James Simmonds

Get it here Hopefully this release addresses some of the performance issues numerous people have reported . The release notes which include a complete breakdown of bugs fixed & features is here . Enjoy...I know I will :)

Find out more here ... It's been AJAX'ed up and is looking really nice... " Orb 2.0 is all about MyCasting - Be your own producer:Create channels out of your music, photos, videos, and television. " What's Orb? It allows you to stream your recorded and live TV, music, pictures, videos from your PC to any other IP connected device (PDA, Smartphone, Laptop, another PC)...how cool is that? Very very very cool that's how cool! Check out these posts on it if you've never heard of Orb.... My Orb blog post Scotts Orb blog post

So finally I've got round to buying some new gadgets...and this time its the long awaited attempt at home automation using Z-Wave devices. Why Z-Wave and not X10? Tricky choice...Z-Wave uses RF and a mesh network approach with command confirmation - this is the primary reason for going for Z-Wave - rock solid control. Each Z-Wave module is not only a receiver but a repeater too; this means that the controller sends the command to any module in range and it passes it on to any other modules nearby until the command eventually reaches the intended module and vice-versa for the command confirmation response. By "in range" and "nearby" I mean about 30 metres (100ft) The more modules you have the more resilient and robust the command messaging becomes and the messaging is very quick too. I'd read a lot about X10 and was really impressed by its support for almost anything you want to do; Z-Wave in the UK is poorly supported in terms of variety of modules, currentl...

(via Gizmodo ) OMG....I've seen it all now...indicators for your ears to avoid those little " which way are you going shuffles "... how ridiculous!

11-Dec-2007 Update I've updated this post to fix the broken images and replaced them with inline text for the example xml and accompanying C# code. This post has been by far the most hit on this blog and along with the comments about the missing images I thought it was time to update it! Whilst recreating the examples below I zipped up the working source code and xml file and loaded this onto my Project Distributor site - please download it to get a full working custom configuration to play with! Just click on the CustomConfigExampleSource link on the right hand side, then the "Source" link to get the zip. We are in the process of converting our codebase to .Net 2.0. We've used Enterprise Library to great effect so decided that we should continue with this in the form of the Jan 2006 release which targets 2.0 and I've got the job of porting our Logging, Data Access etc wrappers to EntLib 2.0. ...And so far so good - the EntLib docs aren't bad and the migrati...

Finally! Sandcastle is go! CTP just released here . This is MSFT's NDoc style source code documentation tool finally unleashed and with the recent announcement of Kevin Downs , the main NDoc developer pulling out of further NDoc development (which Sandcastle influenced to some degree) this is a very eagerly awaited event! Other links Sandcastle blog "The Hansel-factor" - Scotts review here Mikael Söderström has a "Sandcastle Helper" here Ashley van Gerven has a batch script available here Have fun!

I've been using IE 7 for a little while now and I am quite impressed with it. The bit I am disappointed with is offline support, a feature that has been dropped or rather superseded by its Rss support. Now I wouldn't be upset with this if it wasn't for my new TabletPC...with IE 6 installed on it I can quite happily save pages offline for reading on the train home and this is great. I'd love to do this with IE 7 and use the cool tabs feature but you can't do it and it's a real shame as I do like what they have done with it - I just wish they hadn't dropped this feature as it's the main one I use! I've just got a Fujitsu Lifebook P1510 and I'm really impressed with it. I particularly like the handwriting recognition. It's very accurate without any training but on my bumpy train ride home it takes twice as long to actually write anything but it looks pretty damn cool! Already though I'm worried that as a niche (ultra portable) laptop I am g...