Like many of you, I have been seeing a lot of coverage regarding the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Although, I sympathize with the main goals of the movement (that the current corporate culture is not constructive toward building a better, stronger America), I have been put off by the inclusion of some groups that are essentially “professional protesters.”
Pepper Spraying Students at UCDavis
A while back I created a page that offered an example of how to parse JSON objects using the .NET JavaScriptSerializer class. It was a mess. It has now been updated. Continue reading
Since 2005, I’ve spent a lot of time living out of hotel rooms. The programming opportunities where I live are limited. So I’ve had to take jobs in areas near my home, but far enough away that I usually need to stay in hotels.
For most of that time I’ve used the Priceline “Name Your Own Price” system with good success. That system allows you to specify a “star level” that you want and a “price level” that you are willing to pay and through some black magic they (often) find a hotel matching your requested star level at your offered price.
But every so often, something goes wrong. Today, what went wrong is that the hotel that I “won” is not up-to-snuff with regards to its assigned star level. Continue reading
A while back, I put up a page on my first introduction to the Javascriptserializer class in the .NET library. Specifically, it dealt with how I used to to write a “hello world” application for Facebook. But in the last two weeks, that page has become the most popular page on my site. What happened? Continue reading
After the umpteenth request for an example of how to generate PDF using MySQL and iTextSharp, I have finally create a tiny sample project that shows how to do just that.
You can download it here: Complete MySQL and iTextSharp Project (C#).
On this site, I have a page that discusses some of the problems that I encountered while getting a website up and running on GoDaddy servers. Specifically, I had to re-compile some open-source projects to allow them to work in an environment with Partially Trusted Callers. I have added some step-by-step instructions on how to perform this task. Continue reading
Zatoichi (from the first movie)
This morning I was getting dressed and I happened to grab an old T-Shirt that I had made at CafePress. It features a picture of Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman and the phrase “What would Zatoichi do?” That got me reminiscing about about the Zatoichi series of movies which starred Shintaro Katsu back in the 60′s.
Mankind
Every Wednesday, our boss takes us out to lunch. Like all geeks do, we started talking about some pretty fanciful topics, including Time Travel.
Ignoring the laws of physics (and the bewildered stares of the young ladies at the next table), we developed complex strategies of how we would use time travel to peek into alternate futures. (Think “Quantum Leap” with a touch of “Doctor Who”). Anyway, that got me reminiscing about my own internet past. Continue reading
This is how I feel.
Like a lot of geeks, I wear eyeglasses. I’ve worn them since about my junior year in High School (good ole Piner High School). Also, like a lot of geeks my head is kind of big. And not just because I’m good looking and smart (let the laughing commence), but because there’s a lot of grey matter stored in the gourd on my shoulders.
Unfortunately, having a big head makes finding new eyeglasses frames difficult. More difficult than it should, in my opinion. Here’s what I’ve gone through in the last few weeks. Does this sound familiar? Continue reading
The lottery has sold out to the spammers.
The other day I was complaining about the spam e-mails generated by my visiting what I though were reputable e-commerce sites. I guess California really is broke since they’ve also sold their soul to the spammers. Continue reading
