Sublime Software

Boost Spirit 2.1

2009-11-03T12:11:00.001+11:00

I'm very impressed by what Joel, Hartmut and the rest of the folks have done with the 2.1 release of Spirit. The syntax has been improved, the code is much neater and more powerful – bravo guys!

If you use C++ and have a need for a parser do yourself a favour and check out Spirit.

Spirit 2.1 will be in Boost 1.41.0, which is due for release any time now (it's currently in beta). Until then you can read the pre-release documentation.

CppDepend

2009-07-08T07:04:00.001+10:00

Geektastic! The company that develops NDepend, the sensational source code analysis tool for .NET, has just released a C++ counterpart. I intend to spend a great deal of time analysing our code with CppDepend. Available for free as a beta.

[Via Kate Gregory.]

VMWare Server 2 Remote Console and Synergy

2009-05-23T09:00:00.001+10:00

I've got VMWare Server 2 install on one of my machines here and I was trying to use the Remote Console (which installs as a Firefox extension) to connect to a Windows XP VM I was creating. But no dice. The keyboard and mouse inputs were not being redirected to the VM.

After trying a bunch of things I stumbled on turning Synergy off. Voila, the mouse and keyboard works as expected.

[Incidentally my recommendation is to use the Synergy+ client; the original Synergy client appears to be pretty much abandonware and the Synergy+ folks are doing a great job at fixing bugs.]

So there's my tip of the day: If you find your keyboard and mouse not working as expected with VMWare Server 2's Remote Client take a took in your system tray. If Synergy is running turn it off and see if Remote Client responds. Worked for me!

Code Snippets for C++ in VS2005

2009-04-13T21:45:00.002+10:00

Visual Studio 2005 introduced the concepts of code snippets. Handy little chunks of commonly-used code that are easily inserted to your own with some Intellisense magic. Hit a keypress, choose the snippet, fill in any fields and voila.

C# and VB users were spoilt; MS supplied a bunch of snippets to do many common tasks. Iterating over containers, creating regions, defining classes…many common tasks were snippetified. Further, there were many more online.

Alas, C++ users were left in the dark with no snippet support at all.

Thankfully the release of the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements" addressed that issue (also known as the VS2005 "Powertoys"). After installation you get – among a few other questionably useful tools - C++ snippet support in VS2005. There are only two problems. 1) If you're using Vista you get a bizarre error ¹ when you try to run the installer. 2) You don't get any C++ snippets installed. Instead Microsoft makes the C# snippets available in C++. Thanks guys. Anyway, let's address those problems.

1) The issue here is that Vista requires administrator privileges to install this package. Had the install package been an exe we'd have been fine; shift-right click and select "Run as Administrator". Alas it's an MSI so we'll have to find another way. The simplest, as described by the MS UK Dev Team, is to fire up a command shell, running it as admin (open the start menu, type 'cmd' then shift + right-click the cmd.exe icon), change to the directory where you downloaded the PowerToy installer then execute the command:

msiexec /i "VSSDK_PowerToys.msi"

Then follow the GUI installer as normal. Oh, you'll need to exit from all VS2005 instances.

[You may notice – well, I did – that Visual Studio will have a bit of a conniption fit when you restart. It appears that it's setting itself up for the first time again. Not sure why. Thankfully all my keybindings etc remained intact and there were no noticeable problems but YMMV.]

2) Once everything is installed correctly you should find that the "Tools->Code Snippets Manager" should now have "Visual C++" listed as a language. Good sign. However by looking through the supplied list of snippets you'll find they're all actually C# snippets. You'll want to write your own C++ snippets. To do that you'll need a snippet editor since writing the XML by hand is tedious (far from impossible but annoying).

Of the bunch of tools I found that edited snippets only Snippy supported C++ snippets. Snippy works fine but doesn't seem to have a binary distribution so you'll need to download and build it (a VS2005 solution file is supplied). After you run it create your own snippets and save them somewhere (like "Users\YourName\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\Visual C++\YourSnippets"). You can then add those snippets to VS2005 using the Snippet Manager.

I haven't discussed the format of a snippet, it's pretty easy to figure it out from Microsoft's documentation. But here's one to get you started. If people ask nicely I'll try and post more.

And that's it! Now you should be ready to create your own wicked-cool C++ snippets. Let me know if you have any rippers!

1: The error is something like: "Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor." I love how the error makes it so clear that administrator privileges are required.

Code Camp '08

2008-04-23T23:42:00.001+10:00

Once again I'm going to miss Code Camp. Too many other things going on (holiday to book, birthday party x 2, BBQ Friday, gathering to go to Sunday) to justify heading away for three days to geek out. In other words my girlfriend will be über cheesed if I go. ;)

Have fun if you're going! Wish I was there too.

PS I've got a plan for next time. I'll present on some topic - that'll be way easier to sell to my SO than if I'm just tagging along...

Building Boost 1.35

2008-04-11T18:04:00.001+10:00

I'm a big fan of the boost library for C++ development. They're incredibly well designed and implemented, generally cross-platform, and quite well documented. In short, they're awesome.

However, I regularly have issues building them (on Windows with the VS2005 compiler). Thankfully I'm not alone. Kevin Heifner ran into the same problems I did when trying to build the recently released 1.35 and documented a work-around. Thanks Kevin! It worked a treat.

The summary is that the Boost Consulting group, who usually put together a nice installer, haven't yet published one for 1.35. Further, following the instructions on the Getting Started page that describe how to build boost led me astray. With hindsight I think the major problem was that the "stage" directory mentioned in the example needs to be created before the build commences. Anyway, Kevin provides an alternative set of command line options for bjam:

cd "C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_35_0"

bjam --toolset=msvc --build-type=complete --prefix="c:\program files\boost\boost_1_35_0" install

Then just configure your projects Additional Library Directories to include "C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_35_0\lib".

Wireshark matures; v1 is released

2008-04-04T17:59:00.000+11:00

Wireshark, formerly called Ethereal, has made it to the 1.0 milestone. Congrats to Gerald Combs and the team. Wireshark is an amazingly useful application that helps analyse network traffic.

As a software engineer it's an invaluable part of my toolkit and I'm very grateful for the many folks who work on this wonderful open-source (GPL) application.

Internet Sharing: Mac to Windows

2008-04-04T17:28:00.002+11:00

Sharing an Internet connection from your Mac is trivially easy:

Open System Preferences
Choose Sharing
Tick the Internet Sharing checkbox

Typically I share out my wired Ethernet connection over wireless (Airport in Mac parlance).

You'll need to configure the Network Name (the SSID) and the encryption settings. Unfortunately WPA is not yet supported so your best bet is 128 bit WEP. You'll also need to choose a 13-character password if you want Windows computers to share your network (if you're network only has Mac's then feel free to choose any length password).

Connecting any Mac to this network is trivial. Simply turn on AirPort, browse to the network and enter the password.

Unfortunately, from a Windows PC it isn't quite so obvious - you can't just auto-detect the network and enter the password. You'll need to perform the following steps:

Open Control Panel, Network Connections and click on Wireless Connections
Add a new wifi network
Enter the Network Name that you created on the Mac - it must match exactly
Set the Network Authentication to Shared
Set the Data Encryption to WEP
Uncheck "The Key is Provided Automatically" and enter the 13-character password that you chose earlier

You should now find that the Windows PC can connect to the network.

If you're using a wifi manager other than the standard Windows functionality then you may need to experiment on the various settings. One manager I had to configure wouldn't work until I chose Enterprise as a network type.

I'll try and get some Windows screenshots soon (my VM doesn't have a wireless connection).

Hope that helps someone!

Google Docs goes offline

2008-04-01T09:19:00.000+11:00

Google Docs has just gained the ability to go offline. This makes the simply office suite significantly more useful as you no longer need to be tethered to an Internet connection while editing your documents. Naturally they've used Google Gears to implement this. Mental note: Get up to speed on Gears!

My Google Docs doesn't yet reflect the feature but I presume it's rolling out through all the Google servers as we speak...

Google Chart API

2007-12-07T18:16:00.001+11:00

Google have just announced their Chart API. This is freakin' awesome! Anyone can now embed charts into their web pages (yes, even your blogs!) by whacking in a well-constructed url.

Here's a quick chart I whipped up that shows average maximum temperature for each month:

Nice, eh?

Don't share intermediate directories

2007-11-16T17:38:00.001+11:00

OK, I've been bitten by this issue twice.

Take care when setting the intermediate directory (Project->Properties->Configuration Properties->General->Intermediate Directory) for Visual C++ projects.

If you have multiple projects that use the same intermediate directory you are likely to run into problems.

Specifically, if you're using a multi-core machine to build projects that share an intermediate directory and those projects happen to build in parallel the second project will fail when it tries to delete the files in the intermediate directory.

One way to ensure this never happens is to set the intermediate directory to $(ProjectName)_$(ConfigurationName).

This is particularly nasty because if you create two vcproj's in the same directory this will happen with the default parameters.

My code's compiling...

2007-08-20T11:49:00.000+10:00

The biggest problems with Moore's law and the power of PC's these days is that compilation time is constantly decreasing.

xkcd knows what I'm talking about...

Mac Mini upgrade...finally!

2007-08-09T10:43:00.000+10:00

Amongst the fanfare of the Apple iMac range overhaul I didn't initially catch that the Mac Mini has also been upgraded! I've been waiting for this for a long time so I can use one as a front end for my MythTV system.

Not only have the processors and RAM been upgraded (Core 2 Duo 1.83 or 2.0 GHz, 1Gig RAM) but the price has come down too.

Now is the right time to buy.

Firefly (aka mt-daapd)

2007-08-07T01:19:00.000+10:00

Firefly is a wonderful implementation of a DAAP server. What is DAAP I hear you ask? It's an audio streaming protocol introduced by Apple to allow you to stream music from one PC to another over a network. In simpler terms it lets you host all your music on your server and play them through iTunes (or some other apps).

Unfortunately, the version of Firefly in the Ubuntu repositories is a little old and stopped working for me when I recently upgraded my iTunes. Upgrading it wasn't as easy as normal in Ubuntu so I thought I'd list the steps I took:

Uninstall the old version
- sudo apt-get remove mt-daapd
Delete configuration files and the database as they appear to be incompatible (YMMV).
- sudo rm /var/cache/mt-daapd/songs.db
- sudo rm /etc/mt-daapd.conf
Download a recent build
- wget http://nightlies.mt-daapd.org/dl.php?FILE=mt-daapd_0.9-svn-1586_feisty_i386.deb
Install package
- dpkg -i mt-daapd_0.9-svn-1586_feisty_i386.deb

Now reconfigure Firefly. There's probably a much better workaround than deleting the config files and the database but Firefly is so easy to set up that it's not worth figuring it out!

Thankfully, I can now, once again, play my music through iTunes from my Ubuntu server.

Mac Defect: Samba mounting

2007-08-07T01:13:00.000+10:00

I've found a workaround to what appears to be a bug in the OSX Finder. When you mount a network drive (over samba) sometimes the drive appears, then promptly disappears. Attempting to mount the drive again results in the error "Volume already mounted". Dang.

The workaround is to "Go to Folder" (Shift-Apple-G) and enter "/Volumes". You should find your network drive there.

Chicken of the VNC - Slow connecting to Ubuntu

2007-08-07T00:46:00.000+10:00

Chicken of the VNC is undoubtably one of the coolest-named apps around. And, in most situations, it's the best VNC client on the Mac. But it has some serious issues when connecting to my Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) server - it's slow to the point that it's unusable.

Twiddling with the various options doesn't make a difference. No idea what's causing the issue; if anyone can enlighten me I'd appreciate it!

In the meantime I use the venerable VNCViewer. It hasn't been updated in years but it connects to my server just fine (although it does drive CPU usage high).

dm_mirror and LVM's pvmove

2007-07-30T00:57:00.000+10:00

To allow LVM's pvmove command to work you need support for dm_mirror in the kernal. Simply enter the following at a terminal:

modprobe dm_mirror

The error I received when I didn't have that module loaded was:

mirror: Required device-mapper target(s) not detected in your kernel

If you use LVM regularly you may want to add support for this at startup; there are a few ways you can do this but I choose to add to the modules list at /etc/modules. (Just use vim and add "dm_mirror" to the end of the file.) I'm on Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) so YMMV.

BTW, for conveniance, there's no difference between "-" and "_" in module names. dm_mirror and dm-mirror are interchangeable.

Ubuntu and MythTV notes

2007-05-13T23:54:00.000+10:00

I've been wanting a particular server PC for a long time now; a PC that I could use to record TV, be the main storage area for all of my data (especially music and photos), remotely trigger downloads and perform backups from. Installation of this PC is well underway but I wanted to post about a couple of stumbling blocks I had in case others were having them (or unless I had to go through it again!).

Background: The two major software choices I've made were to use Ubuntu for the OS and MythTV for the TV recording. I've been very happy with both decisions; highly recommended.

The vast majority of users will find Ubuntu amazingly simple to install. I had a couple of slightly unusual requirements however...

