By Renegade on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 9:29 PM

With laptops, tablets, and palm top computers we have a plethora of people predicting the demise of the desktop. They're wrong. And they're morons. No, they are retards. No... retarded morons. No, they are retarded, moronic media whores. But I digress. Let me explain why the desktop is far from dead. And be a media whore at the same time.

At the moment we have 7 distinct kinds of computing:

• Palm top
• Tablet
• Laptop
• Desktop
• Server
• Super
• Cloud

Each of those serve a different purpose or fit a different form factor. If you believe that, then I've already made my point. If not, then read on and I'll explain why each of them is distinct ... Read More »

By Renegade on Saturday, September 04, 2010 5:14 PM

The GDT sale at bits du Jour is over now, and I'm happy with the results. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it went well.

I learned a few things and received confirmation on others.

Sales were 4.5x my record day on a unit basis. Nothing to complain about there. Smiles all the way.

However, I must mention that I did expect higher sales than there were. That may very well have just been wishful thinking on my part though. As I mentioned, I had no idea about what to expect. I saw that a lot of the top sellers were utilities, and GDT really is a niche product.

Part of that could have been that it was only discounted 50%. Perhaps a higher discount of 67% might have yielded better results. That's all just speculation though.

For the contest to win a free copy... That was a complete flop. I didn't even receive a single email on the topic. I thought it would have had a better reception than that. However, it's ... Read More »

By Renegade on Monday, August 23, 2010 8:51 PM

Samsung has released the final bada 1.0.0 for its next generation of mobile smartphones.

It's been a while in coming, but the full v1 is here. There are some minor changes, but nothing insurmountable. There are still features coming out though.

I'm expecting an announcement on the bada relational database relatively soon that will prove exciting for a lot of CRUD developers.

Cheers,

Ryan

 

By Renegade on Friday, July 30, 2010 3:54 PM

Not sure if I've mentioned this little gem before:

http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/

It's a fantastic little tool that I simply LOVE! It lets you format C#, HTML, VB.NET, MSH, and T-SQL for the web. Check this post on free music for an example.

Cheers,

Ryan

 

By Renegade on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 10:31 AM

VistaDB is in jeopardy, and may disappear entirely. It's a crying shame, as it's an excellent product.

Read about why here and here.

Regards,

Ryan

By Renegade on Sunday, July 18, 2010 1:39 AM

The Internet speed here at the DFW Hyatt Regency is simply extremely slow, so uploading pics is taking FOREVER. I'll get them up ASP though. I've got more thumbs up below, but the high-res photos will take some time.

 

 

 

< ... Read More »

By Renegade on Thursday, July 15, 2010 10:43 PM

Lots of pictures from the Software Industry Conference (SIC) registration day and the Digital River welcome reception. I'll upload more and higher res versions as well as time permits.

No labels on pics yet, but I hope to come back and label a few.

Mitch & Paris.

Jillian arrives (my little sister)~! =D

Lil sis~!

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By Renegade on Thursday, June 17, 2010 10:03 AM

My rants are scathing, but my praise is equally high for deserving companies and products. The Planet fits into the praise-worthy category as they have stellar products and spectacular services.

I've used other hosts and dedicated hosts in the past, and the only one that comes close is Rackspace. Everything else that I've tried falls very far short of what you get at The Planet. (I would actively discourage anyone from ever using Layered Technologies as from what I've seen, their incompetence brings new meaning to the word "morons".)

Anyways, I just got another email from The Planet:

... Read More »

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By Renegade on Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:45 PM

The jury is definitely in with the verdict. Guilty. And it's a hanging offense. In the gas chamber. While being shot. With grenade launchers. With a tormentor in the wings waiting to waterboard the corpse as an appetizer.

But seriously, the TomTom XXL 540S is simple horrible. But before I get into all of its many deficiencies, I'll outline the good parts as there is a small number of them. I've had more than enough time to evaluate the unit, and I've decided that I will most likely sell it and get a different GPS unit if time permits.

THE GOOD

The box is good. It contains the unit very well. (End sarcasm.)

The screen is actually very good. It is bright enough and it doesn't grime up with finger prints. It is matted, so you don't get glare off of it. Also, it's quite large, which is nice.

The battery life is very good and has more than enough.

The suction ... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, May 07, 2010 12:22 PM

HA! I can FINALLY talk about this! (I've been dying to blurt this out, but am under NDA.)

Samsung bada is now finally available to all developers! Here's the official bada release announcement.

You can finally get the bada IDE and the bada SDK (login first) to start developing for Samsung's new generation of bada phones, like the Samsung Wave S8500.

