Moving iwkid.com

As terrifying as it is for me, I am transferring the iwkid.com domain to a new registrar.  The company that has been hosting iwkid.com actually went away a while ago (RIP: http://www.ihost.biz)  and iwkid.com then got transferred to eNom.  Since then things have just "worked" even though their control panel doesn't show my web hosting or email.

I've been very nervous about moving it for fear of losing my email, web site, etc but I've decided that now is the time to make the move (and possibly update the site).

Wish me luck and be patient if my blog images disappear for a few days!

IWKID in 64-bit

After a few great hours spent paving my laptop:

So far I'm underwhelmed with 64-bit, to the point of considering a 32-bit rebuild.  We'll see how this week goes.  The only casualty of the rebuild thus far was InstantSource.  A quick email to their support confirmed that there are no plans for them to ever support 64-bit.  I've been pretty pleased with the driver support - everything just worked after the rebuild.  Well, everything except my Creative Labs Web Cam... but honestly, when has something from Creative worked on the first try?

While I was out...

I picked a rough week to be sick!  There were a ton of announcements and tons of new toys released last week.  Here's the top three things I need to check out this week:

• New release of Expression
• Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

Back to work!

Unconference Presentation - 1st place?

Wow!  I was happily surprised with the news on Friday that my unconference presentation was the top rated session!  Thanks again to all that attended and submitted evaluations!

 

More Info:

Session Resources

 

Mentioned on:

• MSDN
• Ton's blog

ODC Unconference Presentation

For those of you that attended my Unconference presentation, here are links to resources from the talk:

• Slide Deck
• WSS RPC Test Page
• My other blog:  http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/rmitchell

For those of you that did not attend I hope to post some demos from my presentation here shortly!

ODC 2008 - a good start!

So this morning I left for the Office Developer's Conference in San Jose, CA.  We had a few laughs when the gate attendant announced "we're just about set but as you can see, we're still looking for our plane..."  Apparently the plane was in the hanger but the hanger doors were FROZEN shut.  That'll happen when it is -11F outside.  Good news is, they got the doors open and they didn't have to find us a replacement plane.  Better news?  It is sunny and in the 60s here in San Jose!

The conference officially kicks off tomorrow with Bill Gates presenting the opening keynote.  I am SUPER excited to hear him speak and for the rest of the conference!  It is going to be a great week!

If you're also here at the ODC, leave me a comment or send me an email!

TweakSP referenced in the SharePoint Governance and Manageability site

TweakSP was just added to the list of tools on the SharePoint Governance and Manageability site:

http://www.codeplex.com/governance

 

Thanks Joel!

On My List...

I spent a few hours this morning catching up on blogs (2000+ unread) and now I have a smaller list of things I need to look into.  Thought I'd share:

 

Rebuild my laptop?
http://blogs.sqlxml.org/bryantlikes/archive/2008/01/07/switching-to-windows-server-2008-on-my-laptop.aspx

 

Look into the ASP.NET MVC Framework:
http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2007/12/09/soaking-up-the-asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

 

Create a Site Collection in a specific Content Database:

http://blogs.tamtam.nl/mart/HowToCreateASiteCollectionInASpecificContentDatabase.aspx

 

Visual Studio 2k8 & SharePoint Workflows:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2008/01/17/sharepoint-workflow-tools-video-interview-with-john-durant.aspx

 

Installing SharePoint on Windows Server 2k8:

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/12/13/installing-sharepoint-on-windows-server-2008.aspx

 

SPUtility Gems:

http://zac.provoke.co.nz/archive/2007/04/30/programming-in-wss-use-sputility.aspx

 

LINQ Resources

http://blog.svencipido.be/Blog/PermaLink,guid,66d36c37-ebc9-4c7b-84d4-8227be15cf9b.aspx

 

Community Server:

http://communityserver.org

 

STSDEV @ CodePlex

http://www.codeplex.com/stsdev

 

Creating a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution with SharePoint Server 2007

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687711.aspx

TweakSP v0.0.0.2 Released!

This morning I released the second early release of TweakSP.  The project is moving along pretty well and I have learned a TON during development.  Hopefully I'll be posting some of those lessons learned on this blog shortly.

For now, a quick walk-through of what's in v0.0.0.2:

Once you add the solution and deploy it, you will get an additional top link bar and Quick Launch element in Central Administration:

Clicking on either will bring you to the TweakSP Dashboard:

The two pages I'm most excited about for this release are the View Logs and View Extended Site Content.

View Logs displays the top 300k of the current log file:

The View Extended Site Content is the first Tweak Layout page in the project so it will be available for any web on your farm.  It displays information about the lists and files in the current web:

I'm very excited with the potential for this page.  I'd love to be able to list out the web parts for each aspx page, allow users to easily reset a customized page to the site definition, etc, etc...

If you have a development SharePoint environment and would like try it out, visit http://www.tweaksp.com (currently redirects to the codeplex project homepage) and download the latest release and installation guide.

Thoughts on the Xbox Gamerscore

For those of you not familiar with the Xbox, they have a Gamerscore feature that gives you points when you get certain achievements in a game.  For instance, if you pass a level you'd get 20 points.  They have all kinds of achievements but one thing I haven't seen:  Negative Achievements.

Now I know we all need positive reinforcement to keep playing our games but I really think that moments of true stupidity should be recognized.  For instance:

• In a single player campaign mode, killed 5 times or more by the same bad guy:  -5
• In a Halo 3 ranked playlist, killed 3 times while reloading when you should have been using your melee attack:  -10
• In any FPS, walking around with your head looking at the floor or ceiling for 5+ minutes:  -25

Hmmm... after a quick search on Google it looks like I'm not the only one with the idea.