Category Archives: General

I’ve been too busy to blog much lately. This blog gets over 100 spam comments a day and I don’t have time to read them all to find legitimate comments. If you want to leave a legitimate comment please send … Continue reading →

I have figured out how to convert my Notes.chm HTML Help file into the new Help 2.0 format and how to add it to the The Visual Studio .NET Combined Help Collection. First you need to download the Visual Studio … Continue reading →

This blog post is for my clients who may be wondering what I’m doing. I was recently hired by a local company for what may turn out to be a full time job. I needed to find a full time … Continue reading →

I am quite greedy for expertise. I am always looking to increase my knowledge and improve upon my skills. It is surprising how rarely career advice mentions the importance of gaining expertise. Maybe they just assume you have the expertise … Continue reading →

Netvibes has developed an Universal Widget API which can be used to create widgets that work on multiple platforms. Currently a widget using their API will work on Google IG or the Netvibes mashup site. You can find the documentation … Continue reading →

Today I got another 250 GB Western Digital hard drive that I bought on eBay. I have installed Windows Server 2003 on it in order to run Sharepoint. You cannot install Sharepoint on Windows XP. Sharepoint interests me because it … Continue reading →

Now that I’ve worked as a freelance web developer and as a web developer working for a small company that does a variety of Internet consulting and I.T. related work I have some thoughts on choosing one over the other. … Continue reading →

Last night I installed the Joomla open source content management system on my local web server and explored its ability to consume XML data feeds (web services, developer APIs, and RSS news feeds). The News Feed module did not allow … Continue reading →

I devote a lot of time each week to studying new technology. It is very important for a web developer to keep up his skill set because his expertise is his major asset. I prefer to learn incrementally because most programming languages … Continue reading →

Tonight I tried to use some of the XSL stylesheets I created for my ASP.NET 2.0 web parts mashup in the DotNetNuke 4 web portal. I was very pleased to find that most of them work when used with the … Continue reading →

Today I purchased RegexBuddy, a tool for creating and testing regular expressions. Regular expressions are strings that describe or match a set of strings, according to certain syntax rules. In other words, a regular expression is a complex syntax for … Continue reading →

Some people are quite fearful of programmers and web developers. When a company has to let go of a developer there is usually a lot of fear that the disgruntled employee will hack their network or web site. There will … Continue reading →

I have upgraded to Visual Studio 2005 Professional and I now have the XML menu with the Show XSLT Output and Debug XSLT submenu items. Unfortunately, it does not appear to work. I get an error. I searched on the Internet … Continue reading →

Yesterday I created a web part to show video comments using the LiveVideo API. The API returns XML so I had to format it using XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) which is a stylesheet for XML. I used Visual Studio 2005 … Continue reading →

Today I investigated several other mashup sites to get an idea of how this technology can be used. I was impressed by the range of content you can include on your start pages. You can even submit your own content, … Continue reading →

I really like the new web portal applications you can create in ASP.NET 2.0 so I have used this technology to create a custom mash up for myself. A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more … Continue reading →

I have finally begun to study ASP.NET 2.0. I am currently reading ASP.NET 2.0 For Dummies by Bill Hatfield. I am up to chapter 13. Unfortunately, everything I have read so far has been really basic review of ASP.NET. So … Continue reading →

I have updated my Client List to reflect the current state of my business. I have severed my business relationship with Car Accessories because they owe me a lot of money and refuse to pay it. I had to sic a … Continue reading →

I’ve discovered a new social networking site today, Newsvine, which is based on news rather than video. Newsvine allows you bookmark any newsworthy content you find on the Internet which then becomes part of the news gathered on the site. … Continue reading →

I have completed the first three chapters of Creating Motion Graphics With After Effects Volume 1: The Essentials. I read about keyframes and compositions and explored many features of the program. I also jumped ahead and read chapters 25, 26, … Continue reading →