Livin' the life...

Well folks, sorry for the lack of posts today but between the electricity being "off" island-wide from like ~7 to ~12 (ball park times), Champions League from 3:30-6:00 (Yes, Liverpool won 3-0 ) and me doing some work, I haven't had time to blog at all.

One thing I wanted to touch on though was the hint that the ISLAND-WIDE power outage seemed to be linked to a... monkey? (nb. not 100% caused by a monkey) (Ref - CBC Evening News). That's... interesting.. however, before I comment any further, I think I'll wait until the newspaper does a little report and then I'll speak a bit further as I see necessary.

Firstly, for those of you that don't know, I'm a Christian. Ya sike? Good. Now onto the posT...

Lately, I've received about 4 invites with the subject "Join me on christianvibes.com". These invites have come from persons whom I consider are pretty legit and serious about their faith. So I browsed to the site to see this thing for myself.

When I got there, it honestly looked like a good site, no banners, no ads and it even gives pictures of its members, WITHOUT one logging in or anything. BUT, with pictures and emails and all this other documentation it holds on its members, surely there must be some Privacy Policy link... Hmm.. I don't see one. BUT, probably one can check the About Us link to find out more about this place/site/online community... Hmm.. I don't see one.

Ok Ok, enough with the fluff, now to the meat of this post.

ChristianVibes is one of the online networking sites, belonging to a Jamaican-based company called Vibesnetwork (Ref). This fact in itself is cool, a regional company doing their thing, great! BUT the interesting thing to me comes about when I find out that Vibesnetwork also own another networking site called SmutVibes. Upon browsing to this site (please don't do it at work), you'll see at the bottom some links for porn sites. Yes, that's correct, Porn Sites. Also, if you were to just skim through the slide show they have there on the main site, you'll see some rather, .. "questionable" photos (aka people in the nude - partially or entirely). Remember, I haven't even logged in, this stuff is viewable by the public at large.

Now I ask, Christians, is this cool with you? Are you willing to subscribe with a site that is run by people who support porn etc. etc.? It's surely NOT OK with me. I'll be giving that one a miss.

Also, one may want to research BigChurch.com, another Christian network site, before you take the plunge there as well. ;It has been reported that that's owned by the Friendfinder Network, an organisation which also owns Adult Friendfinder (don't view this site at work). It also has been reported that they own another site called Out Personals (a gay site; don't view this at work either).

Now you see why we as Christians need to keep our eyes open, and do the necessary research instead of just joining anything that crosses our paths. Come on people, we will know them by their fruit, remember?

PS.1. I refused to put a link to SmutVibes or Adult Friendfinder on my site, browse to them yourself if you so desire.

PS.2. If this link is 100% accurate, that is a sad.. story.

PS.3. I'm glad I don't have Google AdSense on here yet, if ever. I can't imagine how much and what type of ads that content above with the word "porn" in it would put on my site. Hmm, to think of it, I guess that's a limiting factor of Adsense, ie you can only put stuff on your site which you want ads relating to. Never thought of that... Interesting. I'm sure GLAD I'm NOT constrained! (I'm not 100% sure that Google AdSense would bring back links on porn based on what I have in my content above, but, I think it would and I'm not up for taking that chance.)

PS.4. I hope I didn't come across too strong and offend you... it was not my intention, I just have very strong views on this topic.

Go to Google.com.

Search for: jason nurse

What do you see come up FIRST in the Results list?

!

And I did no registering, submitting a site, begging, writing threatening emails, nothing. Its all thanks to Google's sweet, efficient search technology.

Can you find me on Yahoo! ? or... Ask.com ? or... AltaVista? Nope, Nope, Nope. Why? Because I haven't yet gone through the tedious process of Suggesting/Submitting my site to their web crawlers.

You ask: Hmm, but, why should one have to suggest a site if it's a "web crawler"...? Shouldn't it just crawl the Web for the search term?

I reply: To consider it, it seems like, their web crawlers only crawl sites in their DB (of sites) and not sites directly on the Web itself.

You ask: But, that'd make it a "DB crawler" kinda wouldn't it...? 

I reply: No comment.

In Summary: This is why I use Google as my default engine for Web searching.

(PS. 1. No, Google has not sponsored this post; 2. I do not dislike Yahoo!, I actually like them a lot, they're the top portal on the Web! Just that their search technology isn't my cup-o-tea; 3. Ask.com - never used it; AltaVista - ... I like Babel Fish? ..)

Now tell me, what would a day be without a good laugh?

