Thursday, September 14, 2006

Banned Book Week is the last week of September (coincidentally, so is my birthday), and Google Book Search is highlighting a number of challenged or banned books.  I was surprised to how many of the books on the list were required reading in my rural Kentucky school district (not so rural anymore, but was 20 years ago).  Plus, I'd read many on my own.  I do remember some attempts to have books banned, and even one book burning (I think it was Tom Sawyer), but that met with no success.

I'm curious as to the reasons for why some of these books are being challenged.  OK, I get why some folks may not want Lolita rolling around a middle school reading list.  But apparently I missed something in James and the Giant Peach, which I read as a kid.  If anything, many of the books should be required reading just for the sake of not repeating some of the horros of the past.  I can't really imagine a world without Salinger, Vonnegut, Faulkner or Steinbeck, and I'd hate for any kids I might have one day to live in such a world.

Hat Tip: Download Squad

Thursday, September 14, 2006 11:50:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Saturday, September 09, 2006

Lightbox is that cool photo-opening javascript/css combo.  You know, the one where the page is greyed out and the image is overlaid on the page.  If you haven’t seen it, go to http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/ for a demo.  While you’re there, download it.

Once you have the download, unzip it.  Upload the JS, CSS and IMAGES folders to your dasBlog root.  If you have an images folder there already, just add the images to that folder.

To add the scripts and CSS to your blog, you need to find the theme.  Figure out which theme you’re using, and drill down in the Themes folder, and open your theme’s folder.

Find the homeTemplate.blogtemplate file, and open it in Notepad.  In the <HEAD> section, add the four includes (three JS and one CSS) as specified on the Lightbox sit  You can cut and paste from the sample page in the ZIP if you’re lazy.

That’s it!  All you need to do is activate your links with ‘rel=”lightbox”’, and you’re good to go.

Saturday, September 09, 2006 9:10:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

There is a workaround to get Picasa to index a photo collection on an Netgear SC101.  The trick is, you have to set Picasa to save imported pictures in the root of the photo drive--go Tools >> Options >> General.  Click the Browse button (next to "Save Imported Pictures In"), and click OK.  Picasa will then index your entire drive.

Another option you have is to use the Import functionality, and import your folders from your Netgear drive.  This requires much patience, and the application may claim to be "Not Responding", but it's just loading information from the drive.  If you have a lot of photos, this can take a while.

I still can't get Picasa to add additional SC101 drives via the foler manager, so it's a good thing I have a partition dedicated to just photos.

Saturday, September 09, 2006 2:24:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Central Penn .NET Users Group is planning a Code Camp for Dec 3.  More information at http://centralpenn.web121.discountasp.net/home/.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006 6:30:03 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code.  It's also one of the first (if not the first) open source tool from Microsoft hosted on SourceForge (project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/).

Join as as Eric Kepes talks about WiX and how it can be used to create customized deployment packages.  The meeting will run from 6–8 pm on September 28, pizza and refreshments provided.  Directions to Communifax HQ at http://www.communifax.com.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006 6:23:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Coming in January 2007: .  Get your free subscription now at http://www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/.  You knew it was only a matter of time.

 

Tuesday, September 05, 2006 9:44:23 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Super simple and sweet:

So I was looking for a real quick way to publish an RSS feed from a Web application I created for a friend and found some great articles and components (RSS Toolkit for ASP.NET 2.0.)  However, I didn t find anything that used XML Serialization (specifically) to work with the RSS 2.0 Specification (maybe my Google skills are truly weak today.)  I use XmlSerializer religiously, and thought it would be quite trivial to build a set of classes to quickly create and publish an RSS feed.   Thus, as any geek would do, I did just that.

...

These classes are adorned with System.Xml.Serialization attributes, which comply with the RSS 2.0 Specification.   To create an RSS document, it s no more difficult than creating and populating a PONO (Plain Ole .NET Object.)

