Michael S. Clark

There it was. A quiet, thoughtful moment, right in the midst of our rat-a-tat assault. There’s not much room for unnecessary thought during a drive-by shooting — aim and pull the trigger, aim and pull the trigger — but this one provided an odd moment of stillness and clarity. As time slowed to a crawl and a prostitute’s unlucky encounter with our front bumper became a slow-motion aerial ballet, we saw the world. Peering out the window at our decaying urban surroundings, we could think of only one question. “What would this be like … in a game?”

Grand Theft Auto IV attempts to answer that question, reshaping New York City into the architecturally approximate, but satirically scathing Liberty City. Flickr user (and blogger) Matthew Johnston has created a photo set that compares the Big Apple to its rotten, in-game core, with various real and virtual landmarks placed side by side. We think you should check it out.

[Via: Joystiq]

Here’s a crossover that I didn’t expect -  Ricky Gervais in GTA IV:

One of the most anticipated games of the year has to be GTA IV, and will be a huge hit once it is released. The game has been written about to death now and we all assume we know all there is to know about the game however; there is one little gem that we did not know and that is Ricky Gervais is to make a cameo in the game.

The comedian will play himself in the game as he is a stand up act performing in the comedy club in Liberty City. Going into this comedy club might just be a welcome break while you hang out and have a rest, and you will also be able to watch Gervais as he performs some new material that he has written especially for Grand Theft Auto 4.

[Via: Product-Reviews]

Matthew Dent who won the open competition to design the new coins, launched by the Royal Mint, in August 2005, was born the year before the 20 pence coin entered circulation. A graphic designer, originally from north Wales, with a nice sense of humour, Dent has shown that it is possible, even in 2008, to design coins that most people will probably like, while playing intelligently with traditional motifs.

[Via: The Guardian]

… some kids find a woman’s heid in a poly bag on the beach in your home town.

It’s not often that Arbroath appears on the front page of the BBC News site. It is also being reported by the Times Online, Daily Record Online, Reuters, The PA, ITN, The Guardian, The Sunday Herald, The Evening Telegraph, Kazinform (Kazakstan) and MyFox, Pennsylvania, among others.

And no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.

[Via: BBC News]

While reading the latest installment of the CodeProject newsletter, I thought I’d highlight some of the useful topics:

• AJAX-style Asynchronous Progress Dialog for WinForms - A base class for adding a rich asynchronous progress animation to any Form

• xml to json - convert xml to json - faster, stronger and more comfortable

• Running a Web Site in Kiosk Mode with C# - Running a Web site in kiosk mode and disabling some normal keyboard control functionality to limit a user’s ability to depart from kiosk mode

• pInvoke.net - Primarily a wiki, allowing developers to find, edit and add PInvoke* signatures, user-defined types, and any other information related to calling Win32 and other unmanaged APIs from managed code

1st of March. Unless it’s your birthday, it probably doesn’t mean a lot; but of course it’s one of the two days in the UK when new car registration numbers are issued.

And to celebrate the fact, we bought a new car. With some foresight, we decided on a Nissan Qashqai.

Wannabe Jedi Knights are advised to brush up on their lightsaber techniques, dust off their copy of the Jedi Handbook, and get down to Surrey, where two Star Wars aficionados have announced their intention to open a training centre dedicated to promoting the popular alternative religion.

[Via: The Register]

One of the clients of the company I work for required a client that was predominantly keyboard based to enable them to perform batch processing. This wasn’t a problem as netBake has similar functionality to enable fast entry of Orders, etc.

Whilst the client was evaluating the latest build of the client, she noticed that hot keys shortcuts were available on all the buttons. When she tried to use them however, an annoying behaviour was observed.

We use 3rd party controls from Janus to emulate the Office 2007 ribbon bar from Microsoft, and so we are not blaming Janus as the original controls have the same behaviour. The <Alt> key is handled differently when using the Ribbon bar.

When the <Alt> key is pressed and released, the Ribbon bar waits for the second key press that calls the desired command. If, after pressing the <Alt> key is pressed, no other key is pressed, the only way to clear the <Alt> key is to press it again.

Originally, the <Alt> key behaviour only lasted as long as the <Alt> key was held down.

If when using the Ribbon bar control, you activate a standard hot key command, e.g., a button; you will not be able to perform another hot key command until the <Alt> key is pressed and released.

Obviously a pain the arse.

I’ve found a partial way round it below:

private void MainView_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    // Stops the Janus Ribbon Bar from capturing the <Alt> keypress
    if (e.Alt) { SendKeys.SendWait("%"); }
}


The above is the KeyUp event handler on the form. The SendWait() method programmatically sends a key press to the application and waits for the message to be processed.