Saturday, February 21, 2004

The format of the file 'VSUserControlHost.dll' is invalid

I've been struggling for a few days with an exception that kept on being raised when authoring my own composite ASP.NET Web Controls:

The format of the file 'VSUserControlHost.dll' is invalid

After spending some time banging my head against a brick wall, it turns out that the cause was the otherwise excellent CodeSmith plugin for VS.NET, which I use to produce things like type-safe collections; disabling it removes the problem immediately.

 Thursday, February 12, 2004

Gallery Online

I've installed a copy of nGallery 1.5 over at http://gallery.edcourtenay.co.uk where I'll be keeping pictures of my kids and other stuff.

nGallery itself is really very cool, and best of all it's free.

 Thursday, February 05, 2004

Silence is Golden

DRM madness strikes over at Apple iTunes. Buying DRM crippled tracks is bad enough, but DRM crippled encoded silence?

 Monday, January 26, 2004

Smack The Pingu

Childish, stupid and completely amoral. In other words, great fun!

http://www.meph.eu.org/pinguin.swf

Childless

Bec and I managed to palm our kids off with grandparents for a weekend, so we could get away and enjoy ourselves for probably the last time before offspring number three makes an appearance.

Bliss.

After dumping kids off early in the morning, we drove into London and after leaving the car in Notting Hill (relatives with parking spaces in London are gold dust!) we started by heading to the Golden Dragon in Gerrard Street for enormous quantities of Dim Sum.

An enjoyable afternoon of pub-hopping followed (something we've not really been able to do since our first arrival).

Later though, after checking into our hotel, we ended up at The Glassblower. I'd booked tickets for the comedy evening earlier in the week - not a clue who was going to be performing, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And what an idea it turned out to be; some of the most pant-wettingly funny comedy I've seen in a long, long time.

First impressions of the venue were not great. The comedy club is held in the upstairs bar, with enough seats laid out to seat about 100 people. Bec and I were in the very front row on a sofa, which was great for us seeing as a) Bec is getting larger before her impending crash diet, and b) I had room to stretch my legs. In the end, the small venue was perfect for the evening, giving a really close feeling to the acts.

The evening consisted of three comics (Hal Cruttenden, Marc Lucero and Stefano Paolini) with an MC (Eric McElroy). Three completely different styles, but higlights included Hal's uncanny Tony Blair impersonation (the conference speech was a masterpiece) and Stefano's incredible beatbox (the Brixton ice-cream van jingle had me in stitches).

Anyway, even though it was only one night away it was a good break for the both of us, and yes it has to be said that it was great to see the kids again last night.