October 2005 - Posts

31 October 2005
Dell Inspiron 9300 -- I'm Selling My Laptop
[Update] I'm amazed...it was on eBay for all of 2 hours and it already sold for my Buy it Now price. [/Update] Not that any of you guys would be interested, but I’m selling my laptop . It’s just too big and clunky for business use, though it’s a really nice laptop. At the time I bought it, I needed a desktop replacement, but ended up building myself a new desktop instead. If you know of anyone who might be interested, feel free to pass this on. Read More...
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31 October 2005
I Am Not a Spaghetti Coder
Though I’m the first to admit that I used to be back in the good ol’ VB6/ASP days. We all have to start somewhere right? When .Net came out 5 years ago it forced us all to rethink how we code; .Net 2.0 is going to further reinforce this mantra, which is a good thing. Here are some of the things I try to do in my day to day work: No circular dependencies between components (keep your modules orthogonal, and employ a top down dependency scheme so that changes in a layer only affect the layer directly below it if need be). Refactor as often as you can (and as often as time/budget/etc permit) to keep code duplication to a minimum. We’ve all had to maintain projects that use the same code block repeatedly throughout the application, and we all know what a pain in the ass it is to have to fix something in multiple places. Move repeatedly used code into a base class and set up an inheritance scheme. When you’re done refactoring, do it some more. Move frequently used “utility” methods (i.e. string... Read More...
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31 October 2005
Half-Life 2 -- Lost Coast Demo
From HalfLife2.net The Lost Coast is essentially just a technology demo that is showcasing the new technology that they're building into the Source engine. We've all heard of it before, it's a thing called High Dynamic Range rendering (or HDR, if you're lazy). Here's a really technical detail into what HDR exactly is, from our friends over at bit-tech.net : The Dynamic Range is the ratio of the largest value of a signal to the lowest measurable value. Current 16-bit integer-based formats use colour component values from 0 ("black") to 1 ("white"), but don't allow for what is known as "over-range" values, for example, a whiter-than-white highlight glinting off a piece of metal. HDR facilitates the use of colour values way outside the normal range in an effort to produce a more realistic rendering of a typical 3D scene. If you have ever driven through a dark tunnel in your car, and then emerged out the other side into blazing sunshine, temporarily blinded by the difference in light levels... Read More...
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29 October 2005
Surreal Streams -- 40 Hours of Non-stop Sasha and Digweed Mixes
I’m queueing up 30 of my favorite Sasha and Digweed mixes to get us through the weekend (and the work week for that matter). Stop in and have a listen @ http://jaysonknight.com:8000/listen.pls , there are some real gems in these mixes! Playlist is @ http://music.jaysonknight.com/ (browseamp/browseamp). Read More...
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28 October 2005
Two Years and Still Going
Today marks two years since I started down this whole blogging path thing, and what a couple of years it’s been: Two domain name changes. Three site overhauls (rolled my own, moved to .Text, and now the current incarnation known as Community Server). This site has been hosted on no less than 5 different machines, all in house. Bush somehow got re-elected. Two Hilton sex tapes. … I seriously didn’t think I’d still be going after 2 years…I’ve done the whole “journaling” thing before, and it didn’t last. Maybe it’s the fact that people actually read this drivel I manage to hammer out from time to time :-). I was going to make a seperate post about this, but I feel it fits in decently with this one. I’ve finished up my “Current Stream” control for CS; it’s on the upper right hand corner of my site (the name of the track currently streaming is displayed in real time, just click it to tune in). I’ll post... Read More...
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27 October 2005
Using an XmlDocument Returned from a WebService
Sir Google was kind to me tonight . In a web service I’m working on, I’m returning a relatively simple xml stream to the calling client (in this case, of type System.Xml.XmlDocument). I got it all figured out/debugged, built a test client to test it, and promptly realized that the client was seeing the return type from the web method as type System.Xml.XmlNode. Since XmlDocument inherits from XmlNode, downtype casts aren’t allowed. The above article explains a workaround relatively nicely. Perhaps there’s an easier way to accomplish this though. Read More...
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26 October 2005
BrowseAMP -- Remotely Control Your WinAmp Music Streams
I’ve posted before about a tool to remotely control WinAmp (in my case I’m usually at my laptop, WinAmp runs on my main rig…you know, the one with decent speakers)…that tool quickly outserved its usefulness as it was LAN only. I even emailed the guy who wrote it begging for the source code so I could add some more functionality to it to extend it outside a LAN scenario…of course, I never heard anything back. Then just a couple of days ago while discussing my new music streams with my buddy Ray , he comes to the rescue with this killer add-in for WinAmp: Enter BrowseAMP . It’s basically WawiTray on some serious steriods and gives you complete control over your WinAmp player from any web browser (and yes, it looks/behaves great in Firefox). A quick feature list (not exhaustive by any means): Full player control, including volume, track position/previous/next/pause, equalizer, shuffle/repeat. The ability to build playlists on the fly (in my case I just... Read More...
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25 October 2005
Jayson on the Merits of Ergonomics
Haacked reminds me of a post I’ve been meaning to throw on my site for a while now. I’m not complaining (after all, I took this career choice knowing that it would entail a shitload of typing), but my fingers really hurt lately. On my right hand, my fore/middle fingers tingle quite a bit, and have periods of numbness as well. On my left hand it’s the same with my fore finger. Actually the only fingers that experience no pain at all are the little guys and my thumbs. It’s worth mentioning that I was formally trained in typing many years ago…I’m not saying I haven’t developed any bad habits over the years of staring into monitors and coding away, but I’d like to think I know what I’m doing. I honestly think it’s related to the year+ I’ve been using a laptop almost exclusively. I’ve noticed on a laptop (especially for the afore mentioned fingers that hurt) that I use the tips of those fingers more often than using the... Read More...
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23 October 2005
Surreal Streams -- It's a Goa Sunday
Tune in to my live stream @ http://jaysonknight.com:8000/listen.pls for a Sunday goa-fest…nonstop goa tracks all day long. I’m still working on the WMP issues that have been reported, and will have a stream up for the weenies who refuse to download an AAC+ capable player (such as WinAmp…come on, easy installation folks) shortly. Enjoy! Read More...
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21 October 2005
So What's New at JaysonKnight.com?
Anyone who’s read this site for any amount of time should know that I’m a huge fan of music, namely electronica. I literally listen to music all day, every day. So something I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks is getting a streaming music server up and running so that you , the loyal JaysonKnight.com readers can tune in and listen to whatever I’m listening to in real time. Why would I waste donate valuable bandwidth on my already taxed out connection? Simple…I love music. I like to share. Ok…group hug :-). There has to be a smidge of selfishness involved right? Well yeah…there is. Within the next couple of months I plan on getting some work done on music of my own (a lifelong dream, but instead of choosing to starve to death as a musician, I chose computers). So that means eventually I’ll be able to stream my own stuff and get discovered one day. The internet is a beautiful place. So where’s the bloody URL to drop in and have a listen? http://jaysonknight.com:8000/listen... Read More...
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