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Author: Steve Novoselac
Director of Digital Technology @TrekBikes, Father, Musician, Cyclist, Homebrewer
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Microsoft Beta Testing
In the last 2 days, I have been asked to test the new MSN Messenger 7.5 and the new Mail Beta (Next version of Hotmail). What a cool oppourtunity. I am running the new Messenger, but I am still waiting for my Hotmail to transfer to the new layout, hopefully within the week.
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Firefox and Internet Explorer
The debate between FF and IE is a hot one. Firefox is good, nice tabs, etc, etc. IE integrates well with Windows. I like FF, but one thing I don’t like is it is a 3rd party app. The more stuff you install on your machine, no matter what it is, is more upkeep, more problems can happen, etc. And, everytime you redo your machine you need to install everything again, etc.
Some people think that FF is a paneca for security. Well, it is not. That isn’t saying that IE is fort knox either, but they both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Lately I have been using IE and I am actually excited for IE7 and what IE has to offer in Longhorn.
In any event, it is your choice. Just like if you want to use ITunes or MusicMatch or Winamp to play your music. I choose to use Windows Media Player. I just like it. It integrates tightly with the OS, I like that.
It is analogous to a vehicle. You don’t go putting a Ford engine in a Chevy trunk, it just doesn’t happen. 3rd party after products are usually only used in a case where nothing else is available. Usually after some time, things catch on and the manufacturer creates the part and you can get it from them.
I see FF as an aftermarket part for my computer. I see IE as something like the CD player that comes with your vehicle, and FF as the cool pioneer CD player with all the add ons.
Scoble has been getting major flack for his post today, which I think is kind of wrong. He is just bringing to light news about a tech product. There are flaws in a very popular extension for FF, and also another programming issue about localization, so the FF team is having some problems this week. When Microsoft IE Team has issues, it is all over the news, and people talk about it. If the google toolbar has a flaw in just in IE, I am sure there would be rumblings all over the blogsphere.
The problem is the mindset of people that promote FF and Linux, and anything not Microsoft, they think that whatever they say is the only way, the correct way. They don’t think people should have a choice, they think that if you don’t use FF or Linux or OSS that you are less of a geek, less of a developer, things like that.
I think people shouldn’t be forced to use anything they don’t want to. Free will. I should be able to use whatever browser I choose, and stand behind it.
It reminds me of fights about C# vs VB.Net – neither one is better, it is a choice to use one or the other. The thing is, people that use VB.net are laid back, and don’t get all blown up about people that use C#. On the other hand, people that use C# look down on people that use VB.net, they think they are better than VB.Net developers. When it comes right down to it, C# and VB.Net are the same, why are we even fighting about it? It is your choice to program in whatever language you see fit.
Anyways, I am going off on a tangent, but the bottom line is, FF and IE are both good products, check them both out. Use whichever one you think it the best. But don’t be closed minded. When a new build for either comes out, check them out, see what is new, try them out. That is the fun of having a computer and being able to customize it. If you like one better, choose to use it!
Happy Geeking!!!
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Red Hat 9 – Firefox Install
So I installed Red Hat 9 today on a machine, and I was going to install Firefox (instead of using the built in Mozilla). I was in a terminal, trying to run ./firefox-installer-bin and I was getting a stupid xpistub error. Found out that you just need to run ./firefox-installer
doh!
Anyways, all is well 🙂
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Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Well, I finally beat MGS2, I have had the game for a few years, but never played it. A couple weeks ago I decided to give it a go, and finally beat it this afternoon. Took 15 hours. I only played on the “Normal” settings, but it still wasn’t a walk in the park. I remember playing MGS on PSOne back in the day, great game.
I think I will have to go out and buy MGS3: Snake Eater now!
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AJAX
Well, AJAX is the new buzzword these days in the development world, so I figured I should see what it is all about. Most of the web work I do is in classic ASP, so I figured I should see if I could do some async jscript in classic ASP. I got it working and I do have to say that it is pretty cool. Opens up alot of possiblities and could make the end user experience alot nicer. It should be easy to implement in ASP.Net or PHP too if you so wished.
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NewsGator 2.5 Upgrade – bad!
Ok, so I get an email from NewsGator, saying I can upgrade to 2.5 from 2.0 for free, so I go for it, install it, and now it doesn’t work. They say it is because I have .NET Beta 2 installed (I have the 1.1 and 1.0 installed also). They say no fix until the end of the week.
Did they not test the release? I can’t believe they didn’t see any issues before they released it to the public.
I am kind of peeved about it as now I don’t have NewsGator on my laptop at home.
Update: after many days of fiddling with newsgator support I have decided to install version 2.0. So I install it and it works great. I am waiting to see if any new version they have doesn’t have issues. This was one of the worst upgrades I have ever dealt with!
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Reincarnation (Crazy Eyes!!)
I’m sure a lot of people have seen the news about the runaway bride (Jennifer Wilbanks) – those are some crazy eyes.
Well, I was thinking about back in high school, there was the big “Heavens Gate” cult – and their leader, Marshall Applewhite – he had some crazy eyes. We pulled some good pranks on teachers with the Time magazine cover and some cutting and pasting.
Well, I looked up both of their images and I made a little comparison image. Maybe Marshall Applewhite has been reincarnated as Jennifer Wilbanks? You be the judge.
If you use Microsoft Outlook, you know that when you set up a meeting or appointment, you can select an option like “The 4th Monday of every month�. Well, today I had to correlate this to a SQL statement and it through me for a loop: Well, yeah, I used a loop. Check it out
DECLARE @tempDate DATETIME
DECLARE @maxDate DATETIME
SET @maxDate = ’07/01/2006′
SET @tempDate = ’07/01/2005′
WHILE @tempDate <= @maxDate BEGIN
SELECT DATEADD(wk,3,
DATEADD(wk, DATEDIFF(wk,0,
DATEADD(dd,6-DATEPART(DAY,@tempDate),@tempDate)
), 0))
SET @tempDate = DATEADD(mm,1,@tempDate)
END
I am getting the first Monday of the month in @tempDate and adding 3 weeks to it. Then I just loop through from @tempdate to @maXDate. Works like a champ.
So, I like I said earlier, I have been playing with the Personal Web Site Starter Kit (PWSK) in Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. I read these two articles:
· Introduction to the Personal Web Site Starter Kit
· Extending the Personal Web Site Starter Kit
I wanted to see if I could get my blog feed on the main site under the “What’s New Lately� section on the main page (default.aspx). Well first, I took the atom.xml file from my blog, and got the URL. In the process of doing this exercise, I noticed I couldn’t get the Atom feed to work, so I found a site (FeedJumbler) to convert the Atom feed to straight RSS feed, which works.
Then I dragged the XmlDataSource item from the toolbox to the page under the ObjectDataSource that is there by default. If you set the datasource to the URL and the XPath to “rss/channel/item�
In the HTML code for default.aspx, if you add this code
<h4>My Blog Latest Posts</h4>
<asp:DataList ID=”DataList2″ runat=”server”
DataSourceID=”XmlDataSource1″>
<ItemTemplate>
<p>
<h5><%#XPath(“title”)%></h5>
<p>
<%#XPath(“description”)%>
</p>
Posted by <%#XPath(“author”)%> @ <%#XPath(“pubDate”)%>
<a href=”<%#XPath(“link”)%>“><i>Link</i></a>
<hr/>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>
Then you should see your blog posts on your PWSK front page!
Steve Novoselac's Blog 