Holy Grail Bird Found!

Another animal story, but this one is fantastic! The Ivory Billed Woodpecker lives!
I remember seeing this in my Dad's bird book as a kid and feeling despondent that such a creature could be allowed to go extinct. Well, it looks like we may have a chance at redemption.

Holy Exploding Toads Batman!!

Had to share this; exploding toads, no explanation.

Spring

Spring was so abundant today, I was drowning in it. A hummingbird in the cascara tree, next to a bumble-bee that rivalled it for size. Thunder and lightening in the evening after bright sunshine all day. A chaos of smells from grass, to flowers, petrichor, clover and who knows what else. All combined for an olfactory assault that had me swimming in memories and thoughts linked to each new smell that registered.
Four healthy deer slipping by at dusk capped off this day, which epitomized Spring.

Regex Tester

The Regular Expression Tester at regexlib.com is pretty neat. It handles .NET regular expression syntax, so I was able to use it to develop my app from the post before. And, now I'm using it again to debug that app. : The good news is, the problem was in my procedural logic, not in the Regex. Whew!
At any rate, having a tester is a real time-saver when writing regexes.

Blog....and ye shall receive!?

Perhaps it's time to update the age-old saying? Only last week I wrote that I wanted to get back into .NET programming, and just days later the perfect opportunity arose. I now have a cool xml to xml conversion program under my belt. And, I was able to use two .NET technologies that I'm currently most interested in: .NET regular expressions, and the .NET xml classes. Oh, and I got to use the newGUID function, which is pretty handy.
I was a little surprised at a behavior I noticed with a regex.replace I tried. It was unable to replace using the group reference $2. That seems odd to me. I was able to accomplish it using the match class, but that was after some time of being frustrated by the .replace function.
While I found it slow getting started, I can see that with a little practice, pumping out handy exe's with .NET could get ridiculously easy. On a slight tangent dotnetmonster will be added to the related sites page on msdn.microsoft.com. It looks like it could be a useful place. Let me know if you find anything cool there.
Speaking of published on microsoft.com, check me out...I'm published there too, albeit, limited to a script, but hey I'll take what I can get!
Home front:
My fingers are crossed that we'll get our occupancy permit today.
Other:
Can someone explain to me why I should pay the premium for a Tablet PC? The pull is almost irresistable, but the brain cannot explain it. Why do I want so badly to draw on my monitor with a pen? I just do. It sounds fun! And, maybe it'd be useful too?

Boomeranging anyone?

This evening, after work, I picked up my truck from Wilson's auto repair. (The starter fell apart.) And driving it home I noticed my boomerang sitting in the front seat. Well, my plan was to go back in and work hard late into the night, but the sky was clear and calm. And, we happen to have a large field right next to our house....I'm guessing you can see where this is leading.
So I started chucking it around, working out the kinks refreshing my skills, and before long all five of the neighbor girls have come to join in the fun. Then my kids come out and it's seven kids, and two moms watching me throw the boomerang. Of course, with such an audience, one tends to want to provide plenty of spectacle, which I did, to the extent that I'm wondering if my arm will ever be the same. But, no matter, everyone had an utter blast. After the thrill of watching the huge arc of flight wore off, we all began racing to be the first to catch it after it landed.
Some people might be inclined to let small children win, when it's just for fun, but not me, I think it builds character in them if they lose sometimes. I guess none of these girls watch football, because after I won the race and did something resembling an end-zone dance, they didn't even have the sense to be humiliated in their defeat. They just laughed. Kids have so much to learn.
Anyway, the upshot is that I feel Great! The excercise has put me in a terrific mood.
And, I got started on some .NET xml programming project, which should help with my programming goals while dramatically improving some of my time at work.
In particular I'm trying to use the xmlnodereader, and the xmlwriter.

Coolest Newsitem

This has to be the coolest item of news I've seen in a long time:

Basically, a new development in infrared photography has enabled people to 'see' writing on ancient documents where the ink has faded from the human-visible spectrum. The result: 800 boxes of ancient writings are 'readable', which should add to humanity's collection of ancient Greek texts by 20%!!!
That is what I love about technology.

I haven't done a ton, to begin working in programming yet, but I've picked up my reading on the topic.
I have an idea that I think would be interesting to implement that has perhaps to do with RSS aggregation, or news aggregation anyway. Perhaps it will be useful to design the app using ASP.NET.
In general I'm interested in harvesting data from a multitude of sources on the web and compiling it into an RSS newsfeed.
To get started on this, I should probably practice by getting some automation back into my day job.

House Near Completion

With our new home near completion, I am feeling anxious to turn more of my attention back to programming, and other technology, and gardening. I have a terrific spot for gardening here; a south-facing slope with nothing obstructing the sun. So I hope to grow some delicious tomatoes and peppers this year.
Our house is pretty neat, it has straw bales in the walls for insulation (they really work, by the way).
So, I'm trying, again, to join the blogosphere in hopes that I will learn something useful. In my prior attempt I found that it's similar to hearing your own voice on a recording. But nevertheless, I will sally forth.
Next time I hope to dazzle you with news of my progress in re-entering the realm of .NET development. Wish me luck. ;)