I spend a lot of time troubleshooting web applications. My Swiss army tool of choice for all network related issues is WireShark but it falls short when it comes to analyzing SSL encrypted traffic. FireFox takes forever to load compared to IE7 but its wide range of add-ons can be a life saver at times for developers. I am a heavy user of: User Agent Switcher which quickly lets me change the user agent of the browser SwitchProxy lets you quickly swap between proxies. Proxy configuration scripts are great if you always use the same proxies but I frequently have to force a specific proxy to test different web application behaviors. LiveHTTPHeaders plugs into FireFox ...

The agenda is not finalized yet, but I am sure Community days 2008 will be as interesting as the past events. I doubt I will attend the free event this year as I do not program in .NET at work. I still do some coding for fun but it is hard to justify two days away from work just for fun :-) I will try to attend some Microsoft events to stay in touch with friends but you are more likely to see me at Python conferences in the future...

I have played around with GTD for several years. It has worked reasonably well but I recently learned that I have done one thing wrong: I used categories instead of contexts. They sound like the same thing but using context has made a big difference. In the past I used categories like: "personal" and "work". It works for grouping tasks together but it is a bad idea when you have to choose the next thing to work on as it says nothing about the "context" you require to do them. I could have a personal task like "scan letter" that I actually have to do in the office where I have access to a scanner. Defining real context makes it very clear what you should work on at ...

SQL Server Magazine has a set of free essential guides regarding many SQL Server tasks. They are targeted at people that are new to the topic and they are short and to the point: The Essential Guide to Business Intelligence Reporting: Choosing the Right Tool for the Right Job Virtualization of SQL Server 2008 The Essential Guide to Reporting Services Tips & Tricks The Essential Guide to Disaster Recovery and Virtualization The Essential Guide to SQL Server Backup and Recovery The Essential Guide to Jump Starting Your SQL Server Skills The Essential Guide to User Continuity Special Report: Perspectives on SQL Server Sprawl The Essential Guide to ...

Got a great idea for a web site or web service but not the resources to host it? Why not try Google App Engine: Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users. You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization. App Engine ...

I was trying to install Ubuntu 7.10 on Virtual PC 2007 but I got this nasty screen when it went into graphics mode during the setup: It turns out that Ubuntu sets the color depth to 24 bit which Virtual PC doesn't like. This detailed step by step guide shows how to fix the video and mouse issues so Ubuntu works on Virtual PC 2007. The short version to fix the graphics problems: Hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 when the screen goes in tilt to drop to a console Change DefaultDepth 24 to 16 in /etc/X11/xorg.conf Hit Ctrl+Alt+F7 to go back in graphics mode Hit Ctrl+Alt+F7 to reload XWindows

The Microsoft 2008 product launch will take place in Milano 28/2 and 29/2 and will have two separate tracks for IT Professionals (TechNet) and Developers (MSDN) but you can move between them as you wish. Judging by the presenters it should be pretty good, and it's worth participating just to get the free software kit: Windows Server 2008 Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition (CTP with voucher for getting the final version) You can find the other dates of the 2008 launch tour here.

The anti spam filters in Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Mail are not bad, but they are no way as good as the anti spam filter in Gmail. It is just fantastic. I hardly use my Hotmail account so the majority of my mail is spam: Last autumn I migrated all my mail to Google Apps. It took me a while to upload my 4.5GB of mail but it was worth it. Instant search and "zero" spam. Since New Year I have only received 1 spam mail in my inbox! The best feature though has to be the threading. It makes it a lot faster to catch up with e-mail and see the context of long e-mail threads. Some Gmail productivity tips: Learn the keyboard shortcuts (did you know that you can ...

I did a hard reset of my Windows 5.0 mobile device yesterday as it no longer wanted to synchronize files and notes. I did a partial restore of my data (notes, tasks, mails) using the excellent Spb Backup program as I had the same problem after a full restore. That meant reinstalling all my apps but that didn't take long until I tried to install Adobe Acrobat 2.0 for the pocket PC. I hardly ever use it but it is handy for bringing along receipts of hotel reservations etc. The setup started ok with the usual security warning but it failed without giving any sort of error. I even tried the Italian version... It actually installed OK but failed to run which just confirms ...

I recently migrated a Microsoft SQL Server database from one disk drive to another using the sp_detach_db and sp_attach_db stored procedures. It was on the same machine so I was surprised when I got this half English, half Italian error message: An error occurred in the Microsoft .NET Framework while trying to load assembly id 65733. The server may be running out of resources, or the assembly may not be trusted with PERMISSION_SET = EXTERNAL_ACCESS or UNSAFE. Run the query again, or check documentation to see how to solve the assembly trust issues. For more information about this error: System.IO.FileLoadException: Impossibile caricare il file o l'assembly '..., ...