July 2005 - Posts

The Mobile Minute 107
PostedSunday, July 31, 2005 1:57 PM by Nino

Last week was pretty busy for me; I had a lot to get done before I left for vacation (“blogging on your vacation?”  yep, we’ll get to that..), so I was head’s down until we left (which was frustrating because a lot of cool stuff happened this week)…

Software / Hardware 

 Development

In Other News . . .

-Nino

WCF, WPF - it could have been worse
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PostedWednesday, July 27, 2005 3:17 PM by Nino

“Longhorn” has been unveiled as Windows Vista  (add my -1 for liking that..although maybe it will grow on me) and now we get more pieces of the puzzle:

“Avalon” shall be known henceforth as Windows Presentation Foundation  and “Indigo” shall be known henceforth as Windows Communication Foundation.   Guess what? I actually like the names. They make sense. woo. hoo.

Don’t like them?  Hey, at least we didn’t get misnomers like “MTS” or “COM+”.  I think the marketing / naming folks are starting to come around. :-)

oh yeah.. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1841073,00.asp

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 106
PostedFriday, July 22, 2005 10:59 AM by Nino

Since last night (Thursday), my smartphone has, literally, been my conduit to the world; I had to drive up to my mother’s to take care of things this weekend and have no connectivity other than a less than 100% GPRS signal.  A bit trying on the patience for someone who is used to broadband, but by re-ordering the way I do some work and working hard to be patient, it works alright – kind of like the ‘olden days’ <g>.   I’ve picked up some new gizmos lately (after I sold a bunch of gizmos) – three cheers for eBay – I’ve got some posts coming on those, too.

Software / Hardware 

 Development

 -Nino

July CINNUG meeting is tonight (..and I'm speaking!)
PostedTuesday, July 19, 2005 9:10 AM by Nino

Hey folks – The July 2005 meeting of the Cincinnati .NET User Group is tonight  ..and, oh yeah, I’m speaking about .NET Compact Framework development with .NET CF 2.0 and SQL Mobile 2005

See you there!

-Nino 

The Mobile Minute 105
PostedFriday, July 15, 2005 11:55 AM by Nino

Happy Happy Joy Joy – I had the distinct pleasure of having VS2005 go south on me yesterday.  At one point, my laptop was being rather sluggish so I thought a reboot was in order (been doing the Standby and Hibernate thing all week). Silly me.  When I ran VS2005 (beta 2) after I restarted, my smart device projects where all whacked. MSBuild was throwing errors, references couldn’t be found – it was a regular festivus. I checked the app log and see a *bunch* of stuff in there.. I try to run devenv /setup as it suggested to rebuild the templates. No joy.  I tried a repair. No joy. I then uninstalled VS2005 (oh, wait, have to remove MSDN Library for VS2005, first!), restarted, re-installed VS2005 and MSDN Lib for VS2005.  Several hours later – all was well.  ah, the beta life..  now to catch up to where I should have been Thursday evening and get my deliverables knocked out.

Software / Hardware 

 Development

In Other News . . .

  • It appears that Microsoft is adding a new competency to the list for their partner program –Mobile Solutions (via msmobiles.com)  If you are a developer and are interested in helping your organization be qualified for this, take a look at the certification requirements.  Hmm, looks like I have two Exchange exams to take….
  • Russ gives his analysis of Palm’s new logo
  • Check out Current if the idea of getting your Internet over your power lines appeals to you.  It’s available in my area as Cinergy is involved.  What I haven’t yet ascertained is what the up/down speeds will be – yes they say 1Mbps, 2, 3, etc.. but give to qualification as to direction

-Nino

MCP changes (so long, MCSD)
PostedWednesday, July 13, 2005 8:30 AM by Nino

Check out this piece from mcpmag.com on the forthcoming changes to the MCP program:  http://www.mcpmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=821

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 104
PostedTuesday, July 12, 2005 11:58 PM by Nino

 Well.. my illness on Monday was the result of (and I’m pretty confident about this) something I ate.  Ick.  Hopefully I’ll fair better at the Nerd Dinner Wednesday – see you at BW-3’s.

Software / Hardware 

 Development

In Other News . . .

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 103
PostedSunday, July 10, 2005 11:58 PM by Nino

 So.. it’s Monday morning, 0233 hours and I’m awake and blogging. I can’t sleep, and reading isn’t taking my mind off of how ill I feel, so I started working, and after a bit I decided to blog, thinking, of course, that would do it… but nope.  Hopefully, this – whatever it is – will be gone tomorrow and I’ll be back to normal…

Software / Hardware 

 Development

In Other News . . .