I wanted to use a filesystem called LVM. The main benefit for me with LVM is that you can add extra storage space whenever you want. LVM abstracts the logical mapping of mount points from the physical hard disks and partitions. An example: Today I may have a mountpoint at /var/mydata and it may be mapped to a partition on my current 320 Gig HD. Tomorrow I could drop another 500 Gig HD in and add some (all if liked) of it to /var/mydata.

In the Windows world this would be like having a 320 Gig drive appearing as C:/ then adding another 500 Gig drive to it. [I've been told Vista has some support for this kind of thing - can anyone confirm?]

It's a very useful feature (and Unix OS's have had it since '98) particularly for a server where my storage needs are going to be ever-increasing.

Unfortunately there is a problem with LVM under Feisty Fawn, the latest version of Ubuntu. LVM, as installed when using apt-get, seems to be located in the wrong place. Thankfully John has written up a simple work-around. It may also be related to another defect with the libdevmapper package. Either way it's easy to fix with those two references.

Installing MythTV is remarkably easy under Ubuntu, just follow this guide. Unfortunately my capture card (a Leadtek WinFast 1000 - basically a bog-standard DVB card) didn't work straight-up. It wasn't being properly detected in the MythTVconfiguration. Turns out that for some reason I was missing a couple of required kernal modules. Again, hitting the Internet quickly gave me a pointer in the right direction. dvb_core and cx88_dvb were the culprits; adding them with the following commands:

sudo modprobe dvb_core
sudo modprobe cx88_dvb

solved the issue. Of course, resetting the PC would mean that these modules would be missing next boot so I also had to add them to /etc/modules.

They were the biggest stumbling blocks (though installing shepherd - a wonderful EPG for Aussies - took some trial-and-error!). I've now got a stable system that I can record TV (remotely if I like using MythWeb) easily. I've still yet to shift all of my data to the box nor are backups happening yet, but it's just a matter of time.

Check out Ubuntu and MythTV, I've had a good experience with both of them!

Google to release online Powerpoint competitor

2007-04-18T07:31:00.000+10:00

Google just announced that presentation software will be added to their online Docs and Spreadsheets package "this summer". So it won't be long before they have all of the major building blocks that defined Microsoft's Office package - available from a web interface.

The really exciting part of this news for me though was that the software was acquired from a company called Tonic Systems. Tonic is "based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia"!
As a keen software dev in Melbourne I'm shocked and disappointed that I hadn't even heard about these guys...someone needed to throw me a frickin' bone here... ;)

[Although Tonic's webpage has been replaced by a Google announcement you may still be able to get at the old page - ironically - by using Google Cache.]

I'm really looking forward to using this application!

Hotspotr - Community WiFi Cafe Hotspots

2007-03-01T10:21:00.001+11:00

Hotspotr is a sweet mashup that displays cafe's with wireless using Google Maps. It's community driven, so go enter more for Melbourne!

Switched to Google Reader

2007-02-16T00:48:00.001+11:00

About three weeks ago I migrated from Bloglines to Google Reader. I'd checked out Google's offering some time ago but found it lacking, particularly given that I was such a Bloglines devotee having used it for years.

Turns out that the more recent version of Google Reader is fantastic! So much so that I've made the complete switch. Apart from now being as stable and up-to-date as Bloglines, Reader has a much better (and prettier) interface and has a killer feature up it's sleeve; your unread blog posts are protected from aggregator and/or browser crashes.

Here is the scenario: You go away for a day (or three) and come back to read your blogs. You put aside and hour (or three) and start to delve into the 900 new posts that have accumulated. It's at this point that Bloglines blows. If you choose the regular option and read all of your new posts ("A") then Bloglines tries to download them all into your browser - all at once.

More often than not something goes wrong and the download doesn't complete. Occasionally the browser presents problems (huge memory consumption, high CPU usuage or, sometimes, a crash) as it tries to render the humungous page of posts. So, with large numbers of new posts, there's a very real chance you're going to lose them all. They disappear into the darkest depths of the blogosphere. You see, Bloglines marks them as read once the download begins. Anything goes wrong, kiss new posts bye-bye.

Google Reader is smarter. Instead of downloading them all at once it fetches 20 at a time with AJAXy goodness. When you approach the bottom it grabs the next 20. When each entry is highlighted (when it has focus, or as you thump on the "j" key) it is marked as read. Simple. Slick. And not even a browser crash will cost you more than 20 unread posts. Very slick.

Google Reader isn't perfect and Bloglines is still a great web app but for now I'm a very happy Google Reader fan.

Now, if you're not using a blog aggregator then get on to it! Everyone will be soon, simply because it's the best way to absorb information that is of relevance to you. I can recommend Google Reader.

Google Maps down under

2007-02-06T12:32:00.000+11:00

Sweet, Google has just announced extended support for the Google Maps Australia site. You can now perform business searches and get driving directions.

Now, if they could just add the Google Maps road information to Google Earth...

[BTW, until they do, you can use this tip as a workaround; it will download the correct 'tile' from Google Maps and semi-transparently overlay it in Google Earth.]

make_pair is your friend

2007-02-05T12:20:00.000+11:00

One common newbie code smell I've seen a lot of recently is the unnecessary definition of a typedef for a pair of items:

typedef std::pair <Type1, Type2> myPairForMap;

typedef std::map <Type1, Type2> myMapType;

...

myMapType m_Map;

The idea is that you can do this:

m_Map.insert( myPairForMap(foo, bar) );

What many people seem to not understand is that there is a more elegant way - use std::make_pair:

m_Map.insert( std::make_pair(foo, bar) );

make_pair is a templated function that returns a pair of items. It's a simple function so I'll repeat it here in its entirety:

template <class T1, class T2>

pair<T1, T2> make_pair(const T1& x, const T2& y) {

return pair<T1, T2>(x, y);

}

See? It detects what types you're passing in and returns a pair containing the items. No need to define the pair typedef.

To the spammers...

2006-11-27T11:00:00.000+11:00

Could you prats please stop spamming this blog? I will delete your comments quickly so it's a fruitless exercise. I don't want to have to use moderated comments but if this keeps up I will be forced to.

I do use Bloggers captcha facility and yet still some spam comments are getting through. Are actual people creating these comments or have the automated spam systems become more sophisticated?

I don't expect this post will help at all but venting relieves stress. :)

DLL not found exception

2006-10-23T12:10:00.000+10:00

I've been working on a C++ project recently that involved creating a DLL. Although I had unit tests to pummel the objects that were used inside the DLL I wanted an easy way to test the DLL itself through its interface. I chose to create a C# Winforms app that used the DLL using interop.

Really easy to do:

[DllImport("YourDll.dll")]
public static extern int MyFoo(string bar);

There's heaps of documentation out there for this kind of stuff. Suffice to say that the .NET framework goes to great lengths to make this happen as easily as possible.

One gotcha that I ran into though was that initially the JIT compiler threw an exception - a DllNotFoundException. I checked to ensure that the DLL and EXE were in the same directory, I used dumpbin to ensure that the DLL was correctly exporting the expected symbols etc...couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Turns out that my DLL had a dependency on another DLL that wasn't in the path. Unfortunately the exception doesn't give you any further useful information so watch out for this problem.

Two nifty Windows apps

2006-10-13T12:11:00.000+10:00

Rearrange the items in your taskbar with Taskbar Shuffle.

Display your Outlook calendar appointments and tasks right on your desktop with DeskTask.

U3 USB drive

2006-10-10T13:32:00.000+10:00

My company recently purchased a 1GB SanDisk micro cruzer USB drive for me to use. These devices are great, providing lots of useful space. However when you insert the drive it automatically runs some software that "assists" you with such tasks as synchronizing and password protecting your files. Although the software may be useful to some people it isn't to me and there's no easy way to remove it ^[1].

Manufacturers should realise that they ought not to install - or run - a damn thing on my computer without my permission. Ask if you must. And if I say no don't pester me again. Ever. A better course of action is to ask me to opt-in; ship a CD along with the device (or provide a URL) that I can choose if I want it installed.

Anyway, after unsuccessfully trying to remove the software for a couple of minutes I hit Google and found that many other users had complained and some had found a solution. At some stage U3 (makers of the drive) put an uninstaller online. My PC is now clean again.

Kudos to U3 for putting the uninstaller online but, please, next time do the right thing in the first place.

[1] It fiendishly mounts two drives when you insert the device - one of which fools the operating system to appear as a read-only CD drive. Clever, but difficult to remove. Yes there are ways around getting it to run the software (although in this case even disabling autorun wasn't going to cut it) but I just wanted it gone.

Firefox extensions

2006-10-02T10:24:00.000+10:00

OK, I can't find any easy way to transfer my Windows Firefox extensions and configuration to my MacBook - there are extensions to do this (notably FEBE and MozBackup) but they don't work on the Mac.

Perhaps I can copy my profile folder? I'll try.

In the meantime, here are my extensions in case I have to install them one-by-one:

ListZilla was used to easily create this list.

Are there any others that I should install?

Foldershare venting

2006-09-22T15:53:00.000+10:00

Update: Foldershare is back up and running. As far as I can tell it was down for a solid eight hours plus...

I started using Foldershare a few weeks ago and really like it. It allows me to easily share files between my home and work PC's. ^[1]

Unfortunately I've started becoming reliant on the system.

Today I intentionally didn't worry about copying files to my iPod (to carry them to work) because I knew that I could use Foldershare to access my home PC from work. Dagnamit, wouldn't you know it; Foldershare has been down all day.

I still like the service but I hope there's not too many outtages!

As a final thought, I've gotta remember to make software that my users become reliant on. Not to intentionally lock them in but it indicates that you're providing an invaluable service. User reliance == success.

[1] It works by running a "satellite" app on both PC's. You can then access files on the PC (that the app is running on) through a web interface. So, from work, I can log in to the Foldershare website and view and copy files from my home PC. Sweet!

Goto's are evil

2006-09-21T18:12:00.000+10:00

OK, so I'm working on some legacy code today when I stumble on a compiler warning: "C4102: unreferenced label". The cogs in my brain started ticking over..."label, label, hmm, what could that be"? Then I took a look at the code. Oh crap. Goto's. In C++. In one function (~100 lines) there were 21 goto calls.

Practically unmaintainable.

Lucky the author wasn't still with the company otherwise I'd have given him an earful.

Mr Duffy you suck.

Registering ASP.NET in IIS

2006-09-21T14:52:00.000+10:00

I've tripped over this issue a couple of times so I figure I'd offload it to my blog to free up some space in my head.

The short story:

If you've just installed a new web application to your IIS server and it uses ASP.NET and you're unable to view the web page (specifically you may instead be asked to save a file) then it may be because you need to (re)register ASP.NET with IIS.

You do so like this:

> cd "\WindowsFolder\Microsoft.NET\Framework\VersionNumber"

> aspnet_regiis.exe" -i

The longer story goes something like this:

You install the .NET Framework version x.y. However you didn't have IIS installed in Windows. Then you install a web application to your IIS server ^[1]. Viewing the web app pages ^[2] confusingly just doesn't work, dammit! Then you remember the magical register command and voila, birds start singing, sun beams out from behind the clouds and the world is a happy place once more. :)

MS have also documented the issue.

[1] For me it always seems to be CruiseControl.NET.

[2] Which, for CC.NET, is http://localhost/ccnet/default.aspx.

Matt's recommended technical books

2006-09-13T00:37:00.000+10:00

A friend of mine in Vancouver asked me to recommend some technical books; Ryan, I may be a little late but better late than never, eh? ;) Warning: This list is quite C++ focussed.

Design Patterns, Gamma et. al. Let's start with a non-language-specific title (although Smalltalk and C++ are used for examples the languages aren't important). This puppy is necessary and should be on every developers shelf. It describes, with methodical detail, the most common design patterns that we encounter - learn them all, and glance at this book regularly as a refresher. Be aware however that many of the code examples are somewhat dated and can be improved with modern techniques so don't copy them verbatim. Keep the book close particularly during the design phase of the software lifecycle as it can often simplify your "in the head" design. If nothing else this book gave the software community a vocabulary to discuss patterns; make sure you can talk the talk.

The C++ Programming Language, Stroustrup. The father of C++ writes the definitive reference book. Kinda like K&R's venerable The C Programming Language - but for C++. This book is great when you can't quite remember certain syntax or you're trying to recall obscure behaviour. If you have a spare bit of cash opt for the newer hardcover "special" 3rd edition as it'll wear better and has a couple of extra appendices (Appendix E on standard library exception safety is required reading) though both can be (legally!) downloaded.

Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example, Koenig and Moo. For newcomers to C++ (or those coming from a C background), this book is terrific for two reasons: 1) it gives the reader practical examples of how to write quality C++ code and 2) it doesn't shy away from introducing common and useful C++ features (like templates and the standard library) early on. One of the few C++ books I can recommend to beginners.

Exceptional C++, More Exceptional C++ and Exceptional C++ Style, Sutter. Herb Sutter is one of the true legends in the C++ landscape and his books are all gold. Once you're into "intermediate C++" territory, buy his books and read. Each chapter begins with a question, challenging you to think about a particular C++ topic. The rest of the chapter thoroughly discusses the answer (Sutter began this format many moons ago with the "Guru of the Week" postings to comp.lang.c++.moderated). Learn the intricacies of the pimpl idiom, exception safety, memory management and a host of other topics.

