Bill Mauldin is probably the most famous cartoonist from World War II.  He was an infantry soldier in the Italian campaign who also worked for Stars and Stripes, the soldier-run newspaper.  If you were to see one of his strips, you would instantly recognize his work.

Up Front is a collection of some of Bill Mauldin's panels from the war, starring Willie and Joe, along with his own commentary on the war, his work and his own experiences.  They range from very funny to moving.  The text is in no particular order, the panels are roughly arranged by topic, and the stories are fine, indeed.  He gives the reader a feel for what the infantryman, the most important element of any army, went through while at the same time conveying a feeling that it truly can not be comprehended by any outside of the brotherhood of men who were there.

Bill Mauldin has been called the best cartoonist covering the war years and the plight of the foot soldier of all time.  I would agree, though I certainly have not been exposed to the full range.  I liken it to the book Company Commander, written by an average Joe made Captain and given the command of two subsequent companies during the invasion of France.  I tremendously enjoyed Up Front and it will be added to my permanent collection.  I anticipate that I will be reading it again many times, or at least referring back to it on many occasions.

Ed:  Wow, this is my third review in as many weeks!  But that's not entirely fair.  I started this book while still reading Fatal Terrain, which I reviewed a couple weeks late.  I did blaze through The Last Colony very quickly, though.  That was an excellent book!  And Up Front was a very easy read with a lot of space used for panel comics.

Below is the most simple database query for C# to populate a GridView object:

            int nItemID = 1;
            try
            {
                using (SqlConnection oSQLConn = 
                   new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["UserInfo"].ConnectionString))
                {
                    oSQLConn.Open();
                    using (SqlCommand oSQLCmd = new SqlCommand())
                    {
                        oSQLCmd.Connection = oSQLConn;
                        oSQLCmd.CommandText = "SELECT DisplayName, EMail FROM Users WHERE UserID = @PARAM_ItemID";
                        oSQLCmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@PARAM_ItemID", nItemID);
                        SqlDataReader oSQLReader = oSQLCmd.ExecuteReader();
                        GridView1.DataSource = oSQLReader;
                        GridView1.DataBind();
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Label_ErrorMsg.Text = ex.Message;
            }

There are actually many reasons to never use this, including performance, caching, safe SQL, code reuse, standards, proper exception handling, etc, etc.  But sometimes you need a quick and dirty, non-production, piece of code for testing and/or development.  This is it.

Almost everything I read regularly online now is through an RSS feed.  The few things I don't get through RSS are either not suited to RSS or don't come in a feed, but are too important to me to skip.  I use SharpReader to collect and browse all of these feeds.  It is not a perfect reader but does what I want it to do better than anything else I can find (for free).

I have always enjoyed comic strips and much prefer them on the web than any other format.  I have been reading Dilbert online since the old days when Scott Adams posted them himself on Usenet.  But not all comics online are available in an RSS feed.  And none of them were a few years ago (before RSS, of course).  I have tried over the years to script or code different ways of collecting strips with some success, into webpages or browsable collections, but something was always lacking.

Today I use a app I created to collect the img tags from the hosted sites and put them into RSS feeds for each strip.  It works for me.  The only problem is the RSS library for .NET that I used doesn't clear the old entries correctly, so the XML file get big over time.  Not huge, just big.  Now I can load my feed into SharpReader and have all of the feed-y goodness such as tracking which entries I've read, notification of new ones, and locking or saving the ones I want to save.  I have about a dozen strips now, including the fabulous XKCD all RSSed up.  If you'd like to use some, let me know and I will email you the link.  I will not post it here as I don't want them abused. 

Oh, the other problem:  I'm always looking for more webcomics.  Most that I like I just stumbled on, so I always take recommendations.  And yes, I will feed up a strip, even if I don't like it, for someone else.  Just the way I am, service-oriented.

