Finally! I can BLOG! Updates on SgDotNet!

Hey guys and girls! It's been so long since I blogged. Anyway I've been busy getting Community Server up and working for SgDotNet. The link for the new forums is http://community.sgdotnet.org/forums.

I'll be switching my blog as soon as I can figure out how to migrate all my posts here to the Community Server Blogs @ SgDotNet.

Well, anyway, my new blog url is @ http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez. There's nothing up yet until I write the code to migrate. A lot of people I know are waiting for this migration code. Well, I'll try my best to write it this weekend.

I have to get the SgDotNet Website up ASAP, because we're having a meeting next thursday. I achieved something today with the website, I've fixed the Single-Sign-On issue between cross-sites, the website and the community server. :) I rock. Yeah I do! :)

Till next time, hopefully you'll see me in my new blog space. Cyaz!

Content Management System - Is creating one viable?

A friend of mine was telling about creating a commercial Content Management System is a good way to go. Then I was asking myself, why would I want to pay for a CMS which is so expensive, when I can get a CMS which costs $0, has online support, and many resources on how to set the system up.

One of them is the Mambo CMS created using PHP and MySQL which all runs on Apache. Here's a recent review on it.

Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably

All these are free. Another one of them is the DotNetNuke created using Visual Basic.NET and runs on IIS which isn't much of a CMS but there are modules to convert it into a CMS which can also interface with MySQL. The same goes with PHPNuke.

Just do a google search for "Content Management System Opensource" and you'll get back so many results. So now I ask you, why should I spend time creating my own, and selling it? One way to make money from CMS would be to take one of these Opensource free CMS, and provide the service of customising it for the client. It's much faster, reduces cost, and it's already easy and ready to use.

Now I want your opinion on this.

What's the rationale for creating your own CMS? Even if the rationale is that CMS is meant for big enterprise-level businesses, and most SME aren't really taking for it, as previously mentioned, there is the niche market there to push into. But why would I want to spend time creating a CMS from scratch, then customising it, then selling it?

And why should I as a businessman want to buy the CMS from Microsoft when it's so complicated, difficult to setup, and most of all, EXPENSIVE? Integration is one thing, but that's all I can see as the advantage, which I don't quite need really for CMS.

Comments please. :)

Discovered (??) CSS Hack - Loading Logos First

I've always had problems putting links on css backgrounds. For example, a simple logo like this.

<div id="logo">
<a title="SgDotNet For Cool Developers" href="/">
<span class="alt">SgDotNet For Cool Developers</span>
</a>
<div>

with the CSS...

#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

The logo will render the background image LAST! Now, as a main website logo, we don't want that do we? We want it to be rendered first. So here's what I changed.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

This will render the background image FIRST, but the anchor is gone. This isn't what I need.

So this is what I did... I added both CSS in. And it renders FIRST, plus the anchor is still there.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }
#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

And this is all I did. It worked perfectly fine. If there's such a hack already discovered out there, please forgive me for my ignorance.

Hee, feeling proud I discovered this myself.

BrainGate - Science Fiction becomes Reality

Have you ever watched sci-fi movies that show interaction between computer and human just by thought alone? Or plugging into the computer through a jack like the Matrix?

It's becoming reality.

Check out the research here.

Cyberkinetics - Neurotechnology Systems, Inc.

Cool huh! Check out the demo video.

Google OS?!? And advice for Imagine Cup teams

For those participating in Imagine Cup 2005, I wished you would have given me something like this.

A Google OS by 2010?

I was just talking to another group of participants in IC2005 about an idea similar to that article up there, though it's not coupled to a specific OS. Apparently this article came up soon after. LOL. Great minds think alike.

You guys want dissolving boundaries? That is your ultimate idea. Why didn't anyone from Singapore think about that? Or something similar, or even something of the same granduer. Think grand scale, think innovation, think out of this world.

What was mentioned in the article is just waiting to be implemented, to be used, to be wide-spread. The idea has been going around since ages ago. We have webservices, we have SOA, we have the .NET Framework, we have Java, we have Linux. The technology is out there already. We're waiting for it to happen.

Come on people, I was very disappointed with most of your proposals that I judged. Apparently Singaporeans have very little ambition, and are quite polluted by the fact of marketing and business. Think of out the box, please!! I had an agonizing time reading all the proposals I got.