Effective C++, More Effective C++, Effective STL, Meyers. Scott Meyer's 'big three' are a common sight on many programmer's bookshelves. And rightly so; Meyers has a very appealing, easy-to-read writing style that is well suited to the intermediate C++ devs it's aimed at. Each chapter begins with a guideline which is clarified over the rest of the chapter. Don't break the Meyer's guidelines! Note that Effective C++ has recently been revised (now in the 3rd edition) to better cover more modern techniques - pony up the extra dough if you can though the older revisions are still pretty good.

Code Complete, McConnell. The "how-to" guide for software engineers. Language neutral (almost - there are some Java and C++ examples) this book covers a diverse range of topics such as defensive programming, variable naming, software quality, testing, refactoring, and programming tools - just to name a few. What I like about this book is the depth of research (there are many sidebars with "hard facts" giving convincing weight to claims made by the author) and the logical way that McConnell explains why he gives the guidance he does. I consider this the Book of Common Sense for Software Engineers. Many experienced dev's will consider some of what is covered a little too simple but there are so many nuggets in here that everyone should go back and flick through this a couple of times a year. I do.

Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, McConnell. I know of not a single software engineer that can give accurate estimates for projects. Not one. Nor do I know of any project managers that have really had a project schedule under control. This book should be read by everyone in those roles. It provides techniques to estimate (nay, measure) software effort and lists techniques to help both devs and managers get a handle on how to run a project. Fantastic stuff!

The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial & Reference, Josuttis. A simple recommendation. If you use the C++ standard library you need this book. It's the best reference material on the subject there is. Period. Buy it. It covers everything in the library from streams to containers, algorithms and iterators and is suitable for everyone from beginners to advanced users. Many C++ devs I know use only a fraction of the power of the standard library: don't be one of them.

C++ Templates, Vandevoorde and Josuttis. A book for any developer really itching to understand the nitty-gritty of how templates work. High intermediate to advanced users will get the most out of this one. If you've been confused by template template parameters, partial specialization or Koening lookup this book can help out. Traits, metaprogramming, template instantiation and expression templates are also covered. Very complete, very clearly written, very good.

C++ Coding Standards, Sutter and Alexandrescu. The best description is in the subtitle: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and best Best Practices. If you're team is using C++ make sure your architect(s) have a copy of this book. Written by two of the most knowledgeable folks in the industry, every one of these guidelines is gold. The writing style makes for easy reading; the topics are accessible even while some are inherently complex. Best suited to low intermediate to advanced users.

Modern C++ Design, Alexandrescu. The most mind-blowing coding book I've ever read. Chapter three (Typelists) was a revelation, though I had to read it half a dozen times to begin to understand! Aimed at advanced users, this will challenge your design skills. Not only does this book cover many advanced techniques (policy-based design, compile-time programming, traits etc) but it does so with the real-world in mind: at the end you'll have a library (Alexandrescu's Loki library is described and freely available) with many amazing components and implemented design patterns such as smart pointers, generalized functors, object factories, abstract factory and visitor. Although boost now has some better production versions of these libraries, you'll now know to write your own. Awesome stuff but be prepared for some challenging topics (although the author does a decent job explaining this stuff it's just hard).

C++ Template Metaprogramming, Abrahams and Gurtovoy. Another one for the advanced users out there, this book covers the relatively newish world of metaprogramming; developing code in the compile-time space. Abrahams and Gurtovoy both work on the boost libraries and this book covers many of the techniques developed for the boost::mpl library. As well as trying to explain the concepts, the book also looks at why you'd want to use them - chapter 10 (Domain-Specific Embedded Languages) really sold it for me; all the tough metaprogramming stuff suddenly became more important when I could see what could be done with the techniques.

Beyond the C++ Standard Library, Karlsson. Finally a book that covers many of the wonderful boost libraries. Although the online documentation will always be the definitive guide, this book is great to pass around to colleagues to introduce them to any of the boost libraries. Although I would have liked to have seen more examples of when to use the libraries and descriptions of how the libraries are implemented, if you use the boost libraries (You don't? Why the hell not?) you'll want a copy of this book. Not a necessary book but good to have nonetheless.

Framework Design Guidelines, Cwalina and Abrams. The bible for Microsoft .NET devs, this book describes rules on how .NET libraries should be constructed. Naming conventions, exception usage, common design patterns and many other topics are dissected and rules are clearly stated (with some excellent commentary in the form of inline annotations by many MS gurus). You can use FxCop to help find the flaws in your designs but then use this book to understand why. Microsoft use this internally and the .NET Framework is all the better for it.

The Design and Evolution of C++, Stroustrup. This book is a little out of place. It doesn't describe any software techniques or languages, nor is it really required reading. But I couldn't leave it off this list. D&E describes the history of C++, the design decisions, how it was developed, how it went through standardization. There are many lessons to be learnt here but, for me, I just couldn't believe that a topic so dry as computer language history could be so damn interesting! Maybe I'm strange though. ;)

So there you have it, that's my list. I'm sure I've left a few off there as I've got books scattered all over the place at the moment but that should get you started.

One book I know I've left out is Fred Brook's Mythical Man Month which is fantastic but I've lost it (just buy it anyway!). When I find it (or buy a new copy) I'll add it to this list.

Disclaimer: My only affilliation with these books is that I own them. I don't personally know any of the authors (though I have had some correspondence with some of them) and I don't get any monentary gain by talking about them. I just think they're great books. :)

Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows - updated for 2006

2006-08-29T23:58:00.000+10:00

It's really comforting to know that I'm not the only developer in the world that has to try out every tool in existence! Scott Hanselman recently updated his Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows.

If you're a software dev ensure you're aware of every tool on the list, even if you don't install them. Seriously.

Also be sure to check out the Hanselminutes podcasts, which are always chock-full of great tips.

If this seems like a Hanselman love-fest it's probably because it is - Scott is a guy I respect and admire. Love ya work Scott, keep it up!

Microsoft loses a good one

2006-08-10T01:57:00.000+10:00

Niall Kennedy is leaving Microsoft to start his own business. Sounds like Niall got a little fed up waiting for Microsoft to follow through on promises that were made to him about resourcing a project he was passionate about. Big companies can do that, dammit.

Having heard some of his ideas (though he probably doesn't remember, I met Niall while I was in the bay area attending one of his tech sessions) I'm convinced MS has let an amazing opportunity go begging. I can't wait to see what Niall comes up with working for himself in a startup!

Good luck Niall!

Visual Studio designer doesn't like generic controls

2006-08-08T12:51:00.001+10:00

Generics rocks; coming from a C++ background it wasn't until .NET was blessed with generics (v2.0) that I began taking it seriously. Without at least some form of parametric polymorphism any programming language is simply hobbled.

Once the almighty Anders got around to giving us generics however, things were all rosy. I could safely (and speedily!) add and remove typed objects to my lists, write generic methods to perform operations and, generally, genericise the hell out of my code. Sure, it wasn't as powerful as C++'s templates but generics are easier to use and have their own advantages (side-stepping the code bloat issue and providing an easy way to package a generic library for example). Anyhoo, I'm using generics and I'm a happly lil' developer.

Until I try to derive from a WinForms control and create a generic class from it.

"Ohh noo, you can't do that!" complains the Visual Studio designer. "Of course I can" I reply (surely I'm not the only developer who talks to their computer?) as I scan the code for errors. There are none; the code compiles and even runs just fine. All I wanted was a type-safe CheckedListBox and generics are the perfect solution. Unfortunately the designer doesn't know how to deal with generic classes. If you create one, that's fine - but try to use it at design-time and you're in deep poo-poo. Bugger, it has a lot of great uses...

Anyone know any way around this limitation? And, for bonus points, do you know why that limitation is there (seems to me - with cursory thought - that there's no good reason for the limitation to exist)?

Annoying Bloglines 'feature'

2006-08-08T12:51:00.000+10:00

I love Bloglines, I use it all the time to keep track of my feeds. But lately something has changed, something that is driving me nuts.

Perhaps a month ago I started noticing that when you display all the new posts from your feeds, Bloglines draws the focus to the top of the page when all the posts have finished loading. Arrgggh!

I subscribe to around 200 feeds which typically generates around 250 posts per day to read. It takes awhile for those posts to load and so I begin reading them as soon as they start to appear in my browser. Some time later I'll be midway through reading post #74 and whoosh! Back to the top I go, losing my place and boiling my blood.

[I'm lazy and haven't yet broken out the Javascript to find out why this is happening but I have two guesses. 1) Bloglines is telling the browser to give some element near the top the focus, though which one and why I don't know (it's not the search box). 2) The keyboard shortcuts implementation is interfering somehow. Just guesses, I should really get dirty amongst the code.]

It's only a small thing but please Bloglines, make it stop!

Tagging this post with "bloglines freedback" (Chris Pirillo's freedback idea is a ripper) ought to alert the Bloglines team that this is feedback for them - we'll see how we go!

California, Redundant, MacBook(?)

2006-07-20T22:35:00.000+10:00

Well, well, well. It's been over two months since my last post on this blog and boy has life been interesting!

As you may remember, I spent six months in California's Bay Area to support one of the products I had been working on. What a fantastic experience (if you're interested in reading about some of the sights I saw in Northern California you'll find some stories and pictures on my personal blog.)

Supporting software, compared to developing, requires a whole different slew of skills and I encourage every software developer to exercise those skills if given the opportunity. It'll make you a better developer. And teach you patience. And - sometimes - make you want to inflict mortal injuries on your users. ;)

When I got back I began regular development work again, slipping back into the role pretty easily because I was motivated (getting in close contact with your customers will do that) and still well practiced (I undertook a lot of mini software projects "on the side" even overseas - if you're a 'true' software dev you'll understand!). But a few weeks later bad news rippled through the office; our sales had continued to underwhelm, restructuring was going to occur and some jobs would be cut.

Long story short; mine was one of them.

Now, I'd been considering leaving the company for quite some time, in fact had I not been given the overseas stint it's unlikely I would have stayed much longer. I'd been at the company for over five years and, while it's a great environment, there are many things I found insanely frustrating. I'm not going to discuss them here suffice to say that I thought many things should be done differently and change was very hard to instigate.

Anyway, for whatever reason, my job evaporated and I'm now on the market. After the initial shock wore off I actually felt somewhat relieved; now I was free to decide what I want to do and go after it.

Which is where I am now. I'm trying to figure out if I join another large company, or a start-up. Or perhaps work for myself (I have many ideas of applications to write!). Or maybe returning to uni to pursue post-graduate studies would be good for me. Not yet sure. But I do know I will be involved in software development in some form or another which leads me to the question that prompted this post.

Can I get a MacBook and effectively develop software using Visual Studio?

You see I really like the new MacBooks. I've used a few and am impressed with their UI and the build quality of the machines themselves. The Unix core also strongly appeals. However I need to work with Visual Studio because it's likely my next job will require it and, simply, it's a productive and effective environment. I'm hoping that VS2005 runs well under Parallels - does anyone know? Have any other developers headed down this path? Or will I be forced to run Boot Camp? Is BC really ready for prime time?

Any information you guys might have would be very much appreciated!

Google Maps finally has Aussie roads

2006-05-19T14:21:00.000+10:00

Awesome!

Google Maps now has Australian (and New Zealand) road data!

I have been waiting for this for a long time. While in the US I've gotten so used to using online services - because they cater so well to the US market - that it'll be somewhat of a shock to get back home and realise that Australian services are so far behind. But now I at least have road information!

You can even see the outline of the block of my house. Fantastic.

Looking forward to seeing some Aussie mash-ups.

Oh, and before you ask, no, Google Earth data hasn't yet been updated. But it can't be too far away. Sidenote: The "Melbourne" city identifier in GE is still some 10kms too far east...

Update! The Windows Live Local team have just gone live with a new version of their online map product which also includes Aussie road data. Sweet. :) But despite Frank's claims that they use the same provider Google seem to have a significant edge in my area where the detail is much better with Google Maps. Compare my house location: Google Maps, Live Local. Although the Melbourne road data may not be that great (and of course YMMV - I've only checked out my 'hood) there are some fantastic features with the new release - the scratchpad and sharing capabilities for example. It's wonderful to see such activity in the mapping domain!

Google Calendar

2006-04-14T10:02:00.000+10:00

Google Calendar is finally here.

Bottom line: For a first release it's slick. A couple of minor niggles and performance issues (it's running noticably slower than yesterday!) but on the whole it's great. I've been evaluating Airset, 30Boxes and Calendar Hub but I'll now switch to Google Calendar.

Apple Boot Camp

2006-04-06T12:16:00.000+10:00

Apple have released Boot Camp, official software that allows an Apple to dual boot with Windows or OSX.

If the performance of Visual Studio turns out to be reasonable I may just buy a Mac Mini. I've been looking for an excuse for awhile. :) Among many other things, I'd love to use it as a front-end for a MythTV setup.

