I just finished watching DimeCast
#15. It completely blew my mind. Part of me really likes the elegance
of the syntax of using Linq to query the FS. The rest of me can’t imagine the
performance of joining files to directories in such a manner would be efficient.
I need to dig in and do some side by side comparisons and get to the bottom of this.
Sounds like the makings of an in-depth blog post.
Author Archives: brian
Linq to File System
MacBook Update
So, it’s been over a month now since I purchased my MacBook on one heck of an impulse. After, buying it I must saw that I had a fair bit of buyers remorse. After all, I just had built a new desktop quad core PC a few months prior and I had a perfectly workable laptop provided by my employer. Did I really need another machine? Probably not. Fortunately, the remorse was very short lived. I have never worked with a better piece of computing machinery. Period.
Lets start with the battery life. It is incredible. Most nights, it can
handle a full load of development, surfing, emailing, and gaming without being plugged
in for the whole evening. Spending several hours out on the deck is finally
an option. I can finally enjoy my backyard investment to it’s fullest.
I assumed that I would spend most of my time using windows. After all, windows
is what I know best. but that also hasn’t been the case. With the exception
of actual development work, I do everything in Mac OS X. When I code, VMWare
fusion provides a seamless way for me to run Visual Studio without having to reboot
into windows native.
I never have to reboot. Sleep mode just works. It’s a great piece of equipment.
Errata Update
Yesterday I posted about
my experience with the Errata submission process at Wrox. I promised an update
and this is it.
Within an hour of my submission, I received an email reply from someone in the customer
service department. It turns out that my observation about the missing figure
had already been noticed. If I would have looked harder, I would have found
the replacement figure in the form of a JPG file in the downloads section for the
book. I still believe that it should have been listed in the errata section
- after all it IS an erratum.
I also received an email from Jim Minatel.
It seems that the comment functionality of my blog was down so he emailed instead.
I was very satisfied ith the service I got from everyone involved and am happy to
say that I have had my faith in Wrox restored. I’ll continue to buy books from
them when I have an opportunity and I will continue to hold them to a high standard
of excellence – as I do with everyone I recommend.
Errata
Let me preface this by saying that I understand people make mistakes. I make
them all the time. I expect mistakes in technical books. This is NOT a
rant about the quality of any particular book or technical books in general.
Today I was reading a particularly interesting section in a technical book and ran
into a figure that was clearly incorrect. After making sure it wasn’t simply
a case of the figure reference being off by a number or two, I decided to take a browse
over to the Wrox site for the book and check out the Errata page. This is where
my journey becomes very frustrating.
Problem #1 – When I search for a book using the exact title, I expect it to be the
FIRST hit, not the fourth.
Ok, so I find the title, bring up the book’s page, and click on the Errata link.
So far so good. I’m a little troubled by the fact that the book has only a few
items listed – I know I’ve run into more errors than this and I’m only in Chapter
2. Either I’m the only person reading the book or something is broken with the
errata process. I click on the “errata form” link. I expected to get to
a page that clearly indicated that I was submitting an errata for a particular book.
Instead I’m at a generic “ask a question” page. I thought this was strange enough
that I went back and searched for a completely different book to see if the link itself
was broken. Nope – all the books take you to this generic page.
At this point I’m starting to see the issues with the Errata submission process.
I’m imagining some English major doing an internship getting an email and yelling
at her screen something like “I’m glad that you noticed that ‘obtuse’ was misspelled
on page 578, but IN WHICH F**ING BOOK?”. So, I try to help the intern out and
provide the book’s title and printing number along with my errata submission in the
“ask your question” box.
I move on to the next *required* section which requests that I enter a category.
I eventually find an option for “figure error” which seems to fit the bill.
Selecting this enables a text box where I can put in the book’s title and ISBN number.
The text boxes are empty.
Problem #2 – Don’t make me enter data which you have no excuse for not knowing.
I clicked on a link on your website that contained all the information you are requesting.
Don’t make me do your work for you.
Problem #3 – x1000 when we’re dealing with a web development book. Perhaps you
should read some of your own books from time to time – you may learn how to make a
website that doesn’t suck.
Deep Breath.
Now, I click the submit button. Feeling rather pleased with myself that I took
the time to report the errata in spite of all the challenges. Oh, what is this
- they want me to create an account? This is optional right? Nope.
They want my address and phone number to submit a freaking errata? Fail.
Problem #4 – When someone is trying to help you out, you should be thankful and appreciative.
This should not be viewed as an opportunity to pad your marketing database.
Against my better judgment, I filled out the silly little account creation form.
I didn’t give any real information except for my email address. Submit.
We’re finally done, right? Wrong.
I get redirected to yet another page that gives me some troubleshooting steps that
I can perform myself before submitting my question. The first on the list -
Have you checked the Errata page for this book? Congratulations – you just bought
yourself a blog post. Epic Fail.
I did get an email saying that I’ll hear from someone in “support” within 24 hours.
I’ll update if/when my submission ever makes it to the errata page.
Updated here.
PS3
I’ve been very impulsive lately.
As I mentioned last night, my HD DVD player lost it’s ability to upconvert standard
DVDs. This morning I received a sign from a higher power that I could not refuse.
Walmart is offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of a PS3. Now, the sale
ad makes you think that the gift card must be used to purchase Blu-ray disks, but
at least in our case, we just got a standard walmart gift card which we can use on
anything, including the diapers we would buy from walmart anyway – so for us, it was
very close to getting a PS3 for $299. Not a bad deal at all.
I was very pleasantly suprised to see that the PS3 has built-in WiFi. I’m downloading
the latest firmware right now. Not having to buy yet another standalone wireless
dohicky was a huge win.
The other positive suprise was blockbuster.com’s ability to up-convert my entire queue
to blu-ray with a few clicks. I guess they are gearing up for more people to
take the plunge. They certainly didn’t have a similar option when I first got
my HD DVD player.
Adding Insult to Injury
Ok – I admit that I chose the wrong side in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war. That’s the risk you take when you are an early adopter. I’m cool with all that.
Now, the one thing I could take solace in was the fact that my Toshiba A20 was still
a reasonable upconverting DVD player. Sure, it takes longer to boot the damn
thing than all of my computers combined, but once it is running, it does a good job
- until today. It seems that it has lost the ability to spit out audio on the
HDMI line. Of course, I need HDMI to upconvert. With the component connection,
I get great audio – but a 480p picture. Grr.
It appears that the blu-ray player may need to be purchased sooner than expected.
I’m not about to buy a standalone upconverting DVD player.