Anyway, I wish all of the teams who got into the Semi-Finals of Imagine Cup 2005 in Singapore all the best, and please go all out to impress.

A good idea is only good when you yourself are excited over it.

Accepted into University!!

Yesterday I just got news that I've been accepted to University of Waterloo. I did it!!

1 hour later, I got news that I've been accepted to University of Toronto @ Scarborough (UTSC) too!! Stress! Now I've got to choose which one.

Anyone knows which I should go? Anyone knows which is better? Stress!

And furthermore, now that I got in, I've got to consider about paying for my education. I'm wondering if there's any grants or scholarships around for my lowly results. Because all I see is scholarships asking for high A level results, with S-Papers and such. Oh well, I'll do my best searching for some $$$. Each university also has scholarships and grants over there. So I might be applying for those too.

Well, congratulations to me! WOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Game Developer Conference 2005 Slides

The Microsoft DirectX slides are available for download here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e9d5a43-a045-4ed8-99ae-09f3d69211ee&DisplayLang=en

This download includes presentations given by the Windows gaming and graphics team at the Game Developers Conference 2005. Included is the Microsoft DirectX Developer Day content and the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) Workshop content.

The nVidia slides are available for download here.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gdc_2005_presentations.html

The ATI slides are available for download here.

http://www.ati.com/developer/techpapers.html#gdc05

Enjoy.

Zeta OS Deluxe Edition Screenshots

A few days ago I posted some news on Zeta OS, the successor of BeOS. Here are some screenshots to follow.

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=223&slide=1

I'll be ordering my Zeta OS v1.0 when it's officially released on the website.

Cool looking Pub

Here's a cool looking pub in Poland.

http://www.living-images.org/livingimages/beer/goodbeer.html

Take a look at it. It looks damn cool. :P

lex / YACC on .NET?

I was trying to find a lex or YACC or bison equivalent on .NET, and lo ho and behold I finally found it, by accident.

It's called The Compiler Generator Coco/R, or just Coco/R in short. Here's the link to it.
http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Research/Projects/Coco/

It has ports to C#, Java, and others. It does things slightly different from lex or YACC or bison, but it still serves the same purpose. To parse text/code.

So that's that. This is actually for a project that MIGHT be doing in future. Check out the thread here.
http://forums.sgdotnet.org/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=10570

Design Patterns C#

I think it's high time I posted this up.

Design Patterns C#
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321126971/002-3952322-5488036
This book covers all the 23 patterns in the Gang of Four book.

Here is an online resource for the 23 patterns in C#.
http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

Learn the basic design patterns and appreciate it. Every developer needs to have this book.

Routing Secured SOAP Messages Through Multiple SOAP Intermediaries Using WSE 2.0

Routing Secured SOAP Messages Through Multiple SOAP Intermediaries Using WSE 2.0

(snip)
Route secure SOAP messages through multiple HTTP SOAP intermediaries using "Next-Hop" mechanisms, and use the ExtendedSecurity function to form a secured chain of SOAP nodes through which messages must pass.
(/snip)

--
Well, this is my friend's, Softwaremaker, or he'll like me to call him William Tay instead, article on MSDN!! Well, I've read it, and it's one great article. But it really needs indepth knowledge of the internals of web services. So be prepared for one hell of a ride.

Here's his blog about this article.
http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog/PermaLink,guid,efeecf7b-a2bc-45bc-8e71-3f16e586ce15.aspx

Good stuff. Thumbs up!

Atom Resources

Hey ho. I'm back again with more things. Here I am getting interested in Atom.

Here are some resources to read up on.

Note that the current version of Atom is v0.3, and the Atom WSDL specs are for v0.3, and not the drafts.

