Spotlight IT Ramblings Blog I'm living in Dublin, Ireland and this is a collection of ramblings about my day-to-day activities in the exciting world of web development ;-) Technologies used and projects under development. Also links of interest, mostly completely work un-related.... tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256 2006-12-22T15:01:24Z Blogger
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 true Craig 2006-12-22T15:01:24+00:00 2006-12-22T15:01:24Z 2006-12-22T15:01:24Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116679968454006869 Tax Calculations for Irish budget 2007 www.taxcalc.eu Updated for the 2006-2007 budget allows calculation of tax allowances false Craig 2006-12-22T11:46:58+00:00 2006-12-22T11:46:58Z 2006-12-22T11:46:58Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116678801871021989 Visual Studio Team System I have been looking into pricing and features of the new visual studio team system.It is unfortunate that this product is being pitched at the enterprise market to the exclusion of smaller teams, which could do with the functionality.Here are some of my favourite features:- A SQL server based replacement for Visual SourceSafe, finally ! - Code Coverage tools to show how much of the code was false Craig 2006-11-06T12:10:00+00:00 2006-11-06T12:11:20Z 2006-11-06T12:11:20Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116281508031154511 Replacing region specific blocks of code, T-SQL Synonyms When dealing with different database names per country/region it is quite common to write the following code IF @Region = @Const_Ireland BEGIN Select * from DATABASENAME_IE.dbo.Orders where........ Update DATABASENAME_IE.dbo.Orders Set OrderDate=... where........ etc etc END IF @Region = @Const_UK BEGIN Select * from DATABASENAME_UK.dbo.Orders where........ Update DATABASENAME_UK.dbo.Orders false Craig 2006-10-20T10:40:00+01:00 2006-10-29T14:37:02Z 2006-10-20T09:40:33Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116133723337356109 Internet Explorer 7 Released After years of nondevelopment the worlds most popular browser internet explorer has been released to version 7. Some nice new features but nothing that FireFox doesn't already have. This will probably be sent to the world in general via automatic updates at some stage. If testing different browser compatability for your web pages and you still want to have IE 6 on your machine you can try these false Craig 2006-10-18T16:46:34+01:00 2006-10-18T15:46:35Z 2006-10-18T15:46:34Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116118639481729256 Printer Supplies I'm buying a printer and when out at lunch today I dropped into one of those shops (that shall remain nameless) that refill cartridges to get some advice. Q. Which is cheaper for printing large amounts of black and white A4 paper, Laser or Inkjet ? A. You will have to replace a cartridge every 200 sheets for an inkjet, every 2000 for a laser, much cheaper... I think this could be an exageration false Craig 2006-10-11T18:03:00+01:00 2006-10-11T17:17:48Z 2006-10-11T17:03:12Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116058619228691475 its official, The best chocolate bar to go with a cuppa tea Andy McDermott sitting beside me (check local press for his comedy gigs !) just bought me a Nestle "Lion Bar" to prove a point that he has been saying for the past few months, and you know, he's right, IT IS THE best accompaniment with a cup of tea. The only payment he demanded was to spread the good word. So, to both of you reading this blog now you know, try a lion bar instead of your regular false Craig 2006-10-11T13:14:41+01:00 2006-10-11T12:14:41Z 2006-10-11T12:14:41Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-116056888187301512 Google Code Search released Essential for searching for open source code, why reinvest the wheel Google Code Search Check out this blog for great comments like "I am drunk and coding like I am the greatest coder of all time." and other funnies found... false Craig 2006-09-29T11:01:05+01:00 2006-09-29T10:01:05Z 2006-09-29T10:01:05Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115952406510632830 Watch out redgate here comes VS 2005 for Database Pros The makers of the excellent SQLCompare tool will likely see a slice of their market dissappear with the comparison features of this new VS.Net 2005 edition. Here are a few more reasons its going to be successful. What Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals Can Do for You Automatic storage of database changes in Source control is well overdue, no more jumping through false Craig 2006-09-26T12:58:00+01:00 2006-09-26T12:01:09Z 2006-09-26T12:01:09Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115927206958299431 It looks like a nano, but at less than half the price This MP3 player is about the size of an iPod nano but will also play windows media WMA files, has a FM radio and the 2GB model is only €70 ex VAT Neon mp3 player false Craig 2006-08-24T15:03:57+01:00 2006-08-24T14:03:57Z 2006-08-24T14:03:57Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115642823772136073 Forcing pages to expire in .Net 2.0 Add the following false Craig 2006-08-10T16:55:00+01:00 2006-08-10T15:58:11Z 2006-08-10T15:58:11Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115522549179710192 ASP.Net 2.0 Themes, Styles, Skins and Layout Download these professionally designed Starter Kits and XHTML templates to get you started creating compelling, standards-compliant Web pages with ASP.NET 2.0. There are four Starter Kits. These Starter Kits are complete web site solutions using ASP.NET’s latest controls (tree view control, grid view control, detail view control, login control, site map path controls and more). There are another 5 false Craig 2006-07-15T13:10:26+01:00 2006-07-15T12:10:27Z 2006-07-15T12:10:26Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115296542683856507 CSLA .NET 20 I have just started a new contract role delivering ASP.Net 2.0 web applications agains a SQL Server 2005 database. One of the aspects of this project is the use of the CSLA .NET 20 framework by Rockford Lhotka. This open source framework allows the creation of object oriented business objects that can be located across 5 logical tiers. It encapsulates common functionality encountered when false Craig 2006-06-13T10:36:41+01:00 2006-06-13T09:36:42Z 2006-06-13T09:36:41Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-115019140169526636 VS Team Edition for Database Professionals Microsoft have finally got on the bandwagon, instead of having to use tools from Reg Gate software such as SQLCompare when Team system releases in late 2006 you will be able to add new database objects through your project, compare database schemas (even if they aren't part of your Database Project), compare the data contained within a table for differences, reverse-engineer objects from a false Craig 2006-06-06T09:14:49+01:00 2006-06-06T08:14:50Z 2006-06-06T08:14:49Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-114958168949703653 Check if your pc is capable of running Windows Vista Windows Vista: Get Ready false Craig 2006-05-24T17:00:48+01:00 2006-05-24T16:00:49Z 2006-05-24T16:00:48Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-114848644868026562 CodeTranslator: Free Code Translation From VB.NET <-> C# CodeTranslator: Free Code Translation From VB.NET C# Very useful tool, does a great job from C# to VB.Net 2005 anyway. They also say that privacy of code is assured as its converted on the fly and not saved on their server. false Craig 2006-05-16T12:04:17+01:00 2006-05-16T11:04:18Z 2006-05-16T11:04:17Z tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7419256.post-114777745754340865 Five XHTML Elements You Didn't Know But Were Afraid to Ask Here are some important XHTML tags that are rarely used by web developers Five XHTML Elements You Didn't Know But Were Afraid to Ask by Adam Tibi Nice short article about the use of optgroup, label, fieldset/legend, col/colgroup and acronym tags, with screenshots of what they look like. I especially like the optgroup one, very useful, the fieldset I have been using for a while and makes false