Re-routing CVS repositories

I'm putting this here to save myself the hassle of figuring out how to do it on the rare occasions I need to re-route a CVS sandbox to a different repository without releasing and checking out from the new repository. So if anyone else is wondering how to do it (you'll need cygwin on Windows), run this command from the top of your checkout tree:

find -name Root -exec sed -i.bak -e 's:/old/path:/new/path:' {} \;

. You will also need to be careful if you use a Windows CVS server like CVSNT, since using the ':' as the sed separator will require you to escape the colon in your repository path if you have one. By the way, this will make a backup of each Root file called Root.bak, just in case you don't trust it (and why should you...:P)

Star Wars on the (really) small screen

I found another reason to dig my Pocket PC. My usual top reasons are talking books from audible.com and reading electronic books (in really big fonts!) with the Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC.

But having picked up a 1Gb SD card for next to nothing, I thought I'd investigate the supposedly forthcoming phenomenon of pocket movies. Microsoft has been making some noise about their new portable devices that play movies, but you don't need one of those. You just need a copy of this software and you're done. In about the time it takes to watch the film, it's converted to a 250Mb AVI at 320x240 resolution. That's 15 frames per second at a resolution that's higher than your TV, so it's pretty darn watchable. There is a slight weirdness to the screen when rotated to watch in landscape mode, probably because the RGB subpixels on the LCD or up/down aligned in this mode, but you get used to it.

So having recently picked up the Star Wars box set to relive my childhood like all the other 30-something males on the planet, but not having time to scratch myself like all the other 30-something males on the planet, I can now squeeze this necessary pastime into my morning commute and leave all the iPod weenies wondering why exactly they think they're so cool. Rock on.

Why I Hate Domain-Driven Design

I was feeling pretty good about myself I have to admit. Having just delivered a system that took a year of a dozen developer's lives to complete with the full XP experience working like a treat, on time, on budget, happy customer, etc, etc, I thought I'd finally get my life back and start catching up on all the reading I don't do when it's head down, bum up on a project. High on my list was Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans, as it had been highly recommended by people I respect a lot. So now I'm depressed. It is such a fine book, no, it's a truly mind-expanding, insightful, gee-now-I-feel-stupid kind of book that I now just want to go back and do the whole damn project again. And this time I'd do it properly. Dammit.

If you'd like to share the joy, as usual my recommendation is to get it on the cheap at Safari