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* 19th June 2008
All good things, they say, must come to an end. Meanwhile, in what must obviously be
an amazing coincidence, the gibbering and generally incoherent ramblings that make
up my occasional diary are also moving on to pastures new. So stick one finger in your
ear and hold your nose so it sounds like one of those recorded messages, then repeat
after me:
"Thank you for visiting Al and Dave to read Alex's pointless and incomprehensible
ravings. Your call is important to us. Unfortunately, Alex is even less at home than
usual, and is therefore unable to provide the next episode. If you have an RSS-enabled
receiver, please press
http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/rss.xml
now. Otherwise, to catch up with his current diatribes
and musings, replace the receiver and call his new blog at
http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer".
Yep, at last I've got myself a real blog, which means I'll probably not be able to fall off
the edge of the world for three months at a time like I do now. And, being a full-time
'Softie, I'll probably also have to write something technical each week. Or at least
something with a bit of technical content. Or with a technical-sounding title.
Meanwhile, if you think you can bear it, you can read all the old stuff here in this page
and the linked pages for each year, or via RSS at
http://www.daveandal.net/alshed.xml
and
http://www.daveandal.net/alshed2005.xml.
Thanks for your support. |
* 21st May 2008
It's official - scientific proof is now available to show that creating
the documentation for a complex software product is actually three times harder
than writing the code. Maybe it's because I'm newly unemployed that I found time to
discover this amazing fact. Want to know more? See the
technical description buried within the
dark and often unfathomable depths of my most recent ramblings... |
* 16th March 2008
It's becoming obvious that reading newspapers when you get past middle-age
is bad for you. With a good pair of glasses and a 500 watt bulb, I can generally
make out the text on the page, but I still end up re-reading bits because I just
can't believe that I read them right the first time. But its the rise in blood
pressure, and having my wife beat me over the head when I keep doing the
Victor Meldrew (One Foot In The Grave)
"I don't believe it!" thing, that is
most harmful to my health I reckon... |
* 2nd March 2008
So, the time has finally come for this rambling, itinerant, and
semi-competent author-stroke-developer-stroke-trainer to cast aside his
independence, sell his soul to the devil, and throw his lot in with the
people who have provided him with the platforms and tools that supported
him for the past too-many-years-to-remember. Yep, I've just accepted a
full time position with the
patterns & practices division of Microsoft. |
* 27th December 2007
Another fiendish mystery.... After losing my memory (the RAM kind) last month, I
discover that my airmiles have disappeared this month. There I was thinking I
might get a seat near the front this time, but it turns out I can't event book a seat
at all. I can see I'll be spending ten hours sitting on a box in the hold, or maybe
even two weeks in the departure lounge. Why? Well, just
read on... |
* 19th November 2007
A couple of months ago, I promised that I would file a report on our new Acer
iDea 510 Media Center. So here's the good news - it's superb! Of course, I ended up
rambling on about other stuff as well, such as how caching can come back to bite you,
and how - even today - some Web sites seem to disapprove of people using Internet
Explorer. If you feel the urge, you can
read more... |
* 13th October 2007
OK, so the title of this months item may seem a bit dodgy, but I can guarantee
that the rest contains the usual content of half-cocked observations, wild assumptions,
off-topic ramblings, and other drivel. And, of course, pointless unrecognizable photos.
There's even one of some buses. Why? Well, we were off on another
trip to foreign places - but this time
without a single conference in sight. |
* 21st September 2007
In motoring terminology and railway circles, an upgrade is basically a hill.
And a severe upgrade is usually a steep hill that takes some climbing - especially
for the old steam engines that required a "banker" at the back to give them a push.
