January 2005 Archives
Cath Burton
31/01/2005
A poem by someone who knew Cath, that sums her up so well,..
-------------
~I'm still here~
Please don't mourn for me
I'm still here, though you don't see.
I'm right by your side each night and day
and within your heart I long to stay.
My body is gone but I'm always near.
I'm everything you feel, see or hear.
My spirit is free, but I'll never depart
as long as you keep me alive in your heart.
I'll never wander out of your sight ~
I'm the brightest star on a summer night.
I'll never be beyond your reach ~
I'm the warm moist sand when you're at the beach.
I'm the colourful leaves when Autumn comes around
and the pure white snow that blankets the ground.
I'm the beautiful flowers of which you're so fond,
the clear cool water in a quiet pond.
I'm the first bright blossom you'll see in the spring,
the first warm raindrop that April will bring.
I'm the first ray of light when the sun starts to shine,
and you'll see that the face in the moon is mine.
When you start thinking there's no one to love you,
you can talk to me through the Lord above you.
I'll whisper my answer through the leaves on the trees,
and you'll feel my presence in the soft summer breeze.
I'm the hot salty tears that flow when you weep
and the beautiful dreams that come while you sleep.
I'm the smile you see on a baby's face,
just look for me
I'm everyplace!
--------
A reminder to myself, as this has bitten me in the arse before:
Dim i, j, k as Integer
Does not declare i, j and k as Integers, it declares k as an Integer, with i and j declared as Variant. I *think*. I must get round to double checking this, but whilst I remember it (random memory association from reading a code article) it's worth making a note of it so I don't forget it ever again,.....
--------
To get a day return from Guildford to Godalming costs me �2.50, a day return from Godalming to Guildford would cost me �3.50,.... apparently this is because I'd be travelling towards London if I bought the Godalming -> Guildford return. How's that work? I'd be doing exactly the same thing with the Return portion of my ticket from Guildford -> Godalming.
The UK Rail Network, what a load of crap.
--------
I found a useful bit of information regarding Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) today here, describing what a "Cloaked Project" is - I'm definately going to find this useful for various job related things I do as there are a fair few nodes of the source tree that I seldom need. (such as the source-code for pre-compiled components)
One interesting use for VSS is as a documentation management system, in lieu of a package specifically designed for the task. Whilst it's "better than nothing" it definately has its shortcomings. Over a period of time, many different versions of the same / similar files get created by different people, generally for the same well intentioned reason, but it does tend to result in a tangled folder hierarchy. Sorting out / tidying something like this becomes a bit of a mammoth undertaking, to say the least!!
How about creating a structure, what kind of structure would be best... If you have a product that iterates through versions, with each client generally having every other version of the product, what's the best structure to store documentation? (For example, Clients A & B tend to have the even-numbered releases and clients B & C tend to have the odd-numbered releases) Do you have a ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT structure, or a ROOT > CLIENT > VERSION structure, or something more complex?
A potential structure is ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT, accompanied by ROOT > CLIENTS > CLIENT for non-version specific documentation, such as Contracts and the like, and in the ROOT > VERSION > CLIENT structure, you either store the "generic" documentation for that version in the VERSION folder, or a "GENERIC" sub-folder thereof. What about non-client, non-version specific documentation? Is there even such a thing? Surely any piece of documentation should be created for a specific version and then copied to the later version and updated if required,... but then should the same apply to generic documentation.
Let's say that the product is a Cake. The base recipe might undergo changes between versions, with bespoke "patches" applied for some clients. For example, clients A & B might have the cake plain, client C might have it with an "icing-on-the-top" patch, and client D might have it with a "chocolate-flavour" patch,... Should the generic recipe be kept in a GENERIC folder, or copied four times, once into each of the clients folders?
Documentation management gives me a headache.
--------
Master Pages looks like quite a nice idea in ASP.net 2, but that's no use to those of us who won't have the cash to spend on the latest greatest version of Visual Studio, hey, 2003 was enough of an outlay for me! Hopefully the Express SKUs will provide me with the required level of functionality, but I doubt it!! Having had a look around the web, it seems that a lot of very ingenious people have come up with solutions for pre-2.0 ASP.net though. Links below, but I must really look into them in more detail,....
asp.net : Control Gallery
ASPAlliance.com
Note: Both those links go to different versions of what I think is the same content. More for my ref than anything else!!
--------
The one annoyance that I've found so far with Windows XP Service Pack 2 is that you get constantly reminded to reboot after updates have been installed... What if I don't want to reboot right now..... having hunted around on the 'net, I found this as a way to get rid of the reminder,...
1) Use GPEDIT.MSC
2) Use Regedit
The information is documented in this thread, on the Multiplay UK Forums.
--------
For the purposes of learning, fiddling and generally messing around, I have no intention of spending money on pre-produced server/web control thingys, unfortunately in the vast majority of cases the sample versions are crippled to a degree that is more than I'm willing to accept when mucking around. What would be nice would be trial versions that'll run fine as long as, for example, they're being called from localhost,... or some other limitation which as a hobbyist, I could live with. Admittedly this would limit me as I'd have to remote desktop into the machine I'm using as a webserver so that I could access it as localhost through the web browser, but it would be bearable.
Some of the "free" open-source type stuff looks alright, but visually isn't as smart as the more expensive products. Yes, I know I could go for a slightly dog-eared looking for example, menu bar, but I want it to look smart! Maybe I'll try tweaking one of the free tools, but the one I've seen that I like the most is written in C#, and I'm just not a fan of that syntax ;-)
Maybe I'll give it a go tonight - something to do, isn't it!
--------
Yet another year, doesn't seem like it was long since 2000. The usual resolutions have been made and almost, kinda, sort-of kept,...
Treated myself to a few techy books as a New Years present to myself, one's a (shudder!!) tutorial type book, for ASP.net. I'm more intimately familiar with classic VB/VBA/VBScript than I'd care to admit, so I thought that a book like that would help make the transition to the new object model, yada yada yada.... little did I know it'd be 9/10ths drivel. Oh well!
The second book, on the other hand, is a far more interesting volume for one of the acronym named microsoft qualifications, namely in developing secure applications in C#/VB.net -- I've only read the first chapter so far, making copious notes, answering the questions, and then writing sample "perfect" answers based on the chapter contents so as to absorb as much information as possible, and the online practice exam gave me 73% -- either I know more than I thought, or the practice exam's easier than the real one!!
--------