-Nino

More Command Prompt goodness
Filed under:
PostedFriday, July 08, 2005 1:03 PM by Nino

So call me a fuddy-duddy because I like the command prompt – fine, you are entitled to that – I like it nonetheless and use it very frequently.  Anywho, the point of this post is not to debate the merits of the command prompt, but to elaborate on this post from Coding Horror

I offer a few differences from the suggestions stated:

  • Options | Command History | Buffer Size | 999
  • Layout | Screen Buffer Size | Height | 1000
  • Layout | Screen Buffer Size | Width | 300   —-essential for avoiding wrapping by longer items (which can severely decrease the readability of some things)
  • Layout | Window Size | Height | 40
  • Layout | Window Size  | Width | 100

    The window size numbers are all personal preference…

    Screen Background: black (0,0,0)
    Screen Text: lime green (0,255.0)  (my friend KeithC prefers text colors more along the line of 255,140,0 .. which isn’t bad either)

    I would also like to call out something noted in that post (that you may have overlooked) that I have seen many customers express surprise (“How did you do that?!?!”) when I do it – changing the title of the title of the command prompt window.  I find that this is essential to maintaining sanity with multiple command prompts open:

    type title <titlename>   (e.g.  title xp-ninob_ninob ) …I like to have my computer name and my logon name (sans domain) in the title so I can keep track of who I am / where I'm at.  easy-squeezy!!!  :-)

    -Nino

  • Lame Happy Hour
    Filed under: ,
    PostedFriday, July 08, 2005 8:15 AM by Nino

    My friend Mike L just sent me this one:  LameHappyHour.com, LLC    ..for all the Cincinnati folks

    -Nino

    The Mobile Minute 102
    PostedThursday, July 07, 2005 10:51 PM by Nino

    Looky there, Daniel Moth has taken the orange pill – he’ll be coming aboard in early September. My mobile pals in the UK, Matthew (welcome back!) and Steve, will get to add another to their ranks.  

    I received my July 2005 issue of Communications of the ACM and was quite pleased to see a cover story on Designing for the Mobile Device– very cool (you’ll need to be a member to access it).  Also from ACM, (from their ACM Queue publication), two publicly available articles: Mobile Media: Making it a Reality  and Mobile Applicaitons Get Real

    … and I am very thankful that all the folks I know in London are safe. Damned terrorist bastards..

    Software / Hardware 

     Development

    In Other News . . .

    -Nino

    The Mobile Minute 101
    PostedWednesday, July 06, 2005 5:21 PM by Nino

     Software / Hardware 

     Development

    In Other News . . .

    -Nino

    Fixing my CS and .Text URL redirect issues
    Filed under: ,
    PostedWednesday, July 06, 2005 12:40 PM by Nino

    As some of you may have noticed, ever since I moved Community Server to the root of nino.net, I have had some outstanding URL issues.  1)my .Text redirect (forhttp://nino.net/blog/ -based URLs) has broken, and 2) all the http://nino.net/CS/blogs/nino -based URLs needed a redirect.

    I spent a little time yesterday resolving both of these with one solution.  I used a URL re-writer that I got from Dennis van der Stelt at http://bloggingabout.net/dennis/archive/2005/06/28/7408.aspx (it seems to have been started by Fritz Onion and been improved upon by several others).  I found the original link on the Community Server blog forums.  In addition to the very handy URL re-writing functionality, it also sends a permanent (HTTP 301) or temporary (HTTP 302) redirect (real swell for telling Google to update itself).  These manifest as the first item in the <add> node (note that mine have a value of “true” for sending HTTP 301’s).

    Here is the redirections section from my web.config:

        <redirections type="Madgeek.Web.ConfigRedirections, Madgeek.RedirectModule">
               <add permanent="true" ignoreCase="true" targetUrl="^/blog/(.*).aspx\??(.*)" destinationUrl="~/blogs/nino/$1.aspx" />
               <add permanent="true" ignoreCase="true" targetUrl="^/CS/(.*)" destinationUrl="~/$1" />
       </redirections>

    The first redirect handles all URLs coming in for my .Text blog URL (e.g. http://nino.net/blog/archive/2005/02/09/552.aspx?Pending=true  gets rewritten to http://nino.net/blogs/nino/archive/2005/02/09/552.aspx)

    The second redirect handles all URLs having /CS/ in the path (e.g. http://nino.net/CS/blogs/nino/archive/2004/01/23/172.aspx gets rewritten as http://nino.net/blogs/nino/archive/2004/01/23/172.aspx)

    I used RegexDesigner.NET from Chris Sells (I used to use The Regulator, but once I switched to running as non-admin it had issues) to verify my regex for the URL redirection along with a friendly reminder from my friend Mike L.

    -Nino

    TopDesk 1.3.3 released
    PostedWednesday, July 06, 2005 10:27 AM by Nino

    TopDesk 1.3.3 (think [Mac OS] Expose for Windows) has been released.  Get it here (trial and retail update).   They fixed a nasty resource leak as well as a few other things. 

    1.3.1 and 1.3.2 fixed CPU utilization issues, but I couldn’t leave my computer overnight with TopDesk running – it would consume more than 500MB of memory!  Frustrating.  Particularly when I would forget to shut down TopDesk before leaving my computer for the night.   Now, that is all taken care of, I can have TopDesk auto-start and leave it running. :-)

    -Nino

    No stupid cards..
    Filed under: ,
    PostedWednesday, July 06, 2005 9:01 AM by Nino

    I received my June 2005 issue of Visual Studio magazine yesterday and it had NONE of those stupid subscriptions cards in it!  Bravo, FTP!  For once, you’ve done something swell.   If you were wondering, I am one of those people who promptly flip through the magazine and tear all the subscription cards out. 

    FWIW, this issue also came with two CD/DVDs – Microsoft Mobile Applicaiton Development Toolkit (CD) and Microsoft Connected Systems Resource DVD.  Spiffy.

    -Nino

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