Kevin Trethewey

Software Developer, Technologist, Connoisseur of things that go 'bing'.

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April 2005 - Posts

SaDeveloper.net Retrospective

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 7:29 AM

Recently on SaDeveloper.net there was a post which started out very positively and self-congratulatory but quickly went south from there, exposing the fact that there are many community members that are not happy with the current state of the local community as represented by SaDeveloper.net.

 

I think it would be accurate to say that most of the positive statements were coming from the Cape Town side and most of the critical ones were from Gauteng members of the community.

 

This issue is a very emotional one for people and unfortunately the thread degenerated into personal attacks and was heavily moderated, which had to be done, but also took the fire out of the heart of the debate.

 

What I would like to do is urge those who have an opinion on the current state of SaDeveloper.net and the community at large to return to that thread and post your thoughts on where we are, what we are doing right, wrong, and where we need to make changes because whilst I am well aware that you can’t please everyone all of the time, at the moment there seems to be only one demographic that is happy.

 

So go ahead, grab your soapbox and make a stand. If you don’t, you have no right to criticize the local community after this. I would prefer you post in person, but if you have things to say that you feel would be better made anonymously (no personal attacks please!), please post it as a comment to this blog. I will delete the comment and paste the contents to the thread on your behalf.

 

Things it would be nice to know:

  • What is right with SaDeveloper.net?
  • What is wrong with SaDeveloper.net?
  • Are you happy with the way the forums are run?
  • Are you happy with the choice of leads and do you feel they are doing the right job and their jobs right?
  • Why does toast always fall butter side down?
  • What changes could be made that would make you feel more positive about SaDeveloper.net and get you to want to be more involved?
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by Kevin Trethewey | 5 comment(s)

Buyer Beware

Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:11 AM

Follow on from this post…

 

This is the bottom line: I am a fully paid up subscriber of a service that provides a broadband connection that states I have 3gigs of traffic at 1Mbs, then unlimited traffic at 64kb thereafter, unless i wish to buy more high speed bandwidth. Under this agreement, as i see it, there is no possible way for me to become an 'abuser', unless I go out of my way to bypass any controls they put in place. I didn't do this. If WBS have problems with the technical aspects of their offering, that is not my concern. The cut-off came with no warning and no request to limit my downloads until they have sorted out teething issues (which, as a developer myself and a general all round good oke, i would have respected).

 

The decision to cut my connection was rude, smacks of really bad and close minded mis-management, and left a very bad taste in the mouth. I decided to put it up on my personal blog to keep people posted of the development, particularly in light of the fact that in a previous post i had recommended their service to people who read this blog - they deserve to know the situation. Even though I was seething at the time, I tried to make sure the post contained only the facts of the matter, waiting to see how it all panned out before I added my own personal opinion, as I am doing now.

 

FusionReactor has in the past always provided me with impeccable service - the best i have ever had from any IT company, they were not involved in creating this debacle in any way, and I think I was fair to them and pointed that out as soon as it was clear, so I am surprised that I took flak for it in the comments – unless ‘v’ has some undisclosed financial interest in the success of either company. But he/she sounds like a fanboy – the kind WBS badly needs at this point in their business cycle, and the kind they are going to lose in droves if they continue making silly calls like this.

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by Kevin Trethewey | 32 comment(s)

DON'T GET IBURST!!!

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:16 AM

If you were thinking about applying for an iBurst connection, just hold on to your application until I get the bottom of this little 'development'...


Dear Kevin,

Your iBurst account has been suspended due to your inordinate consumption of bandwidth. Please contact our call centre (0861 927 4357) for information on how to reactivate your account during normal office hours (Monday to Friday from 8.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.)

Please check your bandwidth monitor (http://helpdesk.wbs.co.za) to see details of your usage to date.

Regards,

WBS Helpdesk


After using 3Gig at (an alleged) 1Mbit, you get throttled to a 64k service. I have used about 6.4Gig so far this month. Nowhere in the contract i signed, or on FusionReactor's or WBS's website does it mention this policy and this was exacted without any form of warning or notice.

Let the games begin:


[08h00] Called FusionReactor (the reseller i bought the WBS service from). They were apparently unaware of the problem. Told to wait for call from Director.
[09h30] Still no call - phoned FusionReactor again: "Director not yet in".
[10h00] Call from Director (Bill). Says FusionReactor were not consulted about this, they are on their way to the WBS offices and the problem will be rectified before the end of the morning. So that is FusionReactor's name out of the mud (at this point).
[13h08] Still no feedback from FR - phoned Bill, no answer, left a polite message. Next one will not be so polite.
[14h07] Just got my latest usage report from WBS - 7.83GB total (2.7 up, 5 down) - bit more than i thought, but that is beside the point really.
[16h50] Bill calls me, tells me they have been at WBS's offices all day trying to resolve the matter. Latest news is that if i buy another R150 worth of bandwidth from them they will switch me back on, otherwise i must wait till the end of the month. I point out that this is tantamount to extortion, but decide that it is better to pay the money in the morning, get back online and then continue to fight the situation.
[23h50] I test my connection after getting home from the cricket. It is back online (i didnt buy more bandwidth). No email from WBS regarding the matter.

