After some discussion with Jeff Key this morning, and reading in Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy, I decided to start testing out FogBUGZ to see if I like using it for a bug tracking software for my personal development.

So far I'm very impressed, and I like the price too. Just something about very affordable software for individual developers. Great thinking Fog Creek and SourceGear!

The experience so far has been very pleasant. You sign up for the 45 day trial, and you instantly have access to their site with your own personal database. What makes it really nice, is that at any point during my trial, I can purchase licenses, download my databases that I was using (either SQL Server or Access), install it to my local version and I'm off and running.

So, I have about 44 days and counting and I'm looking to add a development partner, so maybe we both can really get a sense of how great FogBUGZ is when working with a small team.

So I finally received my copy of Coder To Developer by Mike Gunderloy. I started reading it today, and so far I've gotten through the first two chapters, and both of which have hit points that I constantly think about at work starting a new project. I've also walked away with a better understanding of how I should be prepping myself as well as a new project prior to actually writing some code.

The first chapter really inspired me to start using some mind mapping software in future projects (personal or not), so I can get a better understanding of how things are going. However, I find this to be difficult to do in my work setting due to me being a developer and not a consultant that gathers the information and prepares the requirements for us. I'm thinking that this book should be passed on to those individuals so they can get an idea of what's best for everyone.

The second chapter has really opened my eyes into the specific process that needs to be taken after the requirements are gathered. At this point, the methodology for developing the project needs to be determined based on the company's needs or risk. I especially enjoyed the distinct clarification between architecture, design, and implementation. Lastly, Mike hits us with the point of how the product should be delivered to the public or client. He states that this type really depends on the methodology chosen previously - ie. doing a normal beta process for waterfall and releasing working portions of an application if doing XP.

So far the book is really good and I'm enjoying reading it. It's very easy to read (for a semi-technical book), and is not for the faint hearted of starting programmers. As the title states it clearly, Mike's purpose is to transition you from a coder to a developer. To me, its a mindframe on how things are to come together and work - and I think I may be on the right track.

I would like to preface this post with the following:

In no way am I affiliated with Interscape or VisualBlogger 2004. What I will be writing is based soley on a discussion between Robert and I. As I will indulge your minds, I will not disclose any proprietary information that was passed on to me concerning VisualBlogger 2004. However, I feel the information discussed needs to be told, truthfully, and unfortunately its not come from Robert after more than a day of waiting in anticipation.

Here's the skinny...

VisualBlogger 2004 will become a commercial application sometime in July/August, price is unknown to me. The main reasoning behind Robert's decision was due in part that he spent 60+ hours refactoring from Beta 1 to incorporate the (uber cool) provider model. In short, this isn't a bad idea due to the amount of time that has been spent developing the tool.

Prior to becoming the final version, approximately 3-4 more beta's will be released to the public free of charge. During this time, the user interface will get an overhaul, more blog engines will be supported, VS.NET integration will be put into place and a few other awesome things (those of which I cannot divulge). Robert briefly mentioned having two final versions, one of which being a free, but crippled, version of VisualBlogger.

A lot of other factors came into play in his decision, one of which was relating to how the tool has become more than his intial plans of providing a simplistic posting utility that has VS.NET integration. The way I see it, is that Robert too initialy felt this to be a small developers utility, however didn't think of the big picture and over shot the initial plans by far.

Now...I'm sure there's more to it, as well as a definate plan for it, however it seems that we as a community are lacking that information. Robert, we wan't to know what your plans are, its that simple. Maybe after this post, something will come about, but until we see that, we'll just have to wait.

After a nice comment from Paschal, he noted what I was thinking after writing my original post this morning. So - what was it that he and I had the same thoughts on? Well, when Robert intially launched the idea of VisualBlogger, he stated in a comment on his initial post:

"Yeah, it's really free. I'm going to release it by the end of the week, barring any VS.NET integration issues. I'll have it set up so you can run it standalone as well (outside the IDE)."

So, whats the big deal? Well, according to his latest post and announcement, it seems as if VisualBlogger 2004 will become a commercial app, read it as you will:

"Oh yeah, and the winner will get a free copy of VisualBlogger 2004 when we do a final release in late July, early August."

In the above post, Paschal also posed the question, yet there is still no response.

Now - I'm not necessarily knocking the fact that VS.NET integration isn't there yet, that can be extremely tricky, so I can see why it hasn't made it yet. However, he teased us from the beggining, and I just wanna see it in action.

