SQL Server Deep Dives

I finally received my copy of SQL Server Deep Dives in the mail today. I have waited for this book for several weeks, and am already through the first chapter. With what little I have read thus far, I really like this book. This makes hard copy book number three that I have read this year. (I know that does not sound like very much, but I have read countless eBooks this year. And I really mean countless … ummm … because I can’t tell you how many.)

If this is something that you think might interest you, consider buying a copy. The author royalties go to support War Child International.

This sitemap maps all collections, albums and pictures. This version assumes that .htaccess is enabled for nice URL’s, but it would be a quick rewrite to have it work without nice URL’s. It would be a long rewrite for it to check if mod_rewrite was enabled, but that could be done, too.

Plogger Sitemap Version 0.1

Installations was a breeze, but you are unable to specify an installation directory, so those of us who install programs on separate drives are SOL.

Setting up the blog was even easier than the installation. All you need to do is type in the URL and Windows Live Writer does the rest.

There are three interfaces for composing. There are two WYSIWYG. One is an HTML(link) preview with the styles from your blog and the last one resembles a simple word processor. The third interface is the classic HTML(link) view. WLW also has preview and spell check functions which PFF, my preferred tool, does not.

I will update this post once I have published it, just to let you know if everything came across alright (unlike my post from Office 2007 Beta).

UPDATE:  The worst thing that WLW did during post is not separate my paragraphs.  Not too shabby.

UPDATE 2:  The image uploads are a little wonky.  For WordPress is loads to the correct directory (i.e. uploads/2006/08), but there it creates a sub-folder based on the post title and another folder to contain the thumbnail and the original image.  This in itself is not a huge deal, but is makes these uploads inaccessible through the web admin panel.

I knew that there were going to be bundled products. Before even running YIM I removed their helper program (that was a new one to me), the tool bar and mail. It downloaded flash and installed that as well. I ed-selected all of the add-on and preference options as I do not regularly use Yahoo! for anything other that instant messaging.

I started YIM and opened Firefox. The install had also installed the Yahoo! tool bar for Firefox. With Firefox’s growing market share that was not totally unexpected. I clicked on the toolbar to see if I would give it a shot (slim chance) and saw a remove this option. It intrigued me so I clicked it. It opened a “Why is there a Yahoo! menu on the menu bar of my browser?” page.

After browsing through the help pages for a few minutes, I was disturbed. Nearly every problem referenced a corrupt profile. In the past two and a half years I have only once had to create a new profile. I install and un-install extension on a weekly if not daily basis. It also mentions fixes in the about:config. While I have no problems making any of these changes, I find it disturbing that this stealth installation could corrupt the customizations I have worked so hard to make.

Hat Tip: Hot Links and EFF.

If you installed this script before March 27:th you need to reinstall the latest version, as the coComment people changed format of their bookmarklet and this script needs to understand how to parse it to work and reupdate itself.

I installed the updated script and everything is hunky dory.

Either way, I have had many people that ask me what extensions I have installed. I am kind of a fair weather extension user and routinely have almost a hundred. For this, I removed all of the extensions that I have not used in the past couple of weeks to shorten the list. Here are the Firefox extensions that I am currently using:

Enabled Extensions: (44)
• Adsense Notifier 0.8
• Bandwidth Tester 0.5.5
• BugMeNot 1.3
• Chrome Cleaner 0.3
• ConQuery 1.6.4
• CuteMenus 2 0.6.3
• del.icio.us 1.1
• Disable Targets For Downloads 1.0.1
• Download Embedded 0.3
• Download Statusbar 0.9.4
• DownThemAll! 0.9.8.7
• Extension Developer 0.2.2.20050505
• Fasterfox 1.0.3
• Feedview 0.9.8
• Flashblock 1.3.3
• Forecastfox 0.8.5.3
• Google Images Re-Linker 0.3
• GooglePreview 1.3
• Greasemonkey 0.6.4
• IE Tab 1.0.8
• Image Zoom 0.2.3
• Launchy 4.2.0
• ListZilla 0.7
• LiveLines 0.4.4.1
• Mozilla SpellCheck Libraries 1.0.1.0
• NextPlease 0.6.4
• Nuke Anything Enhanced 0.53
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver 1.0
• Performancing 1.1.1
• Platypus 0.64
• Quick Locale Switcher 1.28
• QuickJava 0.4.1
• Resizeable Textarea 0.1b
• Restart Firefox 0.3
• Reveal 1.0.6
• Scribe 0.21
• Selenium IDE 0.7.2
• Signature 0.4.0.3.200511282308
• SpellBound 0.7.3
• Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.8.8
• User Agent Switcher 0.6.8
• View Rendered Source Chart 1.5.02
• ViewSourceWith 0.0.7.91
• Web Developer 1.0.2

Microsoft will close the book on its FrontPage Web-design program with the release of Office 2007, formerly known as Office 12, late this year.

Microsoft acquired FrontPage in the mid-1990s, and it soon outdistanced Adobe’s PageMill and other popular low-cost what-you-see-is-what-you-get Web-creation tools.

FrontPage was the software that I used to build my first web site. That was over a decade ago. It was a simple site for a college project. My undergraduate degree is in music education, if that tells you anything about my complete ignorance at the time. I saved that site for nearly four years before it finally saw the world wide web. I went out and bought FrontPage the day before I registered my first web site, just to update and upload the site I had began four years earlier.

I continued to use FrontPage for probably the next six or seven months. Then I got persuaded, mostly because of the lack of any other option, to update my company web site. Of course FrontPage was not available, and I was introduced to DreamWeaver. It was with the introduction of DreamWeaver that I actually started looking at code instead of using a WYSIWYG editor. It was a crash course for me, and to this day I can definitely say that I have learned just enough to be dangerous.

With that little knowledge of code I switched to using Notepad++ as my editor of choice. It is small, quick and supports syntax highlighting, which I am lost without. It also integrates nicely into Firefox via use of the run menu. That, in conjunction with the Web Developer Toolbar and other great extensions, is my complete toolkit.

The other day I was asked to update a not as yet functional section of the intranet where I work. As I embarked on this task, the person I was helping opened FrontPage and, looking back, I had to chuckle.