You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002, 2:53 PM in .NET
Current Project Command Prompt for VS.NET
Here. Another answer from the VS.NET Info Center Q&A Forum describing how to start a command prompt and the file explorer in the directory of the current project.
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002, 2:50 PM in .NET
VS.NET 2003 Pre/Post-Build Steps in C# Projects
Here. "[I]n VS.NET 2003, the latest version that supports the .NET Framework 1.1 and available in beta version to MSDN subscribers, C# projects allow you to add your shell commands to the pre-build and post-build events during the project build." A cool VS.NET trick from my VS.NET Info Center Q&A Forum.
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002, 2:31 PM
Image Analysis and Web Services
Here. "Images are common currency in many business applications from banking to surveying and automotive engineering to semiconductor manufacturing. They face similar issues of distribution across already loaded networks, efficient processing and analysis, and the interaction of tools from multiple vendors. This article looks at the approach taken at Digital Healthcare, Ltd to solve its bottleneck for clinical image analysis and distribution. Digital Healthcare successfully implemented a secure n+1 tier architecture involving Web services, peer-to-peer resource sharing, and the Intel® Performance Libraries with C#* and the .NET* Framework."
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002, 2:28 PM in Tools
ADO.NET -- Offline and On Tap
Here. "In the .NET* Framework, rich clients can bring database servers to their knees, just like Web-based applications. But with the disconnected nature of ADO.NET, your rich clients can manipulate and analyze database data without impacting the database server. Once you have the data in the rich client, you can do high-performance analysis of the data—including sorting, filtering, and querying—without expensive server calls. In this article we will show you how to use DataSet, DataView, and XmlDataDocument to make your rich clients work with database data in a disconnected way."
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002, 2:26 PM in .NET
High Perf. Image Processing in .NET Clients
Here. "Not so many years ago, serious image processing meant using highly specialized hardware when same-day service was required. However, microprocessor manufacturers have consistently delivered exponential performance improvements for so long that even relatively modest client systems can now perform non-trivial image manipulation very quickly. These client capabilities were especially aided by the introduction of Streaming SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) Extensions to Intel® processors a few years ago, along with Intel's highly-optimized libraries for exploiting the technology. This article shows how to take advantage of these libraries in .NET client applications."
Wednesday, Dec 11, 2002, 8:44 AM
Team Leader
From Assaf Levi:
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, 5:23 PM
Of Eggs and Omelets
Here. In which Chris describes his most recent personal journey on the path to true enlightenment. : )
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, 1:28 PM in .NET
Info.NET, similar to Dashboard on MSN 8
Here. From Ryan Dawson: I had talked earlier in the week to Chris about an application I was developing, and I said I would post it as a news item when it was finsihed (I should say just started, I am not close to being finished). If you are interested in advancing this program, please contact me -rd933@msn.com.
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, 5:24 AM in .NET
.NET Passport Manager Source Licensing Program
Here. From Spencer Harbar: The .NET Passport Manager Source Licensing Program enables developers and other interested individuals to access and use Passport Manager Source code for both commercial and noncommercial purposes, including the creation and distribution of derivatives of the licensed source code for non-Windows applications. Licensees are free to use the source code also to develop, debug, and support their own commercial software for integration with .NET Passport. Passport Manager Source code is available for installation with any version of .NET Passport.
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, 12:00 AM in The Spout
Of Eggs and Omelets
My life has been one long series of experiments. I tried to be a know-it-all jerk in high school and found that this tended to cut into my social life (drastically), so I stopped (or am still stopping, depending on how well you know me : ). I tried to be a "ground floor" employee for a small company, but that stopped being fun when the repetition and bureaucracy hit and it became clear that any profits that might someday happen would be kept at the owner level. I tried being an employee for a large company, but when my projects started getting axed based on political winds that, as a low-level grunt, I had no control over, I went looking elsewhere. Then I found DevelopMentor. The combination of working on lots of different things with lots of smart people was something that I loved more than anything I've since found.
But even that didn't stop my experimentation. After teaching and consulting for a while, I decided that instead of just talking about building software, that I would take one of my ideas and build a software development team. There I worked to build the best software development team that I've ever had the pleasure to work with and a learned a *ton* along the way. However, the fact that the product itself was a commercial failure didn't make for lasting employment.
