Tales from the Evil Empire
Bertrand Le Roy's blog
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My Xbox 360
Here's what my Xbox 360 looks like currently. Can you guess why?
UPDATE: Here's your feedback and my answers...
Azra: You add a tape recorder in?
BLR: Err, no, but that's an interesting hack idea. Certainly an original one...
Wim: Err...you decided to put a mod chip in? ;-)
BLR: Nope. No modchip exists yet, and there isn't much that a modchip would add to the unmodified 360. The feature set is already pretty cool and I'm not at all into piracy.
Wim: Problems with overheating?
BLR: No, I've never had any overheating problems. Both the box and its power brick have their vents away from any other object. I've never noticed one or the other being more than warm. If I had to modify something, it would be to put silent fans, because the built-in ones are pretty noisy.
Wally: Its turned the wrong way?
BLR: No, that's the front.
Wally: Its broken?
BLR: No, works perfectly.
Wally: You had laid it flat and had something on top of it?
BLR: No.
Brandon: looks like you spilled Tang on it and had to throw away the face plate.
BLR: Yes, I did remove the faceplate, but not for that reason. And I did "spill" something on the faceplate, but after I removed it.
Chris: Cause you got a new faceplate?
BLR: Aha! Getting close. But if I had bought a new faceplate, it would already be there. I still have only the original faceplate, but removed it for a good reason.
Travis: No, why? Tell me before I pick one up. Planning on it when they become available at the local Walmart.
BLR: go ahead and pick it up. It's absolutely awesome. Best console ever (and I've had a few). The Live feature is flawless.
Dror: i think you baought PS3 faceplate :)
BLR: :) That's a funny one.
Brian: You are painting your faceplate.
Chris: well that would mean you are customizing your faceplate. Cool.
You just inspired me, I think I may go paint my OEM faceplate this afternoon.
BLR: Yes, exactly.
I recommend acrylic paint and some varnish when it's dry.
I'll post pictures of the completed project once it's finished... -
Saving partial state of an ASP.NET control
Rick Strahl has a created a great control that's specialized in saving other control's state. This enables you to declare what properties you really care about, which is a great improvement over ViewState and even ControlState.
There could certainly be a few improvements, but check it out:
http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/3988.aspx
UPDATE: Rick did actually improve his control based on the feedback he got and now it looks perfect:
http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/4094.aspx -
Atlas December available; Event bubbling in Atlas
You can download the December release of Atlas from this URL:
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Man literally dives from sky
I have to admit I didn't know that.
In 1960, before Gagarin, Joe Kittinger reached the boundary between Earth and space using a balloon. He reached the incredible altitude of 31300 meters, 3.5 times the height of Mount Everest. It's not technically space (if a ballon can sustain itself, it means that there still is enough atmosphere for it to float) but it's admittedly a fuzzy limit.
That's fascinating in itself, but wait... Once he got there, he did the most amazing thing: he jumped. He... jumped... With a movie camera. Having jumped from a much more modest altitude, I can only begin to imagine the life-altering experience it must have been for him. Amazingly, we have images of his incredible dive.
That day, Joe Kittinger, at the peril of his life, advanced the whole of the human kind on its way into space, and broke four records: highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest freefall and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere at a whopping 982 km/h.
Watch the video here: Skydiving from the edge of the world
Seen on Nobel Intent. -
Making callbacks (and Atlas) synchronous, or how to shoot yourself in the foot
I've explained before why XmlHttpRequest should always be used asynchronously. In a nutshell, JavaScript is not multi-threaded, so the only way to keep your application and browser reasonably responsive is to use some kind of asynchronous pattern. This way, the multitasking is left to the hosting browser and the JavaScript developer can enjoy a relatively easier programming environment where he only needs to care about events and not about summoning threads and managing locks.
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Another Atlas keyboard behavior?
I wrote this keyboard behavior a while ago and I just realized that Wilco published something very similar long before me. Oh well, just use the one you like best...
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Got me a 360 this morning
Well, it seems like this second XBOX 360 shipment has finally arrived. Thanks to a tipster whose identity I shall not reveal (but absolutely no MS insider info involved), I was this morning a little before 9AM (one hour before the gates open) at the Costco in Bellingham. We were second in line with my friend David. The line was no more than 25 people when the gates opened, and they had dozens of 360s ready to grasp. Rumor has it they had 144 in Bellingham and about as many in Tumwater.
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Find me on the new Windows Live Local
I think this is pretty neat (click on the bird's eye icon, that's the really awesome one): This is where I work
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Date is a reference type in JavaScript
If you try this:
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How to use enumerations in Profile?
If you've tried to put an enum type into the ASP.NET Profile, maybe you've noticed that there's a small caveat with specifying its default value. To specify the default value, you need to use the serialized value, using the same serialization the profile is going to use for this property. For non-string types, the default serializer is XML. So if you add this to your profile section: