According to Baseline Magazine, you should make room on your bookshelf for the following books:

1. Managing the Human Factor in Information Security: How to win over staff and influence business managers by David Lacey
2. Information Nation: Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance by Randolph Kahn, Barclay Blair
3. The Truth About Middle Managers: Who They Are, How They Work, Why They Matter by Paul Osterman
4. Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams by Terry Schmidt
5. Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers by Louis Testa
6. Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofin​g Your Project by Tom Kendrick PMP
7. The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment by John Lamb
8. Winning the Hardware-Softwa​re Game: Using Game Theory to Optimize the Pace of New Technology Adoption by Ruth D. Fisher
9. The Deciding Factor: The Power of Analytics to Make Every Decision a Winner by Larry E. Rosenberger
10. Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (Pragmatic Programmers) by Johanna Rothman

 

Once I stumble across a list like this, I’ll likely read a couple… already ordered one of them.

Fresh off the production line, a P2V tool by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, formerly of Sysinternals.

The tool is called Disk2Vhd and this is the 1.0 offering, and is now part of the Sysinternals Suite.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online.

This assumes “other” tools require you to power down the system you wish to create an image of.  I guess this sounds reasonable to expect, and since I haven’t used either tool yet, I am not one to make a judgment call.

I am turning my old Dell 600SC server into a virtual host exclusively and in doing so I need to P2V it and store that image on my new NAS and then host it virtually amongst other environments I plan to add.  These tools are now a critical component of that plan and my plan is to write a post about the process and results once I get to doing it.

I just signed up for a 24/7 Web Monitoring service, and granted it is probably a startup and probably going through growing pains, I still couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

(Image hosted FREE by pict.com)

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.

I recently came across Microsoft StyleCop, that analyzes the code, within the IDE for style.  This includes things like naming conventions, formatting and other matters of visual appeal.  It differs from FxCop in that it doesn’t check for use patterns, it simply checks style. 

I’ve been looking at this tool in order to implement it at work, where we have a pretty consistent and adhered to coding standard, who’s style enforcement could be done by a tool and save some people some time.

In any case, I am sure most of you are familiar with it but I deemed it worth noting, writing about and referencing.

The team’s blog is a great resource for help, release announcements, and general information about the tool.

The tool itself is available here in its latest 4.3 release. 

Quick note to link to the training kit released with the advent of .NET 3.5 SP1.

Complete kit with presentation & events materials, hands on labs and demos on:

• ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data
• ASP.NET AJAX History
• ASP.NET Routing
• ADO.NET Data Services
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• WCF 3.5 SP1
• .NET Framework Client Profile

One feature in Visual Studio 2008 I found myself using frequently is this:

Right Click on the project in your project explorer, and the next to last option in the context menu is...

When building systems made up of many components that need to be "shuffled" around, from and to many solutions, across different locations for different reasons, it becomes a handy tool.

Mainly just as a quick reminder to self of the tools I've found to be worth the time to install and learn.

The Tools listed here are mainly utilitarian, and not at all focused on anything in particular. All of them, as stated in the title of the post, are free. I love free software, oddly enough given I make my living writing software.

.NET/Development

• Lurz Roeder's Reflector, I am not the first (by a loooong mile), nor the last one to list this MUST HAVE. Just go get it if you don't have it and don't ask, just use it. Period. 'nuf said.
• Krypton Toolkit. If you do any Windows Forms development in this WPF new world, you HAVE to get these Free Components, use them and love them. Great looking, practical, easy to use. Check out the tutorial screencasts on their website.
• Fiddler. Look at your stuff... look at everyone else's stuff... the stuff that is really coming down, ya' know!
  
• Sysinternals Suite. With tools like DebugView as a given, and many others that add incredible value to any developer's arsenal, this is a no brainer must have.
  

Firefox Extensions

• ScribeFire, I am writing this post using it. Nice, simple, integrated, powerful.
• foxmarks, Keeps my bookmarks synchronized between my home PC(s) and my work PC. Priceless. Literally.
• TwitterFox, The easiest and least intrusive way to keep up with an addiction. It is not the most powerful or feature rich Twitter client... by a mile... but it works!
• SiteAdvisor, Free browser extension from McAfee. I'll make this disclosure: it works for me. In an unsafe world I use common sense first and foremost, but many get past my gut feeling, data backs this service up which is better than nothing.

Editors

• NotePad2, I use the installer Brennan created that adds an "Open with.." to the right click context menu.
• LINQPad, great way to learn and teach. At this point it is not a tool of daily use, but its awesome, so I list it.
• Windows Live Writer. Hands down the best blog post editing tool. Although ScribeFire is convenient and very good, Windows Live Writer is great for offline editing and also has tons of plugins available.
  
• Cayra. Mind Mapping tool. Cool to use, ideal if you can actually make it an "everyday" thing. Handy to have right now for me though.
  

Other Tools

• Pidgin. All your IM accounts in one client. Lightweight, simple, so bells and whistles.
  
• Picasa. Simple photo organization and editing. Love the feel of it. Direct upload to Picasa's online web albums (free up to 1GB of storage), and also to photo printing services (my main reason for using it), like KodakGallery, SnapFish, WinkFlash, Shutterfly, Walgreens, Walmart and many others.
  
• 7Zip File Manager. Awesome compression, great compatibility.
  
• CCleaner. The first "C" is for CRAP. Yep, that's right, it cleans crap out of your PC.
  
• SyncToy.I tend to want to keep some folders in sync. In the end each one is its own world, but this has been the tool I've resorted in my attempts to keep them the same.
  
• FeedDemon. From NewsGator, my favorite desktop RSS reader. Although it does "synchronize" with an online OPML, it only works between a given instance of the reader (say the one you have a home) and the online version they provide. It does not keep two desktop instances and as such it has proven inadequate by itself.
  
• Virtual Clone Drive. Great ISO management tool. It works as a driver to mount .iso files as a local drive. Awesome and indispensable.
  
• AusLogics Disk Defrag. Better than the built in defrag, great performance.
  

Woohoooo!

I won the raffle for 2 great software products, that Max Pool @ {codesqueeze} put out in honor of the blog's 1 year anniversary.

As entries to the contest one could twitter, blog or post videos... I twitted a couple of times and wrote a blog post here.  That was enough to make me a winner.

So freakin' cool... I can't wait to start using Bamboo CI.

All my data are belong to them.

I can't help but realize now how much of my data, my valuable and precious data, that I think means nothing to anyone but me, keeps finding itself somewhere where I have truly no control over it <*sigh*> oh well, it is what it is. 

The reason why I do it, why we all do it is primarily because it appears convenient, in a way that is accessible for us and other that may be interested... or not, and even then I'll just put it up there... right on your face!  Here are my books (the first 100 or so I've entered so far in any case).

Very cool, albeit overly graphic in my opinion and according to my preferences, but usable, Web 2.0 ish, with friends and whatnot.  Still haven't played with it as one may probably want to in order to fully utilize it.  Don't entirely know yet what can and can't be shared amongst friends.

The widget currently displaying on this blog was provided by them... tweaks will be forthcoming.

I will accept pretty much any and all friend invites, as if it is not evident to you by now, books are one of my passions.