I needed a virtual machine to test an application in isolation and realized I didn’t have any of my .vhd images on hand.  

I looked around and came across this collection of downloadable VHDs directly from Microsoft, pre-activated, for both Vista and XP with different versions of IE including IE6 (XP only), IE7 & IE8.

The OSes are trial versions (of course) and expire January 1st for the XP installs and 120 days after first use for the Vista images.

Images require at least 1.5GB of HD space once expanded, so make sure you have some room available for it.

It appears the word/verb “Refactor” is absent “out of the box” from all if not most of the environments that provide a spell checker service or feature.  At least the ones I’ve used lately and since I started to notice.  From (this) Live Writer to Word to within the browser on the update textbox of twitter, you name it, I keep having to “right click, Add to Dictionary”.

Wikipedia does have an article for the term “Refactoring”, and so does Dictionary.com but the “verb” Refactor is not on either (Wikipedia redirects to Refactoring) and Merriam-Webster comes up empty when searching for either.

Is there a way to carry around one’s dictionary from environment to environment and use it on all if not most of the aforementioned tools? 

I guess I have to do a little bit of research, and no I won’t hold the post until I do.  I’d rather note my observation and I *should* then later do the legwork and update with my findings.  I reserve the right to slack on such task, do nothing and instead keep “right clicking, Adding to Dictionary” as I go.

Image by hisks

I know I have mentioned it before that one of my passions and (at one time at least, for sure) addictions are books. 

Yes, sometimes I read them!

Right now I am going through Working Effectively with Legacy Code and the less technical yet incredibly relevant but certainly more entertaining Dreaming in Code.  I'm trying to get through the former while at work, 30 minutes a day of reading when I can, the latter I am reading at home after the ripples of the hustle and bustle of what is my day to day at home come to rest.  At this point I'm at about the half way mark on both, but doing more reading at home than I am at work.

Michael Feather's book has been recommended so many times in so many different posts that I had to see for myself why this book was in those reader's opinion such a must read.  Jeff Atwood has it as part of his recommended reading list, Steven Smith posted a short review and recommendation after reading it as a recommendation from Jeffrey Palermo. For the fear you may have at this point that I post more references, I am pretty confident you get my point and trust my word!  Its been read and deemed a worthy resource.

At home I am also reading Ship It for a second time and just recently went over Practices of an Agile Developer for a third time as well.  To me both of these seemed [now] to be elementary, but yet so relevant, giving me a sense of "yeah, we are doing this the right way" and not because the books say so (hey, don't jump to conclusions), but because much of what is common sense extracted from the content of these compilations of ideas, past experience and the analysis of the results of their implementations, can be easily projected and extrapolated to the work we do, the way we do it and most importantly the way the people I work with have "learned" to relate, work, communicate with each other. 

I don't want to digress too much, but there is value in mentioning all this because most of these practices are part science, part common sense, part keeping your head above the smoke someone or some group in the industry is blowing at some point in time and at every turn.  It takes determination, self awareness and more importantly it takes focus to be able to weed through so much jargon and so much hype to extract what is really of value and what yield results.  On that last point, what yield results is always a combination of some elements from "all of the above" with what works for the group, for its dynamic for its internal makeup of skills, personality, culture & traditions.  Dare I  forget to mention keeping the business needs as a primary focus at all times.

Ok, so I did veer off a little bit too far, but what is done is done!

In summary, the message I wanted to convey with this post is that one should read not only to learn the "technology du juor", which of course is a perfectly valid reason to do so, but also and most importantly after reading so many opinions and different points of view one is able to apply these to a practical everyday life as a professional developer (in this particular case), how one then may use the same books one used to learn to now assess our level of assimilation of all this information, to gauge, to extrapolate, to connect one's own dots.

The event topic is: Architecting for Scalable and Usable Web Applications.  The event page is not very specific on who the speaker/s is or are, but since it makes mention of the Central Region Architect Evangelists I can make a safe assumption that Larry Clarkin will be at least somewhat involved in the speaking and presentation roles, aside from being the very participative host he always is at these events.

I'll commit to follow up with my cliff notes review of the event content.

A simple note and mention for Tadalists.   My very well deserved kudos to 37signals for making easy, simple software that works.  All of their offerings are no nonsense, no bloat web applications that are very straight forward without sacrificing a much appreciated elegance and that now so familiar web 2.0 feeling and functionality which makes its way into their tools without shouting it in your face.