Since I think most of you check will check this blog on Monday morning while you're settling in for a joy-filled week of work, I thought I'd give you a quick laugh to start off your day. Here goes:

After digging to a depth of 100 meters last year, Russian scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network one thousand years ago.

So, not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American scientists dug 200 metres and headlines in the US papers read:
"US scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical fibres, and have concluded that their ancestors already had advanced high-tech digital telephone 1000 years earlier than the Russians."

One week later, the Barbadian newspapers reported the following:

"After digging as deep as 500 metres, Bajan scientists have found absolutely nothing. They have concluded that 5000 years ago, their ancestors were already using wireless technology."

ahAhah, LOl! Now that is good stuff! That one was compliments Trudi. Thanks lady, .

Another Saturday night has arrived and this time the plan was to catch Departed and The Guardian. Like somethings in life however, that fell through (laziness on my part sad to say). As I sit here now though, watching the trailers of both these movies (Departed trailer, The Guardian trailer), I wonder though, was this a Saturday night lost, or one saved...

Departed, from the trailer, looks looks a bit complicated but with its star studded cast and seemingly interesting plot, may just be a good one. Plus, it has received pretty good reviews to back up that view. The Guardian however just... looks... 'not me' ie it's more of a Adventure/Drama flick as opposed to Action and Suspense (Yes. I AM A MALE ). Also, The Guardian hasn't received that good reviews either.

As a result of this... I'm not 100% sure if it's good I didn't go or what. In retrospect, I think my laziness got it right this time though. After last week, I still have the need for a good comedy. Probably next week something worthwhile will emerge... or, I'll have to go video store and get Madagascar and Over The Hedge!! Now that's some sweettt stuff right there!

One can also check Football:more than just a game. That is just beautiful. Enjoy.

PS. I'm trying out having MetaCafe videos on this blog (as you can see above). So I ask you to help me in this testing phase.. If this post (video mostly) takes a long time to load, just drop me a Comment letting me know please. Thanks.

PS #2. I thought that song that played to the video above was pretty good, my type of music (under the right conditions... *heh)!! Just in the event you share my taste, the song is 'Bushman - No One Else'.

Wow, this took a little while and one or two headaches but my first update to the web site is now complete! What's the update you ask?

Well, if you ever browsed to this blog via www.jasonnurse.com, you would have recognised the quote under my name... That's it!!!! ... Ok, you look puzzled so I'll explain.

Before, there was only one quote on that web page and no matter when you went to that page, you'd get that quote (kinda what us web savvy people call a static HTML page). Now, as opposed to that static system, what's happening is that a quote is being randomly selected from a set of quotes (which are stored in an XML file) and then, its being spit out onto the screen (with the XML content styling handled by XSL). Cool huh!

No doubt some of you are like me and dislike situations where you find a great code snippet online then to recognise its not in your chosen language ie  VB or C# - . Well, I had found a site before that helped me a lot in this area.. more specifically in moving from C# to VB, and today I found another two sites that allow conversions - . So being the nice gentleman I am, I thought I'd post'em all for your benefit and just in the event I forget the links myself!

Here are both sites: site 1 (allows C# -> VB and also has an offline converter, I'm yet to try the offline one), site 2 (allows conversion both ways) and site 3 (allows for both ways AND does it REAL TIME ie when you type, it converts, no buttons to click).

So far these have worked pretty well for me but each one may have its own little "known issues" (documented or not), therefore one should read the sites carefully before copy/pasting code into the textboxes. Especially if you have secret, classified, level 500 clearance code (yea... right). EnjOy!

"The date and time functions (dateTime) are part of XPath 2. Thus, they are not supported in any browser yet." Ref

Hmm... "Why You Won't See XSLT 2.0 or XPath 2.0 in the Next Version of the .NET Framework" ('2004 article - Ref)..

Explains a lot.

So both of the "big guns" in browsers have released new editions. Who's better? Who's worse? What's worth getting? What's worth leaving on the download server? CNET gives its take and what I consider a pretty OK review. Check the link below for more.

CNET PRIZEFIGHT: Internet Explorer 7 vs. Firefox 2

PS. Hopefully soon I'll be linking to another review that's more "close to home" (ie from someone local and who I know is pretty practical) as I'm trying to get Antonio at Tech-Barbados to give his take on both browsers as well.

This post is to do with how VS'05/ASP.NET handles the DataSet and connection strings.

Today, I got the following error:

Error 39 Unable to convert input xml file content to a DataSet. Requested value 'ConnectionStrings' was not found.

