Month: February 2004

I’ve put together an article on the latest program I’ve been working on and the statistics on newlines, semicolons and other productivity indicators that I’ve kept while doing the work.

I was having trouble finding the correct syntax for the cref attribute of the see tag (and the exception, seealso and other tags) in .NET doc comments. I tried Namespace.TypeName.MethodName and Namespace.TypeName.MethodName(ArgType) to no avail getting the error “XML comment on ‘foo’ has cref attribute ‘Namespace.TypeName.MethodName’ that could not be found.” Eventually I found this in Google’s cache (not on site anymore) that made things clearer:

Use the cref attribute to link to a type or member or the langword attribute to specify a language keyword. The body of the tag is ignored. Cref attributes have the form: a one-letter prefix (N, T, C, M, P, F, E), a colon, and a value. Here are some example crefs:

• “N:” for Namespaces, example N:System
• “T:” for Types (classes, structs, interfaces, enumerations), example: T:System.Byte
• “C:” for Constructors, example: C:Gtk.Button()
• “M:” for Methods, example: M:System.String.Substring(System.Int32,System.Int32) (the argument list is optional)
• “P:” for Properties, example: P:System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain
• “F:” for Fields, example: F:Gtk.TreeIter.Zero
• “E:” for Events, example: E:Gtk.Button.Clicked

Common langword usages: <see langword=”null”/>, <see langword=”true”/>.

So I just needed to put “M:” on the front of my cref et voila no more compiler warning.

The original page, should it come back online, was at http://www.nullenvoid.com/mono/wiki/index.php/ECMAStyleDocumentation.

Everybody knows that Tetris is the greatest computer game of all time. The version I have played so much lately is Tetrablocks which is a very nice version. Sadly the speed of the game is tied to the speed of the machine you play it on which means scores are not really comparable across machines but if you can get more than 350 lines then you’re probably better than me.

The reason I mention Tetris is because there is a documentary about the game showing on BBC4 tonight (2100 in the UK) and replaying through the week.

One of my favourite Tetris things is this 12.8MB MPEG from the 2001 Japanese Tetris Championship (will take at least 8 mins to download from this site, as long as 40 mins over dial up). How fast is that guy?

And finally there’s a great site about Tetris AI.

Looking on eBay I can see that my tickets for the Pixies could be sold for up to 100 pounds (nearly 200 US dollars). Some of the buyers have decent feedback ratings so I don’t think it’s a case of people creating dummy accounts to mess up the touts.

That’s ridiculous. I bought four tickets for 115 pounds. I could sell them for nearly 400 pounds and I’d have done about 15 minutes work (including entering on eBay and posting the tickets) maybe 30 minutes if I include a walk to the post office to send the tickets recorded delivery. If I had 10 credit cards I could conceivably have bought 40 tickets. Then my profit would be 4000 pounds for not much more work, certainly less than an hour. If I did that for Reading Festival, Glastonbury Festival and any other events where tickets are guaranteed to sell out then I could give up my job and just work for about an hour or two every few weeks!

That leads me to two questions really. 1) What is going to be done about this? Neither organisers nor fans want it like this. And 2) Why don’t ticket sellers make their tickets more expensive if people are willing to pay that much? It’s surely not altruism – companies like Mean Fiddler or Ticketmaster don’t know what that means.

Not only have the Pixies reformed but they are touring and have dates in the UK. The tickets for two nights at Brixton Academy sold out in minutes but not before I got 4 tickets for the Wednesday.

When the rumours first started floating around I came up with this ideal setlist that I’d still LOVE to see. To be honest though they could play their B-sides and Isla de Enchanta four times and I’d still be ecstatic.

Ideal Pixies reunion tour set list (I’ve given Kim quite a lot to do here to keep her happy) 1 hr plus encores:

• Debaser (right out of the starting blocks)
• Head On (ratchet it up another notch)
• The Sad Punk (and evolving from the sea wouldn’t be too much time for me to walk beside you in the sun)
• Nimrod’s Son (eclectic crowd pleaser)
• I Bleed (break it down)
• Here Comes Your Man (everyone’s happy middle section)
• Gigantic (everyone’s happy middle section)
• Velouria (getting somwhat more excited)
• Tame (hips like cinderella)
• Hang Wire (every morning and every day – I’ll bossanova wit’cha)
• Tony’s Theme (stomping crowd pleasing build up to the finale)
• Oh My Golly (stomping crowd pleasing build up to the finale)
• U-Mass (stomping crowd pleasing build up to the finale)
• Down to the Well (medley of greatness finale)
• Is She Weird? (medley of greatness finale)
• Gouge Away (medley of greatness finale)

Encore:

• I’ve Been Tired

Second encore (unplanned, because it was just too wonderful):

• The Happening (if they could pull this off I could die happy – “I’m almost there to Vegas where they’re putting on a show they’ve come so far I’ve lived this long at least I must just go and say hello”).

Final Score: Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim 4; Doolittle 5; Bosanova: 5 (who would’ve thunk it); Trompe le Monde: 3

Notably missing (mostly because they’re too quiet):

• Dig For Fire
• Where Is My Mind
• Caribou
• Levitate Me
• Cactus
• River Euphrates
• Brick is Red
• Hey!
• Letter to Memphis
• Subbacultcha

Thankfully missing to the chagrin of most of those attending:

• Monkey Gone To Heaven
• Wave of Mutilation