A Week of Wii

Last week, I got a chance to play with a Wii for the first time. I’ve been a recent console convert and picked up a XBOX 360 last year, so most of my comparisons will be versus the XBOX 360 and XBOX LIVE.
At first glance, the Wii interface is much more simpler than the current [...]

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How to use custom audit fields with SubSonic

SubSonic uses a few audit fields by default – you don’t need to write any code. However, the field names that are used are coded into the source code. You can modify the source code and generate a new assembly, but if you’re like me and would rather not edit the source code (so you [...]

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Are facts useless to U.S. voters?

A couple new articles came across my viewing today. The first was by Joe Miller of The Fact Check Wire, who posted a new article titled “Fact-Checking is useless.”
An [WaPo] article last September pointed to cognitive science research showing that debunking myths can have the effect of reinforcing the very myths you’re trying to [...]

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How to verify your voter registration, register to vote, or request absentee ballot online

The Obama campaign released this new web site to allow voters to verify their voter registration. If you aren’t registered to vote, then you can also register to vote. Additionally, once you’ve registered to vote, you can request an absentee ballot and locate the nearest polling location.
Just enter your name, email, and mailing address and [...]

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Would you like a soda, pop, or coke with that?

When I moved to California, I used the term “pop” to refer to carbonated soft drinks (such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi). I assume that’s because it was the most popular term used where I was coming from. Very few people knew what I meant, except other people from the same region or the mid-west.
After a [...]

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Visual Studio macro to add file headers

Microsoft’s StyleCop analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules. It can be run from inside of Visual Studio or integrated into an MSBuild project.
One of these rules is #SA1633. This rule requires that each of your files have a file header that contains a copyright XML element. Of [...]

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How many banned books have you read?

There’s been a lot of discussions over a certain government official’s “rhetorical and realistic” questions asking the town’s librarian “if [the librarian] could live with censorship of library books.”
Just for clarification, the town did not ban any of the books. The librarian was just asked if she’d object to having some books removed from the [...]

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The reason you should vote is…

A friend asked me why she should vote since her vote wouldn’t really count. She had a valid argument since presidential elections aren’t based on popular votes. The presidential elections are based on electoral college system and our state leans heavily to one side.

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