July 2004 - Posts - Stuart Gunter
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Stuart Gunter

There's too much!

July 2004 - Posts

  • I'm outta here!

    Well guys & girls... I'm outta here!

    Leaving in 26 hours for an awesome trip to the UK & USA! Gonna be buying some cool stuff from the states that we either can't get here or is too expensive. Luckily for me the exchange rate isn't too bad at the moment, so I'll be making good use of that!

    Hopefully buying one of these puppies (digital photo frame):

    Gotta run... this is my last day at work for a while, so I better finish everything off before I leave!

    Adios amigos...

    Posted Jul 28 2004, 01:00 PM by stuartg with 4 comment(s)
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  • Misleading Configuration Management Quickstarts

    I've been playing around with the Quickstarts that accompany the Configuration Management Application Block, and have found that the titles of these are very misleading! I normally just get the tool and start using it (they're not at all taxing) - but this time I thought I'd have a quick squizz at the Quickstarts and see what they could offer. There are 3 of them, namely: Hashtable, Read, and Write.

    Naturally I assumed that the “Read” quickstart was for read-only configuration data, and “Write” was for read/write configuration data. But alas, I was wrong! This is what they are really for:

    Read: This is for a read-only configuration section, but the configuration data itself is read/write.
    Write: This is for a read/write configuration section, and the configurationdata is read/write.

    The configuration section is defined in your app.config file, but the configuration data itself is not necessarily stored there. I tried creating an app that used the SqlStorage provider to persist that data. Obviously the table in SQL was empty to start off with, so I naturally started the “Write” quickstart to write data to it. It kept giving hassles, so I eventually gave up. I opened the “Read” quickstart and modified it here and there, and it wrote to the SQL table.

    Yeah, yeah... so this is all basic stuff. But my point is that a quickstart named “Read” is a little misleading. Well... all is fine now though! Will be posting some stuff back here once I've mastered the block!

  • Death & Taxes... or is it Chocolate and Taxes!?!

    Well, it seems another year has flown by in the blink of an eye, and I find myself once again having to hand in my Income Tax forms at the eleventh hour. This time I was greeted by a cheery woman handing out chocolates to all who were handing in their tax returns. It seems that SARS (the South African Revenue Service, not the deadly Asian disease) is warming up to us South Africans this winter!

    The forms had been sitting on my desk for over 2 months, uncompleted. Then when I finally managed to fill them in, they sat in my bag for another 2 weeks because of work deadlines preventing me from handing them in. Now I've just returned from the SARS offices (almost across the road from ours) and am glad to have that burden off my shoulders.

    Ok... enough “personal time”... back to work (only now I have a chocolate in my hand)

    Posted Jul 09 2004, 08:37 AM by stuartg with 2 comment(s)
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  • MSDN Webcasts... offline viewing???

    I've always been a keen fan of the MSDN Webcast series... the only problem is that bandwidth is far too expensive in South Africa for me to afford a decent line at home! Until we get some decent competition here, that'll remain! But this leaves the problem of people like me not being able to watch the MSDN Webcasts! I can't watch most of them live due to the time zones (they run fairly late over here) but I can't even watch them on demand because I'd rather be able to see them at home than staying after work.

    Does anyone know if MS has any plans to release these as downloads rather than on-demand shows??? Would LOVE to get a DVD of those! Considering the .NET Show and MSDN TV are available as downloads, I can't see why this should be any different (then again, it's not as simple as a video clip).

    Well... anyone know anything that I don't???

    Posted Jul 07 2004, 08:06 PM by stuartg with 16 comment(s)
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  • Summer of Express competition...

    Check out this competition held on Channel9. Prizes are cool, and there's still plenty time to get your entries in!

    Good luck!

    Posted Jul 05 2004, 12:31 PM by stuartg with no comments
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  • SADev Durban Event last night

    For those who are SADev members... I'm sure you'll be interested to know that our first SADeveloper meeting in Durban went off really well last night! Ernst did a talk on the .NET Framework 2.0 and it got a few “cool” and “wow” effects, so that was good! We'll be having these events monthly, so please keep an eye out on SADev or my blog and show a face when we have these meetings! If you don't know anyone... just look for me and I'll make sure you don't sit quietly in the corner without talking to people.

    A couple of things we'll be looking at over the next few sessions is the Application Blocks, some architectural / design issues, Patterns & Practices... and plenty more! We may have a 5 min “Product Session” in the beginning of each meeting where we showcase a particular product. If anyone has specific requests on products to showcase, contact me via my blog and I'll try make it happen. Some requests so far have been for NDoc, and NUnit.

    Looking forward to seeing everyone again in a month, and bring your colleagues / friends along too!

    Posted Jul 02 2004, 07:55 AM by stuartg with 3 comment(s)
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