When we’re gone
On a somber note, we all know what a living will is, or a last will for distributing our worldly goods, but how many people have a will that helps those who come into our office to pick up the pieces when we’re gone?
C# coding – I’m getting lazy
Microsoft continues their effort to reduce the amount of code required for C# developers to accomplish certain tasks. The more I see of this the more I want. Somewhere between where we are now and the point where the system reads our minds and just does what we want, there is a place where guys like me can get the […]
Grandma, didn’t you read the manual?
I need to set this up briefly. I don’t just hang around in MV forums, I hang around in a lot of different forums. My latest venture was to the usenet forum microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general where people go to get advice with problems with IE. The mentality of the people providing responses there has just floored me. It makes me take a […]
What is “The Linux Desktop” anyway?
In my last blog I mentioned there really isn’t such a thing as "The Linux Desktop". The topic was mentioned in a forum today so I thought I’d post a follow-up with some related thoughts and hallucinations – you can decide which is which. I apologize if this posting isn’t organized very well. I’m blasting this one out quickly and […]
The price for “simple”
Dawn made a comment in comp.databases.pick: "I like to say that "it takes hard work to make software simple". That triggers a thought: as software evolves and user expectations increase it takes a lot more work to keep it simple. I don’t think some of my colleagues have embraced this concept.
Nebula MV ASP.NET Starter Kit?
We’ve been putting together an ASP.NET starter kit which may or may not be productized. It’s a Visual Studio solution / template which includes the following features.
Tips for CSS and ASP.NET
As I’m sitting here tidying up some CSS in a new ASP.NET app, I thought I’d provide a couple tips that I’ve found to be helpful.
MV and Relational Data Exchanges Part 1
One of the most common inquiries we see in MV forums involves exchanging data between the MV DBMS and relational databases. In this multi-part series over the next couple weeks, I’ll describe ways to get data flowing in both directions without using platform-specific ODBC tools. This Part 1 is just an introduction and I’ll start describing some details in Part […]
D3 FlashBASIC History and Usage
Questions frequently arise in forums about how FlashBASIC works. So I thought I’d summarize it here. First, a primer on compilation and object code in general
Responsibility in Software
A common statement that comes up in forums and other discussions about software is "the vendor should have put feature X into their product". There is no clear line where vendor responsibility "ends".
Lonely D3 Shell Variables
A question came up in comp.databases.pick that asked how we could use a pre-defined set of values in a D3 query. For example: SORT CUSTOMERS WITH STATE “AZ” “CA” “NM” “OR” … but getting the state codes dynamically. Sure, we can do that, using shell variables.
Open Source – way beyond software
In this world of "Open Source" it’s amazing how many software offerings completely die because the one author on the planet that cared about the code has lost interest and no one else seems willing to maintain it. The concepts behind OSS go beyond software toward philosphy and changes in the way we work. And unless people subscribe to these […]
PrintWizard Tip 01
People frequently ask about PrintWizard, how it works, what they can do with it, etc. As time permits I’ll start posting some info here about how to use it. Unfortunately this won’t start at the beginning like a tutorial. I’m just going to post some nice tips as I happen to think about them. In this first tip I’ll show […]
Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8
This news is all over the place but I know it will be of interest to Nebula colleagues: From Microsoft:"We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with […]
Estimating project time
In my last blog entry I mentioned a couple tools I use for tracking time. Today a forum posting mentioned the difficulty of doing accurate project estimates. I’ve made mistakes on both sides of the estimation game, and documented a couple of them here. I’ve been doing this for years but I confess I still need to work on some […]
What’s on your desktop?
Whether using Windows, Linux, or Mac, we all tend to customize our desktop and use our favorite tools. Have you ever been curious about what other people use? Ever wonder what life saver you’re missing that someone else uses daily? Well, here are a few tools that I use every day. EDIT 2017: Originally published in 2008, I’ve crossed out […]
Why mv.NET – Part 2
Almost two years ago I wrote a blog entry titled "Why mv.NET?" But every couple of days we still see the same question phrased differently: "How do I connect to/from MV?" My immediate response is still to include mv.NET in your list of options. Here is an explanation why.
ASP.NET and AJAX tips
I found a couple articles regarding performance and scalability for ASP.NET, and ASP.NET with AJAX. I think these are a good read for anyone doing development with these tools.
Website Design – Establish a consistent theme
For developers who use ASP.NET, DesignBais, and other tools, it’s important to design the look and feel of a website before too much front-end work is done.
Back to the blog
I haven’t written many blog entries lately. I keep saving up material that I think would be interesting but somehow I never get to publishing it. Right now I’m looking at about 25 unpublished blog drafts, most of which will never get published. This is just an FYI that I intend to start publishing on a fairly regular basis. Rather […]