General

Solution-sudoku opens !

Nidhogg — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:31:00 GMT

I've been working on http://www.solution-sudoku.com in the past few days. The site is now functionnal and active. Its sole purpose is to give hints about or solve sudoku puzzles. Give it a try and tell me what you think about it

I also created software for solving sudoku puzzles for MS smartphones and PocketPC, the Windows version should be online soon. They are available on the site for free.

MCT now

Nidhogg — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:27:00 GMT

Since my last post about a century ago, I moved into a new flat my wife and I bought. Then there was a 1 month Internet black-out until my ISP restored my connection to the world.

In other news, I passed the MCT exam so I will be teaching .NET and related technologies from time to time, starting at the end of this month.

70-300. Done.

Nidhogg — Fri, 06 May 2005 17:51:00 GMT

I just passed the 70-300 .NET Architecture exam. Another one down, only one left (70-340 on .NET security) and I'll be a MCSD.NET. After that I plan to go for the Microsoft Certified Trainer certification. This will enable me to teach official Microsoft courses on .NET. I really look forward to it, it should be a lot of fun.

And I still get married next week :)

Back to blogging .. for a while anyway

Nidhogg — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:06:00 GMT

I just realized it's been months since I last posted anything on this blog. So, here are the news :

I am now a MCAD.NET, working on my MCSD.NET certification
My work right now is on a ASP.NET v2.0 project which is about as cool as I could hope for
I am getting married in 2 weeks which is obviously way cooler than all of the above :)

As an aside, I'm working on a little application that will monitor CounterStrike:Source. When a user is playing online it will publish the server IP and port so that fellow gamers can come and join the fun. I have a working prototype that publishes the information to the Friendly Name in Windows Messenger 4.7 (In the more recent versions the friendly name in the COM APIs has been made read-only which makes the whole publishing stuff a pain). I plan to support publishing to a FTP site, mIRC, MSN (if I find a way to do so), maybe other IM software. I'll build a simple plugin architecture to extend it if needed. I may even design it to support other games / apps.

Captcha Enabled

Nidhogg — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 17:27:00 GMT

Recently we started to get some comment spam on the stup.org blogs. Removing them manually was beginning to be a real bore so I implemented Miguel Jimenez's Captcha control for .Text. From now on, you'll have to enter the text displayed on the image to post a comment. It sucks but it's the most efficient way to stop this annoying spam.

Font for programmers (and users of text editors)

Nidhogg — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 19:04:00 GMT

If you're a programmer or if you use text editors on a regular basis you might want to check out this font. It's a fixed-size font called Proggy and it's the best I've found. I've tried quite a few other fixed size font but none was as good as this one. There are multiple versions, choose the one you like best. I use the Proggy Clean version.

Got my Orange SPV C500 !

Nidhogg — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:06:00 GMT

I just got my brand new SPV C500 phone from Orange. There's a review on Neowin.

So far I find it great. I knew from reviews that the joystick was not so good but for normal use it works quite well.

Now it's time to look at what the .NET Compact Framework offers on this platform.

DMS Explorer menu editor 1.0

Nidhogg — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 08:47:00 GMT

If you don't understand what this post is all about, you don't need this software =)

I wrote this little application to be able to edit the DMS Explorer MENU.TXT file easily. Normally to install custom software on your PS2 with a DMS modchip you burn a CD with a INSTALL.CNF file and DMS explorer does the rest.

Unfortunately some PS2 models can't read CD-RW very well so you need to burn quite a few CDs just to install some apps.

I decided to install Execftp on my memory card and use a ftp client instead. Now the problem is that DMS Explorer uses the \BOOT\MENU.TXT file which is not a valid file because the PS2 uses "/" as the folder separator, not "\". So normal or even advanced FTP clients like FlashFXP could not get this file (ok maybe you can but I didn't find how). So I quickly wrote this application to bypass this problem.

Download it here : DMSMenuEditor_v1.0.zip

Active@ Partition Recovery

Nidhogg — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 11:12:00 GMT

Active Partition Recovery saved my day. I deleted partitions on a backup drive I had removed from my PC to put it in my Playstation2 and moments after my RAID array decided to die. This piece of software recovered everything from the backup drive in seconds, flawlessly. Combined with a Norton Ghost clone I got my system back up in a few hours.

An example of bad commercial practice

Nidhogg — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 13:32:00 GMT

I've been a happy customer of my ISP, Free until now. They provide a service that is fast and cheap (30 euros/month for 5Mb down and 350Kb up). On top of that they have developped a custom adsl modem, called the Freebox. It's a linux based adsl modem that also has TV services and VoIP services. This means you get TV and cheap phone calls (free between Freebox users). Plus it has Ethernet and USB ports. The latest version also has WiFi.

The problem is that 2 years ago this Freebox was out of stock and I was given a normal adsl modem instead. Free kind of promised to upgrade its users to the Freebox "as soon as possible". Meanwhile all new customers were given a Freebox !

Now Free annouced that the upgrade costs 60Euros. But new customers are still getting the Freebox free of charge ! I can't believe it... I thought you usually reward your oldest customers not try to extort money out of them. Actually it's cheaper to cancel the subscription and subscribe again than to upgrade... but you lose your Internet connection for a few days/weeks/months.

Let's hope they get back to their senses because they are getting a much deserved trashing on french newsgroups and forums.