DSL.Blinkie.Blinkie

I'm back after a week long silence. The DSL light on my router-modem has been blinking for the past few days. Called up TM Streamyx and they managed to fix it for a while before the problem re-surfaced again. I wonder what's going on as I seem to experience the same problem every now and then. Maybe it is a loose cable or something...

New.Home.for.Stickies

Looks like the MalaysianDevelopers.net site is dead for good. Fortunately, WeeHyong from SGDOTNET was kind enough to donate some space to host the downloads for Stickies.NET. You can now download it from here. I have included an installer this time due to request from users. It also contains a fix for a bug in the menu. *Blush*

Crossbow

One of the most common question that developers have when they see Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is "How does it affect my Windows Forms applications?" Well, enter Crossbow - the technology that enables integration between Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation.

Watch the talk and demo on MSDN TV.

MCTS.SQL.Server.2005

*WoOHoO* I've achieved the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: SQL Server 2005 certification!!! *YiPPee* *YiPPee* *YiPPee* I'm so excited! It says in the transcript that I've achieved it since 25 January 2006 but I only got to know it yesterday. Yeh! Yeh!

Ok-ok. I know it is just a basic certification but I'm still happy about it because it is my first new generation certification and to make things more interesting, they are issuing Charter Member certifications to recognise early achievers. Yeh! Yeh!

To reward myself, I will go watch a movie now. *HuGs*

VSTS:Team.Foundation.RC

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server RC has been released to MSDN Subscribers. This will be a step closer to its release in March. A lot has been done on the MSF for CMMI process guidance. If you have access, go download it and give it a shot.

VS.NET.2003.On.Strike

Tried to open my Visual Studio .NET 2003 today and I got the following error:

"MS Development Environment has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application."

I guessed it must be *mad* at me for not using it for so long. I tried to open the one on my office notebook and the same error occured. Had to spend a few hours to fix both installations.

Repairing the installation doesn't help at all and uninstalling terminates abnormally. Searching through support.microsoft.com revealed a KB article but it does not seem to apply to the problem. Finally, discovered that running msiexec /x vs_setup.msi on the installation DVD will reset the installation and allows me to reinstall it.

SSRS.Webcasts

Learning more about SQL Server 2005 nowadays. Check out these webcasts for SQL Server Reporting Services:

Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services

Part 1 - Introduction and Overview
Part 2 - Report Delivery
Part 3 - The Report Builder
Part 4 - Report Design
Part 5 - Extensibility
Part 6 - Management and Security

Advanced Report Authoring with Report Designer

Nasi.Goreng.Ayam

Today, I ate a RM15 Nasi Goreng Ayam (Fried Rice with Chicken). Sorry, no abalon. Just nasi and ayam. Luckily, it tasted ok and I nearly ate until lao-sai.

I think food is getting insanely expensive nowadays.

IE7.B2.Blogger.Blues

Installed Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview a couple of days ago and starting to like the new user interface (UI). The UI looks cleaner, simpler and more 'modern' now although there are still some untidy bits on the tabs. Like all technology previews, I had expected it to give me some problems and it very well did! I can't see what I type when I'm creating a new post on my blog now :(

Application.Architecture.Workshop

I'm currently preparing the second edition of my Application Architecture workshop which is a revision to the previous Application Architecture for .NET workshop that I had conducted last December with additional content to cover services. Hence, the course is renamed to Application and Services Architecture for .NET.

I'm working on the business layer module now and have added more content to the other modules. For the data layer module, I have provided more elaboration on designing the data layer components with an additional topic to talk about locking and concurrency control. I've also expanded the slide on Stored Procedures versus Dynamic SQL.

Designing Business Entities is an entirely new module now with greater focus on data representation and added content for designing Custom Business Entities. I have also included new slides to explain why persistence logic should be separated from data.

For the business layer, I'm planning to cover more about transactions and maybe talk a little more about the distributed technologies. I'm also thinking about giving a one-slide introduction to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). For the remaining modules, I'm not sure what to put in yet but I will work on it as I progress along.

This time, I will not hesitate to use Paladin as a reference to illustrate the concepts and to demonstrate the architecture implementation. Previously, only students who stayed back on the last day got to see it.

With all the added content and planned goodies, the duration of the workshop will be extended to four days (instead of two). *Gee! I hope you like to hear me talking* The workshop should be available somewhere in April 2006 - I will blog about it when it is ready.

Lastly, here's a screenshot of the Application and Service Architecture diagram using Office Powerpoint 12. *Nice eh?*

Volatile.Memory

I missed those good old days where I can have the time to read through each and every new MSDN articles that interest me, work on the latest and coolest exciting technology and check-out what's new in the industry on ZDNET. But nowadays, I felt so drained and very little fresh knowledge is going into that skull of mine.

I maybe having too many things in my mind as I realised I have problems retaining what I read nowadays. Hmm... probably I'm getting old.