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A guide to ActiveX for both experienced software developers and preschoolers alike.
One day last week, a chap on my team at work broke his computer with the effectiveness that only a veteran software engineer can do. Jokingly, I sent him a link to a "Computers for Beginners"-style book on Amazon. In return, he mailled me a link that forever changed the way I think about computers. And bunnies.
For some reason, my PC was going slow and the Amazon page he had linked me to refused to do anything but be a nice shade of white. The guy then asked my to search Google for a different retailer of the book. "Just search for Mr Bunny", he said.
It began to dawn on me that searching for things like "Mr Bunny" on Google, at work, would almost certainly end in priority-one sacking. And I mentioned my suspicions to my colleague. Being fearless, and in possession of a new, fully operational (if a little slow) computer, he dragged me to his desk to show all. Amazon loaded first time on his PC.
Stupid Internet.
Mr Bunny's Guide to ActiveX is a technical manual that was written in 1997 by a bloke called Carlton Egremont III (commonly referred to as CE3 in his own books) but unlike most technical manual authors, CE3 had little knowledge of computers when he wrote it. Let alone the new-ish technology known as ActiveX. As such, it has been put together in a very unique way.
It starts, as these things often do, in a field. Farmer Jake is our protaganist and is merrily raking some leaves when a bunny comes across to him. Mr Bunny in fact.
Mr Bunny is an expert programmer and guides Farmer Jake to the internals of his Windows operating system whereupon he sets about a series of adventures set to both entertain and inform the reader.
Now, before I get all hardcore-geek on yo' asses, let me take you to one of the many great sentences that adorn the first few pages. While describing who should be using this How-To book, it plainly states that this book is for "experienced software developers and preschoolers". This fact becomes very obvious as you start to work through it. Take the contents page as a starting point (most books do):
The story of Bunny and Farmer continues and develops, with Bunny taking the receptive Farmer Jake through developing ActiveX controls in Visual Basic, how classes are registered and how virtual functions work. But trust me, it is a billion times more entertaining than that sounds!
This is a definite laugh-out-loud book which successfully parodies the usual self-help, How-To guides that are out there. From the small icons depicting the text next to them are "Tips" or "Dangers" to watch out for, this book pays careful attention to detail and mocks the hell out of it.
One Tip states "Use COM only in well ventilated areas", one danger states "< and > symbols must always be capitalised".
Genius.
Even if you don't have an interest in ActiveX programming, which I don't to be fair, or COM, or OLE (pronounced "olé") or Visual Basic (pronounced "Geoff") but own a computer, have used a computer or have simply heard of the word 'computer' then this book is for you.
I took this book to lunch with my good Chum Rob on Friday and tried to point out some of its funnier aspects. To no avail. However, when I left it on the table to go grab a sandwich I came back to find Rob with the book in-hand and a ruddy great smirk on his face.
And Rob hates computers.
So there you have it. And I didn't get sacked. And my colleague who introduced me to Mr Bunny still hasn't got his original PC back. The words "buggered" and "fubar" were mentioned... But let's hear it for Mr Bunny anyway.
And needless to say, Mr Bunny's Big Cup of Java is on order.
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