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I've spent the last few days struggling to get Crystal Reports to give me the report layout that a client has requested. What a nightmare. For once, Crystal isn't totally to blame. The data structure of the Symposium Phone System (Sybase) database is ill-suited to my clients demands. I think I've persuaded my client to reduce his requirements until I work out a plan to extract the data into SQL Server and transform it into a more suitable format.
I then get back to my email (I'm on-site and don't have full pop3 access) and find a message from one of my other clients telling me that they want to discuss their reporting requirements too. Argh!
Hopefully next year, I'll get back to writing real code because all this reporting is starting to suck the life out of me.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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It has been a tough couple of weeks recently. Doing a very boring reporting contract has pretty much sucked all the life out of me.
However, this small teaser[^] for the new series of Doctor Who has given me a warm feeling inside.
There is very little content in the trailer but just hearing the words "I'm the Doctor by the way" followed by "Run for your life" , brings back so many enjoyable childhood memories.
The Doctor was always one of my biggest role models and along with the Star Wars movies was a constant companion through my childhood years. Good to see it coming back and I hope it can inspire a new generation of children just like the original series did for me.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Fred Dibnah[^]
When I was growing up, Fred was a big fixture on the television set. My Dad, was also a steam enthusiast. Whilst I don't share the same love, watching the process of taking down an industrial chimney was fascinating viewing. A real eye-opener, given that my home town had and still has the same kind of chimneys. Fred, himself did some work on one of them some years ago.
Fred's catchphrase "Did you like that" in his wonderful Bolton accent, after the chimney had fallen gracefully, will always stay with me.
His recent TV exploits of building a mine-shaft in his back-garden using Victorian Engineering principles was great educational viewing too.
One of our country's great characters, he will be missed.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Just saw a it.
Wow.
I think I finally understand why the Emperor is feared so much. A scary bad ass by the looks of it. Anakin has lost his whiny teen look and certainly has the dark side about him.
Roll on May 2005.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I'll take this as a good thing. Girls like footballers yeah? 
regards,
Paul Watson
South Africa
Michael Dunn wrote:
"except the sod who voted this a 1, NO SOUP FOR YOU"
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
I'll take this as a good thing.
Yeah, you should. Freddie is a big hit with the ladies. Search for him in the google image search and see how you really compare 
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Longhorn to help restrict USB device use[^]
About bloody time. I have had this problem at one of my clients for whom I do IT administration.
As they are a 24hr call-centre, there is very little control over what happens on the night shift. It turns out that one of the call-centre operatives, who thinks he knows a bit about computers, has been plugging in a USB memory stick to work on his own projects.
As standard a Win2k group policy environment, doesn't support locking down the USB port. This means we have to rely on the operative's own good behaviour. Beyond disabling USB in the bios, which isn't supported on the workstations in use, there isn't a lot I can do - apart from disable access to drives via the explorer group policy. It probably won't take long for somebody to work around that.
Good to see Microsoft are taking note of the problems we IT administrators have to cope with. 
Of course, it would be better if this was added to Win2k as I can't see my clients upgrading their workstations anytime soon. 
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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A reassuring demo[^] from Microsoft, showing the power of WinForms2.
Maybe .NET is maturing faster than I'd thought.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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As I've said before, I like the BBC News[^] website layout. It looks good and is very functional. Whilst investigating possible layouts for a client's site, I had a look at the page source code and was disappointed to find all those table tags, not to mention that it totally ignores the browsers text size.
In my search for information on CSS, I came across this article[^] about CSSifying the BBC News site. The article is fairly old and there may be a newer one I haven't found yet, but all very eductional (well to me anyway)
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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In my pursuit of learning more about CSS and how to do a three-column layout without resorting to tables, I came across this nice site[^] with plenty of links to example three column layouts.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Inspired by Scott's list[^] here are the sites that I frequent most and get frustrated if I can't access them. (In no particular order)
The Code Project[^] - what more do I have to say. The best developer site on the web, probably one of the best sites on the web. Certainly my favourite forum code.
BBC News[^] - where I get all my current affairs and sports news from. They might be a little behind with some of the tech news but for quality and sheer volume of information, the BBC can't be beaten.
SlashDot[^] - whilst it has an editorial bias that borders on zealotry. It is still the best place to keep-up on what is happening in our industry and related news.
BBC Radio 7[^] - classic comedy and drama from the BBC.
Joel On Software[^] - whilst he hasn't written anything of real value for a while now. The archives of his articles are invaluable. Although once I buy the book, then I probably won't need to visit as often.
Those are the main sites I visit everyday. Others in my most visited list include
The Force.NET[^] - The best site for Star Wars related news
Outpost Gallifery[^] - with the new series getting closer, this site is the best place for keeping up with the world of Doctor Who. Although some of the comments in the forums make Linux users look calm and sensible, it is still worth a read for those interested in Classic and New Who.
Football 365[^] - despite some of the most annoying advertising on the web, it is the best place for a mix of football news and humour.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I was watching 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' on TV last night. It started me thinking about fictional heroes.
