I find it funny that every time I go to post a new blog entry, the wordpress admin site looks different.  They seem to change their design faster than I can post.

Anyway, for those who are as slow as me on the uptake, google recently announced (around 2 weeks ago) exchange protocol support for mail, adding to their existing calendar and contacts push-sync functionality.  I’m not sure if anyone else will be as ecstatic as me on hearing this, but for the benefit of the doubt I thought I should post it here.

If you already have google sync setup for contact/calendar as I did, it is as simple as flicking an iSwitch.  Otherwise, read here for full instructions.

every time i see this i think i have a dead pixel.  microsoft sql management studio 2005 patched to latest service pack…

I might as well not post this because the target audience has to be under 100 people worldwide (of which how many will read this post?) but just in-case, right?

If you don’t know what MARC-8 is, stop reading here.

If you never wanted to convert from UTF-8 *to* MARC-8 (why the hell would you want to anyway?), stop reading here.

If you are happy with MarcEdit’s broken MARC-8 output, stop reading here.

If you are still interested, here is a .NET port inspired by the Perl MARC::Charset package to do unidirectional conversion.  Optimised for performance with multi-thread support for multiple input files.  Benchmarks to process around 80mb/s of text with 4 threads on a q6600 equiv.  The code (that you need to call) should be easy enough to understand.  No binaries provided, just build from source.

not enough, really!  been kind’ve caught up between gaming, coding, working, sleeping (a bit at least..) and fixing things that were broken.

got into some c&c3 action a couple of weeks ago, but either due to hidden EA copy-protection code or just crappy network code, it took around 1 hour to get six players into the same server.  i’d really like to get a few lan games of this going, but lans aren’t cool anymore apparently .

coding comes with binary productivity lately – sometimes i will get some really good progress going, other times i end up planning and thinking about logic problems and get nothing done at all.  needless to say, forward progress is being made, and i’d like to make a few public releases over the months to come.  i’m sure most of you already know the projects i am working on anyway, so i can’t surprise you with the releases .

work has been kind of a drag lately though, as it really owns my productivity for the rest of the night.  it is quite hard to keep up a routine of 18-hour coding days.. really feel like going travelling sooner rather than later, but that will come in time .

we recently got a new aerial installed on our roof (the last one was actually inside the roof, and also ancient).  its kind of nice upstairs, but with the 15+ metre cable to my room, the reception becomes barely watchable.  i tried installing a masthead signal amplifier, and while it did wonders for SBS/Ch31, it was actually degrading the VHF signal..  ok, so there IS nothing else worth watching other than SBS, but still!  I think I will get a powered signal splitter and give that a try instead.

also got some response from  amnet/tel$tra on my phone line.. which resulted in a telstra technician “fixing” my line which had a faulty earth link.  its still not perfect, but a lot better than before.  i think i still get some packet loss when a phone call comes through, but i can live with that.