250,000 Superballs

Sony Bravis LCD TV Commercial.

Is awesomeness a word? It should be.

Why Bush cannot be impeached

Why [President] Bush is unimpeachable.

Wow, that's incredibly scary.

Medical Treatments @ Walmart

Yes, it's true;
http://www.medpointexpress.com/

Vista DB 2.1 for .NET

I read about Vista DB 2.1 for .NET on Scoble's blog.

Now, I'd like to think that I'm not normally a corporate shill, but I thought I would take a look anyway; I've been working on a .NET application that uses an embedded database for a while now, and I've been using Sqlite. It's Open Source Software, and that's generally a Good Thing. However, as good as Sqlite is, it has limitations, and it's not as easy to use as I would prefer.

So, anyway, I thought I would download the trial edition and take a look at Vista DB 2.1 for .NET. Now, in addition to not being a corporate shill, I also tend not to use the word "wow" too often. But lately, I just don't know; first Visual Studio 2005, and now this; that's two posts in a row!

For my needs, Vista DB 2.1 is perfect. The price is just right, it works as advertized, and the deployment strategy, which they call "Copy 'n Go! deployment", just, well, works! Not only that, but it's small; about 500KB. Unlike Sqlite (which doesn't even enforce data type constraints), it fully supports Sql-92, and, especially for an embedded database product, it actually feels like a real database.

There's more information here:
Vista DB 2.1 Overview
Vista DB 2.1 Blogger Offer!

Visual Studio 2005 Refactoring and Class Diagrams

Wow. Just... wow.

The Refactoring and Class diagramming tools in Visual Studio 2005 are absolutely mind-blowingly powerful and productive. It's impossible to describe. You just have to use it and see for yourself. There's just no other way. Pictures would not do these features justice. Even a video would not do it justice. You have to use this functionality for yourself to truely understand how powerful it is.

Even calling these things "features" and "functionality" seems somehow degrading. They're more like experiences.

Subversion Source Control

First off, I really really like Subversion. I've been using it for about three years now, since before it was even version 1.0, both professionally, as well as for personal projects. I've used it for both source control, as well as document management. It definately has it's strengths. It's rock solid, it's never once failed on me, and it's fairly performant. Open Source Software is great. It helps small entrepreneurs like myself keep down the overhead, and stay competative. Of course, all Open Source Software, or at least all the Open Source Software I've ever used has flaws or limitations. That's not to say that commercial software is perfect or without issue. That is certainly not the case. However, in the case of Subversion, I've started to run into problems that are preventing me from using it.

The first annoyance with Subversion is that it uses a hidden local directory structures to store all of the files and folders that it uses to keep track of the source code tree with. Now, this causes a well known issue with ASP.NET projects in that some of these folders create problems for IIS. This means ASP.NET developers need to install a special, un-supported version of the Subversion client tools which are not compatible with the other Subversion client tools. Not much of a problem, but still an annoyance. However, these hidden files that Subversion uses are, in and of themselves, a much bigger annoyance. They tend to rapidly balloon in size, and, for some reason, they can be very slow to copy around, probably because they are both fairly large in size, but probably also because they are special hidden files. Anyway, the point is, they're a pain!

The second annoyance with Subversion, and one that I've only started to see recently, is related to the fact that the codebases for some of the projects I am working on are starting to grow to the point where Subversion just grinds to a halt. In some cases, it's not even that the quantity of source code is in and of itself very large. However, the folder structure of the source code has grown to the point where, for whatever reason, Subversion slow down.

In addition to that, I've started to grow tired of the Subversion client tools themselves. Because they integrate directly into the Operating System, they have a tendancy to slow the system down.

Visual Studio 2005 Impressions

So, the more I use Visual Studio 2005, the more I like it! It's going to be very hard for me to go back to Visual Studio .NET 2003 next week Monday.

I particularly like the way that my new favorite source control tool, SourceGear Vault, integrates with Visual Studio 2005. I still have not figured out how to change from RCS to CVS style SCM, but I figure there must be a way. I hope there's a way.

