Before I start my rant, let me preface this post by saying that I do really like WP7, from a consumer perspective (it's very responsive, good looking, and just plain fun to use) and a developer perspective (language and tools are a breeze to use, there's a lot of helpful…
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I guess I haven't blogged in a few months. Oops. I probably should have, just to write down what's been happening. Here's what's relevant to this post anyway: I got a Windows Phone 7 pre-production device a while ago, and right now I'm using a production LG Optimus 7 as…
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This blog post shall serve as my semi-official request to receive a Windows Phone 7 development device from Microsoft. So, why should I receive one of these devices? The reasons are quite simple.
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Recently, the Diaspora project has been making waves on the Internet. Personally, I'm glad someone is taking privacy seriously for a change, but that's not what this post is about. One thing about the project that caught my attention is that their Kickstarter page says that they promise to release…
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I think I can safely say that, to date, I've not really released anything that I could consider popular. Things like The Vista Syn are useful tools for a very limited audience. That's exactly what I expected when I released ArkSwitch, a finger-friendly Windows Mobile 6.5.1+ task manager. After all…
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In Part I, Part II, and Part III, I covered mostly the reasoning behind my home automation project, and its hardware components. Now it's time to conquer the project's most challenging aspect, the software. I suppose the reason that I consider software to be the most challenging aspect is that…
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Although I'm not 100% done with the lamp topic from Part II, I think it's in a good enough state that I can move on to something else for now. The next topic is controlling window blinds, also known as an exercise in masochism. Existing solutions are obscenely expensive, starting…
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Since I have decided to go with Z-Wave at the end of Part I, the next step is to determine what hardware I'll need for the features I laid out (again in part I). Some hardware is obvious, like the various Z-Wave modules I'll have to buy, while other hardware is…
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I have wanted to do home automation for a number of years now, but various things prevented me from experimenting with it, not the least of them being me not owning a house. Now that I actually do own a house, I've been looking at home automation technologies more and…
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Despite this post's title looking a bit like a spam subject line, this is a serious post about an issue we ran into today at work. We have a stored procedure that gathers some statistics for us, and a really strange thing was happening with it. When run from SSMS,…
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