Atom WSDL
---------
After reading, this link seems to have the most updated WSDL file for Atom.
Randy Charles Morin
http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/?guid=20040614174016

This is link is some fix up before the top link, and provides some c# client code.
Sam Ruby
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2003/12/18/AtomAPI.wsdl

And some thoughts from Christopher Ferris about the old Atom WSDL before the top link was revised.
http://webpages.charter.net/chrisfer/2004/02/some-thoughts-on-atomapi-wsdl.html

For those playing with WSDL 2.0, here's the updated WSDL file.
Dave Orchard's Blog
Atom 0.3 WSDL 2.0
http://www.pacificspirit.com/Authoring/wsdl/atom3.1.wsdl2

And lastly, this is the official WSDL that everyone uses. IMO, the first WSDL file posted up there is still the latest and updated one.
http://atomenabled.org/developers/api/AtomAPI.wsdl

Atom .NET API
-------------
Atomizer
Atom.NET

Atom Specifications
--------------------------
New Atom Format Draft
Atom Publishing Protocol (txt) (html)
Current Atom v0.3 Specifcations

Atom Resource/Website
---------------------
AtomEnabled
The Atom Project Wiki

From what I see, the Atom community activity seems to have stopped for a while, web-presence I mean. Whereas in the mailing list and such, they are very much active.

That's all folks. Note to self, get softwaremaker to take a look at the Atom WSDL file.

You guys might be wondering why the sudden interest in Atom, and the WSDL. You'll find out soon. Hee! Man I took 1 hour to type out this post.

Cheerios

ManWrap Library - Managed Code in Unmanaged C++!?!

Use Our ManWrap Library to Get the Best of .NET in Native C++ Code

(snip)
The Managed Extensions for C++ make it possible to mix native and managed code freely, even in the same module. Wow, life is good! Compiling with /clr, however, has consequences you may not want. It forces multithreading and dispenses with some useful runtime checks. It interferes with MFC's DEBUG_NEW, and some .NET Framework classes may conflict with your namespace. And what if you have a legacy application that uses an older version of the compiler that doesn't support /clr? Isn't there some way to reach into the Framework without the Managed Extensions? Yes!

In this article, I'll show you how to wrap Framework classes in a native way so you can use them in any C++/MFC app without /clr. As my test case, I'll wrap the regex classes from the .NET Framework in a DLL and implement three MFC programs using it. You can use RegexWrap.dll to add regular expressions to your own C++/MFC applications, or use my ManWrap tools to wrap your own favorite Framework classes.
(/snip)

--
WOW! THIS IS COOL STUFF!!!!! I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THIS; THE OTHER WAY AROUND FROM MANAGED TO UNMANAGED!! Enough of CAPS. This is cool. Alot of C++ guys will love this. Maybe I should fire up my passion for C++ again, since C++ is actually getting SOME recognition in the .NET environment, finally.

The Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle

The Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle

This paper discusses the Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle (or SDL), a process that Microsoft has adopted for the development of software that needs to withstand malicious attack. The process encompasses the addition of a series of security-focused activities and deliverables to each of the phases of Microsoft's software development process. These activities and deliverables include the development of threat models during software design, the use of static analysis code-scanning tools during implementation, and the conduct of code reviews and security testing during a focused "security push". Before software subject to the SDL can be released, it must undergo a Final Security Review by a team independent from its development group. When compared to software that has not been subject to the SDL, software that has undergone the SDL has experienced a significantly reduced rate of external discovery of security vulnerabilities. This paper describes the SDL and discusses experience with its implementation across Microsoft software.

--
4 words - Read it. Use it.

Klipfolio

My friend icelava had asked me what's that blueish thing with so many headlines at the top right hand corner of my laptop screen. That, is KlipFolio.

Download it here.

http://www.serence.com

You can get more klips here at KlipFarm.

Klips are just getting changes from anything and everything under the internet skyline. :) That's about it.

Cheerios.

IE7 and CSS: the Acid2 test - Microsoft has now been challenged

This is just something my friend Kit Kai was interested. So I thought maybe you guys might be interested too.

IE7 and CSS: the Acid2 test - Microsoft has now been challenged

In a public effort to encourage Microsoft to add as much CSS 2 support as possible as its developers embark on IE7, Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera Software and the father of CSS) and the Web Standards Project have begun the development of a test suite, known as “Acid2.”

"To ensure that IE 7 does not become another failed promise, the Web community will issue a challenge to Microsoft. We will produce a test page, code-named Acid2, that will actively use features Web designers crave, such as fixed positioning of elements.

...To the IE 7 developers, I want to say:

You are smart and talented. You know Web standards as well as anyone. You were capable of fixing IE in the past, but your managers didn't let you. You now have a new chance to get it right--don't waste it. Download Acid2 when it's released and get in touch if you think it's unfair for any reason. Resist pressure from management to ship before you are done--spend the extra time it takes.

