Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Blog has moved to: http://michaeleatonconsulting.com/blog
Saturday, August 16,2003
The new house is great, but not without issues. :-\ More on that later.
I wrapped up a VB.NET project recently. It was a cool project, but I still remain a fan of C#. :-)
I'm heading out on a business trip next week - 1 week in London, Ontario. It should be interesting.
Friday, July 11, 2003
2 months in our new house and I've lost close to 10 pounds. :-) It's a combination of things...we live in a 2-story house so walking up and down the damn steps helps. I've also been spending a lot of time outside
working on my "lawn"...well, my 1/2 acre of weeds. We're having in-ground sprinklers installed on Monday and then the landscapers are supposed to come back and re-seed our lawn. What a PITA.
I've done some work to my bike...new pedals and a new saddle. The saddle (seat) has the cutout in it to supposedly relieve pressure on certain parts of the anatomy. I've only been for one short ride on it, so I'm
not sure if it'll help. The pedals are pissing me off. I can't seem to tweak them so I can easily get my feet out of them. I've messed with the cleats in my shoes and the pedals themselves. I'm afraid I'm gonna
fall and break something unless I get them fixed pretty soon.
I started a new project this week. It's a VB6 gig that involves reverse engineering an existing app (we have the code AND the original developer on the team) and documenting it. Once we've done that, then we'll have
some time to actually add new features to the product.
I have a kickoff meeting for the "16-bit app" project next Thursday. I'm looking forward to that project since it'll be a change from .NET and VB6.
Sunday May 18, 2003
Well, it's been almost a month since we moved into our new house. It's been great except for the lack of a lawn (coming soon) and a few "attention to detail" items the builders missed. Oh...and we have issues
with hot water...the idiot builders need to come back and move a "manifold" (water control system) from one end of the basement to the other. I actually had a plumber come in and take a look and they think
it's a warranty issue and don't want to get involved. We'll see.
As for projects...I've been working on a .NET project that's quickly coming to a close, but it does appear that I have a couple of interesting gigs coming up. One of them involves writing a throw-away (in use for a year or less)
application for a client. What so interesting about that? Hehe...it's for Windows 3.1!!! Woohoo! So, in preparation for the gig, I've installed DOS 6.2/Win 3.1 in VMWare (what a great tool). I can't believe we actually used to
live in the world of Windows 3.1. That's where I got my start (Win 3.1, VB 2.0/3.0).
So, the day after we move into our new house, I got my bike out (a 1998 Specialized Rockhopper FS1). I use clipless pedals, so I put my cool Specialized shoes (clipless pedals require special shoes that physically attach to the pedals)
on and took a short ride around the neighborhood. Thank God there are only a few houses around because I promptly fell off my bike. :-) I was coming to a rolling stop and couldn't get one of my shoes disconnected from the pedal . Anyway, I
scraped up a knee pretty bad (and came away with a slightly bruised ego since I did fall in front of my nephews). I can't wait to get some good rides in this summer. I'd like to get a road bike, but will probably just deal with my mountain
bike.
Back to tech stuff...My PDA finally died after 3 years. I had a Handspring Visor Deluxe. It was one of the best investments in technology I have made. I'm not sure why it died, but it's no longer under any kind of warranty, so I'm gonna live
without a PDA for awhile (or at least til I can find a PocketPC that I like). My wife still has a Visor Deluxe, so I transferred all my cool software to it so she can at least get some use out of it.
I also upgraded my cel phone. For the past 3 years I've been using a Motorola i1000+ (Nextel service). It was getting flaky and kept powering down if certain keys were pressed. Since that kind of flakiness has been going on for quite some time,
I decided to take Nextel up on an upgrade offer. I moved to an i60c. It's a nice phone, but it isn't as user-friendly as the i1000+ was. The phonebook is cool, but the new menuing system requires too many steps to accomplish simple tasks. After
I got my i60c, my wife wanted to upgrade her i1000+, so now we both have new phones.
