Shawn’s Thoughts

I had an old(er) Thinkpad T42p gathering dust, and I’ve wanted to kick Ubuntu a bit, so I chose to install the 8.04 disto on this laptop. I couldn’t believe how smooth the install went. By default, it wasn’t completely optimized, and it was certainly functional. It was cake to add my networked printer just by handing the installer the printer’s IP address.

I even found a site that lists some of the Thinkpad-specific optimizations available. So far, everything is running great. The power management doesn’t look quite as aggressive as under Windows, and I’ll live with that.

Firefox 3.0 came as part of this install, so getting online was smooth. I’ve installed a few extensions, including ScribeFire, and I can’t really tell that I’m not on my Windows box anymore. I’m using Scribefire to create and post this entry now.

I’ve got to show this to some of my friends working on Windows - this will blow their minds (in a good way)…

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, thinkpad

I love Firefox. Works great on the Stinkpad. Works great on the Crapple. Firefox is usually the first application I install after I fire up a machine for the first time, or re-pave one of the existing machines. I find myself using the same set of extensions over and over again, and I wanted to share them for posterity’s sake.. These are my favorite Firefox extensions:

• better gmail. better gmail 2, actually. I’m not a big gmail user (i’m still one of those hotmail wackos. when i do use gmail, i really like the added functionality, especially letting gmail grab the mailto: links.
• better greader. gotta keep plugged in. i hopped over to the Newsgator family for a while, but trying to use different applications on Windows, OSX, and my phone was driving me nuts. Better GReader adds some nice touches to GReader, especially the Preview functionality.
• fireftp. my favorite ftp client. makes updating my site simple - everything can be done inside firefox now.
• greasemonkey. lots of handy scripts available at http://userscripts.org
• firebug. the most powerful developer addin I’ve found. i love this addin - it lets me learn how someone put a site together, modify my own css and see the changes instantly. i can’t say enough good about this addin.
• foxmarks. keeps your bookmarks synced across multiple machines. i’ve found it is also the easiest way to send a link from my mac to my winbox, and vice versa
• del.icio.us bookmarks. for those sites I want to share, i use this addon.
• scribefire. The only free blogging client i’ve found for my mac. it’s a pretty solid blogging client. i still prefer Windows Live Writer, but I haven’t whined to Becky enough to convince her to create a Mac version for me.
• pdf download. for those who spend time wondering if anal retentive is hyphenated. let’s you choose on a file-by-file basis what to do - open, save, etc.

And there’s a couple Mac-specific addins I want to mention:

• System Proxy. Firefox had braindead proxy management. This addin reads proxy settings from the OS, which Firefox should do anyway. Great when I hop back and forth between the office and home. I let MarcoPolo figure out where I am, and this addin makes sure Firefox keeps up with the changes.
• User Agent Switcher. Unfortunately, there are those in the world, most of which work on the same campus I do, who think it is okay to only support IE7. Until they come crawling into the 21st century on their taped knuckles, I user this addin to switch the user agent string. I wish I didn’t need it, and I’m glad this addin makes the chore a lot easier.

Congrads to the Expression team for shipping v2 of the Suite. I’m installing the whole suite now - it’s looking good so far. There are trial versions available for tire kickers too. A new 200GB hard drive, VS 2008, and Expression v2 on my laptop - guess what I’ll be doing this weekend. Wee-hah!

Technorati Tags: microsoftexpression, expression, webtools

Well now… Someone’s blogging when they should be drinking. Seriously Joel - get over yourself. How many bug tracking systems do we really need?

Two entertaining rants for the price of one. I would have expected Joel to remember the business model that he used to work inside - Darwin wins at Microsoft. There’s several examples of multiple groups working on and releasing what seems to be duplicated technologies. We have the luxury of being able to have different groups, working independently, focusing their efforts on delivering some cool technologies that overlap in some areas. Messenger and Communicator is a great example. What’s really interesting is the hook line - Joel’s not pissed because Microsoft is funding similar projects. Joel’s pissed because he can’t seem to compete for the talent to work on these projects.

I’m not sure folks like Heather see themselves as shady, or willing to make “unethical exploding offers” as Joel alleges (got any proof?). And really, if the college kids are so smart (although they’re apparently better as frisbee than at coding), why would they allow themselves to be duped into accepting these “untenable salaries”. If they really are so poor at Python, why would Joel want them working at his company anyway? The lure of working on yet another bug tracking system just not shiny enough these days, Joel?

I’m proud of the work we’re doing, and the place where we’re doing them. It thrills me to see that we can still attract the best and brightest to work here. Joel - get over yourself. Go invent something unique. See you at the hiring fairs…

This is pretty funny. When we wrote the Windows Vista calendar, we didn’t expose any APIs to manipulate the underlying data. Everything is stored in iCalendar files, and there’s plenty of iCalendar parsers floating around. It looks like the Coding4Fun folks went the extra mile, and implemented a COM Automation service that lets you bang against the Windows Vista calendar. There’s even sample code that teaches you how to implement their stuff.

Nice job, folks!

Technorati Tags: vistacalendar, windows, calendar, csharp, icalendar

This is pretty exciting news. I follow both Joel and Jeff religiously. Based on both their backgrounds, I have a feeling this will be a fantastic resource for developers. Subscribed, and hitting refresh every minute…B-).

Technorati Tags: developer, expert, coding

This is a great resource for interview questions and answers on all kinds of technologies - Windows, Java, HTML, C++ - you name it…

Developer interview cheat sheets

If you’re a developer and you’ve got an interview coming up, you’ll want to check out DEVFYI’s exhaustive list of developer job interview questions and answers.

Source: Developer interview cheat sheets
Originally published on 9/27/2006 8:00 AM

This is great to see…  I always enjoyed the JobsBlog, and I was bummed to hear that we lost two goodies recently to the non-Firm world…  It looks like Gretchen and Zoe are offering some great services.  I hope I don’t need them anytime soon, and they would certainly be at the top of my list if/when the time is appropriate…

Now that the Feb CTP is out in the wilds, some of you are going to get inspired to write gadgets for the Sidebar.  Here’s a couple pointers to some info that will help get you off on the right foot…

• Lou has been posting some excellent information regarding Sidebar and Sidebar gadgets 
• Brian Teutsch, a fellow PM on the team, just published the “official” white paper on gadget development
• I’ll be at the MIX Conference in the Sandbox, hosting a hands-on lab that will show you how to create a gadget, add a settings page, and respond to the dock and undock events…

I just found out I’ll be running one of the Sandbox areas (what PDC and TechEd folks know and love as Hands-On Labs) at this year’s MIX Conference.  We’ll be showing folks how to create gadgets for the upcoming Windows Sidebar.  This is your opportunity to tell me where we need to focus – what content should be in our lab?

The current thinking is to walk you through the skeleton of a gadget – the manifest, the file structure, the css, etc…  What else do we need to cover?  Want to know best practices for handling docked and undocked events?  Want to know how to pass data to a Sideshow gadget?