Couple of nifty things · Thu Aug 18, 06:05 PM

A new way to manage (and buy) e-books, VitalSource Bookshelf is trying to use an iTunes-like interface and model to sell e-books. I’m giving it a whirl (they have a few free books you can “test-drive” with…I like the poetry of Wordsworth). If you’re into e-books, you might want to check it out. It provides a few nifty features, like automatically managing your books and allowing you to make notes and highlight text. I haven’t dug in far enough to see what happens when you A) move computers, B) need to access your books sans the Bookshelf application (if that’s even possible), and C) if / when the company goes out of business.

An article by Adam Nathan on how to handle GetLastError when doing managed/unmanaged code interop—yes, it’s an older article, but the information is still fresh and tasty!

Good article on the upcoming safety-related changes in Visual Studio 2005’s C++ support. Over the next few months, as I start looking to using VS2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 (shudder), I’ll be posting links to useful information on the topic. It’s kind of funny…Microsoft (and specifically MSDN Magazine) has been publishing detailed information on how to use VS2005 (aka “Whidbey”) and .NET 2.0 stuff for like a year and a half now. Yet now, when we’re actually within 3 months of getting our hands on the product, and sane people might actually want to consider how they’re going to use it, MSDN has already used up all the good, useful stories. Now they’re down to talking about esoterica like, oh, using operator overloading to handle RGBA and HSV color models in VB.Net. and skinning your Windows Forms apps. Good luck with that .

The Kraken is an alleged sea monster, enormous, ravenous, and probably highly-tentacled. It has a cool name, and is the subject of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Although the word “kraken” is etymologically related to “crank,” methamphetamine, sometimes called crank, has very little to do with sea monsters. It’s a lot more destructive in real life, though.

And finally, for an inside look at the most terrifying monster in the United States, read this disgustingly revealing article in Rolling Stone, about how Congress really works. I wouldn’t read it while you’re eating, and you probably shouldn’t be surprised by a looming sense of doom afterwards.

-- David --

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If you want real geek cred...     CD of the Week, 21 Aug 2005