Mad Props!

A couple of random observations for a Monday morning:

Ghost Rider is really as bad as they say it is (and I say that as a huge fan). What a tragic waste of potential. Not even Nic Cage, whom I usually like, could save this film. So many ways in which it could have been done better. The story is a classic one, so there's no problem with that; it's just the execution that was so horrible.

SharePoint (or, more specifically, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) rocks. It really does. I've spent most of the last week playing with it as we roll it out here at work. Trying to keep it simple right now with document libraries and wikis, but the power and flexibility of the product surprises me at every turn.

Crackdown is still one of the best Xbox 360 games. I read recently that Epic have announced that there will be a Gears of War 2. I don't care. I want a Crackdown expansion pack!

My birthday is in less than two weeks, and I'm getting an HD DVD Player accessory for the Xbox 360. Can't wait! It comes with King Kong, so that'll be a great demo of the format (and of my TV). I'm looking forward to grabbing Nine Inch Nails - Beside You In Time (Live) and Planet Earth on HD DVD.

I've been a bit slack in terms of blogging lately. I've tried (and admittedly failed) to only post meaningful stuff, rather than bombarding the blog with small posts. Do you guys as readers have a preference? Would you prefer if I posted more often with smaller tidbits of news? Leave me a comment.

Not a lot going on right now, so this blog has quietened down somewhat.

On Saturday Sal and I went to an "advanced screening" (I thought it was supposed to start two months ago) of Pan's Labyrinth. I've been waiting for this movie for months now, and it was definitely worth the wait. Unbelievably good film. For those who haven't heard of it, it's director Guillermo del Toro's pet project - a fantasy tale set during the Spanish civil war in 1940. Go see it if you get the chance.

As you may have noticed from my gamercard over there on the right (don't bother looking if you're reading this via an RSS feed), I recently upgraded to a gold subscription to Xbox Live. I only bothered getting a three month sub, because I'm not entirely sure how much use I'll get out of it. Last night Crucible and I played some co-op Crackdown, which was fun, but obvioulsy the game wasn't designed for a 512k connection. There was a lot of pausing/freezing during gameplay. Disappointing. I was very impressed by the voice chat though - I had bought a headset on Friday night and this was my first chance to use it. The voice comms during gameplay are seamless (apart from when the connection can't handle it and freezes up for a second or two).

And on a political note (overseas readers can basically stop reading now), what's this furor over dealings with Brian Burke? Is he like the Kenny Craig of politics or something? Apparently all you have to do is look into his eyes (don't look around the eyes) and you've been "morally and politically compromised." We've already seen a resignation on one side of the floor, and a huge controversy on the other, over something as simple as having lunch with the guy. Amazing.

As a tribute to the most awesome game I've played on the 360, and the reason I haven't blogged much this week:

Haven't heard of Crackdown? Have a look at the official site.

As you know, I've been using Windows Live Mail Desktop (beta) for a while now instead of Mozilla Thunderbird (my previous email client). I'm quite happy with it now, apart from a few niggles (the ridiculous amount of time it takes to "catch up" a newsgroup, for example), so I've decided to switch for good.

The means, of course, that I want to get my saved messages in Thunderbird across to WLMd. After a bit of searching around, I've worked out a relatively easy way to do it. It should be much easier than this, but Thunderbird has no "Export", and WLMd's "Import" doesn't include Thunderbird. Bad form.

Anyway, here are the steps you need to follow. Because we're saving messages as ".eml" files here, this technique should also work with Outlook, Outlook Express and Vista's Windows Mail.

1. Download and install the Thunderbird AutoSave extension from AusDilecce Extensions. Restart Thunderbird when you're done.
2. Select the messages you want to move to WLMd.
3. Right-click and select "Export Selected Msgs|Individually", and choose the folder to which you would like to save the messages. Each message will be saved as a single .eml file.
4. Open the folder you just exported your messages to using Windows Explorer.
5. Open one or more of the .eml files you just exported. Assuming you have set WMLd to be your default mail client, each message will open in WLMd's message-reading window.
6. Hit Ctrl+Shift+V, which is the keyboard shortcut for "File|Move to folder...", and select the folder you want to move the message to.
7. Rinse and repeat. You either want to go back to step 2, or to step 5, depending on whether you've finished sucking all those exported .eml files into WLMd.

This one was too good not to link to. After dealing with both ISPs and bricks-and-mortar retailers with incredibly poor customer service, I think everyone should read this article:

Seven steps to remarkable customer service by Joel Spolsky.

This is a really dumb tip, but I've done it and I'm happy, so I thought I'd share.

When a web site doesn't specify the font that IE (or FireFox, for that matter) should use to render it, the browser falls back on some defaults. For IE it's Times New Roman and Courier New (depending on the type of font it needs to display).

Internet Explorer gives you the ability to change those default fonts. You do so by opening your Internet Options (via Control Panel, or using Tools|Internet Options from within IE), then clicking the "Fonts" button on the bottom of the first tab. Everyone's always been able to do this, but let's face it - who does?

Well, I did.

I set them like this:

Webpage font: Cambria
Plain text font: Consolas

These are two new fonts that come with Vista and Office 2007.

Now all those old web sites look fresh and modern!

Like I said, it's a dumb tip, but it made me happy. Why not try it?

