DragonStyle

VMWare Continuing to Rock

In my life before Microsoft, I was a regular VMWare user. When supporting our product, it was always a pain to try to find a machine with a specific configuration (Windows 2000, IE 5.5, .Net 1.1), so we ended up just making a library of virtual machines (we even had some configuration preloaded with Visual Studio and Perforce so you could simply fire up the VM, sync, and start debugging a problem that only occurred in a specific environment). VMWare was simply a fantastic product. 

As I was surfing around to catch up on the writings about Windows Live Writer, I stumbled across a post describing a switch to Mac, and a VMWare application that will let you keep using your favorite Windows only products. Wow, does this look awesome.

The cool thing about Fusion though is something called Unity. Unity makes the virtualized applications appear as though they were part of the OSX desktop. Instead of a window showing the Windows desktop and its applications, you get the Windows apps running as part of the regular desktop.

VMware Fusion :: robteix.com

Technorati Tags: VMWare, Unity

I am also a fan of Ben Folds

Some of you out there may have heard the track 'Rock This B*tch' on the album 'Ben Folds Live.' The basic story is that between songs, someone in the crowd yells that Ben should 'Rock This B*tch.' Ben then improvs a new song right there on the spot, the title, of course, being said phrase. Apparently this has taken on a life of its own, and now from concert to concert, a new song is born in the tradition of 'Rock This B*tch.'

Technorati Tags: Ben Folds, Rock This B*tch

Intel has gone stark raving mad

At the top of my list of things to do when I have a bunch of extra money laying around? Upgrade my home desktop PC. And here, my friends, is the CPU that will be installed (among other things). 

Quad-core for $299! If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your computer, now is the time!

Intel has gone stark raving mad
Joe Cheng
7/20/2007 8:33 PM

Windows Live Writer Customization

Since we launched Beta 2 of WLW, I've been keeping watch for the all the ways that people would take advantage of the new provider customization capabilities that we added.

Blog This In Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer includes the ability to blog about interesting stuff you find online. Basically, when you're surfing the net and you find something you'd like to write about, you can simply use the 'Blog This' button to launch Writer and pre-populate it with content from the web page. The great thing about this is that it allows you to reference content you find online, and it builds in things like a link back to the URL where you found the content.

Read on for a more detailed summary of the feature and it's capabilities.

Post Draft and Edit Online

Another little tiny thing we added in the last beta of Writer (but a little thing that can be incredibly useful) is 'Post Draft and Edit Online.' This is great if there is customization or fine tuning that you like to do using the web form before you publish a post.

A great example of this is if you have a set of Wordpress plugins that you'd like to set before you post. Just write your post in Writer, and when you're ready to publish, hit 'File > Post Draft and Edit Online', and Writer will publish the post as a draft and open it in your online editor. You can then do your fine tuning, press publish, and you're done!

 

Technorati Tags: Writer, Tip

FTW

This might be Bonnie's first time being referred to as a Rogue Ninja, but this is my third. I can't talk about the other two, though. 

This weekend? Ninja BBQ

Technorati Tags: Ninja, Writer

Intel 3945 Wireless Problem on Vista: Solved!

The other computer in our household... I mean, one of the other computers in our household is a Lenovo z51t (a very sweet little laptop). It has built in wireless via Intel 3945 a/b/g. For the last couple of weeks, it has frequently dropped off the wireless network, causing much annoyance and headache.

After my last experience with Vista and networking, I went straight to the driver. When using Vista to check for an updated driver, no joy. When searching on the Internets to find one, joy.

 

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2259&lang=eng

 

After a download and install of the drivers, the z51t is back on the network and the signal strength appears better (it was listed as 'good' even though the laptop was about 5 feet from the wireless router). It's too early to declare success, but this is looking good.

 

Technorati Tags: Vista, Wireless, Network, Troubleshooting

.Net LinkLabel LinkArea Problem in Thai

I've been troubleshooting this problem we have with a link label- on some computers the link area of the link label appear in the incorrect location. Turns out that the difference between machines reproducing the problem and machines that weren't reproducing the problem was simply what version of .Net our app was being run under. .Net 1.1 looked fine, .Net 2.0 was incorrect. To simply the scenario, I wrote a little test app that displays the string in question in a LinkLabel control, then used a config file to run the application in .Net 1.1, or .Net 2.0. Here is the result of my test:

That sucks, and I have absolutely no idea what would account for the difference (remember I literally ran exactly the same code:

linkLabel.Text = "ในการเปิดใช้งานปลั๊กอินนี้ โปรด ดาวน์โหลด และติดตั้ง 
		.NET Framework 2.0 จากนั้นเริ่มการทำงานของ Windows Live Writer ใหม่";
linkLabel.LinkArea = new LinkArea(32,9);

If anyone out there can explain the difference, I would love to understand what is really going on here. In the meantime, I'll be looking for some other creative solution.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Dotnet, Internationalization