Contents tagged with Website

  • New Look?

    1 Comment

    Trying out a new look. Changed the theme on the blog and created a custom header. The header is an image captured from Wordle which is a pretty neat tool. Give it a bunch of text or point it at a feed and you get a jumble of words. I pointed it at my own feed as it seemed appropriate and it spit out this. Anyways, hope you like it. I think I needed a change from the Marvin3 theme I've had for the past few years.

  • ASP.NET Weblogs, the saga continues

    5 Comments

    Hmmm, more odd things happening at ASP.NET Weblogs, even after playing Halo 3 for 4 hours (and boy are my thumbs killing me).

    I noticed I was getting trackbacks. Nothing new here, I get them all the time. Except I was getting them from myself. Huh?

    Yeah, the last two posts I made created a trackback, to itself. Sigh. More email, more notifications, less sleep...

    Update: Now my RSS feeds are only partial. Grrr. Argh.

  • Being a responsible aggregate blogger

    2 Comments

    Sometimes things make my blood boil. Other times I just let it pass and move on. As I was trying to catch up on my feeds tonight (only 6182 to go for this month) I stumbled across this post by Andrew Stopford:

    Commercial UI components in OSS

    The use of commerical UI components in a OSS project is a topic of debate and contention. The standard winforms/webforms components are limited and using commerical UI components allows for a far greater degree of UI functionality and in an eighth of the time. It's such a mine field that certainly in the .NET space they are not used. You run the risk of a ever changing UI, a quote from this post on the use of commerical UI components in RSS Bandit.

    I read the quote and it seemed to be very familiar. Wait a minute, it was mine from this post on being a responsible open source developer I wrote back in December.

    The problem I have with the post that Andrew links to is it goes to some aggregate site (the World of ASP.NET) but if you visit the page from the link above, you have no idea who wrote it. In fact there's no link back to my original content.

    My blog content is licensed under the Creative Commons license and you're free to use it, but there needs to be some professionalism about "borrowing" someone elses content. I mean, at least have a link, credit, or at least a mention of where it came from if it's not your own thoughts.

    I've come across other sites where people just downright steal content and even claim it their own which is a whole 'nuther problem. Just as a friendly reminder for anyone who wants to link or quote my content (and you're quite welcome to) please direct people back to the source. It helps me understand if anyone is interested in my message and provides me with a conduit to the outside world in case I'm mistaken (hey, it can happen) or someone wants to leave me for dead in a dumpster.

    Just be a little responsible when you blog, that's all I ask.

  • Five degrees of separation

    1 Comment

    There's a tagging game going on in the blog-o-world. I traced the origins (I think) back to Jeff Pulver here. Basically someone tags and you have to come up with 5 things about yourself that relatively few people know. You then go and annoy the crap out of 5 of your friends who blog to do the same. Glenn Block tagged me. Yeah, it's 2007 and we're practicing digital chain-letters but oh what the heck, it's almost January 2nd and I still haven't finished my blogging day just yet.

    Here's 5 completely silly things you may (or may not) know about me (or care):

    1. I used to be big in graphic design doing movie poster (for movies that would barely show up on IFC), animation (for films I'd rather not admit I was part of), and drawing comic books (indy back when indy was cool, never did the big Marvel or DC titles).
    2. I was part of a special effects studio based out of Oakville, Ontario where I did matte paintings and special effects. We won an award one year from Much Music for the effects on a music video I did work for.
    3. I drive the biggest, gas-guzzling vehicle known to man (a Dodge RAM 1500 Megacab) and I'm proud of doing my part for the environment (I also have a Suziki SUV so I generally take up the slack up for the gas quotient per person in Alberta). Go ahead naturalists, have at me!
    4. I've never broken a bone in my body but did have my appendix removed a few years ago (just before it was about to explode in a rather Stubbs the Zombie like move).
    5. My name "BIL" is spelled this way because back in the 80's when video games and quarters were all the rage, the games only supported entering three letters when you got a high score. I got a lot of high scores and would only be able to spell "BIL" instead of "BILL" (curse those Atari programmers!). So it just stuck.

    There. Tag. You're it. I ceremoniously tag the following people that have crossed my path in the past and will now pay for it, or face the wrath of the broken tagging game:

    • Jean-Paul Boodhoo - Developer Craftsman Extraordinary, in any language or tool
    • James Kovacs - Intense 64-bit .NET guy and recent Architecture MVP awardee
    • Kate Gregory - Awesome C++ skills and a fellow Canuck
    • Joel Semeniuk - My Winnipeg Team System guru
    • Keith Richie - Former Microsoft SharePoint guy, new Mindsharp SharePoint guy

    Go forth you uber-geeks and thou shalt write 5 things about yourself, not 3, and definitely no more than 5, and then tag 5 other people with the same fate.

    Who knows, maybe someone can make some money from this silly game then we can talk again. Here's a thought, someone could build a diagram of everyone who tagged everyone else. Then we'll see how close me and Mr. Gates really are.

  • Stats, stats, stats and more stats

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    What else would you do on a blog in the new year than to post stats? Here's what this blogs 2006 roundup looked like:

    Number of posts in 2006: 262
    Number of views on all posts: 1,184,018

    Over a million views for the year. Not too shabby. 

    Note: Views are both aggregate views (RSS readers, etc.) and web page views so there might be some duplication but I'm not posting stats for correctness here, just popularity of posts.

