Houston we have a problem. As if Excel wasn't bad enough, Microsoft is expanding what it can do. I liked the fact that Excel can't have more than 64k rows thank-you-very-much.
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/26/474258.aspx
Anyway, for the IT developer: nothing good will come from this.
See this for referance:
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/434.aspx
September 30, 2005
September 28, 2005
I hate Fall
...and Spring for that matter. Is hate strong enough of a word? Loath. Despise.
I guess if you multiply all of them together you come close. Though I will say that Spring is a bit higher on my seasonal hit list than Fall. At least in Fall you get the NFL.
I know this comes as a shock to many people. I see it on their faces whenever I say it -- including my wife's. Other people see Fall as the glorious end to Summer. The colors of the leaves, the cooler days, and occasional rain (it really doesn't rain at all during Summer here in southern Idaho). And Spring is the great season of renewal and freshness. New leaves, the first flowers, spring showers, and warmer days….
I see two unfortunate similarities between the two seasonal changes that have, and will continue, to make my life very unpleasant. Which means, both seasons are bearable, but I have the general attitude of a starved bear in the meantime.
First is rain. More importantly, what the rain brings with it: barometer changes. Even here in the relatively placid weather of Boise, come Spring and Fall the barometer start to jump faster a 6 year old on trampoline. Some friends of mine have one of those old fashioned barometers that is a glass jar with a spout. You measure the barometer changes by watching the water go up and down the spout. The darn thing about explodes, turning into a spigot, this time of year.
So does my right knee. Do to an over-zealous youth of work, sports, a genetic defect, and an ugly surgery, walking this time of year can be really painful. Heck, sitting and laying in bed is uncomfortable. Every time the barometric pressure starts moving I start popping enough ibuprofen to make a horse dizzy. Realistically, when I start getting a lot of nose bleeds, I know it is time to cut back.
So now I'm scouting out elevators and trying to avoid well meaning gockers -- e.g. "Oh, your limping, did you hurt yourself?". Me: "Ya, about 11 years ago, but you should see the other guy!"
Truth: the other guy is fine, it happened in a high school wrestling tournament my senior year, the other guy nearly ripped my knee out of its socket (everything was legal). That wasn't the only thing that happened to that knee, but that was the biggest. I don't really mind the concern I get from people I pass by, I just hate being made a spectacle and having to explain my history to people I don’t know very well.
Second is temperature change. This one does not affect me like it used too, but the psychological remnants are still there. I used to work on a dairy, for 15 years, feeding the newborns. I fed every heifer produced on that dairy until it was about 3 months old. I got pretty good at it too, during Summer and Winter. But every Spring and Fall there was one thing that always happened: they got sick. Sometimes all of them at once. Colds, flue, diarrhea, you name it. Did you know diarrhea kills? Not real pleasant either. The temperature fluctuation is what usually set it off. Cows are just fine in stable temperatures, but when it is 80 degrees and sunny one day and 50 and windy the next...bad things happen.
Luckily, I don't work on a dairy anymore, but I am forced to visit (it is a family thing). And because of the first point, I'm very glad I don't work on a diary anymore, I don't think I could physically take it anymore. Diary life doesn't have a lot of real physical labor anymore, large tractors and trucks have taken care of that. But there is enough to close that occupation out for me.
That’s all right. I didn't like cows anyway. As for the knee: ibuprofen and beer make a nice combo.
I guess if you multiply all of them together you come close. Though I will say that Spring is a bit higher on my seasonal hit list than Fall. At least in Fall you get the NFL.
I know this comes as a shock to many people. I see it on their faces whenever I say it -- including my wife's. Other people see Fall as the glorious end to Summer. The colors of the leaves, the cooler days, and occasional rain (it really doesn't rain at all during Summer here in southern Idaho). And Spring is the great season of renewal and freshness. New leaves, the first flowers, spring showers, and warmer days….
I see two unfortunate similarities between the two seasonal changes that have, and will continue, to make my life very unpleasant. Which means, both seasons are bearable, but I have the general attitude of a starved bear in the meantime.
First is rain. More importantly, what the rain brings with it: barometer changes. Even here in the relatively placid weather of Boise, come Spring and Fall the barometer start to jump faster a 6 year old on trampoline. Some friends of mine have one of those old fashioned barometers that is a glass jar with a spout. You measure the barometer changes by watching the water go up and down the spout. The darn thing about explodes, turning into a spigot, this time of year.
So does my right knee. Do to an over-zealous youth of work, sports, a genetic defect, and an ugly surgery, walking this time of year can be really painful. Heck, sitting and laying in bed is uncomfortable. Every time the barometric pressure starts moving I start popping enough ibuprofen to make a horse dizzy. Realistically, when I start getting a lot of nose bleeds, I know it is time to cut back.
