Blogging

Cross post from ASP.NET Weblogs (Community Server) to GeeksWithBlogs (SubTEXT)

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:12:42 GMT

I'm new to ASP.NET Weblogs. Thanks to Joe Stagner of course who setup my weblog account and whom I have thrown tons of questions at (Poor Joe. All day answering my messages!). I'm also an old member of GeeksWithBlogs (since January 2005) and cannot just slip away like that! So I considered cross posting, as a permanent procedure, not temp. one.

To do cross posting from a Community Server weblog like ASP.NET weblogs to any blog that supports MetaWeblog APIs like SubTEXT (which GeeksWithBlogs.NET uses), the steps are really easy:

You login to your community server blog control panel
You expand "Global Settings" from the left menu and click "Spam, Ping and Cross-Posting"
You click "Setup a new blog" and enter your MetaWeblog API enabled blog

You can see my settings in this screenshot:

Technorati Tags: Blogging,GeekWithBlogs,GWB,Cross Post,MetaWeblog API

Cross posted from weblogs.asp.net/meligy

New Blogger in Town - Business, Management, Technology mixed together

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:12:22 GMT

Tamer Zaki used to be one of the closest coworkers to me although we have worked together only once in Hot Potato. He's the kind of a guy who believes in having one direction and following it, while reading in many other areas as well, just enlarge your horizon. We used to talk for so long every other day and I've learned a lot from his ability of "connecting the dots" that I sometimes didn't see their connection that well, and, if now believe I have a fair analysis capabilities, he shoudl be thanked for a good deal amount of it.

Through his experiences in working on MSN Arabia in LinkDotNet and the experiences of agile development with special mentalities and sometimes pre-released tools in SilverKey, and his new Team Lead position in his new company, the guy has pretty much to share with the community. He was just (as many others) too lazy to share it!!

Now, the guy has started a blog for the second time with intention to stop being lazy this time.

Quote from his first post:

Lately I found that Most of the time I spent with my friends we do share our ideas, believes and thoughts and this help us to improve our thoughts and learn new things but I feel that this is not enough I want to share my thoughts with the whole world to get more feedback thereby enhance myself so the blogging is the right way to do so. Now my mind is not forcing me to blog because I want to blog. Hopefully this time I won’t quit and if everything goes well I might make a technical blog we will see, Finally welcome to my territory.

Think and grow rich

I have decided not to announce his blog until he DOES WRITE SOMETHING. He recently summarized his reading on the book "Think and grow rich" in his second post.

Go on for more, Tamer :)

Technorati Tags: Friends,Timo,Tamer Zaki,Think and grow rich

Gotcha: .TEXT and SubText Users who like ANOTHEREON001, watch for IE6

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 05:16:25 GMT

The problem

When GWB moved to SubText, I wanted to feel the move by changing my blog theme . ANOTHEREON001 seemed the only one that has listing of categories under each post and still looks fine . I wanted this badly as alternative to tags So, I went to use it.

Very soon, I found that on IE6, some posts (those with BLOCKQUOTE tags) were looking very bad in IE6. The post text looks like it's shifted to the left that some parts cannot be seen, especially when you resize the browser to less width/height.

The solution

Googling the problem, I found its description and solution. You need to edit the skin file yourself as follows

Remove the “border-left” style.
Add a “border-bottom” style of equal width. Make it match the background if you don’t want to see it.
Eliminate the “padding” style from the “blockquote”.

In case you have no access to the theme file (which is my own case and all GWB users typically), you need to go to the Custom CSS section in your control panel and apply the changes.

Here's how my custom CSS looks like:

blockquote {margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;}

li {margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;}

body, .post, .post a, .post *{

font-size: .95em; font-family : Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;text-align:justify;}

.post h2, .post h5{

font-size: 1.2em;font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}

.HeaderTitle {font-weight:bold;}

* html blockquote { border-left:none; border-bottom:none; padding-left:4px; margin-left:0px;}

The last line is what really matters here. It has the needed work (others are just tweaks for the theme). Clearly, the fix requires that you remove the left border. I tried to modify it to still have the borders with no use, so, I decided to look up a hack that makes these changes apply only to IE6 users (who do have the problem). The hack was simply inserting * html before blockquote.

Color-blind People get VERY high rank :D

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:13:00 GMT

Our cool designer whom I work with since my former company, and has been considered a very special sucessful designer over the 7 years he kept working on, somehow suddenly discovered that he's a color blind!!!
He came to write about it, and got shocked by the number of visits his post has been getting. It's still on the homepage, and top blogger of the week in all categories at Digg.com(the post from Digg).

I think it's worth checking for you too, at least to make sure that you yourself aren't another colorblind ;-)

The typical "first windows live writer post", my version...

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:19:00 GMT

The Facts

OK, as everybody, I had to write my first Windows Live Writer post, like everybody else did, that's what you are reading right now!

If you haven't checked it out already, Windows Live Writer is a blog authoring software from Microsoft, which has become a top topic in the blogsphere lately; it's released with an SDK which some people also had good experience with, used mainly for posting to Windows Live spaces, yet supports many other blogging engines including Movable Type, Blogger.com, Type Pad, Das Blog and Community Server. Even blog engines that don't have native support (like .TEXT, the way older version of Community Server :: Blogs, and the current engine of GeeksWithBlogs.NET) are supported via either MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs. (Jeff Julian, our kind host here wrote a very comprehensive post with images on how to connect it to GeeksWithBlogs account or any other .TEXT using Metaweblog API).

