DevHawk's Inessential List of Tools

ilanchelian left a comment yesterday asking for me to share some of the utilities that I use sometimes. Of course, Scott Hanselman keeps *THE* ultimate list of tools, hence my titling this list as "inessential" (note, it's the list that's inessential, not the tools themselves.)

But since you asked, here are some of the things kicking around my utilities folder (in no particular order):

• cdburn and dvdburn from the WS03 Resource Kit
• CodePlex Client (aka cpc and tfc)
• NcFTP Client (aka ncftp, ncftpput and ncftpget)
• Reflector
• Wizmo
• AMP FontViewer
• DiffMerge
• Process Explorer
• HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (used for building bootable flash drives)
• Subversion command line utilities
• 7-Zip
• Notepad2
• TreeSize Free
• Foxit Reader
• Script Elevation PowerToys (PowerShell Here and Elevate)
• SyncToy 2.0

Morning Coffee 151

• Unity's first CTP was just over two weeks ago, but according to Grigori Melnik, it's shipping just over two weeks from now. That seems pretty speedy to me. By the time I get a change to take a closer look at Unity, it'll probably have shipped.
• I discovered Matthew Podwysocki blog via DNK. I don't typically subscribe to blogs that I discover via DNK, but Matthew has written about IoC/Unity, F# and DLR lately so I'm thinking I should be a regular reader.
• Corporate VP David Treadwell has an extensive post on updates to the Windows Live Platform Services that are being unveiled at MIX next week. The updates include the new WL Messenger Library, a new SDK for WL ID Delegated Authentication, a new WL Photo API, a new CTP of WL Tools, standardized support for AtomPub, updates to WL Contacts API and Sivlerlight Streaming and a new "experimental" service called Application Based Storage that "allows application developers to store a small amount of state/configuration data in the WL data centers on behalf of a user". I'm sure there'll be more WL news at the MIX conference proper, but that's quite a good chunk of features to start digging into. Personally, I'm particularly interested in WL Delegated Auth, esp. how it deals with phishing, something I don't think OAuth handles very well.
• Windows Live isn't the only group making announcements in advance of MIX. Adobe announced a research project that allows "cross-compiling existing code from C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby to ActionScript." This seems pretty obviously a response to Silverlight 2.0's embedded CLR, announced last year @ MIX. Support for C++ is very interesting - Adobe evangelist Ted Patrick claims they were even able to cross-compile Quake 1 to Flash. Interesting, but this is an internal research project @ Adobe with no projected release date while Silverlight 2.0 goes into beta next week.

