Brad Corbin's Blog

First Scoble, now Gates!

Brad Corbin — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:13:00 GMT

Bill Gates is stepping down from his day-to-day duties at Microsoft to focus more on his charitable work:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jun06/06-15CorpNewsPR.mspx

Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates

Working full time at Microsoft through June 2008, Gates then will continue as chairman and advisor while increasing Foundation efforts; Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie to assume expanded roles

My contest game design ideas...

Brad Corbin — Fri, 26 May 2006 02:04:00 GMT

Well, I've officially entered the Geeks with Blogs .Net game design contest. Why do I need to win this? Well, my last console video game was a ~~Nintendo 64~~ Super Nintendo.

Yes, really.

Stop laughing. I can kick your butt in Donkey Kong Country. I think I even still have a framed Blockbuster Video game contest prize around here somewhere.... that'll impress the chicks, eh?

Anyway..... I'm going to be using C# express, mostly because the majority of my experience in VS2003 is in VB.Net. Should be a good experiment--we'll see if I can endure the case sensitivity long enough to put out an actual product... :)

While some other contestants are planning elaborate card games or drawing sophisticated diagrams, I'll be taking a slightly different route: similar to the sample file, Escapa, I'll be taking some simple but fun and addictive web-based games and replicating them in .Net. That way I can scale up to however many individual games I'm able to kick out in a month.

Here are some of my current favorites I am hoping to replicate:

Chaos Theory - My all-time high score: 135
Animal Maze Maker - Extremely frustrating, yet addicting just the same. High score: 3850
Cursor Catcher - Similar to escapa, but much more annoying
Chopper Challenge - Slightly more complex, but similarly addictive

If I get a chance, I'd like to even build a simple website using ASP.Net that lets users upload their scores onto an online high scores list. Should be an interesting challenge.

So what web flash games are you addicted to?? (remember, simple and addictive.)

GWB .Net Game design contest!

Brad Corbin — Thu, 18 May 2006 11:30:00 GMT

I'll definitely be all over Jeff's announcement of a GWB game design contest. Prize is a XBox360!!

Now I just need to decide what game to do...

Classic arcade game?
Remake of a popular flash game?
Puzzle game?

Take a dive into DirectX?
Stick with Winforms?

Any suggestions welcome!

Tasty tidbits from Microsoft's EU legal correspondence

Brad Corbin — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:38:00 GMT

You have got to go check out these documents just posted by Microsoft on their press release page. My favorite quote: "In short, the Statement of Objections claims Microsoft has failed to create Technical Documentation that the Commission did not read, and for which no competitor has sought a license, all to address a problem about which no customer has ever complained."

Apple announces availability of Intel-based iMacs, and the new MacBook Pro

Brad Corbin — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:35:00 GMT

They don't have a live video feed from Steve Jobs' keynote, but according to some sites reporting from inside the keynote, Apple just announce availability of Intel-based iMacs, shipping today.

Also announced the new MacBook Pro, an Intel duo Core replacement for the Powerbook. Dual processor, 4-5x faster than its predecessors, and the “fastest notebook ever.”

For a live report of the keynote main points, see http://www.macrumorslive.com/web/ or http://engadget.com/2006/01/10/steve-jobs-keynote-live-from-macworld-2006/

I'm sure it'll also be up on www.apple.com and virtually everywhere else in mere moments....

Update: MacBook Pro can be ordered now, and will ship in February. Spec sheet on the two models:

The apple store is back open, and more pictures and details can be viewed here.

The problem with Main Feeds

Brad Corbin — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:25:00 GMT

Scott Kuhl has a post that talks about some of the problems associated with a blog “main page” like here at GeeksWithBlogs.

There are other problems, though, when you subscribe to a main feed through an RSS reader. I subscribe to several Main Feeds, including blogs.msdn.com, weblogs.asp.net, and geekswithblogs.net.

