New Blog - Emlyn Tech

Once again I find myself needing a technical dumping ground. But Blogger is lame. So lame. I've got a wordpress based tech blog here: http://emlyntech.wordpress.com . It takes over from this (long dead) blog.

Raymond Lewallen : Asp.Net Page Life Cycle

Raymond Lewallen : Asp.Net Page Life Cycle

A link to and discussion of a lifecycle diagram for asp.net

Raymond Lewallen : Asp.Net Page Life Cycle

Raymond Lewallen : Asp.Net Page Life Cycle

A link to and discussion of a lifecycle diagram for asp.net

Slashdot | Microsoft to Open up Office Formats

Microsoft is opening it's office file formats! For those of us in the business app dev world, that's kind of exciting.

Microsoft will submit its Office file formats to Ecma International, the standards body, which will develop the documentation and make it available to the industry. The move is being supported by a number of organizations including Apple Computer, Barclays Capital, BP, Intel and Toshiba.

An ECO project

ECO is Delphi's cool uml-based rad environment. I've been recommended it quite strongly, and am hanging out to have a go at it. Apparently the article above is a good starting point.

Real coders don't comment their code

I ran across this quote today, attributed to the Linux Kernel Mailing List:

"Real coders don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand."

'nuff said!

O'Reilly Radar > Live Software

I've just stumbled across this idea of "Live" software, and "Web 2.0". Looks like a bunch of marketing stuff from MS; it's very difficult to ascertain if it means anything precise. I get the impression that this is Microsoft trying to really embrace the net, extending live updates into everything, allowing their software to interact with stuff on the net in a more natural way, etc etc. Still, a stick in the mud might label it as yet another flailing attempt to stave off the loss of platform ownership that is the net. But who would be such a stick in the mud? Not me...

Anyway dear reader, please read the article (in the title link), it has words in it. I'm fairly sure they have been arranged such that some meaning is supposed to be conveyed. If you can extract some meaning from them, could you please post a translation or summary here? Thanks!

The Jack-PC

Here's a funky little device - a PC that you mount in the wall like a power or ethernet socket. It's designed to be a network PC, running Windows CE and a browser. It's tiny, and it uses Power over Ethernet to run (thus no extra power connection).

Places that have their acts together using all browser based applications, combined with Citrix or similar for accessing desktop software servers with Office and related boring applications, will drool over these for reducing help desk calls, installation complexities, and basically removing the user's ability to do anything useful with his/her PC. Big sites love that stuff.

You might see these things in corporates and probably in shopfronts (especially banks?). Or you might not see them, which is kind of the point.

VistaDB Blog Offer

VistaDB, a nice looking standalone db for .Net, which looks excellent particularly for desktop apps, is giving away free copies to bloggers who post a blog entry about their database. So I'm doing it. You can do it to!

Here's the required stuff for the blog (interesting actually):
----
VistaDB 2.1 database for .NET has been released
This 2.1 update includes over 60 improvements, including new support for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio .NET 2005. VistaDB is a small-footprint, embedded SQL database alternative to Jet/Access, MSDE and SQL Server Express 2005 that enables developers to build .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 applications. Features SQL-92 support, small 500KB embedded footprint, free 2-User VistaDB Server for remote TCP/IP data access, royalty free distribution for both embedded and server, Copy 'n Go! deployment, managed ADO.NET Provider, data management and data migration tools. Free trial is available for download.
- Learn more about VistaDB
- Repost this to your blog and receive a FREE copy of VistaDB 2.1!
----

I don't know why they don't mention their snapshot isolation feature in this blurb, that was something that made me sit up and listen (in a texty kind of way).