It's been a while since I posted any links to things that have caught my attention, so...
Christopher Anthony reviews Windows
When I first encountered Chris, it wasn't under the most pleasant of circumstances.
Some of you might remember his first appearance on the scene. Since those days of one-sided zealotry, we've been emailing each other somewhat regularly. At first it was a series of arguments about Windows versus Linux and all the other stuff that comes into play when people argue about religion. Eventually, though, it became a reasonable conversation which then turned into a nice little friendship.
Recently, he posted his thoughts on Windows. As someone who previously used OSS exclusively, I found his review interesting. He certainly doesn't think Windows is great on all fronts, but that's quite a ways from where is opinion of it was before.
Shrinkster - ASP.NET replacement for TinyUrl
Kyle Tinsley recently (as in: finished yesterday) developed a very slick .NET replacement for TinyUrl.
If you've been listening to .NET Rocks lately, then you, along with a few other people, have probably been irritated by the long URLs announced during the "News of the Week" segment of the show. We fixed this by using TinyUrl to shorten URLs to something manageable, but I'm going to be using Kyle's service from now on. Aside from winning me over by being .NET, the interface is what I like to call "google clean," and it has a cool tracking feature that lets you see how much activity your shortened URL is getting.
Check it out here: http://www.shrinkster.com.
Speaking of .NET Rocks
If you haven't heard yet (or read Chris's post on it), we're giving away a tablet on .NET Rocks. You don't even have to listen to win.
Not just any tablet either, but the tablet - a Toshiba m200 that's pretty nicely decked out.
Speaking of tablets
Kori couldn't take it anymore. She found out about the .NET Rocks tablet contest and asked if she could enter. I pointed out that, although she was quite eligible, it would be highly suspicious if she won, so I advised against it.
Well, she must have really wanted one because she went out today and picked up an m205. She's loving it, too.
I'm pretty convinced now that tablets are one of these things that look interesting from a distance, but which become objects of mad techno-lust once you've played with one up close. Kori definitely had that look in her eye when she said "charge it" today.
If you like BBS door games...
If you remember the good old days when DOS ruled and you made fun of your friends who used Windows or MacOS, then you might also remember the glory that was the BBS door game.
My Aussi friend, John Elliot, sent me a link to his friend's telnet BBS where they were just getting a game of LoRD (Legend of the Red Dragon) going:
Even though I can't figure out how my character managed to swipe 32 gold off the body of a dead "Large Green Rat," LoRD is still nevertheless quite entertaining.
When I asked John if it'd be all right to invite some other people to play, he said "The more the merrier," so there you go...
Now it's time for bed.