Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

Bits for December 2, 2007

Too much Microsoft Love for one day? On Thursday us Vermont Geeks are being treated to an MSDN Bob and Chris Roadshow.  And on top of that, we'll be enjoying a VS2008 InstallFest after a full day of presentations.  That's a lot of Microsoft Love for one day!  Postscript:  Chris Bowen is a phenomenal Microsoft Evangelist, he really is.

Me and my Toro 828LE are ready for action. The first substantial snow storm is supposed to arrive in Vermont later tonight and me and my Toro 828LE snow blower are ready.  I love my snow blower.  It sounds really weird, but I know other guys who feel the same way about their snow blower.  They're just not man enough to blog about it like I am.

Targeted marketing and facebook's bad play. I never got facebook or why anyone cares about it, but the recent storm of beacon criticism fascinates me.  The thing is, we want targeted marketing, ads tailored to our interests and purchase history, but having no opt-in is just plain stupid.  Not only that, but as Dare Obasanjo explains, a beacon.js on affiliate sites passes data back to facebook with no user control for all users on the affiliate sites, whether they're facebook users or not.  

Apocalypto. I put Mel Gibson's Apocalypto in our NetFlix queue for the second time, having watched it by myself the first time and being completely mesmerized by it.  A very hard movie to watch though.  My wife watched it with me last night.  She got as far as the temple.

Weekend CS Coding Bits.  I was able to squeeze in 6 hours of work this weekend creating an original Chameleon Control and getting dirty on adding paging support.  The most interesting aspect was having to overwrite the page DataBind() method because the page inherits from CSBlogThemePage and results in a List<WeblogPost> datasource with a BlogThreadQuery instead of using the custom control's thread query class.  My ITunes app pages inherited from CSThemePageBase, so I could bind directly to the custom control.

 

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Posted on 12/2/2007 7:41:09 PM by Dave Burke
Categories: Everyman Links
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Comments (2) -

12/5/2007 4:44:35 AM Permalink

You loved Apocalypto? Me, too!  I added it to my Netflix queue, almost on a whim.  I'm ambivalent towards Mel... at best.  But I gotta say that those cocoa-drinking Aztecs had me from the first few minutes.  I've been trying to push this movie on people ever since, but sadly, with little success. Please tell your wonderful wife that she's got to make another run at this.

And since we're on the topic of cinema, I've got two words for you... Werner Herzog.  Do you know his work?  Most people of heard of Grizzly Man.  That documentary about a whacky guy that frolickled (yes... past tense) with Grizzly bears in the Alaskan wild.  His latest movie-- Rescue Dawn-- is just recently out on DVD.  It's a dramatic adaptation of Dieter Dengler's story of escape from a Viet Cong POW camp in Laos in 1965.  Dengler was a US immigrant to the US.  He grew up in Germany and was captivated by airplanes that he saw in the last days of WWII.  He immigrated to the US, served in the US Army, and then enlisted in the Navy to fulfill his dream to become a pilot.  He was shot down on his first mission, and the story begins here.

Herzog produced a documentary of Dengler's story a few years ago.  The dramatic adaption star Christian Bale, Steve Zahn (yes, the pest exterminator from Saving Silverman), and an great performance by Jeremy Davies.  ("Who IS that guy?  Oh yeah, Upham from Saving Private Ryan!")

I've decided that I'm an unabashed Werner Herzon fan and intend to watch every one of his films on Netflix.  Stay tuned...

Mike Kovacs |

12/5/2007 5:23:54 AM Permalink

MIKE!  Ah, I wanted to see Rescue Dawn before you informed me its a Herzog film.  I don't think I've ever seen a Herzog film.  I remember reading about Fitzcarraldo and being a Pittsburgher I thought, "this guy sounds lot like an Andy Warhol."  I'll put it in the queue!  Thanks for your comments.

daveburke |


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