Over the last few weeks I’ve been having a few adventures in the world of Silverlight. A bit like Alice I’ve been following white rabbits down holes and through looking glasses. What I’ve discovered is that having an IDE doesn’t always make things easier, especially when the error is occurring somewhere between the chair and the keyboard, a place which is notoriously hard to debug. Brain don’t fail me now One issue I have is with my brain. If you start thinking as if the development environment is going to help you, then when it doesn’t it can completely throw the processes you use to...

I have to admit it I have a problem with dates. I always seem to draw a blank when trying to remember them; I’ve outsourced much of my anniversary notification to outlook and my iPhone, or work with them in applications. It has been ironic this week as the last decade ends and the next decade begins that the first thing that stumps me is a little date problem. A choice of dates I’ve been doing some development using the Silverlight API and I came to the part of the project where I needed to filter data using a date range and display on the map and in graph (or chart) form. Now querying with dates...

The post was going to be initially titled, why Visual Studio 2008 is like a VW Bora, in reference to the current fun I’ve been having with my current Silverlight adventures. Unfortunately that particular episode will have to wait although I might give it as my Ignite presentation at our companies away day, watch this space as I’ll only give it if we don’t get enough other presenters. Anyway I digress, or should that be ramble, the current post has been sparked by two things, watching Doctor Who episodes with my daughter and fixing a simple connectivity problem in Silverlight. Sonic What? Just in...

I’ve been hyper busy in the bat cave (aka the garden office) with end of year projects, Christmas parties and general shenanigans (who sounds like an Irish military commander). It’s times like this when it’s good to see another site straining under the weight of usage and the imaginative page showing that times are good, yet the server load isn’t. Many sites (the tr.im one is too the left) now put up fun pictures when there servers are taking the strain. These pictures let you down gently, but thoroughly (no slow response just no response) with a promise that coming back later will make...

It seems strange in this day and age that there is a still a need to ‘stake a claim’ for a piece of digital landscape. We have often be warned about identity theft but it’s often just other people with the same identity (i.e. name) as you that you need to defend against theft of your name or infact the name you might want with a new service. I have no interest in being mtoon768562@hotmail.com or www.facebook.com/mattatoon/ and fortunately I’ve been using the internet longer than most other ‘Matt Toons’ which means I’ve got many of the important sites in the bag so to speak. Mr Toon I...