Sunday April 13, 2003
I've been swamped with a new .NET project for a client. It's the data and business tiers for a "Membership profile" screen in a larger application. Actually, there's quite a bit more to it than that, but
unfortunately I can't get into too many of the details.
Our move-in date for our new house has been pushed back twice. The first date was supposed to be April 1st, then April 18th and now it's April 25th. Why? Because the builders are idiots. They have said things
to me that I would never be able to say to a customer. Some examples:
Me: When will the house be done?
Them: We don't know.
Me: What is left to do?
Them: We don't know.
Me: It's been 4 months.
Them: We're working as hard as we can.
Me: We were told you'd be done by April 1st.
Them: The person that told you that no longer works here.
Me: What about the inline heater for our whirlpool tub?
Them: We've never heard of that.
Me: I have a change order for it.
Them: We didn't even know such a thing existed.
Me: I paid for it so you better find out in a hurry.
Those are just two examples...I've got plenty more, but I'd rather not get too worked up on this beautiful Sunday morning. :-)
Sunday, March 9, 2003
Our house is almost done and we think we'll be moving sometime during the first week of April.
vCard for .NET is still moving along, although a bit slower than in previous weeks. I really want to get a good WinForms demo released on the website, but
there are still a few things I need to do first.
I was recently asked to provide a custom backup solution for a client. As luck would have it, I wrote a backup program using Perl in 2001. It was a great starting point for what this client needed, so over
the past couple of weeks, I've been adding functionality and testing it. I love Perl. I love CPAN. I even added POD so I could generate a
nice HTML page for the documentation.
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
I can't believe it's March already. After a great month of progress on vCard for .NET, things have slowed down some. I need more beta testers! I'm reasonably confident in the code,
but until more people provide feedback...
So, if you are doing .NET development and want / need to read and write vCards in your application, please let me know.
Friday, February 21, 2003
Version 1.1 of the vCard "Read" demo was just uploaded. I fixed a few bugs. Oh...I also changed the vCard web site and put
it in it's own sub-domain (http://vCard.MichaelEatonConsulting.com).
Friday, February 7, 2003
I just posted a vCard web demo. It's not as complete as I'd like, but it's a start. Check it out.
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
I've gotten some feedback on my vCard assembly and have been incorporating the requests into the code. I'm pretty happy with how the code is structured as well as how the
documentation has turned out. I don't know where I'd be without NDoc. This tool is great. With very little effort, I am able to create MSDN-like documentation based on the
XML comments within the source code. Check out the vCard site for more information.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Well, we're 19 days into 2003...man, where did 2002 go?
I've been working on my vCard code lately and made a lot of improvements. My initial versions of the code had hard-coded properties for things like
WorkPhone, HomePhone, etc. While this made the code relatively simple (and guaranteed compatibility with MS Outlook), it went against the vCard 2.1 specification.
The solution I've been working on is much cleaner and works to the specification. I think version 1 of my work will end up not being 100% to the spec. There are a
few features defined in the specification that I just don't want to tackle right now. They include vCard grouping and property grouping.
So, where does that leave the code? Out of the 25 requirements for a vCard reader, I've implemented 15 of them, with several being close. Out of the 2 requirements for
a vCard writer, I've implemented both as well as 16 of the optional requirements. Check out my vCard site for
more information.
Friday, December 27, 2002
I can't believe 2002 is almost over. We ended up having a very white Christmas (I'm in West Michigan). It started snowing Christmas Eve and by Christmas morning, we had 6 or 7 inches of nice,
fresh snow.
The vCard code is still coming along. I ran into some challenges dealing with Photographs, but I think the problems I was having have been solved. I really like doing TDD...it's nice to write some
code, run my unit tests and see if anything broke since the last run. Writing tests first also allows me to think more from the end-user (or in this case, developer) standpoint.
