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April 05 Filming Begins
I plan to start the filming this week for the Summertown documentary that has yet to be named. I will be filming scenic shots of Summertown and the surrounding area to use in the documentary. I am also starting to build the web site for the documentary which will be located at the SummertownTN.com domain that I own and currently points to the High School’s web site. We are hoping to line up interviews with local historians and others in the community to get stories. We will also be advertising this more as we get closer to needing assistance from the community with photos, documents and anything anyone might have. Stay tuned and we will have pictures and videos of the production process as we go… March 18 The “Summertown” Documentary
Jeff and I have always talked about filming a documentary, but never had the equipment or the idea of what to do, well now we do! We have come up with the idea to film a historical documentary over the town we grew up in, Summertown, TN. It has history that many living there do not know about. Many would be surprised to find out that Summertown actually used to be a vacation spot with a hotel! We will be working with the residents in Summertown to spread the word about this documentary and collect as much historical information as possible. We are looking for stories, photos and documents from the history of Summertown. We will be setting up a web site so residents can upload scanned photos, documents and stories. We will also be holding a couple of meetings in Summertown so people can have their historical items scanned and preserved. We are in the “pre-production” phase now…. Stay tuned for updates! October 21 Man Cave 90% Complete!I know I didn't keep up with this blog while building the Man Cave but I was busy!! I have completed the room and the theater portion. The only thing left to do is to finish the outside drywall and build a sports bar in the back. Here are some pictures of the finished theater! June 23 Building "The Man Cave"If you look back through my posts you will find that I had planned on converting my basement into a home theater/Man Cave for about a year now. Well on June 14th construction began! There will be a theater area, card table area and a bar in "The Man Cave".
We are almost done with the framing and only have 1 wall left to do and it is only about 6 ft long so it should be knocked out pretty quick. I am finishing up the wiring in the completed walls now and wiring all of the surround sound speakers for the Theater area.
I will be posting the construction updates and photos here after major items are completed.
The goal is to complete the man cave by Sept. so I can watch footbal on a 120" Screen!
Stay tuned!
April 01 Visual Web Developer Book - Now Available!!Several of you that were in the "Introduction to Web Development" class have expressed interest in a book using Visual Web Developer 2008. You can pick this one up at Amazon.com: Enjoy! March 18 Free .NET Graphics Program- PAINT.NETFor those of you looking for an cheap (FREE) way to edit graphics, here is the answer! It is PAINT.NET, written in the .NET framework and is an amazingly powerful graphics and photos editor.
Check it out!: http://www.getpaint.net/ Intro to Web Development - Make Up ClassThe makeup class for the Intro to Web Development course has been cancelled. It was scheduled for yesterday and due to oral surgery I had to have I requested that we do it tonight or Wednesday and instead they cancelled it. I don't know the status of the advanced classes or anything yet. As soon as I know something I will post it on here.
If you have any questions regarding what we covered in class feel freel to email me or post a question to this blog and I will answer it.
March 13 Intro to Web Development - Class 5,6,7,8????For those of you that attended the Intro to Web Development class, I have not heard if the class has been expanded. I did send Vincent and email today and tried to call him several times. As soon as I know something I will post it here so check back frequently!!
-Stay tuned!! March 11 Introduction to Web Dev - Class 4Unfortunately, I missed class 3 due to an illness and had to cancel it. I am feeling much better and looking forward to the final class in this course. We will be finishing up the MasterPages and then creating a new application to recap everything that we have learned in this class. I have provided my email address to the students just in case they need assistance in the future with any development issues they will have a method to contact me and ask questions. March 10 Web Class - ResourcesLearn HTML and ASP.NET: http://www.htmlgoodies.com Online Videos (Paid Membership Required) Jason’s Blog: Intro to Web Development - Class 3Tonight is the 3rd class of the 4 class Intro to Web Development course I am teaching. The 2nd class went very well but again we didn't have enough time to finish everything. With that being said I think the Skill Center is trying to plan a more advanced class in May and would like for me to come back and teach it.
Tonight we will be finishing up MasterPages and touch a little bit on CSS. Then we will start a new web site and being a web site that they could copy off somewhere and take home and use. This will allow the students to think through the process of mentally assembling the requirements of what they want in a site and we will build it.
It should be fun! March 05 Intro to Web Development - Class 2Tonight I will be teaching the second of four classes called the Intro to Web Development. The first class went very well and I taught the foundation for web development. Only having two hours per night I am not able to go into enough detail on anyone thing so I took them from HTML to developing their first ASP.NET web application in about 2 hours. Tonight we are going to focus on Visual Web Developer and go through the controls that are built into it.
As I have told the class, there is no way they will come out of this class knowing everything there is to know about building web applications with ASP.NET but I hope that this class will inspire them to dig and learn more about it and take it up as a hobby or even a job one day.
March 03 Introduction to Web DevelopmentStarting tonight I am teaching a 4 night course at the GM Skill Center in Spring Hill, TN that will be a beginner's introduction to web development (It is sponsored by Columbia State Community College). I am starting with the basics including "How does the web work?" and "What is HTML?". By the time I wrap up the class on March 12th I hope that the students are able to develop their first ASP.NET Web application and save and retrieve data from SQL Server 2005 Express. It is going to be a whirlwind for them and I hope we can get everything covered in the alotted time (2 hours per night for 4 nights).