As the rest of the world is discussing, this is an audacious move by Apple but many are predicting that virtualization - running Windows applications within OSX - is coming. Now that would be seriously kick-ass. There are only a handful of applications that tie me to Windows, my development tools being the most important, and it wouldn't take much effort to nudge me over into the Mac world. It would also have many ramifications in the computing world. What would it mean for Linux? Which platform would you target as a developer?

Read more about it:

Ars Technica
Scoble
Gizmodo
Engadget
Make: Blog
Slashdot
TPN: The Bit
Om Malik
Wired

Virtual Earth Streetlevel

2006-03-05T06:03:00.000+11:00

I'm a big fan of Google Earth and, to a lesser extent, Google Maps. I regularly use the services to give me directions and learn about foreign places.

Microsoft's Virtual Earth (now Windows Live Local) has always been an also-ran in my books though in typical MS fashion they've perservered and worked hard to make it a very competitive product. I've no doubt that it will continue to get better.

So I wasn't totally surprised to see Chandu Thota, a key developer in the Virtual Earth team, announce a new technology preview this morning. The team have extended the regular Virtual Earth interface to deliver street level images. It was only a matter of time I suppose, but this technology is very exciting and Microsoft should be pretty happy with themselves - there's gotta be an awful lot of data they're managing there! While the interface is still a little kludgey (and IMO would fit much better in a client-side Google Earth style application) it has the potential to be elegant enough to be useful.

I have been saying for a long time now that GIS-enabled software will spurn a bunch of new software applications and I believe more good stuff is yet to come. :)

Anyways, go check it out:

Windows Live Local Virtual Earth Technology Preview

Scoble also blogged about it (and there's a video on Channel 9).

[Update: The excellent Google Earth Blog made the point that you can achieve a similar effect in Google Earth.]

ABC RSS Feeds

2006-03-02T05:58:00.000+11:00

I used to subscribe to the Age's RSS feeds to get my dose of Aussie news. I generally like the Age, their reporting is usually even handed and reasonably fair. But I agree with Will that the ABC feeds are much better.

For a start they've got summaries. With the Age feeds you only get headlines - and they're typically quite vague. The ABC gives headlines and a short one-line summary of what the article is about. It's not full text (which would be ideal!) but it's pretty good. And the quality of the ABC articles, while a bit drier than the Age, is also high.

So bye-bye Age, hello ABC. :)

The brrreeeport report

2006-02-15T04:38:00.000+11:00

Helpin' out Scoble where I can...this is the brrreeeport!

Kate Gregory gives a "migrating C++ apps to .NET" presentation

2006-02-12T16:58:00.000+11:00

Kate Gregory, a terrific C++ presenter, has posted some slides and code from a C++/CLI presentation she recently gave on migrating C++ applications to the .NET framework.

Matts Mind

2005-12-16T06:43:00.000+11:00

I promised a link to a more personal blog of mine that I'm writing in while I'm OS. Naturally I forgot. So here it is:

Matts Mind

I'm posting much more to that blog for the forseeable future but if I want to write any software-related posts it'll be done here.

Google Music Search...and maybe an iTunes killer?

2005-12-16T06:39:00.000+11:00

Google just announced the addition of a music search feature. Now you can search for your favourite artist's name and get some enhanced information, not just web site links.

There are also some pretty significant rumours that Google are going to release some sort of iTunes Store competitor. Dave's regularly on the mark and he's far from the only one spouting that kind of story (just do a Google search!)

I'm all for competition in this space! I love my iPod but the online music options are underwhelming.

C++/CLI now an International Standard!

2005-12-15T13:09:00.000+11:00

Sooo, now there's officially a new language on the block! C /CLI was just approved as an international standard.

I like C /CLI but don't see it being used a great deal. Simply because it's more (!) complex than C (seeing as it's essentially a superset). However, for those times where you really need to interface transparently to a C or C++ library and/or performance is a significant issue then it'll find a home.

The Microsoft team did a great job fleshing out this spec - there's a lot of complexity in integrating the .NET aspects yet it feels quite natural to C++ developers.

Thank goodness we've seen the last of Managed C++. ;)

Google Earth placemark test

2005-11-16T17:18:00.000+11:00

While I'm overseas I want to use Google Earth to display locations that I visit so that my family and friends can join me on my journey. :)

As a test, here's the apartment I'll be staying at. If you've got Google Earth installed you should just be able to click on the link and press OK.

Google Analytics

2005-11-14T23:44:00.000+11:00

Google has complemented their AdWords business by offering Google Analytics for free. Analytics is some pretty sophisticated tracking software that shows you a great deal about who is visiting your website. What keywords they've searched with to get there, what browser they're using, what resolution their display runs at, where (geographically) they're from, how effective AdWords is - a veritable treasure of information.

This service is free (as long as you have five million hits or less per day - or are an active AdWords customer) and easy to use. I've incorporated it into Sublime Software to see what it's like. I'll keep ya'll posted. :)

ArsTechnica has a good overview of the service.

Shopping for webcams

2005-11-11T23:16:00.000+11:00

Quick story about good customer service from a couple of computer hardware suppliers.

I wanted to order three webcams so I can communicate with my family and Melissa while I'm overseas. I didn't have a clue which models were good or bad so I jumped into Google and tried to find reviews. Surprisingly (well, to me) it was really hard to find a site that did good webcam reviews - I found that the best resource was doing a search for "webcams" in Amazon and taking a look at the customer reviews. A terrific use of what Scoble likes to term “slave generated content”. ;)

Anyway, once I'd isolated the models that were generally well-liked (and fitted my price and feature requirements) I used the trusty Static Ice search engine to find the best local prices.

If you're an Aussie looking for PC hardware Static Ice is a great resource. Just type in product keywords and SI will return you the list of online vendors that advertise that product - sorted in (lowest first) price order. [1] [2]

Static Ice listed Centre.net.au as having the best price for the webcam I'd settled on. So I placed an order with them. Unfortunately, shortly after, I received an email stating that they were unable to source stock for my item until late November and to confirm if that was OK. It wasn't (remember I'm leaving on the 23rd!) so I called them up and asked if I had any other options. The girl I spoke to on the phone was fantastically helpful. She looked up other products that were similarly specced, priced and in stock and was patient and cheerful with me. It was a shame that, in the end, they didn't have anything that I wanted and I asked if it was possible for me to cancel the order. "Of course, no problems at all sir."

This is service that I want. I'll come back to Centre.net.au. And I recommend others try it out.

Back to Static Ice looking for vendor #2. Infinity Computer Group. Their website advertised the product I was after but this time I rang to check that they had it in stock and could ship it within the next week. Unfortunately the service here wasn't great. After repeatedly being put on hold I was informed that the store that I'd rang (Brunswick) didn't have any in stock. I could try calling one of their other stores if I wished. Oh, and by the way, the store price is different (quite significantly!) to the website price. No thanks. Any vendor that has a web presence needs to have a centralized system and have the same price at their store and website.

Can't recommend Infinity.

As it turns out, third time lucky. City Software advertised my product on their (pick of the bunch) website at a reasonable price. I called them to check availability and expected shipping times and I spoke to a very helpful person who listened attentively and told me what I needed to hear ("yes we have that in stock, yes it'll be on your doorstep in time"). He was professional and friendly and, after a brief chat, offerred to waive the shipping fee!

Excellent, highly recommended. Assuming I get my webcams next week of course! :)

[1] Remember that you can narrow the Static Ice results to products by vendors only from your state by using the "state" syntax, much like Google's "site:" feature. For example, I searched for "logitech quickcam stx state:vic".

[2] If you're a Firefox user you need to set up a smart keyword search for Static Ice. I tweaked the default location to "http://www.staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=%s state:vic" so that my searches are always Victoria only. Now I just type "si webcams" into my location bar in Firefox, press enter and voila! I get a price-sorted list of webcams available online around Victoria.

Holiday - and enjoy the cup!

2005-10-31T18:00:00.000+11:00

And now I'm off! Heading down to Apollo Bay for a much-deserved week away with Melissa. I'll probably be incommunicado until Sunday. It'll be the longest I've unplugged for in aaaages. I won't know what to do with myself! ;)

And I'm scared to think how many blog postings I'll have waiting for me when I jump online again.

Have fun at - or watching - the Melbourne Cup folks!

VS2005 issues

2005-10-31T17:24:00.000+11:00

In my last post I mentioned that VS2005 was tighter than its predecessor. I thought it'd be useful to show where we had some problems (we're still working through them so this isn't an exhaustive list) and some of our solutions.

The changes are all covered in detail in the MSDN document "Breaking Changes in the Visual C++ 2005 Compiler" but I'll try and give some real examples that we faced.

Pointer-to-members now require qualified name and &

The compiler is much stricter about the types of function pointers. The error C3867 is generated with the following code:

  CAThing()
: m_MyObserver(this, MyCallback)

The resolution is to qualify the function pointers and pass the addressof the function in. e.g.

  CAThing()
: m_MyObserver(this, &CAThing::MyCallback)

const_cast can't down cast / Previously implicit string
casts are no longer allowed

This code does not compile (error C2440)

   BSTR bstrMessage = SysAllocString(T2OLE(const_cast(MyThing.ErrorMessage.c_str())));

This was replaced with the following (the BSTR could be deallocated after use):

   CComBSTR bstrMessage(MyThing.ErrorMessage.c_str());

This code will also give the same error:

   OLECHAR* pStringBuffer;
USHORT* pString = pStringBuffer;

COM/C++ Attributes with enumeration values should not be enclosed in quotes.

This code:

    coclass,
threading("free"),
event_source("com"),
aggregatable("never"),

Should be rewritten without the quotes as:

    coclass,
threading(free),
event_source(com),
aggregatable(never),

The first time that the quotes get compiled gives warning C4581. This implies that the double quotes (") need to be replaced with single quotes ('). However, if you do this you then get error C3455. This error will say that "none of the attribute constructors matched the arguments".

Public attributes are stricter

The error MIDL2072 will be emitted for this code:

    typedef [public] enum EEventIdType
{
E_DEFAULT_EVENT_ID,
E_DEBUG_EVENT_ID,
} EEventIdType;

The solution is to place the public attribute earlier:

    [public] typedef enum EEventIdType

The scope of variables in control constructs is limited to
the construct

In this code:

    for (int i = 0; i*max  ;++i)

The scope of i is limited to the for loop. (The * is meant to be a less than operator but I'll be damned if I can get blogger to cooperate!)

Method declarations must explicitly indicate return types

This code gives the error C4430:

    virtual CheckChar(UINT maskChar, UINT nChar, int endPos);

The return type must be explicitly defined. e.g.

    virtual int CheckChar(UINT maskChar, UINT nChar, int endPos);

Private types are not accesible outside of the class they
are declared in

This code gives the error C2248:

    class cdxCSizingPropSheet : public CPropertySheet
{
private:
struct StandardControls
{
...
};
};

...
static struct cdxCSizingPropSheet::StandardControls   psheetCtrls[]   =
...

In this example, the struct StandardControls needs to be available at the global scope for psheetCtrls.

Deprecated methods

For security, many methods/functions that can cause buffer overruns have been deprecated. The recommended action is:

replace the deprecated methods, or
define _CRT_SECURE_CPP_OVERLOAD_STANDARD_NAMES as 1 so the compiler will use a template overload to replace the deprecated method with another. N.B. security template overloads are not available for everything. Alternatively,
define _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE or the warning pragma to not display this warning.

If you want my opinion (sure you do!) any function that can cause buffer overruns ought to be an error and avoided. You'll thank me later. ;)

OK, that's it for now. We had a few more but I've had it with trying to lay out code in Blogger. Does anyone know any good blogging software to write code? It's damn hard from within the Blogger editor. I'm thinking of moving to my own system hosted at home for this reason alone (actually there are a few more!). If I was to move to my own system which can you recommend that do a good job of handling code?

Anyway, I hope that was useful to you - and a huge thanks to Ben who wrote most of this in our Wiki at work. The good work was his, the errors mine. :)

VS2005 and .NET is shipping!

2005-10-28T18:22:00.000+10:00

The newest version of Miscrosoft's development suite - and the matching .NET framework - has just ben released to MSDN subscribers!

Kudo's to Geoff for watching so attentively. You may not have gotten the scoop buddy but you were the first person I saw that made the announcement. :)

Personally, our company will be making the switch (from VS2003) quite quickly, and I can't wait.

Beware though folks, if you're compiling C++ code you may have a fair chunk of work migrating. The compiler is significantly more strict and we've found many errors (and warnings) that have to be rectified. As a positive, remember that your code will be cleaner when you're finished!

Heading OS for awhile

2005-10-26T23:57:00.000+10:00

My role at Agilent Technologies is soon going to change. On the 23rd of November I'll be heading off to San Jose, California to support our products at one of our largest customer sites. It's a six month assignment and I'm damn excited about it! :)

It's a pretty big change. For the past few years I've been a full-time software engineer, beavering away developing features for our product line. This new role is totally about support. It's unlikely that I'll write any code except perhaps for some automation scripts. That'll take some getting used to as I really enjoy writing code.