...To the Web community I want to say: Microsoft has now been challenged. They will respond, if enough people remind them of the challenge. Please remind them. And, when IE 7 is released, make sure this is the first thing you type into it

http://webstandards.org/testsuites/acid2/"

--
What do you guys think? For me, I support the web standards committee to push IE 7 to be as compliant as it can be. I like the current CSS 2.0, and XHTML 1.1 standards. It's clean, simple, and good.

Infrared Programming Using the .NET Compact Framework

This is quite old, but it seems quite a few people are asking how to do it. It's written by Lee Wei Meng from Singapore. Yay! 3 Cheers.

Here's the link.

Infrared Programming Using the .NET Compact Framework

Oh btw, if I'm not wrong there are some changes for Infrared and Bluetooth programming on .NET Framework 2.0. I'll have to check that out.

Changelog from .NET Framework 1.1 to .NET Framework 2.0

Here's the changelog link for the changes from .NET Framework 1.1 to .NET Framework 2.0.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/changeinfo/default.aspx

Cheerios.

Microsoft Solutions Framework v3.0 and v4.0 Resources

If anyone realise yet, I'm bored and tired. So I'm just searching stuff to read.

Here's a link of resources on MSF v3.0 and v4.0(still under beta).

MSF v3.0 Resources

MSF v4.0 Resources

I'm sure you guys will benefit more from the v4.0 resource. I've been trying to find stuff about v4.0 and this guy's all I've got.

If anyone has more links, please feel free to post them under comments.

Patterns And Practices LIVE

Some schedules of Enterprise Library Webcast.

http://www.pnplive.com/

Check it out.

Enterprise Library can be downloaded here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0325B97A-9534-4349-8038-D56B38EC394C&displaylang=en

Software Factories

This is a bit old, but I'll post it anyway.

Download it from here.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/7/b/c7bd6035-ed1c-4885-85de-43f7158c70b9/msdn_1102.zip

It's a webcast talking about Software Factories. I'm not too sure about this topic, but I'll be watching the webcast and will write more on it.

DynWsLib

DynWsLib

A .NET Library to dynamically call Web services at runtime.

Have you ever thought of invoking your Web services dynamically without having to generate a client-side proxy class at design/compile time with WSCF, wsdl.exe or Visual Studio .NET? No need to know the exact Web service description and endpoint at compile/design time. Just get your WSDL, specify the service (binding) to use and the operations to call, and voila! The library can be used especially good in testing scenarios.

Just noticed this other good stuff for web services, posted by Softwaremaker. It's from the same guy as the previous post I made, WS-ContractFirst (WSCF).

Do check it out.

Oh and just to add, the web services guru in Singapore, Softwaremaker aka William Tay's blog. http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog

MSDE Deployment Toolkit

Finished! Completed 1 project. Feeling good. 5 more to go. UGH!

Anyway, here's something to tingle your senses. I'm sure everyone needs to use a database somehow or another during their development, and not everyone has SQL Server 2000 installed. One way would be to use Access, but that's too slow. Another way would be to use MSDE. Here's a good article as how to create your application installation to include and setup MSDE 2000 for your application.

The MSDE Deployment Toolkit (RC) in Action

Enjoy!

Next up I'll talk about Paladin, if I can remember anything to write about.

WS-ContractFirst (WSCF)

Yo yo yo. I'm 90% done with one of my long-passed dateline project, and NOW I'm going to rest. But before that, I'd like to share with you guys WebServices - Contract First.

A few weeks ago, my friend Softwaremaker gave a presentation to the SgDotNet User Group. And he did a wonderful presentation about WebServices - Contract First. Here's his blog about it.

Introducing WS-ContractFirst (WSCF) to Singapore

And he did mention about Christian Weyer's WS-ContractFirst (WSCF) tool. Please do check it out. Contract First with webservices is a good way to go, though not the best, but I assure you SWM has convinced me it's the best way to go at the moment.

There is a March 2005 Indigo CTP just released on MSDN Subscribers. Here are a few good articles on Indigo.

Microsoft "Indigo" The Unified Programming Model for Building Service-Oriented Applications

Introducing Indigo: An Early Look

Well, that's all folks! It's dinner time, and after that, I have to do the rest of this. I have another 5 more projects which datelines are way long overdued. Sigh.

