He had a sandwich.

They obviously didn't write down 12-21-2012. It's the winter solstice in that year. And others who were paying attention astronomically in ancient times would have come to the same date. On the winter solstice of 2012, the noonday Sun exactly conjuncts the crossing point of the sun's ecliptic with the galactic plane, while also closely conjuncting the exact center of the galaxy. That's rare enough that you might just assume that something special was going to happen.

Start with C++ or even C. They'll teach you the principles of programming quickly. C# is similar semantically, but is much more about learning to use specific libraries in order to increase productivity. Learn to crawl before you run. If you're planning on a career in programming, you're going to be using several different languages as needed, and it will be easier to go from C++ to C# than the other way around. "Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt." - Goethe

I have a web page that is mainly generated dynamically in code-behind vb.net, and which has some server controls. The contents of the page is cached when generated, and added to placeholders during the call to Page_Load. When an event fires in a server control, and the event is handled on the server, the page in the browser flashes the blank page during the server roundtrip, so that if you are working through the page quickly, the page flashes a lot. Is there any way of telling the browser to keep the previous screen during postback and only re-display once the modified page has been generated, so that the duration of the flash is minimized? Can this be done without having to use javascript to fire off events in hidden windows, etc.? Is there some kind of setting on the page that can achieve this? What is the "correct" way of solving this problem? The basic structure of the page is as follows: '******** Private myForm as MyDataForm Sub Page_Load() 'If not postback then 'Generate contents of myForm 'Add myForm to cache 'Else 'Get myForm from cache 'Add myForm objects to placeholders 'End Sub 'Sub OnBubbleEvent 'Catch events from server controls and modify page 'End Sub '******** Thanks for any help