Using a gift certificate I was given for Christmas, I bought 'Halo'...oh man...this is by far the coolest game I've played on the Xbox.
Monday, December 23, 2002
Don't ya just love the holidays? It looks like we're going to have a white Christmas after all. Our new house is coming along quite nicely (but it's still gonna be another 3 months til
we can move in).
On the technical side of things, I've been putting a lot of time into my vCard code. It's definitely coming along and using TDD (Test Driven Design) allows me to always have something that
works. :-) I'm pretty much doing all of my development in Vim. I'm using Nant to control my builds and of course, I'm
using NUnit to handle my unit tests.
I've been doing product evaluations for Xtras which has been a great deal of fun. So far, I've evaluated a couple of really great products and a bunch of mediocre products. :-(
Friday, November 29, 2002
Well...the deal to buy the house fell through. The owner was a complete idiot...he would not allow us to have a well and septic inspection done and also refusing to give us a
possession date. All clouds have a silver lining though...we've decided to build a house. :-) I'm sure I'll have a lot to say on the subject over the next 3 or 4 months...
As for technical "stuff", I've rewritten one of my shareware programs...DocClear is a little utility I wrote several years ago (about the time Windows 95
came out)...it basically keeps stuff out of the Documents menu. I've completely rewritten it from the ground up. It's always been written in Delphi, but I felt like the code was
getting a bit unwieldy. In the process of cleaning it up, I've added some features...the best of which is the ability to have a filter that let's you keep certain types of files
in the Documents menu while making sure others are removed. I'm in the process of testing it, but version 2.5 will be released in the next week or so.
I like Delphi because a) it's a clean language, b) no run-time requirements and c) it's different. :-) If C# didn't require a 20mb runtime, I'd probably use it.
Friday, November 1, 2002
Well...it looks like the house is a done deal. The mortgage company still needs to have an appraisal done, but after the home inspection today, I don't see anything that will
keep this deal from happening. Unfortunately, between working a bit more lately and dealing with the house, I haven't had time to do much of anything else.
Friday, October 25, 2002
We're in the process of buying a house, so things are gonna be slow around the site for awhile.
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
I just read a great interview with Alan Cooper on Visual Studio Magazines website. Alan is known as the
father of Visual Basic and has long dealt with user interface issues. In this interview, "Alan Cooper speaks out about turmoil in software management, why .NET beats VS6
by a hair's breadth, and more." This really seemed to hit the nail on the head:
VSM: What do you think about the .NOT movement among VB6ers?
AC: I've been reading books on C# and .NET recently. .NET is without a
doubt extremely complex and extremely difficult. I agree with Grady Booch when
he says that programming is hard and intellectually demanding, and always will
be and always was. A lot of people got sucked into the programming world during
the dot-com boom. Now they're discovering it's not easy. I think that as we
build bigger and more complex software systems, we're going to find that the
tools are going to give us more power and reach but they'll never make things
easier.
More on this later...
Monday, October 21, 2002
Today is my 30th birthday. :-)
The port of my article code from C# to VB.NET went well. It took about an hour -- much of that time was spent figuring out simple things like checking if a value is null
in VB.NET. It seems that MS didn't like the obvious "IsNull" function...they renamed it to "IsDBNull"! Overall, I was more impressed with VB.NET than I thought I would.
The way you connect code to control events is pretty cool. The code was almost a 1-1 match...
I've spent the past couple of days working on cleaning up a virus at a client site. People that write viri suck. Luckily, this one wasn't destructive, just a pain to clean up.
Well, the image loading program for work is just about done. Ya gotta love free code on the web. I've been using some code from VBAccelerator
to deal with resizing and stamping images. I had been having a heck of a time getting the images to look good after resizing them, but tonight I dug a bit deeper into the code and found
a "Resample" method. This is exactly what I need and the images look GREAT. All that's left to do run some tests.
