One of the great things about 2012 is that I am not in our office nearly 100% of the time during business hours. This is the first time I have been able to work from our office this much in about 4 years. In fact, we have moved three times during that four years and I have only averaged about 10-25% of my time in the office.
This means I can actually setup my desk for development instead of business related tasks only. That means THREE MONITORS! My first reaction after a week with this setup: I never want to go back to two monitors.
Visual Studio is a beast when it comes to multi-monitor support. It remembers where you placed your floating windows and keeps track of all the other goodies. I do wish I could detach a document and then make it dockable by other monitors, but at least with Windows+Left and Windows+Right and I quickly tile the documents on the external monitors.
So far with an MVC application I have been working on I was able to have SQL Server, Visual Studio, detached Solution/Property/Team Explorer and my browsers all open at the same time. I can already find a use for going with 6 monitors now, but that will have to wait…
I am definitely excited to see this new setup working for some of our SharePoint consulting and Team Foundation Server help we do. Those projects always have a need for multiple applications and flipping between quickly to get the job done.
Kevin Tews, a very awesome guy who was the organizer of my trip to Haiti two years ago put together and amazing video from some of the photos I took while in Haiti. Even today, I have still not got back to spunk I used to have for photography before this trip. When you see this through the lens, it is hard to want to take a picture of a park or cityscape. Seeing the devastation and the beauty of Haiti definitely changes a person.
Link: http://youtu.be/McZDLjUKJ-c
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Haiti,
2 Years Later
I have always been a fan of Google Reader. I have been using it since it first came out and have never tried another feed reader. Yesterday they decided to update the UI to fit their new G+ look and in my opinion, made the application almost impossible to use.
I have three main machines I use on a daily basis. A Dell XPS desktop with dual 24 inch monitors, a Toshiba Protégé with a 13 inch display, and a 11 inch MacBook Air. When I am at my desk all day, the Dell is awesome for getting development done, but I don’t like to clutter my noise-generating applications on my development machine so I leave Outlook, Thunderbird, Messenger, Zune, and my social browsing to the Toshiba with 1366x768 resolution. This resolution is standard for most < 15 inch laptops.
Now when you open up Google Reader on the laptop you get this huge portion at the top of the page that is wasted whitespace. Big dumb buttons with small text and lots of padding and a toolbar with lots of padding. On a big monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, its ok, but on the small monitor, you are left with half of the page to read your post and the other half for this dumb whitespace.
Any who, if anyone has an alternative Feed Reader they are using, please let me know.
Ok, I think this is the coolest contest I have seen. Red-Gate is sending a DBA to Space! If you have mad SQL skills, you should definitely look into this contest.
More Information:
Red Gate, a U.K.-based software company, has launched a campaign that will reward a database administrator (DBA) with the ultimate getaway: a seat on a commercial flight into space, courtesy of Space Adventures, Ltd
But first, DBAs must unravel a Gordian knot of a plot involving morphing Martians, pets in peril, alien body parts and abduction of one of their own – all unfolding in a five-week series of snazzy (and frankly surreal)
60s-style space-noir B-movies.
Fifteen finalists will be selected from those who provide the best answers to quizzes within the videos and the ripest tweets from dataspace. The winning DBA will be elected by popular vote to join the first citizens of Earth to sail beyond our atmosphere.
Visit https://www.dbainspace.com/ to learn more about the contest!
Demostration of Windows 8
- Lots of great stuff going on with Windows 7 installs
- Touch First, Mouse Second – Wow, that is going to be interesting
- Demo of a netbook from two years ago running Windows 8 using only 380mb of RAM, nice. Steven even said it was his daily use machine for a year, Microsoft needs to buy him a nicer machine.