Morning Coffee 150

• Yesterday was the NHL trading deadline, and the Capitals were very busy. They obtained Huet from Montreal, Federov from Columbus and Cooke from Vancouver. Given they are fighting just to make the playoffs, going for three soon-to-be unrestricted free agents seems like an odd choice. However, the consensus (among my parents anyway) was that it's critical to get this very young Caps team some playoff experience. Even if all three walk at season's end, it'll be worth if the Caps make a playoff run. Besides it's not like we gave up much: an extra second round pick in '09, a 19 year old defensive prospect (who was apparently 14th on the depth chart) and an underachieving winger.
• Speaking of the Caps playoff chances, they are currently one and a half games back of the division leading Hurricanes and two games behind the current eighth seed Flyers. Yes, I rank hockey teams using baseball's standings system. Otherwise, you have to talk about games in hand (i.e. the Caps are five points behind Carolina with two games in hand).
• The writer's guild ratified the new contract, so Hollywood labor strife is now officially behind us. At least until July when the the actors may go on strike.
• It seems like a slow week for Microsoft geek news, which is odd since WS08, VS08 and SQL08 all launch today. I'm guessing it's the calm before the Mix storm next week.
• After going dark for six months, Linq to XSD has been re-released to work with the RTM version of VS08. Scott Hanselman demonstrates Linq to XSD by applying it to OFX, an XML Schema he calls "goofy" but apparently helped develop. OFX uses derivation by restriction, which has no direct corollary in C#, but Linq to XSD's  is able to translate between XML and objects without loosing any of that type fidelity. Nice to know Linq to XSD can tolerate OFX's level of goofiness, though I'm guessing most people use much more straightforward schemas.
• Speaking of Linq, I discovered LINQPad via a comment on Rob Conery's blog (which I found via DNK). It's basically a code snippet IDE for C# 3.0 and VB9, with it also has built in database connection support, so it can fulfil much the same role as SQL Management Studio. I only played with it for a few minutes, but I was really impressed.  This is definitely going in my utilities folder. I wonder if they're interested in supporting F#?
• Not sure how I missed this, but you can get MSDN Magazine via same Syndicated Client Experience as Architecture Journal. Unlike AJ which is divided into issues, the MSDN magazine client is divided into topics which is harder to square with the physical magazine. On the other hand, since MSDN Mag has been around longer, perhaps topics + search is a better discovery mechanism.
• Soma announces the Visual Studio Gallery, a repository of VS Extensions. It's kinda cool, but the whole discovery mechanism is clunky. I might like to experiment with some free or even free trial products, but there's no way to filter on cost so finding them is a hassle. Also, there's no way for community members to vote, rate or comment on the products in any way.
• Nick Malik can't answer the question "how does Enterprise Architecture demonstrate value?" I could be snarky and say "it doesn't", but that's only half the answer. It doesn't, but it should. My opinion, since you asked Nick, is that EA fails to deliver value because it tries to control the uncontrollable. Trying to gain efficiency thru establishing standards and eliminating overlap via reuse are pipe dreams, though literally millions of $$$ have been poured into those sink-holes. There are a few areas where centrally funded infrastructure projects can solve big problems that individual projects can't effectively tackle on their own. EA should focus their time there, they can actually make a difference. Otherwise, they should stay out of project's way.

Morning Coffee 149

• Big news yesterday was Microsoft announcing "Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability". More details available at the new Interoperability website and this interview with Bob Muglia.
• The videos from Lang.NET 2008 are now available, including mine.
• Mix08 is just under two weeks away, and the news is ramping up. Scott Guthrie provides a "first look" at the Silverlight 2.0 beta (aka the one with .NET) that will release @ Mix. He also provides a set of eight tutorials where he demonstrates building a Digg client for Silverlight 2.0. I've been doing a little Silverlight 1.0 experimentation recently, but I think I'm going to scrap it in favor of waiting for 2.0.
• Shorter Nick Malik: IoC is cool, but isn't a silver bullet. Go read the whole thing.
• Brad Wilson has a new laptop with a solid-state hard drive. VS08 installs in under 10 minutes? I gotta get me one of those...
• In addition to the XNA news, Microsoft also announced Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and Ninja Gaiden II and Too Human will all be available this year exclusively on Xbox 360. Of those, I'm most interested in Fable 2, though Too Human is looking interesting. But what about Halo Wars? When is that shipping?

My First Point in Ten Years

Not only does this month mark my son's fifth birthday, it also marks the ten anniversary of my first date with my awesome wife Julianne. I met her online while I was laid up at home for six weeks after breaking my ankle at hockey practice. You see, I'm not just a hockey fan, but I also played several years of amateur league hockey in the mid-90's. I'm not very good, but I really love playing, though it all came to a halt when I broke my ankle. 

Last night, for the first time literally in a decade (shit, I'm getting old), I hit the ice for a local TechRec league game ("Home of the Thundering Nerd Herd"). And when I say "hit the ice", I mean that fairly literally. Man, it's been a long time and I am WAY out of shape. I hurt pretty much all over, but especially my right shoulder.

We only had ten skaters, which means only two lines total. I probably skated around 20 minutes total - I spent three minutes in the penalty box (grabbed an opposing player as I fell down) and skipped the single power play we had. I still felt like I was gonna die by the end of the game. Hopefully, after I get a few more games under my belt, I'll be able to skate more than once up and down the ice without looking to the bench for a change. On the plus side, we won 6-2, I had an assist and was +1 on the night.

