Ryan Morlok’s Blog

Every so often I need to format string in .NET.  For whatever reason, the printf formats always stick in my head from years ago, but I don’t use the .NET equivalents frequently enough to drill them into my head.  Instead of having to Google the pages I use to refresh my memory, I’m just going to post them here.  Way to use the blog as a bookmark tool…

• Kathy Kam’s .NET Formatting Tutorial
• John Sheehan’s .NET Format strings cheat sheet (pdf)
• SteveX’s String Formatting in C# tutorial

Facebook just released a new plugin for iPhoto that allows you to tag people in pictures and export them to Facebook.  The plugin is really well done, and works well.  The developers at Facebook have continued to impress me with the quality of work they churn out.  These are people with a cohesive vision of what they’re trying to put together.  One minor quirk with the plugin, depending on a friend’s privacy settings, it appears that their name won’t appear on the tag list from iPhoto where it might actually appear in the list when you upload to Facebook via the website.  If you type in the name correctly, however, it will pick up the tag upon export, though.

To follow up on my previous post, HawkWings.net is a site that’s full of great information about the Apple Mail client. Usability improvements, fun add-ins, and all sorts of other stuff, it’s a really great resource if your on the Mac. The speed up tip I’m mentioned previously has definitely helped make my mail app more zippy. Especially when starting the program.

For those of you using the Mac mail program out there, you may want to check out this housekeeping trick.  Basically, it cleans up the inbox database, which can become fragmented from extended use.  I don’t have any hard evidence to prove things are faster, but things do feel a bit more zippy when I’m navigating my mailboxes.

I ran across Speedtest.net several months ago on Digg, and since then every time I’ve wanted to use it, I’ve had to search Digg to remember the name.  When it made the front page again today, I figured I’d just stick it in my blog so it would be easier to find.  I guess this post is more of a bookmark than a real post, but if you haven’t tried it you should check out Speedtest.  It’s a nice flash-based, graphical internet connection speed tester.

This video shows some of the upcoming new features in Parallels, such as coherence mode.  Looks really cool.  I haven’t installed any of their pre-releases because I don’t want to risk hosing things with my Windows installs, but I can’t wait until the final version.

I just downloaded the release canidate for .NET 3.0 and less than a week later, Microsoft goes and releases the final version.  Back to the downloading board…

I must say though, the new version is pretty slick.  The new Windows Presentation Framework is awesome, I’m just starting to learn the ins and outs of it.

I want my entire desk to be made of this stuff.  Awesome.

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1& 

These guys have apparently solved the problem: http://www.spanningsync.com/

When that comes out I might actually start using Google calendar. If I get over the idea of Google knowing what I’m doing 24/7. What would be really cool is if someone would offer the same feature for iScrybe, when that comes out. That would be money.