Well, it had to happen sooner or later: after 8 years with IS Solutions, it's time to move on to pastures new - I'll be starting a new job with Clarks in the next few weeks as a Microsoft Architect. It's been an eventful time at IS and I'm going to miss everyone there, but the lure of a job on my doorstep as opposed to 120 miles away is too tempting.

Time to break out the farewell beer...

I installed Vista SP1 last night and all appeared to be well, but when I tried to access YouTube this morning, the Flash video player wasn't working; instead, I got a dialog pop up complaining that it couldn't load a DLL.

The solution however was very simple; download the Flash uninstaller from the Adobe site here http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157&sliceId=2. Once Flash has been uninstalled, go back to the Flash installation page and all should be well in a matter of minutes: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash.

I was contacted the other day by someone who couldn't get my (now ancient) port of Repton 3 running under Vista; mostly because Microsoft seem to have hidden the .NET 1.1 runtime download (or made it more confusing than necessary for mere mortals to locate and install). Seeing as Vista comes with .NET 2.0 installed as standard, it seemed to make sense to rebuild the project using Visual Studio 2008 and targetting .NET 2.0.

You can download one of two flavours:

• Repton.NET.1.0.2.exe (471 KB) - If you're not certain what you need to download, use this version
• Repton.NET.1.0.2.zip (300 KB)

Enjoy!

Scott Guthrie's blog entry "Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries" details how Microsoft are finally going to allow access to the .NET framework source code without having to resort to using Lutz Roeder's fantastic Reflector utility - under the terms and conditions of the Microsoft Reference License.

To their credit, Microsoft are not claiming that this is an open source license; although naturally some on Slashdot are seeing this as further proof of that Microsoft == Satan (you'll find the discussion here: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/03/1626209&from=rss)

Anyway, it does look being yet another compelling reason to move to Visual Studio 2008 when it finally gets released (along with .NET Framework 3.5 support, and the ability to target .NET Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5 from within the same IDE - about time too...)

The BBC News website has an excellent Q&A article up at the moment dealing with the implications of DRM infested music files in the wake of the closure of Virgin Digital. In case you've not heard about this yet, Virgin Digital is closing its doors which means that any Club subscribers will now have hard drives full of media content that they can no longer play.

The article points out that we've "... been here before, most notably with the video wars between VHS and Betamax. When Sony's Betamax format lost the battle, Sony threw in the towel and started making VHS recorders instead, leaving Betamax fans reliant on aging machines."

All perfectly true, except when Sony threw in the towel with Betamax, they didn't instantly invalidate any media content that had been stored on Betamax tapes - which is precisely what's happening here.

I feel very sorry for any Virgin Digital subscribers that have been affected by this fiasco, but hopefully they'll start telling their friends to avoid DRM infested music in future and the music industry will stop treating their loyal customers as criminals.

I've just stumbled upon one of the best mash-up albums I've ever heard; it's called "Cracked Pepper" by ccc / Ill Chemist which takes each track from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in turn and mashes them with tracks by other artists making completely new songs while leaving the originals recognisable. Particular highlights for me are "With A Little Glam" which fuses "A Little Help From My Friends" with "Rock 'n Roll Parts 1 & 2" and the totally gorgeous "She's Slipping" which marries "She's Leaving Home" with Kinobe's "Slip Into Something". Wonderful.

Go grab it before some BPI/RIAA blowhard takes the tracks offline.

Here we go again; why is it that the moment a group of people invoke their own version of the ‘magical sky-fairy’ myth, they're imbued with some form of special privilege? Today’s case in point is the frankly idiotic ruling by the High Court to quash a destruction order on Shambo the bullock - because somehow, even though the animal has been diagnosed with Bovine Tuberculosis (which is highly infectious, and puts other livestock at risk) it's spared the abattoir because it'll put some lunatic religious adherents’ noses out of joint.

Why should the ‘religious principles’ of a minority be allowed to run roughshod over the laws by which the rest of the country must abide by? For crying out loud, it’s just an animal – before it contracted TB it might have made a nice steak or five – it shouldn’t earn special protection by virtue of a small community of (probably well-meaning but completely deluded) monks venerating it.

And as for those 20,000 imbeciles who’ve signed an online petition to save the animals’ life – what if Shambo had been, say, a swan had been found with H5N1 Avian Influenza and was being worshipped, would you petition to save its life as well?

I just stumbled across this video by Pat Condell while I was looking around www.earthsgreatestlawsuit.org (I hope they're serious; if there's one thing I despise as much as religion it's slimeballs fleecing those guillible enough to believe in the first place. Step forward Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton, Mike Murdoch et al).

Anyway, here's Pat's analysis of Religion in the UK. Nailed it as as far as I'm concerned...

As varioussources have reported, yesterday was the 25th birthday of the ZX Spectrum - the launchpad of many a software developer (myself included). The speccy was my first home machine, originally in the 16k flavour before quickly getting it returned and upgraded to a whopping 48k.

In honour of this auspicious event, allow me to donate a completely useless piece of code - isn't it amazing what rubbish gets stuck in your head? I've not touched a Spectrum since, oooh, 1990 or so and I could still remember the POKE involved without having to look it up. Sad really....

10 LET A$="Happy 25th Birthday Speccy!"
20 FOR X=1 TOLEN(A$)
30 FOR Y=15 TO 0 STEP -1
40 POKE 23606, Y
50 PRINTAT 10, X; A$(X)
60 NEXT Y
70 NEXT X

Fire up a Spectrum emulator, type in the listing and see what it does! It's hardly OpenGL, but what the hell!