February 20, 2005

Making coasters with Windows XP

Note to self: never, ever use Windows XP's integrated CD burning for anything other than making drink coasters. This feature seemed to work fine the few times I used it with my old TDK CD-RW drive, but it has never worked with my Plextor DVD burner (PX-708A). Hopefully now I'll remember this fact next time I need to burn a CD. At least I haven't wasted much money making coasters since I only buy CD-Rs when they're nearly free after rebate(s). :)

Posted by JoshC at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Introducing Indigo

David Chappell (not to be confused with this Dave Chappelle) recently wrote the best, most informative article I've found so far about Indigo. The article goes over the various approaches to network programming, what's wrong with the current frameworks, how Indigo solves all the world's problems (a prerequisite for all Indigo articles), and finally he covers how to migrate existing systems to Indigo when the times comes.

A few interesting points:

  • Indigo is built on the various WS-* standards to ensure interoperability with non-Microsoft frameworks.
  • Indigo to Indigo communication will use an optimized, binary SOAP encoding by default.
  • Indigo is a very explicit framework. Methods and even data types must be explicitly added to a service contract. Likewise, service boundaries are well defined.
  • Indigo services can be easily hosted in any process or by the Windows Activation Service.
  • Avoid Remoting at all costs for anything other than cross-process communication on the same machine -- as I've learned myself the hard way.

Posted by JoshC at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2005

More What I'm Reading

I've been busy working on the "What I'm Reading" section of my site. I just added a link to view all the books I've read. I've only entered my four most recent books so far, but I'm planning to go back and enter older ones soon.

Currently, I enter a book's ISBN number into my system and the book's info and cover image are retrieved using Amazon's excellent web service API. My system stores the ISBN number, title, author, number of pages, the date I started the book, and the date I finished the book, but I'm planning to add a spot for ratings and comments, too. Ultimately, I'd like to be able to compute some statistics and maybe even generate a graph for how much reading I've been doing.

More posts will follow as I complete more features, but now it's time for bed. The only problem with working on my book tracking system until midnight is that now I don't have any time left to actually do any reading! :)

Posted by JoshC at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack