Okay, I've finished upgrading to the new version of DasBlog. Unfortantely, I overwrote the site configuration and web.config files with the default ones, which broke the site for a short while. I've fixed it all and made some minor CSS adjusments that will make my life easier (change administrator menu location and style).

I hope that this will help reduce the spam, and at the very list this gives me a way to remove it :-D

I released another version of Brail today:

• I added the ability to use sub views (NVelocity's #prase() ).
• I am now signing the assemblies.
• Added a lot of comments :-)

It seems that Amazon has puslished the info about a new Sword of Truth novel! Should be out in January, and the blurb seems cool.

Phantom

This is the second in a trilogy, so there is one another after it to wait for.

I'm now signing the assemblies, so you could use them in trusted environments.

Made some modifications to the build script as well, to add testing to the build process and to sign the assemblies.

Get it here: http://www.ayende.com/projects/rhino-mocks/downloads.aspx

I just finished reading the Windows Vista Beta 1 Review on WinSuperSite, most of the stuff there was more or less expected, but there was one thing that made me go "Wow! Why didn't I think about it?"

Editable bread crumbs, check out the picture:

I can think of so much uses for this right now...

Beyond that, it seems that Vista is looking good for a (much delayed) beta 1.

 Here is a new picture of myself. I also updated the About Me section on the site.

Now this is personalized search :-)

Go here to get your own.

[Via: Micro Persuasion]

When I wanted to change Boo On Rails to Brail I needed some utility to do all those text replacements for me. I don't trust Windows Search, and while MSN Desktop Search is cool, it's not suited for search & replace job (and I forgot to tell it to index .boo files, so it didn't help anyway).

I thought about grep, and sent out to find a windows version. I found many ports, but none that seems to fit what I wanted (a simple recursive find in all files), then I found Windows Grep. This is one powerful package with really nice GUI. It allows you do regex search & replace on multiply files, which is really nice, and there are no arcane commands to remember.

On thing to note, don't use the Basic interface, as this is something that is taken from the Windows 3.11 days, use the Expert mode, and you'll get a modern UI.

To celebrate my newfound freedom I've had a two days marathon of the six Star Wars movies. I've never seen the recent batch, and the last time I saw the old Star Wars movies was when I was ~11.

I was certainly entertained, but I don't understand all the big noise around it. The plot normal SciFi one, designed to show off as many special effects as possible. Some of the things in the movies that really bothered me are:

• Blatant disregard of the laws of physics - I'm not talking about what they are doing with the Force, I'm talking about ignoring such things as gravity and failing to explain how this is done.
• Being a Jedi sucks -  You get a cool weapon, a sucky job and you are not allowed to form attachments. Sorry, this doesn't work on a large scale if you are dealing with sentient beings. In addition to that, considering that the Force is supposed to be inherited trait, forbidding the Jedi from marrying & having children would cull the ability out.
• Androids are just plain weird - I can accept a robot that has emotions, Asimov did it very successfully. What I can't accept is a robot that show fear of pain, can't create a decent backup to save its life and in general acts like a human in a steel skin.
• Anakin's virgin birth - Yuck! Did they have to put that stuff there?
• Holes in the plot you can drive the Entreprise through.

The special effects are spectaculars, and the way the renewed the original movies is amazing, the only visible difference is that the battles' choreography, which is much reduced in the original movies.

All in all, what was all that noise about?