I searched for a while tonight but was unable to find a mapping API for Silverlight.  I found several examples of maps built with Silverlight, but I’m not finding great references for building one of my own.  I know that I won’t be able to make much progress without a solid guide.
I found a few [...]

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thSo obviously as soon as I ruled out Silverlight and decided to stick with Flex, Silverlight 2 was released, and I now have to go back and re-evaluate its usefulness.  I still maintain that I have limited my decisions to RIA.  In other words I have to decide between Flex and Silverlight.  So, I will [...]

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After getting all my notes together and organized, I realized immediately that the next step had to be choosing an architecture, or stack.  (Those two are not synonymous, but its ok).
To start, I looked at the components of the stack of the proof of concept version, from bottom to top:

OS: Linux - as chosen by [...]

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When I was 15, I loved Debt of Honor, by Tom Clancy, and like the main character’s wife in the book, I believe that if you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.  So whenever I have an important thought about Visualize History, I write it down in whatever is handy.  If that means a [...]

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I resurrected the blog today with a little trickery and fancy SQL-ing.  I have taken quite a liking to blogging so expect more from me.

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Today I did a dumb thing.  I accidentally deleted the blog.  Completely.  I have backups but they are in an awkward format so I may or may not be able to restore the old posts.
Luckily for me, though, I am writing this post to mark a new chapter in the site.  I have been finished [...]

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Dates present a complex problem for an application like Visualize History.  I did not expect them to be this complicated, and now find myself struggling to implement historical dates as they should be.
The problem arises because of the way computers think of dates.  To a computer, a date is an exact moment, for instance, 4:22 [...]

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For the last few days I’ve been working o the site design for Visualize History.  I think I’m done, but only because I have no more ideas.  I am horrible at design.  By design I mean graphic design, including fonts, colors, background images, and layout, and how all those things interact with each other.  I [...]

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I’ve been telling all my friends about my recent issues with gathering data in an appropriate way.  Each and every one is shocked.  They all know how to google some fact and they also know the internet knows everything there is to know about anything.  I try to explain the problem but have some trouble.  [...]

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I’ve always said that there is nothing like a shower, a shave and a good night’s rest.  Any of those three is great, and I’ve had all three in the last 12 hours.  Pretty impressive, I know.
As a result, I am ready to face the project again, with my inspiration renewed.  I’ve been working on [...]

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