So now I'm scouting out elevators and trying to avoid well meaning gockers -- e.g. "Oh, your limping, did you hurt yourself?". Me: "Ya, about 11 years ago, but you should see the other guy!"
Truth: the other guy is fine, it happened in a high school wrestling tournament my senior year, the other guy nearly ripped my knee out of its socket (everything was legal). That wasn't the only thing that happened to that knee, but that was the biggest. I don't really mind the concern I get from people I pass by, I just hate being made a spectacle and having to explain my history to people I don’t know very well.
Second is temperature change. This one does not affect me like it used too, but the psychological remnants are still there. I used to work on a dairy, for 15 years, feeding the newborns. I fed every heifer produced on that dairy until it was about 3 months old. I got pretty good at it too, during Summer and Winter. But every Spring and Fall there was one thing that always happened: they got sick. Sometimes all of them at once. Colds, flue, diarrhea, you name it. Did you know diarrhea kills? Not real pleasant either. The temperature fluctuation is what usually set it off. Cows are just fine in stable temperatures, but when it is 80 degrees and sunny one day and 50 and windy the next...bad things happen.
Luckily, I don't work on a dairy anymore, but I am forced to visit (it is a family thing). And because of the first point, I'm very glad I don't work on a diary anymore, I don't think I could physically take it anymore. Diary life doesn't have a lot of real physical labor anymore, large tractors and trucks have taken care of that. But there is enough to close that occupation out for me.
That’s all right. I didn't like cows anyway. As for the knee: ibuprofen and beer make a nice combo.
September 22, 2005
Delphi components for download
It would not be too much to say that I still dabble in Delphi. It is a nice platform, not quite as object oriented as I would like, but very mature. The great thing was that Delphi could do all of the things that VB could not. Like build a fully featured UI, and create COM DLLs and OCXs.
--ok point taken, technically you could create that stuff with VB, but you had to spend a LOT more time to do it, and VB had a number of limitations that could not be overcome without going down into C++. Like accessing OLEDB interfaces, you couldn't, you had to use ADO.
Anyway, over the years Delphi has collected a large number of freely downloadable component libraries that were quite usable. These were created by hobiest and professionals alike to accomplish any number of tasks. But a great number of them are specialized UI controls. A large group of them used to be commercial controls, but the parent company didn't think they were making enough money on them so the open sourced them. Here is a list of them that I keep track of on Source Forge:
This is by no means a comprehensive list of component libraries, but it is a good start.
What this also is, is a list of things that .NET still needs out there. I love the .NET Framework and C#, but there are still a lot of things that I can do in Delphi that are not quite available yet in .NET.
Of course, maybe this is just me telling myself to get off of the sidelines and get to coding.... My wife would kill me! OK, back to hoping.
--ok point taken, technically you could create that stuff with VB, but you had to spend a LOT more time to do it, and VB had a number of limitations that could not be overcome without going down into C++. Like accessing OLEDB interfaces, you couldn't, you had to use ADO.
Anyway, over the years Delphi has collected a large number of freely downloadable component libraries that were quite usable. These were created by hobiest and professionals alike to accomplish any number of tasks. But a great number of them are specialized UI controls. A large group of them used to be commercial controls, but the parent company didn't think they were making enough money on them so the open sourced them. Here is a list of them that I keep track of on Source Forge:
- Abreva Link A compression library featuring zip, cab, tar, and others
- Essencials Link A lot of UI controls
- Flash Filer Link A SQL engine, complete with server and client controls.
- Lock Box Link An encryption library
- OnGuard Link A library for creating Demo versions of you apps
- Orpheus Link A monster library of visual controls
- Shell Shock Link A library for extending Windows Explorer
- SysTools Link Lots of specialized functions and procedures.
- Visual Planit Link Outlook style calendar controls
- Jedi Code Library Link From the good folks at Delphi-Jedi. Lots of visual controls, functions, procedures, classes, etc.
- SysEdit Link The BEST open source, syntax highlighting text editor out there. (Sharp Develop take note)
- DUnit Link Just like NUnit, JUnit and the like.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of component libraries, but it is a good start.
What this also is, is a list of things that .NET still needs out there. I love the .NET Framework and C#, but there are still a lot of things that I can do in Delphi that are not quite available yet in .NET.
Of course, maybe this is just me telling myself to get off of the sidelines and get to coding.... My wife would kill me! OK, back to hoping.
September 21, 2005
Thats it, I've converted to Avalon
Automatic spell checking.
If you have a TextBox or a RichTextBox, set IsSpellCheckEnabled to true and VIOA: spell checking.
So that seals it. I'm converting to WinFX as soon as it comes out.
http://blogs.msdn.com/marcelolr/archive/2005/09/21/472407.aspx
If you have a TextBox or a RichTextBox, set IsSpellCheckEnabled to true and VIOA: spell checking.