Main Feeds are nice because:

You can discover brand new bloggers with interesting content to subscribe to
You can find the occasional interesting post by bloggers you don't subscribe to
You've got something to read when your subscribed bloggers are a little quiet. I guess Scoble doesn't have this problem, with his 700 subscribed feeds :)

But there are a few problems:

You get duplicate posts by bloggers interesting enough to subscribe to directly
You can't eliminate posts by bloggers you know you don't want to read (foreign language posts, for example, or products you don't use or care about)
Massive quanitities of posts of uncertain quality
Massive quantities of near-duplicate posts when something interesting happens (“If you haven't heard already from 10,000 other bloggers, Microsoft just announced ...”)

I don't know if you could ever figure out a way to solve the last two of these, but if an aggregator had the ability to selectively unsubscribe to posts based on author within a feed, that would solve the first two issues.

I use OmeaReader by JetBrains as my aggregator, primarily because it is also a newsreader, and I don't want to use two separate apps. OmeaReader doesn't have this ability.

Does anyone know of an aggregator that has this ability? (Exclude posts from a feed based on author)

Do you subscribe to main feeds, or just to specific feeds from individual blogs?

Microsoft CRM organization name trick...

Brad Corbin — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:38:00 GMT

Your Microsoft license key is tied to the organization name that you enter when installing CRM. Good reasons for this, of course.

This would normally mean that to install a development server without having to purchase a new license key, it needs to exist in an independent domain. (Because the CRM Organization Name is used to create the Active Directory OU.)

At one of our clients, though, we discovered they had a development server in the same domain, using the same license key. How did this happen?

Well, it turns out that the license key validation ignores punctuation. So the production server looked like:

Organization Name: MyCompany INC
AD OU Name: MyCompany INC
SQL DB Name: MyCompany INC_MSCRM

The DEV server was:

Organization Name: MyCompany Inc.
AD OU Name: MyCompany Inc.
SQL DB Name: MyCompany INC__MSCRM (note the double underscore)

In the database name, it converted the period to an underscore, so even the databases could exist on the same SQL server, if that were required.

There are, of course, some nice advantages to having the DEV server in a DEV domain, but for smaller clients that don't have tons of spare servers sitting around, this could come in handy.

Debugging a .Net Windows Service the "easy way"

Brad Corbin — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:40:00 GMT

Mark Pearce describes how to debug a .Net Windows service from Visual Studio:

To do this, you need to emulate what the Service Control Manager (SCM) does when it starts your service — in other words, invoke your service’s OnStart method. In VB, this looks like:

    ' The main entry point for the process
     _
    Shared Sub Main()
#If DEBUG Then
        Dim DebugService As New ServiceAdmin
        DebugService.OnStart(Nothing)
#Else
        Dim ServicesToRun() As System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase
        ServicesToRun = New System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase() {New ServiceAdmin()}
        System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun)
#End If
    End Sub

Cool stuff.

One caveat: if all you do in your OnStart event is start a timer, then the application will terminate immediately. You have to give it something to hold the application open while you are debugging. This is cheezy, but works:

Protected Overrides Sub OnStart(ByVal args() As String)
    Timer1.Interval = 1000
    MessageBox.Show("Click OK to stop the service.")
    Timer1.Enabled = True
End Sub

The service will run as long as the Message box stays open.

Worst Office 12 review ever

Brad Corbin — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 03:17:00 GMT

One of my favorite recent blogs is Jensen Harris' excellent blog on the Office 12 user experience. As a former (and still occasional) instructor, I am very interested to see how they've re-thought almost the entire user interface for the next version of Office.

I wasn't fortunate enough to get picked for the Beta 1 for Office 12, however. (Actually, its worse than that. I didn't even bother to sign up because I thought the Beta 1 would be available to MSDN subscribers. Oops.)

I was very interested to see the first off the new reviews on Beta 1.

Here's my favorite review at WindowsAtoZ.

It starts out somewhat promising:

Some of the new features to Office 12 include XML-based file formats (there is an "x" added to every Office file format now), a "ribbon" at the top replacing tradition drop-down menus and improved workflow between Office applications. Without a doubt, the most apparent change to Office is the ribbon-style menu at the top of most Office 12 programs. The old drop-down menus that included File, Edit, View and so on are gone from Office 12 and they are not even available as an interface option if you wanted them. At first we were a bit confused and baffled at how the ribbon menu worked, but with a few uses, we were able to get the hang of it.

