Microsoft just upgraded Live Messenger.

If you happen to use Windows Server 2003 as your operating system of choice – As a lot of web developers do, you are now out of luck using Windows Live Messenger.

As of yesterday, you are forced to upgrade Live Messenger to the latest and greatest version, which um, er, doesn’t support Windows Server 2003. You’ll either need to upgrade to Server 2008, or downgrade to an older version Windows Messenger instead of Live.

Yes, we understand, Server is meant to be used as a server, but a lot of people use it as their main OS.

Microsoft really overlooked this one…

Although VB had it’s limitations, it was damn easy to filter an input string for a numerical value.

Here is how to do it in C#. You’ll need to use System.Text.RegularExpressions in the header

private static int VBVal(string sInput)
{
        string sOutput = string.Empty;
        MatchCollection oMatches = Regex.Matches(sInput, "\\d+");
        foreach (Match oMatch in oMatches)
        {
                sOutput += oMatch.ToString();
        }
        return (int)sOutput;
}

I’ve previously blogged about CHDK. It is the “Canon Hackers Development Kit” and is alternative firmware for Canon digital cameras. It never actually overwrites the camera firmware and can give a camera many extra features not available in the default firmware.

For radio control applications, specifically aerial photography, there is a real bonus in being able to control a camera to take photos from the radio control unit.

CHDK will allow your camera to take photos when 5volts is supplied on the +ve pin of a USB cable. I’ll be using this feature to show you a simple way of interfacing a channel from your RC gear to the camera.
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