Hopefully till tomorrow, I'll be blogging again.

Saying Hi from MRT!

Yo! I'm using GPRS with Bluetooth connection to my cellphone to connect to the interenet from the MRT train! w00t! Technology rocks. Improving my productivity by the double, or maybe eventually triple. Who knows... Weeeeeee!!!

Being connected every second and minute feels good.

Cheerios.

No technical stuff today. It's rest day for me. w33t.

Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

The Phalanger is a complex solution giving web-application developers the ability to benefit from both the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the power and richness of the .NET platform. This solution enables developers to painlessly deploy and run existing PHP code on an ASP.NET web server and develop cross-platform extensions to such code taking profit from the best from both sides. Compatible with PHP 5.0, the object model in Phalanger enables to combine PHP objects with the .NET ones. It is possible to use a class written in PHP from a .NET application or even to import a .NET class (written for example in C# or Visual Basic .NET) into PHP scripts provided that this class respects the PHP object model implemented in the Phalanger. The Phalanger is the only existing PHP compiler which produces .NET Framework MSIL bytecode.

From another point of view, Phalanger provides the .NET programmers with the giant amount of practical PHP functions and data structures - many of them reimplemented in the managed environment of the .NET Framework. The whole Phalanger class library (including functions implemented in the PHP extensions) is accessible to a .NET programmer regardless to her favorite programming language together with type information and in-library debugging.

For last but not the least, compilation of PHP scripts gives yet more power to the existing web applications in the Phalanger environment. All the static (run-time immutable) code in the scripts gets parsed and compiled only once and all following accesses to a page benefit from the unleashed execution of the native compilation of the script. Yet the usage of Phalanger is not limited to web applications. The compiler supports output of standalone executables or dynamic link libraries enabling you to create managed PHP console applications or library modules reusable from any other .NET Framework application.

--

Take a look at their interview at Channel 9
Phalanger: PHP .NET compiler revealed #

Thoughts on Business

I was thinking just now about business and how it runs. Basically, a business simply contains 3 things.

1 - Providing (a) service(s)
Be it a product, a way to do things, creating applications, and so on, everything is based on providing a service. That's what the main business runs on, and depends on.

2 - Creating Awareness
You have to make known of what your business does, and let people know it's benefits and how it is different from others and so on. This in it's way is to create awareness, or advertising, or social networking, or whatever you call it. It basically boils down to creating awareness for your business.

3 - Innovation
As mentioned above, you need to let people know how your service is different from others. Therefore you'll need to innovate, and come out with something unique for your "service". Why I put this last is because innovation in itself is quite difficult to achieve, and it requires someone of certain calibre to handle it. Most businesses do not have that calibre. But they still fulfill the first 2 criterias on business.

These are just my thoughts on business, as I was talking to a friend. I don't study business or marketing or what have you, so I might be wrong, or this might be extremely obvious to everyone, but I just find it quite interesting that every business must at least fulfill 2 of the criterias.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Feel free to comment.

GoWebTools - Free Hit Counter

GoWebTools

This looks like quite a good hit counter provider. Reminder to use this for SgDotNet website.

Five Undiscovered Features on ASP.NET 2.0

Five Undiscovered Features on ASP.NET 2.0

By now, developers everywhere have had the opportunity to download the first beta of the Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0. ASP.NET developers who have played with it are no doubt salivating at all the cool new features. From Master Pages to declarative data access to new controls to a new provider-based state management architecture, ASP.NET 2.0 offers myriad ways to do more with less code. And with Beta 2 just around the corner, now is the time to get serious about ASP.NET 2.0.

You may have read some of the many books and magazine articles previewing the upcoming features. You might even have seen a live demo at a conference or user group meeting. But how well do you really know ASP.NET 2.0? Did you know, for example, that those wonderful $ expressions used to declaratively load connection strings and other resources can be extended to create $ expressions of your own? Did you realize that the new ASP.NET 2.0 client callback manager provides an elegant solution to the problem of keeping browser displays in sync with constantly changing data on the server? Did you know that you can encrypt sections of Web.config to prevent connection strings and other potentially injurious data from being stored in plaintext?

---

My Take? Interesting article. I like the part about the client script callbacks, which is extremely useful. And the custom expression builder.

Interest Articles : Communities

My friend Savagerx at SgDotNet posted something interesting for me to read up.

