A number of things going on this past week, but sadly this will be one of my few posts with no code :(
Dell XPS M170
My new laptop arrived last week. It has 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM Drive, 17" screen, 256MB Graphics Card, and a backpack that I may actually use for toting it to various places around town. It is way too much PC for me since I don't play games, but it is cool just the same :)
ISO Recorder v2
As with any new laptop or PC, I always format the hard drive to remove all the extra junk put on it by the manufacturer. This year I opted for the DVD-version of the MSDN Subscription, which means a few things are in ISO format. I remember having a heck of a time trying to get an ISO burned to a CD last time as it was all new to me. This time I found ISO Recorder, which is embarassingly easy to burn an ISO to a CD in its original CD format. I am sure there are others I don't know about.
Subtext
Haack mentions the release of Subtext v1.0, which is a fork of the .Text Blog Engine. Kudos to the Subtext development team for their first release. There are a number of people still running personal blogs on .Text v0.95, including myself, that look forward to the possibility of converting their .Text blog engine to another blog engine, like Subtext. Subtext appears to have a wizard that will migrate your .Text database information to the new Subtext database. I look forward to trying it out. Subtext also appears to have a number of cool features to help with comment spam. All .Text blog owners will appreciate the SPAM features. ReverseDOS has been an absolute necessity for all .Text blog owners needing to fight comment spam. It still may be a useful addon to include with Subtext.
Enterprise Library 2.0 Cryptography Application Block
I have a presentation on Enterprise Library 2.0 at the Orlando CodeCamp in about 3 weeks. I finished all the code samples this weekend and migrated them to my new laptop. The past 3 to 4 days was an exhausive look at the encryption in the Cryptography Application Block, the SecureString Class, DPAPI, and hashing passwords using the Cryptography Application Block. This may be old hat for some people, but I didn't realize the .NET 2.0 framework was so feature rich, and how the Data Protection API made things so easy by eliminating the whole process of key management.
Practical .NET2 and C#2 Book
Patrick Smacchia came out with a new book, called Practical .NET 2 and C#2. Sahil has good things to say about it here. I am also impressed with the book having read about 200 pages of the 800 page book. I am going to save my final review until I finish it, but I have really enjoyed reading it thus far. It comes across as very detailed to me, which is a very pleasant surprise. Patrick makes the most of every page:
- No big glaring gaps of white space and fluff that you get from some books that try to meet a page minimum.
- Code samples get right to the point as opposed to showing a lot of extraneous code.
- All code is in C# which means you don't have to deal with duplicate examples in multiple languages.
You can view the contents here and judge for yourself. I will post a complete review in a few weeks.
Visual C# 2005 Recipes Book
Visual C# 2005 Recipes came in the mail last week as well, which is a collection of solutions to various problems. I like these types of books, because they are easy-to-digest answers to common problems that occur in everyday development. Quite frankly, this book has answers to problems that may end up being questions in your next interview, especially if you are interviewed by John Papa who likes to toy with you :) A couple of recipes helped substantiate and clarify some solutions to problems this past week. One solution made me realize the err of my ways. Check it out at Amazon and Apress.
May next week bring forth code-related posts :)
Drinking: Gyokuro Green Tea