Yearly Archives: 2008

Visual Studio 2008 upgrade

Visual Studio 2008 review - Team ExplorerWell this will be a short one………………. it’s very disappointing.

  • You can’t CTRL+F or CTRL+SHIFT+F will crash the IDE.
  • Editing any CSS file will crash your IDE….ANY CSS file.
  • Teeam explorer’s ‘Queue New Build’ doesn’t queue them at all. It’s the exact same as it used to be (see screenshot below).
  • It’s slow even on a dual core XEON with 4GB Ram

In conclusion – don’t bother upgrading, even if you do get javascript autocompletion.

New Year 2008

Philip Snacking on New Year's eveYet again – a new year has crept up on us. The christmas and New Year period was tough on the auld liver but a lot of fun was had especially the 28th in Leopardstown for Frank’s birthday and the afters of that day which will go down in history with the tags “hilarious”,”drunk” and “lol”.

I took a ton of photos on New Years eve which are all up now (http://halfviking.com/newyear07-08/). There’s some embarassing videos on there too.

Last year I had a list of resultions – How did I do??

I will

  • Finish the new design of this site – as you can see, it’s still a work in progress – Done
  • Comment my code – Well, this is really an ongoing exercise but I am alot better than I used to be
  • Finish projects I have started – same as above
  • Document my code properly – same again
  • Use UML – even if it’s just in my head – I do this alot now
  • Move to Ubuntu on my home machine – Dual boot
  • Caption all my photos – all 8500 of them – No chance
  • Read all the books I bought – I had quite a few but I did read an awful lot of them
  • Read non-techy books too – many many novels read this year
  • Cook more – I cook for myself now so I cook every day
  • Eat less – Done dropping a whopping 1 stone 7 pounds so far
  • Eat healthier – Done
  • Find some way of feeling healthier that I can actually stick to (Gym is a bit too much commitment) – Gym, football and back playing GAA far exceeded this goal
  • Start to budget my outgoings properly – Due to circumstances I’ve only been able to this in the last month but it’s goiong well so far
  • Stop calling my dog “the rodent” – Bobby has a new family so goal achieved 🙁
  • Learn that Friday does not have to equal “getpissedday” – yes it does
  • Stop watching soap operas – comedy series like King of Queens and Scrubs will remain on my Sky+ planner though – I watch very little TV these days
  • Contribute to an open source project – Not time this year I’m afraid
  • Help fellow developers more – Ammado is a very open dev team so help flows freely
  • Always keep in mind that I know only a fraction of what I think I know – Definitely true
  • Be in a good mood – I try
  • Write another useful Firefox extension that uses a custom XPCOM component – No
  • Use Patterns in code more – Done
  • Stop driving like an idiot just so I can get home quicker – Not done
  • Go to Ireland to see my friends and family more – I live here now so Done
  • Go to the summer house in Norway – Done
  • Save money – Done
  • Keep this blog up to date – Kind of Done
  • Move to IMAP instead of POP email – Done
  • Backup more – Done
  • Learn how to use SVN properly – Done and I also use TFS
  • Go to LinuxWorld in London (as long as it’s not on Gill’s birthday like last year) – It was postponed but I did have it planned
  • Get a whiteboard at home – Done but in my mum’s shed at the moment

Not too bad really considering. I’ve yet to create this years list but I can assure you it will be shorter 🙂

Paha Maa (Frozen Land)

My Norwegian cousins work in film and they usually send me DVDs for christmas of birthdays. The films are usually scandinavian and are usually very good. One such DVD this christmas was “Frozen Land”. It’s a great movie with about 6 characters who all come in contact with each other during the film – each time resulting in some sort of tragedy. The film was in finnish but using my google skills I was able to track down the english subtitles for my favourite quote from the film.

Do you remember the questions we asked each other as kids?

Why am I who I am? Why was I born here?

Why can’t I scream when I feel bad?

What’s the point of living if this life is merely hell?

But we have to believe, –

that in the end things work out for the best

Otherwise, nothing makes any sense

It’s available on amazon and play.com – well worth a watch. As you can probably tell – it’s a pretty morbid film.