I really dislike VB’s inline Function syntax… it’s incredibly verbose.  When they were looking at it, I suggested Func, but given that usage in the framework that would be confusing. (I hadn’t seen the Func(Of T,…) delegates at that time )  I would still like something more succinct. I’m wondering if we couldn’t have something […]

If you want to download the videos to watch later, or to happily play them faster, skip ahead etc, then you can grab the .wmv files instead of having to watch them in a browser in silverlight.  I like to increase the play speed in parts and silverlight doesn’t allow that 😉  To get the […]

Thanks to Paul Vick for pointing out the Lang.Net symposium talks are now on the web.  I’ve only watched a few so far, but here’s my thoughts/review of them   Paul’s talk on VB.Next A quick overview of one area VB will probably be heading is making the language more scriptable.  This isn’t anything revolutionary […]

I was flicking through some MSDN help pages, when I noticed this topic on Component Authoring:   Isn’t it nice how “special” Microsoft views VB folks.  Obviously anyone using C# doesn’t have this issue, it’s just the people using VB.  Not patronising at all <geez> Oh well, at least they didn’t say you VB folks […]

  For fun I thought I’d plant some sunflowers this year. I have to confess this is the first time I think I have ever grown them in my life… shameful almost 😉   Hopefully they might bear some seeds for me to nibble on.  This one I took a snap of t’is afternoon makes a […]

Just noticed the VB Power Pack 3.0 has been released with the much anticipated Data Repeater component…… Haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but fingers crossed it looks promising.  The download is here, the pretty splash page about it is here.

You probably know that declaring an array in VB, such as :       Dim names(9) As String creates an array with 10 elements.  As of VB8 you can use the 0 To syntax for the same thing:       Dim names(0 To 9) As String   I prefer the 0 To syntax as it clearer for […]

One of the most annoying things I have found about Vista is the file explorer. It constantly changes the views of folders and way too often sets the columns in a folder as if the folder contains photos when it doesn’t.  To me that is really disappointing and undermines any confidence I could have in […]

The blood plums are in season now.  Apart from lovely eating fresh, last night I found they cook really well with ripe Nashi fruit, balances the flavours superbly. The Nashi sweeten them much like pear juice is used in conserves.  This is really handy, because Pears usually don’t ripen till late in the season, where-as […]