When I was growing up, we were blessed with an abundance of fictional heroes. Good guys, who we all wanted to be. 'Indy', 'Han Solo', 'Luke Skywalker', 'Captain Kirk', 'MacGyver', 'The A-Team', 'Doctor Who', 'Blake', 'Avon'. Some of them were flawed heroes but they fitted the mythic tradition.
If you look at modern day characters, there are very few people I'd class as heroes. Who do children growing up today look-up to. Who are there fictional role models? Who do they pretend to play in the playground? 'Harry Potter'? 'Captain Archer'?
Or do fictional heroes not have a role anymore? Are children too obsessed with wanting to be the rich sport/film/music "star"?
Has the desire for fame and money, quashed the desire for excitement and adventure?
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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One change that may be relevant is that the complexity of life has extended down the age line. At least on the surface it has, it's always been complex no matter your age but was never openly discussed. Nowdays young kids tackle complex subjects openly, things even I, a youngster, never tackled at that age.
Harry Potter might be a good example of that, and along with the resurgance of Spider Man, shows the beginings of a trend back to heros but heros with depth and complexity.
Luke, A-Team, MacGyver etc. were all a bit stereotypical. Bold and easily identifiable. Now we have Potter and the like who are still strong but have a bit of real-world depth to them.
But it still seems to be in it's infancy and yes kids seem to rather be a R&B star or a pimpin fo shizzling rich lout in this day and age. Hopefully that is changing a bit.
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote:
"Gassho rei, Watson-san!"
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
One change that may be relevant is that the complexity of life has extended down the age line.
One of the least appealing aspects of progress. Still I suppose it is necessary, so that kids today are more prepared for the more dangerous world we now live in. Evolution in action.
Paul Watson wrote:
and along with the resurgance of Spider Man, shows the beginings of a trend back to heros but heros with depth and complexity.
Lets hope so. We all need our heroes to lookup too. With the media-saturation of pop-stars, football players and the like, the real-life heroes tend to get lost.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Scoble[^] collects together the reactions from various bloggers.
I think we need more of this. I liked to see a "blog-publisher" who gathers together the thoughts of various bloggers on key-subjects of the day. It would certainly save me from having to subscribe to lots of different RSS feeds to try and keep-up with how my fellow developers feel about subjects that effect our development lives.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Even though I do support myself with contracting and consulatancy work, I still like to think of myself as an ISV - even if it is only me.
Eric Sink (of SourceGear fame) has a good article[^] on MSDN about Micro-ISVs.
It's a good read with some good advice to prospective Micro ISVs.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Hi Eric,
I just read the article you mentioned in your blog post. I'm thinking to develop a product. At the moment, I'm fully aware of the development route I'll be taking since I have already developed a product in the past of same type. I know another person who used to market his own product. He doesn't have time to develop a product like I'm thinking of. We discussed the opportunity of me developing it and he'll be marketing it. I'm just confused that how it should work; revenue wise. I know its funny, the product hasn't been completed yet but i'm just confused that once its finished how should I take it further. Infact, any developer I discuss the idea is willing to join the team but nobody ever contributed any single hour on it. Its just when I describe to them that what the potential of the product could be, everybody gets excited and shows interest to be a part of it. I'm just confused. I just don't find the motivation myself to develop it unless theres some prospect in future. But I do believe it can get me somewhere once its finished. You can say i'm lazy . What do you think if you would be in my situation, any suggestions? hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks
Ali
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I'm currently adding a new feature to one of my old MFC/C++ based apps.
I'd forgotten how much work is involved in old ADO. Even with my old wrapper classes, it is still time consuming. It has made me realise how much of a god-send DataTable, DataSet and DataAdapter are in .NET
Not to mention having to do all the manually binding of controls to the data. I've become spoilt by .NET, C#, MyXaml and the rest. Luckily this is the only database based app that I still maintain in C++. The customer will never spring for a .NET rewrite, so I guess I'm stuck with it for the moment.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I'm just starting on designing my own personal website. I want the design to follow the traditional three column model, but I don't want to use too many tables or spacers gifs. In my research, I came across this site CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit[^]. To me, the novice web-developer is appears to be a great resource.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Nice feature on Miguel de Icaza,[^]
There aren't many 'names' in the open-source community that I admire or respect but Miguel is certainly one of them. I'd be interested to see what he could achieve if he wasn't spending so much time playing catch-up with Microsoft.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I picked this one up from Paul's blog[^]
Throwing Tables Out the Window[^]
It is a good article on CSS. I like the example used too. A nice real world example. Certainly something I'm going to show to my web-designer, because I much prefer CSS based sites but don't have enough web development knowledge to understand her own arguments against using CSS for building an entire skinable site.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Thanks Michael. Interesting to know that someone actually reads that Quickies blog of mine (I don't get stats on RSS usage, alas).
How is the life of Butler going? Still working from home?
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Christopher Duncan wrote:
"I always knew that somewhere deep inside that likable, Save the Whales kinda guy there lurked the heart of a troublemaker..."
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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