Cool

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:16:05 GMT

I just got sent a link to a website called Wordle which creates "Beautiful Word Counds". It is quite good fun and I ran it over the Scottish Developer's May newsletter to see what it would come up with and this was the result:

(Click for larger version)

Cool switch snippet

Colin Angus Mackay — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:22:35 GMT

I was watching one of the MSDN Screencasts today and Mike Taulty put in a switch statement that pre-populated itself with valid values for each of the case statements within the switch. I hadn't seen this before so I investigated further (in other words, I emailed Mike and asked him what he did). It turns out this is a feature that has been in since Visual Studio 2005 and I'd only just noticed.

Essentially, if you are switching on an enumerator the snippet will expand with all the case statements created for you as you can see by the animation below. To access this, follow these steps

Type "switch", the intellisense will show the word "switch" with the torn document icon, indicating it is a snippet.
Press the tab key twice to expand the snippet, this will also highlight the text "switch_on".
Change the "switch_on" text to the name of the variable on which you want to switch.
Press return twice, this will further expand the switch statement filling in all the cases from the enumerator.

For an example, see the animation below:

Technorati Tags: switch,snippet,visual studio

OTT Christmas Decorations

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:06:25 GMT

More festive diversions with this display of synchronised lights on someone's house.

Technorati Tags: video,christmas,lights,display

A fantastic cartoon on SQL Injection Attacks

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:43:10 GMT

Just in time for the SQL Injection Attack micro presentation that I'm doing.

From: xkcd.org

Technorati Tags: SQL Injection Attack , cartoon , xkcd

Forum Signatures

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:36:17 GMT

Due to a slight problem with my email I'm currently downloading 14000 emails over the last few years. I don't know why Thunderbird suddenly decided to download everything agian, but I spotted some emails that I thought I'd deleted but are obviously still on the server.

Some of these emails were from forum posts made many years ago and I spotted some rather funny or thought provoking signatures in there. So, I'd like to share them:

Disclaimer: Because of heavy processing requirements, we are currently using some of your unused brain capacity for backup processing. Please ignore any hallucinations, voices or unusual dreams you may experience. Please avoid concentration-intensive tasks until further notice. Thank you.

"The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything." - Joel Spolsky

"I still maintain that seeing a nipple is far less disturbing than seeing someone get their brains blown out." -- Chris Maunder

'Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p'

I am an atheist only because fences are uncomfortable and the other side is filled with flames.

"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but perseverance." (H. Jackson Brown)

A working Program is one that has only unobserved bugs

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks

Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something. - Thomas A. Edison

When all else fails, there's always delusion. - Conan O'Brien

I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.

Let's put "civil" back in "civilization"

'Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.' - The Doctor: The Wheel in Space

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little past them into the impossible.--Arthur C. Clark

VB is like programming with crayons.

"Your village called - They're missing their idiot."

Open the fridge door, scream, and everything that doesn't run into the corner is safe for eating.

Memes don't exist - tell your friends

SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue 0
0 rows returned

"You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want." --Zig Ziglar

"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." - Bertrand Russell

"The different versions of the UN*X brand operating system are numbered in a logical sequence: 5, 6, 7, 2, 2.9, 3, 4.0, III, 4.1, V, 4.2, V.2, and 4.3" - Alan Filipski

Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"

My code isn't buggy. Those are all fleatures.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. (Douglas Adams)

Chocolate Crunch Cake

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 11:44:03 GMT

One of my favourite sweet foods: Chocolate Crunch Cake

I used to make this as a child and I only just rediscovered the recipe

Basic Ingredients:

400ml sweetend condensed milk
100g butter or margarine
200g plain cooking chocolate
200g milk or white chocolate
300g Rich Tea Biscuits

Instructions:

Slowly Melt the milk, butter and chocolate in a non-stick pan on a low heat.
Crush the biscuits roughly (so there are various sizes of chunks) into the pan
Mix until the chocolate mix covers the crushed biscuits
Pour into the flat baking tray (lining the tray with grease proof paper will help get the set mix out later)
Allow to cool then refrigerate for an hour or two. This is the base
Slowly melt the milk or white chocolate then pour over the base and return to the fridge.
Once the chocolate has hardened it can be cut into squares and served.

Variations:

You can add a handful of rasins (or other small dried fruit), crushed nuts (unsalted) or seeds to the mix at the same time as adding the biscuits.

Reducing the quanity of butter will make the mix more solid, so it sets quicker, but it become harder to spread evenly in the flat mixing tray. Increasing the amount of butter will make the mix easier to spread out in to the tray, but it will make it more difficult to set.

It is possible to use benecol butter (the one suitable for baking - not all are), light rich tea biscuits and lite condensed milk for a slightly healthier version.

If you have an exceptionally sweet tooth milk chocolate can be used for the base, but it will be very sweet.

Tags: recipe chocolate cruch cake cake chocolate sweet

A wooden marble based binary adding machine

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:25:51 GMT

This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

If you want to read more about this project and others like it then visit http://woodgears.ca

Tags: binary marble wood adding machine

Bursting Water Balloon

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:25:24 GMT

This is more interesting that it sounds. It is a slow motion video of a water balloon being burst. The video is about 39 seconds, but it shows what happen in a fraction of a second.

If you can't see the video here, try going directly to see it on the Google Video site.

NOTE: This entry was rescued from the Google Cache. The original date was Friday, 20th October, 2006.

Google Map of Scottish Developers Event Location

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:47:39 GMT

Google maps has a cool feature that allows you to draw annotations on a map. I've created one detailing the transportation links (bus station, railway station and car parks) nearest the location of the upcoming Scottish Developer events.

To create a map like this all you need is an account with Google, then press the My Maps button on the Google Maps page.

NOTE: This blog entry was rescued from the Google Cache. It was originally dated Sunday, 29th April, 2007.

Customised Google Search

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:50:25 GMT

I've been playing around with Google's customised search recently. It is great, I can create a filter on Google that means that, for the majority of the time, I get the results that I want. The majority of the time I search MSDN, Code Project, my own website and my blog.

MSDN is the main documentation for all of Microsoft's developer tools. It contains nearly everything I want to know.
Code Project fills in the gaps with examples of how to do certain things
My own website and blog are included because I often write things down so I don't forget... Then I forget, so I have to find it again. It is much easier searching my own blog for something than it is to search the wide internet.

I'm sure I'll be adding sites to the filter as I go along. The Microsoft DPEs' blogs are likely to be added shortly as will a number of other blogs that I read regularly. All will be developer focused so if you want to use my custom search you can be assured that you won't end up getting crazy results back about cute kittens.

Finally, if you want to use my custom search, just click this link: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=003507701737802140662%3Afwturq34rxo&hl=en

Tags: google Customised Search Customized Search

NOTE: This blog entry was rescued from the Google Cache. It was originally dated Wednesday, 9th May, 2007.