Casa de Vega
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K2 blackpearl and Windows Explorer context menus
Jul 20th
I was about to go through and upgrade a whole host of old K2.net 2003 workflows. When I notice that in the context menu there was an option to upgrade.
I thought it was nice that K2 was detailed enough to put something in this small and useful. So I clicked on it and Visual Studio 2010 opened up. As of right now, K2 blackpearl doesn’t support 2010 so no upgrade. So instead of just opening Visual Studio 2008 and upgrading that way, I decided it was time to fix the registry so it would open 2008 automatically. Open Registry Editor and go to the following path HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\K2Studio.2\Command. There you will find in the data field “devenv.exe” “%1″. You just need to change it to add the path were Visual Studio 2008 is installed and it should work from there on out. Hopefully this will help someone else who is having the same problem.
UPDATE: Apparently the K2 for Visual Studio 2010 components were released on 7/14.
The T-Shirts of TechEd 2010
Jun 8th
After the expo last night, I took photos of all the t-shirts I collected. I have both the fronts and the backs pictured. I left my camera at home, so I ended up having to use my camera phone, so sorry for any quality issues. If there is a shirt that I am missing and you want it displayed here, make a comment and I will stop by and pick one up and add it to the photos below.
The T-Shirts of TechEd 2010 Early Edition
Jun 3rd
For the last two years (2008, 2009), I have run around the partner expo and tried to get every t-shirt possible. I checked my stats and last years post had over 3000 hits. I have to say I was pretty excited to see that. I will once again try to recreate the success of the last two years.
Over on twitter I put out a call for any partners to pre send me photos and I would post them up early. I have only recieved one response so far, from Accusoft. So I figured I would try asking in blog form. If any of the partners would like to help me out, please comment on this post and let me know that you have a t-shirt and a way to contact you. I will then contact you to get the photos. If you don’t want to do that, just let me know that I can come by the booth at TechEd and get one so I don’t miss you. Please leave your company name and booth number.
I will continue to post pictures here as I get them until Saturday.
My WordPress plugins
Mar 18th
I wanted to share what plugins I use currently on this blog. I actually spent way more time browsing the plugin directory then I did setting up wordpress. By that I mean moving blogging providers, setting up the blog, and migrating all my posts. I can’t say that I looked at each plugin in the directory, but I did view a lot of them. Just as a warning the directory can be extremely frustrating to navigate and search sometimes, but it is worth the pain to find plugins that will enhance the behavior/look of your blog.
- Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
- All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog
- Broken Link Checker – Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
- FD Feedburner Plugin - Redirects all feeds to a Feedburner feed
- Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics’ UID and enable logging
- Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
- Maintenance Mode – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.
- Socialite - Publishes your WordPress posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. I use WP to Twitter to post to Twitter (see below)
- SyntaxHighlighter Plus – An advanced upload-and-activate WordPress implementation of Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript code highlighting package.
- Theme Test Drive -Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail.
- WordPress.com Stats - Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. The benefit of using this is that you can view the current day’s stats unlike google which you can only view the stats after the current day passes by.
- WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database as well as scheduled backups.
- WP-Optimize – This plugin helps you to keep your database clean by removing post revisions and spams in a blaze. allows you to rename your admin name also. Additionally it allows you to run optimize command on your wordpress core tables (use with caution).
- WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
- WP Security Scan - Perform security scan of WordPress installation.
- WP to Twitter – Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. I really liked the options on this plugin over Socialite and solely use this for posting to twitter.
- WPtouch iPhone Theme – A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.
Just post it
Mar 4th
I was participating in the workshop on How to Become a Person of Influence, hosted by Jo Miller, at Grace Hopper 2009. Throughout the workshop we were asked to exchange ideas and our assignments with those at the table. I was lucky enough to have Stormy Peters (of GNOME fame) at my table. During one of these exchanges on increasing our influence, we were asked to talk about things we knew we should be doing but are not. For me that was writing on my blog. I ended up talking about blogging and why I didn’t do more of it. She really got to the core reason why I wasn’t blogging. She said you are trying to emulate other blogs your read and really like, you are trying to be prefect. She told me to “Just post it”. She was completely right of course. I feel it is more important to actually publish the information and experiences that I have rather that trying to write the prefect post. I have using this mantra since I have updated my blog. I hope she approves of the new blog so far.
jQuery 1.4.1 and Intellisense
Feb 9th
If you are looking for the jquery 1.4.1 intellisense file(-vsdoc). It can now be found on the downloads section of jQuery web site. Here is the direct link for the -vsdoc file for jQuery.