Update [10 Aug 2007]:  Ha ha!  When I went to XKCD.com today, I noticed that he's put up an ATOM feed himself.  So I can remove that one from my collection list. 

Scalzi's latest book is The Last Colony, which also marks the end of the OMW trilogy.  The first two books were very enjoyable, so obviously, I had to pick this one up too.  I think I should also note, that this is the only trilogy that I have bought the first run of entirely in hardcover.  They are that good.

This is the last book in the John Perry storyline, at least for now.  Perry and his ex-SpecialOps wife Jane Sagan are asked to be the administrators of a new colony against the demands of the Conclave of Worlds, which Humans are not part of.  Fittingly, the colony is named Roanoke as it will be hidden, or lost, from everyone.  Of course, it is not hidden forever, nor is the premise as simple as it appears.

An excellent, and quick read.  I have read every novel that Scalzi has written to date.  This is the best of them all.  You can tell that his style is maturing nicely in this novel, which was written as well as many of the giants of SciFi.  A more complex story than Old Man's War, more compelling than The Android's Dream, and packed with more intrigue than The Ghost Brigades.  I still think I liked OMW best, but that is because it was much more military than this one.  Can't recommend Scalzi enough for the true SciFi aficionado.

Following Shadows of Steel is Fatal Terrain, a continuation of the Patrick McLanahan / Brad Elliot storyline.   The next in my quest to read all of the Old Dog series from Dale Brown.

This time, the conflict is in China.  Specifically centered on the "rogue province" of Taiwan.  The Taiwanese leadership declares independence from China, which is not received well.  Gen. Elliot (ret) is recruited by Sky Masters, Inc. to fly one of the EB-52 Megafortresses with McLananahan and crew on contracted Sig-Int recon missions in the Formosa Strait.  When a Taiwanese frigate is attacked by Chinese navy ships, Elliot launches against them, exposing the stealth missions and heating things up.  Major conflict ensues.  Nukes are used.  Fun by all.

I found it very helpful, and quite enlightening , to read up on Taiwan's real status in today's world.  Wikipedia's article on the Republic of China (Taiwan) is concise enough to get a feeling of the complexity of the situation over there.  While not one of Brown's best works, it was very entertaining, if a bit disturbing.  The portrayal of Elliot was a bit over the top, but worked for the story, and the reasoning why was evident in the end.

I had to hunt down my ICQ number the other day, which I seem to do occasionally over the years.  I use it for a few weeks, then delete it as useless.  I used to use it a lot, but email is much more useful, generally.  I even have an early number:  529564.  It is becoming more difficult to find it, so here it is.  Preserved until this fad wears thin too.  Of course, the client really stinks, since AOL bought them out, but the new Trillian client is pretty nice.  And it integrates Yahoo and MSN IMs too, which I have by default of possessing accounts there.   Let's see how long I use it this time...

A colleague and I were discussing desktop systems, and agreed in confusion about the seemingly typical cost-cutting measure of giving developers underpowered systems to work on.  This got me thinking:

First of all, with todays prices, how expensive would it be to really outfit a developer with a truely powerful rig?  You don't need tons of storage or a fancy 3D gaming card or high-end sound (unless, of course, that is your line of business) so you should be able to get a really powerful machine for under $2000.  It shouldn't be hard to do an ROI for that, just in productivity gains.

Second, it would make your true developers, the propeller-heads that love this stuff, very happy.  That is also a great productivity gain.  After all, a happy coder is a working coder, not one that is standing around bitching.

Finally, I always felt it a truism that it is worse to have a better system at home for development than at work.  This is more an intangible.  After all, you can't constantly be polling people about their personal systems; not to mention, most of us have more than one.  I have 4 functioning and a few not.  I personally will feel more compelled to work on the better system; for management's sake it ought to be on my desk at work.  

So, you management types:  we developers love the hardware, we want to play with it, we want to use it, we want to possess it.  It's a cheap win to give us toys to play with.  We will want to exercise them.  It's in your best interest.