However, helping customers understand and solve problems with our products is a new challenge that I welcome. I've always believed that to be a really good software engineer you need to thoroughly understand your customers needs so this experience will be invaluable from that point of view.

And I'm really looking forward to spending time soaking in the California culture (alas not much of the sun - I'll be there through winter!) and seeing some of the sights.

The only really tough bit is that my amazing girlfriend Melissa won't be able to come with me. She'll be (hopefully) joining me for a month in the middle of the trip - which will be fantastic! - but we've hardly spent more than a couple of days apart, let alone months. Ugh, that's going to suck.

Baby, if you're reading this, I'm going to miss you like crazy.

Thank goodness for webcams, broadband connections and video chat. ;)

Anyway, I just wanted to give y'all a heads up to let you know that I won't be in the country for much longer. I'll also be starting up another blog to document my adventures over there - I'll post a link to it when I get around to creating it.

Three links of potential goodness

2005-10-20T12:41:00.000+10:00

My bookmarks folder is a mess and I've got a brazillion (hehe) tabs open in Firefox. So I figure why not post a couple of useful links here? You may even find them useful.

ShinyFeet is a site that advertises unlimited email and file storage. It's also got some sort of photo gallery feature. Don't yet know what the catch is (probably advertising).

YouSendIt is a cool site that allows you to send a file (up to a gig!) to someone. Here's how it works. Type in a recipient's email address. Upload a file. The file is stored temporarily (for about a week I think) on the YouSendIt server and a link to the file is sent to the recipient. Again, not sure of the gotcha (advertising again?) but it's a pretty nifty idea.

Inquisitor is a(nother) search engine but has AJAX goodness and searches as you type. Pretty sweet. It gathers it's results from Google.

Other blogs

2005-10-04T00:12:00.000+10:00

Speaking of other blogs...I write in a couple now and just thought I'd quickly 'advertise' them.

Matts iPod News is a blog all about iPods and iPod accessories.

Wireless Cranium is my friend Jiggy's blog. Jiggy is a music buff and really knows his stuff - probably because he owns a pooload of CD's and spends all his spare time absorbed in the world of music. ;) I occasionally write in the blog since I also love listening to sweet, sweet music...

Photo Impression, as mentioned recently, will contain photography news and information as well as links to photos that Jarek (aka J-Man) or I like. It's only early days for this blog but we'll see where it goes...

Then there's this blog which I'm still, even after over a year, trying to figure out what to really do with. I'd like to write more articles on software development but damn they take some serious time that I just haven't had lately. Mostly it's just become a dumping ground for stuff I want to say, which is fine but probably terrible to read! Anyway, I'll try and sprinkle a few software-related posts in amongst the drivel. I hope you get something, even if it's only a tiny something, out of reading this blog!

Lens fixed, a 'new' camera and a new blog

2005-10-03T23:01:00.001+10:00

Speaking of cameras...I'm sure you remember the heartache, the despair and the horror of the day my lens broke. Well, my 80-200 has come back from repair and it's better than new!

The wonderful folks at the Camera Clinic (no web site unfortunately) on Easey St in Collingwood did a fantastic job with the lens. Not only that but it was just a pleasure dealing with them - they kept me well informed, were sympathetic, spelt out my options and gave me a reasonable price. If you've got a problem with your camera gear I can highly recommend them.

Here's some (hastily taken) shots of my new and improved baby:

Note the general roundness. ;) I heart that lens. :)

The other bit of photograpy-related news is that I bought a 'new' camera. It's an old-school Yashica medium format TLR camera from the early 60's. No photos since I left it at work (maybe tomorrow!) but there is a shot of it in the eBay listing that I won.

I've been fascinated by all sorts of photographic equipment and I've wanted to play with a medium format cameras for years. I haven't run any film through this Yashica yet but, assuming it works properly (it makes all the right sounds though the shutter is a little suspect), I'm intrigued that this relic can produce better images than the most expensive, top-of-the-line digital SLR.

Maybe next up will be a large-format view camera, who knows!?

Finally, I'm going to try and minimise the photography-related posts to this blog from now on. I've set up a new blog, Photo Impression, solely for photography related news. My friend Jarek and I are keen hobbyist photographers and we'll endeavour to post links to photos we like and share any photography-related information. So if you're interested in cameras, lenses and striving to capture the perfect photo take a squiz or subscribe.

Geek Dinner this Friday

2005-10-03T23:01:00.000+10:00

My mate Tejas has organised a geek dinner for this Friday at Gopal's vegetarian restaurant on Swanston st at 6:30.

Check out the details at Tejas' Blog.

My camera and I are going to make every effort to be there!

Google Blog Search

2005-09-15T00:50:00.000+10:00

OK, OK I'm a Google fanboi. But this blog search looks pretty nice indeed - certainly feels better than Technorati ever has:

Google Blog Search

And an ego search reports a link to this blog - and damn fast too! Kudos Google.

Doppler and NPR feeds

2005-09-13T11:11:00.000+10:00

I use Doppler to manage my podcasts. Recently I added a bunch of NPR feeds to Doppler (highly recommended BTW!) but found that they wouldn't download. Turned out that Doppler has an issue with the URL that NPR supply, the solution was found in the Doppler Forums.

Hopefully this'll help someone else!

eBay Buys Skype for $4.1 Billion - Web News News - Designtechnica

2005-09-13T01:57:00.000+10:00

eBay buys Skype - works for me, I like both services! If eBay do pay close to four billion then I suspect they've paid a few billion too much...

But it's still big news. :)

eBay Buys Skype for $4.1 Billion

Seeing what Katrina has wrought

2005-09-03T11:35:00.000+10:00

Hurricane Katrina has caused so much damage. Frightening. My thoughts go out to the people affected by the disaster.

If you can please donate to the relevant relief funds (and check whether your company can help out - ours matches employee donations).

The Google Earth community has extended Google Earth so that you can visualize what's going on - it helps put things in perspective. Seeing what Katrina has wrought.

Dave Winer is, as always, covering the issue well and posting useful links as is Scoble.

All the best to those folk living in Katrina's wake.

August 26th Geek Dinner Mugshots

2005-08-29T22:04:00.000+10:00

So here are the mugshots for the recent geek dinner, held at the illustrious Pizza Hut on the 26th August.

It was a pretty short & sweet affair but it was great meeting all you folks! Let's try and make it regular guys. :)

Thanks again to Tejas for organising. :)

Dave Glover

Parvesh Tanwar

Cameron Reilly

Daryl Cook

Tejas Patel

Jesse Villani

Robin Froosh

Michael Specht

Justin Marshall

Nirav Patel

Chris Bell

Simon Heap

Melbourne Geek Dinner

2005-08-22T19:49:00.000+10:00

OK folks, those of you who are livin' it large in our wonderful city of Melbourne take note! Pencil in a geek dinner for Friday the 26th (yep, this Friday). Tejas has done the superb job of picking a date and venue (OK, Pizza Hut wouldn't have been my first pick, but hey, whatever!) so trundle off to read his blog post and mark the time in your calendar.

I'll be there with my camera (still without my blessed 80-200mm) at least for a while. Feel free to say g'day to the guy holding the Nikon. His name will be Matt. :) [1]

I will have to leave early-ish as I try to go to Salsa dance classes (at Viva Cabaret on Smith st) at 9:00 Fridays. If anyone wants to come along Salsa-ing let me know! :)

Looking forward to meeting some more of you... :)

[1] Unless there's another guy holding a Nikon. In which case their name may not be Matt. Though it might be - it's a pretty common name. Regardless, I'm sure you can say hi to him too. :)

Freerunning

2005-08-12T12:34:00.000+10:00

Warning: Totally off topic and way too cool for this blog. :)

Just an awesome clip I saw recently that I want to remember:

Putfile - Upload Video and Upload Images

Synergy is the schizzle

2005-08-11T12:06:00.000+10:00

Synergy is an open source, multiplatform application to share a keyboard and mouse between two PCs. If you're like me and work with two PCs on a daily basis you'll find it a godsend. No more confusion when trying to figure out which keyboard/mouse you should be using!

Engadget recently had a nice how-to.

Great piece of software. :)

There's also the commercial (though it is only US$30!) alternative MaxiVista that takes things even further - allowing you to use an old PC and monitor as a secondary display. It comes recommended by way of Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List.

Matt ♥’s...

2005-08-10T18:40:00.000+10:00

I gave a presentation today at work about various useful tools and wanted to keep track of the links. So here they are!

Bloglines
A web-based blog aggregator.

Matts list of blogs
A list of the blogs I'm subscribed to. There may or may not be something there that you'll enjoy...

Sauce Reader
A client-side blog aggregator.

Blogger
A web-based blog-authoring tool. Owned by Google.

MSN Spaces
Another web-based authoring tool by Microsoft. Has great integration with MSN Messenger.

Technorati
A search engine that only indexes blogs.

PubSub
Another blog search engine.

Doppler
A podcast aggregator.

Matt's list of podcasts
My list of podcasts, to get you started!

Google Maps
Web-based mapping application. Satellite & road data, with local search.

Microsoft Virtual Earth
As above, but from MS.

Google Earth
A client-side map application. Like Google Maps but with a richer interface.

NASA's World Wind
Similar product to Google Earth but open source and uses freely available satellite imagery. No road data.

Microsoft Mappoint
Renamed to Streets & Trips. Rich mapping application. Not free.

Copernic
Desktop search application. Just install it already!

Windows Desktop Search
A solid alternative to Copernic. [BTW Yahoo, Google and many others have other desktop search offerings, these two are just my favourites]

Firefox
Improve your web browsing experience!

Firefox Extensions
One of the many websites that host Firefox extensions.

Matts Firefox Extensions
My list of extensions.

Picasa
Great photo management software, owned by Google.

Nvu
Cross platform, open source web authoring system.

StrokeIt
Mouse gestures for any Windows application.

ToDoList
A simple todo list manager. Allows hierarchical tasks among a plethora of other features.

Firefox extensions

2005-08-10T15:34:00.000+10:00

I've had some queries about which Firefox extensions I use so I thought I'd post my current list. Hover over each link for a description.

Adblock 0.5.2.039

Bloglines Toolkit 1.5.6

BlogThis 0.3

Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1

BugMeNot 0.6.2

Copernic Desktop Search Toolbar 1.1

Duplicate Tab 0.5.1

Ebay Negs! 0.6

FirefoxView 0.31.1

IE View 1.2.4

Image Zoom 0.1.7.1

lget 0.1

ListZilla 0.5.1

miniT (drag+indicator) 0.5

PDF Download 0.5

Print It! 0.3.6

Resizeable Textarea 0.1a

Scribe 0.21

SessionSaver 0.2 0.2.1.028

Sort Extensions 1.1

SpellBound 0.7.3

SwitchProxy Tool 1.3.2

Tab Clicking Options 0.5.2

Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.7.1

TinyUrl Creator 1.0

undoclosetab 20041125.5

Web Developer 0.9.3

xMirror 0.2

For some reason Flashblock doesn't appear in this list (which is generated by the extension ListZilla).

And I've recently been impressed with TabMix - if I was to start installing extensions from scratch I would use that tab manager extension which would replace a handful of those above.

Paper Steam Engine

2005-08-08T00:54:00.000+10:00

Another one for Dad:

From MAKE: Blog:

Paper Steam Engine

Robotic hand catches 300km/h fastballs

2005-08-05T13:10:00.000+10:00

My Dad is going to love this.

No Dad, they're not for sale. Yet. ;)

Google's portal gets RSS

2005-07-27T18:57:00.000+10:00

If you haven't seen the Google Labs "Personalize Your Hompage" feature you should check it out. It was recently extended to be able to subscribe to RSS feeds.

Google

What's more, it's got the funkiest javascript to handle the panel movement. :)

It seems all I'm doing lately is discussing Google!

Mapping wars heat up

2005-07-26T21:56:00.000+10:00

Kudos to Microsoft for releasing their Google Maps competitor: MSN Virtual Earth.

It's not quite as complete as Google Maps yet but give 'em time. MS have been in this space for a long time (have you heard of TerraServer?) and they'll no doubt improve quickly. And they're actually ahead in some areas - much of their data is very impressive, in some cases providing closer satellite shots that Google Maps.

Oh, and it would be an oversight not to mention that Virtual Earth also has a set of developer API's. Incidentally, that website was created none other than our own Dr Neil.

Speaking of Google Maps, they recently made a nice tweak: there is a new 'hybrid' view that overlays the road and satellite images. Both Virtual Earth and Google Earth had similar features.

Competition is good! Now if either of those products only had good Australian data...

The joys of photography...and the pain of a hard-learnt lesson

2005-07-21T20:07:00.000+10:00

I just realised that I haven't yet posted about one of my favourite hobbies, the great art of photography. And since I've had a recent tragedy I may as well begin now...

I've always enjoyed shooting photos but in the past couple of years I've begun getting more serious about it. My Dad has a Nikon F801 (N8008 for you US folk out there), a beautiful old 35mm camera, as well as a couple of cheap lenses - a 24-80mm f/3.5-5.6 and a 70-300 f/4.5-5.6. I used it as my own - and loved it - until I decided to take the plunge and go down the digital path. There are many reasons to "go digital" but for me, the way it accellerates your learning and allows greater experimentation was the clincher.