The TechRec league is very different from the league I played in down in SoCal. In SoCal, I played on the same team with the same players against the same players on the same other teams season after season. Naturally, animosity developed. In TechRec, they re-pick the teams every season, so it seems much more friendly and less competitive. I mean, we still want to win, but it takes on a different feel when you know some other player you don't like may be your teammate next season.

Major thanks to my neighbor Stephen Bury for getting me back on the ice. I'm looking forward to smashing him into the boards grabbing him when I fall down facing off against his team a couple of weeks.

Delivering the XNA Vision

Shortly after posting today's morning coffee, I notice two "blogging advisories" in my inbox from the XNA team. They're announcing two things: XNA Game Studio 3.0 and Xbox LIVE Community Games.

Given that there was an XNA Game Studio 1.0 and 2.0, news that there will be a 3.0 version releasing this holiday season isn't what veteran bloggers like myself call "a surprise". However, the news that XNA GS 3.0 is going to support development of Zune based games was quite a surprise. Rumors of a Microsoft hand held gaming device crop up every few months, but there's never been any substance to them. The Zune isn't really a handheld gaming device like the DS or PSP - the FAQ points out that it will take "creative thinking" to build a game for a device with a 240x320 display that's designed for one hand use. Furthermore, Cesar "Zune Insider" Menendez points out that "Zune is a wireless music and video player first and foremost".

Still, it's pretty cool to think about what a Zune based game experience would be like. So far we know it'll be 2D only and it have full access to any non-DRM music on the device. Also, it will be social - Zune XNA games will support wireless multiplayer with up to 8 players, though it doesn't support cross-platform networking with Xbox and Windows. I can't wait to see what the community does with this capability. I'll definitely be getting a Zune now.

As for the Xbox LIVE Community Games, it's something the XNA folks have been hinting at since last year. This is the announcement the XNA folks have been building towards since day one when they called XNA the "YouTube for videogames". Very much unlike the retail or arcade Xbox channels, Community Games will be peer-reviewed by XNA Creators Club community members instead of Microsoft (though unsurprisingly, MS "reserves the right to reactively take down a game without prior notification"). You'll even be able to sell your games, though details on that won't be available until later in the year.

Like XNA GS 3.0, Community Games will be available "during the holiday 2008 season." However, for the next month, Microsoft is offering a preview of Community Games, offering seven community developed games for free, including last year's DreamBuildPlay co-winner "The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai". I can't wait to get home and try them out.

IMO, this is a huge announcement. But what's most impressive to me is how much they've accomplished in a fairly short time. XNA was only announced two and a half years ago. That's amazing progress for a pretty small team. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Morning Coffee 148

• As I predicted yesterday, Microsoft announced that "For the first time, community games will be distributed through Xbox Live." I haven't seen a press release yet, but it looks like this will allow any XNA developer to publish on XBL. Joystiq has a few details. According to Major Nelson, six community games will be available on XBL later today. Also, it looks like you'll be able to make XNA games for your Zune as well. Details to follow.
• Speaking of yesterday, I referred to President Bush as "President 30% Approval". This was incorrect. From now on, I'll refer to him as "President 19% Approval".
• Speaking of politics, two more big wins for Obama yesterday. The Clinton camp, looking more desperate every day, unveiled a new website purporting to provide the "facts and myths about the race for delegates". Memo to HRC: "Florida and Michigan should count" isn't a fact, it's an opinion. I can't see how this site helps her cause.
• Joel on Software, who used to work on the Excel team, provides a facinating look into why the Office File Formats are so complicated. Nothing more to add, I just thought it was an interesting discussion of "real-world" complications to something that seems like it should be simpler.
• Scott Guthrie provides a client product post .NET 3.5 roadmap, much like he did for web products a few months ago. Unlike the web roadmap, which includes exciting stuff like Silverlight 2.0, IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET Extensions (including MVC), the client roadmap includes: better setup, better perf for WPF, better memory utilization and startup time, WPF designer improvements, and some new WPF control. Color me under whelmed.
• My old team recently launched the Software + Services Architecture Center. S+S guru Gianpaolo Carraro recently wrote about the different perspectives this new site is trying cater to. S+S hasn't been on my personal radar, but it's something I really would like to dig more into.
• In a recent charity hockey game, Team Cure beat Team Hope 2,250 to 2,223. No, that's not a typo. The two teams of twenty faced off for 240 straight hours of hockey in sub-zero weather to raise $300,000 for cancer research. That's frakking dedication to a cause.

