My new inspiron 6000 Dell laptop arrived on Friday. 2GB or RAM, 100GB hard disk and a 1920 x 1200 screen. It should have been a joyous occasion, but instead it was marred by disappointment. The screen just didn’t work. Plugged in to an external screen my new system worked fine, but the screen just didn’t work. The dell support person I spoke to told me to “wiggle the screen backward and forwar” (hmmm…. »
I’ve received over 200 spam messages on my weblog in the last day or so. Normally when I just get a few I delete them manually but that was waaay to many, so it was “DELETE FROM blog_content WHERE…” time. Dominic is writing his own weblog engine as we speak to combat this problem. Mitch is in the clear because nobody supports his version of .Text. Just to re-iterate spammers. I WILL delete every single piece of spam you post, so why bother? »
I spent the last couple of days on a Biztalk training course with Biztalk Bill Chesnut. Although I’ve seen a few of Bill’s high-level Biztalk presentations I haven’t gone so deep before. What struck me is just how “service oriented” Biztalk is, without being too “in your face” about it. Although its implementation internally is heavily tied to XML and Schema, it goes beyond the view that some people have of SO where it is directly equated with Web Services over HTTP. »
ReturnsShow Name Presenter Guest Topic URL ========= ========= ===== ===== =========== SQL Downunder Greg Low Kalen Delaney SQL Server http://www.sqldownunder.com/SDU1FullShow.mp3
»
I’m a big advocate of “personal” development projects done “just for fun” by developers in their spare time. I think the technical skills gained by embarking on these projects are obvious - you get to choose technologies your current job might not be using because they’re not fully baked (alpha/ctp/beta versions of stuff), or isn’t in line with their current direction (rich client if you’re a web person from 9-5 etc.), try things out and explore. »
As a developer you may be contacted “out-of-band“ by a customer or “interested party“ and asked to add a feature to a piece of software. If somebody asks you to add a feature to a piece of software, just say NO. Politely. Adding features to software (even features that seem simple) can be a real pain. Unless the person who asks you to add the feature has a compelling reason why the feature should be added, and the authority to add it, and you’re at the right stage of your development to add it it should not be added. »
Casey Chesnut has gone and ported NASA’s extremely cool WorldWind application to the compact framework running on Windows Mobile 5 (formerly Magneto). »
Winmerge (my diff/merge tool of choice) has improved in the latest release (23-Mar-2005) (or maybe I’ve just been slack keeping up with the latest versions). It now has one of those “diff summary view thingos” that WinDiff used to have (see left-hand in the screen-shot below). Also it has a “diff in current line” feature (thank goodness somebody thought to add that feature - altho it seems like their current implementation could use some improvements), as well as better syntax hilighting. »
Last week I did 2 days of training in Sydney with Steve Smaller (a HIS TI PM) and Andrew McLaren (a HIS specialist from PSS) on HIS2004. The course was interesting for reasons not directly related to the course material - many of the attendees were “old hands” from mainframe days and there were a great deal of interesting “war stories”. Here are a couple of random tips from the course. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> /o:p <? »
Shame on me for taking a whole week to write about this, but it has been a busy week. I attended Codecamp Oz organized by Mitch, Greg, Chuck, Andrew (with the help of many others too numerous to list here) last week-end. I enjoyed the event a great deal. Charles Sturt University was a well-equiped venue and it was great to see so many people in attendance. I might be biased but I liked Dominic and Joel’s individual presentations the best, with Bill Chesnut’s Biztalk talks and Troy Magennis’ C#2. »