James Simmonds

Pointed this here and got this...pretty!

I've been using a laptop (Dells exclusively) for the last 6 years as my sole computer. This week I've finally been persuaded (for performance reasons) to start using a beefy desktop which is great - plenty of ram and CPU means that it is much quicker than the laptop....however I just can't get used to the keyboard! The keys are huge and require too much travel to "engage" - i keep missing capitals (as proved just there, that was a genuine attempt to press the Shift i)...passwords are a nightmare (for those that haven't been replaced by my fingerprint reader)! This is the nearest I've seen to a laptop style keyboard, the Logitech diNovo, but its crazy money! Maybe I'll just get used to a normal keyboard again...

Couple of things caught my eye in a recent tranche of posts from Gizmodo , USB Touch Screen I've been looking at Tablet PC's & graphics tablets for a while now...I think that being able to sketch something by hand, a screen layout for example is a real time saver (check out EasyPrototype for cool app that takes this even further) - I don't want to boot up Visio and mess about, neither do I want it pixel perfect. I think that touch screen monitors for desktops will be mainstream in the future with big chunky interfaces for fingertip control - think Media Centre "10 foot experience". Right now (armed with this reminder of Windows keyboard shortcuts) my mouse is not getting a lot of action that for sure! This "wrap over" touch screen looks pretty good and I'm really keen to get one...however I can think of a few problems with it, * Price - no mention yet * Distortion of the underlying screen - I don't want to sacrifice any clarity for the sake...

Download the World Cup fixture list direct to your Outlook calendar - get the installer here from the thoughtful people at Microsoft bCentral.

SQL Prompt from Redgate rocks! (via Greg's CTOTD ) Its intellisense for Query Analyser, Enterprise Manager and more... Free download until 1st September 2006, no restrictions! I've just installed it and its wonderful. Along with the other cool tools Redgate do this makes them my New Best Development Friend :) Thanks for releasing this gratis! They even have a support forum for it!

Scott Hanselman , Howard van Rooijen , Udi Dahan Three guys from the .NET world that I respect and read....is it me or do they have an uncanny resemblance?! Something in the genes of a top .NETter? Borg-style "factory" churning these guys out? What do you think?! PS: Although I'm too cheap to actually buy the application that generated this morph I can heartily recommend it - it worked really really well and was nice and easy to use - thanks for enabling these 5 minutes of fun!