May 2003 - Posts

• .NET AppUpdater

  I think GotDotNet has to be one of the worst sites for continually breaking links. Today at work we were searching the AppUpdater that is shipped with the TaskVision sample app. After about a dozen broken links, at one point I was sent to winforms.com which then sent me back to gotdotnet which sent me back to winforms.com, I finally found a link to an article at winforms.com. This article contains the real link to the download for the AppUpdater which is here. I know a couple other people have been looking for this so I figured I would share it here. -James Posted May 30 2003, 05:40 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• Microsoft News Sites

  We were talking about it the other day at work and came up with the following lists of sites devoted to Microsoft news, anyone have anymore to add? Microsoft-Watch Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk Neowin - Where leaked alphas just look better. WinInfo (Paul Thurrott) Bink.nu Updates ActiveWin - From Mike Gunderloy WinBeta - From Thomas Freudenberg Windows Super Site - From Deepak Sharma MSFN  - From Deepak Sharma -James   Posted May 28 2003, 08:35 PM by jamesavery with 3 comment(s)

• Masters of Doom

  If you are into gaming at all, or just want to read the story of how the computer gaming industry was revolutionized by two programmers, then you should check out Masters of Doom. The book is a great read and really shows how in young industries like computer gaming it only takes a couple guys to change everything. -James Posted May 28 2003, 08:17 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• Why we chose CodeSmith

  With the new version of CodeSmith being released I thought I would explain why it is that we chose to use CodeSmith over the many other code generators available. When we decided to use a code generation tool to automate some of the more redundant sections of our project we took a look at all of the various code generation tools out there. One problem that I have always had with other code generators is that they force you to use their architecture. For every code generator that I looked at I did not like what I saw in the way of architecture, none of the generators I looked at accommodated for using custom business entities instead of using datasets or passing a reader around. CodeSmith was the only generator I found that really allowed me to completely customize how the code was generated. It took alot more effort to create the templates, but in the end it was the only generator that met all of our requirements, and so far has worked out perfectly.   -James Posted May 23 2003, 08:22 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• Dinner with Eli

  I had a chance to grab a drink and a bite to eat with Eli Robillard on his way through town earlier this week. Eli has some great ideas about the software development process, as you can see in his lazy programmer posts, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully we will get to see a lot more of his ideas and theories both on his blog and through other mediums. It is always great to be able to put a face to a name. If you are passing through or around Cincinnati drop me a line and we can grab a drink. -James Posted May 23 2003, 07:51 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• Avanade aquires GA Sullivan

  "...it looks like I've beaten my co-worker, James, to the punch on this.  Our employer has been acquired.. we had a company-wide conference call this morning.  We now are part of Avanade.  Avanade, as you may know (or may not) was founded approximately three years ago as a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture." [Nino's Blog] Nino went and stole my thunder.  I am very excited about working for Avanade, I think it will open up a plethora of new opportunities as well as hopefully giving me a chance to work on even bigger projects than I am working on now.  I have only been working for GA Sullivan for a couple months so it is not as big a change for me as I am sure it is for some of the other guys who have been working there much longer. Our entire office is really excited though and I do not think anyone views this as a bad thing, but rather as a great opportunity. If anyone out there reading this currently works for Avanade drop me a line, I would love to chat. It's pronounced (ah-va-nod) by the way(I did not know either). -James Posted May 23 2003, 06:51 PM by jamesavery with 1 comment(s)

• One step closer to CodeSmith

  It looks like Eric has received enough donations to start the process of aquiring the rights to CodeSmith. As soon as the legal mumbo-jumbo is done with everyone should have access to the new and improved version of one of the better code-generation utilities out there. -James Posted May 19 2003, 06:52 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• Welcome to Jayme

  A good friend of mine Jayme Davis has started blogging here. I started working at Dell with Jayme almost four years ago, he still works there, but I do not even live in the same state anymore. He gets the unique opportunity of working with huge amounts of data, I am talking terabytes here. Be sure and tune into his blog for tons of info on enterprise level reporting and OLAP, you will probably also see tons of info on Direct X and game development as well. -James Posted May 19 2003, 06:32 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• Gyro 1.0

  If you use the SCCLI (Rotor) then you might be interested in Gyro. Gyro will modify a current installation of Rotor and enable the use of generic types and methods. This is a very cool way to play around with generics before the next version of C#.  There is also some very cool other stuff coming out of Microsoft Research. -James Posted May 18 2003, 09:46 PM by jamesavery with no comments

• Only in Seattle

  I caught a matinee showing of the Matrix : Reloaded on friday while still in Seattle(Bellevue specifically). Before the movie came on everyone was sitting there watching the ads that are on the screen, no not the annoying preview like ads but the regular ads, and an ad for hotels.com came on the screen and a couple of people started to boo. I asked the guy behind me why they were booing and apparently I was watching the Matrix with a large number of Expedia.com employees. Only in Seattle. -James Posted May 18 2003, 09:04 PM by jamesavery with no comments