Our St Valentine's day meeting of the Albury/Wodonga .NET User Group was all about SharePoint. Pablo from Albury TAFE and James from Aspirence gave presentations around MOSS 2007, which sparked a lot of discussion about the platform and its various uses.

One of the things we were all very interested in was the Workflow capabilities of SharePoint 2007. There are some very basic workflows (little more than, "Hey guys! I uploaded this document!") built into SharePoint, but we really wanted to know about how to create our own custom workflows. Spelunking around the installations we had at the meeting didn't get us anywhere, but a quick Google-search when I got home last night revealed a few resources for those interested:

• Creating Custom Workflows with the SharePoint Designer 2007 on Channel9
• Walkthrough: Creating Office SharePoint Server 2007 Workflows in Visual Studio 2005 on MSDN

As well as those, there are some great videos out there about SharePoint and Windows Workflow Foundation, predominantly from Carl Franklin and his awesome DNRTV show. If you're not downloading and watching DNRTV every single week, you're doing yourself a great disservice. Here are some of the more relevant episodes as well as an interesting Channel9 video about SharePoint's Business Data Catalog:

• Michael Stiefel on Windows Workflow part 1
• Michael Stiefel on Windows Workflow part 2
• Michael Stiefel on Windows Workflow part 3
• Michael Stiefel on Windows Workflow part 4
• Sahil Malik on SharePoint part 1
• Sahil Malik on SharePoint part 2
• Introducing the Business Data Catalog on Channel9

These are all great resources for the knowledge-hungry SharePoint n00b. I know they really sparked my imagination with regards to what's possible in this humongous application. Enjoy!

Wow - a whole week since I've posted. That could be some sort of record (not counting the thirty years or so that I went without posting initially).

I wanted to make a quick post about Microsoft Money. I've been using MS Money since Money 95, which cost me all of AU$19.95. That twenty bucks was probably the most important $20 I have ever spent. I don't know how many of my readers use a financial-management program like Money or Quicken, but for me it has been invaluable. I know at any time how much money I have, and how much will be available in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, Money 2003, the version I currently use, asks you to sign on with your Passport (now known as Windows Live ID) when you start. It doesn't actually seem to use it at all (I think users in the US get extra features regarding online statements etc), but it's never bothered me having to sign in. Last week, however, the login process stopped working. I'd hit the Login button, and Money would instantly tell me that my login was unsuccessful. It didn't even seem to be going off to the net to verify my credentials. I could still use the product without signing in, but the sudden breakage worried me.

So I did some research, and found this knowledgebase entry with a whole series of things to try to correct the problem. Method 5, re-registering msxml3.dll, solved the problem.

My guess is that the recent install of Windows Live Messenger 8.1, or perhaps Windows Live Mail Desktop, hosed the msxml3.dll registration and hence broke Money's ability to sign in.

This, of course, gets back to my current gripe about computers - how difficult they are to manage if you're a newbie. Registering a DLL is no sweat for me, but what if my mum & dad had experienced this problem? Ok, maybe that's a bad example, since they wouldn't know how to install a piece of software like Live Messenger, but still: How is Joe User supposed to know how to research a problem like Money not signing in?

Jeff Atwood recently wrote on Coding Horror that computers shouldn't need to ask the user's permission if something goes wrong and Windows knows how to fix it. I think that applies here. If it's possible to write a neat series of steps in a knowledgebase entry that will diagnose and possibly solve the problem, why can't Windows do that for me?

So Money 2003 is working again, and I'm now considering an upgrade to 2007. Anybody out there using Money 2007? Is it worth the upgrade? I know it costs more than $20 nowadays. :)

Paul Stovell brings us the first episode of his new screencast series, "Binding Patterns", entitled "Working with DataSets". This is a great introduction to the concept of DataSets in ADO.NET, including typed DataSets. It goes for a little over an hour, but I found that it's quite watchable at 1.2 or 1.4 times normal speed, so you can race through it and still pick everything up.

If you're new to .NET and want to get into some database programming, this would be a great place to start!

Also, check out the comment I left on his post regarding the initialization of default field values in DataSets. The solution that Paul gives in the screencast works well, but it's worth knowing a few different approaches to the same problem.

Caught a post on digg.com overnight entitled "10 Most Misspelled Words in Blogs". The post details some of the homophones that people mix up for no good reason except that they weren't paying attention in grade one or two when you learn this stuff. Words like "their", "there" and "they're"; or "your" and "you're".

Surprisingly they left out "definitely", which I often see misspelled as "definately". But that's not what this post is about.

This post is in response to a comment on digg, where a commenter named Hypermarkalan posted this comment:

Practise= UK conventions
Practice= US conventions

Well, I can tell you that that's not the case at all, but it's actually very easy to remember which variant to use.

You know how you can advise someone, and therefore you have given them advice? The "s" variant is the verb (the "doing word") and the "c" variant is the noun (the "naming word"). You can give advice, but you advise someone. "License" and "licence" follow the same rule - you license someone to drive, but you own a driver's licence. I'm also reasonably certain that "devise" and "device" are two words that are similarly related.

It's exactly the same with "practise" and "practice". You practise doing something, and once you've done it you have practice. Again, the "s" variant is the verb, and the "c" variant is the noun.

Hope this helps you understand how to use the two words. Start practising best-practice grammar now!