Finally got around to subscribing to Korby Parnell’s blog. I met Korby at Scoble’s last blogger’s dinner. He is a wealth of information on VSS. He’s also into Wikis, something I’m investigating as part of my new role. I like the idea one of his readers had on a .NET doc wiki. However, why would it need to be located at a MS-independent site? Wouldn’t it be more powerful if MSFT set up and hosted such a site as part of the “official” documentation?

Korby also blogged on my entry regarding MC++ vs. C#. He did leave out the part that read: “If you’re wrapping an existing codebase with a C or C++ API…”. Looking back, I think I should have written “If you’re wrapping an existing codebase that exposes a C or C++ API…”. I’m not sure it’s a law of nature, but I’ve found it’s easier to add the managed parts to C++ than translate the whole API into C#.

Neither SharpReader nor RSS Bandit renders my business card nicely. They both strip out or otherwise deactivate the CSS tags that are used in rendering the card. So go my web site if you want to see the card “for real”.

Raises an interesting question. How much support should syndication feeds like RSS have for look and feel?

Well, the darkness continues. I’ve been doing a ton of reading, both on and off line. I saw a post on Many 2 Many that lead me to Design for Community. My copy is on the way. But mostly, I’m busy getting as much stuff done before PDC as I can. In addition to the Architecture Symposium @ PDC, my group is doing two other big events the following week, so things are a little crazy around here.

One of the things that’s been taking up my time is getting my new machine configured. I’m doing a good job keeping my host WinXP install clean, while installing all my development tools into VPCs. One of the benefits of working on campus is that I now have access to Indigo and Longhorn. I’ve got one VPC with Longhorn already and I’m setting up an Indigo/Whidbey VPC. I also want to kick the tires on Yukon, but I think I’m going to build a separate VPC for that.

Finally, I got my new business cards. Our e-procurement tool includes a preview of what your business card will look like. My cards from my previous role first had the .NET logo, then I changed to the VS.NET logo. I decided to just go w/ the vanilla logo cards this time.

Since I’m doing community, I figured I should post my contact info where the community can get it. Our IT dept. just moved my mailbox to a bigger server plus I’m running Outlook 2003‘s Junk Mail Filter, so I should be able to handle any increase in email traffic, both legitimate and spam. (Though I did add spaces in my email address above try and avoid automatic harvesting.) If you have specific ideas around architecture, community and Microsoft, please send them along. I’ve already gotten a good suggestion from Jimmy Nilsson and Enrico Sabbadin.

If you like C++ and CLI, you’re going to love ECMA TG5 of TC39. Task Group 5 of Technical Committee 39 is going to tackle C++ bindings for CLI. Since it’s starting from a draft to be submitted by Microsoft, I assume they will be using all the existing keywords like __gc, __value and __property. I wonder if they’ll strip out the double underscore prefix?

BTW, if you think the C++ / CLI combination is a waste of time, I say don’t knock it ’till you try it. If you’re wrapping an existing codebase with a C or C++ API, it’s much easier to expose a managed interface with MC++ than C#. Don’t believe me? Go take a complicated C structure like WSAQUERYSET and implement it via C#.

I did say I was going to go dark for a while. Of course, I wasn’t expecting to burn my hand on the BBQ grill, get a toothache or for my son to come down with what might be Whooping Cough.

One of the things I’ve been up to is updating my blog software. Well, not as much updating as migrating to DasBlog. I’ve made a bunch of changes to support my current functionality as well as my look and feel. I’ve even built a CDF feed for DasBlog. Clemens wants one. DevHawk currently has one. I’m still trying to figure out how to do my projects and articles sections. It does mean that many of my existing links will break, but I am working on path rewrites to minimize the hassle.

While I’ll be using DasBlog on my personal blog, I’ll also be working with ScottW on .Text. DasBlog rocks as a single user blog, but .Text is a great engine for a hosted weblog community.