You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Friday, Oct 3, 2003, 9:17 AM
Forces Required 2 Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces
Here. The 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
Friday, Oct 3, 2003, 9:14 AM in .NET
Use Rory Blyth as your own personal PDC reporter
Here. Rory Blyth, potentially the most entertaining writer in the bloggesphere, has offered to be your own personal PDC reporter, attending the topics that you can't and writing them up for you. I'm not sure if he's willing to do this, but maybe you could talk him into wearing your clothers while he does it. I'm XXL, Rory, and like neon colors. I'll send my session schedule later today and you just hit all the ones I can't, OK? Great. Thanks!
Friday, Oct 3, 2003, 9:01 AM
Geek dinner in Portland... and I missed it!
Here. Doh! There was a geek dinner in Portland and I missed it! What? I make my address and email secret from you people?!? Let me know these things! I hope they have another one soon...
Friday, Oct 3, 2003, 8:37 AM
Nuance Vocalizer 3.0 Demo
Here. I always love a good text-to-speech demo. I dream of the day of marrying Project Gutenberg [1] with great TTS, colored in a "voice font" of my favorite reader. [1] http://promo.net/pg/
Friday, Oct 3, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
My 9-Year Old Has a Cell Phone
Friday, October 3, 2003
Tonight is Friday night, which means the Sells family generally has pizza and a movie at home. However, since we've been through most of Blockbuster's catalog and the boys aren't quite old enough for most of my DVD collection (9 is a tad young for things like Fight Club...), we thought we'd take in the new Jack Black movie School of Rock. Kids-in-Mind.com gives it a 3.3.3, heavy on the poop jokes (which my sons like) and heavy on the irreverence (which I like), so it seemed like a winner. However, as most movies start between 7-7:30pm and I just noticed it was 6:30p but Melissa wasn't home with the boys, I started the calling. First was her cell, but I remember her telling me it was out of batteries. Then it was her sister's house, where she had been, but she had left for a friend's. Then the friend, but no answer. And then I remembered my son and his cell phone.
My son is 9 years old. He's been into computers and gadgets of all kinds since before he was 3. A few months ago, he was digging around and found my old Nokia cell phone. It had some cool games, so he charged it up and started carrying it around with him. Then, he wanted minutes so he could make his own calls. So we finally found our way to the local AT&T wireless place (which wasn't really very local at all) and he spent his allowance money on pre-paid minutes ($10 for 20 minutes). After less than a week, he was down to 8 minutes left. He's most just calling his friends from our car (where I have my cell in my pocket w/o unlimited monthly minutes) or from our house (where we don't have long distance, but we do still have a land line), but it's his phone and his money and it gives him pleasure.
It did, however, freak my wife out. "A 9-year old doesn't need a cell phone!" she'd say. I'd explain that it was his own money. "A 9-year old doesn't need a cell phone! Drug dealers have cell phones!" She and I both have our own cell phones and besides the occasional glass of wine, we don't even *use* drugs, let alone *sell* them. And while no amount of reasoning with her stopped her from being upset, she didn't say he couldn't have a cell phone, so now he does. That he keeps charged. And that he carries. And that he spends his own money on minutes for. And that I just called because he was with his mother:
"Hello?" said my 9-year-old son on his very own cell phone, surprised but pleased to get a call.
"Can I talk to your mother?"
"Sure."
"Hello. Sorry. My cell phone ran out of batteries," she said.
"Aren't you glad that John has a cell phone?" I asked, not bothering to keep the smug out of my voice.
"Hmphf," she said, not bothering to keep the annoyed out of hers.
