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):
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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!
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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).

Articles: Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notes, by Lucy A. Snyder

This *requires* periodic blogging. Installing Linux on a dead badger. Go read it.

A Simple protocol to view aspx pages without IIS implemented in C# - The Code Project - ASP.NET

From the site:

Introduction
Ever since I started working with asp pages, I've always wanted to be able to test them simply from the file system without having to configure IIS or setup a virtual directory. Especially when downloading and looking at sample code from sites like CodeProject. While working on an application for web based acceptance testing, I discovered how to make it happen. First, ASP.NET lets you host the runtime outside of IIS. Second, Microsoft provides the Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol interfaces to create custom protocols for IE. I just needed to hook a custom protocol up to an instance of the ASP.NET runtime and everything would work great. My final solution came out pretty close to that, but there were quite a few problems I had to work through along the way.

I've included two protocols, echo: and aspx:. The echo protocol just echoes the url line as html text. This is the test protocol I wrote just to make sure I got the headers right. Aspx will run any aspx page locally and load the result in IE. It supports most headers and postback but doesn't support cookies just yet. I've added a shell extension as well that lets you just right click on any aspx file and execute it using the aspx protocol.

MSN Messenger Protocol - Home Page

My old markov chaining chatbot, Nigel, is languishing in an old pile of Delphi code. I want to bring him into the 21st century, and I think the best way to do it will be to turn him into an MSN Messenger chatbot!

The link above covers the MSN Messenger protocol in detail - awesome!

MSN Messenger - Worlds Best App Contest

Make a cool MSN Messenger app and win some stuff. Oh yeah, it's an Alienware mobile desktop. Dunno what that is. Sounds heavy, and slimy. Also, it sounds like it might end up being available to MSN Users in some obvious way, which is kind of funky!

Chrome

RemObjects used to be a Delphi component vendor. Now they are a .net component vendor, who have written an object pascal compiler for Visual Studio .Net, which is souped up!

eg: multithreading using asynchronous method calls:

Nanopond: The world's smallest and simplest artificial life virtual machine

From the site:
"Nanopond is the world's smallest and simplest artificial life virtual machine. It is a "corewar" style artificial life system of the same class as Tierra, Avida, and Archis but is so simple and tiny it fits in only one .c file! By comparison all three of these others are absolutely huge.

It is simple and no-frills, and to make it work you must compile it."

Consuming a Web Service from an HTML Page: ASPAlliance

This is a really cool article on how to talk to a webservice from javascript embedded in html. So you can talk to the server without needing a postback. Excellent!

Turn any image into a .ico format file

This is a cool free web site to turn an image into a .ico file. Excellent useful tool for developers! It does a really good job, too, surprisingly excellent.

TheServerSide.NET - Continuous Integration with CruiseControl.NET and Draco.NET

The link above is to an excellent article about continuous integration.

"Why You Need Continuous Integration
All development teams (read: more than one programmer) have to deal with integration builds. This is where you pull together all the bits and pieces that the different team members were working on, and check to see if you have a fully functioning product or a Frankenstein’s monster. Like many other project management tasks, though, it can be complex and repetitive. This unfortunate combination means that over time, you will likely devote less brain power to running the integration build, even less to documenting the results, and are likely not only to miss important problems but fail to have a documentation trail that you can look back on later to see the mistake. A continuous integration tool takes away the repetitive task, makes it repeatable and automatic and builds a document trail as it works for historical accuracy." etc...