Before I returned to Pennsylvania for the holidays, I rather quietly made the initial commit to the SlimBuffer Subversion repository.

SlimBuffer is a very straightforward API for creating and manipulating native-memory buffers from managed code. While there exist ways to do this directly — via unsafe blocks (in some languages) or various methods of the System.Marshal class — those methods are usually inelegant, inefficient, or both. SlimBuffer is written in C++/CLI for maximum efficiency and does what it does in a very clean, expressive manner. →

Morimoto, which opened in Philadelphia in 2001, is named after its executive chef Masaharu Morimoto. I had wanted to visit the restaurant for some time. However, as I only return to the east coast once a year, I’d never really had the opportunity.

But this year I was able to secure a reservation for myself, my brother, and six of our good friends. As it turns out, the experience was unforgettable and well worth the wait. →