I think I may pay for his next batch of minutes just so I can keep calling her on his phone. : )
Thursday, Oct 2, 2003, 7:29 AM in .NET
PDC Pre-Con Tutorial: Windows Forms
Here. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I'm really looking forward to the Windows Forms pre-conference tutorial I'm giving with Rocky Lhotka at the PDC. I've never spoken at a PDC before but it'll be just like old times with Don, Tim and Martin down the hall. Also, I've never spoken with Rocky before, but he's also a big Midwesterner with a strong opinion, so it should be fun. Plus, he prefers semi-colonless languages, so all kinds of sparks should fly as I attempt to convert him to the one, true way and he does the same to me. We may have trouble remembering there's an audience. : )
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 7:38 PM in .NET
LonghornBlogs.com
Here. "LonghornBlogs.com is a community initiative to help spread the word with factual information about the next version of Windows, straight from the people that are building it. Because of this, the majority of people posting here (at least for now) will be Microsoft employees. Our intention here was to keep the signal-to-noise ratio extremely low. You won't find too many personal posts here, just good solid information about Longhorn."
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 6:35 PM
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 Review
Here. Microsoft quietly released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 and Paul Thurrott loudly loves it (although he certainly identifies "opportunities for improvement" as well... : ).
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 5:09 PM
MS "Send comments on this topic" really works!
Here. If you see a little "Send comments on this topic" link, it launches an email to MS where you can complain about the docs, e.g. the .NET Mutex ctor. I had always ignored that link, thinking that I'd never get a response to email sent that way, but I was wrong. In fact, when one of the readers of my WinForms book [1] was trying to mix single-instance detection and no-touch deployment, he found that he couldn't. When he looked at the Mutex docs, they didn't list the appropriate permissions that creating a named Mutex requires. So he complained. And he got a response w/in 24 hours! And I got dragged into the ensuing conversation to fix the problem! I had *no* idea that little link would yield those kinds of results. Today I am proud to be a Microsoft employee. : ) [1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321116208
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 4:05 PM in .NET
.NET Resource Kit CD
Here. While the .NET Resource Kit is targeted at VB programmers, it comes with tons of real 3rd party controls for free that work just as well for C# programmers as well as VB.NET programmers.
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 4:02 PM
Nice video intro to Office 2003
Here. "Are you curious about the new Microsoft® Office System, including the latest versions of Office Professional Edition, Outlook®, and the all-new OneNote™ note-taking application? The current Insider show is a perfect way to whet your appetite for their release this fall, plus get the latest information on Tablet PC."
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003, 10:12 AM
BillG using his power for good, not evil
Here. An interesting summary of the impact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is having, and about to have, on the world.
Tuesday, Sep 30, 2003, 5:25 PM
I *Trust* MIT
Here. Sure, sure, MIT is well known for their high-tech education, blah, blah, blah. What I think is *much* cooler is that MIT's Open Courseware project has also put up a large number of courses from the Sloan School of Management, where I can learn all kinds of investing, finance, marketing and business basics from folks that aren't trying to upsell me. I wish MIT provided discussion forums so that I could talk with other students "taking" the OCW courses when I was or MIT students or faculty that didn't mind answering questions, but just having the materials up is *huge*. I think I'll start with 15.433...
Monday, Sep 29, 2003, 4:11 PM in The Spout
Creating Doc-Centric Apps in WinForms, part 1 of 3
Here. This 3-part series really belonged as a chapter in my WinForms book, but after doubling the estimated size of the book (not to mention the amount of time it was supposed to take to write it), my publisher was anxious for me to stop writing. For those folks accustomed to the document management support in MFC or for anyone that needs to build document-centric WinForms application, I think you'll like this series. Part 1 discusses the basics of document management in SDI WinForms apps. Part 2 discusses MDI apps and deeper shell integration. Part 3 wraps most everything up into a reusable component, turning the construction of document management features in .NET largely into some drag-n-drop and some property browser settings. The resultant FileDocument component is available in the latest Genghis sources (although not yet in the release zip) @ http://www.genghisgroup.com Enjoy.
Monday, Sep 29, 2003, 1:46 PM in The Spout
A *royalty* check from Pearson!
Here. Whoa. I just got a royalty check from Pearson today. Right now, it lists my advance for the WinForms book (which may turn into positive money some day), but also includes money from ATL Internals (which I'm still proud of) and Windows Telephony Programming (which I can't believe is still selling!). I won't be able to put my kids through college with the money. In fact, I can barely put them through a car wash with that money, but it's still nice. : )