[Follow-up post]
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by Kevin Trethewey | 18 comment(s)

Virtual Post-It #009 - Content Files

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 9:25 PM

When using Visual Studio 2003, if you add content files to your solution they are not automatically copied to the target directory, even if you flag them as 'Content' - which causes all sorts of time wasting frustration (like making the build look broken when it isn't).

Here is how to get around that problem (found whilst playing with the AUB 2.0, which I am hoping to blog a bit about soon)...

The work around is to use the Post-Build Event functionality of VS. Right-click on the project on your solution and go to the project properties...

Add the following line to the command line arguments (edit to suite your requirements of course)...

copy "$(ProjectDir)updaterconfiguration.config" "$(TargetDir)updaterconfiguration.config"

This will result in the updaterconfiguration.config file in the project directory being copied to the target directory after a successful build.

Really easy when you know about it!

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by Kevin Trethewey | 1 comment(s)
Filed under: Virtual Post-It

Test

Thursday, April 07, 2005 9:55 AM

Testing new post category - Not Aggregated

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by Kevin Trethewey | 1 comment(s)

VS2005 Product Line-up

Thursday, April 07, 2005 8:12 AM

This is a brilliantly laid out post (which I am still working my way through  ) by Sean McBreen from New Zealand. He covers the following bases:

  • Extending the product offering
  • So What’s in The 3 Visual Studio Team System SKU’s
  • Why would you move to VSTS?
  • I currently have an MSDN Subscription how does this relate to me?
  • What is included in the new VSTS Subscriptions…
  • The Most Cost Effective Way to Get VSTS?
  • How does it work for Partners (ISV/SI)?

[Found via The Daily Grind]

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by Kevin Trethewey | with no comments

Request to dotnet.org.za bloggers...

Thursday, April 07, 2005 7:53 AM

There is an increasingly prevalent trend (which I whole heartedly support) to not include some or all of the posts to your blog in the main feed. I am a keen reader of most of the blogs on this site, and have in the past just used the main feed in my aggregator to save duplication and clutter, but this is now resulting in me missing some interesting posts from people who's blogs i am a fan of.

I don't think I am alone in this, so I would like to ask that if you decide to no longer post to the main feed, please just make one more public post to this effect so that myself and others can add your individual feed to our respective aggregators.

In line with this, I will be keeping all of my non-tech posts off the main feed from now on and encourage you to do the same. These posts will be published under the category Not-Aggregated, so you can just add that feed to your aggregator and you will not get duplicate posts popping up.

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by Kevin Trethewey | 2 comment(s)

Firefox plugin for IMHO

Tuesday, April 05, 2005 9:40 AM

"The fans of Firefox, now can post to IMHO directly from thir preferred browser. Thanks to Diego Guidi, the imho plugin for firefox emulate the same funcionalities already embedded in IMHO for Internet Explorer. You can post a lik to a page, or quote a block of text from a web page.

Installation notes: unpack the imhoplug.xpi file and open it using "Open file..." from Firefox's File menu. The instalation require that you specify the installation folder of IMHO the first time you run the plugin."

Download: http://imhoproject.org/download/imhoplug.zip

[Source: www.imhoproject.org]

Ps, yes, this was posted using the FireFox plugin...

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by Kevin Trethewey | 3 comment(s)

Comprehensive list of .NET Languages

Tuesday, April 05, 2005 7:10 AM

44 languages and counting...

.NET Languages

[Source: Wow -- great list of .NET Languages]

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by Kevin Trethewey | 1 comment(s)

Google to double GMail account size?

Friday, April 01, 2005 11:56 AM

You always have to be weary of press releases on this particular day of the year. I remember last year when Google announced they were going to be giving out free accounts with 1 Gig of storage most people, including myself, thought it was probably a hoax.

Well now they have announced that they are doubling it again.

"Our goal is to make sure storage is no longer an issue for web mail users," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer web products.

I just checked my account and it says that I have 1187 Mb of storage. Ten minutes ago it was 1184 Mb…




[Update: I also should have mentioned: Previously, my single grievance with GMail was that I could only send in text – which meant no forwarding of html or embedded images either. This morning I noticed that Google has also added the ability to send in rich text…woot.]
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by Kevin Trethewey | 8 comment(s)
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