The more I use .NET, the more impressed I am with how easy Microsoft has made things. Remember how tough it was to create a nice, resizable form in any version of Visual Basic (classic)? You either
had to write a ton of code in the Resize events or you had to buy a 3rd party control. Same goes for splitter controls. .NET makes it sooo easy to do these things. Drop a control on the form, set it's
Dock property and it's Anchor property and you are good to go.
Sunday, October 20, 2002
I'm currently working on porting the code for my Visual Studio Magazine article from C# to VB.NET. This was requested
by a reader and I, being the generous type, volunteered to do it. :-)
Up til now, I've tried to stay away from VB.NET...it just seems like a huge hack. It
doesn't have the nice "clean" feel of C#. Anyway, it shouldn't be too difficult since a port is really only syntax anyway...the Framework handles so much stuff that
the details of the language you use is trivial.
Friday, October 18, 2002
Wow...it's been a week...
Well, this week, I've been working on the image loading program for work -- there are a lot of details it has to deal with, but I'm almost done. I've been
testing it with 5000-6000 images. Each image needs to be resized, stamped with a copyright logo, have a thumbnail created, have a record updated in the database
and finally, be copied to at least one location, although the app allows an optional second location. Pretty much everything works right now except for the database
updates...
I've also been dealing with the .NET treeview control this week...it sure seems like the VB 6 treeview was a bit easier to use. I'm trying to populate this treeview
based on the names of files...so, if I have the following files:
- a.b.c.ext
- d.e.f.g.h.ext
- a.g.ext
- d.e.f.blah.ext
I want to end up with something like this:
root
\a
\b
\c
\g
\d
\e
\f
\blah
\g
\h
Unfortutely, I can't seem to get the nesting right.
Update: -- Decided against using the method described above and when with a physical folder
layout...seems to work just as well and my friend and I have decided it will actually be more useful
to do it the way we are.
Monday, October 14, 2002
Thinking about what to write today...
Sunday, October 13, 2002
I'm in the process of writing up an article describing the web service I wrote. I still have to clean the service up a bit before presenting it in
the Code section of this site. I'm also in the process of answering some questions that I've received via email that
relate to the article I wrote in Visual Studio Magazine. I hope to not only respond to those people in email, but
to post the answers to this site as well.
It has long been my intent to provide local content on this site and not just a bunch of links. The code samples are a start and the article on the web service
will be a nice addition. I would also like to write a series of articles that discuss a few things that I feel very strongly about regarding software development
and the state of this "profession". I'm not sure when those will be written since they're just ideas floating around in my head right now.
I'm also going to start the process of moving The Programmers Source to .NET and SQL Server. Currently the site is all ASP (using VBScript on the server) and XML.
It's a good design, but I've been working on another .NET project that uses inheritance to give the site a consistent look. This site currently uses templates which
gives it a consistent look, but it's a real pain to manage. Maybe I'll write up an article about the current site and the transition to .NET or maybe I'll just document
the process in the web log.
Friday, October 11, 2002
I've been using CVS for my personal work lately. This comes after years of using Microsoft
Visual SourceSafe. Why you ask? Well, some friends and I are working on a couple of projects and it's much easier to get CVS to work via
the internet than it is VSS. Both have their pros and cons, and for everyday work, I still prefer VSS, but the more I use CVS (and learn the ins
and outs), the more it grows on me. Too bad there wasn't a CVS add-in for Visual Studio...
I came up with an idea for an example web service I can post to this site, but I still need to work out the details. I'm still not convinced that
web services are as cool as the computer media and Microsoft would have us believe. I'll make sure to post my thoughts as I'm developing it.
Anyway, my idea is a simple web service that would expose a single method -- getCityInfo. It would take a single parameter (zipCode) and return information
like city, state, zip, long, lat, etc. My apologies to the international crowd that may be reading this, but the database I have is US only.
