March 2006 - Posts - Derek Adkins

March 2006 - Posts

MSDN Magazine on CD as well as "Best Of" VS2005 and SQL2005 articles.

Here's a link to purchase (well... pay for the shipping costs only) some quite nifty CD's from the MSDN magazine:

http://gallery.bcentral.com/GID5121612DD441701-Shop.aspx

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Posted 29 March 2006 11:52 AM by derek | no comments
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Vostok Station

I quite like free stuff, so when I came across this link today, I had to share it with all you guys.

Vostok Station is a free e-book written by Kerry Plowright.  It's a novel along the lines of Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Steve Coonts. So if you enjoy reading "military style" novels and have a spare weekend, go get it!

I haven't read it myself yet, but I plan to soon!

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Guesswork and the UI

I found this post about icons and text in the UI, and I can also relate.  In any case, it makes an interesting read:

Guesswork and the UI found on Thomas Willams blog

It's also worthwhile to read through to this link as well: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000523.html

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Posted 24 March 2006 10:06 AM by derek | no comments
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Making websites look good.

I have a question. What other tools do you guys use to make normal webpages look better than what is available in Visual Studio?

Sure you can do some nice things with VS, but there are huge limitations.

For example, I want to have a tabbed navigation bar with rounded corners, and I would like some "flash type" transitions between menu options etc.

I would think a tool like HomeSite to do general HTML would work nicely. (Although VS is quite good at this.)
And maybe Macromedia Flash to do the fancy graphic effects.  (But that means people need to have the Flash plugin installed to see the page as intended)

I haven't had the opportunity (or the RAM!  :p  ) to see what VS 2005 has bundled with it, but I'm now getting frustrated with my websites looking "bland".

Any suggestions as to what worked for you?

UPDATE:  For example, I want to do things like Community Server has got. The scrolling menu on the left on Control Panel.

Windows Vista to ship in 33 different versions.

From BBspot:

Windows Vista ships in 33 versions.

Some monday humour to cheer us up.

New VW GTI ads

I found these on Ad_Blather.

New VW GTI commercials.

Brilliant!!!

Notice a particular star from the current Prison Break series that's showing currently on MNET.

The world definitely needs less Rice Cars.

Voting shambles

I hope everyone here went to go vote today. And I hope everyone else here had more success than we did.

My wife and I went to our local voting station, and were turned away because we're registered in a different area. (Our voting registration is from the previous national elections in 2004 and we've moved since then).

So, apparently we have to vote in the area that we're previously registered in.. Even though that is NOT where we're staying. Kinda defeats the "local elections" idea hey?

Last time we voted, we could fill in a form and vote regardless if you're registered in a certain area or not. And now, even with proof that we stay in our area, we still were not allowed to vote.

Sucks!  My country does not work for me.  What is worse is that most of my friends are not even bothering to go vote.  I wish I didn't care, but I do.  And I feel robbed that we can't vote in our area.

UPDATE: See here: News24: People, not on role, vote  Now I'm upset that some people were allowed to complete a form and vote. But we were turned away.