Yesterday afternoon I watched some more episodes of the BBC’s Rough Science show. This is really an addictive show which I love. I keep trying to work out what I would do if I was placed in the show in place of one of the contestants. How would I react if I was in the situation, or how would I solve the problem. And is there a better way to solve the task?

I was thinking about how this program was filmed too… The six episodes are shot in six weeks, and each episode is three days long. Therefore there are about four days between shooting each show. I would guess that each week the cast have at least one day off. Some of the other days I think involves research and working out what additional materials they might need to be given. Much as I would like to think that the entire show was planned without the scientists having any idea of what they would be getting, I just do not think that it works that way.

All in all, I would love to be involved with a show like this. Ironman did have the tropical location, and I did manage to go swimming in the sea, something that I have not managed very often since then. I guess I just like the whole idea of combining science and technology with nature. And solving problems, whatever they are.

I was reading Blogs.MSDN.Com and found a link to an interesting article on XML. Most people will find it boring, and I think I do to, but I suspect that one day I will need it, and will find out about it to my horror. XML is a way that you can store data in a long string to be sent through a communications network, and recontruct it at the other end. Unfortunately under .NET the string can get corrupted intentionally with carriage returns and linefeeds where they were not originally. This article describes how to fix this problem.