Why aren't there any good replacements for Outlook (full version, not Outlook Express)? Nothing I have found has the features that I want...but at the same time,
Outlook is too big (and I hate the fact that everything is in one huge proprietary file).
Update at 10:18pm (EST): I am just about done with the web service I discussed earlier in this log...hopefully I'll be able to post it sometime this weekend along
with the source code and an explanation of what I did. I also need to figure a way to keep people from abusing it. :-)
Thursday, October 10, 2002
I have always been the type of person to say "use the best tool for the job". Sometimes it's Perl, sometimes
it's Delphi, sometimes VB or Java. More and more, it's becoming C#. It is a clean, relatively efficient language to write
code in. The .NET Framework is excellent, considering that it is only a 1.0 product. It's amazing how quickly you can
accomplish most tasks using the Framework classes, although, on the flip side, it's pretty stupid how many things you still
need to do with the API or with WMI (like retrieving drive information).
The one thing that keeps me from really and truly loving the .NET Framework is the size of the runtime. I'm working on a couple
of projects in my spare time and the one thing that is sticking in the back of my mind is distribution. How many people are
going to want to download a 20mb runtime? Yea, yea...I know...Microsoft has it in Windows Update so a lot of people will have
it and they are including it with the new operating systems, but I can't help feeling it's a pretty big roadblock for a lot of
developers.
Today I worked on the image loader application for work. I also fixed some minor issues I found in another program I wrote for work.
I'll probably drag the laptop into the living room so I can work while watching TV tonight. I have a wireless access point for those times I
don't feel like being tied to my desk. It's only 11MB, but it's better than nothing.
I recently subscribed to MSDN Universal. While it cost quite a bit of $$$, it'll be worth it since I get all the operating systems,
Office, VS.NET, Visio, Project, etc. I've been using VS.NET, but I haven't decided if I like it or not. It's kind of a hog compared
to VB 6 or even Interdev. I've been doing most of my .NET development using my favorite text editor -- Vim. It's got a pretty high
learning curve and it isn't an IDE, but it lets me work quickly and efficiently.
Did I mention that along with my MSDN Universal subscription, I also get a free XBox? I can't wait to get it!
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Just received my copy of Visual Studio Magazine with my .NET Printing article in it. It's a
very cool feeling to see my name in print and to see, that in the relatively thin magazine, my
article takes about 5 full pages and is one of 6 "full" articles in the magazine this month.
I'm sitting at my desk waiting for some data that I'm BCP'ing from a remote database. Way too much
fun...almost as much fun as watching paint dry. At least with the paint, there's some color involved.
I'm working on a few projects right now...besides prepping another proposal for VSM, I've been working on a vCard
writer/parser in C#. The spec for vCard is pretty ambiguous (IMO), but I'm almost done!
I'm also working on
a flexible, plug-in architecture for an application that a friend and I are working on. .NET makes it almost too easy
to create a program that can be dynamically enhanced by 3rd parties (in other words, Reflection is cool!).
On top of those projects, my normal work has been pretty interesting lately. I've had to write an application (in VB 6)
that basically synchronizes 2 SQL tables -- the main table points to files that *should* be on a drive somewhere. If the
physical file isn't found, I have to update both tables. It sounds easy (and boring), but I was able to make it interesting.
The next big thing for work is to create an application that will load images into the system -- basically, the user will point
to a source directory of images and I need to make sure they're named correctly, stamped with a copyright logo, a record is entered
into a database table, etc. I'm going to try to go all API (did I mention it's in VB 6 also?) instead of using things like the
FileSystem object.
I should mention that my "work" is actually a sub-contracting gig for a company in South Carolina. I'm technically self-employed, but
I get almost all of my work from them. It's nice because I'm able to work at home -- no dealing with a commute anymore, no dealing with
managers telling me I need to be 125% billable. :-) Been there, done that, didn't like it.
Monday, October 7, 2002
In deep thought...wondering what to write about today.
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