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August 2008 - Posts

Friday, August 22, 2008 5:21 PM

Believe it or not – I’m off on holiday again

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.
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
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Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:40 PM

WPF Datagrid is here – well, nearly here…

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 21, 2008 11:54 AM

Visual Basic and .NET Framework Versions

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 4 Comments
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 5:39 PM

.NET Reflector acquired by Red Gate

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:06 PM

I’m back…and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 shipped

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.
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
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Friday, August 08, 2008 10:19 AM

See you all in a weeks time

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…
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
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Friday, August 08, 2008 10:11 AM

Your advice needed – what should I do with this devx site?

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 4 Comments
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Friday, August 08, 2008 9:29 AM

LINQ Overview concept map #2

Just started the day with a swift play with my original concept map .
Posted by Eric Nelson | 4 Comments
Thursday, August 07, 2008 5:35 PM

Updated the list of events I will be attending/delivering sessions

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Thursday, August 07, 2008 5:14 PM

Two tools I MUST find some time to try – Typemock and NDepend

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 :-(
Posted by Eric Nelson | 3 Comments
Thursday, August 07, 2008 12:11 PM

My first concept map – LINQ overview

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 :-)
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 07, 2008 11:22 AM

Is it time I went 64bit Vista?

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 4 Comments
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Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:03 AM

Wow – a concept map of “everything”

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
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Thursday, August 07, 2008 9:46 AM

Microsoft Sync Framework released

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-for-ado-net-v2.aspx
Posted by Eric Nelson | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 07, 2008 9:37 AM

SQL Server 2008 is finished – break out the bubbly

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.
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 9:03 PM

Software Practice Advancement Autumn Series of lectures

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 8:52 PM

Manic Miner in Silverlight

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 7:36 PM

The best feature in SQL Server 2008 – sqlps.exe?

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 5:15 PM

Oh no…. my poll is going entirely wrong!!!

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 4 Comments
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 5:09 PM

PHP driver for SQL Server 2005 Released

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, August 05, 2008 4:48 PM

C# and Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, August 05, 2008 1:29 PM

7 days of sun – I guess that is it until next year

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
Posted by Eric Nelson | 3 Comments
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