Adam Caudill

Kill CapsLock!

Most people I know have issues with the CapsLock key; with feelings ranging from annoyance to sheer hatred. More often than not, I fall into the sheer hatred side of things. I’ve played with various ideas to solve the problem. Everything from a system tray notification when CapsLock is on, to physically removing the evil key itself. After all these attempts, I have found I like none of them.

Enter waNOCAPS (from the Winadmin tools project), a registry modification to quickly and cleanly remap the CapsLock to a third Ctrl key. This is nice in that it’s a simple registry change, not something as ugly as a background program to alter the CapsLock state or value as many CapsLock killers use.

Detailed CSS Changes in IE7

As IE7 approaches release, the IE team has released a detailed list of the 200+ CSS changes that will appear in the final release. If you do any web development, this is a great time to read the list and audit the CSS that your sites use. IE7 breaks many of the old hacks used to work around the bugs in previous versions, so careful attention will be needed to ensure everything keeps working and looking as intended.

XML Notepad 2006

Microsoft’s Chris Lovett (of System.Xml fame) has released XML Notepad 2006 – a simple, easy to use, and free, XML editor. For those that regularly work with XML, an editor of this type can be an invaluable addition to your toolbox.

XML Notepad offers a basic set of features, great for those quick jobs where using an IDE or a more full-featured application would be overkill. While XML Notepad doesn’t offer a great range of features, it does offer some of the most important features needed to get the job done.

Hosting Woes and Down Time

Over the last couple days my various web sites have seen far more downtime than normal. My hosting provide, Radical Vision has apparently been having issues with the MySQL server that powers not only this blog, but even their support system.

Yep, you heard me right, the support system that you have to use to contact them about any issues relies on MySQL, the very same instance that everybody else uses. The same one that was down for several hours today. What’s the point of a support system if you can’t report issues?

VB.NET 2005 Performance Issues

Seeing slowdowns in large VB 2005 projects? Well, I think I just found the answer. There’s now a QFE released that may help address these issues. One of the applications I maintain is a 25,000 line solution made up of 9 projects, I’m hoping this fix will resolve the issues we’ve seen compiling it (not to mention the frequent compiler crashes).

Here’s the list of symptoms addressed:

• You experience a slow response time when you use single-step debugging. For example, the response time is slow when you press F10 to step into a line of code.
• You experience a slow response time when the Error List or the Task List is updated by Visual Studio 2005.
• You experience a slow response time when you use the IntelliSense feature.

Once I hear back from Microsoft support, I’ll post details if it makes any difference.

WordPress 2.0.4

It’s upgrade time again, WordPress 2.0.4 has been released (changed files list & zip), and after a fairly painless upgrade (instructions, though I didn’t follow the method they suggest), seems quite stable. This release sports over 60 changes, clearing up a fair number of small issues, as well as a few security fixes.

If you have a WordPress powered blog, it’s worth the upgrade.

What It Takes To Be A Great Developer

Recently a programmer I know decided that it was time for a career change, leaving the IT field entirely. This gave me cause to think; what does it take to be a great developer. Many people go through school believing they have what it takes, only to receive a rude awaking once they enter the real world.

Before I go on, I think it’s important to define what I mean by developer, and the differences between a developer and a programmer. Here are a few key aspects that every great developer must possess:

Useful Notepad Tip

Here’s a great little feature I just heard about to make the always useful though mostly featureless Notepad utility even more useful. If you create a new file and put “.LOG” (case-sensitive) as the first thing in the file, each time you open the file after that it will append a timestamp to the end of the file. While you could just press the “F5” button to insert the timestamp, this does have the advantage of added simplicity.

In Comes The Schwag

The third edition of ValleySchwag has arrived. Yet again, there is a nice collection of goodies – well worth the membership fee.

While a bit less loaded than last time , I’m still quite impressed with the package they’ve put together. The two big hits this time are the rather cool shirt from imeem and the laptop bag (see below) from MI6. While the bag doesn’t have the padding of my regular bag, it’s a lot lighter, so I know it’ll see some use.