So a year or two ago I purchased a Nikon D100 and the Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 lens from a work colleague (thanks Marian!). Great starting kit! Took it everywhere - hiking around Wilsons Prom, sailing, skiing, everywhere. It was robust, reliable and took great photos (a little soft but every camera has it's character).

Then of course I had to buy the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 (yes, I very nearly bought the 1.4 but couldn't justify the cost for the benefit!). Great lens, so flexible, particularly at night where the wide aperture comes into its own. And they're cheap! (I bought mine from B&H which I can highly recommend. Keep in mind that you will be taxed 10% duty when it goes through customs though.) Love that lens, it's just fantastic except for one failing - ensure there are no bright lights in the scene when it's wide open as it suffers from strong ghosting.

Much to my delight, Mum and Dad chipped in and bought me a Manfroto tripod for Christmas and so my kit started to fill out.

However, I was lacking a telephoto. After reading seemingly hundreds of websites I decided that it was time to really get serious so I decided I wanted the Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 (yep, the #4 in that review). I couldn't justify the extra $$$ for the AF-S or the drool-worthy Nikon 70-210 f/2.8 AF-S VR but the 80-200 AFD is, by all accounts, a ripper. Fast, fast focussing, solid and sharp as a tack, this is the kind of lens that defined Nikon and helps make photography a joy. I decided that the only way to buy it here in Australia (where camera gear is horrendously expensive) was via eBay. After many lost auctions I finally won one from a reliable seller than I trusted, even though he was a Texan. ;) When it arrived I was ecstatic, the lens was in great condition and lived up to all the expectations.

That was a month or so ago. During that month I ran out and took many shots with 'my new baby'. All was good.

Last weekend I was shooting a friends soccer game for some sports photography practice. It was windy, overcast and a bit wet - generally terrible conditions. But I was happy, my camera and lens were performing well and I managed to shoot some good shots despite the poor light and weather. Then I made a fatal mistake. Not having eaten all day (I'd gone out shooting photos near Albert Park in the morning) I decided to get some food at the caf at half time. I left the camera on the tripod maybe five metres away from the shop so it was in plain sight and left the kit alone. I turned to pay for my hotdog only to hear the gut-wrenching sound of glass breaking. The camera and lens were lying on the ground, surrounded with glass.

After the chill shot up my spine I ran to pick it up. God it looked bad. However I was fortunate - the only glass that had broken was from my Hoya UV filter. The rim of the front housing was damaged, cracked, but when I'd cleaned out the glass I'd found that I could still focus using the lens and there were no obviously tight spots or nasty sounds. Although there were some minor nicks in the front element the lens seemed optically sound.

But I still felt like vomiting. Literally.

Anyway, there's a lesson here kids - don't, under any circumstances, ever leave your camera sitting alone on top of a tripod. I'm still not sure how it fell over (either a huge gust of wind or perhaps I just simply didn't set the legs out properly? *sigh* I don't know.) but just don't take the chance. Take it off and sit it in your bag.

The sad part is that I knew that. And 99% of the time I would have just instinctively put my baby back in her bag. But for some reason, this time, I didn't. And I paid for it [1].

The lens is currently still functioning well - albeit with the "limit" switch engaged. That switch prevents the lens from close-focussing so it doesn't unnecessarily search if it hunts for focus but in this case it's on to prevent the front elements from extending into the cracked housing. Ick. I feel ill again. But I won't ever hear of anyone poo-pooing Nikon build quality - it's a miracle that the lens still works, hell I shot the rest of the soccer match!

Don't let my disaster story discourage you though - photography is a wonderful pastime, if you enjoy it then get out there and shoot photos! Just remember to look after your gear...

Update: Sorry the original post didn't have photos, I was in a rush to get on my holiday to Daylesford! Here's some hastily-taken shots: <*sob*>

[1] Speaking of paying, I'll be taking it in for repair - hopefully they'll be able to replace the front housing for a reasonable cost.

Boys weekend away

2005-07-04T00:21:00.000+10:00

Friday afternoon saw ten* guys leave for Sprocket's family holiday house in Portarlington. We'd decided to have a 'boys weekend away' where we'd do very little except play poker, pool and maybe have a few drinks...

Rather than tell all the stories ("What happens in Portarligton..." ;) ) I just wanted to say I had a great time - it's always going to be fun going away with good company.

Speaking of company here's a list of the lads:

Me
Jeremy ("Jiggy")
Anthony ("Sprocket")
Toshal
Jarek ("J-Man")
Shobhit
Mark ("Screws")
John ("Chisel")
Mick
Stu ("Mallet")

Thanks guys, it was fun. :)

Don't ask about the nicknames - it's a long story! (One of you original tools ought to blog about the tale...)

Congrats to Stu for cleaning up in game one of the almighty poker tournament and Jiggy, Sprocket and Mick for sharing the spoils after the seven-hour marathon of game two.

Oh, and a shout-out (that will probably never be heard!) to the über-sweet Becky from Bendigo for agreeing to appear in a couple of sunset photos. Thanks!

Update: Photos are now online.

* OK, it was eight - Stu and Mick joined us on Saturday.

Google Maps API

2005-07-04T00:16:00.000+10:00

I didn't have time to blog about this when I read about it the other day. But since I've reported about all their other announcements...Google have released an API to their fantastic Google Maps.

Announcement

Google Maps API

Fantastic. :)

Google Earth

2005-06-30T00:32:00.000+10:00

Another day, another Google announcement. This one is a ripper though!

Obviously, Google executives read my recent post revealing my lurve for satellite imagery because they have just release the wicked-cool Google Earth. For free. Freakin' awesome.

Holy crap this thing is sweet. It's like World Wind on 'roids.

What are you still reading for? If you drool over looking at the world as much as I do then get downloading (10 odd meg - but you'll need a fat-ish internet pipe to grab the satellite images on the fly).

Here's the announcement on the Google Blog.

And here's a bunch of interesting places to see with your new favourite gawking tool.

Update: The good folks at Google have now published documentation on KML, the file format used by Google Earth.

RIAA/MPAA vs the People. 1 - 0.

2005-06-28T13:45:00.000+10:00

The Supreme Court of America has ruled against P2P sharing in the much-publicized "MGM vs Grokster" case. Wow. Scary.

OK, so the problem I have with this ruling - in my understanding - is that it provides a precedent for the software developers of specific P2P systems to be responsible for how people use their software. What the? It's akin to stating that the designers of email can be sued for allowing people to send illegal files to each other.

I do have problems with some of the P2P systems - apparently they were trying to "foster infringement" of copyright and that's not on. But the legal precendent that this sets, if it applies to all P2P developers, is concerning.

For what it's worth I believe that any technology should be allowed to be developed. Without restriction. Only how it's used should be of interest to the courts.

Anyway, smarter people than I are writing about this hot potato - here are some links!

Popular Science: Supreme Court Strikes a Blow against P2P Sharing

BBC: File-sharing suffers major defeat

SCOTUSblog: Grokster, StreamCast Lose

Robert Scoble: Major bad news for P2P software

Davenetics: Dowloads No Longer on the DL

Corante: Notes on RIAA and MPAA Press Conference

The actual ruling [pdf]

I dare say that Bram Cohen (creator of BitTorrent) may be a little nervous today...

Google To Launch Online Video Playback

2005-06-27T18:31:00.000+10:00

More Google news; it looks like the online behemoth is looking to increase their presence in the video domain:

Google To Launch Online Video Playback

Interesting! Particularly since they are going to use an open source alternative to Microsoft's Media player. MS are likely to be upset.

Update: Rumours are true!

Beever's pavement art

2005-06-27T11:47:00.000+10:00

Julian Beever is that guy who does those amazing 3D illusion pavement drawings that were 'doing the rounds' ages ago. Just realised recently that he had a website:

Julian Beever

Just incredible! Gotta wonder how he comes up with them - the computer geek in me is figuring out how to write software to generate them...but maybe the guy is just talented! ;)

Satellite support for Australia in Google Maps

2005-06-27T11:00:00.000+10:00

I'm a big fan of satellite imagery. I love Worldwind, Terraserver and Google Maps - I can just imagine so many applications to use the data they present so effectively. Anyway, until recently Australian coverage was poo but Google Maps has began rectifying that situation. Yay!

Here's lookin' at you Australia, using Google Maps

Local search is still poor and coverage patchy (no high detail images east of the Telstra dome in Melbourne and the Sydney Harbour bridge and Opera house are also low-res only though the city is pretty well covered) but it's a start. Keep up the good work Google!

The Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

2005-06-20T14:18:00.000+10:00

Scott Hanselman has updated his invaluable list of damn useful tools for power users and developers. Obviously has a .NET slant but still highly recommended. I've tried just about all those tools and agree that they are all worthy of their place on that list!

Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

Google set to compete with PayPal

2005-06-20T11:51:00.000+10:00

It looks like Google has realised that PayPal are sitting on a goldmine. They are now looking to compete in the electronic funds transaction market and I, for one, am all for it.

Google Plans Online Payment Service

Competition in this niche is critical - PayPal are really the only players here and their charges, while on the surface reasonable, are not trivial and soon add up. Competition can only be good for us consumers.

I really wonder if banks know what's going on here. Like the recording industries (music & movie) technology has advanced to the point where the old mainstay institutions are being threatened. And they don't seem to be aware of it.

BadFruit

2005-06-19T10:56:00.000+10:00

Those that know me know that I love my iPod. They probably also know that I avoid iTunes - I think it's a reasonable application, just not ideal for me. However, if you are an iTunes user then you may be aware of the announcement that version 4.9 will support podcast subscriptions.

If you can't wait that long then check out BadApple. It's a plugin for iTunes that does what 4.9 promises right now. Looks nice but I haven't used it - caveat empor! Oh, BTW it's Windows-only.

Personally, I'll continue to use Doppler. It's not perfect but it does the job.

Scott Rosenberg wants a left-handed camera

2005-06-17T01:12:00.000+10:00

As a hobbiest photographer, I can understand Scott's desire for a left-handed camera. Just can't see manufacturers making them. It's a question of economics; duplicating tooling, significantly increasings manufacturing costs, test coverage etc for just 10% of people?

Is it really that hard to adjust? ;) I'm pretty confident I could happily shoot left-handed without too much trouble...

As for his comments on trackpoint devices - hell no, can't agree, I think they suck. I have both a trackpoint and trackpad on my laptop and, while competent with both, I find the 'nubbin' just too imprecise. Same argument for a trackball (thumbs just aren't dextrous enough). YMMV.

Marc Pesce: Piracy is Good?

2005-06-17T01:00:00.000+10:00

Gotta agree with Frank, this article [part 1, part 2] by Marc Pesce on video piracy - and how it's inevitable and good! - is fantastic.

It's amazing that the movie & television industry, let alone the music industry, is so unaware that they are going to have to drastically change...or become irrelevant.

Google to make an iTunes clone?

2005-06-16T12:16:00.000+10:00

Dave Winer, who is a pretty reliable source of software gossip blogged that Google is readying and iTunes-clone. Let's hope he's right!

Melbourne Blogger catch-up

2005-06-16T01:08:00.000+10:00

Just got back from the first Melbourne Blogger meet up with Phil, Phil, Michael, James and Cam. We had an enjoyable little discussion about quite a few varied topics - it was great to at least put some faces to names. Hopefully we'll get together again soon, perhaps (as was suggested) over some Scotch Malt Whiskey. :)

Personally I felt like shit. I've just been floored with some sort of 'flu and couldn't talk much - it physically hurt. Sorry guys if I was out of it! In particular I wanted to talk with Cam a little more about the business model he and Mick have developed for The Podcast Network (maybe that link will bump you guys up the technorati rank?) but it was difficult so I thought I'd get my thoughts out in blog form while they're fresh!

So, my problem with the business model - or any involving podcasts - is that I'm not sure that there's significant money in it as a publisher. The whole point of podcasts, the huge advantage of this 'new medium', is that it's so cheap to publish. In theory anyone can do it with minimal cash and effort.

Actually, I'm going to interrupt myself with an important side discussion; right now it actually takes a great deal of effort to create a podcast. The tools are poor - it's not easy to produce a high-quality, effectively compressed audio recording. Nor is it trivial to create and update RSS feeds with enclosures. It's not rocket science but, especially for non-techy people, it's far from easy.

Further, as Cam and Mick found out, it can cost a lot of dosh if your podcast becomes even moderately successful due to high bandwidth fees.

However, both of these issues (ease of creating and cost of bandwidth) will eventually go away. Tools will get better and distribution methods (like using bittorrent) will improve. I firmly believe that within a reasonable time frame (something like a year or two?) it will be easy and cheap enough for my Mum to create and publish a podcast if she so desired.

