.Net Jonesie - October, 2006

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		Peter G Jones New Zealand

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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Script Debugging by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

This is new for me - maybe for you too. To debug a javascript block from Visual Studio, add the following to your script block:

debugger;

Make sure your IE advanced settings have Disable Script Debugging turned off. When the browser hits the debugger statement it will display the page source in Visual Studio and allow you to step over the code, examine variable values and do all the lovely debugging stuff you need to do.

Wish I'd know about this a few years ago!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:44:17 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Beware of IE 7 by Peter

Darryl and others have mentioned recently about the impending doom that is IE 7 :] If you are like me and decided not to use it - for one reason or another - then beware that it is very likley to be automatically installed on your favourite computer weather you want it or not.

Now, dont get me wrong, I like IE7 but during the early betas I had an issue with it and Visual Studio Team Suite so I haven't used it on my work machine since then. I do use it at home though and it works fine, but from a user POV I don't think it works any better than IE6. From a dev POV I've just realised that I haven't done any testing on my sites (personal or otherwise) so I should probably stop blogging and get testing!

Anyways, my main gripe is that this is rolling out as a critical (or at least high priority) update so most users will get it without asking for it. I can understand the justification for doing this - it does fix a lot of potential security issues so it would fall into that category - but I can see this causing some problems for a lot of people.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:43:24 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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Monday, October 09, 2006

New Camera by Peter

We (actually my wife) purchased a camera on the weekend. It's a Nikon D80. We got it from Photo & Video International in Merivale Mall and I must say that they are without doubt the best camera shop in Christchurch - if not the whole of NZ. Very professional, very friendly, efficient and knowledgeable. It's so refreshing finding real service again!

As for the camera, it appears to work very well. It has a quick shutter speed, is not too heavy - we got the 18-135mm lens so it's a bit heavier than the smaller lens - and comes with all the features we want in a SLR. The previous model, the D200 is a little faster if you are taking lots of rapid shots but otherwise the D80 is identical - same lens and chips - but is also cheaper by a few hundred bucks.

d80_front_view.jpg

Monday, October 09, 2006 3:54:45 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

New Base4 Release by Peter

Alex has just released Base4 version 2.1.

I haven't been following the progress of Base4 that closely but it appears that it has matured into a very stable and innovative product - take a look at the 15 minute video if you doubt my word! I can't see how any other product could be simpler to use than Base4. It's awesome.

Alex: it might be a good idea to do some benchmarks like the NHibernate v ADO one I saw recently - sorry can't find the link now. It would be interesting to see the comparison. I'm thinking that Base4 would stack up very well against NHibernate :)

Thursday, October 05, 2006 8:15:35 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [1] General | SQL |

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

What a releif! by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

My work PC has been performing very poorly ever since I installed Office 2007 TR2. Last week I removed this and it didn't seem to help very much. After a few calls to our support people and some monitoring of the running processes in Task Manager I managed to figure out that the MacAfee Virus scanner was the problem.

IT'S A PIECE OF CRAP - NEVER USE IT! At least, not if you want to do any work. Luckily I could uninstall it so my machine is back to full speed again - Visual Studio now takes less than a minute to open a file.

Phew, glad to get that off my chest.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:08:25 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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Free Office Developer Training by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

Microsoft are providing some free Office 2007 developer training around the country at the moment. You can sign up here: http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/developer/default.mspx.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 10:44:57 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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We NEED You! by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

Not trying to sound desperate here but Intergen are still looking for talented people. In Christchurch we currently need :

Project Manager / Business Analyst
1 Senior .Net Developer
2 Junior / Intermediate .Net Developers
1 Tester

Initially this is for a new initiative working closely with a major customer on some big systems. It's a very desirable team to be in (for Intergen) and will involve working closely with the customer supporting existing systems and creating new systems. The customer is very successful in their space and a great organisation to work with.

Looking on Seek at the weekend there was 140 or so IT vacancies in Christchurch and I'd say 90% of these were for developers and a good majority of these were for .Net or Microsoft technologies. So given the huge demand and fantastic choice you have at the moment, why would you want to work for Intergen?

Well, for me, it's about the people and the work. We have some really smart & fun people working for us - people that can make your working day an adventure. The work is varied and leading edge - we have no fear of using the latest technologies if it fits the requirement and we understand the risks - things like .Net 3, Office 12 etc.

If you are at all interested in chatting about the opportunities - or know someone who might be - then please send use your CV or contact me on 021 583 793 or contact me via email.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:21:58 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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Vista Compatibility by Peter.Jones@intergen.co.nz

There's been a few comments here and there about the lack of support for Visual Studio .old on Vista. I was reading bharry's post on this and it makes perfect sense to me - anything that takes time away from future versions is a bad thing in my book.

However, Microsoft are definitely going to extraordinary lengths to provide compatibility for as many applications as possible. For example, VB 6! There is still a heck of a lot of VB code out there and it's not going away soon (btw, have you noticed the investment Microsoft have made in VB6 <-> VB .Net migration and tools since the big stink last year?). I don't know how anyone can say that Microsoft don't care or don't listen - that's just patently wrong.

I installed Vista RC1 on a fast machine over the weekend so that I could work on a small DotNetNuke web site (for a moonlighting job - don't worry, the boss knows :). During the process I had to install SQL Express. Vista gave me an interesting warning message that told me I needed SQL Server 2005 SP2. Now after a bit of hunting around I finally realised that SP2 doesn't exist yet. Hmmmm, this could be a problem. However, I then noticed the Application Compatibility icon on my desktop and in about 1 minute I had SQL Express running in XP SP2 mode.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't remember ever knowing enough about the future to tell users of my applications that they should get a patch that does not yet exist. Frankly, I find this to be amazing that Microsoft would go to these lengths and a clear demonstration that of their commitment to delivering a great product.

So, now I really want Vista at work - not because it's necessarily any better - but mainly because it's new and shiny. New is good because it will have the latest goodness (and sure, the latest bugs). Shiny is good because I spend 10-12 hours a day looking at computer screens and I need a bit of a change to keep me interested. Oh, and I guess it's faster and easier to use and all that boring stuff too.

This is a great industry to be involved in.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 7:31:30 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

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