The reason for this error was that I had named my ConnectionString JN.ConnectionString. Now looking at it, this seems a pretty normal name, however a problem arises because of the "." within that string's name. Apparently in the Connection element of the DataSet1.xsd (ie the DataSet file), mistakes the "." to mean something it shouldn't and thus generates the error I mentioned above. (More specifically it's this line: 'PropertyReference="...ConnectionStrings.JN.ConnectionString.ConnectionString"' - I show the problem in bold,red,underlined).

To fix this and also ensure that you never have the error mentioned, make it a RULE NEVER to include a "." (dot/full stop) in your connectionstring's name. So you'll have: 'name="JNConnectionString"' in your web.config and 'PropertyReference="...ConnectionStrings.JNConnectionString.ConnectionString"' in your DataSet1.xsd file.

(By the way, I didn't find this error on Google, so apparently it's only me that make this mistake. )

This morning I came across a rather strange occurrence with Firefox (FF) and I thought I'd share just in case either of you had the same problem. Basically, what was occurring was that whenever I loaded FF 6 tabs would open linking to sites I had opened sometime yesterday. I mean, even if I shut all 6 tabs, one by one, and closed the browser and reopened it, the same 6 tabs would open!

Hoping for a solution, I went though all the settings and even IM-ed a couple of buddies online, everyone, including me was clueless! So by now, I'm getting a bit frantic as to what's going on... so something tells me to just press the Home button. When I did this, I recogised that another 6 of the same tabs (with the sites) loaded again! HMM, soo by mathematical deduction I noticed something must be up with the Home button... because also, when Firefox loads, it opens the 'home page'.

After studying this a bit more I recognised that somehow I had set the Home Page to MANY pages i.e. the 6 URLs that kept loading! Now, I didn't even know that you could set a Home Page, to more than one page, interesting concept really... just may be useful... So just in case this problem ever happens to you, you now know how to fiX it!

OH, by the way, to get a Home Page as more than one page in FF, use "|" as a separator... i.e.: http://www.jasonnurse.com/blog|http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial

NB. I tried this in IE 6, doesn't work. Probably if it does have this functionality at all, it doesn't use that separator.. OR, probably it'll magically appear in IE 7...

OK, finally, I seem to be making some progress, Thank You God! This thing was driving me crazy. The amount of permissions etc. that have to be set to get this working.. wowwy, there SHOULD BE A MANUAL (those of you who have some affiliation with MS,  *hint *hint ).

Hopefully I can do some documentation on how to get through it (ie to move from finishing develop asp ;2 apps to getting then properly deployed) and put it up here (*cross fingers).

Until then, these were two of the sites that helped me understand some of the madness - Site 1, Site 2.

After my problems with this Visual Studio, ASP 2.0, SQL Server 2005 dev. stuff, I needed this laugh, I just thought I'd share.

Currently, I am in a state of disbelief as to how difficult it is to be able to create a fully functional website in VS'05 and then have that same website GIVE PAIN to work under IIS. (This is mostly with respect to ASPNETDB.MDF and SQL Server 2005 Express dbs in general - with Integrated Security = True.)

And I understand, I'm new-ish, so I may make silly mistakes but some of these podcast and videos online give NO HELP WHATSOEVER. They show how to do the development under VS'05 (which runs everything under your user account ie what DOES NOT HAPPEN when the site is deployed to IIS), yet they do not show how to deploy the web app and have it work!

Thus far I've been plagued by errors such as:

Cannot open user default database. Login failed. Login failed for user 'PC\ASPNET'.
(This is just as I try to login using the new login controls which are to interact with ASPNETDB.MDF)

An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file C:\...\DB.mdf failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share.
(This is just as I try to Connect to my DB under SQL Express... For this one I found out I had to detach the db from Express FIRST.)

Also, online, there are tons of people facing this same problem and solutions have been suggested such as changing NTFS permissions on the DB folders and files to allow read/write/modify access to ASPNET user account... For me though, that doesn't seem to work with any stability at all (ie I could wake up this morning, it works, go have lunch, come back and it doesn't).

MS... what are you really about though? I mean, if there are "expected" changes people are suppose to make (eg. setting up NTFS permissions, SQL User accounts for ASPNET, NETWORK SERVICE Windows accounts), WHY NOT MAKE IT CLEAR? Stupse.

The login controls, Web site Admin tool etc were a step forward but, the deployment stage is LACKING (for lack of a better word). Or... am I suppose to keep the app in development mode and put it on the web site like that ie running under VS'05?

Bleh.