- Windows 8 Start still feels like Windows Mobile and Windows Media Center had a child
- We decided every time they said “SUPER”, we are drinking
- They are very nervous and the quality is not as polished as Apple
- The UI speed is amazing. Swiping is so responsive
- Wow, she reverted to saving it is “pre-release software” after only a few seconds of delay
- They need to get this lady off the stage
- Windows 8 gets Flair! They call them Charms, but they are definitely Flair
- Spell Checking throughout the OS! I hope Office vNext uses the same dictionary as the OS
- Wow, very unpolished presentation. “I can launch the Bing app…’No, skip it’”
- It’s Alive! “WINDOWS 8 BECAME SELF AWARE ON SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2011”
Now to Building Apps for Windows 8
- Drum Roll Please
- WinRT – Windows Runtime – 1800 Objects in their new API
- Unified Tools Set, You Pick the Language
- I must admit, I am a little scared and happy at the same time
- Definitely time to learn a new platform to get up to speed with WinRT instead of CLR/.NET
- Expression Blend gets HTML support
- Live DOM in Expressions allows drag-n-drop movement of elements
- Windows Store integration looks very cool, straight from Visual Studio
- XAML/Silverlight Now
- Moving away from Silverlight to Windows 8 to make your app look “metro”
- What about WPF? They show Silverlight and Phone migrations with a few code changes, but nothing with WPF
Hardware for Windows 8
- Startup Times are Amazing!
- Rootkit Virus demo, UEFI stops before machines can be compromised, for now
- Idle power on turn off in a few seconds.
- USB 3.0 demo was amazing!
- All apps and hardware us the hardware acceleration for graphics
- Windows reserves one pixel around the border for the API, you get the rest
- SensorFusion API! Awesome, where are my Legos WinRT
- Printer Controls within Print dialog instead of after market drivers
- ASUS and Toshiba show some great devices, ultra thin and under 2.5 lbs
After this point, I had to walk away to dream, but it looks pretty awesome. I am definitely excited about Windows 8 and development within.
To start, I love Red Gate Software’s Tools. I have loved them since the first time I started using SQL Backup and SQL Compare when I first started Geekswithblogs.net. I think they create quality products and have been a “Friend of Red Gate” for years. So know that this review is coming from a “fan boy” of sorts.
What is SQL Compare?
Well the name sort of says it all, this product compares SQL databases. But not just databases, but backups, snapshots, and source control using their product SQL Source Control. Once you configure your project to select the type of source you would like to run through the system, SQL Compare will load the differences into a view and allow you to see what is different. You can then push the changes into the different sources, allowing them to be aligned. I don’t even like to think about what this would be like with hand rolled SQL most developers resort to.
For this review, I am going to use the SQL Server Sample Database, Adventure Works, available on CodePlex.
Comparing Live Databases
SQL Compare has had this feature for years so I won’t spend much time explaining it, even though it is my most used by far. This feature really works well when you have a test or demo system that is running a version of a database and a development version you are using on your machine. You can compare the differences, select the ones you want to synchronize and generate a script that the SQL Compare application will execute or you can run yourself in SQL Server Management Studio.
This can also be a poor mans version of Source Control if you want to keep tracking of changes between builds, but if the funds are available, I would highly suggest adding SQL Source Control to your suite of tools.
Comparing a Live Database to Source Control
For this sample we have changed the EmailAddress field length in Production.ProductReview table from 50 to 100. Immediately SQL Source Control shows us that this table has changed by the icon, but we are going to use SQL Compare to help us this round.
We first open up SQL Compare and set our source database to the AdventureWorks database on the local machine and then set the Target to the Source Control schema folder we have assigned in Team Foundation Server and SQL Source Control. Below is the project configuration
The output of the comparison shows that we have one difference between the Source Control version and the Database.
My standard response would be to open SQL Management Studio and check in the changes, but I want to see what it will do if I run the SQL Compare Synchronization Wizard under source control.
So far so good, the Wizard can make the changes to the scripts themselves, however it doesn’t check out the files first so you would need to go into source control (our case, Team Foundation Server) and check out the files then check in the changes. In fact it will let you know it is changing read-only files first before committing the changes. This should alert you that you will need to do a little extra leg work to get the changes back into source control.
