Predictably Irrational

Haven't posted for ages. I have been reading a book "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely about behavioral economics. Fascinating stuff in it, like how first impressions count on our later choices. A good read so far, I recommend it if you have the time.

Improvments to Paint .Net 3.5 startup speed

It starts up much faster now, well done to Rick Brewster and anyone else who worked on this version.

If they could speed it up even faster it would be just fantastic.

Anybody else noticed

how stack overflows ratings system is busted?

I've kind of lost interest in it now. My stack does not overfloweth anymore.

“Huburb”

I was just having a shower and thinking of how Melbourne is growing and I think I came up with a new word. Huburb to describe a major hub suburb.  The ones where all the trains and trams meet and there are cinemas and shopping centres. 

I was thinking of Camberwell and Box Hill when it came to me. The “huburbs” that have failed to materialize from Steve Brack’s Melbourne 2030.

So that’s my new word. I’ll think I’ll send the word to Justin Madden the current planning minister for Victoria.

Silverlight Rule 1

Discovered a Silverlight issue today in Visual Studio 2008.

When you add a user defined control to a control the parsing can stuff up. If the 1st control has event handlers that are not defined or parse incorrectly then you get into a state that is hard to recover from. I ended up with many AG_E_UNKNOWN_ERROR and AG_E_BAD_TYPE errors.

This leads to Silverlight rule no 1.

"Don't put event handlers into your Xaml."

Until the parser gets better, either VS2010, Silverlight 3 or a patch this seems to be the way.

USB Flash memory

Been having horrible trouble with a 16GB USB Flash stick today. Couldn’t copy a 9GB file to it.  Never found an answer.  In the end I destroyed it by using convert.exe /FS:NTFS. rats

Edit:

I fixed my flash disk. In the ned I booted from a windows XP DVD into a recovery mode. Then I used the FixMBR command. Oh boy.

First post with Windows Live Writer

I ran into windows Live Writer today.  The story goes at work we have merged with another company, usually we use Skype but the new company won’t use Skype so the two groups are using MSN for the time being.  Installing MSN Messenger also has a few extra tick boxes and one of them i windows Live Writer.  Its a simple enough WYSIWIG editor.

A Test Table

With a few tricks like tables.

Technorati Tags: And you can add tags

And maps

Headings

And video

In general it seems an improvement over the standard blogger editor.

We shall see