What? It’s 3 point 5 already?! I just realised this when I installed Visual Studio Codename Orcas several weeks ago.

So what’s new in 3.5? Something sweet, indeed. We’ll gonna have lots of language enhancements. Most of them I regard as syntactic sugar, but that’s something we should really welcome, a soothing curve to the square edges of the verbose C# and VB syntax. (When Ruby comes mainstream, suddenly C-like languages feels verbose :)

Some of them are:
· Automatic Property setters/getters
· Object Initializers
· Collection Initializers
· Extension Methods
· Implicitly Typed Variable
· Anonymous Types

To ease your understanding, let’s view the following nice colored graphical code with markers:

Credit goes this article here. Read the rest of it to know more.

Aku baru dapat satu bungkusan dari Chicago IL hari ni, iaitu DVD OpenSolaris. Ngeh, ngeh, ngeh. Aku request dari bulan 5 tempoh hari, lepas baca satu blog entry dari Irwan. Korang boleh order OpenSolaris starter kit secara free-of-charge, mengandungi 2 DVD dari laman OpenSolaris.

Aku tertunggu-tunggu NetBeans worldTour CD, tak sampai-sampai lagi. Tertarik nak try NetBeans, nak download rasa malas pulak. Barang free, tunggu lama sikit pun takpe lah.

Hari Jumaat lepas, aku dapat berita, ayah kepada salah seorang kawan aku, dan juga pengunjung setia blog ni, Aslilin, telah kembali ke rahmatuLlah. Takziah diucapkan, banyakkan bersabar. Mari sama-sama kita doakan roh ayahnya mendapat perlindungan Allah dan digolongkan dengan orang-orang soleh. Al-Fatihah…

I’ve been forced to work away from my machine for several days now, on another PC which is.. err.. not mine. After several minutes working on it, I realized that how I really miss my own sweet machine :`(

First thing I noticed is that I was constantly pressing WindowsKey+Q, which don’t do nothing in default Windows setup. But on my machine, a wonderful little bar named SlickRun would pop up, waiting for my input to run command or open applications and stuff. Windows+R (the Run dialog box) is just not slick enough.

When there’s simple text editing work needed, I would usually type “np” in the SlickRun, and behold… the Notepad++ will emerge. Ready to rock with syntax highlighting, tabs, show hidden chars, and rectangular selection. Things that you don’t have on Notepad, and plus, no multi level undo in Notepad is so annoying.

And when I need to code, of course I’d use a Visual Studio. I got Visual Studio ORCAS Beta 1 installed on that other machine, but it’s just not the same. Not much different form Visual Studio 2005, but my Visual Studio is configured with useful toolbars at the most convenient places, with my comfortable layouts, and most importantly, the color scheme tuned to purrfecshun.

Another thing that I missed is the VirtuaWin virtual desktops. Without it, the taskbar will just get too cluttered. Even after I change it to two stacks like I usually have. I know that you can group together similar taskbar items in Windows XP, but I really hated that, which is usually the first thing I turn off when I’m on a new PC. And the hide familiar extension in filename feature too, another one that I hate.

Thinking of it, there are a lot of thing that I use a lot, which really helps me to work faster. SnippetCompiler, Reflector, and my own regular expression tool, to name a few. I just feel crippled without them.

Hope I can get back to my own machine soon…

Related entries:
http://ikhwanhayat.net/2005/10/slickrun-slicker-than-your-average/
http://ikhwanhayat.net/2007/01/the-desktop-abuser/
http://ikhwanhayat.net/2006/01/font-kegemaran-ii/
http://ikhwanhayat.net/2006/03/lump-of-madness-continued/
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5921/datamadness3kt.jpg

I just realized how short is my attention span on reading articles off the web lately. The problem is that we have too much to read, with too little time to spend, and the general signal vs noise ratio of writings in the Internet is usually low, there’s high possibility that I’d waste my time reading rubbish. I would simply just skip an article if:

1. It’s long and winding, like maybe more than 3 paragraphs.
2. Made me lose interest after reading 4 or 5 lines.
3. It’s made of ugly or small fonts, and the website color and layout doesn’t satisfy my choosy eyes.
4. It’s hosted in a big-article-or-news-sites which has lots of effin’ huge advertisements left and right with only a narrow part in the center for the content.

I’d stop reading, unless if the article:

1. Has a very attractive title.
2. I’m, at that time, is really looking forward to learn more on the discussed topic.
3. Excites me in the first 4-5 lines.
4. Written by a writer that I like.
5. Written by me :)
6. Includes a picture of a sexy girl. Just kidding :D

FYI, hari ini aku pakai stoking sebelah lain sebelah lain… lagi sekali.
Thanks and regards.