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I tried the demo of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 today. Unfortunately, Tiger, the ball, clubs, hole and most of the scenery were invisible, which I’m afraid limited my enjoyment somewhat. By their cheering I’d say the invisible crowd could see what was going on.

However, on exiting the demo I was presented with a list of features that the full game sports, one of which was “growing grass.” Now, I’m not very good at golf but even I haven’t seen anyone mow the same bit of grass on two seperate occasions during a round. And I just noticed the EA web site suggests I might “experience mind-blowing adrenaline rushes.”

Is it true that Half-Life 2 is to have drying paint? I need a lie down.

PopHeadlines has a bug is its support for enclosures. Once an enclosure has successfully been passed on to the email client, you may keep getting duplicate emails for that item containing enclosure errors rather than the enclosure itself. Note that nothing extra is being downloaded, it’s just that PopHeadlines thinks there should be a downloaded enclosure for the item but it’s not there.

As a workaround, set up an email filter to delete emails containing “Enclosure: Error Getting Job (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80200001.).”. This will stop you seeing the duplicate items.

Woohoo! I’m currently ranked 16th on Celebdaq - the BBC’s celebrity stock exchange. I think there are about 200,000 players, so I’m quite pleased with that.

BTW - My player ID is 2811141 should anyone have a personal league they’d like me to join…

BBspot: In the early hours of the morning, .NET, Microsoft’s platform for XML Web services, saved a five-year-old boy who fell down a well in Ottumwa, Iowa.

It’s nice to see the .NET framework making a difference to the lives of ordinary people.

Ed said: They call it “dishwashing liquid”, but if you put it in the “dishwasher” it’ll also clean the floor and part of the wall

Good advice

Coincidentally, our washing machine (the kind that washes clothes) broke down a week ago and needed a new motor. When the repair man came to fit the new motor yesterday, he told us that you only need to use half of one of those tablets, and you should put it in the drum with the washing.

They don’t like to shout about it (apparently the washing machine and washing powder companies are closely tied) but because modern machines use so little water, you only need to use about a quarter of the amount of detergent that the packet says. We’d been following the instructions and the machine gradually got clogged up with powder until the motor couldn’t turn the drum any more, and broke. Besides breaking the machine, this can cause skin irritation because soap is left on the clean clothes.

Presumably it’s economically viable to replace the motor under warranty when this happens, because the price of repair is outweighed by the extra money spent on detergent.

I just received a response regarding TDK Systems’ work on their Widcomm 1.4-based drivers. In short, not yet, and there’s no hint of a release date. I’m still using my USB adapter for my mouse.

Thank you for your email. My apology if there seems to have been a delay in releasing 1.4 - I hope that it has not caused you undue inconvenience. At TDK Systems, we pride ourselves in releasing software and hardware products that are robust, user friendly and, most importantly, have the minimal amount of bugs.

Indeed, we are working on release of version 1.4: however, we are not ready to release the new application quite yet. We believes in adding value wherever possible. In the case of the Bluetooth application, the current release (1.3.2.19) has a number of unique software features that we believe add value as well as the generally stable operation of the programme. TDK Systems would be loathe to release a new version of the application that did not meet the expectations of our users in terms of functionality, performance or stability.

If you have registered your product, we will inform you of the availability of software updates by email, otherwise the availability will be confirmed as usual on the TDK Systems website: www.tdksystems.com

Hope this information help and should you require any further assistant, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

Once again thank you for your continued patience and support.

It would be great to have an automated build tool that worked seamlessly with VS.NET solutions.

I’ve tried NAnt a few times without success, so like many others I’m currently using my own custom build tool. NAnt should work, but in practice it’s very picky about the solution and projects you use it with. The alternative is to maintain a NAnt build file mirroring what’s in the solution, but that’s a lot of extra work.

So… I’m looking forward to getting my hands on MSBuild, and I’ll continue patching my custom build tool in the meantime! (Thanks to Chris for the link)

“WTF, they liked that last mock-up?”

After months of intensive (well, weekly) lessons, I played my first ever six holes of golf this evening, and I really enjoyed it. We’d have carried on but it got dark.

The lessons have been at Blackwater Valley Golf Club and I’ve been learning alongside celebrities like Laurence, who did particularly well.

I’m playing at Southwood Golf Course with some people from work on Saturday and then its back to Blackwater for the final lesson! Can’t wait!

If you’re a recent parent (my little boy’s nearly four) you’ll enjoy Perplexing Times - a web site with a unique point of view.