At the same time, a lot of somewhat subtle things have changed with Visual Studio 2005. Commands and controls are not in exactly the same locations any more. And while I really love how you can host web sites and web services anywhere on your hard drive and not just under C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot, the various ways in which Solutions and Projects have changed is going to take a bit of getting used to.

Attention

OK, so Steve Gillmor's article is just full of marketing and so-called web 2.0 language. The average person would probably not be able to understand it. Actually, the average person would probably get bored and stop reading it altogether.

That said, it's actually a fairly interesting article. Or, at the very least, the concepts the author is talking about are very interesting. The world he portrays, in which the new micro- and mega- corporations participate in a kind of information sharing, is, to me at least, a very scary world. Now, granted, it's an open world, and it is hard to argue against openness, but the ability to focus in and target people so easily, and with increasing accuracy just leads us further down the path of global consumerism.

This is a more dangerous situation than "big brother" government keeping tabs on you. Now you are relying on the security of a globally accessible information system. A system that is, in many ways, trying to be as open as possible.

In my mind, that's a scary future.

Visual Studio 2005

Microsoft .NET 2.0, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 just shipped the other day, and I finally had a chance to install them and begin playing. I mean working. Yes.

VS 2005 is extremely impressive. I have tested the Beta versions before, but wow, the final version seems much more complete, not to mention more stable.

Anyway, time to get working on a few projects...

President Bush

Too funny
http://www.xroadsfilms.com/batescomedycentral/

Speaking of Windows Performance Counters

The Enterprise Library Performance Counters can be a pain to work with. There is not a lot of support for them, and there is a general lack of knowledge about them as well.

Windows Performance Counters using .NET

You might find this useful:

System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter cpuPerformanceCounter = new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter();
cpuPerformanceCounter.CategoryName = "Processor";
cpuPerformanceCounter.CounterName = "% Processor Time";
cpuPerformanceCounter.InstanceName = "_Total";
...
int cpuTime = Convert.ToInt32(cpuPerformanceCounter.NextValue());


Open Source hobby project coming soon ;-)

Microsoft BizTalk

Microsoft BizTalk 2004 can, at times, be a difficult and cumbersome beast to work with. While I am definately looking forward to the improvements coming in BizTalk 2006, it may not be an option for the client I am working with, at least not for a while.

Anyway, I plan to have a lot of BizTalk 2004 commentary coming over the next while. After all, one of the purposes of blogging is to share information, isn't it? Oh wait, now I'm blogging about blogging!

Google Base

http://base.google.com
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4373

Hmm, interesting...

Pinging base.google.com resolves to an IP, while pinging, for example, test.google.com or base.google.ca, does not resolve to an IP. That seems to confirm that there is at least something there.

iPod nano

So my iPod nano is totally scratched to bits. This is based on really careful usage. I never, repeat, never have it in my pocket with other items. I've dropped it once, but that was only a few inches onto a desktop, and that particular drop did not appear to create any damage by itself.

There's a fair amount of discussion going around the internet on this, and I wouldn't normally bring it up, except the scratching is starting to get pretty bad. It's to the point where the screen is difficult to read, and that's just annoying.

Web Projects & Small Businesses

Never build a web site for no reason.

An interesting article, and especially applicable to small businesses.

Martial Arts

I've been studying the martial art of Tae Kwon Do since January 2001 and the martial art of Hwarang since December 2002. Since then, I have reached my black-stripe belt. I should have tested for my first degree black belt several times know, but I've missed the last two tests due to an injury (a neck injury that resulted in a case of Bells Palsy) and an operation (an apendicitus).

Since recovering from these, I've missed out on a few months' classes, and as a result, I'm a little rusty and out of shape. However, I've started to re-attend my classes, although I am cutting back on my leadership role as an assistant instructor, and I am hoping to test for my black belt at the next black belt testing, which is still about six months away.

Anyway, this is actually going somewhere technology related. I have begun work on a new and very exciting project. While I have yet to finalize all of the details, the purpose of this project is to create the definitive online martial arts community. Yeah, I know, that's a really lofty goal. But I strongly feel it is an acheivable goal. I've been involved in the martial arts community for long enough now that I've noticed a few things. Unfortunetly, I'm not quite ready to go into more details just yet. You'll have to come back for that...