This article discusses some of the common roles we can expect to find in a community.
http://www.fullcirc.com/community/memberroles.htm

Yet another of somehow the same article.
http://www.dtinational.org/resources/articledisplay.asp?id=27

Designing a Computer Supported Community
https://web-imtm.iaw.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/bscw.cgi/0/208299/30402/30402.pdf

I should get all these read one of these days. Reminder.

Visual Studio 2002 SP 1

Download it here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c41d8159-b42f-4d06-a797-e510494976ee&displaylang=en

Here is a list of the changes and hotfixes included in the SP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837234

Release Notes are here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C64786BC-FC5D-46C8-9E2E-FCD3A79935D8&displaylang=en

This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002. Fixes in this Service Pack concern stability and security enhancements made in many areas of the product. A comprehensive list of hotfixes requested by customers since the release of Visual Studio .NET 2002 and included in this Service Pack can be found by following the appropriate link under Related Resources on this page.

Enjoy! :)

And you thought ActiveX was bad... Here comes Java!

Firefox Spyware infects IE?

The terror has come. Java Runtime Environment is now the target for spywares. It's no more ActiveX. Read on to find out.

<snip>
What if there was an infection out there that could bypass Firefox and still get its grubby little paws on IE, and from there, the heart of your OS? What if that same infection could get past not only FF, but a whole raft of other (supposedly more secure) browsers too?

What if, of all people, Neil Diamond was indirectly involved in this craziness?

Unfortunately, this has now become a reality and woe betide anyone looking for lyrics from Neil's latest hit. You're more likely to end up with a nasty case of browseritis. After hearing rumours of a Firefox Adware bundle from this thread, I thought I'd go check it out. The results were, as they say, a right kick in the pants.
</snip>

The Algorithm Structure Design Space in Parallel Programming

The Algorithm Structure Design Space in Parallel Programming

The first phase of designing a parallel algorithm consists of analyzing the problem to identify exploitable concurrency, usually by using the patterns of the Finding Concurrency design space. The output from the Finding Concurrency design space is a decomposition of the problem into design elements:

• A task decomposition that identifies tasks that can execute concurrently


• A data decomposition that identifies data local to each task


• A way of grouping tasks and ordering the groups to satisfy temporal constraints


• An analysis of dependencies among tasks

This chapter will help you, the algorithm designer, to leave the parallel algorithm design abstract enough to support portability while ensuring that it can eventually be implemented effectively for the parallel systems on which it will be executed.

Zeta 1.0

BeOS has been dead for almost 4 years or more. Yellowtab took up the mandate and carried on it's legacy. Now, Zeta 1.0 is out. Check it out at http://yellowtab.com

Other news on reliving BeOS, probably my most favourite OSes in my life, OpenBeOS or now named Haiku-OS is the opensourced implementation of the recreation of BeOS. This is how wonderful BeOS is. Perfect and powerful in it's own being.

For those OS hackers, please consider helping out Haiku-OS. Long Live BeOS.

More CSS?!? Oh no...

To re-iterate my growing love for CSS, here again are some links (some which I've posted before) to get good resources.

Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html

css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
http://www.csszengarden.com/

css-discuss Wiki
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
The css-discuss Wiki is a companion to the CssDiscussList mailing list.

meyerweb.com
http://www.meyerweb.com/

A List Apart: Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/

A List Apart: CSS Design: Taming Lists
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/

WebDeveloper.com: Advanced HTML, CSS, and DHTML
http://www.webdeveloper.com/advhtml/

glish.com : CSS layout techniques
http://www.glish.com/css/

CSS, Accesibility and Standards Links
http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

The W3C CSS Validation Service
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

SitePoint
http://www.sitepoint.com/
Quite a number of articles & forum discussions regarding design, layout, css, etc.

CssCreator
http://www.csscreator.com/
Good forums for CSS discussions

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Part 1

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Part 2

Good read. Don't tell anyone I told you about this. Hee! Anyway it's quite a difficult thing to understand unless you've done lots of packet h*cking before.

Disclaimer:
I'm not responsible for whatever damage might come from you learning from those links.

The Wordlist Project

The Wordlist Project

I won't talk much about this. It's just for my reference. Wonderful list. Fantastic for *ahem*. Enough said. Those of you who knows what to do with it, use it. Any other links to other similar sites would be much appreciated.

