The Woolston Blog

summer of scifi

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:06:00 GMT

Some really good scifi coming out this spring/summer:

Iron Man May 2nd, 2008
Speed Racer May 9th, 2008
Chronicles of Narnia May 16th
Indiana Jones May 22nd
Kung Fu Panda June 6th
Time Travelers Wife June 6th
Incredible Hulk June 13th
Get Smart June 20th
wall-e June 27th, 2008
Hancock July 2nd
Hellboy 2 July 11th
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3d July 11th
Dark Knight July 18th
XFiles 2 July 25th
Star Wars; The Clone Wars August 15th
City of Ember: October 10th

kids room decor

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:55:00 GMT

Found this at eToys.com:

Kid's Room Decor? Seriously?

already?

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:01:00 GMT

wow..this movie launch is creeping right up:

Watch the Trailer on Yahoo! Movies

West Michigan Day of Dot Net

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:05:00 GMT

The West Michigan Day of Dot Net is fast approaching and this year we're really trying to blow out attendance. There's a ton of really good content this year and 5 tracks. Yes, you read that right...5 tracks! I'll be doing a session on IE8 For Developers where I'll profile some of the newer features of the latest browser release. I'm also looking into the idea of setting up a table with vintage pc's. I have a working ZX80, Vic20, Atari 400 and Atari 800 that I'll have on display. I'm still looking for someone to provide a commodore 64 and possibly a trs80.
So help support the midwest .NET community and spend some time with us on what is sure to be an awesome developer event.

music and life

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:17:00 GMT

no monkeyboy for me

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:37:00 GMT

So let's reflect on the recent Microsoft Launch event in Chicago.

My friends and I piled into an SUV at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. My idea of 5:30 a.m. activity does not include travel, in the dark, to an overpopulated city. However, this was an opportunity to hang out with friends for the day and possibly take in some good developer content. The last launch event..same friends, same ungodly hour and unfortunately we left a little dissatisfied with the event. So with this iteration of the process, we thought that surely Microsoft would come through in spades, given that the Chicago crowd is one of (if not the greatest) largest populated launch shows that Microsoft rolls out.
You would think that with this many people in attendance (5k+), surely Uncle Bill or Monkeyboy would make an appearance.

No...and thats where things started to go downhill.

Robert Youngjohns stepped up to the podium to do the keynote. Who? Exactly!
Wait a minute..didnt this guy work for Sun Microsystems not too long ago? Yep. Months ago, in fact. And he's a salesman. Microsoft just brought him on board. A Sun salesman at the keynote, telling us how excited he is about the new technology? Seriously? How excited can you possibly be? You just joined the company. No Bill. No Steve. No Monkeyboy dance for me.

The BI demo during the keynote crashed. The demo gods bent down from Mount Olympus and smote his whole presentation. I felt pretty bad for the dude because it was obviously a system issue and he struggled to illustrate, vocally, what it was he wanted to show us and how it fit into the Microsoft BI program. But not today my friend. So they moved on, while poor Mike snuck around back to strangle someone, who undoubtedly is surfing Craigslist today.

So ends the keynote.

First session...."Break Through Challenges with Visual Studio 2008" All powerpoint. No code. a 45 minute commercial. The presenter did an awesome job of selling Visual Studio 2008. Made me want to buy it. Oh wait...I already have it. Ok...no big deal. Still nice to know that all of the features that they promised would be in there, are indeed in there.

LUNCH! Microsoft hands out some pretty nifty lunchboxes, with quite the selection of goodies. However, if you picked Chicken instead of Turkey..too bad for you cause they looked, smelled and most likely tasted horrible. They were so strong smelling that the lunch box absorbed the scent. But cool that I got a neato lunch container/box thingy. I like free stuff. During lunch, i eagerly awaited my software pack that we would be picking up today.
Microsoft's various evangelists promoted the fact that "Today we're going to give you Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Sql Server 2008. Sweetness. My MSDN expired not too long ago and I've been eagerly awaiting the new stuff; most desired was the Server 08 disc for its awesome virtual support.

So anyway...enough salivating..back to the story line here.

After lunch, we noticed that the launch crew was handing out the cd packages and one could procure the stuff a bit ahead of the nerd herd. So we pick up our much wanted software pack:

Server 2008 - its a trial version.

Sql Server 08 - it's the CTP version.

Visual Studio 08 - it's the standard edition..sorry no deployment tools, remote debugging, sql integration or TFS for you my friend. please drive through.

okee dokee. a little disappointing but i'll survive. its hard to really complain about free software. oh wait, i just did and it didnt seem hard at all.

