When I'm at home, I use MSN Messenger for my primary Instant Messaging application. Unfortunately, at work we are generally (and perhaps wisely) blocked from using IM clients to access the internet. However, MSN has introduced a web service they call "Web Messaging" (http://webmessenger.msn.com) which allows those people at Internet Cafe's or using computers that are not their own to still access the IM network and chat. Similar to web e-mail services like Hotmail and Gmail, WebMessenger uses a web browser to faithfully reproduce the IM client experience and it seems to work pretty well. The browser window looks almost identical to the IM client window and it properly imported all my contacts (though it did not arrange them in my categories like I have at home, thus contact categories must be a client-only feature). It did cause my IE to crash once (thus, I use Firefox) and a few days ago I was unable to access the webserver a few times, but so far I'm happy.
Tuesday night, the Home Theater Forum hosted their annual live chat with Warners Home Video representatives, giving fans a chance to ask anything related to upcoming Warners video releases. I only happened to stumble upon this announcement last night after the chat was already underway, but since my interests lie with some of WB's animation releases (Looney Tunes Golden Collections), I decided to attend the last hour and a half. I accessed the chat through a web page but the technology underneath it was an IRC channel and it really brought me back to the days before Instant Messaging hit the big time on the internet. Before Instant Messaging, there was....IRC. Read the rest of this entry ...
I thought I'd jot down some notes on what I do when designing new classes in C++ to be copyable. I'd be curious to get some feedback as I'm not sure what the C++ community at large does... Read the rest of this entry ...
I had to force myself to finish writing this entry as it's been sitting in "Draft" state for way too long. Read Step 1 and Step 2 first. Read the rest of this entry ...
I thought I'd post some of my thoughts on the GDC 2005 experience that Rob Russell and I had after having a few days to acclimatize myself to the still-shitty Chicago weather and the still-shitty job. Read the rest of this entry ...