I was reading an article in IT World Canada, and I have to say that I was absolutely astonished to hear that Royal Bank is thinking about offering a service whereby it’s customers can send money via text messaging. Now, it may just be small amounts (anything under $100), but the idea of being able to send money via text messaging does concern me.  They indicate that customers will get a call asking that they input a PIN number after initiating the transfer to confirm it, but I just think that there are too many variables which make this a bad idea.

Although I am sure that I would take full advantage of this service if it was offered by my bank, I can tell you that from experience working in the banking industry, this will create more problems than it may be worth.  My main areas of concern are as follows:

• How many of us have dialed a wrong phone number, even after double-checking it?  How would you feel if that wrong number just cost you $100?  A pretty expensive mistake in my opinion.
• Instead of stealing $20 from mom’s purse, now kids can take $100 directly from the account…what’s that you say?  My kids would never do that!  Well, you may be right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their friends won’t convince them otherwise.
• The elderly and those who don’t know much about technology, but use it anyway – my main concern lies here.  We have all heard horror stories of people getting scammed on the news.  I think this would be just one more way for it to happen.  How easy is it by a disposable cell phone, and fake that you are collecting donations for a just cause, while pocketing all the money for yourself.
• Thieves can already get information about you and assume your identity.  This is another avenue to take advantage of.

I guess what I am saying is that technology is a wonderful thing, and I embrace it whole-heartedly. At the same time though, there are many who would take advantage of those less technically savvy, and those whose main occupation is to lie, cheat, and steal from others. There is no way around this, it is just the way our society is built.

My concerns aside, I do look forward to trying this service…I can’t count the number of times my wife and I need to send small amounts back and forth between our accounts, and this is just one more easy way to do so.

Here is where the details will be for this Silverlight Re-Sizer…I will be posting it shortly!

While delving into the word of Silverlight 2 Beta 2, I came to the realization that fonts stay a static size, even if you change the size of your plug-in.  For instance, I am trying to recreate this blog in Silverlight, and have it be dynamically sized to the users browser window (essentially copying the behaviour of Flash when occupying 100% of the browser window).  I have been able to have everything else on the page re-size itself accordingly, except for text.  No matter what size the browser window (or resolution, for that matter), the font stays the same size.

This has caused numerous headaches, so I decided that it was time to write my own code to dynamically change the “Font Size” element of each Silverlight TextBlock on my page.  I consulted several trusted sources for Silverlight code, and could not find an example of this, so I had to start development from scratch.

I thought it would be simple…iterate through the controls on a page, mark them as if they are TextBlocks, and then set the font property on each.  It turns out that this was not as simple as I had hoped!  Please visit the Silverlight Font Re-sizer page on this site for more details, and a review of what I will do to ensure this works.

At this point, I am about 75% through the development process, and I hope to post code shortly in the downloads section.

It is so frustrating sometimes to be the only awake in the house.  There really isn’t that much you can do.  Playing video games is out, as I know myself well enough to know that at some point, I will start cursing at the screen because I am tired and things aren’t going to plan.  Working on my Silverlight endeavours is out as well, as I am too tired to delve into a new chapter right now.  I have a few websites that need some polishing, but my eyes are telling me it is time for bed- even though my brain may be firing on all cylinders, my body is certainly not keeping up.

So, I have decided that I will make this quick blog entry, as I have promised myself to write as often as possible, check some emails, then try to fall asleep to a good movie.  What is a good movie, you may ask?  Well by good I mean a movie I have seen hundreds of times which doesn’t make me think too much, and a movie which I know the plot so well that I can recite the dialogue in my sleep.  My choice, I am sure will be either an action or a comedy, and probably be an Austin Powers flick.  My wife is so sick of watching these movies that she refuses to be in the same room whilst they are being played, so I know that they make a great candidate for a show that will put me to sleep, and hey, my wife is sound asleep, so it’s not like she is going to mind them being played.

The only question is, which one to choose?  I guess only time will tell.

Thinking back on it, the summer seemed to be so short this year.  I know that I had a great time, and that I did quite a lot, but for some reason, everything seemed to just fly by.  It may have been because my wife was taking a course this year, and that had us shifting some things around, and it may have been that I had a few more projects on my plate – like helping build a shed at our cottage – I just can’t put my finger on one thing, or a group of things for that matter.

Alas, the summer has come to an end…my wife is back teaching, it’s starting to cool down, especially at night, and it is getting darker much sooner than it was just a few weeks ago.  I look back on the summer with my usual awe – remembering some of the moments which make our summers fantastic, and I find myself a little down knowing that it will be another 10 months before I am able to see some of the friends from the cottage, and feel the sense of community the cottage offers.  It truly is a wonderful place where anything and everything happens, and I couldn’t be happier that I am part of that place.

For now, it’s back to learning, back to website design, and back to taking care of the wifey.  It will be good to get back into the groove of things, but not nearly as relaxing. Cheers to a great summer, and many more to come!