I know, I know...

Yes it has been a while since my last blog, but you know what its like. Working on a lot of things both in work and out at the moment. It's not long since I moved house, so I am busy working on that getting it up to scratch. I have had to postpone development on the dotnetdiary site for a while. In work I am still working on adding metadata to resources stored in SQL Server. It is a bit of a nightmare because I have to extract resources from many places add the meta data using RDNLTSN Application Profile and then combine the data in to SQL Server. I then have to pump out OAI compliant XML to the web. I am also writing a piece on MathML for one of our publications, so I am busy researching that, as well as attending college ( I am finally doing a Masters in Computing). Oh what else, oh yeah a couple of book reviews. And eating, drinking and basically having a life.

Sorry for going on so much. I realised I haven't exactly explained what it is I do. Basically I am an Astrophysicist working as a web developer/programmer for a University physical sciences department whose main technologies are .Net. I get involved with asp.net, vb.net, SQL Server, Windows 2003 Server, XML and some other technologies.

The site can be accessed here:- www.physsci.heacademy.ac.uk

Visual Studio Web Developer

Just a quick one here. As I am re-writing thedotnetdiary.co.uk I have opted to use the beta of Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. My first impression has to be a big thumbs up. MS have judged the area spot on. It lays somewhere between Web Matrix and the full Visual Studio. It uses .net v2.0, so you have to make sure that you do not use anything 1.1 cannot handle when going in to production. One thing I realy like is you have a choice if you wish to use code-behind or not. The Toolbox sweeps in and out like VS and you can pin it down. That is one area I thought Web Matrix lost out on. Oh and there is Intellisense and autocomplete. Go take a look. The URL for more info is http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/.

Lycos/Codezone

Two things to report today. Firstly congrats to Lycos for releasing their anti-spam screeansaver. If you don't know anything about it go here for a look. It's about time someone tried taking on the spammers.

Secondly, I just stumbled across a UK project called Codezone. It's a MS backed project, don't know too much about it, but it lists different resources about .net and is UK based (albeit based on a US project). Go take a look. I will certainly be posting some stuff there. Doug Seven heads the US version, so it has a dotnetJunkie at its helm which has to be good news.

Events

As I am researching content for www.thedotnetdiary.co.uk I have come across Devweek 2005 which is on the 21st-25 Feb 2005. I would love to go to something like that, but with a price tag of arround £1000 there is no chance I could get my dept to fund it. I know MS do small regional events that are either free or very minimal cost, does anyone know of any .net events that are free. If you know of any let me know here administrator@thedotnetdiary.co.uk .

Go Blogger Go

Well after sutch a long time pondering over blogging, I have finally set one up. My website www.thedotnetdiary.co.uk which was where I used to put my blogg messages was hacked last month, so as I am rewriting that, I may as well sepperate the blogging stuff and my other .net stuff.

Thedotnetdiary will be back soon. I am currently restructuring it with Visual Studio, more on that soon.