In order to get VS 2008 SP1 to automatically use -vsdoc files with intellisense, you will still need to install the patch (I have previously cover this, but rehash it below). If you have VS 2010 support is already built in.
Not having the patch will result in the following warning:
Error updating JScript IntelliSense:
Object doesn’t support this property or method @2139:1
You need to download and install the following hotfix: KB958502-JScript Editor support for “-vsdoc.js” IntelliSense documentation files
You can force Visual Studio to update JavaScript IntelliSense by pressing Ctrl + Shift + J.
Why I switched to WordPress
Feb 8th
Deciding to switch from BlogEngine.Net was something I did struggled with. I felt some loyalty to it though, because primarily I am an .Net developer. So making this decision was not easy at first, but after careful consideration of what was important to me the decision was easy.
I switched to WordPress because BlogEngine.Net just wasn’t doing it for me. BlogEngine.Net is a great piece of software, but the overhead for me was just too high. I could customize it to my heart’s content such as adding my flickr badge, disclaimer, etc. via code. The problem is I just don’t want to take the time to make it work/look the way I want. I would rather actually write on my blog and not spend most of the time maintaining it (look, feel, versions).
I was able to install WordPress in a few minutes using the auto installer my blog host provides. Then Import my blog posts to WordPress. After that I was able to use WordPress’s great directory of plug-ins and themes to get my blog to work/look the way I wanted. The part that took the longest was actually looking through and searching these directories and finding the plug-ins I wanted (yes I will post which ones I am using later). Also WordPress has the ability to auto update, which is fantastic. Not only does the core WordPress auto update, but does the the plug-ins and themes. One click of the button and a few moment later you are done, fully updated, with out having to to anything yourself.
In conclusion WordPress gets out of my way and lets me just write, which is the point of having a blog right.
Importing BlogML to WordPress
Feb 1st
- I was using BlogEngine.NET, so I went to the main administrator page and exported my blog to a BlogML file on my computer.
- Make sure your exported xml file is in UTF-8 format.
- Install WordPress on you favorite hosting provider. On many hosting providers this is a few click process that runs an auto installer.
- WordPress does not have a built in way to import BlogML. Luckily Kavida Munasinghe as already written the import module for us. BlogML to WordPress import module. Once you have the zip file on your computer just unzip the file and upload the two files directly into the wp-admin/imports folder. If you have an issues setting it up check his post and the related post he has.
- Before you import, make sure you have setup your permalink structure to your liking. Once you import each post will get a new permalink, which will match the structure you setup. You will also get a cvs file with all the old permalinks and the corresponding new ones. You can use this file to create 301 permanent redirects as not to lose your link love.
- Create a backup of your database. If you import and thing didn’t import to your liking, you will want to restore from this back and try again.
- Now just log into your WordPress blog and in the Tool section will find Import Menu. Select BlogML, browse your saved BlogML and click the upload and import button.
- Now setup your redirects. Depending on the type of hosting you are using you will either have to setup .htaccess file or use something like the IIS 7 URL Rewrite module 1.1 or higher. You can check out the following WordPress Codex for more information.
Updated the blog
Jan 25th
For those of you who actually visit casadevega and not view it through your favorite rss reader, you would have seen that my blog as gone through a complete redesign. What you might have not noticed is that I switch blogging software, from BlogEngine.NET to WordPress (I will go into why in a later post). There should not be any problems as all my old posts have been imported and I have redirection working. So if you have links to my old blog they should just work. I have always used feedburner so hopefully you all come along for the ride as well. Hope you all enjoy the new look and feel. Let me know what you think or if you have any problems.
Moderating Comment
Jul 27th
I have decided to start moderating comments after being spamed for the last few days. So if you leave a comment, I will eventually approved it if I feel it isn't spam.