So, late last year, I started another whole series of experiments, this time aimed at making myself solvent as an independent in a down economy. I've been doing all kinds of crazy things to see if I could use them to help build my brand, my business and my customer base. Some of them have been critically acclaimed and a few have even been commercially viable, at least to the point that I can continue to pay my mortgage (many of my friends weren't so lucky). I have been successful in that I've gotten to do a lot of cool things and work with a lot of smart people.
However, what I've found is that to remain independent, I have to spend a lot more time doing promotion and marketing, which goes against every fiber in my being. The problem is, although I've experimented a bunch, especially as related to this year's DevCons, I don't have any natural marketing aptitude and I don't know where to turn for help. So, I fall back on my old standby -- experimentation.
Over several years, I've experimented with several sales/marketing/PR folks and organizations and so far, haven't found what I'm looking for as far as "mentors" go (to be fair, my standard for comparison includes Don Box, Tim Ewald and John Robbins, so I'm not surprised I haven't found someone to meet that bar). Even if I did meet that person, or may have already met him/her, I don't know that I'd recognize it. I just have no standard for comparison. With software, it either works or it doesn't. With marketing, did it succeed or fail because of the quality of the product or the quality of the marketing? The whole thing is too damn squishy and it drives me nuts!
My most recent set of experiments is to let a friend of mine, a long-time marketing guy that I've known for years, run rough-shod over my newsletter subscribers, asking them all kinds of questions and for their help in various ways, offering my money and my time as incentives. Will it work? I have no idea. Is it risky? You bet. I've lost a dozen or more subscribers and who knows what some people think of me now that I've let marketing ideas into what I do (and I'd like to apologize again to the folks that I drove away or offended in this most recent campaign). Is it worth the risk? Yes it is, but not for the promised return (I still think my marketing friend was on happy pills the day he quoted his marketing targets). What makes it worth the risk is that I've identified a weakness in myself and I'm willing to perform the experiment and make the mistakes to see if I can come out better on the other side. Even if I fail, I've learned something. Eventually, I'll get that omelet made, no matter how many eggs need breaking.
And to those of you who suffer with me through my experiments, thank you very much. You have no idea how much you mean to me.
Monday, Dec 9, 2002, 8:59 PM in .NET
Mono Runs ASP.NET
Here. From Jesse Ezell: Ximian released mono 0.17 today: "Many new features as well as plenty of bug fixes. Many new System.Data providers and a more mature System.Web (ASP.NET) which can now be hosted in any web server. A simple test web server to host asp.net has been released as well."
Monday, Dec 9, 2002, 5:52 PM
Visual Studio Tools for Office
Here. "Businesses and developers have long benefited from the ability to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to customize Microsoft Office applications and integrate them with existing data and systems. While VBA continues to be an important part of Office development (and benefits from the new features of 'Office 11,' the next release of Office), 'Visual Studio Tools for Office' will provide significant advances in the areas of language choice and innovation, security, deployment, and the integrated development environment (IDE)." I once heard that most VB programmers are actually office programmers, so keeping them happy was *way* more important than keeping the average VB programmer happy, let alone a lowly C programmer. So, until .NET is ubiquitous and there's a seamless porting tool, looks like VBA and VSA will co-exist in Office instead of just having VSA replace VBA in a single version. This is goodness, imo.
Monday, Dec 9, 2002, 4:25 PM in .NET
Web Services Enhancements 1.0 for Microsoft .NET
Here. From John Bristowe: "Web Services Enhancements 1.0 for Microsoft .NET is the released and supported version of the Web Services Development Kit Technology Preview (WSDK)."
Monday, Dec 9, 2002, 4:25 PM in .NET
Web Services Enhancements for .NET
Here. "Web Services Enhancements 1.0 for Microsoft .NET (WSE) provides advanced Web services functionality for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft .NET Framework developers to support the latest Web services capabilities. Enterprise ready applications can be developed quickly with the support of security features such as digital signature and encryption, message routing capabilities, and the ability to include message attachments that are not serialized into XML. Functionality is based on the WS-Security, WS-Routing, WS-Attachments and DIME specifications." In their own wonderful way, Microsoft has changed the name yet again to the set of classes that they've put together to do heavy-duty web services stuff. It was GXA, then WSDK and now it is, finally and officially, the Web Services Enhancements (WSE). If you liked it with the old names, you'll love it with the new name. : )
Sunday, Dec 8, 2002, 2:46 AM
More PetShop 2.0 Fun
Here. "Carl and Mark discuss the PetShop 2.0 application which Vertigo developed as an answer to Sun's PetShop J2EE benchmark application. The .NET version proves to be at least 2 times as fast as the J2EE version."