Last weekend, I decided to reunite myself with one of my favorite pastimes, watching movies. The lucky pictures that caught my eye this week were: a) the well publicized Open Season - animation - and; b) some flick called Zoom (where it came from, I have not a clue) but it stars Tim "the tool man" Taylor! aka Tim Allen. Both movies of which are from Sony Pictures. (One can see trailers for each at the sites mentioned above.)

To do a quick an dirty review (that is if the topic hasn't given it away already), both were (n)! I give Open Season 5/10 and Zoom 3/10.

I may be a bit cruel on Open Season because it did have its funny parts like the Scottish squirrels and the kung-fu trout, but I really thought it would've been better (ie funnier) as the cuts I saw alluded to (yes, those previews trick me every time!). And Zoom, oh my, I not even going there, when I saw it start, I said, well, at least there's Tim, but... even he couldn't save that.

Conclusion: Stay home and get kix from YouTube or MetaCafe, or get me to forward you some nice emails. PS, it's not only me that thinks Open Season was a -ve, check these big review sites, here and here. Also, as one would see from this page, Zoom not even rated by the critics! lol. I wonder why...

Just got a nice IM from SimplyDBee, reminding me how "cool" and accurate Google Earth can be. As a result, I took her lead and loaded the program and after about 2mins found my house (as one can see circled on the left - sky view & vertical layout).

Then it hit me, this will be excellent to give directions! So the next time some one wants to come by, they will be getting a screen shot! In the left there you can see my house with as good a quality as Google Earth currently supports.

If you're among the 10% of Internet users in the world without this prog, I suggest you get it, it's quite innovative and FREE.

I didn't get to catch the game but I didn't hear good things at all, and from the final result (ie 2-0 to ManWho)... what can I say besides, "we'll get'em next time mates! . . ." And as I'm not a bitter guy, I'll say congrats to all the ManWho supporters, (yes, including you Ramal, even though based on this post, I should bun fyah pun you).

Also, I notice that some other characters are talking about Liverpool even getting relegated (yes, I'm referring to you Buddy Lee), but you were rather LUCKY yesterday as Barca should've destroyed Real.! From my understanding though, wait until they play at Camp Nou (ie Barca's stadium). Ways, as I told you before, all this means is that Pool will be in the top 4 rather than in the top 2 in EPL.

Enuff said on epl.

(Note to self: looks like pool going to have to win CL or/and FA or/and Carling instead. Must email RaFa.)

System.InvalidOperationException: ObjectDataSource 'ObjectDataSource1' could not find a non-generic method 'Update' that has parameters: ...

This was my fate after simmplllyy following an ASP 2.0 tutorial vid(eo) click-for-click. Thinking that somehow this was my fault ie I mistakingly omitted some parameter, I spent about an hour doing the thing over and over and... o.. Eventually I found the problem, and it was linked to the way that ASP 2.0 (and VS'05) handles the ObjectDataSource object (this also depends on the data and data types as they are in your database). IE, It can happen to anyone and is not directly proportional to your c0ding skill.

In retrospect, I should've checked online, as when I did (a couple hours after I got it fixed), I saw that tons of developers had that problem! And good suggestions have been made to curb it. Here are a couple: one, two.

Other that that little hickup, ASP 2.0's looking very very nice and yea, I know, I'm late... as it's been out for a while but, better late than never! And once I see no ASP 3.0 headlines from MS, I still think I'm sitting well!

Lately, I was trying to find out the pricing for the Pay As You Go (PAYG) service provides here in Bim. This was mainly to help me make my decision on who to go to, the "standard" Cable and Wireless (C&W) or the "new-ish kids on the block" DigiceL. To get this info I checked various places in Town, Sheraton etc. Eventually I did what I should've done from the beginning and WENT ONLINE! (tsk tsk tsk, I can't believe it took me that long.) Finally I found the info and I made my decision (I'll leave you in dark but those who have my # should know who I chose. )

Looking back on it however, I thought I'd save some of you people the work and display most of the info I gathered here on my blog. So, I hope it's of some use!

Ah Liverpool 1 - 0 Bordeaux. An away win at Bordeaux, to set the stage for a THRASHING at home in the next meet. Great work! Great work! And once again The Robot man (ie P. Crouch) himself brings home the bacon.

This win takes Pool to the top of their group as one can see here, and I'm sure it also brings a  to the Kop's face.

In the pic to the left, one can see Hyypia missing the header but Crouch tidying up and adding to his tally to make it 3 goals in the CL thus far!

