I plugged my Sansa clip into my lappie(running windows 7) to recharge before today's workout and this popped up:

Maybe it's the added touch or polish, whatever, but I like it.

I have yet to see a good timesheet. The online type. I realize this when I'm entering my time every week(in two systems). Is it 2010 or 1995?

When I started on my current gig, I used to have fill out my timecard by hand and fax it in every week, it was a HUGE pain in the ass. Here's the timesheet(click for a bigger image):

So since I hate wasting time on crap like that I wrote an app that uses GDI+ to draw on that image, so all I have to do is enter some quick info, push a button and everything(including my signature and approvers signature) is drawn on the timesheet. Here's the form to capture the necessary info:

After pressing that button my timesheet was created(click for a bigger image).

I spent a ton of time guessing where to draw until I noticed a pattern and figured out an easy offset implementation to make it a little easier.

It's totally useless today but I just re-found that project and figured I'd post it. Here's the code: http://panteravb.com/downloads/tektime.zip. Might be a useful example of how to draw text on images, or it might not.

Upgrading

I've just read http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001316.html. Now I'm in the mood for upgrading. But not hardware. My Deathangel 2.0 has been running some pretty heavy hitting hardware since April 2008, like a 10k Raptor boot drive, 3.2 GHz AMD dual core beast, 8 gigs ram, nothing to laugh at. We're at a point in the software industry that, arguably, we're not going to see a performance increase going from 2 to 4 cores.

It's Still Speed Baby

I'm still a fan of purchasing the fastest CPU you can afford. Currently(and I really emphasize currently because it will change in the near future), at the end of the day, if you can do more things per second with a fast cpu versus a slower cpu, you will notice a difference. Until tools like Visual Studio are refactored to take advantage of multiple-cpus, chips with greater than 2 cores are not going to help performance.

I Heart MonoDevelop

I'm upgrading my bomb-ass Windows 2003 server to some flavor of 64-bit Linux. This past weekend I installed Ubuntu 9.10. I installed the OS on my lesser of two remaining desktops, just the 32 bit edition since that machine only has 2 gigs of RAM. Then I installed MonoDevelop. WOW. I only played with it a little bit, console app thing, but way cool. Just a fresh perspective on a .NET IDE. Me likes, I'll post an update after I get Deathangel 3.0 built.

Why Am I Fucking Around With Linux?

I originally installed Windows XP on my other box(the one that now has Linux). After I started applying service packs, etc., the reboots would take literally minutes, like more than 5 minutes(c'mon, it's an MSI board, Athlon x2 2.2 GHz cpu with 2 gigs of RAM, this should not be happening). I applied all of the updates I could find, and nothing helped. Since I didn't feel like fucking around with figuring out why XP didn't work, I repaved it with Ubuntu 9.10. XP required me to go to MSI to download drivers to get the mo/bo to work(built in networking, etc); as well as going to my video card's manufacturer's site to download those drivers. Ubuntu just worked out of the box(well that's not totally true, the audio still isn't working, but I'm using built in audio to the mo/bo and have not investigated anything).

Back To Upgrading

So I'm going to try one of 3 flavors of Linux on my main beefy machine. CentOS, Suse, and Ubuntu. I have a strong feeling I'll be using Ubuntu but I've wanted to use those other two for awhile now. No new hardware, I just can't justify it, my hardware is fast, really fucking fast, there is no compelling reasaon right now that I'd need better hardware.

OK. So not quite a daily design yet but more of an every other day design. This one I decided to use the 960 grid system for the layout. The system is very simple to implement, I came up with this one for one my side projects in about 20 minutes(I don't love it but it's a start).

I saw a link to Opera somewhere and decided I'd check up and see what they're doing these days, it's been years since I've used that browser. I came across their mobile browser and the little simulator demo, the simulator is pretty damn cool, check it out:

In an effort to expand my design horizons so to speak, I'm starting a new challenge today, the daily design. Inspired in part by The Daily Monster, I'll [attempt] to come up with a new blog design everyday(ish).

I say "inspired" by The Daily Monster only because that guy is actually good at what he's doing everyday, creating art. I'm not great at designing beautiful interfaces, so I'm getting my practice in.

Why Create Your Own Blog Design?

I'm a perfectionist. This is both a blessing and a curse. Every time I sit down and start designing a user interface, it's never good enough. Not even close, and I end up not finishing the design. It's a consistent pattern for me. But most of the time it's that I don't know where to start in the design process. I know what I like, but that first step in putting something on a screen is the toughest.

I woke up at 3:30 this morning. Wide awake, so I took some time to make the first design. And yes, it sucks, have a look: http://panteravb.com/dailydesigns/design1.html. It took me like 2 hours to do that, horrible. I have a picture in my head of how I wanted it to look(that's not it by the way) but getting it down and visible was hard. Well, I'll see how this goes.

I've been liking some non-programmer blog designs too, check these out:

• http://zenhabits.net/
• http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
• http://www.elanaspantry.com/