Morning Coffee 147

• My son Patrick turns five today. The big treat was his cousin Jack coming up for a visit. Here's a picture of the two of them at Patrick's party on Saturday. My wife has all the details on her blog. Update: My wife just posted a whole slew of Early Patrick Pictures.
• If my son is five, it means this blog is also five - I started this blog about a month before Patrick was born. I never remember to mark the occasion until Paddy boy's big day comes around.
• Major props to the House of Representatives for growing a backbone and not caving to President 30% Approval on telecom immunity...yet. Personally, I'd like to see the House bury the measure completely, though I'm not holding my breath. But given that even the right-wing Washington Times reports "Analysts say FISA will suffice", maybe the House Dems will do the right thing.
• After tearing it up since Thanksgiving, the Caps have gone a little cold. 5-4-1 in their last ten and 2-2-1 in their last five. In the month of February, they're 1-3-1 against SE division opponents. Good news is that they're still even with Carolina (two points behind with two games in hand), half a game up on Atlanta, a game and a half up on Florida and two and a half games up on Tampa Bay.
• Bill Gates announced a new program called DreamSpark to provide college students access to all of Microsoft's developer and designer tools, including Visual Studio, Expression, SQL Server, Windows Server and XNA Creators Club membership. This looks like an outgrowth of the MSDN Academic Alliance program. I think it's a great idea. Update: Looks like high-school students will be able to access the DreamSpark program too. However, since they're minors, they have to get the software via their teachers. (via LiveSide)
• The winners of the XNA Silicon Minds contest have been announced. Of the five winners, Specimen looks the coolest to me. I wish I had more time to get into game development. (Via LetsKillDave)
• Speaking of game development, this week is the Game Development Conference, so be on the lookout for lots of game-related news. Xbox Live VP John Schappert is giving a keynote on "Unleashing the Creative Community". XNA GM Chris Satchell said last year they would "announce full details on, and ... vision for, opening XNA creations to the community" sometime this year. I'm guessing this is said announcement.
• Speaking of Xbox, there's a rumor that Microsoft and Netflix will announce this week that Netflix is bringing their Watch Instantly service to Xbox 360. If true, sign me up!
• Grigori Melnik announces the GAX/GAT February 2008 final release. Key feature is VS08 support. Is it just me, or does calling it the "final release" make it sound like they won't be upgrading GAX/GAT further?
• Speaking of p&p, Grigori also announces the Feb 2008 CTP of Unity, p&p's new IoC container. I've seem lots of folks echoing the announcement, but not much in the way of specifics on Unity itself. For example, Chris Brandsma describes IoC and mentions Unity, but he doesn't cover any Unity specifics. :(
• MSIT EA Nilesh Bhide has started blogging. His first post is on Customer perception of Service Quality in S+S/SaaS. I've worked closely with Nilesh in the past two years, so I'm excited to see him take to the blogosphere. (via Nick Malik)
• I don't know how I missed it, but the MSDN Code Gallery launched last month. As Charlie Calvert explained, this is logical successor to GotDotNet's user samples area. Between Code Gallery and CodePlex, GotDotNet has finally been shuttered for good.
• Telligent, makers of the very popular Community Server, have released Graffiti CMS, which looks like a more flexible content platform than Community Server. (via DNK)
• In somewhat unexpected news (at least, unexpected by me) Microsoft has released specs for the Office binary file formats. I'm not sure why this is happening now, rather than say when we released the specs for the Open Office XML file formats. (via DNK)

You Call This Archaeology?

I know how I'm celebrating my birthday this year. Well, technically the day after my birthday.