Now this CL win is done, the next thing is the league game with top-of-the-table ManU on Sunday 22nd. Luckily, Benitez has declared Stevie G and Agger fit for that match (Ref). So basically it's a full squad, as Sissoko and Kuyt are back as well. THEREFORE, as usual between these two teams, it will be a shOwdown! I've already tipped my pal Do with who's going to win, but as a ManU supporter, he's *blinded by the lights. No doubt Ramal will be the same... Ah well. Joga Bonita!

By the way, on that Chelski win over Barca on Wednesday... without Eto'o, Barca seemed almost, toothless up front. And about Ronaldinho, the general word is he's under a lot of pressure to perform but in that game, I really can't say too much as the defenders played him rather well. This weekend (on Sunday) though, he'll have an ideal time to shine as Barca take on Real Madrid at the Bernabéu. And then again, next week on Tuesday 31st when the Barca - Chelski is replayed at Barca!

Sounds like a nice weekend for footie though, enjoy! (Kat and Mark: you two better be watchin that Pool game!! :@)

No offense ladies, . Now onto today's funnY.

A lady calls her boy friend and says, "Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get started." Her boy friend asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?" The lady says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a rooster. Her boy friend decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, "First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster." He takes her hand and says, "Secondly, I want you to relax. Let's have a nice cup of tea, and then....." he said with a deep sigh...... "Let's put all these Corn Flakes back in the box."

LOL!

Today I had the rare 'pleasure' of dealing with some C++;. To start, the first thing I had to do was get a compiler. For this I ran to my usual engine and typed in "free c c++ compiler". The first hit said "Borland C++ Compiler version 5.5 Free Download Is Here !!!", to which I responded with a HUGE , as I used Borland compilers before in my undergrad yrs.

Sad to say however, to get that free 8.7MB product, released on 08/24/2000 it told me I had to register and fill out a form. Some of the required fields for this form were: first name, last name, telephone, address, city and country.  Now, I'm not one for giving out easy personaL info esp just for a quick dabble in C++, so I pushed the Back button a couple times and returned to my engine. After about 20mins, that too proved to be a waste.

I then found an old Visual C++ cd from MS lying around the place and installed that (this is version 1.52). That installed great and took about 155MBs (stupse) but I didn't care as I got my compiler! To test, I put in some code and click Build. Immediately I get an "iostream : No such file" error... again, "stupse!". So I rushed to claim back my hd space and get rid of that prog however, no uninstall file, not even from Add/Remove programs. By now, I'm not the happiest guy around as one can imagine!

FINALLY, something tells me to check VS 2005 and in the Project Types side-pane in the New Project window, there is the heading "Visual C++". <- he reappears here.

So I go to creat a new project but for some reason I've found it a bit difficult, it not as simple as I would have thought at all. Ways, for ones who just want to use VS 2005 to play around with standard Windows C++ (cpp) files follow the following steps (PS, of course this is under the pretense that you've installed Visual C++ component when you installed your version of VS 2005):

1. File -> New Project
2. Click Visual C++ heading in left pane and come down to Win32
3. Click Win32 Console Application and in the bottom of the window enter the project name (yes, you should create a project first)
4. In the Win32 Application Wizard window that pops up, Click on Application Settings link in the left pane and ensure the following are selected - Application type: Console application; Additional options: Empty project.
5. Now, your project is created all you have to do is add the C++ files by Right Clicking on Project Name or relevant directory in Solutions Explorer and choosing the C++ File (.cpp) option in the Code category.
6. Enter the name of your file and you should be sorted!

One last thing, remember in using C++ to include the "using namespace std;" to enable you to just put 'cout << "blah blah";' instead of 'std::cout << "blah blah";'. Oh and if you want VS 2005 C++ specific help, pop the string "visual studio 2005 c++" into your search and hopefully that gives you some good info. Usually a nice MS link should be up there with some samples and even a team blog. Enjoy!;

Today I woke up with the idea of jumping head first back into some ASP 2 (technology) stuff.. however, as I browsed to yahOo! (a usual daily occurrence), I saw this headline "N. Korea: Sanctions are war declaration". (posted only 21mins ago too, so I figured I'm pretty 'on the ball'!) Upon reading the article which is on the fact that N. Korea's not planning to dismantle it's Nuclear Operations like UN or President Bush wants, I see more reported comments like "The resolution cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war", 'The North warned it "wants peace but is not afraid of war" and that it would "deal merciless blows" against anyone who violates its sovereignty.' Do I need to comment? I think not, you must get the point. (Yahoo! Ref)

NOW, what adds to my concern is the fact that Iran is not too "hunky-dory" with US either, and they too are in the Nuclear Operations game - for peaceful means they profess. (Ref)

So, I honestly don't know what I'll be doing tomorrow, do you?