But then they start talking about the individual products:

Word 12:

The only really big improvement to Word 12 is the ribbon menu at the top...

Excel 12:

As with Word 12, the only real change to Excel 12 is the interface.

I think I speak for everyone when I say: did you do more than just install and open the software before writing this review?? Looks like their primary goal was to get the very first Office 12 Beta 1 review up on the web!!

Ok, putting myself in the reviewer's shoes--if I was seeing Office 12 for the very first time, never having read anything about the changes, the new “ribbon” interface is certainly the first thing you would notice. But how can you say that Excel 12 hasn't gone through other significant changes???? Mr. unnamed reviewer--here are a few that might be important to mention: (From David Gainer's Blog)

Uh, how about increasing the available size of each spreadsheet by a factor of over ONE THOUSAND. (now 1,048,567 rows by 16,384 columns - some other interesting new numbers discussed here)
Oh, and some very dramatic changes to conditional formatting, allowing some pretty spiffy one-click applications.
Some very cool new ways to work with tables of data, including some extremely easy one-click formatting.
Server-based Excel Services, allowing business to host a complex Excel spreadsheet as a server application, utilizing either web access or programatic web services access to the data.
Oh, and some very purty new chart styles, available as default styles

Ok, I can see that there are a couple of these that you might not notice the instant you open the application, but how about going to Help, What's New or something like that before you simply say

As with Word 12, the only real change to Excel 12 is the interface.

Haven't seen as much blogging activity on the Word side, although I'm keeping my eyes on Joe Friend's blog, now that Beta 1 is out. Is that his real name, or just how he likes people to think of him? :)

Even so, we still have a pretty significant list of things that we know have changed in Word 12: (From Jensen Harris' blog)

New Ribbon (ok, you actually mentioned this one. Good job, unnamed WindowsAtoZ reviewer!)
Galleries. Jensen says that galleries are “debatably the single most important concept in the Office 12 UI.” I tend to agree, although part of what makes it work so well is the next item:
Live Preview. YES. About time. Exponentially better experience.
Floatie. Ok, the MiniBar. But floatie sounds so cute...
View tools on the Status Bar. Very nice.

And what does the review say again?? Oh. “The only really big improvement to Word 12 is the ribbon menu at the top”

The reviewer does mention the new graphical effects used in Powerpoint, but makes absolutely no mention of the ABSOLUTE OVERHAUL OF ACCESS. Oh, sorry. Shouting for a moment there.

I'm not a MS employee. I don't work on this product. I didn't even make the beta list, so I've never actually touched the new product myself. But Office 12 has got me more excited about a product than I've been in a long time.

If you REALLY want to find out what's happening in Office 12, don't go to WindowsAtoZ. You owe it to yourself to:

Read Jensen Harris' blog. Go all the way back to the beginning, or see Jensen's “best-of” top 30 posts regarding improvements in Office 12 interface.
See Julie Larson-Green's interview and demo on Channel 9
Download Jensen Harris' PDC presentation and slides. Some very good material here. (Was available at http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC05/ Seems to be down right now--hopefully just temporarily)

I'd also love to start seeing some frequent traffic from someone about the new Word and PowerPoint!

Brad

Finally starting my own blog...

Brad Corbin — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:10:00 GMT

Hello World!

I've been lurking around the blogosphere a little too long, and have a bad habit of posting long rambling discussions in other peoples' blogs. I guess I finally need a place to place my OWN rants and comments. I'll be making posts about:

.Net, mostly VB.Net and a little ASP.Net
MS CRM, I mean Microsoft Dynamics CRM
SalesLogix, I mean Sage SalesLogix CRM (another mid-market CRM product, a competitor to MS CRM)

and probably some other miscellaneous discussions of interesting stuff.

One of my primary goals is to have an archive for the problems and solutions I encounter every day. Hopefully my discussion will be interesting and helpful to some others as well.

Brad Corbin