.WndProc(Message&)
at JetBrains.ReSharper.CommonControls.WindowListener.WndProc(Message&) in c:\Agent\work\Server\ReSharper2.5\src\CommonControls\src\Utils\WindowListener.cs:line 37 column 5
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr, Int32, IntPtr, IntPtr)

via http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/browse/RSRP-36491

I love watching a good exchange between the umps and baseball managers. Most of the time, they are just a way to get some passion back to the players. They may be planned in advance, but none that I’ve ever seen has gone quite this far.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hUcFWPgB8oY

From covering home plate to belly crawling to the pitcher’s mound and lobbing the pitcher’s rosin bag as a grenade at the feet of the home plate ump, this was just too much to take. Absolutely hysterical.