March 2005 Entries
I've just tried to sign up to a website which requests a password. So I enter a nice pass phrase and hit the register button, only to be thrown back. The password must be between 8 and 20 characters. Great. So I shorten the pass phrase and try again. Same result, different error - the password can't contain spaces. Dumb, really dumb. Let's restrict the number of characters that can be used for password and restrict what those characters can be. Talk about dumb security. Sigh.
[Listening to: Bob Harris - Oleta Adams - Movin' On]
Last I went to see Karine Polwart. I'd not heard of her until Thursday, when I received word that the Equation concert was cancelled because Kath has a bad throat and lost her voice. Equation are one of my favourite bands, so I was pretty disappointed, but Jon suggested the Karine gig instead, and boy am I glad we went. She's amazing; a beautiful voice, cleverly worked songs and great guitar work. I can completely understand why she won three gongs at the BBC Folk Awards. A thoroughly good evening.
And this leads onto a little hobby-horse theory of mine, which...
I have eclectic tastes and listen to a wide range of music. I despair of the industry that promotes talentless no-hopers because they look good and sell millions, when there is so much talent struggling to break through. I know why they do it, but that doesn't mean I have to agree. People who have to pay for their own tours and barely make ends meet, but have real talent; they write, the play instruments, they sing (in tune), but that won't sell a million. Does that mean their music is less valuable, less important?
So via the Wired feed I...
The Lego Thriller is genius. Way too much time on their hands obviously, but still excellent, the dance sequence especially. I still have a soft spot for Thriller - never really liked much of his other stuff, but Thriller holds a special place, partly because I remember the video release so vividly. We'd heard there was something special coming, and it had been given a really late slot for its UK premier - around midnight. That night was the last night of our school play (I was crew) and we were having the after show party, so were up late...
A while ago I talked about navigation and security trimming in ASP.NET 2.0, and someone asked about this on as ASPAdvice list. Luckily a couple of the team members (thanks Ting-Hao and Stefan) stepped in to correct a few misconceptions. The <authorization> section of web.config controls who has access to the page, and this is the case whether or not security trimming and site maps are being used; it protects against direct url access and controls user and role based access. When using the site maps and a navigation control, then the menus are built using this information too -...