    Top 10 Posts:

    1. Folders bad, metadata good! (24,112 views)
    2. DotNetNuke vs. SharePoint, the big showdown (20,544 views)
    3. The Big Dummies Guide to setting your SharePoint Virtual Environment (17,560 views)
    4. Tired of SharePoint Discussions? (announcement of SharePoint Forums Web Part - 11,253 views)
    5. SharePoint Forums, go get 'em (the release of the Forums Web Part - 8,751 views)
    6. 3-tier Architecture with ASP.NET 2.0 (8,509 views)
    7. Composite UI Application Block - Soup to Nuts - Getting Started (8,293 views)
    8. SharePoint Forums Web Part (8,141 views)
    9. The Lighter Side of being an Architect (8,051 views)
    10. SharePoint Forums Language Pack (7,342 views)

    While I'm not versed in the fine art of statistical analysis, it doesn't take an Acme anvil to fall on my head and show me the SharePoint Forums Web Part was quite a popular topic. Something (along with other SharePoint Web Parts) that I need to focus on early in the year to finish off the remaining work on it (that 2006 baggage I was talking about earlier).

    So not a bad year for me anyways. I'm no Oren Eini (aka Ayende, this guy is a blogging engine unto himself), Hanselman, or Osherove who post like gangbusters and every post is a gem, but I'm happy with the activity I've had and I hope you've had fun reading it all. Here's to a new year of posts that will hopefully enlighten, entertain, and enrage you to no end.

  • My Personal Web of Confusion

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    I have a bunch of sites that I run and regularily maintain and sometimes it's not only confusing but hard to keep up. These are non-specific project sites, but contain (or should/would contain) tips and tricks, info, tools, downloads, and other goodies as I try to organize my Life 1.0 contributions to the world (both SharePoint and non). So in creating this monstrosity, I've built (as I like to call it) my own "Web of Confusion". Here's the rundown:

    There are a dozen or so "other" sites that are individual projects (3 projects I manage on CodePlex) that I haven't included here but probably will add to the individual sites somewhere. Like any art, this is still a work-in-progress. I need to get more articles online on the SharePoint sites, update my personal site to the latest version of DotNetNuke, and start posting cool WSS v3 stuff. If you run your own WSS v3 site, let me know and I'll you to the my list of WSS v3 demo sites (there are 3 so far).

    Why am I using DNN for my personal site and not WSS v3? Not sure and things may change. Once my hosting provider (and the software) hits RTM, that might change. It would certainly fix my problem with my personal blog as I detest the way the DNN blog module works. After then I'll probably switch my home page over to WSS and spin off a subdomain for DNN development as I have some DNN modules and skins in waiting right now.

    Anyways, no Earth shattering SharePoint news today. Just thought I would toss my info out there for anyone who's interested. And let me know if there's anything in particular you're looking for, beit a DNN module, a SharePoint/.NET 2.0 Web Part, a theme, a tool, a skin, whatever. I'm always game for new challenges and have a few hundred toys in my toybox I have yet to share.

  • What is the Rock smoking?

    2 Comments

    In my always present ego-searching that I do, I come across odd instances of people referring to me or my blog. Case in point, I stumbled across this link on a site that (I guess) features interesting links he finds on the blog-o-sphere. His entry for this blog:

    "nice blog about sharepoint .net and sometime OS X integration"

    Hmmm. I don't remember blogging about OS X integration, ever. Is he talking about something else (like maybe MOSS?). I dunno.

    The only mention of Macintosh or OS X I've made was back during PDC here and I just causually mentioned (in the last paragraph) that my new Mac Mini kicked the llamas hiney. Other than that post (and now this one) that's the only mention of Mac anywhere here (not that I'm a Mac-homophobe or anything as I do own one).

    I sometimes wonder what drives people to say things these days?

  • Comment spam on the rampage

    2 Comments

    Holy mother of Isis. What’s with the comment spam on weblogs these days? I’m getting close to 100 comments a day that are all spam. Luckily I have anonymous comments turned off and the spam filter on Community Server is recognizing these as spam and not publishing them. Still, is anyone else getting this much comment spam? It’s been quiet for sometime now but the last week or two things have just gone nuts. Talk about the coming apocalypse, Nostradamus sure didn’t see this one coming.

  • Feedburner

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    Hi guys,

    If you’re subscribed to this blog (using the default RSS feed) can you please update your feeds to read from feedburner instead (http://feeds.feedburner.com/bsimser). I can actually do better formatting, trimming, etc. as a provider of the feed to you and in the case this blog moves, you’ll always have the latest. Also if you’re consuming this feed on a mobile device, the feed coming from FeedBurner is much better formatted for that layout.

    Thanks!

  • Thanks to everyone at weblogs.asp.net!

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    Just wanted to thank everyone involved in the upgrade of weblogs.asp.net to Community Server. It seemed to have gone seamlessly and all my posts (with code snippets) survived. Earlier testing of the CS upgrade found that they were stripping embedded HTML out of posts. I use a plugin for Visual Studio called HtmlAsSource that lets me load up some code, select it, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into a blog post just as you would see it in Visual Studio. I was involved in testing the upgrade a few weeks ago and these posts became gobbly-goop (technical term) so I'm glad to see that fixed.

    The other great thing are the new features. Search is great now so just search on my blog for Forums and you get all the posts about my SharePoint forums web part. Search for TechEd and you'll get all the TechEd posts. Yes, even the snozzberries taste like snozzberries.

    Other nice features are the highlighted tags (where size does matter and shows how many posts are filed under a particular tag), the option to email a post to someone, a single link to post an entry to digg, and subscription features for those that don't want to subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed.

    Anyways, thanks guys. Job well done!