My new blog is now at the following URL :
ScotchFicelle.com
I haven't been blogging for a while now... Indeed, I'm currently working at Microsoft France and it takes up quite a lot of my time... Moreover, during the past three months, I spent all my spare time working on many different professional projects...
But now I've finished these projects, I now can work on my personal project which will combine a weblog publishing system combined with an RSS aggregator. It's been a year now that I want to release this service and things of all kind prevented me from releasing it... I hope I'll be able to publish it in the next month. Stay tuned !
Here are some blog posts I flagged:
The new beta version of the excellent blogging tool "
BlogJet" is out. This new version doesn't crash anymore at startup so I finally can use it again to post on my blogs.
A friend of mine is the creator of a really nice WYSIWYG HTML Web Editor :
WxEdit. I know there already are a lot of editor out there but this one is really beautiful and has a lot of nice features. It's not ASP.NET specific so you can use it in every web applications using PHP, ASP, etc.
I've been using SharpReader for a year now and I recently started to feel the lack of new features, and getting tired of having 200+ Mb of memory used by SharpReader. So I decided to download and test (once again) RSS Bandit, which never really satisfied me (UI was way too slow and froze all the time).
I have to admit that the new version of RSS Bandit is pretty cool and it doesn't seem to freeze anymore like it used to do... It's even damn fast (maybe my new computer is a little for something here). RSS Bandit doesn't consume more than 10Mb of memory and provides some mandatory features for an aggregator, such as the ability to flag an item for follow up, etc.. So I guess I'll stay with RSS Bandit, well, until my own aggregator goes public. Oooops, did I gave a clue on my personal project here ? :)
Please don't make me regret for having bought a dual 17" flat screen... This 23" flat screen is really beautiful !
(via Omar Shahine)
It seems that the .NET Framework will be included in the Windows XP SP2. It would be really nice. Look at this article on "The Register" (last paragraph) : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/xp_sp2_rollout_impends/
WOOOHOOO ! My favourite soccer team just got qualified for the final of the Champion's League, by defeating the londonian Chelsea Football Club (3-1 at Monaco and 2-2 at Chelsea) ! GO MONACO ! GO !
The final version of the excellent guide "Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability" has juse been released on MSDN ! IT'S A MUST READ ! GET IT NOW !
Stefano Demiliani tells us about his first 10 installed programs after the first OS installation. Here's my Top 10 (well my Top 15) :
- Winamp
- WinRAR
- EmEditor
- XMLSpy
- Fantom CD
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Acrobat
- DivX + VLC (Video Lan)
- Nero Burning Rom
- SharpReader
- SmartFTP
- Sothink SWF Decompiler
- UltraMon
- BlogJet
- eMule
As I mentionned it in many of my previous posts, I'm currently working on a personal project. Since it's going to manage a lot of informations, tables of my database have a pretty big number of columns (like 30 columns)... I know what you're going to tell me : Normalize your database ! Of course I did and it's normalized, but these 30 fields really are native properties and core data of my entities.
Since the application will have a lot of users and a real need of scalability, I was wondering if 30 columns in a table is a problem or not... Does it have any consequences at the performance level ? If so, I guess I would have to normalize a bit more, but another problem appears here : over-normalization which is also a performance degradation cause... Do you guys have any advices about that ?
When I plugged my second screen on my new computer, I wondered why the Windows task bar didn't expand on both screen.. So I searched around on the internet and I found
UltraMon. It's an excellent utility that lets you leverage the power of a dual screen
with many different features ! A must have if you are a dual screen owner.
Woohoo ! I recently received my new PC. It's a Dell Dimension 8300, with a P4 3.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2 * 74 Gb (10000 tpm), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb RAM), Dual Flat Screen 17", etc... Here are some pictures :
(That's me on my snowboard in the French Alps, at "Les 2 Alpes" station.)
Do you guys have any good wallpapers for dual screen ? I know there are some excellent ones on Digital Blasphemy, but I'm not in the mood to buy them...
I am now working at Microsoft France ! It's for an internship in the HR department and it will last for 6 months. That's not a technical job, but it will be the occasion for me to improve my collaborative and relational skills.
As you might know, I was working at Business Design Consulting, a french Microsoft Enterprise Solutions and .NET specialist. I was learning some nice stuff (mainly BizTalk Server 2004), but I felt the desire to leave in order to work on a full time basis on my personal project, so I quit.
But when I saw this open position at Microsoft, I decided to apply and voilà ! I got in !
Anyway, I'll still work on my personal projet during my spare time. I just guess I won't have a social life anymore... Aaah geekness...
(I'll let you know about this project pretty soon I hope. It will definitively rock !!).
Sorry for the lack of update, I've been so busy lately, so I couldn't blog much.
Anyway, Scott Woodgate posted some nice BizTalk Server 2004 Tutorials : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9C64562C-3FA7-49BA-885E-82213D00776E&displaylang=en
If you are looking for such materials, you should also check this out : http://groups.msn.com/biztalkserverstuff
There are a long serie of Labs out there which are very nice and let you learn how to use BizTalk from the beginning.
A new version (Beta 3) of the excellent "Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability" guide is out !! It seems it's out since February 27, but hey if you didn't check it out, you definitely should !!! A MUST READ ! Thanks Robert Hurlbut for mentionning it !
It's been a week I haven't been reading my RSS feeds. I had so much things to do... But now I've finished my studies, so I'm back again :) So, here are some links :
If you can read French, I've written a second article on BizTalk Server 2004 during my internship at Business Design Consulting, which has just been published : Gestion du processus de publication avec BizTalk Server 2004.
L'article a d'ailleurs été mentionné sur DotNET-fr :
Cet article illustre la mise en oeuvre des règles métiers de Biztalk Server 2004 à travers un processus de publication multi canal. L'auteur reprend le thème de la gestion de contenu, de l'agrégation de données, et de la publication d'information pour montrer comment ces problématiques peuvent êtres élégamment implémentées avec un moteur de gestion de processus comme Biztalk Server 2004.
Sinon, pour ceux qui s'intéressent à BizTalk Server 2004, j'avais déjà rédigé un premier article : Implémentation d'un processus métier avec BizTalk Server 2004, SharePoint et InfoPath