I've always been a movie buff and, other than Star Wars, I can't think of a movie series that shaped the way I think about movies and movie making as much as Indiana Jones. I remember well going to see the first three Indiana Jones movies with my father. Of course, now I'm a father, but Patrick and Riley aren't really ready for Indy yet. So they'll have to be content with Lego Indy for a few more years.

Otherwise, here's hoping Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't suffer from Star Wars prequel-itis.

Morning Coffee 146

• The writers strike is officially over. Everyone goes back to work today. Thomas Cleaver has what I thought was the best post summarizing how the writers won. TV Guide has a rundown of how and when various shows will resume. I can't wait to see Daily Show and Colbert Report tonight. Lost - aka the best show on TV - looks like it will be getting five more episodes (in addition to the eight shot before the strike).
• Speaking of TV, Battlestar Galactica Fans: circle April 4th on your calendar.
• Obama won all three "Potomac Primaries" yesterday, and is now the Democratic front-runner, though there's a long way to go before the convention. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a great take on presidential experience - I'm guessing he's an Obama fan.
• In minor acquisition news, Microsoft is acquiring Caligari, makers of 3D modeling tool trueSpace. The Caligari folks are joining the Virtual Earth team, though I wonder what the XNA folks think of the acquisition. This isn't the first 3D modeling product Microsoft ever acquired - we owned Softimage for four years in the '90s.
• Scott Hanselman and Tomas Resprepo both write about PowerShellPlus, which I saw week before last @ Lang.NET. Scott really likes it, for both PS novices and gurus, but Tomas thinks the UI is busy, based on the screenshots. Personally, I'm not doing much PS work lately - occasional one off stuff, but that's it - so it doesn't seem worth the effort.
• Speaking of Scott & Tomas, Scott also has a nice gallery of VS themes. I'm partial to Tomas' Ragnarok Grey. Is there a VSThemesGallery.com site somewhere?
• Still speaking of Scott, he points to the new ASP.NET Developer Wiki (beta). I poked around, but didn't find anything shiny. I was very surprised that searching for "MVC" returned no results.
• Speaking of MVC, Scott Guthrie has a rundown on what's coming in the MIX preview release of ASP.NET MVC. Biggest news IMO is that it's /bin deployable - i.e. you don't need your hoster to do anything special to support MVC (assuming they already support ASP.NET 3.5). Also big news, they're releasing the source so you can build and patch (and enhance?) it yourself.
• Chris Taveres continues is ObjectBuilder series and Tomas continues is DLR Notes series. BTW, my F# based DLR experimentation continues, albeit slowly (frakking day job). Hope to be able to post on this soon.
• One of the things driving my interest in F# is manycore. An interesting tangent to manycore is general purpose programming on graphics processing units (aka GPGPU). MS Research just released a new version of Accelerator, just such a GPGPU system. I personally haven't played with it - I've been focused on writing parsers, not parallel code.
• Is XQuery really "a promising technology of the future" as Don Box suggests? I see exactly zero demand or use for it in my day-to-day work. Of course, Don's paid to build future platform goo, so maybe it is promising and Don's afore-mentioned goo will leverage it, though I remain skeptical. As for XML being "Done like a well-cooked steak", I'd say XML is like a great steak cooked perfectly, except it's done exactly how you don't like it. You can appreciate its quality, but you don't really enjoy it as much as you could have.