I don't know the skill level of the students yet. I will find that out tonight and hopefully I can skip some of the more basic topics.
Stay tuned! November 12 Fall DevConnections 2007I just returned from DevConnections 2007 in Las Vegas and had a great time.
I attended several session on WCF and AJAX/ASP.NET and found them very informative. Scott Guthrie and Dan Wahlin were the two best speakers there. I did have one session on Advanced WCF with a gentleman named Juval Lowry and it was the worst I had ever attended. He spent most of the time arguing with and putting down the attendees than teaching them. He stated that everything in .NET was a COM object and then he proceeded to show us a GUID and claimed that it proved it.... ok.... I think he stayed up a little to late in Vegas the night before.
Other than that it was a great time, but I think I have had enough of DevConnections and Vegas. The constant blitz of new technology to wrap your mind around for 5 days straight can make you go mad!!
I think next year I will find a conference or training to enhance my management skills since I am now in a management position.
August 09 Diving into the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
As with all technology, things change. I now embark on the journey to educate myself on Microsoft's WCF that ships with the new .NET Framework 3.0. Although, I know it will be out of date and 3.5 will be released before I can call myself an expert I at it, I will continue and press on. At work we are in the beginning stages of developing a SOA for our internal applications, so I need to pick it up. My copy of "Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step" came in the mail today and I am excited to get started on it. From the reviews on Amazon.com it looks like it is a great book and easy to follow. So I will keep you posted on my progress and let you know if it is worth the read. Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step I often ask myself..."What ever happened to the days of notepad, HTML and Windows Paint to create "cool" looking web sites?! " April 21 Confirm Delete on ASP.NET 2.0 DetailsViewI have been asked several times how to implement a Confirm Delete on the delete button of a DetailsView. Here is how you do it...
Put this in the “DetailsView_ItemCreated” event then replace the "DetailsView2" with your DetailsView ID and it should work fine. // Test FooterRow to make sure all rows have been created
if (DetailsView2.FooterRow != null) { // The command bar is the last element in the Rows collection int commandRowIndex = DetailsView2.Rows.Count - 1; if (commandRowIndex > 0) { DetailsViewRow commandRow = DetailsView2.Rows[commandRowIndex]; // Look for the DELETE button DataControlFieldCell cell = (DataControlFieldCell)commandRow.Controls[0]; foreach (Control ctl in cell.Controls) { LinkButton link = ctl as LinkButton; if (link != null) { if (link.CommandName == "Delete") { link.ToolTip = "Click here to delete"; link.OnClientClick = "return confirm('Do you really want to delete this record?');"; } } } } } April 19 Developers - AVOID VISTAWell, as you see from my ealier post I installed Vista to use on my home PC. Well I am here to say, if you are a developer DO NOT INSTALL VISTA. Microsoft have blatantly stated that they WILL NOT support Visual Studio 2003 and that there are some compatability issues when you try to run Visual Studio 2005. I just have one question... do the different teams at Microsoft no communicate with each other? It amazes me that they would release something that isn't compatible with their own latest software releases. January 07 Back to the books!!I have started studying for the new Microsoft certification for web developers. I hope to get my MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) this spring sometime and then my MCPD (Professional Developer). I ordered the training kit books for the first two tests that will get me the MCTS certification and have started reading. A lot of it is the basics of .NET 2.0 which I have been developing with since May so it is just refresher. I will let you know how the testing and studying goes.
until next time.... November 25 Big changes in IIS 7Well, as I dig through Vista the biggest change (other than the overall interface) is IIS 7. It is totally different from IIS 6. But for those ASP.NET 2003 developers, you can also install an IIS 6 compatability module when you install Vista. I did find out a couple of things you have to do to run 2003 ASP.NET projects to avoid a ASP.NET version mismatch error:
1. In IIS select the top level (web server) and then select "ISAPI and CGI Restrictions"
2. Then double click on the ASP.NET 1.1 entry
3. Make sure "Allow Extension Path To Execute" is checked.
Now that that is done, all you have to do is go to the project that you want to open in VS 2003 and set the application pool to the "ASP.NET 1.1" application pool.
1. In IIS, drill down to the web application that you want to open in VS 2003.
2. Right Click on it and select "Advanced Properties"
3. Change the Application Pool property to the property that supports ASP.NET 1.1
I hope this helps if you are having issues with this!
Exploring VistaI hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I did and I am enjoying the time off from work. It is always good to be with the family and the kids.
Yesterday I decided to go ahead and install Vista on my laptop, well intially after the install I wasn't impressed; my laptop fan stayed on and at a very high speed and it just seemed like a resource hog. My laptop is a 2.8 ghz machine with 2 GB ram and it still maxed it out... well after talking with one of my Microsoft buddies I found out that during the first few hours, it will do that because of the search indexing that Vista has. After the first few hours it cooled off and is running great! I still haven't seen all that it has to offer yet, but I am eager to dig into it. I did realize that it contains IIS 7, which is going to take some getting used to because it is so different from 6.
I also noticed that if disable the sidebar that is on by default, that it will decrease the utilization of the processor which in turns decreases the amount that it needs to use the fan.
I will post more as I dig into it.
-Jason
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