Rudi Larno's WebLog : Somewhat Personal

2005

Rudi Larno — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 18:40:00 GMT

Politics

Rudi Larno — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 04:20:00 GMT

I try to keep this blog only on the technical side and not discuss religion or politics, but this seems like a nice site, that involves us all:

http://www.us-election.org

go post your vote.

Windows XP SP2 (Dutch)

Rudi Larno — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 17:39:00 GMT

Ik heb in mijn referrals gemerkt dat ik nogal hoog scoor op google als mensen zoeken op Windows xp sp2 en dutch (ofte Nederlands).

Windows XP SP2 Dutch is beschikbaar voor download.

Let wel, deze download is groot (~260 MB) en is niet de aangewezen manier als je een enkele pc wil updaten. Deze download is voor systeem administrators die een heel park van Windows XP machines willen upgraden.

De beste manier om XP Service Pack 2 op te halen wanneer dit beschikbaar is, is met de functie Automatische updates in Windows XP. Bezoek de site Protect Your PC om Automatische updates in te schakelen via de volgende drie handmatige stappen en u krijgt SP2 automatisch.

Meer informatie in het nederlands over Windows XP SP2

update: aangezien ik zelf geen nederlandstalige Windows XP heb, kan ik niet nagaan of alles vlekkeloos verloopt. Als alles goed gaat, laat dan even wat commentaar achter. Indien je problemen zou hebben, probeer eerst eens de Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Support Center.

Indien je nog steeds problemen zou hebben, contacteer onze support:

Ondersteuning voor Windows XP SP2
Neem telefonisch contact met ons op wanneer u ondersteuning nodig heeft na installatie van Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
Let op: dit telefoonnummer kan alléén worden gebruikt voor Windows XP SP2 gerelateerde kwesties.

En laat me dan weten dat jij ook SP2 hebt.

Allegiance

Rudi Larno — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:08:00 GMT

While perusing the otherwise very interesting and usually somewhat 'over-my-head' downloads from MSR, I came across the Source Code Download of Allegiance.

This is a game that has been around for eons (ok, yes 4 years, but were talking space sims here). I have on occasion installed (and uninstalled) it and have played this numerous hours. Last incarnation was only last autumn, and it still resides on my home-machine (somewhere, I'm sure). Cool thing about Allegiance is the shoot-em-up style mixed with RTS, so if you really want to get anywhere in the game, you gotta do team-work. A good team beats the other side in no time. Graphics were a bit outdated (as this game has been kept alive by the community) and maps were also rather limited and small.

So I was dreaming of having this game, rewritten in .NET, with agent technology, so you could plug in your own logic for automating the tasks that inevitably get tedious and boring after a while. Update the GUI to have a sleek DirectX9 look. Eve Online has one of the best ones I've seen so far. And possible make it perpetuous and massive multiplayer like Eve. For me, that would be the ultimate game ever, combining strategy, space combat and space flight simulation, with massive maps, online gaming and persistent. The new thing here is something that seems obvious to me as a programmer and it is the automation. With the .NET Framework and its Code Access Security, one could host logic inside the game that manipulates a secured and given set of the API, same technology as Terrarium.NET (Someday they will release the code for it...).

This agent/plug-in model really could bring mmog's to a new level, not only automation of tedious tasks would be possible, but given an event model, interesting AI modules could be build. Ah, sooo many things could become possible... but I'll just dream on.

Maybe, as so many things, this already exists somewhere? Anyone know?

update: just remembered while sitting in trafic: there is this game called CoLoBot that has this type of automation/programming as main feature of the game.

Nice little videos

Rudi Larno — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 02:34:00 GMT

Summer is shaping up to be enormously wet, especially between 17h-19h. Just when I'd enjoy a nice beer in Ghent. So instead I guess I'll go through all of these to keep me occupied.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/atthemovies/

It is amazing but these are just the answers to the kind of questions I get from my father, a hobbyist developer.

Nice!

Re-instate the 'Esc'ape key!! (please, pretty please, with sugar on top?)

Rudi Larno — Fri, 07 May 2004 21:29:00 GMT

I would like to start a call to all developers in the world, and especially to the Longhorn devs; to re-instate the Escape key. There are just soo many scenarios still in the Windows shell where you as a user (of a not soo powerfull machine perhaps) are just waiting for something to finish, while you do not need the result.

As a simple example, I'm working from home here and I wanted to connect to my home machine (to load yet another vpc off my 20GB disk, and clear up some space). So I fire-up Win-R (which launches the Run-dialog box), type '\\', and I get the AutoComplete list for all shares I have visited. In error, and too finger-trigger happy I selected the wrong unc item from the dropdown list. And all of a sudden my machine is dead slow while it is trying to connect to some corporate server that is by no means accessible. But there is NO UI, there is absolutely no option to cancel that command. The only thing I can do is wait for the system to find out the share is not available and display, after some time waiting, the error message.

There are other scenarios like that, I'm sure. And not only in the Windows Shell. Some apps still do not take enough advantage of multithreading, especially when there is some network link involved. I have come across this feeling while using Outlook and Visual Studio.NET (My two main workhorse applications).

Candidates can apply here

Rudi Larno — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 02:13:00 GMT

This is indeed getting somewhat personal, if only they got my name spelled correctly!

But yes, some of my colleguas are getting married and people seem to start to wonder whats happening in my life. Ah, I really never expected to be watched like a hawk like some celebs. Not anything to the scale of Beckham, but hey, feels weird.

Well, I'm off to another infamous MS Belux Party, as we won the Best Employer of the Year award again.

Its a small world - NOT!

Rudi Larno — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 05:13:00 GMT

It seems like I only visited about 9% of the globe. Thanks to Tim Sneath for pointing this out.

create your own visited country map