Today, 16th October 2006, I have made this blog available for public consumption (legal use only please ).

Why? To be quite honest, I have no real expectations from "releasing it". I don't expect millions of visitors (like I blogged about here - that was joke, clearly), but I more come with the notion that this is me, commenting on sometimes random, but other times pertinent topics and therefore who wants to read it will and who doesn't, won't. Simple, it's a win-win situation!

For those of you who intend to visit here once in a while, I intend to blog about almost anything that comes to my mind (sports, life, Barbados, Int'l, fun stuff, dev.-ICT, research, etc). Currently, there're only a few categories but as time progresses, I know there will be more, so keep on the look out. Something here may just appeal to you.

As on virtually every blog, your comments are welcome (use the Comment[] link below the post entry).

'Final score at Anfield today Oct 14th '06: Liverpool 1 - 1 Blackburn.'

EPL just seems not to be Pool's domain whatsoever. I mean, sure, usually the FC hits within those top 4 spots but can we get any higher than 3rd?? I guess that's to be seen. This result today and the performance of late is just.. *arg, especially when Man-Who, oups, ManU, Chelski, Arsenal winning. As of today, 8 games have been played and Pool hold 10th spot with 11pts.

To think about it, for Rafa, these may be some pretty tense times... given in the 2 yrs he's been at Pool, the FC has won 4 trophies (04-05: Champions League, UEFA Super Cup; 05-06: FA Cup and the Community Shield). I really hope this is a standard he can keep up, or even better. As always though, he or more generally, the FC have my support (once he or the FC don't do what I consider rubbish!!)... poOl Rules! You'll neVer Walk Alone!

Also, check for:

• Champions League action this coming week (18th)... Bordeaux vs Liverpool at Bordeaux. (Much respect to Vladimír Šmicer, a past Pool hero who now plays for Bordeaux.) AND
• the Chelski vs Barca at the Bridge (plays on 18th as well) - that should be a nice one AND
• A big one: Pool vs ManU at ManU on Sunday 22nd. AND if you wish...

Update on Chelski - Barca game on 18th:

At the weekend, even though Chelski beat Reading 1-0, they suffered some big blows - seems like both top pick keepers, Cech and Cudicini have taken up spots on the IL.  Not good news when facing Barca, I THINK. Hmm, we'll see. (For more on this check this link.)

This was the scene a couple days ago because of the weather we've gotten lately. Now, what drew my attention to this picture most was not the level of the water, but the fact that this dude (or lady, one can't ascertain the driver from the photo) drove through it! (I'm mostly speaking about the top photo.) I mean, I'd be concerned about the car stalling or water getting into the car and all kinds of stuff. I guess this road was the only way out OR that mazda is really an undercover Jeep/Land Rover. 

Anyway, I just thought I'd share. (Photo reference)

So in playing with ASP 2, a time came for me to try to deploy/publish my test site... sad to say, the VS 2005 as is, didn't handle this for me too well. For example, I wanted each directory compiled into its own dll WITH its respective name, as this I consider is a standard setup especially for identification and updating purposes (and code privacy as well). AS IS however, VS gives you something along the lines of App_Web_(random letters), my favourites being: "App_Web_3tyx-q0m.dll" or "App_Web_chu6wowl.dll"

Now, with the knowledge that these configuations of directory name for dlls was done in VS '03, I figured there must be a way to do it in '05 - Enter 'VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects'. This is a plugin file from Microsoft (which is freely downloadable of course ) which allows the configuration I mentioned above and also, has some other interesting features for use at the deployment stage for web sites. 

For more information on this plugin see the 'VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects' site, there also will be a link to download it.

Truth be told, I must thank this guy's blog on the topic as he is the one who directed me to this required plugin.

20 SPAM emails a day! Needless to say, I am not pleased. What or who to attribute this to? Not 100% sure however, I have a sneeky feeling it's linked to the fact that some of my colleagues see it fit to give MY EMAIL ADDRESS to sites online that THEY decide to sign up to. Here, I'm mainly talking about these friend networks and community sites.

Honestly, and I mean no offense  whatsoever but I don't get this at all. If you (for eg) wish to be apart of these networks and decide to 'donate' your email addy, please please, ask me first before you donate/sell/contribute mine. Contrary to what seems popular believe, I do not like SPAM.

