Lycangeek

Enso

Wow - what a find. I read about this product in the Wall Street Journal the other day, and just got around to trying it out myself...and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed...

Want to spellcheck any text in LabVIEW? Any other program?

Want to quickly switch between VIs? Any other windows?

Then you want to try Enso...

The Start of the Next Adventure

Well, I have some news - it's time for the Tyler family to put down roots in a new location. I've recently accepted a position at Microsoft and so will be moving from Texas to Washington in the next couple of weeks.

Because of this, as you may have already noticed, I'll be posting less frequently and obviously not have access to LabVIEW source code to help diagnose problems. However, as long as my memory holds, I'll continue to try to help out in whatever way I can.

I'm very sorry to be leaving NI as it is an excellent company to work for and is loaded with very talented and friendly people. But my goal has been to try to relocate to the Pacific Northwest for many years now. Having selected Seattle as the best choice for us, I must say that Microsoft was my number one choice, and I'm very excited to finally work for the company I've specialized in for so many years.

For those that are interested, my new position is as a senior developer in the Visual Studio team. I'm not certain yet what the blogging situation will be, but I assume it'll move to the MSDN blog pages. I'll post an update here once I find out.

C++/CLI and Pointers

Just had an interesting support issue and I ended up learning some new syntax in C++/CLI, so I thought I'd share it with you. This has to do with passing values by reference and how they map within LabVIEW.

So, here is the question - you want to create a method in .NET that passes an integer by reference, and have that map correctly within LabVIEW.

Windows Home Server

First let me apologize for not posting much in the way of LabVIEW stuff recently. I'm pretty heads down at the moment in work, so unless I receive a specific request, I'll be postponing any demos/how-it-works/etc. until later.

However, with the CES going full swing, we finally got the official word on the new Microsoft Windows Home Server, and I'm pretty excited. We still aren't in the perfect solution for multiple home PCs, especially with respect to upgrading older units with new ones, but this release starts to address the fact that home networks are truly becoming networks, and we need better solutions.

Google Research Picks for Videos of the Year

It's a little late, and the videos aren't short (so plan ahead), but they are great watching!

LabVIEW and Google Earth

Thought I'd direct those interested to this discussion forum post regarding getting LabVIEW and Google Earth to work together. They're currently using the ActiveX interface, but you should be able to use the Web Service version as well.

Next is to get some examples with Microsoft's Virtual Earth...hopefully I'll be out of crunch soon and can put some time to it myself. If you do give it a go, make sure to leave a comment here!

Thank you, Mr Sagan

I don't know how many of you remember Dr. Carl Sagan, the man of "Cosmos" fame, the author of "Contact", the man who took me by the hand (figuratively) at an early age and said, "see, this is science...isn't it wondrous?". To a large degree, the Cosmos series drove me into my life today.

He died 10 years ago Wednesday, and his widow has written up a wonderful entry on the man behind the fame.

Extreme Makeover In Austin

Today is a big day for a family in my neighborhood - the O'Donnells are getting a new home, courtesy of the CBS show, Extreme Makeover : Home Edition. They've blocked off the street and been working on the house for 24/7 and today is the grand unveiling. You can read about the family here, and see a video clip of the production here (half way through is a great time-lapse shot of the destruction of the old house). It's been a lot of fun to watch - like ants all over the house. I've heard that they'll use 1000 people in the 7 days it takes to build the house.

This episode is supposed to air in February or March.

I See Dead People

Okay, finally got a moment to do a little personal post. I was just up in Seattle for a little vacation, visiting friends and looking at dead people.

.NET and the Mac

As reported here, Microsoft has released a beta version of their WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere). So what is this? Well, to quote from Microsoft...

"The “WPF/E” (codename) Software Development Kit, enables you to build web pages and web applications that include rich content such as vector-based graphics, 2D animation, high fidelity text, audio and video and use JavaScript (AJAX) to interact with the page content and your server."

What does that mean?