Pete's Weblog

Looks like my computer is doing a windows update. I didn't ask it to (I don't have automatic updates turned on), but I guess this is WinXP SP2 installing itself. I'm a bit pissed off that it didn't even tell me it was going to install something -- it just appeared as an icon in the notification area.

If it suddenly pops up a dialog asking me to reset the computer (or worse, does it for me without asking), I'll be going back to Linux. Imagine getting a sudden popup asking you to reset your computer; if you didn't notice the thing installing, an inexperienced user will probably think it was a virus like blaster. The question is, would they be wrong?

Update:

The mysterious update appears to have stopped downloading at 47%. There is no internet activity. There appears to be no way to cancel or restart the download (no context menu, nothing happens when I double-click it). I will have to wait a while then try to end the process, I guess. How is an ordinary, non-technical user supposed to deal with this?

Second Update:

Okay, I ended the process. The icon disappeared and then immediately reappeared. That's cheating! On the plus side, it now seems to be at 48% (and it's only been two hours to get that extra 1%).

What is really getting on my nerves is that I'm moving tomorrow. This computer probably won't touch the internet again for a long time (possibly years, as I will be using computers at uni). I really needed to spend this time downloading the programs and websites that I will need so they can be used offline, and not worrying about whether this weird update will go away or not.

As promised earlier, I've added the ability to change the background colour of the text. I've also made one or two minor changes to the rest of the code, which I'll detail at the end.

Microsoft Word and Visual Studio have one very cool feature in common -- squiggly underlining of errors. As of richedit 3.0 (distributed with Windows 2000 and higher, possibly also with ME) we can get these in the RichTextBox. Actually, we can get a lot more underline styles than that...

I've long since given up on using RichTextBox for a code editor, but while I was investigating its use I came across a number of ways to improve it's functionality. I'll present these here in a series of posts on the subject.. first up is how to speed up the control's updating, as well as adding one little extra formatting option.

Nearly a year since my last post, I'm finally back (must have lost my password for a while, heheh).

Anyway, for the last year I've been applying for jobs like crazy. The news is that I won't be unemployed for much longer! In september I'm starting a Ph.D at Leicester University in the UK. I will be based in the Embedded Systems Laboratory and my project is to write a compiler for a not-yet-developed language targetting a not-yet-designed processor -- should be fun! So I'll be a student again, but this time they'll pay me for it (a professional student)! And I'm using way too many exclamation marks!

I've noticed that a lot of people have been commenting on my previous blog entries (particularly the ones on Extending RichTextBox). It's nice to see that people are finding these useful, but I can't really help anyone with the code that is there (I barely remember writing it). Sorry, but it shouldn't be too hard to work out if you play with it.

I've also changed my email address -- it's now pvidler@mailblocks.com and uses a challenge/response spam filter (so be prepared for an automated response if you send me email).