Archive for April 2007
.Net comes to Web
Today microsoft announced that Silverlight will have .Net based APIs. This means there is a small CLR runtime that will go cross platform to Mac. This will enable developers to manipulate great graphics capability that Silverlight provides using advanced languages like C#. This also means familiar tools for building Windows application such as Visual Studio can be used to build next generation cutting edge internet application.
As I type this post, Ray just announced that “silverlight will bring .Net to universal web”.
You can download Silverlight 1.0 Beta as well as Silverlight 1.1 Alpha runtime (that includes .Net) at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/downloads.aspx
You can get SDK/Tools at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/tools.aspx
Tools include Blend version that works with silverlight as well as VS extensions that allow you to use Visual studio to write code for silverlight.
Go to Silverlight community site: http://www.silverlight.net/
700 Sundays
Just started reading 700 Sundays, written by Billy Crystal. I have always thought he was funny. The book’s name comes from the fact that he approximately spent 700 sundays with his father since his father passed away when he was 15. It is funny but touchy too. I have not seen the play but book is great.
His grandmother who immigrated from Russia lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a while before they moved to New York. When Billy Crystal asked her grandmother why she chose Grand Rapids, she said “because Train stopped there”. I thought it was very interesting answer. I guess, sometimes it is not about making choices but going with the flow.
Elbow War
Different people have different reasons to hate air travel. I hate “Elbow War”. This happens when you are traveling in economy class and the person next to you is a stranger. There is a race to claim the common handrest between two seats. E.g. First person who sits, gets it. When you extend your hand to get something else from air hostess (dont know what the PC word…), you hand comes back to its original position only to realized that space it called its own is not occupied by different hand. This is very interesting because almost always there is complete radio silence or maybe i should call it “no diplomatic channel open” to negotiate.