Next Session.

"Reach End-Users With next Generation Web applications."

Sweet...I'm all about the next generation, star trek or otherwise. Bring it on.

First words out of the presenters mouth....this is NOT about Silverlight.

Hmm...o.k. Maybe some other stuff. Maybe MVC. Demo some of the cooler 3.5 stuff maybe?

no.

UpdatePanel.

and yes...THAT UpdatePanel.

Wait? Didnt we hear this presentation/demo like two years ago?

Yes...yes you did.

Many people walked out of the demo. Including myself and the two amigos.

Disappointed? You betcha.
5+ hours in a car just to sit through a keynote by some newb, get handed trial software and the endless powerpoint commercials. And lets not forget the UpdatePanel demo.

wow.

and shame on you vendors for not giving away useless swag. Nothing. No pens, no light up blinky things to amuse my kids. No little squishy balls to entertain me during the UpdatePanel demo. Nothing. But you sure were quick to scan my little badge UPC thing to fill up your spamULater database.
O.k. yeah..Dell did give away some bright neon green shopping bag thingy. Wearing/Carrying such bag, however...kinda effeminate. But good luck to you other 2000 dudes that managed to score one.

oh yeah...no Tshirt.

I was kinda hoping to pop another official Microsoft Visual Studio tshirt onto my chunky torso. But no.

No tshirt this time around. I guess times are tough in Redmond now with no one buying Vista.

So I took a day off of work (I'm independent, so translate that into 'i lost a whole days wages') for this little diversion.

Still...a day with friends, surrounded by my fellow nerds (about 5000 of them) seems to justify the loss and disappointment. I'll probably do it again next year when Microsoft launches their next round of productivity tools. Maybe Monkeyboy will show up this time.

West Michigan Day of Dot Net

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:10:00 GMT

I'll be speaking at the West Michigan Day of Dot Net again this year. As many of you may know, i typically give away some nerf and this year will be much the same as last. I'll be speaking on a shorter subject (not Ajax) this year, so definitely sign up and stop by:

vb is satan spawn

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:28:00 GMT

daniel: i friggin hate VB - its the language spoken by Satan himself

adrian: you mean dick cheney ?

daniel: dick cheney speaks vb. of course it all makes sense now. explains why we cant find Bin laden - search routine is written in VB

adrian: hahahahaha - its still running

daniel: long running process caught in an infinite loop - chewing up resources

ActionScript 3.0 popups

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:58:00 GMT

I wanted to create a modal popup for a flash app that I'm building. I'm working in ActionScript 3.0 which does not have a native popup control. If I installed the Flex framework, I'd have access to more GUI controls, but I'm really trying to keep this thing on a low footprint, so I've opted out of Flex. However, I still needed to build the popup. So this is how I did it...

var modalsprite:Sprite;


function show(object:DisplayObject, xin, yin) 
{
            modalsprite = new Sprite();
            modalsprite.graphics.beginFill(0x000000);
            modalsprite.graphics.drawRect(stage.x, stage.y, stage.width, stage.height);
            modalsprite.graphics.endFill();
            modalsprite.addChild(object);
            object.x = xin;
            object.y = yin;
            modalsprite.alpha = 0.5;
            object.alpha = 5;
            stage.addChild(modalsprite);                    
            stage.setChildIndex(modalsprite, stage.numChildren-1);
             
}

the object parameter would be the MovieClip, Buttons, Controls..etc that you want displayed on the surface of the modal background. the Xin and Yin are the corresponding coordinates for the object that you want placed.
I'm sure theres probably an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it yet.
If you have something better, by all means leave a comment for the rest of us!

Gaming Advances

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:57:00 GMT

So...the next time you're out at Best Buy and you're about to drop off 300-400 bucks on a new gaming console...step back for a moment and wonder why. Is it because of the fancy new graphics, screaming cpu or rumbling-motion-sensing-controller thingy? Maybe?
I own an Xbox 360, Nintendo wii, Xbox 1 and decent gaming pc's. And what is my kid playing on a Saturday morning?

Thats right....the Sega Dreamcast.
Why? Because the living legacy of the Dreamcast is that the games are just plain fun.
So if you're looking to score some high value entertainment value for the childrens....maybe a search through Ebay would serve you well. I've seen the system (with games) going for around 40-50 bucks and what an incredible bargain for the amount of fun that you'll get out of this 'classic' system.