Contents tagged with Tips
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Using IronPython for Dynamic Expressions.
We recently had this question posted to our forums over at LVS:
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Suggestions for distributing CTPs as VirtualPC images
I finally got around to trying the Sept. CTP of Orcas. I loaded up the VPC images on VPC7 Beta (which seems to perform much better than VPC2004). If this is going to be the way that MS is going to release CTPs in the future here are a few suggestions:
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Convert Thunderbird Email to Windows Mail
I've been converting my thunderbird email boxes to Windows Mail on Vista. To do this you need to use a tool that convert the mbox format to .eml format. I found this free one that seems to work pretty well: http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/th2outlook.php
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Problems with RewritePath and Search Engines.
We just recently launched the new version of LearnVisualStudio.NET. The implementation uses the RewritePath method to serve up dynamic pages based on templates. All of our pre deployment testing showed that this was all working without a hitch. Once we deployed to production however it became clear which test cases we had left out. We didn't test how the site responded when getting crawled by search engines.
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New version of LearnVisualStudio.NET launched
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Remote workers and Agile/SCRUM/XP
Andrew raises the question: What is the impact of the remote worker on Agile approaches?
A couple of months ago I started working with Bob on LearnVisualstudio.NET. We are just about ready to launch a major redesign of the site. The development process for this redesign may not have been text book Agile but there were moments where we were definitely pair programming. Now what I havn't mentioned is that we were never in the same room. He is at his house and I am at mine. Both of us are in Dallas and the web design guy, Dustin is in Chicago! So how is this possible? Well, heres what we did:
I set up a VMware image with Win2k3 server + dev tools. This image was configured pretty much the same as the production server. Dev SSL certs and all. I installed Tight VNC so that we could easily share the desktop. I installed shortcuts in the VM that would allow each of us to connect to the others version of the web site as well as connect to thier desktop with VNC. Source control was preconfigured in the VM to connect to our Vault server. This setup has created a consistant dev enviroment for each of the team members.
We pretty much exclusively use google talk to do text and voice chatting. When we have to have a voice conference with Dustin we use Skype. Looking at my google chat logs I can see several occasions where one of us would say something like: "Hey can you come on over to my VM?". This usally initiates a little pair programming session or a design review etc.
This setup is working very well for our small team (2 devs, 1 web designer). To some degree this is working better than when I was in an office sitting right next to other devs. I can't really say how well it would work for larger teams or more complex projects. But I can say that is very easy to try out. All you have to do is install some software and give it a try.
Tools Link-o-rama:- VMWare / VPC / Parallels
- Tight VNC
- gtalk / skype
- Source Gear Vault
- backpackit.com (usefull for keeping track of shared documentation files etc)
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Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)
I recently bought a Mac Book Pro since I can now dual boot OS X and Windows XP. The only real issue that I've had is that OS X, like most Unices likes to set the hardware clock to UTC time. This causes the clock in Windows XP to be off by 5 hours (I'm in the central US timezone).