IUpdateable from Eric Nelson (http://ericnelson.wordpress.com)

I really have got a taste for this thing called “holiday”  - hence I am off to do it again for a week. Have fun all.

I posted in July on DataGrids (or rather the absence of them) in WPF. While I was on holiday last week, this snuck out - The WPF Toolkit on Codeplex . The WPF team have split their work into: Toolkit – what they know they will release Futures – what they...

A couple of folks have asked me recently about Visual Basic versions and .NET Framework versions and how they tie up. I thought I would have a stab at a concept map to demonstrate the relationship. Note that things got very different with the release...

In simple terms, .NET Reflector is… a must have. It was developer by Lutz Roeder back in 2000 before he went on to join Microsoft. Red Gate have announced that they have acquired it and the good news is a free version will continue to be available (Thanks...

We had a superb holiday last week in Yorkshire and amazingly it was reasonably dry which was handy as the house has a tiny beck behind it which apparently can become “huge”. I am still catching up on stuff but I was pleased to see SP1 shipped last week...

I need to crack on with some other work today before my holiday. I should be back on the blogosphere (!) on the 18th. In the meantime – have fun, cut great code and always make up before bed time…

Hi folks – I need your help. My extended team looks after the UK MSDN site and delivers you the MSDN Flash every two weeks (for which I am the new technical editor – and slowly finding my way). This has been our only “vehicles" for sometime now to...

Just started the day with a swift play with my original concept map .

Just a quick note to say I have updated my “ Eric will be appearing ” page. October is looking busy :-) 2nd MSDN Event Reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/bb905504.aspx for all MSDN events 7th MSDN Event Manchester 14th MSDN Event Birmingham 16th...

I have had my eye on two tools for sometime. Both tools look extremely useful. Both tools have a very different focus. Both tools look hot! Regrettably – both tools continue to be ignored while I spend time getting myself up to speed on the basics :-...

Well – my first using a tool inspired by Udi . Took…maybe 5 minutes. Very sweet. Clearly this could be exploded out into much more detail – but I have real work to do :-)

My notebook (a rather nice Compaq nc8430 ) is in need of a major cleanup. Over the last 6 months I have installed many Beta (and Alpha) bits of software. Hence it has the odd “issue” :-) We are about to enter a “most has RTM’d moment”: SQL Server 2008...

I was just skimming in FeedDemon and spotted this post by Udi on concept maps . Nasty at first glance – but have fun following the concepts around… I particularly liked the distance between TX and OLTP :-) What is really scary – is there is so much not...

Ok – I will be honest, I forgot it hadn’t actually released (It is tough keeping on top of the staggered releases we have at the moment!) This is a shameful cut and paste from http://blogs.msdn.com/sync/archive/2008/08/06/top-new-features-in-sync-services...

SQL Server 2008 RTM’d yesterday (August 6th). It is already available on MSDN subscriber downloads http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx . Express edition doesn’t appear to be up there yet. Well done to the team.

For the last 3 years I have been lucky enough to present/attend the SPA conference . SPA (Software Practice Advancement) is doing an Autumn series of 5 talks in London starting in September. Looks to be an interesting mix which I thought would be worth...

Richard popped me an email about his latest “project” - a Silverlight implementation of Manic Miner which he has developer with Pete McGann. This is a very polished game but the cool bit is – they will be discussing how they developed it at NxtGenUG Coventry...

I am beginning to think it could be humble sqlps.exe. SQL Server 2008 includes powershell support – it is very, very nice. I have barely scraped the surface of sqlps but I know it is a feature that needs to be more widely talked about. You can launch...

My poll is showing completely the wrong results. Surely there can not be more Amiga fans in the UK than Atari?! Did they all appear after I left my Atari for dead and replaced it with BSD Unix? Or … does it just prove my point. The Amiga guys always felt...

Whoops – I nearly missed this one. I previously mentioned our more friendly approach to PHP back in Nov 2007.The good news is we have made version 1.0 of the PHP driver available for download .  We have also posted the source code for our driver...

As I dig into Visual Basic a bit further I to realise what I have been missing as a (lapsed) C# developer. A great example is some of the goodness wrapped up in Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll. It is a standard part of the .NET Framework and… is absolutely...

I had a great break over at my sisters new home in Spain. I got to know her 12 cats (!!!), her Spanish neighbours (who are the Spanish equivalent of The Waltons ) and the local vino pretty well. The weather was amazing, the mountains were great to walk...