Full story at http://weblogs.asp.net/skillet/archive/2006/08/29/RSS-in-.NET-Made-Easy-with-XML-Serialization.aspx

Hat tip: Greg's Cool ...

kick it on DotNetKicks.com

Wednesday, August 30, 2006 5:55:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Tuesday, August 29, 2006

The August BADNUG meeting will be from 6–8pm on Aug 31 at Communifax HQ in Cranberry Township, PA.  Our presentation will be an overview of Community Server, from installation to administration to some free stuff to pimp out your site a little.  The presentation will be based in large part on the links below.

Whether you’re building an online community for marketing purposes or a corporate knowledge portal, one tool to consider is .  Community Server is essentially the spawn of a menage-a-trois of DotNetForums (I think that’s what they were called), nGallery and .Text.  Since its inception, more features have been added, but not to the detriment of its core functionality.

Sample Sites

Direct2Dell

MSNBC Cosmic Log

Offline Blogging Tools (one of many)

Configuring WLW for CS

Photo Galleries

Lightbox Module

Batch Import Photos

Chiwi Photo Gallery Manager

Cross-posting from Flickr

Skinning

Change the title image of your blog without access to the CSS file

Spam Control

(not Community Server specific)

Alabaster – Akismet Spam Rule Utility (what is Akismet?)

Developing Modules

Code Browser

Community Server 2.1 SDK

 (ICSModule entry)

Spreading the Word

Google Sitemap Add-on

Tuesday, August 29, 2006 8:44:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Friday, August 25, 2006

WebIS has released FlexMail 2007, a replacement for the Pocket Outlook which ships on Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.  This is a significant upgrade to the FlexMail 2006, which I've used for several months now on my Treo 700w, but found myself wishing for a few more features and faster performance.  My few wishes and then some seem to have been taken care of in this new release.

FlexMail is far and above better in how it displayes messages with HTML formatting, and handles IMAP accounts better than Pocket Outlook.  GMail POP3 SSL is supported, as is storing messages on an SD card.  The featurelist is long, and everyone likes different things, so just go check it out for yourself.

Full story at http://webis.net/products_info.php?p_id=mail.

Friday, August 25, 2006 6:59:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

The nomination period ends September 1, so get on this soon if you haven't already.

Last week Packt Publishing announced an Open Source Content Management System contest. The contest is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward Open Source Content Management Systems and offers a top prize of US$5000 to the winning project, second prize $3000, and third prize $2000.

Full story at http://dotnetnuke.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/825/EntryID/1053/Default.aspx

Friday, August 25, 2006 6:52:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

I'm sure this isn't what they meant to say, but that's how it looked on my Treo 700w.  Doh!  Death by cliche!

Friday, August 25, 2006 6:45:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
 Monday, August 21, 2006

We have up and running.  Based on Community Server 2.1, this is the 45–minute installation I did from the airport (see http://www.rjdudley.com/blog/How+Fast+Can+You+Set+Up+A+Community+Server+Site.aspx). 

We have some forums still to set up, but the forum is online, and so is one devoted to .  We’ll eventually have forums for course reviews in all 50 states.  If you’re in, say, Wisconsin, and want one before I work my way down the alphabet, let me know.  My mad art skillz are evident on the logo.

Also, we’re working on some interactive challenges and distance games you can play.  Stay tuned for those.  In the meantime, if you enjoy golf, join us at www.GolfGladiators.com.

 

Monday, August 21, 2006 10:17:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Ankh is in RC1, but the concept of running both Tortise and Ankh--two Subversion clients--at the same time offends the sensibilities of some.  You can configure a custom toolbar in Visual Studio as a Tortise toolbar, and use Tortise for Subversion source control.  Full story at http://vorpal.cc/blog/development/tortoisesvn-in-visual-studio.

kick it on DotNetKicks.com

(hat tip: Mike Gunderloy)

Monday, August 21, 2006 1:04:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)