Remember, Samsung is the #2 mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia, so bada is going to be HUGE! You'll be able to reach more people than you will be able to on the iPhone. It will take some time, but it will come.

The API is well la ... Read More »

By Renegade on Thursday, April 08, 2010 12:42 PM

Well, so far there's nothing easier about a Mac than Windows. It's so bad that I've even had to reinstall OS X. It's actually installing it again now.

The problem comes from sercurity certificates, and for some reason, it's simply impossible to delete some in OS X. This presents a problem as I need to actually use them... I'd followed some instructions for Xcode and the Apple iPhone Developer site to create certificates, but nothing worked and I ended up with a bunch of certificates that I couldn't delete, and everything simply became a total mess. I spent close to an hour trying to get rid of them and just gave up. Resinstalling OS X just seems easier at this point. Sigh... 53 minutes remaining... (Looks like it's about as accurate as the Windows file copy estimates.)

I really wish that Macs were as easy to use as the fanboys say they are...

Ryan

 

By Renegade on Monday, April 05, 2010 8:57 PM

Ignorant? Stupid? Or cheated?

That's what I wonder when I click a Google ad on an iPhone and it takes me to this web page:

 What's wrong?

1. It's a web site designed for full sized computers, and not mobile phones.
2. It's a splash page.
3. It requires Adobe Flash - The iPhone does not support Flash.
4. It has no call to action.
5. It is a total waste of money for the advertiser.

Now how did that happen? The above problems are just the beginning. Advertising can get pretty expensive if you're just burning money.

... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, April 02, 2010 5:20 PM

I am seriously stubborn. A lot of the time. I refuse to use hosted web services. I refuse to use a "web host". I do not rely on anyone but myself, and today I am reminded why... YouTube... Down. No joy. No happiness. Dead. And this is 2 days later... Youch. 2 days of pain.

So for all those people out there that host their corporate videos and business videos on YouTube... OUCH! A lot of them just got burned.

YouTube upgraded/updated/changed/messed up (whatever you want to call it) their site with a lot of people getting nothing. It's just dead. They're working in some places, but not in others. What's going on? Dunno. Don't care. Just wish that they'd get back up soon!

In these kinds of situations, you really can't afford to wait for them to get back up if you rely on them. If you have a business to run, well, then what? Spend the next day? week? uploading to your own server and recoding your pages? Ouch.

While ... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, April 02, 2010 3:29 PM

My first Mac impressions, or rather, my first impressions for the newest line of Macs since OS 9... I really hate the Apple fanboys. Well, I hate fanboys pretty much all over as they are never very balanced in any of their views, but today, I really hate the Apple fanboys.

Immediately the computer needs well over a GB of updates and several reboots. Three reboots to be precise. What is it that I keep hearing fanboys going on about Windows and rebooting? Hmmm... Well, that myth for OS X is debunked. It requires rebooting as well. Nevermind what they fanboys rant about Windows. Same thing goes for OS X.

I really do like the way it plays videos though. Very smooth and the remote makes it a sheer pleasure.

Resizing windows is miserable though. It's especially difficult with Xcode (the software IDE for Macs) as you need to try to fiddle with a million windows and there's only 1 way to resize things with the grip in the lower right. If it's close ... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, February 05, 2010 11:01 AM

I just about never do things the same way twice. I always end up looking for a better way to do things. Well, not really that case this time, but I couldn't remember the AM/PM string formatters, so I do a quick search and turn up with http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/CSharpDateManipulation.aspx. It's got a very good treatment of things there.

I generally search online rather than go to the Visual Studio MSDN library documentation because the library is rather slow, and I'm not all that patient. ;)

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By Renegade on Thursday, February 04, 2010 9:29 AM

I was checking out map SDKs and APIs a couple weeks ago, and today got a CodeProject newsletter...

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By Renegade on Friday, January 08, 2010 9:30 AM

I have a component toolkit that was really cheap, but the guys there are real fast with support tickets. PureComponents.

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By Renegade on Saturday, December 12, 2009 6:58 AM

WOW! FINALLY! Somebody else said it! I've been ranting alone about the insanity in the computer security industry, and finally there's someone else out there saying to take it down a step!

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By Renegade on Sunday, September 27, 2009 5:54 PM

The old features vs. benefits thang... not an easy task to get right. Here's a quick primer to help write better. I outline one approach where that is basically a series of refinements that steer you towards writing about benefits instead of features until you get to the actual writing step.

Read More »

By Renegade on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 1:38 PM

Well, just finished an illustration that took 3 hours to do... And adds no really useful information...

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