Morning Coffee 145

• Saturday, I participated in the Washington Democratic caucus, which was handily won by Obama. Much has been made of the record Democratic turnout in this race for the nomination, my local caucus location was no exception. It appeared that attendance outstripped expectation about 2-to-1. My precinct alone had 56 attendees, which went overwhelmingly for Obama.
• I had never participated in a presidential caucus or primary before - the race has always been decided by the time it got to my state. I really enjoyed being a part of the process. So I'm going to play amateur pundit today, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled geek blogging tomorrow. If I insult your favorite party or candidate, please feel free to leave a scathing comment explaining that I'm an idiot and how you're never going to read my blog again.
• Obama not only won the WA caucus, he also won Louisiana, Nebraska and Maine over the weekend. And he didn't just win, he won big. He won by 37% in WA, 36% in Nebraska, 21% in Louisiana and is leading by 15% in Maine with 70% of the vote counted. Momentum hasn't meant much in this campaign, but five double-digit Obama wins in a row (with three more likely Obama wins tomorrow) can't be good for the Clinton campain. Polling that shows Obama matches up against McCain better than Clinton doesn't help. 
• Speaking of McCain, he sure had a shitty day Saturday. He lost Kansas by a whopping 36%. Louisiana was close, but McCain still lost. And in Washington, it looks like the state Republican Party simply stopped counting with 1500 votes still left to be counted. I'm guessing the local GOP party leads were trying to keep McCain from going 0-3 on the day. Had they simply counted the votes and McCain lost, everyone would have forgotten by the time he got the nomination. However, this little helping hand makes McCain look weak and keeps Saturday's butt-kicking in the news for several more days.
• Of course, McCain is the presumed Republican nominee because Romney dropped out suspended his presidential campaign last week. The Daily Show's coverage Thursday night was hilarious. Jason Jones is right, Romney's a real douche bag.
• Apparently, McCain is "eager" for President 30% Approval Rating to "embrace" him. Furthermore, the President apparently thinks McCain would be the best to carry forth his agenda. I gotta agree with Steve Benen on this - "Could Dems really be this lucky?"
• In the wake of McCain's Super Tuesday victory, Rush Limbaugh said he and other right-wing talk show hosts are "trying to stop the wanton destruction of the [GOP] party". Limbaugh and his cohorts aren't going away, but certainly they've been reduced to irrelevant status, standing on the sidelines and stamping their feet while the Republican rank-and-file hand the nomination to McCain. Sure is hilarious to watch. Has anyone considered that Republicans are rooting for the wonton destruction of what their party has become?

Morning Coffee 144

• I finished Mass Effect last night. I definitely need to play thru that one again, though I'll probably wait until the new Bring Down the Sky DLC ships next month.
• Caps won again last night, improving to 20-10-4 since changing coaches at Thanksgiving. They're now at 57 points, taking the lead in the SE division with a full game on Carolina, Atlanta and Florida. Still a ways to go - 27 games left in the regular season - and things are far from "sewn up" but we're a damn sight better off than we were in November.
• Speaking of a horserace, looks like Clinton and Obama are in one after Super Tuesday. Their estimated delegate counts are basically tied. On the other side of the aisle, McCain opened up what is probably insurmountable lead - even though he has the right-wing media stars and Christian leaders against him. Money quote of the day:

“The real story of the night, when you look at their rallies and their turn-out numbers, is that the Dems have two strong candidates either of whom could lead a united party to victory. Forget the gaseous platitudes: in Dem terms, their choice on Super Duper Tuesday was deciding which candidate was Super Duper and which was merely Super. Over on the GOP side, it was a choice between Weak & Divisive or Weaker & Unacceptable. Doesn’t bode well for November.”
- Mark Steyn, National Review 
(via Carpetbagger Report, lest you think I regularly read National Review)

• Charlie Calvert is starting a new series on the future of C#. First up: Dynamic Lookup. Probably most interesting is the news that the DLR "will be the infrastructure on which the C# team implements dynamic lookup". Does this mean C# will target the DLR? Sure sounds like it. I think it's a good addition, but I'm not a fan of the proposed syntax. (via Bitter Coder)
• Brian McNamara saw me present @ LangNET and sent me a link to his blog. He's building up a monadic parser combinator library in C# 3.0. This is basically the same concept that FParsec implements, though C#'s syntax is much less attractive than F#'s for this kind of code. However, Brian does a very good job explaining why monadic parser combinators are useful and making the idea accessible to the C# programmer (i.e. you don't have to learn F# or Haskell to understand what he's talking about). He also points to Luke Hoban's C# 3.0 monadic parser implementation.