So that seals it. I'm converting to WinFX as soon as it comes out.
http://blogs.msdn.com/marcelolr/archive/2005/09/21/472407.aspx
September 15, 2005
PDC and information overload
This is getting bad. I'm not even attending PDC this year and I'm already suffering from information overload! Near burnout at this point. I mean, how am I supposed to get any work done with all of this new stuff being thrown out there.
Though, I really like what Microsoft is doing this year. More of the content is being delivered online for all the world to see. Not that it is a good substitute for actually being at PDC, but for those of us not so blessed to be there: it is better than nothing.
Where to get information about what is going on at PDC? Well, MSDN is the best place to start. There is a page there dedicated to the PDC and all of the technologies being unvieled.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/
And there are quite a few. Plus some old standards, like Office. You need to watch Bill Gates's Key Note address. Really, you do. Office got a major UI redesign (think no menus, and an expanded toolbar that looks like a tab list).
The next best place to look for new stuff: Channel 9. They have videos on Sparkle (shows what Microsoft has in mind for next generation UI), SharePoint, IE7, and a lot of other stuff. Actually, Channel 9 videos has an RSS that I subscribe to and check on a regular basis anyway.
After that: Microsoft Blogs -- http://blogs.msdn.com/
This is the best place to find new information about LINQ right now...but it is still kind of ambiguous to me right now. I understand what they are trying to do, but it is some pretty technical stuff (integrating SQL into your normal programming language -- C#/VB.NET), and I'm missing a boatload of details on this one. Oh well, this one isn't coming out until C# 3. So I've got some time.
That is the real confusing part. Microsoft is introducing a lot of new technologies, but I have seen any timelines for them. I expect some of them are coming soon (this year) but others are going to be a while (1 to 2 years). But I can't always tell which is which. And, as always, Microsoft isn't saying how much we can expect to pay for some of this new wizardry. We are just supposed to be happy it is out there (Sparkle is a prime example of this).
Oh well, time will tell.
Though, I really like what Microsoft is doing this year. More of the content is being delivered online for all the world to see. Not that it is a good substitute for actually being at PDC, but for those of us not so blessed to be there: it is better than nothing.
Where to get information about what is going on at PDC? Well, MSDN is the best place to start. There is a page there dedicated to the PDC and all of the technologies being unvieled.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/
And there are quite a few. Plus some old standards, like Office. You need to watch Bill Gates's Key Note address. Really, you do. Office got a major UI redesign (think no menus, and an expanded toolbar that looks like a tab list).
The next best place to look for new stuff: Channel 9. They have videos on Sparkle (shows what Microsoft has in mind for next generation UI), SharePoint, IE7, and a lot of other stuff. Actually, Channel 9 videos has an RSS that I subscribe to and check on a regular basis anyway.
After that: Microsoft Blogs -- http://blogs.msdn.com/
This is the best place to find new information about LINQ right now...but it is still kind of ambiguous to me right now. I understand what they are trying to do, but it is some pretty technical stuff (integrating SQL into your normal programming language -- C#/VB.NET), and I'm missing a boatload of details on this one. Oh well, this one isn't coming out until C# 3. So I've got some time.
That is the real confusing part. Microsoft is introducing a lot of new technologies, but I have seen any timelines for them. I expect some of them are coming soon (this year) but others are going to be a while (1 to 2 years). But I can't always tell which is which. And, as always, Microsoft isn't saying how much we can expect to pay for some of this new wizardry. We are just supposed to be happy it is out there (Sparkle is a prime example of this).
Oh well, time will tell.
September 13, 2005
Code Camp coming to Boise
So this is sort of official now: Code Camp is coming to Boise. Probably in the late February 2006 time frame. You know, well after the Christmas and New Year hang over, but before Spring Break (might be close to Mardi Gras, but I don't think that will be quite the same this time around).
Other than that, there isn't much to report yet. We need to nail down a date and a location. We know it will be over a weekend, and the admission will be free. But as to how many speakers....
So now comes the great quest for topics and speakers. More than likely I will giving a talk. I am currently leaning towards a developing with ADOMD.NET and Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 topic. I also want to get started with the Data Mining features in SQL Server 2005, so that could also be a good topic. But then again, I still want to play around with Phidgets -- this might be just the excuse I'm looking for. Sigh, so many toys, so little time.
Other than that, there isn't much to report yet. We need to nail down a date and a location. We know it will be over a weekend, and the admission will be free. But as to how many speakers....
So now comes the great quest for topics and speakers. More than likely I will giving a talk. I am currently leaning towards a developing with ADOMD.NET and Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 topic. I also want to get started with the Data Mining features in SQL Server 2005, so that could also be a good topic. But then again, I still want to play around with Phidgets -- this might be just the excuse I'm looking for. Sigh, so many toys, so little time.
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