Finally the truth comes out! Between Donald, Justce and me, I clearly rock the most:

http://www.sucks-rocks.com/rate/donald/justice/steven

Today Microsoft released Team System Powertoys. The best thing about the powertoys release is that Microsoft added a Build Test Tools Task that allows you to run unit tests by specifying test DLLs instead of having to create a test list. Thank God!

It has been over a week since I arrived back in Edmonton from Maui. I meant to post pictures as soon as I got back but the reason for not doing so is not because I am lazy, it is because the weather has been terrible here and posting pictures of the amazing Maui weather would get me lynched. If you are interested you can check out the rest of the pictures in my Maui Flickr photoset

Palm Tree Sunset.

Our Condo where we stayed while in Maui.

Surfer dude.

Catherine and I watching the SuperBowl.

I guess one thing that I didn't include about me in my 5 things post is that I get obsessed with watching all the nominated Oscars movies.

It all started a couple of years ago when my uncle who is a local actor here in Edmonton had an Oscars pool, ever since then I try and see all of the movies and predict the winners. So here are my picks for this year along with some movie recommendations:

Recommendations

If you are only going to see 5 of the movies that are nominated this year see these 5:

1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. Children of Men
3. The Last King of Scotland
4. Little Miss Sunshine
5. Half Nelson

Oscar Picks

ACTOR -- LEADING
Leonardo DiCaprio – BLOOD DIAMOND
Ryan Gosling – HALF NELSON
Peter O’Toole – VENUS
Will Smith – THE PURSUIT
OF HAPPYNESS
Forest Whitaker – THE LAST KING
OF SCOTLAND

Hands down this is going to Forest Whitaker. He is great playing Idi Amin. My dark horse pick is Ryan Gosling, his performance in the underrated movie Half Nelson is awesome.

ACTOR -- SUPPORTING
Alan Arkin – LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Jackie Earle Haley – LITTLE CHILDREN
Djimon Hounsou – BLOOD DIAMOND
Eddie Murphy – DREAMGIRLS
Mark Wahlberg – THE DEPARTED

I would like to see this go to Djimon Hounsou but I think Blood Diamond was a weak movie, his performance was the only reason it was watchable.

ACTRESS -- LEADING
Penélope Cruz – VOLVER
Judi Dench – NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Helen Mirren – THE QUEEN
Meryl Streep – THE DEVIL WEARS
PRADA
Kate Winslet – LITTLE CHILDREN

Not sure why this category has turned into the who can play the bitchiest woman category over the years. Helen Miren will win for playing a really convincing portrayal of the Queen but Penelope Cruz in Volver is worth seeing.

ACTRESS -- SUPPORTING
Adriana Barraza – BABEL
Cate Blanchett – NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Abigail Breslin – LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Jennifer Hudson – DREAMGIRLS
Rinko Kikuchi – BABEL

If you look at all of the awards shows leading up to the Oscars Jennifer Hudson will win but Rinko Kikuchi's performance as a deaf girl trying to be normal in Babel was really powerful.  

ANIMATED FEATURE
CARS
HAPPY FEET
MONSTER HOUSE

Monster House had better win over Cars!

CINEMATOGRAPHY
THE BLACK DAHLIA
CHILDREN OF MEN
THE ILLUSIONIST
PAN’S LABYRINTH
THE PRESTIGE

I have a soft spot for Pan's Labyrinth but the cinematography in Children of Men was the best of the year. There is an excellent scene in Children of Men where the camera follows Clive Owen through a war zone that looks like it is straight out of a first person shooter.

DIRECTING
BABEL
THE DEPARTED
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
THE QUEEN
UNITED 93

This year either Scorsese finally wins the Oscar or the Academy/Clint Eastwood lovefest continues.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
AFTER THE WEDDING
DAYS OF GLORY (INDIGÈNES)
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
PAN’S LABYRINTH
WATER

Pan's Labyrinth deserves to be in the best picture category and should win this award. If it doesn't I hope Deepa Mehta wins for Water.

