Adam Caudill

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -Free

I like free stuff, I really like free stuff from Microsoft, as they normally have good free stuff, and this time, it’s a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, and a couple other goodies. Here’s the list:

• Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Standard Edition (Not for Resale)
• Five chapters of Programming ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference, by Dino Esposito
• A 30-day hosting account to try out your custom Web applications
• Microsoft Developer Security DVD with how-tos, white papers, tools, webcasts, and code samples that demonstrate how to write more secure code
• A 50% discount on a Microsoft Certified Professional Exam so you can add your new skills to your resume
• A voucher that allows you to buy Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with an MSDN® Professional Subscription at renewal pricing (a $400 savings)

Not a bad grab bag if I say so myself. Want the details?

End on an Era

Magazines are great, I really like just being able to pick one up, lay back and do some reading. Development magazines, not so great. They tend to have a higher price, far less content, and more ad pages than content pages. Eric Sink thinks they are dying, and based on the announcement that “Software Development” is being dissolved, looks like he’s right.

It’s too bad really, I almost hate to see them go, but I have to ask, do they really have any relevance in the modern development world?

Where’s the service?

When I buy something, I expect support. When I buy something expensive, I expect really good support. That may be asking too much, but that’s just how I think. Now, when I contact the vendor for support, I expect to talk to somebody that understands the product. When I bring up an issue that gets me on a conference call with a Vice President and a Project Manager, I expect them to give me accurate data.

Common Sense Email

While reading a post on Paul’s blog, I came across a rather interesting guide to “better email” – while I tend to disagree with ever deleting an email as the author suggests often, this looks like a worthy read.

SSW Rules to Better Email

WordPress Update

Yesterday the WordPress team announced a new version of WordPress, the blogging software that powers this site, that resolves a couple security issues. So me, being the security conscious person that I am, decided I had to upgrade, that was a two hour adventure.

Due to some of the unique aspects of my theme, I’ve had to modify some of the core WordPress files, that turned out to be a bad idea. I had to convert all of the PHP & JS files to DOS format (after finding a Windows version of unix2dos) and then convert the diff file to DOS format, then the patching began. Getting the patch to apply to my modified files turned out to be an interesting experience, to say the least. Though after about 30 minutes of tweaking, the patch finally applied cleanly.

The Magician

Rent-A-Coder attracts all types, to that I’m sure everybody can agree. It not only receives traffic from legitimate users seeking professional assistance and are willing to pay for it, but also from people seeking code gurus that work for peanuts. This is a case where even peanuts might be asking a bit much.

Here’s the vital details:

• ASP-based solution.
• Converts HTML to a PDF file.
• Does not require the end user to have Acrobat installed.
• Can be completed in two hours.

This project is flagged as an emergency, with a requested turn-around of two hours. Not leaving much time is he? The other note is that the page should generate a PDF, yet doesn’t require Acrobat be installed to view this file. That’s going to be a challenge.

New Windows XP Theme

I’ve stumbled upon a great new XP Theme (actually from Windows Media Centre 2005), seems this has been around for a while as a modified version of the WMC theme, though it’s now been officially released by Microsoft for XP.

It’s certainly worth the download.

How IT Projects Really Work

This was sent to me earlier, it sums things up in such a great way.

It’s Official – IE7 is cool

Today I decided to go ahead and install IE 7 Beta 2, expecting of the ugly browser I dealt with while using Beta 1, this is what I found instead. After so long with IE as the “ugly duckling” of the browsing world, the Internet Explorer team seems to have built something with some degree of quality. While there’s still a lot needed to secure its weakening position in the market, this will have a real impact.