Open Labs is organizing Linux Day 2005 Saturday 26/11 in Cinisello Balsamo. There are several presentations as well as a Demo Area and an Install Fest. Be sure to bring empty CDs/DVDs or have a free partition if you want a hand from the experts at installing a linux flavor on your laptop. To be safe and can make sure that nothing goes wrong with your laptop, you can use the free VMPlayer and a base Virtual Machine. Thanks for the tip Andrea!

Mail, blog and web sites are all happily running on my laptop. My server used a free MSDE DB but decided to try the SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition I got at the Italian Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event when I moved it to my laptop. I was really impressed with the "Copy Database" feature in SQL Server 2005. It can copy the data using the standard SQL data management objects present in SQL Server 2000, but it can also attache a SQL Server 2000 database directly. I took my old MSDE DB offline, copied it to my laptop, attached the DB in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and was up an running in less than a minute. It just worked. Impressive. Phase 2 (re-installing ...

The hard disks that started giving problems last year are giving up. Logging in on the server takes forever and posting fails sometimes so I have avoided posting the last few days. I have already migrated mail services to my laptop and the blogs are next. The total downtime should not be more than a few minutes unless I find any unexpected compatability problems moving the blog from Win2k to Win2k3 and the DB from a MSDE to Microsoft SQL Server 2005...

I was in a shopping center in Milano when I received a file called pw9w3ozl.sis via Bluetooth:I did not, of course, install the application on my Nokia 6630 but I am dying to know what the heck it is. Google and Google News returned 0 hits so I guess it is either something "customized" for Italy or a virus/trojan uses a random file name while replicating. I have the file in the inbox on the phone but I have been unable to transfer it to my PC for further analysis. Any suggestions on how I can get the file off the phone without installing it, or what it is???

There was a lot of good contents during the Visual Studio 2005 launch event. The presenters did a great job with the translated slides and demos from the US launch. As usual I loved the presentation by Fabio Santini which participated in the demo during the keynote. The best part of the Visual Studio 2005 event? Meeting up with a lot of colleagues and ex colleagues; Andrea C, Andrea V, Luca M, Luca Q, Marco P, Marco T, Massimo L, Michele B, Samuele R, Fausto S, Rajesh V. Some "random" notes on Visual Studio Microsoft claims there are more .NET developers than Java developers and a lot more SQL than Oracle databases. I work with both "worlds" and I am always amazed ...

My upgrade to Visual Studio.NET 2005 went without problemsAh, the sweet smell of success :-) I am very glad to report that the Visual Studio.NET 2005 beta uninstall tool worked like a charm. I was worried before starting as my laptop has had several Visual Studio .NET 2005 betas installed. Other versions of Visual Studio (6.0, 2003, C++ embedded etc) are also installed on the same machine for various projects. The uninstall tool is a provided on a "best effort" basis by the Setup Team .A fresh install is always better, but this setup will have to do until my next major software release is out the door later this month. See you at the Visual Studio 2005 launch in Milano ...

Time flies and Sydney is growing up to be one big dog. For the first time this week he lifted the leg:(sorry for the out of focus picture taken on a rainy morning). I thought male dogs lifted the leg from the start but it turns out they only do it when the get older and wants to mark their territory. He is "calming down" a bit but the "downside" to growing up is that the walks take a lot longer as any smell is worth investigating. As all teenage boys he shows an increased interest for females. Sunday morning was the first time he "ran way". They gate stayed open since the previous night but he stayed inside until the female Labrador next door passed by on her -early- ...

I have recently added e-mail subscriptions to my blogs. It is a free service offered by FeedBlitz via FeedBurner. Click the link at the top of each blog or the links below: egilh.com: RSS feed , e-mail subscription CoolOrWhat.com: RSS feed, e-mail subscription CrapAndCrapability.com: RSS feed, e-mail subscription I have tested the service the last few days and it works like a charm. FeedBlitz will send you one mail each day with the new articles (images included) in all the feeds you have subscribed to. A "pro" plan is available on FeedBlitz if you want more frequent updates

The second day of the Windows Embedded Conference was better than the first day. Intel's presentations, in particular, were a lot more interesting. I am a software architect and I must admit that I have not followed the evolutions of the various CPUs as well as I did in the past so I learned a lot about the three families: Xeon: high end/performance. Typically ~100 watts Pentium 4: Mid range Pentium m (+ celeron m): low power consumption: 5->15 watt The Pentium M was designed from the ground up with low power consumption and performance in mind. Low power consumption and low heat emission is important not only in the embedded markets where having fanless ...

The first thing that struck me when the Windows Embedded conference started; embedded developers are different from .NET developers. No long haired, enthusiastic,C# developers here. The average age is easily 20 years higher and these engineers are a quiet and reserved bunch... The were two hands on sessions in the afternoon but I followed the presentations. I will post the link to the slides when they are put on-line later this week. Below are some of my notes/impressions from the meetings. The Windows Embedded family is larger than I expected. I knew of Windows CE.NET and Windows XP Embedded but I didn't know there were many flavors of Windows 2003 Server Embedded ...

The PhoneNotify web service by cdyne is as useful as it is scary, since you can specify any caller id you want: This Method will call any phone number in the US/Canada and read the TextToSay to that phone number. Set VoiceID equal to 0 for TTS Diane to speak the Text. For a list of Voices with their ID look at getVoices. PhoneNumberToDial and CallerID must be filled in (They can be in any format as long as there is 10 digits).A reminder about abuse: Threats and illegal activity can be shared with the authorities.Use a LicenseKey of 0 for testing. I do not have a phone in the US or Canada so I have not been able to test if actually works. Any volunteer testers? Via API Blog

Jeff Atwood has created a great macro for Visual Studio 2005 that allows you to cut and paste code like it should be done. It even removes unnecessary white space! The Visual Studio plugin to copy source code as html has more features but it requires you to install the plugin. Get the latest versions of both alternatives and give them a try, especially if you post a lot of code: CopySourceAsHtml FormatToHtml.UsingRtfConversion Via Coding Horror