Rob Eberhardt

Hard to explain (I'm a geek, nuff said), but I just noticed my One-Billionth birthsecond is coming up soon.  Furthermore, my (almost 3yr old) son's One-Hundred-Millionth birthsecond will be about a month earlier!

Want to know when you/a loved one reached/will celebrate a major birthsecond?  In that case, I proudly (?) introduce my Birthsecond Calculator™ (;>) :

1. Date/Time of birth:
2. + a birthsecond:        100,000 - One-Hundred-Thousandth      1,000,000 - One-Millionth     10,000,000 - Ten-Millionth    100,000,000 - One-Hundred-Millionth  1,000,000,000 - One-BILLIONTH (RIP Carl Sagan) 10,000,000,000 - TEN-Billionth
3. = ?
    

Note: This surely won't work in a feed reader, so come visit for the fun.

(web geek colophon: This works thanks to jsDate, my port of VBScript Date functions to Javascript.)

Update 2007-04-15: My 7yo son wants to know when his 250 millionth birthsecond is, so here's a customizable version.

...yet I got this message when I logged in today:

---------------------------
Windows Product Activation
---------------------------
Since Windows was first activated on this computer, the hardware on the computer has changed significantly. Due to these changes, Windows must be reactivated within 3 days.
Do you want to reactivate Windows now?

---------------------------
Yes No
---------------------------

Very strange. Any ideas?

(Tip: you can capture the text of many Windows dialogs into the clipboard by pressing Control-C while viewing them. The above example came that way. Couldn't use printscreen while logging in, tho, or I'd've shown the dialog too.)

This is just awesome:

...Okay, so it's a slightly ugly picture, why is it awesome? Read about it here: http://me.eae.net/archive/2005/12/29/canvas-in-ie/.  Basically, Emil Eklund of WebFX extended IE to support Canvas elements, the currently most-buzzed new technology in web browsers.

Awesome-er (to me) is that he accomplished in a couple days with IE's DHTML Behaviors, just like my xDOM Suite, or Dean Edwards' Star-Light do.  Just like them, it uses DHTML Behaviors to basically improve (fix, enhance, or extend) IE's rendering engine.  Developers can apply this extension by copying two files and adding a single line of code to pages which use Canvas.

Easy development, 3rd-party browser extensions, easy deployment ....All good examples of why DHTML Behaviors are totally awesome, and great reasons why other browsers should adopt them... 

(via Ajaxian, screenshot borrowed from same.)

Nope, I still haven't seen it, but I can't wait.

And now I think I gotta go see it in style, though...

SNL - The Chronic of Narnia Rap

(Dunno what's with the You Tube videos that keep coming my way, but it's cool that they encourage hotlinking.)

---

(yes color, not music)

I've been clicking on the wrong programs all day, so consider this my request to the world's icon designers to try something other than yellow, orange or red.

I hear purple and green are the new black.

Big fan that I am of Google Maps, here's a great ad for it:

I recently deployed the ASP.net 2.0 Framework to my server, and since have been fighting with problems it's caused. For instance, when I switched one app to use it, it broke all the other v1.1 web apps I was running (including this blog). Fortunately for me, someone else has been having the same problem and found a solution: move the 2.0 apps into their own application pool. Hooray I don't have to uninstall (which I was close to doing).

Hey Microsoft, how about mentioning this anywhere? ...say during the install, on the IIS site's ASP.net tab, or in the error?

I have another related woe, though: If I set a 1.1 app to run under the 2.0 Framework (which should work, and imparts better performance and security), I get the ASP.net Yellow Screen of Death:

Apparently "global" now a reserved keyword under 2.0 (despite its 1.1 compatibility). Fortunately, I found my own easy fix: just rename the class. So line 11 in my global.asax.vb is now Public Class Global2. Of course I made the same change in its global.asax too: <%@ Application src="Global.asax.vb" Inherits="Global2" %>

Happy to find a solution, and I hope mine helps someone.