Lunar Eclipse

Look outside.

Burning ISO image CDs on XP

A utility for burning ISO images to CD that runs on XP.

Why the operating system didn't do this itself I don't know, but this is a nice utility. It attaches itself to the .iso file extension, so if you right click on an .iso file in Windows Explorer the pop-up menu includes an option to "Copy image to CD".

Kids Corner

Microsoft Kids Corner has some fun resources, including C# for Sharp kids.

Blend videos

Richard Godfrey links to some expression blend videos. These are designed to help with the "What do I do now" experience that you get when you first open Blend...

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is available free for download. It runs on XP, and can host Vista. For now, this is the only way I am going to be able to do anything with Vista, as my BT Wireless Network 1250 broadband modem is not compatible.

I need access to the internet.

Vague UML

How vague should your use cases be?

It depends how you are using use cases. If your process is to do big design up front then it becomes important to get them "right". The longer this takes though the more likely it is that the customer will change their minds about what they want. Then your carefully crafted use cases are not so much use.

Now, in an agile process, you might develop your use cases to the level of detail required to be able to prioritise them. Then develop just the ones required for each iteration to more detail.

FEELIX Growing

The BBC has a story on a European project, called Feelix Growing, the aim of the project is to create robots that learn from people.

WPF Planets

Karsten Januszewski has posted a beautiful demo of WPF Planets using some texture maps from NASA and some 3D tools from CodePlex. I didn't realise what he meant at first but the trackball code lets you use the mouse to rotate the model in 3D.

Very cool.