I've had this idea in my mind for the past few months. Showing my most recent tweets on this website in a small silverlight widget. (More info about Twitter here)

This is now done :-) (check on the left column)

I ran into some issues coding this though... but nothing too painful. The whole design+dev took about 2 hours.

Biggest issue was dealing with the fact that I didn't want to expose my username/password to the silverlight widget. The Twitter api requires user authentication to retrieve one's tweets, even though they are public... Having the password stored somewhere in the .xap file was completely out of the question!

The second issue is that I figured I'd probably run into cross domain issues if I talked directly with the twitter api...

To bypass these restrictions, I created a simple WebService that knows my credentials. This WebService returns an xml string containing my latest tweets. The Silverlight widget queries the WebService and then retreives the data by a few Linq queries.

I forgot to mention the part where I actually had to show the control on the page... Since I hate html+css this is always a painful part... but it works now, and I'm happy!

Silverlight Rocks!

... the Aspire One, no question about it!

Let me explain why... The ultra mobile PC market has widely changed in a few months since Asus came out with the Eee PC. Other manufacturers have come up with their own versions.
Last week, I stumbled upon the Acer Aspire One with Windows XP. Read some reviews and figured out it could be a good choice. But I eventually settled for a EeePC 900 since it has an SDD, which I thought would be quieter and faster.
Well, I was dead wrong.

After coming home with the 900, I got frustrated the first second I started using it... It was the slowest machine I had ever used... Any action on the machine would take an incredible amount of time, while the computer was apparently not doing anything...
For example, opening Firefox 3, and clicking on the address bar would make the entire app stall for 10/15 seconds... Seriously...
It could barely play hulu videos and I was experiencing slowdowns when viewing the shows...

Needless to say, I took this POS back to the store!

I exchanged it for the Aspire One, and oh man! What a difference! The Acer is fast, snappy, doesn't lag... a real pleasure to use!
The two downsides to this laptop so far are the fan noise and the screen that is a tad too bright even at lower dim settings...

For the fan noise... these laptop manufacturers seriously need to USE their machines more than two seconds before they ship them... The second I turn on the laptop, the fan is on... why? the CPU is at 20/30c why the fan???
Besides, why is it that these guys can't build quiet fans? Is that really impossible to do?

Anyways, for $399, I'm not going to complain! It's as fast as my old Fujitsu P1510D and for a almost 4 times less money (as it was 2 years ago)!

I accidentally smashed my camera when I was in Quebec last week... so I had to get a replacement. I chose a Panasonic DMC-TZ5.
It's a pretty good camera, so far, the only negative points I have against it are the lack of an optical view finder which makes it hard to spot moving airplanes...
Second point is the fact that while connected via USB, the screen is on full blast, which drains the battery like crazy... Seriously... people...

The reason I chose this camera is because it has a wide angle lens (28mm) and a powerful 10x zoom! And also, it can take HD videos at 30fps...

Anyway, I coulnd't really test it on the ground, so I scheduled a flight in a 7ECA. Bruno had an aerobatic practice session at Tracy and needed a ride...

I flew to Oakland just after the marine layer melted, picked him up and then we flew to Tracy.

On our way there, we overheard a poor guy on the radio coming from Livermore, who wanted to fly to Half Moon Bay via Bravo... and apparently, he got overwhelmed and decided to fly back to Livermore...
SFO class bravo can sure be overwhelming...
If he ever reads this though, he could have done this easily by flying lower and only talking to Palo Alto or San Carlos towers. but technically, it is possible to fly from Livermore to Half Moon Bay by staying clear of Bravo and any Class Delta airspaces.

Anyway, Tracy was hot... and we had a good time watching and filming Bruno, Mike fly around :-)

Once I got back to Palo Alto, I took some pictures of planes landing with the new camera. Even without the viewfinder, the pics are quite amazing, and the 720p@30fps videos look great!

Here's one I took of the same citabria I flew, coming back from a flight later that day...

Youtube has the "HD" version on their site, just click on the video to see it.

And finally, some pictures I took yesterday. I love this camera :)