Morning Coffee 143

• I've been sick for three days, hence the lack of posting around here.
• As a Redskins fan, it's hard to root for any other NFC East team. On the other hand, it sure was easy to root against the Patriots. Congrats to the Giants on their Super Bowl victory. Favorite headline: 18 and uh-oh!
• Sounds like there's cause for optimism regarding the writer's strike. But is it already too late? Will the 9% drop in viewers ever come back? Personally, I think the studios have hastened their own irrelevance.
• With last night's win, the Caps are one game above .500. In and of itself, that's nothing to be proud of - Coach Boudreau remarked when we reached .500 that the Caps had "officially reached mediocrity". However, the Caps are the only team in the SE conference that's above .500. If hockey used baseball standings, Carolina, Atlanta and Florida would each be 1/2 game back of the Caps. It's going to be a fight to the finish.
• In fairly big managed Ruby news, Wayne Kelly has decided to contribute to the IronRuby effort, effectively walking away from the Ruby.NET which helped get off the ground. One the one hand, obviously this is great for IronRuby. On the other hand, I liked the idea of multiple managed implementations of Ruby, so here's hoping Ruby.NET doesn't fade away.
• Speaking of the DLR, I know I mentioned Martin Maly's blog in my Lang.NET Morning Coffee Post, but I didn't actually get to read his posts on targeting the DLR until I unexpectedly had several days off sick. If you are at all interested in writing your own language for the .NET platform: Go. Read. Now. You should also check out Tomas Restrepo's blog, he has also started writing about targeting the DLR.
• Larry O'Brien's blog is currently offline, but he commented that he doubted my ToyScript F# parser would be more than 600 lines of code. Currently, the parser is clocking in at 287 lines of code plus about 50 more for the AST. It's not done yet - see earlier statement about being sick - but I'm fixing bugs not writing additional code at this point. To be completely accurate, that's 287 lines of FParsec code. It's taken me a little bit to learn FParsec, but so far I'm pretty happy with it.
• Scott Hanselman points to the new MS Deploy project, a tool for managing content and configuration on web servers. I've never understood why this wasn't a standard part of IIS. It seems every hosting company I've used has rolled their own web-based management tool like DotNetPanel.
• Oh yeah, Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 shipped Monday. Congrats!
• I fired up Inside Xbox the other day, and there was a page about the new Disney Channel show "Phineas and Ferb". Of course, with two kids under five, anything new on the Disney Channel is notable in my house. What made this blog-worthy is the fact that it's directed and written by Dan Povenmire, who I knew from my USC days. I used to go see his band Keep Left and groan loudly at the bad puns in their song "PSA". Dan, if you found this searching for yourself online: Awesome work, my kids love the show!

Morning Coffee 142 - Wishful Catchup Edition

• After spending most of the last four days away from my desk, I was planning on a quiet day to catch up on a variety of things. Then I heard the oh-so-minor news that Microsoft is offering to buy Yahoo for almost $45 billion. Hasn't been much reaction on the dev, architecture, politics and hockey-oriented blogs I read, but you can get a ton of reactions on TechMeme.
• Lost is back. Finally. I stayed up late last night reading Lostpedia, catching up on Lost Missing Pieces and the Find 815 ARG.
• Alex The Great had four goals and an assist in last night's victory. Coughing up three goal lead and letting the Canadiens tie the game in the last 30 seconds isn't encouraging, but a win is a win. The Caps are currently one game behind the SE leading Hurricanes and two games behind the current eight seed Rangers. Alex was named first star for January.
• Ted Neward has a nice summary of Lang.NET by day: one, two and three. I wonder if my talk qualifies for the exception to Ted's rule that "A blog is not a part of your presentation, and your presentation is not part of your blog". I had 15 minutes to discuss something I've written about over ten posts  (so far).
• John Lam points to the latest DLR hosting spec. I'm much more interested in the DLR code generator, but at least the hosting interface is documented.
• Scott Hanselman has a nice post on fluent interfaces. Note to self, find out if Beautiful Soup works with IronPython.
• I wonder if the VS Source Code Outliner PowerToy works with F#? (via Sam Gentile)
• Chris Tavares has an extensive post Deconstructing ObjectBuilder? I've poked around inside OB before, but I'm really looking forward to Unity (also via Sam Gentile)
• NVIDIA finally updated the drivers for the video card in my Tecra M4. That only took a year.