Dilbert got me Zune

So started my year 2007. My Article on Sidebar Gadget featuring Dilbert (Daily
Dilbert 1.0) got me a bonus prize at Code Project Vista Gadgets
Competition

What did i win ? A Microsoft Zune Player

Here are the link to the Windows Vista Blog and excerpts from the article
!

Introduction

With the broadest ever release of Microsoft Vista World wide, 2007 opens the
door to an era of gadget development. Gadgets are small, light weight but
powerful applications which stay on the Windows Vista Sidebar. The coolest thing
about a gadget is that it is not dependent on any particular language or
technologies, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to create a gadget.
Basic knowledge of HTML and Javascript is enough for that, but you can also
program in any Microsoft language for windows/web to extend a gadget. Once you
know the basic rules of gadget development, only sky is the limit for
productivity and innovations.

This article describes a simple Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget which delivers
the Daily Dilbert cartoon to your desktop.

There is a RSS Feed available
from feedburner.com
which gives you the contents of the daily dilbert in a form of an xml file. The
idea behind, is to read that file, parse the content and display it beautifully
in your sidebar. The user can view cartoons for last 5 days. The benefit is, for
all those (like me) who want to start there day with the Dilbert strip, don't
have to go to the website or even open the feed, to see it. Just click on the
date in the sidebar gadget and a flyout window will show you the cartoon of the
day.

This article also discusses five common features of Sidebar gadget
development:

1. Create: A simple gadget with minimum files
   
2. Use of Ajax: Read an XML file from a website (RSS feed) Get and parse the
   RSS Feed for the Dilbert cartoon from http://feeds.feedburner.com/tapestrydilbert
   
   
3. Parse XML : Extract the path of the image
   
4. Rich Display: The gadget's look and feel
   
5. FlyOut: A simple implementation of Windows Sidebar Flyout to display the
   image

Check the article here

Coming is like El Nino !

El Nino is spanish word for child. Like all things spanish, it is dangerous.
It kills people and burn down trees. This child is more than a child. It really
isn't child at all. It is a storm. A deadly storm that kills people and burns
down trees.

Warm water usually builds up around Australia. But not any more with
El Nino. El Nino moves the warm water from Australia to somewhere else, namely
to other places. Where are these other places? These are places that also have
water, but water that usually not as warm as the warm water El Nino moves to
these said other places. These other places are to the east. Of the
water.

In Peru, they have many names for many things, one of the things
they have names for is for people who go fishing, go fishing to make a living.
If we had a word for this kind of people that would be "fisherman". But we
don't.

In Peru, they have different names for things that we do in
America. They call that kind of people "pescadores". That's Spanish. That's what
they speak in Peru. When El Nino comes, these "pescadores" can't catch any fish.
El Nino is caused when the peruvian god get angry. They have been angry for
millions of years and have made El Nino for millions of years. Many many moons
ago, the Peruvians commited human sacrifices to satiate there gods and end the
flood that was caused by El Nino. In todays modern dog-eat-dog work-a-day world
of scientists, diplomats, McSalad Shakers and George Bush Jr., we no longer have
access to such solutions. We are too proud. We will not commit human sacrifices.
We refuse to satiate the Peruvian gods. Thus, they remain angry and keep killing
us and burning our trees with El Nino.

Instead of satisfying the gods,
many of "these" scientists have tried to control El Nino with "science". They
put up expensive fish-attracting-buoys that run on flashlight batteries.
Imagine, fighting the power of gods with flashlight batteries! Needless to say,
they didn't work and everyone died

Jeremy Lavine

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