(I know almost everyone is writing about it right now, especially in GeeksWithBlogs, but I had to drop this just for the record ;-S )

My Experience

For now, everything look jut fine, and the application looks cool, light (update: no, it isn't light, at least not for my processor) and powerful.

Of course it's not very feature complete (although has cool features like the maps (don't work; at least with .TEXT, check below), spelling check, and simulating blog style (coloring and so) while authoring, and supports default features for formatting, images, links and even quotes). What I miss from old blog authoring programs I tried is smilies... I think Microsoft needs to have a look at IMHO (another GREAT blog authoring software) and learn to perfect its new cool writer.

Oh, yeah. I just remember now that Word 2007 does already support blogging (not fully, but should be complete by the final release). This reminds me of another email client for Live mail released before (called "Windows Live Mail Desktop") which should replace Outlook Express. This makes me think: Is Live Writer something like "Word Express for blogging only", and is Microsoft extending the "Express" concept in SQL and VS to many other products? Well, great :D...

P.S.

For test purpose, I added a map of my city

< --- NOT THERE -- TEST FAILED! -- >

----- The map is saved as local image file and then uploaded, a problem I'll tell about next makes this just doesn't work. A link to the online map ()which is found in the map properties didn't work, so, I couldn't get that running and published together. Hopefully, this is a problem only with blogs configured using Metaweblog API like .TEXT-----

This is an image to test the image upload support, a pic for me with the team in my old company (hmm.. remind me to have a pic with the new gurus I work with now!)...

----- As all other software, unable to integrate with my .TEXT blog for images... have to either upload them separately somewhere, or set an FTP for it :(

As I already commented on it, I insisted on publishing it (I used flickr of course) -----

(By the way, the guy sitting on the floor in the bottom left corner of the picture is still with me; or the accurate is to say I'm with him, as he moved here in Silver Key even before I do. Although, we both have nothing negative for old company and the friendly guys/gals there; on the contrary, but this is another post indeed.)

A Great Old Story (From "Joel On Software")

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 23:11:00 GMT

Joel the famous geek, who is also an ex-Microsoft employee, tells a story about his first document reviewed by Bill Gates back in 1992 (One on Excel Basic, latterly known as VBA for Excel), and his meeting afterwards; through which he gets the reader closer into Bill Gates the programmer and technical manager, not the business guy as many people tend to think of him (That's Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in case you wonder). And drops some thoughts on technical v.s. non-technical management through Microsoft and Apple.

Joel remembered this as he found Bill remembering him as a real great program manager for Excel in a recent short interview for Wall Street Journal, knowing that Joel left Microsoft to start his own work in 1994.

This is such a great story, especially by the time we know Bill is getting soon rested off the big role he plays for Microsoft within less than 2 years, to focus on charity work.

ASP.NET 2.0 Themes: You know, you use!

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 14:01:00 GMT

Last month, I had another blog on AspAdvice. It has a most recent Community Server version and many other advantages a blogger would love, and still is a great geeky community (not as big as here of course). I didn't know how to make the transition and later didn't even know whether this was a right decision, and still untill now; which is why I returned to silance suddenly on both blogs!

Anyway, I submitted a simple article on ASP.NET 2.0 themes there. You may check the related blog post, or go directly to the article.

More About Gate's Role Change

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:38:00 GMT

You must have already heard of it. Bill Gates' role has been planned to be downplayed in 2008. Moving from full-time Chairman and chief software architect to part-time chairman of the great company, as complementing this to to change his part-time n his charity organization he runs with his wife (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), giving his role as chief software architect to Ray Ozzie (formerly chief technical officer at Microsoft since 2004, also the creator of IBM Corp.’s Lotus Notes) who has already been given the title and tarted working with. Writing about this would be reporting quite old news

I write this to refer you to some key pages about it, which are:

Microsoft news conference exact statement as delivered by Gates and Steve Ballmer (transcript and video)
A brief chat on Channel9 with Gates and Ballmer just after the their annoucement above.
The official Microsoft press announcement for the transition (June 15, 2006).
PC World Magazine Statement about the transition. A great summary and analysis.
Microsoft Leadership Update Virtual Pressroom

Do YOU read MY Blog ???!!!

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:26:00 GMT

This MDC, some people came to tell me that my blog is becomming populer day after another. Do you believe that?

I always knew that no one reads my blog except some few guys from ArabTeam2000 . I thought the best way to tell is to write this.

Do YOU read MY Blog ???!!! Please post a reply here if you do, as it's going to make a BIG difference to me.

I'm a very bad blogger anyway, who writes too few posts every too long period, so, it'd ll be weird to have anybody; but it's a try anyway.

Best of the .NET Blogsphere

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 08:34:00 GMT

I've recently found that FTPOnline has put a selective collection of .NET related blog entries and weblogs and entitled that “Best of the .NET Blogsphere”.

Of course “best” can be always a point of personal taste, but, of course the list is a special one, and, it's well categorized too. Yes, you won't find my blog and so, but it's still OK :-D.

The description of the page looks like they update it from time to time, but, I haven't discoevered the page long enough to tell if they do, however, even if they don't, it still is a good deal for me, what about you?