Microsoft Learning 2nd Shot Exam Offer

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndshot/

Give yourself the best chance for success with an extra opportunity to pass any Microsoft IT Pro or Developer certification exam. Sign up now, and if you don't pass the first time around you can retake it free.

Website Statistics - AXS Visitor Tracking

AXS Visitor Tracking

AXS records visits to your web page and processes those records into meaningful graphs and database listings. The scripts tell you where visitors are coming from, charts their flow through your site, and tells you which links they follow when leaving. In addition, the scripts record visitors' server name, IP address, type of web browser, and time of visit.

It is based on Perl.

This is something I want to set up on the SgDotNet website.

ASP.NET and Struts: Web Application Architectures

ASP.NET and Struts: Web Application Architectures

Summary:
Learn about the similarities and differences between ASP.NET on the .NET Framework and Struts on Java 2 Enterprise Edition; and the features that each provides to solve common developer problems. Learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each, and the utility that they bring to next-generation Web development.

My Take:
Struts was the revolution in J2EE. Struts seperated design from logic using the MVC model. Struts was the next best thing for J2EE other than JBoss. Struts is the Controller.

But then came about ASP.NET. :)

Professional C#, 2nd Edition: Graphics with GDI+

Professional C#, 2nd Edition: Graphics with GDI+
The sample book chapter shows you how to interact directly with users in C#, displaying information on the screen and accepting user input. You'll draw lines and simple shapes, images from bitmap and other image files, and text.
By Scott Allen, Ollie Cornes, Steve Danielson, Jay Glynn, Zach Greenvoss, Burton Harvey, Jerod Moemeka, Christian Nagel, Simon Robinson, Morgan Skinner, and Karli Watson

http://accessvbsql.advisor.com/doc/13649

C# Game/Graphics Engines

Just looking back at my old love of game development, I'm here to recommend some good game and graphic engines that's free and opensourced, which are all very good stuff. Naturally, that works with C#, but not confined to Managed DirectX. Did I mention they are also cross-platform?

Axiom3D - Game Engine that's based on OGRE, a C++ graphics engine. It uses Managed DirectX and Managed OpenGL.

Personally I'ved worked with Axiom3D before to create some demoscenes and mini-games. It's a wonderful piece of work. But the interface changed quite alot since the last time I played with it. It has a lot of new stuff, like new physics and UI engine.

RealmForge GDK - Game Development Kit that's also opensource.

I haven't used this before, but I heard from recommendations it's quite extensive and complete, eventhough it's just v0.6 and not a full v1.0 yet. If I'm not wrong, it includes a scripting engine too. Not too sure.

Purple# - Game Engine that's coded in C#. It's a shader driven 3d engine for .NET.

Neither have I used this before. I'm not too sure how good it is, but it's another engine coded for the .NET platform. Not much to comment on this, but I heard it's good.

That's that. As you can see, I don't have much experience with game development on the .NET framework, but I feel there is potential for it. It's definitely much faster than working in Java.

For more information, do check out this fantastic website.

www.gamedev.net

I frequent there last time, until I realise game development just didn't make money here in Singapore. Anyway it's still my passion to create a wonderful game where people can enjoy.

Cheerios.

Scholarships for University and more on CS 1.0

I think this might be my first non-technical post. I'm desperate to find scholarships or someone to sponsor me to go University, if I get into the University I want.

For those who already know, I've applied for University of Toronto and University of Waterloo, to the Computer Science program. Apparently, one of my family member is having an operation today, and that operation costs quite a far bit of money. Therefore, as you should already guess, my funds for university is much diminished.

I've looked at quite a few scholarships, and most of them require 3 A level distinctions, or S-Papers, which is quite apparent that I don't have those. I'm currently holding a Diploma in Computer Engineering from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and it's only a B average (or so my counselor at the Canadian Education Centre says). Furthermore, for those who doesn't know, I'm very active in SgDotNet and currently am an MVP - Visual Developer C#.

So, now the big thing. Where do I find scholarships? I've checked up BrightSparks but like I said, most of them require quite exceptional results.

