Kids Programming Language

KPL.

This looks quite impressive. A bit more graphical and fun than LOGO.

VS 2005 and Firefox

If you have Firefox as your default browser when you install VS2005 and then you notice that VS2005 is trying to run Firefox all the time then look at this.

With 'File-Browse with' you can set the browser you want. Changing your default browser after installing doesn't seem to inform VS2005.

Yipee!

Currently downloading VS 2005 Prfessional Edition... 3 hours to go.

Running just to stay in the same place

There's a new generation of Microsoft Certifications...

I knew it would happen. I had hoped to have passed at least one exam first.

DDD

Another excellent Developer day at Microsoft on Saturday.

It would be an understatement to say there were some good presentations. There were some brilliant sessions, particularly on Avalon, Indigo and XML.

There were plenty of other sessions I wanted to attend but didn't. It was difficult to have to choose one track out of five. I am still kicking myself for not attending the XP Planning game. I do think it would be good to have a whole day devoted to this subject though.

MCAD things

Certifications to include Simulation Testing?!!? View demo.

And, a practice test demo for 70-315.

The Walrus blog

On behalf of Odobenidae everywhere my brother Chris has started blogging. His blog has comments and trackbacks. Why doesn't mine?

CSS tips

CSS tips and more

Install MiniOddie

Fresh from the Beeb... A mini Bill Oddie

Now, back to MCAD studies.

Developer Day

The TripleD Developer day agenda is looking good. Last time the difficulty was deciding which sessions to attend. This time you get to vote for sessions in advance which may help...

Testing Private methods

An article on testing private methods. I don't like the idea of using Reflection to do this. But the alternative looks complicated too.

I have more sympathy for the idea of keeping classes simple. If there are a lot of private methods that are difficult to test through the public interface then perhaps it is time to refactor.

Too busy to blog...

No time to blog, I'm busy installing different versions of SQL Server. First I tried the Enterprise version, but that doesn't work on XP. So then I tried the MSDE but that didn't seem to be what I wanted either. So now I am trying SQL Server Developer edition which does run on XP.

With any luck I'll have some time for studying soon...

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper II

Register now.

Small earthquake in Wells, no pigeons injured

An interesting article in the Wells Journal. A suspect package was delivered to the job centre, leaking a foul smelling substance. The police were called and in this time of heightened national insecurity they turned out in force with the fire brigade and declared it a CBRN(Chemical, Biological, Radioactive or Nuclear) type of incident.

As the city centre was closed the traffic built up and a local greengrocer, tired of being asked by slowly passing motorists what the problem was, put a message on his chalkboard outside the shop:- "Bomb in Wells JobCentre".

Later in the afternoon the police paid the greengrocer a visit, and seized the blackboard under the Prevention of Terrorism Act saying that it was "evidence".

I'm not sure what it could be evidence of.

The newspaper also reports 70 portions of Fish and chips were bought from Tuckers fish and chip shop for the Fire Brigade and 18 portions for the Police.

No jobcentre staff were harmed.

Extreme .NET

Craig Murphy's notes on Dr. Neil Roodyn's Extreme .NET presentation in Edinburgh.

Installing ASP.NET 1.1

This link tells you how to install .NET 1.1 on IIS. You need this to create Web apps.

Google Maps

I have been playing around with the Google Maps API and have created my very own photo album / map. The API is nice, but Javascript is horrible.

I have managed to get it working so that I can just edit an XML file to add new pictures. It would be nice to have a way of selecting the year and having just the markers for that year showing.

There is a strange effect where the information displayed in the InfoWindows sometimes overflows, but when you redisplay the InfoWindow it resizes correctly to contain the information properly. Not sure what is causing that.

AJAX Matters

Apparently AJAX does matter.

Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a free Visual Studio plugin that can compile MSIL to Java. So you can write in .NET and deploy your application to Linux.

Fragile Software Development

This is brilliant. The Fragile Manifesto. Read it and weep.

All we need now is a Fragile Alliance...

I really enjoyed this line:-
"A professional project manager, particularly one who is adept at creating and maintaining Gantt charts using Microsoft Project or another similar tool, is the most valuable person on any project."

When you get tired of this nonsense, this is where you can find the Agile Manifesto.