August 2006 Entries
Notes application development is probably more niche now than at any time in its history. If it wasn't for the fact that there are so many problems with Exchange in terms of architecture and security, Notes would be even more of a niche product because less people would be using Notes for mail.
That's a good quote. There's some other interesting reading to be had too: Eric Mack: GeekTD: Why don’t people get Notes?
One of the (possibly) unsung fixes in Visual Studio 2005 relates to the Solution Explorer's functionality when you're working on multiple projects (which should be most of the time). If you had files open from various projects, and you closed a file, the solution explorer would jump about and try to shift the context back to the project of the next open file which receives focus. That's a wordy way of describing it, but if you've seen it you'll know what I mean. This was pretty frustrating if you were scanning through a few files across the same solution in...
Last week I did a full days race driving out at Pukekohe courtesy of my brother. It was completely awesome. Anyway, as you leave they ask you to tell people about them, and so I am. The Ford Racing Experience is a hell of a lot of fun, and you learn a lot of about racedriving - mostly through just getting out on the track and driving (modified Ford Fiestas and Ford Kas). Heading down the back straight at speeds of close to 200k's approaching the hairpin turn is a lot of fun, although you do need to stop and...
Looks like Dell weren't the only ones who bought batteries from Sony.
Battery Exchange Program iBook G4 and PowerBook G4
Day Three: A short summary.
ASP.NET 2.0 Tips and Tricks
Scott Guthrie's session gave a good variety of tips and tricks - as the session title may have suggested! Taking apps offline using the app_offline.htm, tips for managing debug/release mode for production servers, handy HTML formatting settings, cross page postbacks, server side comments for aspx files, registering controls across an entire solution via web.config, validation groups, DefaultButtons, DefaultFocus, new clientside JavaScript features, the RSS Toolkit, and much much more.
WEB313 Building and Deploying Web Applications
A pretty basic session covering deployment projects, which seem like they're too basic to be much use to...
Day Two: A short summary.
Windows Vista Firewall (SEC311)
A Steve Riley session always means good things. By itself, the firewall in Vista isn't really that interesting. It looks like they've made some good improvements over the XP Firewall, the rules look a lot more flexible, and the UI looks pretty robust. Basically I went because Steve Riley's sessions never dissapoint. I also drew some cool pictures which apparently offer onlookers a portal into my mind.
Developing an incident response process (SEC208)
This was another Steve Riley session, which centered around developing a response process that should help you and your organisation respond to...
Day One: A short summary.
Keynote
It almost felt like a standard templated keynote. Nothing much in the way of technical demos, although the guy from TradeMe spoke well and had some interesting content. Last year they used the keynote to show some teasers from other sessions, and that was a bit lacking this year. Jacqi Brown's style of comedy really didn't suit the conference, and most of her attempts at humor felt pretty flat. She seemed a weird choice for an MC, especially as she spent pretty much all of her time onstage emphasising that she knew nothing about computers at...
Tech Ed is once again upon us! The lineup this year is looking pretty interesting, and hopefully SkyCity has learnt a few things about how to deal with large amounts of geeks in small spaces.
I'd like to say I'll be posting regular and insightful updates about sessions and events there, but I wont be! However I did want to mention the bag, as I picked mine up a few hours ago (one learns very quickly that popping in and registering on Sunday when there are 5 people about is much smarter than first thing Monday morning when the queue goes...
I've had a few weird things happen with my K750i over the past few months. The first is a hardware fault - it's joystick is on the way out, and it keeps thinking I want to press 'enter' when I'm actually moving the cursor around. Very frustrating, and it feels like it'll only be a matter of weeks or maybe months before the thing gives out entirely. However I've managed to solve a couple of minor annoyances, which I'll mention here in case it helps anyone.
First, is that my messaging memory kept filling up incredibly quickly. Initially, I seemed to...
Somewhere along the line I managed to break all the "Recent" links in the right hand side pane. I'd wondered what was causing all the "entry not found in index" errors that I saw from time to time, and now I know it was me. All fixed now, although I can't remember what change I could have made to cause that..
Pirate Party launches anonymous file-sharing service
After being initially impressed at this, your next comment might be along the lines of "Get a life". Next, you might realise that he's gone the extra mile in terms of realism - with all of those crappy PCs under his desk, that room will sound just like a jet engine plane.
The Evolution of Desktops
This article shows you how a lot of patience can yeild some great results. Seeing as I have none, I wont be seeing you on xbox live playing SF:2 for Xbox 360 Arcade, because I simply can't play using a controller.
The DOA stick is still tempting, however I think it's a weeeee bit over priced, and I like the look of the Anniversary SF:2 controller (which of course is only for standard xbox and/or PS2) much more.
Soldering Hell #1
Soldering Hell #2Technorati tags: Xbox 360
Ed Brill shows how out of touch with the community he is by suggesting no one uses POP3/IMAP services on their Domino servers. Ed, here's a little hint - those 2 little services are GREAT tools for customers who are in the middle of migrating away from Domino.
If you don't know what 'the AOL thing' refers to, then have a read of this post on publicaddress.net. It's a huge fuckup, and there's bound to be some fallout over it. But, what would be interesting is if the people at www.aolstalker.com are logging which queries are being run against their database of queries. How many layers deep can we go here before it starts to hurt your brain?
Xtra sent me a nice letter in the mail talking about their plans to offer unconstrained services. They say this will help "bandwidth intensive" things, such as online gaming. Urr, excuse me? Gaming is hardly bandwidth intensive, it just needs a low level of latency - should we really have to be explaning these sorts of things to Xtra/Telecom?
Following on from discussions about the Domino community collaborating to create a series of templates to ship free with Notes/Domino, I came across this link: Can the "Nifty Fifty" be revived? Should it? and check the date of the post: June 8th 2003.
The post echoes the exact sentiment of the current discussion. Looks like it got nowhere then either. It's very sad. IBM has had the power at any time to jump in here and get on board with this, and that's the key. As long as they're not involved then these templates won't be "out of the box"....
If so, then head on over here and contribute to the 'out of the box' project.Technorati tags: IBM, OpenNTF, Lotus, Notes, Sharepoint, Nifty Fifty
The walls of the office speak the truth.
Thanks sonic!
Technorati tags: IBM, Lotus, Notes, Domino