April 2005 Entries
A while back we (us VB devs) were told that there will be no refactoring support in Visual Basic 2005. Although disappointed, I was looking forward to edit and continue and generics. But low and behold Microsoft has surprised us! Refactoring will be supported via a FREE download. Carl Franklin shows off the new refactoring tools in a two part video (part one, part two). The implementation of these tools is impressive. Modal dialog boxes are a thing of the past replaced by an elegant flash-esque interface. The refactoring tools allow you to modify your code without getting in...
Somehow I missed this. I use the Component-based Scalable Logical Architecture (CSLA) to build business objects. We also use CodeSmith for object generation. Developer Cole Shelton has created a CSLA Object Generator that use CodeSmith on the backend to generate business objects. The generator allows you to create multiple objects and you can base your objects on more than one database table. I will be testing this guy shortly.
Recently, I had to rewrite this fairly large stored procedure. This stored proc aggregated a fairly large amount of data hence the reason we had to rewrite it. (Although, this was not the reason that was communicated to me about the rewrite. So, of course I went down the aggregated path then got into a heated argument about it. Talk to me people!) While rewriting it, it was clear that nested stored procedures would be the best approach to take. Of course while debugging it I ran into the "An INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested" problem. While researching...
I just saw on the TechEd website today that TechEd is sold out! Whew! Got in just a nick of time! Those videos must of done some good...
Now Playing: Falling Up - Symmetry
I finally removed Virtual Server and installed Virtual PC. I also had the opportunity to install two virtual machines and SQL Sever 2005. I was also about to install Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 until I found out that Beta 2 was released on Friday. Looks like I'll be downloading a couple of DVD's very shortly.
I’ll be trying my hand a skinning DotNetNuke this weekend. Here are some links: Skinning Guide Post Skinning Whitepaper Post
I have installed Virtual Server 2005 thinking it was the upgrade for Virtual PC 2004. I guess I was wrong. Brian Randell (who is an excellent speaker) has written a post describing the differences between the two products. Let the uninstalling commence! …I wanted to post a few differences between the two products. The biggest difference is purpose. Virtual PC is designed primarily for running desktop operating systems & applications in interactive mode. Can Virtual PC run server operating systems? Yes. Will Microsoft support you? No. Virtual Server is designed to run server operating systems & server applications in...
I saw this and I did a double take. It looks like that there is a team of developers that will be unifying the N-tools (NUnit, NAnt, etc) under one project called NTeam. It sounds like a good idea after the blogsphere blew up (see Rick LaPlante, Eric Sink, and Eric Bowen) one the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) pricing announcement. I just can’t see NTeam 1) replacing Visual Studio 2) replicating the VSTS feature set. The major problem that I’ve had with the N-Tools is the documentation. When MS releases VSTS it will have numerous knowledge base articles, magazine articles, a...
I really need to look into Google’s AdSense. Pirillo talks about how he loves AdSense. And this guy, Joel Comm, proclaims how he makes $500 a day with AdSense. He’s even written an e-book on how you can earn more with AdSense. You just might see context sensitive ads on Jorriss.com very shortly.
Update 4/14/05 11:23 PM: Chris Pirillo uploaded a podcast where he interviews Mr. $500-a-day.
Now Playing: Third Day - Sing a Song
Cory Smith has developed a VB.Net game Checkers Solitaire. It’s a game of skill involving jumping checkers diagonally over another. It’s free so try it! Via Duncan.Now Playing: Rich Mullins - Ready For The Storm
Scott Hanselman writes about a new task switcher called TopDesk. It uses the corners of the screen as “hotspots” to scale all of the windows to fit on to the screen. All in all it works well. An for $9.95 I might purchase it. Scott has also made a video of TopDesk in action.
Too many of my friends have no idea what RSS is. So here's a definition that I found off Goggle, RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication. There is also a FAQ that will answer the rest of your questions. Recently, Scoble has posted a nice write up on RSS and news aggregators that should clear things up even more. So read up an join the world of syndication!
Here are some articles on how to encrypt connection strings in .Net.
Encrypting Connection Strings in Web.configINFO: Usage of Strong Credentials to Store Connection Strings in the SessionState Element
Lately, I’ve been completely infatuated with Google’s Gmail. It’s fast, free, and you get 2 GB of storage space. It also handles spam pretty well. I was using iMail that my web host provides and Microsoft Outlook. But that was cumbersome since Outlook wouldn’t let me open multiple instances (I always have my work e-mail open). Also, iMail wasn’t the most user friendly interface that I’ve ever seen. So, I decided to link my Digital Visuals e-mail account with my Gmail account. This turned out to be easier that I thought. First, I forwarded all of my e-mails to my...
Asynchronous JavaScript + XML or AJAX is a new model for programming web sites. It uses JavaScript to call XML from a server to load data onto a page dynamically. One of my favorite sites, Gmail, uses AJAX to grab data from an e-mail server. AJAX is an interesting bit of technology but I don't see much growth for it unless better tools are made available to develop AJAX application in. JavaScript is a decent language but I hate debugging it. It's a pain. If Microsoft jumped on the AJAX bandwagon then maybe it could be a viable way of...