well, i think i finally have enough info to migrate my blog to graffiti. i found out that both blogengine.net (my current blog engine) and graffiti both support blogml. this is a good thing and i have been wondering how i am going to accomplish the move without busting my posts.
so today i am hoping to be back up running on graffiti… i am keeping my fingers crossed.
i am in the process of moving my old blog from live spaces to my new home here. i plan on adding all kinds of newness to not only this blog but the homepage at briangorbett.com (still not sure exactly what, but i have a few ideas).
stop back soon since my blog is not the only thing moving! :)
i have made a resolution to stop twittering this year and focus on more non-self promoting activities. i also noticed that a facebook friend of mine, molly, also made this resolution since she realized that it was taking away from her always interesting blog posts.
so i am committed to facebook now and trying to sway away from other social networks including twitter. we will see how that goes.
i was having a conversation with a friend today regarding codeplex. he was telling me how many people don’t know about codeplex (or even sourceforge for that matter), and some of these folks he has talked to are developers. i was quite stunned to say the least.
i guess why i was so amazed that developers do not know about codeplex is that not only is it a great place to start an open source project, but even better to find something that you might be thinking about building. i am all for reuse and before i start thinking about coding, i am checking codeplex (or sourceforge) first.
if you want to start a project on codeplex, all you have to do is follow three easy guidelines:
that’s it! bam… you have a codeplex project that allows tons of super smart people to contribute to your brilliant idea.
with all this talk about buying up yahoo!, all i hope is the team that is building yahoo! go finishes the 3.0 beta for windows mobile very soon. if you have not used yahoo! go on your smartphone, you are really missing out, especially if you subscribe to yahoo! services like flickr.
yahoo! go is really an all inclusive email, photo, news reader, weather, maps, search etc. app for your mobile phone. and while yahoo! go 2.0 was fairly solid for windows mobile, navigating the carousel was a little sluggish and the menu items where not what i was used to looking for in a windows mobile app (standard windows mobile ux guidelines apply here yahoo!).
however, looking at the revamped go 3.0 beta, i am anxiously awaiting the release on windows mobile. the new features look like they heard what folks were saying about issues with 2.0 and improved just about all my gripes (although, i can't attest for performance since it is not released on windows mobile yet).
so hurry up yahoo! and finish go 3.0 and maybe even add a little live love in there too!
i am preparing for a fun-filled week of in-depth technical training out in glorious old redmond. as i was putting together my agenda for what sessions i was going to attend, i was torn between what i was doing at msft (or i guess still currently doing) and what i am about to be doing.
for those that did not know, i am moving into the dpe organization at msft to really get into what i am most passionate about… interacting with people that love technology. i really have been trying to convince the folks in dpe to hire me since i arrived here at msft over two years ago and finally someone listened. :)
i am both excited about the opportunities and sad about leaving the fun and energetic city of cleveland where i grew up my entire life (i will be relocating to the windy city).
so if you are willing to help a lost soul in chicago, give me a holler and help me out.
i love listening to steveb at conferences… especially internal ones. no one can ever claim that he lacks the courage of his conviction. he has a way of exciting the crowd and promoting what is msft.
i always walk away from listening to him feeling even more excited about being a part of this company. i know that there are always the msft haters, but one thing is true. folks at msft (except that crazy evangelist that almost got beat down… enough said about him) get what we are about as a company. i don't think we would be as passionate about talking about it if we didn't.
i am pretty anal when it comes to details with my web properties and my blog is no different. i love the blogengine.net engine because of the ease of customizing some really great templates already available. but one thing has been irking me about my rss feed.
i have added a really cool extension called social bookmarks that use icons to allow readers to quickly digg or kick or just about any other social bookmark. however, the rss feed for my site shows all these images as broken image links because of the was the extension code renders the image src path. so after messing around with the extension code, i finally decided i am going to trick my rss feed into thinking that these images are a part of an actual blog by posting them right here!
so all that is left to do is go into the socialextension.cs file and change the line of code:
strImagePath = Utils.RelativeWebRoot + settingPath.Trim() + “/socialbookmarks/” + settings.GetSingleValue(“style”) + “/”;
to fully qualify the image links to the newly created path of this blog post (something like):
http://briangorbett.com.previewdns.com/blog/image.axd?picture=WindowsLiveWriter/trickingmyrssfeedintousingsocialbookmarks/ + settings.GetSingleValue(“style”) + “/”;
this will get my rss feed to point to the image files that are now actually a part of the post and the rss feed won’t be irking me so much.
if you are a student and you have not heard of dreamspark, you need to check this out! under the dreamspark program, students will be able to download microsft’s developer and designer tools to jump-start their development.
so what do you get? students can download visual studio professional edition (yah… that is pro, not express), expression studio (unleash your design prowess), xna game studio 2.0 (get your game dev on), sql server 2005 developer edition, and windows server standard edition. holy cats! what a deal.
head on over to channel 8 to get more details and get your download on.