I just ran across an announcement for a new Microsoft product, Office Accounting 2007 Express. This is a free, and surprisingly full featured accounting package aimed at small businesses. If you run a business, or plan on starting one, this looks like a great addition to your tech-toolkit. I’ll post more on this again once I have time to review it more thoroughly.
The coding guidelines at my job have a rather interesting requirement: code must be wrapped at 100 characters. If you fail to meet this on any line of code, you fail the code review. In the year I’ve worked at this company I’ve learned to guess how long a line is quite well. As of today, no more guessing.
Here’s a quick registry hack to add a vertical line in the editor at any column you wish, just double click the REG file and you’re set. The contents of the file look something like this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
VisualStudio\8.0\Text Editor]
"Guides"="RGB(128, 128, 128) 100"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
VisualStudio\7.1\Text Editor]
"Guides"="RGB(128, 128, 128) 100"
The setting works something like this: The RGB() part defines the color of the line, the number at the end defines the column the line is displayed at. If your style defines a limit on the length of a line, this is a great way to see at a glance if you’re going too long.
Note: This adds the key for both Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005.
Update: The original REG file I linked to had a formatting error that caused the data to import improperly. I’ve replaced the file with a working copy.
This weekend I’ve made a few upgrades to the site, a software upgrade, a few new plugins as well as some tweaks to clean things up. Hopefully these changes will make the site a bit more useful, and remove some clutter from the main page, so that you are presented with content, and all the ‘extras’ will be tucked away.
WordPress 2.0.5
I’ve upgraded to the newly released WordPress 2.0.5, the software that power this site. As a rule, WordPress is an extremely easy install. This upgrade would have been simple, had I not forgotten about a few core files that I modified. After reverting to the previous version, I had the files patched and uploaded within a few minutes.
All in all, this process went quite well. The database performance updates made the install well worth it.
New Plugins
I’ve added a couple new plugins to add some additional functionality, here’s the list:
- Auto Shutoff Comments – This is a handy plugin that closes comments after 30-days, this will help cut-back on the spam that comes through.
- Related Posts – This, in theory, adds links to similar posts below each post (when viewed on its own page, not on the home page). So far I’ve not been completely impressed with the links, but I’ll leave it for a while and see how it does.
- Socible – This is one I really had to debate, there’s not much more I hate than sites that remind me of a NASCAR race car. I’ve set this up to only display on the single post view, and will only offer Reddit, digg and del.icio.us. This is another one I’ll keep for a bit then see if it’s worth keeping around.
New Content & Cleanup
I’ve rebuilt my about page to include some addition data and take a more readable format. I’ve also added a new page that details my bayonet collection. To clean things up slightly, I’ve updated the code that adds the Technorati tags so that it will only show in the single post view, and no longer appear on the main page.
Those of you that are into computer gadgets have surely heard of the now quite famous Optimus keyboard – the (once) OLED powered keyboard that has caused quite a stir. Recent, word came from the team that Optimus will not be using OLEDs, the belief since then is that it will use LCD instead. Well, after many, many months of waiting to see proof that Optimus will live, finally, we see a key.
This is the first real sign of life, and I believe a good indicator that we will indeed see it released. Personally, I can’t wait. I’m hoping that we’ll see more soon.
For those of you that are interested, IE7 has been released. After following the progress of the next generation of IE since March of last year, I’ve got to say, I’m really excited to see it go public. The only real surprise for me with this announcement is that many expected the Mozilla Foundation to release Firefox 2.0 prior to Internet Explorer’s big release, yet no word from them. I’m wondering if there were more issues in the RC2 release that delayed the launch.
It’s good to know that the security and compatibility issue of the older versions of IE can now fade away into the past (where they belong).
For those looking to get into the startup/ISV scene, Paul Graham’s latest work is a great read. The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups takes an interesting look at some of the larger issues to avoid while forming a new company. Personally, I’d call this one a must read.