This month, America's population will reach a record high 300 million. NOW THAT.. is a lot of people...

Anyway, here's a link for some serious comedy around that topic!! Enjoy! I did!

PS. Update on that 4th episode of Chad Vader I mentioned here on the 6th October (the one that premiered on ABC)... Yea, it wasn't that good to me at all... was really disappointing.. bleh. I really hope that's not the ending though!

"93 mins: FULL-TIME: CROATIA 2-0 ENGLAND
93 mins: A dreadful night for England comes to an end. They may have got a slice of luck for their second goal but there can be no complaints from England who were outplayed in every area of the pitch." (Ref) These were the words of the Soccernet GameCast commentator to sum up the England vs Croatia game which took place in Croatia last night.

Normally I wouldn't be too too interested in this outcome but because of my ties with England and also the amount of emphatic England fans I know (eg. Do, Frank, the Bar) AND the fact that Stevie G (A LIVERPOOL FC MAN) was MIA, I must comment.

Firstly, I didn't watch the game (but I read some of the commentry), but England, come come, you gotta play a bit better, even in Away games. Draw with Macadonia (at home) then get beat 2-0 by Croatia (not crying down Croatia though, they're a pretty tough team, esp at home)?

Prior to that game though, I watched an interview on FoxSports with a man who I think was Croatia's captain, and out front he stated that without Stevie G (who missed this game through suspension), his team felt they had a pretty good chance against England. So I ask, was this England's "weak-link"? Is Mr. G that integral in the English team? I'll leave you to ponder on that one... As a Kopite, you KNOW what my answer is.

About two weeks ago, Ramal directed me to this pretty cool video named Barbados Rocks! which attempts, or well, does a rather good job of portraying Barbados for all you out there who've never been.

Well, in association with that vid, I have the pleasure of posting this new vid reply named "My version of Barbados Rocks" authored by A REAL BAJAN (of whom I know, "To SimplyDBee: hey u! " ). It's... a classic I'd say and especially a must see for you music (spec. piano) lovers.. Enjoy!

Good job SimplyDBee, I'll be looking for more. (If you want, you could probably get me in there doing some dancing: wackie dip, or gangsta rock anyone? - I dear not touch duttY wine.)

In working with asp2 lately, I've made it my business to make sure that I test sites with both Internet Explorer (IE), the world's leading browser and Firefox (FF), what I consider, the fastest growing browser with reference to use. Sad to say, this just gives me headaches. Most of the people who've tried to develop a cross-browser sites would know what I mean.

Now I mean, I understand that different companies may want to render content in what way suits them best but if this is the case what's the purpose of the W3C ?!? Is it not to develop and encourage a clear standards track by which companies can develop programs (or in this case browsers) that all render/deal with content in the same manner?

Also, I thought the difference was between IE and FF only, however, I checked out Opera lately and that too renders a bit differently. Now I mean, all 3 can't be following the standards, two must be playing around, even if only at least a little... I sympathise with Web developers greatly who have to deal with this problem, because I've had to stomach it for a couple days now and I just .

Well I blogged about it 3 days ago and now, it has come to pass... Search giant Google has bought video giant YouTube in 1.65 billion dollar stock deal (Ref). Now... I knew these vids were popular but '1.65 billion dollars'-popular... I did not see that one at all. Google is really going all out these days to get its hand in a lot of stuff (ex. images, vids, news, groups, chat, mail, maps, etc). Its becoming as household a name as Microsoft, but actually with a much more diversified portfolio. Doubt me? Check the Google Labs site... I definately will monitor this company, even if only to see who they buy next.

With YouTube gone now though, I wonder if MetaCafe, possibly YouTube's most known competitor will go next. Possibly by one of Google's competitors?

Anyway, in closing, I just want to mention a couple points about YouTube which I found fascinating. YouTube:
1. Launched from a garage (...)
2. Launched in February 2005 (yes, it's that young)
3. Has only 65 employees (must be hard workers... then again, there must be about 5 pcs to 1 worker!)
4. Claims that more than 100 million videos are watched daily by site visitors (wow)
5. To complete this rather cool rise to fame, they have just been acquired in a 1.65 billion dollar stock deal!!
(Ref)

After an "event-less" weekend, I'm back to the glorious asp 2.

For web site construction, I have actually had the pleasure of using Dreamweaver (DW) a bit and I must say that it appears a very good tool, especially the fact that it allows for working with aspx and, if I ever again get the urge, php. With this knowledge (more with respect to aspx), I was actually tempted to use DW more and do away with my VS 2005 (esp. because at times, VS sites seem to be more tailored to entirely work only with IE & not other popular browsers such as FireFox or Opera).

