Silverlight 2.0 is about to be released in the next few days and I had yet to spend any time with version 1.0. I barely know how it works and thus decided to take a few hours here and there and put together a meaningless, but fun project, just to understand how it works.

Also, I know that the newer version 1.1 is in alpha and readily available, but I wanted to however still learn with the first version and understand the core basics of it.

This technology has tremendous potential and will be key in many, many future applications, especially with its close integration to .NET as it is basically a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation. Unlike (formerly Macromedia) Flash which uses Actionscript and a propietary editor, Silverlight uses standard languages such as XML, Javascript and any of the .NET languages in the next version. 

My first humble attempt at this technology produced a slide puzzle, like we all used to have as kids, but instead of a static image, its pieces contain a fraction of live video. Check it out!

Silverlight 1.0 Video Slide Puzzle. 

I was thinking about ways of cutting unnecesary spending last night and thought that I tend to waste a few dollars on so many things that doesn't seem so much at the time, but when it is all added up....well, it adds up.

A cup of coffee in the morning, a snack bar in between, sometimes a pastry at midmorning, then lunch and maybe another coffee in the afternoon.  A couple of dollars at the time X a few times a day X twenty workdays = a lot of $$$. Think about it, even if it is just lunch at $8 per day for a to go salad or sandwhich is ($8 x 20days) $160 per month!

A clever dude has some really good information on how to spend only $6.99 for an entire month on lunch; even if not followed exactly the same, his approach is very good and can be altered to fit your needs and definitively to keep your spending lower than it currently is.

Read more: An illustrated frugal lunch by A Clever Dude. 

Visual Studio 2008 had several issues in its first release of slowing down or even freezing temporarily when developing web applications, especially large ones.

This hotfix addresses some fo these issues.

A readme file included in the download details every issue covered in this hotfix.

For more details check out Scott Guthrie's post on this release.

You can find the direct download here.