OK, so I'm getting old and I get puffed easily, but thankfully managed the most recent
developer-oriented code upgrade with
amazingly little effort. Though I did need a bit of a push (metaphorically speaking) from a
couple of blogs about Enterprise Library. And, as you'd expect, gaining trust proved
to be the tough part - especially Medium Trust. But I fear the most severe upgrade on
the horizon is the seemingly ever-recurring Media Center issues... |
* 16th August 2007
It sometimes seems like my life consists of backing up computers. But I was
amazed to discover that the latest version of TrueImage can cope with the weird
types of machines I always seem to end up buying. Just a shame the machine wasn't
as good as the backup software - even if I did have
a few choice words to say
about Acronis and their "trial versions". One day I'll be rich enough to employ
someone to do all this stuff, and I can spend my days with a desktop Zen Garden,
or playing Mah Jong on Vista. |
* 8th August 2007
At last I'm joining the ranks of the digital have's, even though I'm renown
for being a technophobe when it comes to hardware. OK, so I may end up becoming a lot more
familiar with tractors and general farming practices, but at least I can still
collapse in an armchair after a long day documenting some complicated and half-built
software (and watch some simple and half-baked TV programs). I could perhaps even squeeze
in the joke about whether someone who used to like farm machinery is an extractor fan
- or maybe not. Tempted to read about my
digital adventure this month...?
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* 28th June 2007
Is it time to catch the bus? I suppose that "ESB" will, to those more familiar
with alcoholic beverages, conjure up images of a product from the delightful
Redhook Brewery,
which is rather handily located only a few miles from Redmond in the village of Woodinville
(sidetracking, surely if it's a village in a wood, it should be called Villeinwood?).
Memories of many a happy hour spent within the confines of their welcoming hostelry!
However, despite this rambling, the ESB I'm referring to this month is actually the
Enterprise Service Bus - a new guidance package that integrates with BizTalk Server 2006
to enable a truly enterprise-level, cross-platform, and comprehensive architecture for
Service-Oriented Application (SOA) development. You can read about and download the
latest release version
on the Codeplex Web site.
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* 5th June 2007
Usually, my rambling and "somewhere-near-monthly" diary entries tend to focus on just one topic at a time.
These topics may be exceptionally varied (for instance, from DNS and VPNs one month to Planet Rock radio and visits
to computer stores to buy light bulbs the next), but in general I do try to confine myself to a single theme each
month, and wander aimlessly off only into semi-related areas.
This month, however, I've broken with tradition to
the extent that I actually need to provide a Table of Contents.
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* 29th April 2007
How do you avoid DIY and decorating jobs when you've suddenly discovered you
don't have any work for the next week? Mow the lawns? Polish the car? Watch the snooker
on TV? Or decide to rip the network to bits and (unwillingly) have to learn more than
you ever wanted to know about Active Directory and the File Replication Service?
You can no doubt guess what I did ... and, if it seems even remotely interesting,
read about what happened. At least
my faithful old lady has survived, and not been consigned to the the server farm in the sky...
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* 3rd April 2007
Maybe I have found my true goal in life ... and even escaped a large fine at
the same time. And without encountering rotten fruit along the way. Or perhaps the
effects of temporarily escaping from the cattle-class airline cabin have induced
some stranger-than-usual view of reality. Mind you, I find that visits to Florida
can have that kind of outcome without any additional input. But we did have a good time at the
ASP.NET Connections Conference,
even if they seem to have built the hotel in a different state from the car park...
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* 6th February 2007
I reckon I've discovered a major problem with Sat-Nav devices. They don't work very
well when someone has completely reconfigured the one-way system since the maps were
created. In fact, I think I wore mine out in Birmingham last week. I'm sure I heard the poor
lady inside it swearing when I refused to turn left for the umpteenth time.
And she still sounds distinctly hoarse from shouting at me. And all because I was trying to
get to talk to people about how they need to make their Web sites
more accessible to disabled visitors...
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* 30th January 2007
For some time I've been concerned that the analysis of browser types
for visitors to our site was not as accurate as it could be. For example,
installing the Google toolbar into Internet Explorer breaks the usual standard
format of the UA string. In addition, weeding out crawlers and spiders is getting
harder, so in the end I decided to rewrite all the code to give more
accurate results. I was proud of the result, but disappointed that we were not
making better use of all the historical data we've collected, so I added some new
charts that show up to five years of browser analysis data. Try them out -
go to the Traffic Pages section of our site and
select the new links (they even say "NEW!" to help you find them...)
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* 7th January 2007
An outrageous assumption of capability means that I'm now having to
learn more than I really wanted to know about design patterns. However, the
good news is that you can help. Assuming, of course, that you can steel
yourself to plough (plow) through the dense undergrowth that increasingly
typifies my diary entries. And you also get to hear more about my experiences
with the Soundbridge Internet Radio. So go on, be "Web 2.0" and
read more inside...
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