Entries from Simon Butcher

At the office, we recently received a Google Mini. We finally had some time to open the thing and start testing it out. After one week, we're already pretty impressed with the power and flexibility, but there are still some things missing.

During Christmas, I escaped the cold of Brussels and headed off to the posh side of Bristol for an unusual but slightly traditional Christmas with good food, good company, and lots of grog. Apparently the thick freezing fog wasn't too bad compared with the fog in the south that grounded flights.

So, it's Christmas again, which means we're closing in on the end of another year. Time is flying past so quickly lately, that Christmas is a welcomed change of pace. As with every year, even the Mannequin Piss is in on the action!

With the huge amount of light emanating from the Grand Place Christmas decorations, and the constant requests for photos from those unable to come and visit themselves, I grabbed my aging Sony DSC-P52 and went out into the cold and fog to grab some pictures of this tackiness.

As an experiment, and as my way of proving that my life is just as mundane as the next, I thought I'd finally exploit the (horribly inadequate) camera in my Nokia E70 and capture a day's worth of mindless monotony. While some insight into my current lifestyle may not sway humanity, it will provide curiosity and humour to my future self, if the archive of my blog can be somehow assured.

Now, it's interesting to note that despite Gartner's predictions, modern archaeology is already taking note in the blogging movement, and some universities are beginning to encourage archaeology and philosophy students to blog. Ultimately, the incessant self-publishing phenomenon will provide future civilisations a window into our own; albeit for now, its view into a somewhat obscure facet of our present reality.

Armed with this as my primary excuse to cover up my general state of disregard and laziness, I've decided to leave the images from the E70 in their original state, including those which are blurry and normally inadmissable. This is my day, as seen by me, through my trusty camera phone.

I have been accused of posting entries that are too long.

I apologise.

It seems that calling Windows API functions from Axapta is viewed as some sort of mysterious magic by most Axapta developers. Unfortunately, there are times when you need to do something that requires tight integration with functionality that exists outside of the system. While there are other methods of interfacing between bits of code, including COM, XML-RPC, or even .NET, using the Windows API can sometimes be very efficient, and powerful.

For beginner WinAPI coders who are also Axapta programmers, with at least some programming experience in C or C++, I felt it might be better to answer a question from my colleagues about calling WinAPI calls from Axapta, outside of those already wrapped by the WinAPI:: or WinGDI:: classes.

It seems like everyone lately is talking about how Kramer from the popular 1990's television sitcom Seinfeld is a racist. The guy in question, Michael Richards, was heckled at a comedy club in Los Angeles, and went way over the line. Unlucky for him, the rise in camera-phones meant that most of his tirade, including storming off stage, was caught on video.

The accusations are flying, but is Michael Richards really a racist?

For me, Christmas shopping season has begun this weekend. Normally I wait until the last minute, but this time around I felt it was a good idea to start battling the hordes of relentless Christmas shoppers early in order to avoid any unwanted surprises, and help me find presents for people. It's only one week away from Plaisirs d'Hiver (Winter Wonders), which includes lots of Glüewein, Christmas markets, and so forth. Brussels is going to be chockas again, so it's a good idea to start early.

Welcome to the so-called seventh-generation of gaming consoles. Wow, woo, et cetera. So why don't I care? I mean, I'm very impressed with the technology of these new expensive toys that are coming out, but at the same time, I remain unimpressed over-all.

This week, the subject of video games has come up repeatedly, especially with the European release of the Nintendo Wii on the horizon.

It's been a long time since the original conception of Artemy Lebedev Studio's Optimus Keyboard, probably the first keyboard that's ever created large waves in the geek community when it was first announced. Now, however, it appears the keyboard has gained itself a bad reputation, and will be a mere shell of its original self.

So blogging has lasted a week for me so far - I'm impressed I'm not bored of it yet!

J'habite en Belgique depuis trois ans maintenent, et mon niveau de français est encore terrible. Et je ne fais rien à l'améliorer. Rien. Absolument rien.

Recently, I was talking with colleagues about how the Internet has changed over the years, and how it's become a natural part of every day life for so many of us. How has the Internet influenced us, and has it taken control of us? I couldn't help but take an incoherent look back...

Axapta inherently begs community involvement from X++ developers due to its horrible lack of documentation. Dynamics Ax 4.0 (the erp system formerly known as..) certainly solves this to great lengths, but there are still grey-areas here and there which need to be filled in.

I often get asked about tips and tricks in Axapta, and today I was asked (again) about the nofetch keyword in X++ select statements. Why is it there? What's the point?