I've been using Tadalists for the better part of a month now, and keep one list and separate account for work and a different one for home.  In hindsight, in redo mode, I'd get just one account and manage separate lists, but I was eager and jumped the gun on my vision of how I wanted to leverage the tool.

Worth mentioning is that this is a free service, so you can't go wrong for just trying it.  I like the process better than keeping [to-do] lists using outlook, email reminders (as I used to do) or even whatever more archaic approach to keeping lists you can think of.  For the mobile personality, they have targeted support for the iPhone.

As I mentioned above, the interface is clean and simple and the functionality straight forward.  To begin with, you will create a list (as many as you'd like and I don't really know if there is a limit), and then when in your list you can edit it by:

• adding an item
• "checking" off an item as done
• sorting/rearranging the items by drag 'n dropping the items to their new place within the list.

You can also share the lists and make them "public", as in accessible by whomever you wish to notify.  You can configure access to shared lists as read-only or edit.

One very cool feature is that your list will be a "sub domain" (at least the URL) in the *.tadalists.com domain, and so it is very easy to remember "where" to go to access your list.

Your particular list would be available at http://<yourAccountOrUserName>.tadalists.com

I personally think that is a pretty neat touch!

At the recommendation of a colleague, I decided to forgo self hosting my domain's email and give Google Apps a try.

This move has certainly proven to be a great one, as I not only get the familiar GMail interface available from anywhere at any time, but we can all agree that you can't go wrong leaning on a stable platform that is Google's infrastructure.  Peace of mind and software that works above all else.

I have, by no stretch of the imagination, exerted the kind of "load" that some may wish and will be more than able to put on the service.  Things like using the full gamut of all available application including more common use ones like Calendar, Google Talk or even Google Docs.  I do see myself starting to embrace web applications over the more common desktop application (especially on the personal aspect) as a platform.

Scott Hanselman has a VERY comprehensive post on his process and later on his take of the service and his usual detailed pros/cons, good/bad/ugly features.  Him being a much earlier adopter and having different criteria and needs, went with the paid Premier Edition, whereas I elected the Free Standard edition.  Check out the edition comparison chart.

The signup and configuration process was incredibly simple.  One important thing you should have available before signing up is all your domain DNS management information handy.  If you host your domain's DNS with a 3rd party provider, make sure you are ready and able to make changes. 

I use ZoneEdit for my DNS provider, it is free up to 5 domains and up to a certain traffic limit which at the moment escapes my mind, but that is certainly a non issue for normal use.

You will need to edit your DNS settings to point your MX records to Google's designated servers.  For this and during the process, they use a wizard that is incredibly smart.  I liked that they put some thought into things like the simple fact that they knew who my DNS host was and included directions specific to ZoneEdit.  Simple but powerful in providing the best user experience.

Once you are all setup and ready to go, you will get a Start Page you can customize with things like a company or personal logo, and the myriad of other portal parts available from Google.  I am running at "vanilla" level.  Spicing things up on the web front it one of those things I know I have to get to.  That and revamping my so year 2000 domain home page, including but not limited to my resume and content (hmm, WHAT content?). 

My excuse? I am seriously graphically challenged and rely heavily on my friend and coworker Adam Gilson to provide the much needed touch to the look and feel of my presence.  I know if I continue with the "bug the heck out of him" approach, I will soon see a nicely redone image!

I have configured my del.icio.us account to post daily summaries of the links I bookmark to my blog.

Since it is precisely that, a daily summary, this blog may start to show increased posting activity.

Summaries will be posted only on days on which I actually tag a URL with del.icio.us.  I find myself doing so about 2 or 3 times a week.  

I will try to keep the links relevant, the noise down and the comments appropriate and descriptive.  As usual, any feedback is certainly appreciated and encouraged.

I was looking for a simple icon to use as a "shotcut icon" for one of my pages, and I came across this wonderful, very elegant collection of FREE icons by Axialis in ICO, GIF and PNG formats in sizes from 16x6 up to 48x48 for the GIFs and PNGs.

They are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License. It means that you can use them in any project or website, commercially or not.

Very cool.  Thank you very much! I can see myself using these frequently, especially when I need some non-branded extra umf graphic appeal to my work.  I know I haven't mentioned it but I am seriously graphically challanged, so this is like huge for me... I am psyched.  As you can see, it doesn't take much.... oh well, sad but true.

UPDATE: My friend Benny pointed me to this additional resource with additional free icons... oh yeah, adding "stuff" to the library.