![SNAGHTML16c9543[4]](http://geekswithblogs.net/images/geekswithblogs_net/jjulian/Windows-Live-Writer/Red-Gate--SQL-Compare-Review_8119/SNAGHTML16c9543%5B4%5D_thumb.png "SNAGHTML16c9543[4]")
Instead, open SQL Management Studio and Commit the Pending Changes from the SQL Source Control tool so you can ensure TFS gets the check out request.
Comparing a Live Database to a Previous Backup
Using the Red Gate SQL Backup utility, I created a backup of the AdventureWorks database at this point. Then I went back in and modified the HumanResources.Employee table to extend the length of the Title field.
SQL Backup is another amazing tool if you are used to creating backup with SQL Management Studio. This makes the process simple for creating backups ad hoc or on a schedule. Another day, another review though.
Next I opened up SQL Compare and change the project to compare against the recently created SQL Backup file with the Live Database.
And after executing the project, I see the one change to the Employee table. Simply awesome!
But lets go one step further. What if I use a backup from SQL Management Studio and compare it to a backup from SQL Compare? What will the outcome be? With the existing changes, I used SQL Server Management Studio to generate a traditional backup then changed the SQL Compare project to use the backup instead of the Live Database.
And the after the comparison, it worked as expected. I can find so many times where this just makes life simpler and allows me to get back to solving the problems and not messing with the tools.
Conclusion
Buy this product! I don’t know what else to say. If you have a need for a tool for comparing SQL Server databases, backups, snapshots, or Source Control Files, this will save you loads of time and do a great job at it. We didn’t even cover the Synchronization Wizard, but I hope just by showing you the power of the compare engine, you can imagine how nice it will be to have this tool automatically generate the changes into a SQL script it can run or open for you in Management Studio.
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As I do almost every year, I rearranged my home office. This time I moved my desk against the wall and added a shelve to support my main monitors. This allows me to work from my two macs when I am at home, and RDP into my Windows development laptop (below the monitors). I mainly use the macs for graphics work and photography now. The MacBook Air is still goes with me each day and sometimes I bring the iPad as well. Without better pen support, the iPad is just my couch app device or car device for trips. The speed of the MacBook Air or my Toshiba 13 inch Protégé make it not as useful as it once was. I ended up killing the unlimited data plan and went with Clear 4G Clearspot device for connecting all my devices. Works great.
Hopefully I will stick with this setup for awhile. I have a lot of work to get going on the next revision of Geekswithblogs.net . This will be version 5.0 so we need some cool stuff!
I am definitely on the fence on this one. I love the look and experience of Windows 8 in the video, but I am worried about all the talk about HTML 5 and not hearing anything about the WPF/Silverlight/XNA story. We have seen Microsoft pick these tools for XBox and WP7, but now will they have a cohesive story that will sell tablets and also sell App builders. The winner this battle with have to have the Apps so I can see why HTML5 is compelling, but it also does not drive loyalty and leads into one code base for iOS/Android/Windows8 and that does not sell tablets.
I have to admit, I wish I had more information, but just like any good movie or book, there is a climax that is hidden from the audience and that is what I expect Microsoft is trying to build up until the BUILD Windows conference in September.
What do you think?
It looks like the folks in Redmond are trying to bring Clippy back with Ribbon Hero 2, but due to limitation of the platform, I am unable to play. I understand because I am on a Mac, but I do find it pretty funny that the OSes that were around when Clippy was used (Windows 95/98/ME/2000) are not supported by this application.
Come on Clippy, did you forget who your friends are? Sellout!
Check out the post over on the StaffOfGeeks blog outlining our participation at TechEd 2011 Atlanta. We are so excited to see how Geekswithblogs.net, the best Microsoft blogging community in our opinion, can change the way people blog at TechEd. We are doings so by facilitating a new area we helped design called The Blogger Hub. In this area we have dedicated areas for writing blog post with hardwire network drop and power for your laptops, an education area for learning how to create a blog and getting started blogging, and speaker/influencer interviews for bloggers to sign up to interview notable people at TechEd to help create content for their readers.
John Alexander and myself will be facilitating this area every moment it is open, so please feel free to come by and say hello.