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The Pyro is a Bermudian

While debate continues about whether Team Fortress 2's Pyro is a man or a woman, with him set to receive a new weapon called the Axtinguisher later this week, there can no longer be any doubt about his nationality.

Making progress

Made quite a bit of progress in GTA IV yesterday, getting another 10% or so further through the game. I reckon I've got about the same to go again before finishing the main story, after which I'll probably leave it and go play something else. Compulsive completer-finisher I may be, but there are just too many other games out there vying for my attention now.

Yesterday aside, I've now spent the last eight days writing my program for Mandy. In that time I've only left the house three times, and never ventured further than Ferry Reach. Starting at 9am and working until 11pm most days, I've been working harder than I do when I'm at work.

I've made good progress, but there remains a lot to do. It's proven to be a much more complicated piece of software than the inventory management system I wrote for Godet & Young, and I think I underestimated the amount of work involved. I've learned a fair bit about data binding in .NET and SQL Server Reporting Services in the process, though. The data binding stuff has proved considerably trickier than Microsoft make it out to be in their introductory videos, and I've run into several problems that I've struggled (and in some cases, am still struggling) to fix. I'm now going to have to work evenings and weekends to finish it.

As usual when developing, I've been doing a lot of swearing, but overall I've been feeling less stressed than I normally get at work. I think that's because at home I have at least been able to work uninterrupted, whereas at work I'm constantly getting emails and phone calls from people who need me to do stuff for them, which makes getting into a state of flow almost impossible. It's times like this when I appreciate the advantages an office with a door has over open plan.

The writing's on the wall

Aidan has started drawing on the walls.

He did it for the first time yesterday, grabbing a crayon and scribbling on the kitchen wall when mummy wasn't looking. Then this morning he found a pencil and used it on one of the walls in the hall, covering half its length before mummy disarmed him.

Time to break out the paint...

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.

While some of us spend the day on the golf course and others on the water, I'm planning to spend the day in Liberty City.

Still feel a bit guilty about taking so much time to myself, though. Maybe that's because when I was growing up Father's Day never seemed to be as big a deal as Mother's Day. But having been a dad for getting on for two years now, I can appreciate the value of having a day at the weekend to myself.

Busman's holiday

I'm taking this week off work to write a piece of software to help Mandy manage her summer swim program.

To speed development, I'm writing it in VB.NET, the same language I use at work. As the only licence I have for the full version of Microsoft Visual Studio (for those who don't know, Microsoft Visual Studio is the tool I use to write software, in the same way that Microsoft Word is the tool you might use to write a letter) is for an old version, I've opted to use Visual Studio 2008 Express instead. This is a free, but cut-down, version of the program, which hopefully will be enough for my needs. Unlike the full version, however, it doesn't include Crystal Reports, the tool I usually use to generate reports. Because of that I'm using SQL Server 2005 Express as the database (a free, cut-down version of SQL Server 2005), which gives me the ability to use SQL Server Reporting Services to produce reports instead. It also means I don't have to use Access as the database.

The downside of using all these free tools, apart from the lack of some features I'm used to, is that I'm not that familiar with them. In particular, I've never used Reporting Services to produce reports before, so there's a bit of a learning curve to go through. On the upside, the knowledge I gain could prove useful at work too.

The other problem with Visual Studio Express is that it doesn't support add-ons, which means I'm unable to use the excellent Resharper with it. This is a tool which makes the job of writing code easier, by providing some additional features not available in Visual Studio. I've only just started using it at work, but I'm already missing having to code without it.

Hopefully I can quickly get to grips with everything and have Mandy a working program by the end of the week.