I’m just back from another trip to Germany, this time by way of Gatwick and on to Munich by redeeming some BA miles that had accumulated.

I thought about writing another little travelogue but then it wouldn’t make much sense as my previous trip to Höchstadt is still undocumented — I left readers wandering around the outskirts of Paris. So here’s the short version…

Having now spent the best part of a month beneath the shadow of Dell’s 24″ wide-screen LCD behemoth, the 2405FPW, I thought a mini-review might be in order.

Twenty four inches might not sound big for a monitor when compared a TV but bear in mind you’ll be sitting only a couple of feet away. It will take up most of your vision without moving your head. In fact RSI of the neck could become an issue here if you are not sitting far enough way to take it all in one go.

Update: This behavior is as expected according to the .NET team but it’s probably unexpected for most users.

I encountered a strange problem this week when a conditional operator appeared to be evaluating the false expression contrary to the C# documentation. The line looked like:

Back in ’98 I was developing an extranet site for a local company when I realized that it would be open for exploit if somebody put single quotes in text fields. It was early in the development cycle so I fixed it and moved on, unable to find out how other people were avoiding the problem.

It turned out many were not and it became a well-known exploit called SQL injection. Unfortunately there are many developers who don’t know or appreciate the problem, and it is this:

This week is the annual Battle of Britain week here in Guernsey and today sees highlight of the weeks events, the air display. Alas, I missed the a chunk of it but managed to catch the star attraction The Red Arrows. As always it was most impressive, dives banks and turns at low altitude while retaining perfect form in an number of geometric shapes. The weather was less impressed and the low cloud ceiling canceled out the various cross-overs we are normally treated to.

Today sees the completion of Cable & Wireless Guernsey’s free ADSL upgrade from 512KB to 1MB. My parents and friends got theirs earlier but even mine was enhanced this morning. If yours is still running at 512KB give them a shout.

I recently ran into a problem while debugging inside Visual Studio 2003.Net. Google couldn’t find me an answer, only a few other people with the same problem. Here’s my solution in the hope it might save somebody else some time.

Whenever debugging a specific VB.NET application that used a C# class library I would receive the following error certain objects in the C# class library:

Apple hosted a media event yesterday, here’s my usual opinionated commentary.

iTunes 5 is now out — ditching the scrappy brushed-metal look in favour of the Apple Mail inspired ‘platinum’ look even on Windows. With luck we can expect the next major release of Mac OS X to take this theme across the board and finally kill off the aqua stripes and brushed metal. Let’s just hope they keep the older sane toolbars and not the Safari/Mail abominations.

One of the problems with a capitalist society is the conception that if something is not number 1 then it should be killed/will soon die and make space for another attempt. These products may be profitable and have their own niche and killing them just hands back the market-share to the number 1…

Some of my favorite products have been shelved over the years, here’s a few that deserve some kind of record in the annals of web history.

Check out podiobooks who have put up a number of free audio-books from various authors. Neil Gaiman has managed to get the first chapter of his new Anansi Boys book read by Lenny Henry up too.

Fluid is a screen saver that gives you, well fluid visual effects. It has a whole bunch of preset effects and a mixing desk to mix up your own. Works okay on my PowerBook but ideally needs something more powerful! Mac Mini owners need not apply.

Okay so my current munchy reads Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations but those who’ve visited my Zen-like abode will have admired the un-Zen-like bedside tower of pulp that rivals the best Pisa has to offer in the way of leaning towers. For a few days Pip has been taking a back-seat to a tome of non-fiction…

One Hit WonderlandOne Hit Wonderland comes from the multi-talented and under-exposed British writer, musician and comedian Tony Hawks. When not appearing on TV and radio shows he takes to writing books that chronicle taking on unlikely bets in the hope of impressing a friend or, most lately, getting laid. This book, his latest, starts with such a bet made at a dinner party where Tony takes on the challenge of creating another musical hit…