Oh well. Anyway, enough of lamenting. Here's something I'd like to share with you guys who's playing around with Community Server 1.0. The conversion tool from Asp.net forums 2.0.1 to CS 1.0 is released by external sources. Here's the link.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/475923/ShowPost.aspx

There's a fix for the Anonymous users here.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/476239/ShowPost.aspx

Links for converting from nGallery to CS 1.0.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/2/476157/ShowPost.aspx

Community Server has also released their "documentation" which is a wiki. Check it out here.

http://docs.communityserver.org

Oh yes, did I mention SgDotNet is going to do migration? :) Yes that's right. That's why I posted all these links here. And you think it's for you. Haha! This blog is for me to remember things, not for you! Just joking. *wink*

Other cool stuff is this very cool Content Management System (CMS) that is actually quite good. It's XHTML and CSS compliant. It's called WordPress. And it's totally done in PHP. Very good stuff. I'm wondering if CS 1.0 and DNN 3.0 is XHTML and CSS compliant. Even if it's XHTML 1.0 Transitional, that's pretty good already, in my opinion. Check WordPress out. They have a demo site setup here. http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Is that enough information? Or is it not enough?

Interesting news. It seems that MVPs are going on revolt because Microsoft is stopping development on VB6.

http://rblevin.blogspot.com/2005/03/microsoft-mvps-revolt.html

That's all folks for today.

Emails ALL GONE!!!!

For those who have sent me emails since 05/03/2005 onwards, please re-send. My emails all went down the /dev/null.

Apparently the problem was this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842293

Fixed it. Now everything works. But I lost 2 days worth of emails. Sorry to everyone. Please resend emails to me. Thanks. That includes Jason, Ken, Kitkai, Howard.

Thanks alot for the inconvenience. I'll be sending you guys emails to request you guys to resend to me.

More on Small Business Server 2003

Here are a few links that would help with deploying your SBS 2003 to your network.

Migrating from a Peer-to-Peer Network to a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Network

Getting Started Guide

Connecting Mobile and Remote Users

These are a few documents which helped me greatly in planning and deploying SBS 2003 into my current small network.

I'm still having that tingly sensation of how wonderful SBS is. Hehe!!!

Exchange Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003

Let me first say, Exchange Server alone sucks. It's too damn difficult to configure, and requires alot of registry editing and doesn't have POP3 connector to download emails into exchange accounts.

I was trying to get Exchange Server 2003 working on my Windows 2003 Server for the past few days, and with some effort it worked. It takes almost 5 to 10 mins to shutdown the Exchange Server and reboot, and doesn't have anything to guide you through. You'll definitely have to be very good with your knowledge of Exchange Server 2003 to be able to set it up. Not for someone like me who knows nuts about infrastructure.

The purpose of setting up Exchange Server 2003 was to have a central repository of my emails, contacts, appointments all at my home server, and able to sync with my notebook, any web-enabled device, and at home. Right now I've problems trying to keep everything in sync manually, which reduces my productivity that requires me to go home to read my emails, and recopying mails from my notebook to my desktop.

Let me stress again, Exchange Server 2003 is NOT for dummies like me who wants to do advance stuff like that.

Let me stop lamenting on Exchange Server 2003. Then I decided, what the heck, why don't I just re-format and install Small Business Server 2003 instead. I must say, SBS 2003 is one of the easiest and the most effortless setting up ever. Although installation takes a few hours (I took almost 6 hours to install and configure everything), after all that long wait, everything appears as a wizard. They have wizards for almost everything. And a very intuitive System Manager, with everything I need to configure at my fingertips. They have this TO-DO thingy after installation that tells you what you need to configure, and they have wizards for everything.

And did I mention they have a wizard to set up your POP3 connector? It's so simple and effortless. They included a POP3 connector into the Exchange Server. You just have to key in your pop server, username and password, and where the mails will go into. And of course the frequency of checking your pop server.

Simply wonderful. I also love the Certificate Wizard where they help you to create a self-signed certificate for you. You're able to replace the name to your internet fqdn, instead of the intranet name which I seem to be creating ALWAYS. Like I said, I'm a infra dummy.

Furthermore, it takes only a 1-2 mins to reboot, much much faster than Exchange Server 2003 stand alone on Windows 2003.

Did I mention they have a wizard that helps you set up your AD and lan and everything else?

It's good stuff. I recommend it to everyone who's setting up a business, especially a SOHO, which is quite popular in Singapore.

Alrighty, enough praising. It rocks.