So, moving on...One of Cam's three pillars of goodness ;) that TPN provides is that it ensures a high quality of show. Listeners will be more inclined to listen to a 'cast from TPN than somewhere else because it's on TPN. A fair point. But perhaps that assumption doesn't hold in a blog-rich world. Personally, I listen to podcasts based on what other bloggers tell me. If there's a really good quality podcast then I'll find out about it from the blogs I read. News travels very fast these days and if someone is producing something - anything - of high quality (or low quality!) you hear about it damn quick. Maybe publishers, and advertising, are a lot less important than they used to be.

I'm not completely sold on that last paragraph myself but thought it might be worthwhile saying it anyways... :)

A couple of other links to stuff we talked about:

Gretchens blog (the drama began on June 1st)

Robot hand (so cool!)

Thanks to Phil for the use of the centre (loved the fire!) and to Cam for organising.

[I see Cam has already blogged about the night!]

Update: A couple of photos are online.

Generic Programming in C++ part 3a: Palindromes

2005-05-15T23:36:00.000+10:00

If you've been to an interview where you've been asked to write some C++ code, there's a fair chance that you'll have come across the "isPalidrome" problem.

It goes something like this: A palidrome is a group of letters that is the same written backwards or forwards. The challenge is to write a function that tests whether a given string is a palindrome.

A typical solution may look something like this:

bool isPalindrome(const std::string &str)
{
    std::string::const_reverse_iterator itEnd = str.rbegin()++;
    for (std::string::const_iterator itStart = str.begin(); itStart < itEnd.base(); ++itStart, ++itEnd)
    {
        if (*itStart != *itEnd)
        {
            return false;
        }
    }    return true;
}

(Actually, if you're in an interview you may have forgotten to start at before the one-past-end iterator and you may not have used a reverse iterator or perhaps forgot the call to base when comparing iterators and reverse iterators. Those kind of things you can be forgiven!)

That solution works fine. Use two iterators, one pointing to the first and one to the last characters (which, as mentioned above is one before that returned by end). Compare the characters and move the iterators toward the middle of the string. If any comparison fails, the string is not a palindrome. Finish when the start iterator is past the end (note that this takes into consideration both finishing conditions ie when there is an even or an odd number of characters in the string).

[There are other algorithms but we’ll stick with this one for now.]

We can do better. Why not write it generically? It may not be obvious to you, but std::string is a container. We can apply this same algorithm for any other container. Consider writing reusable functions generically – especially after ‘getting them right’ non-generically.

template <typename RaIterator>
bool
isPalindrome(RaIterator begin, RaIterator end)
{
    for (--end; begin < end; ++begin, --end)
    {
        if (*begin != *end)
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

Something has changed; we’re assuming that two random access iterators have been passed in. We need random access iterators because of the less than operator, which is only provided on these kind of iterators. And you’ll not that we’ve used a bidirectional operation – the decrement operator – instead of using a reverse iterator. That’s to avoid weird syntax – asking the user to supply two different kinds of iterators is unusual (and prone to error!) and you won’t see that done in any standard algorithm.

Usage is slightly different, now we have to pass in stringname.begin() and stringname.end() instead of just stringname. But again that’s consistent with the Way Of The Standard. (It also has an advantage - we can operate on slices of a container.)

So how is this better? Well, if we have a vector of characters we can use this function. Or if we have a vector of longs. Or a deque of longs. Or an array of longs. We could even have a vector of strings that form a sentence and use this function to determine if the sentence is a palindrome!

You get the picture. Generic is better.

Unfortunately if we have a list or set of chacters we can’t use this function – you’ll get an ugly compilation error. Why? Because lists only provide bidirectional iterators. And bidirectional iterators don’t give us that lovely less than operator. So any container that provides anything less than random access iterators will not compile. Bugger! I wonder if we can get around that limitation…

Tune in to part b where I improve our isPalindrome function further, so we can use it with lists!

[I’ll admit that thinking at this level of abstraction is difficult in an interview situation but when you start thinking generically you’ll find that it won’t be too much of a stretch. Disclaimer: In the last interview I sat I wrote the first example…]

Spicks & Specks

2005-05-12T21:22:00.000+10:00

Last night a friend (Heya Age! When are you going to start your own blog?) and I went and watched the recording of two episodes of the ABC’s music trivia show Spicks and Specks.

Gotta say, we both had a great time (though two episodes was bordering on too long) and I can recommend anyone go see it. You’ll have to grab the phone number (I can’t remember it and they don’t have it on the website, sheesh!) at the end of the show to register interest for tickets, which are free. Filming is at ABC studios in Elsternwick.

Adam Hills was a terrific host that earned a great deal of respect from us just because he was so honest, approachable, funny and real.

Myf and Alan were also damn funny – I lost it when Alan broke his chair! You’ll see what I mean in six weeks or so… The guests were also great – I don’t want to name them and spoil the surprise but one half of Lano & Woodley was on and in fine form!

Adam and the team really indulge the crowd, playing up on heaps of gags that will never make it to air. Thanks everyone at the ABC for a terrific show.

Anyways, if you don’t watch the show it’s great fun and is on Wednesday nights at 8:30. Enjoy!

Generic programming in C++ part 2b: A better example with CComSafeArray and standard containers

2005-05-12T20:54:00.000+10:00

In the last post I asked the question "How do you normally copy containers". Let’s explore that.

A typical way would be to use the standard algorithm copy. (Note that there are many ways to copy containers, some are even more efficient, but this one suits the purposes of my explanation)

std::list<long> listOfLongs;

// Fill list here

std::vector<long> vectorOfLongs;
std::copy(listOfLongs.begin(), listOfLongs.end(), std::back_inserter(vectorOfLongs));

copy takes a range and an output iterator. The range is iterated over and each element is copied to the output iterator – after each copy the output iterator is incremented. It’s expected that the ‘thing’ that the ouptut iterator points to can hold all of the elements in the range.

For a vector (or, in fact, any automatically-sized container) this often isn’t what you want. Instead, you often want elements to be added to the container. But how should the algorithm add elements to a container? In fact how can an algorithm add elements to a container when, I’m sure you remember, algorithms don’t know anything about containers! Algorithms only know how to use iterators.

This may not be crystal clear yet so I’m going to make a point of it. Algorithms only know about iterators. They know nothing about containers. This is intentional and A Good Thing. Why? Because by enforcing that limitation algorithms can work for any container you provide – assuming you also provide iterators for that container (and that the iterators meet the requirements of the algorithm).

Now, we were trying to figure out how an algorithm can add elements to a container. The C++ way to do that is via an inserter which, in standardese, is a form of iterator adaptor. An inserter provides an iterator interface for a container. The algorithm ‘sees’ an iterator. But when the algorithm tries to assign to that iterator, the inserter kicks in and does something different. That ‘something different’ depends on what inserter you’re using but ultimately it (usually) adds an element to the container. It also does nothing when the iterator is incremented. If you think about that for a second that’s exactly what we were trying to do.

So how does the inserter know how to add elements to the container? Doesn’t that mean that it needs to know about the specific container type? No. Well, kind of. Inserters are templated on the container type. If we look at the example above, we’re using back_inserter. That particular inserter requires that the supplied container has a push_back method. Conveniently, vector does. Had the inserter been front_inserter, which requires push_front, compilation would have failed because vectors can’t insert elements at the front (efficiently).

So what does all this have to do with CComSafeArray? CComSafeArray is (almost) a container and we’re going to write an inserter to allow us to use them in algorithms when an output iterator is required. That means that we’ll be able to use the standard copy algorithm to copy elements from any container to a CComSafeArray.

template <typename Container>
class add_iterator : public std::iterator<std::output_iterator_tag, void, void, void, void>
{
protected:
    Container& container;

public:
    explicit add_iterator(Container & c) : container(c) {}

    template <typename ValueType>
    add_iterator<Container>&
    operator=(const ValueType& value)
    {
        container.Add(value);
        return *this;
    }

    add_iterator<Container>& operator*()
    {
        return *this;
    }

    add_iterator<Container>& operator++()
    {
        return *this;
    }

    add_iterator<Container>& operator++(int)
    {
        return *this;
    }
};

template <typename Container>
inline add_iterator<Container> add_inserter(Container& c)
{
    return add_iterator<Container>(c);
}

OK, so what’s going on here? An inserter has two parts. There is a class that is the iterator and does all the grunt work. There’s also a templated convenience function that creates and returns an instance of the iterator. That’s a fairly common idiom in the standard (see make_pair) and permits nicer syntax by taking advantage of the fact that templated functions can infer types. We mentioned back_inserter and front_inserter before, these are actually convenience functions that create an instance of the iterator classes back_insert_iterator and front_insert_iterator respectively. Without those convenience functions the syntax would be less appealing and more prone to error. For example, the code above would look like this:

std::copy(listOfLongs.begin(), listOfLongs.end(), std::back_insert_iterator<vector<long> >(vectorOfLongs));

So that explains the add_inserter function. Digging deeper, the add_iterator is actually pretty straightforward. It publically inherits from iterator which is a standard library class that defines a number of useful typedefs that all iterators are required to define. It’s just a convenience class saving you from defining a few things yourself. Assigning does what we described above, that is, it just calls Add (which must exist) on the container (you’ll notice that Add is the method that CComSafeArray provides to append elements). Incrementing (and dereferencing) are no-ops.

I glossed over the fact that assignment operator is a templated function. This usually isn’t necessary because containers are meant to expose the type that they contain. If you dig into any of the standard library provided iterators you’ll find that the type that the assignment operator takes is known. Normally we could have defined the assignment operator like so:

add_iterator<Container>&
operator=(const Container::value_type& value)
{
    container.Add(value);
    return *this;
}

Containers are meant to provide a definition for value_type.

Unfortunately, CComSafeArray doesn’t (hence the reason it’s almost a container) so we have to make the assignment operator a function template. No big problem, it just means that if you try to assign the wrong type via the inserter then your error message may be fairly cryptic – something like: “cannot convert type X to CComSafeArray<T>.Add() where T is Y”.

You may also have picked up that this inserter isn’t actually tied to CComSafeArrays. If you have any other containers that use an Add method to add elements then this inserter will work just as well for them.

And that’s it! We’ve harnessed one of the great strengths of the STL design – extensibility – and created an inserter, a form of iterator adaptor, to a container-like class so that we can make use of existing standard algorithms. Sweet!

Stay tuned for Part 3 where we give the age-old interview question “isPalindrome” a generic workover!

Generic programming in C++ part 2a: A better example with CComSafeArray and standard containers

2005-05-06T00:45:00.000+10:00

Shortly after posting the original entry I thought of a better way to create a CComSafeArray with standard containers. Fifteen minutes later - much less time than it took to write the blog post! - I had working code.

Because I want to get some sleep now I'll have to post the code later. In the meantime I want you to think about it!

OK, you want a hint? How do you normally copy containers - say from a list to a vector?

In part 2b I'll show you how to write very similar code that works for CComSafeArrays.

Happy Birthday Dave

2005-05-05T10:26:00.000+10:00

Happy birthday Dave Winer! Thanks for keeping the simple things simple and for consistently demonstrating the importance of maintaining your credibility in the face of adversity.

Generic programming in C++: An example with CComSafeArray and standard containers

2005-05-03T00:30:00.000+10:00

For those of you developing in C++ with COM you’ll be familiar with the all-too-common SAFEARRAY. You’re probably also familiar with CComSafeArray which is a useful class to wrap up the rather raw SAFEARRAY and aid in memory management.

This blog entry isn’t meant as a primer for SAFEARRAY and CComSafeArray usage, there are plenty of good sites for that.

What I would like to talk about is using generic programming for day-to-day tasks.

What is generic programming? Good question, tough to answer. In C++, generic programming is writing code that works for many types by coding solutions based on concepts. A concept defines what the supplied abstract datatype are required to provide in order to get the job done.

Confusing? Initially it may well be. How about we look at a real (albeit trivial) example:

template <typename T>
T 
max (T a, T b)
{
    return (b < a) ? a : b;
}

In the code above, max is a function that takes in two items (of the same type) and returns the largest of the two. The above code can be used for any T provided it supports the less-than operator. [In standard-library lingo T (the abstract datatype) must satisfy the concept of “Less Than Comparable”.]

This code is maximally reusable and, as such, is A Good Thing. It’s an example of generic programming because, in and of itself, max doesn’t know about T and thus works generically for any type (that supports the less-than operator). We can write max once and it’ll work for all types. Beautiful.

In my experience, occasions to create generic code like max occur more frequently than most developers realize. I believe it’s because it takes awhile to become accustomed to “seeing” generic solutions. For example, consider if our generic version of max didn’t exist but we needed a function to compare two integers. It would be all too easy to write:

int
max (int a, int b)
{
    return (b < a) ? a : b;
}

Then, when we have longs to compare, or floats, we could copy and paste the code and change “int” to “long” or “float”. Avoid such code! Duplicating code is evil and should be avoided. If you notice yourself copy and pasting code regularly it may be an indicator that you could benefit from generic coding techniques.

Here’s a real world example I came across the other day at work.

