Dave Jansen\’s Blog

Code Camp 2008 – Wagga Wagga

Tomorrow I’m heading to Wagga for Code Camp 2008 with Grant and Steve. Grant has been kind enough to drive us up and Emma, Grant’s wife, has baked Anzac cookies.

Other friends heading up are Rory, John and Sean (where’s your blog???).

This will be my first time to Code Camp and the only other major conferences I have been to are Tech Ed and VSLive. I think its great that people are taking there own personal time and freely contributing to the community.

According to Yahoo, the weather forecast is looking fairly fine.

I’ve borrowed my girlfriend’s Apple MacBook Pro and tonight I will have a crack at setting it up with Vista and Visual Studio 2008.

Internode Naked ASDL2+ Plans

News Link: http://www.internode.on.net/news/2008/03/78.php

Internode have beaten TPG to the market with ADSL/ADSL2+ broadband plans that do not require a third party line rental account such as Telstra. On average, Internode state that there is about a $20 saving per month.

Through a network agreement with Optus Wholesale, Internode will offer Naked ADSL2+ from $59.95 a month including a NodePhone1* telephone service. Since customers can save money by no longer paying for a third party phone line rental fee (typically $30 per month), this prices the Naked ADSL2+ service at a nett cost of as little as $29.95 per month – or less, if low cost call charges are included.

There is an setup cost of $149 and then you can say goodbye to your analogue line. But if you require fax or back-to-base security monitoring, then you will still need a standard phone line connection.

There are cheaper options such as going with TPG value plans and a budget Telstra line connection, however Internode are known to provide one of the highest quality broadband services in Australia.

Supported Exchanges: https://secure.internode.on.net/webtools/dsl-coverage-table?carrier=Optus

Google releases "official" Outlook Sync

I have been using Google Calendar for some time now as I can:

• Access it on any PC
• See multiple calendars at a time (colour coded)
• Share Calendars
• Send out invites
• Receive notifications on events via SMS and/or Email.

I still prefer to use Microsoft Outlook 2007 and have wanted to sync my Outlook and Google calendars together. I have used several custom sync tools that have been slow and buggy.

Google have now officially released a sync tool. 🙂

You can download the FREE software from here.

Outlook Links & Firefox

For the past few months after upgrading to a newer version of FireFox 2.x, every time I click on a link in Outlook I get an error box. I was also having the same problem at work with a Windows XP Pro / Outlook 2003 setup. I finally decided to look into it and fix the problem.

It was harder to fix the problem in Vista than in Windows XP.

Vista

In Vista, they have removed (or hidden) where you customise File Type extensions so you must create a registry file or use RegEdit to add a key.

1. Using notepad create a reg file (ending in .reg)
2. Paste the following into the file:

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\shell\open\ddeexec]
   @=””

3. Run the reg file and restart Outlook.

Windows XP

Windows XP allows you to customise the File Type extensions from Explorer.

1. Open Windows Explorer (Not IE)
2. Click on Tools | Options | FileTypes
3. Find the extensions that are marked (NONE) and start with URL: HyperText
4. Click Advanced
5. Edit the Open action and clear out text in the DDE Message field.
6. Apply changes.

Thanks to Dean Lisenby and Dosboy’s Bits and Bytes.

I type at ~77 wpm

Not bad considering a had friend ask me several questions in the middle of this test.

Not as fast as Grant.

Try the test yourself.

Goodbye Line Rental – Hello TPG UUL Plans

For the last 5 years or so I have been signed up with ADSL broadband connections. In those past 5 years, I have rarely used the phone line to make phone calls. I use my mobile or VOIP systems such as Skype to make voice calls. So why do I have to spend money on a service which I do not use?

TPG have made an announcement on their new plans which provide complete package from the Exchange to your house. You will no longer require line rental with Telstra or another telco. Their UUL plans includes the copper wire connection and the ADSL2+ connection.

The only downside is that their plans do not yet have the VOIP option but you can still easily sign up to a provider such as Skype.

I’ve just purchased a new home so hopefully by the time settlement occurs I can look at these new plans. 🙂

Glenn is blogging

Glenn has jumped on the bandwagon and started a blog. He leaving the office and traveling around Australia with his family for 6 months.

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TFS – Cloaking Folder bindings

Cloaking folders is a useful feature of TFS Workspace management. It allows you to specify what folders not to bring down when you perform a Get Latest. This is particularly useful when having multiple branches in the one TFS project.  This is also very useful for continuous build servers as only the required code line is brought down.

For example:

The following TFS project structure is one recommendation as part of the TFS Branching Guidance document.

$/ProjectSite
    /trunk/…
    /branches/…

When I start for the day, I normally perform a Get Latest at the Project Site level. Because I have cloaked the branches folder, the Get Latest command only brings down source code from the “trunk” folder.

An alternative to cloaking, is to manually bind every sub folder in your project.

To activate cloaking:

1. From Visual Studio, open the Workspace Manager
2. Select the workspace
3. Add a new binding pointing to the folder you wish to cloak.
4. Set the status of the binding to “Cloaked”.

This can also be achieved from the command line utility.

In the Beginning…

It’s Friday afternoon and I have had a very hectic week of scripting WiX for a major installer at work. I was chatting to Grant Holliday and he told me I should create a blog and add my solution for custom actions. Well hold on a sec… Which blog site should I use? What blogging software should I use? Well Grant replied in two seconds with www.wordpress.com and Live Writer Beta 2. Another 4.5 minutes later I was all signed up. So thanks Grant. Now I will have to spend time updating this…

Now what presentation theme do I choise?

I’m off to the Whitsunday’s tomorrow for a week and I still have to pack, so unfortunately my very first post will be light on. There will be more posts to come so stay tuned.

One more thing – a quick intro. My name is David Jansen and I’m a .NET developer based in Canberra. I’m currently contracting and I prefer the flexibility that contracting provides. I’ve been working in the IT industry since Dec 1999 where I was a Delphi 4 developer. A lot has happened since then… to be continued…