MAKEUP
APOCALYPTO
CLICK
PAN’S LABYRINTH

The pale man is one scary dude.

ORIGINAL SCORE
BABEL
THE GOOD GERMAN
NOTES ON A SCANDAL
PAN’S LABYRINTH
THE QUEEN

The nursery rhyme from the score plays such an important role in the film that it will be in your head after the film is over.

ORIGINAL SONG
“I Need to Wake Up”
– AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
“Listen” – DREAMGIRLS
“Love You I Do” – DREAMGIRLS
“Our Town” – CARS
“Patience” – DREAMGIRLS

This song was the best part of the film and the reason that Jennifer Hudson will win best supporting actress.

BEST PICTURE
BABEL
THE DEPARTED
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
THE QUEEN

This is going to be the surprise of the Oscars, all of the actors in this film gave their  best  performances.

VISUAL EFFECTS
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN:
DEAD MAN’S CHEST
POSEIDON
SUPERMAN RETURNS

The visual effects were the only good thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest the rest of the movie seemed like a 2 hour long version of the Benny Hill show. 

SCREENPLAY -- ADAPTED
BORAT CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF
AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT
GLORIOUS NATION OF
KAZAKHSTAN
CHILDREN OF MEN
THE DEPARTED
LITTLE CHILDREN
NOTES ON A SCANDAL

SCREENPLAY -- ORIGINAL
BABEL
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
PAN’S LABYRINTH
THE QUEEN

Tonight I am coming back to Edmonton from Maui. Besides coming in during a big storm, the weather here has been nothing but good to us. Check out what it was like when we got here: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/10516.aspx

I'll post more later but I wanted to link to Rick's post now so I don't forget.

Call me crazy right now before you even start reading this post just to get it out of the way.

I think it would be great if comments were removed from programming languages entirely. I think they do more harm then good and that if we removed the ability to use them a lot of us would have to be more disciplined when we code. Now, before you get all worked up hear me out. Here are my reasons for abolishing comments into programming language history.

1: If you couldn't use comments in a programming language you wouldn't get people admitting that they don't know what they are doing like this.

2: Comments are a code smell. If you couldn't use them you would have to explain what you are doing in a method name or with your code. 

3: TODOs are more often than not forgotten and rot inside the code. Maybe a TODO is better off as a story. Do people really need to know that you "hacked" something to make it work?

4: No one deletes commented out code, if you couldn't use them code would be a lot cleaner.

5: Comments are a way to temporarily get your code to compile but does it really need to compile or do you just need to write a test and some functionality that isn't there yet?

I would like to hear some arguments for keeping comments in programming languages. If not lets get rid of them! Viva Le Revolution!

Last weekend Catherine and I went to the Bridal Fantasy here in Edmonton. We went mostly to get ideas for the wedding and enter draws. One of the draws we entered was for a trip to the Bahamas, and on the ballot it said "Only one entry per phone number" so I told Catherine to put her cell phone.

This week to our surprise we both one trips to the Bahamas! Well not really, we both won the opportunity to be scammed. The people that phoned us wanted us to give them a processing fee of only $399 US and to take care of our flight to Florida. Only after that would they take care of our hotel and send us on a cruise. Doesn't sound like we won anything to me especially since not everything on a cruise is taken care of.

Hopefully other couples that are getting married in Edmonton are smart enough not to fall for this scam because weddings are expensive enough already without someone trying to scam you. On that note, I am off on a real vacation to Hawaii next week, watching the Super Bowl in the US is going to be sweet.

Open Command Prompt Here Power Tool: CmdHere.exe

TimeSnapper: http://timesnapper.com/

Replace you regular command window with the Visual Studio 2005 command window by creating a bat file and adding this snippet:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"AutoRun"="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat""

The Parchment theme and the rest of the Visual Studio 2005 themes form: http://idehotornot.ning.com/

Others that I can't live without but you probably already know about:

NUnit, NAnt, MSBuild, Resharper, and SlickRun.

<Disclaimer reason="I normally don't do these" exception="but its about programming languages" />

Which Programming Language are You?