We use SAFEARRAYS and CComSafeArrays often. We also need to manipulate them in various ways so we often covert them to standard containers as they have a wide variety of algorithms that we can employ. Usually we have to convert them back (to pass back over a COM API). Someone had noticed this and written a conversion function:

// Remember to delete the returned pointer
SAFEARRAY *
CreateSafeArrayFromVector(std::vector<long> vec)
{
    CComSafeArray<long> sa;
    for (std::vector<long>::iterator it = vec.begin(); it != vec.end(); ++it)
    {
        sa.Add(*it);
    }
    return sa.Detach();
}

In fact there were a whole bevy of these conversion functions. CreateSafeArrayFromVector that worked for floats. For doubles. On unsigned longs. We also had to work with std::lists so CreateSafeArrayFromList was born, duplicating all the vector functionality. Remember that much of the code is practically identical, we’re just adding things to a safe array! What a mess.

A single generic function could (and has) replaced it all:

template <typename FwdIterator>
CComSafeArray<typename std::iterator_traits<FwdIterator>::value_type>
CreateCComSafeArray(FwdIterator first, FwdIterator last)
{
    CComSafeArray<typename std::iterator_traits<FwdIterator>::value_type> sa;
    while (first != last)
    {
        sa.Add(*first++);
    }
    return sa;
}

Much cleaner! How is it used?

std::vector<T> handles;
//...
CComSafeArray saHandles = CreateCComSafeArray(handles.begin(), handles.end());

You’ll notice a few changes. I chose to use CComSafeArrays because there’s no obvious reason not to. It increases type safety and decreases the chance of memory leaks. You’ll see that we pass in iterators to the function now. That allows abstraction from the specific container type. If you’re familiar with using the standard library you’ll notice that this is a fundamental tenet in algorithms – all of them do the same thing. There’s an important point here, if you’re passing containers in your function declarations you’re not programming generically. Instead, create a templated function and expect iterators to be passed in. Tricky to grasp at first but so clean when you bend your brain around it (repeat after me, “algorithms operate on iterators!”).

You’ll also see something about iterator_traits. What the? Without going in to too much detail (again, it’ll have to be another article), iterator_traits is supplied by the standard library to provide compile-time information about the supplied iterator. std::iterator_traits<T>::value_type resolves to the type that T points to. [There’s a whole bunch of things that iterator_traits provides.]

I’ve called the type “FwdIterator” because I require the iterator to support the post increment operator – the concept of “Forward Iterator” defines this requirement.

But don’t get too wrapped up in the lingo. Read the code like this:

“Give me two iterators pointing to the start and end of a range”

“Create a CComSafeArray containing the same type of objects as the iterators point to”

“Add elements to the CComSafeArray from the iterators and return the CComSafeArray when done”

If you can grasp the high level ideas then the syntax comes relatively easy.

In the future I’ll talk about the pair function, FillFromCComSafeArray. See if you can write it yourself!

Relevant links:

SGI’s standard library documentation

Boost’s Generic Programming Techniques

David Muser on Generic Programming

Gallery: FAQ Item C.22

2005-05-01T23:25:00.000+10:00

I use the wonderful gallery to host my photos.

Every so often I upgrade it or perform some sort of maintenance on it. And everytime I have to search for a particular link that tells me how to configure the software so that I can view it from inside my LAN and from the Internet. I want to preserve the linkso I don't lose it again!

It's item C.22 of the FAQ.

I do recommend the software though ngallery and coppermine look quite good too.

What do you use to host your photos (and BTW I'm not interested in any online facility, flickr is great and all but I want to host them on my own PC thanks very much)? :)

Code Camp OZ - I want details dammit!

2005-04-26T00:24:00.000+10:00

I was pretty pissed to find that I wouldn't be able to make Code Camp Oz. Alas, I had an engagement party and a wedding to attend (not for the same couple!).

Anyway, now I want to know how it went. First reports seem like it was great but I want details! Are slides going to be made available? What was your favourite presentations and why? And, especially for me, what details were there about C++/CLI? Is anyone else using it?

A big shout out to Thomas Williams for the offer of a lift up there. Sorry I had to bail Thomas, hopefully there'll be another Code Camp and I'll be able to take you up on your generous offer! :)

I just noticed that I was down as the "C++/CLI co-ordinator"...I didn't even realise! Sorry Mitch if I agreed to that and didn't let you know I wasn't able to attend early enough to find a replacement.

Podcasts

2005-04-08T17:19:00.000+10:00

I was asked the other day which podcasts I listen to, so here are the major ones:

The Dawn and Drew Show [rss]
Engadget [rss]
Adam Curry's Daily Source Code [rss]
.NET Rocks! [rss]
Triple J's Hack [rss]
TPN: G'Day World [rss]
TPN: The MS Developer Show [rss]
TPN: The Tech Conference Show [rss]
TPN: Matt, Freak and the Fatboy [rss]
Reel Reviews Radio [rss]
Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes [rss]
Battlestar Galactica [rss]

I try to listen to more but just don't have the time. As it is I'm finding that I'm getting progressively further behind. Today I was listening to some podcasts from early March!

When I have another spare few minutes I'll also put links to the actual feeds.

Enjoy George! :)

[Update: Well, I've updated the list! I listen to a few more these days...and I added the rss links. Enjoy Tom!]

GoogleX

2005-03-16T19:24:00.000+11:00

Quick link to something I thought was cool: GoogleX. Now I'm heading off on holiday to Tasmania! Be back in after Easter - hope you and yours has a wonderful Easter break.

Cirque du Soleil: Quidam

2005-03-14T22:54:00.000+11:00

After booking the tickets some eight months (!) ago, yesterday I finally saw Quidam. Most of the rest of the post can be summed up with the following word: awesome.

I've been sitting here trying to summarize what a Cirque du Soleil show is all about and it isn't easy. The show is a unique blend of artsy theatre, astounding athletical stunts, breathtaking live music, stunning costumes and pure comedic routines all rolled into one entertaining extravaganza. They've been touring for many years, beginning in their home country of Canada in 1984, and have gone from strength to strength to the point where they're now playing many shows simultaneously worldwide.

Thankfully, beginning this month, they started touring Melbourne.

I've been juggling (purely as a hobby!) for a few years now and was kicking myself that I missed Saltimbanco, Cirque du Soleil's first show here, in 1999. I was amazed when I saw the show on video (thanks Luke!) and vowed that I wouldn't miss another when they next toured. Unfortunately, a series of events prevented me from seeing Alegria in 2001 so you can imagine how keen I was when I heard that Quidam was touring.

Very keen! It didn't disappoint, it was fantastic!! I'm not going to review the whole show but here are some of my personal highlights:

The diablo girls. Holy crap. How they can spin those little tops with such precision and poise is beyond me. I've used a diablo a few times and it's taken me hours to figure out the simplest tricks. Watching the four girls deftly spin, toss and catch the diablos was amazing.

Skipping ropes. Simple concept right? Everyone's used a skipping rope! If you're around my age you probably did the "Jump rope for heart" program in primary school. In Quidam however, their motto must be "Jump rope gone crazy". People skip while they're skipping inside a 'double dutch'. Be blown away when the soloist (Norihisa Taguchi) skips on his bum.

Contortion in silk. The Cirque folk like dangling props from their specially-made roof. One of my favourites was where they dropped two gorgeous strips of red silk and had their acrobat (Isabelle Vaudelle) dance her way up and down them. Different in tone to the rest of the acts, this was quite emotional, serious and breathtakingly beautiful.

Banquine. Not sure how that exactly translates but here's a guess: "people throwing". See men and women fly through the air at dizzying heights as their colleague's throw them with ease! Check out the woman that is absolutely hurtled around. Hold your breath at the end where they attempt to make a vertical four-man tower.

Two of the funniest acts employed more tradition methods - improvised clowning around. Get some people out of the audience, have a vague plot; just add mischief. Haven't laughed so hard in ages!

Probably my favourite act was Vis Versa, or Statues. A man and a woman link their bodies in a slow-moving dance of incredible strength and balance. Unbelievable.

Although these are but a selection, the entire show was fantastic. Every second was enjoyable. The live music perfectly complemented each act, the lighting was sublime as were the dazzling costumes. Everything just reeked of professionalism and was just a delight to see. Highly, highly recommended.

For those out there that haven't yet purchased tickets, go do yourself a favour! The tickets are reasonably expensive (around the $100 mark) but what the show lacks in affordability it makes up for in kick-ass-ability.

Can't wait for the next show! (Or maybe I'll see it again...)

SQL Server 2005 CTP

2005-03-05T02:21:00.000+11:00

Yukon was a highlight for many at the recent Security Summit - I'm sure Greg and Thomas will be wrapped to see that the new CTP has just been announced.

Me? I'm not really a mad-keen database guy. I will, however, be interested in playing with the new Whidbey CTP when it's released on March 38!

Geek Dinner - Post MS Security Summit Shenanigans (with photos!)

2005-02-27T22:55:00.000+11:00

OK, I'm a few days late on this post. Sorry!

Last Tuesday was the MS Security Summit in Melbourne. I covered the event in an earlier posting, but I'm now going to discuss the important part of the day - the post-summit geek dinner [1]. ;)

Many of us had been in Greg Low's terrific presentation on SQL Server 2005 (Introduction to Developers) which was probably the last to finish at a little after 5:30. After trundling down to the MSDN Connection lounge (gotta love elitism! ;) I met up with Will, organiser supremo, and some of the other gang. The dinner had been set at 7:30 at the Blue Train Cafe so we needed to kill some time till then so off to The Pub, at the Crown Casino we go.

Relaxing at The Pub (over some nice brews - thank you Microsoft!) was a good way to start the evening. Everyone was friendly and interesting, quite a relief when you consider the "geek" stereotype is meant to have the social graces of dead fish. I was wrapped to have some meaningful conversations while [I pissed everyone off by] getting down everyone's details and snapping a photo. Here's some shots while we were at The Pub:

Mayur talking smack about Windows

They're all business at Microsoft

Just chattin'

Seven thirty snuck up on us fast and soon after Coatsey announced "last drinks!" we were on our way. The Blue Train is an iconic Melbourne restaurant on Southbank that serves a pretty varied cuisine. It's always busy and tonight was no exception. We waited aaaages for a dinner before Kathleen took it into her own hands and started getting things moving (awesome work!). Time flew with s conversation. Check out some more photos:

In short: wicked night. As I said, everyone - without exception - was friendly and the night flew by. Most people were keen to get together again so hopefully we'll have a second geek dinner in the not-too-distant future!

[1] Really don't like the name "geek" dinner! It just sounds so nasty, can anyone come up with anything better??

Sublime Software

Boost Spirit 2.1

CppDepend

VMWare Server 2 Remote Console and Synergy

Code Snippets for C++ in VS2005

Code Camp '08

Building Boost 1.35

Wireshark matures; v1 is released

Internet Sharing: Mac to Windows

Google Docs goes offline

Google Chart API

Don't share intermediate directories

My code's compiling...

Mac Mini upgrade...finally!

Firefly (aka mt-daapd)

Mac Defect: Samba mounting

Chicken of the VNC - Slow connecting to Ubuntu

dm_mirror and LVM's pvmove

Ubuntu and MythTV notes

Google to release online Powerpoint competitor

Hotspotr - Community WiFi Cafe Hotspots

Switched to Google Reader

Google Maps down under

make_pair is your friend

To the spammers...

DLL not found exception

Two nifty Windows apps

U3 USB drive

Firefox extensions

Foldershare venting

Goto's are evil

Registering ASP.NET in IIS

Matt's recommended technical books

Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows - updated for 2006

Microsoft loses a good one

Visual Studio designer doesn't like generic controls

Annoying Bloglines 'feature'

California, Redundant, MacBook(?)

Google Maps finally has Aussie roads

Google Calendar

Apple Boot Camp

Virtual Earth Streetlevel

ABC RSS Feeds

The brrreeeport report

Kate Gregory gives a "migrating C++ apps to .NET" presentation

Matts Mind

Google Music Search...and maybe an iTunes killer?

C++/CLI now an International Standard!

Google Earth placemark test

Google Analytics

Shopping for webcams

Holiday - and enjoy the cup!

VS2005 issues

Pointer-to-members now require qualified name and &

const_cast can't down cast / Previously implicit stringcasts are no longer allowed

COM/C++ Attributes with enumeration values should not be enclosed in quotes.

Public attributes are stricter

The scope of variables in control constructs is limited tothe construct

Method declarations must explicitly indicate return types

Private types are not accesible outside of the class theyare declared in

Deprecated methods

VS2005 and .NET is shipping!

Heading OS for awhile

Three links of potential goodness

Other blogs

Lens fixed, a 'new' camera and a new blog

Geek Dinner this Friday

Google Blog Search

Doppler and NPR feeds

eBay Buys Skype for $4.1 Billion - Web News News - Designtechnica

Seeing what Katrina has wrought

August 26th Geek Dinner Mugshots

Melbourne Geek Dinner

Freerunning

Synergy is the schizzle

Matt ♥’s...

Firefox extensions

Paper Steam Engine

Robotic hand catches 300km/h fastballs

Google's portal gets RSS

const_cast can't down cast / Previously implicit string
casts are no longer allowed

The scope of variables in control constructs is limited to
the construct

Private types are not accesible outside of the class they
are declared in