While thinking on this topic though, I stumbled across an interesting set of articles labelled 101 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Features Compared to Adobe Dreamweaver 8. This article, published by MS (no comment...) looks to compare these two development products in various videos. After watching a couple of these vids, I was shocked to see how much functionality DW has, from server side controls, sql server connections, datasets .. a bit of the stuff found in VS. However, the products do have many differences including that VS uses the aspx file for UI mostly and .vb or .cs files for server side code, whereas DW seems to put everything in the aspx file (even though one can create the code files manually). Anyway, enough of that, if one has access to both tools or desires to purchase/use one of them, I suggest you at least check out the link above. At worst, it will be a good introduction to both dev tools.

OK, so today for some reason I found myself at the notorious YouTube and I must say today I stumbled upon a pretty good vid series! It had me absolutely cracking up and even on the edge of my seat at times. The vids I'm talking aout are the "Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager" episodes. I thought about posting them here however I prefer to avoid the extra page load time. The link to the first episode is here and trust me, this and the subsequent episodes are a much watch (thus far, 3 episodes out & episode 4 premieres on ABC's Good Morning America on Oct 11 - Yes, it's THAT GOOD).

Honestly, this "power to the people" thing in letting just about anyone post vids on the net is... abit worrying.. I mean, there's a lot of crazy funny vids on YouTube and MetaCafe, but gosh are there some horrid ones! Today I also had the "pleasure" of checking out some "dutty wine" clips on YouTube such as .. infact, I won't even go there... but gurls & guys on their heads 'dancing' or rather doing the "dutty wuk".

One imp't point about these vid sites is though that they seemingly get hundreds of vids A DAY and also have probably hundreds of thousands of site hits A DAY. With all this activity (and noting that "Ads by Goooooogle" plague the site) it is no surprise there have been hints that Google (even with its Google Video project in play) is in talks to acquire YouTube (Ref) - the suggested acquisition price in the ball park of $1.6 billion USD.

As one can see, it's big business. Hits these days make a site, as the more hits = more businesses pay to for advertising space on your site which in turn = more $ for you (or/and your biz). I recommend, if you have any bright ideas for a site which could attract tons of people (and which is LEGAL and ETHICAL), do it, get the publicity and *cha *ching, instant cash! Or.. so I read on page 61 in How To Make Cash Fast Online - Poor People's Edition.

Till next time! & POWER TO CHAD VADER (you would only get this if you watched the YouTube vid mentioned above)!!

So starting today I embark on learning ASP.NET 2 properly. I expect to take a look Ajax sometime soon as well.

All this on my goaL of becoming an mvP.

Update on the day: So far so good, did a brief recap of HTML & CSS as well. So far I haven't seen any of the tons of stuff in the meta tag as with Visual Studio .NET 2003.. so that's a good sign! Hopefully this is a sign of great stuff to come!

Sidetracking a bit.. .NET Framework 3.0 good to go with Vista?! MS doesn't waste any time at all. Luckily though, it seems more of an "addon" to .NET Framework 2.0 with more technologies such as the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly code-named Indigo), an expected, "big player" in Service-Oriented Architecture. Another lucky thing is that there's no ASP.NET 3.0!! *PHEW! Anyway, more on .NET Framework 3.0 in future posts, for now, it's all about ASP 2.

So finally after about 3 days straight of trying to sort out some 'internal config issues', my blog is up and ready for its millions of visitors!! Ha Ha Ha (*cricket churps) .. or.. probably not..

Ways, so onto this thing called a blog... why do it? Well seems that everyone has one, esp. the IT guys! So I figure, why not me? .. So upon deciding that I wish to involve myself in this, the next step is to figure out, what's a blog! For that one can turn to good old Wikipedia, & after sieving out the important info, we get that a weblog (orginally web log) is a website that provides commentary/news on a particular subject but also can be and, is used as a personal online diary. (Ref)

For me and mostly because "us men don't keep diaries!!" this blog will serve mainly as a commentary on issues whether they be international, local or personal experiences.

OOKKK, now that all boring stuff is out of the way, I'll move on to more important issues.. such as this YouTube video which one of my mates msged me with on msn lately... This is... *sigh.. tragic, but... "All for the love of the Game" I assume.. Enough chat! on with the videO!

PS. A HUGGEEE Happy Birthday to JameL!! (uploaded that smilie just for you, you better be greatful! *grRr) She threatened my life if I didn't do this... beware of her!