So, a response from Robert would be nice on Interscape's plans for releasing VisualBlogger as a free community tool or a commercial app. To me, if it's going to be a commercial app, then they have a lot of work cut out for them. As I previously stated, its not nearly as polished - and this could be due to its infancy - however to me, it seems more of a developer's tool rather than a commercial app.

Dmitry - you've got my $19.95 comin' for BlogJet.

Robert and his team launched VisualBlogger 2004, Beta 2 this morning, and so I decided to give it another shot since Beta 1. Overall, I really wasn't that impressed just like last time.

First off, the thing takes a bit to load for just a simple utility. It may be the provider model that's being used (which is an uber cool idea), but startup performance is crappy as hell. Yes - I realize you can minimize it to the system tray so startup doesn't take any time for future uses, by I don't want it in my system tray because my bar is precious and needs reality when I have 10-15 applications/windows open at one time.

Secondly, after attempting to submit a feature request (and later a bug report because the thing crashed on me) - well, they're 2 different items. First off, there was no indication, still, that my feature request had been sent. When the application crashed on me, I was typing a post and clicked "Configure Blogs", and after submitting my report, the whole app hung - effecitively loosing my blog post (that I'm now replacing with one in BlogJet).

Thirdly, the icons for "closing" dialog windows are just plain wrong. While configuring my blogs, it has a nice big red X underneath save and new (which by the way, I couldn't tell what is what because of now words or hovering text). Because of this, I didn't know if that X meant delete this blog or close. After a few seconds of seriously thinking about it (really, I did contemplate the click), I hit the red X to see it close and my blog be saved.

My last grief comes with the blatant indication of where the software came from. Most applications have an "About", but not VisualBlogger 2004. It comes with a nice link button on the form that says it comes from Interscape Technologies. Hmm, yeah - I know it does, why does it have to constantly tell me. This is more of just a grief, not a "you should remove it because its stupid", though it really should be moved to an About page or something.

I think the real kicker for me for using VisualBlogger 2004, is that it has the ability to paste formatted code, unlike the tool I love most, BlogJet. However, I've been assured from Dmitry, that code posting will come into BlogJet in the future.

Overall, I think its an OK tool. The beta seems more like an alpha to me - in the sense of beta testing BlogJet for so long. BlogJet was always more polished than VisualBlogger 2004, and easier to use. Plus, it has great performance and a nice community to back it and give support. Maybe its just early for VisualBlogger 2004, but for now, its still on the "nope, won't use" list for me.

Yesterday, Google decided to bump particular users' email storage limits to 1 Terabyte instead of 1 Gigabyte. And unfortunately, mine didn't make the cut (not like I'm really using it, though). Read the CNet article.

Well, Test Driven Development in .NET will show up today, however I'm dissapointed that the main book I had ordered at the same time is back ordered and won't be shipping until June sometime. Yup, wish I had Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy to read today, but I guess it'll just be some TDD in .NET for me.

I also find it very odd that no where on Amazon does it say that this book is back ordered, and the real kicker is that it has "Want it delivered tomorrow?" Hah! I don't think so buddy, I get mine first. Maybe I should check out Barnes & Noble to see if I can get the book sooner than mid June. Sorry Amazon, you may have lost my business on that book.

Update: Just ordered it on Barnes & Noble - sure I spent $5 more, but at least their expected shipping date is today, not a range of 1 month. Now - off to cancel the one from Amazon.

After church today I was pokin' around the main menu of my TiVo only to realize that I somehow had the Home Media Edition working for me. This was truly a suprise since I hadn't bought it, but after a bit of searching on the community forums, I found out that they're doing a 30-day free HMO edition trial for all Series 2 DVRs. Very sweet indeedy since I've been plugging my MP3's to my TiVo all night while setting up the new entertainment center. Still gonna be a hard purchase for $99, though.

So me and my girlfriend spent the better half of the last few days searching for and putting together a new entertainment center for the living room. After about 6-7 hours of driving around to different stores in the Bloomington-Normal, IL area, we had finally found one that we liked from Walmart. However, much to our dismay, when I went to go purchase it late last night, Walmart had only the floor model left and the model had seemed to be discontinued.

Disheartening as it was, we found another item not on the floor that seemed to be better (however a bit more expensive - $30 more). After drowning my sorrows in various liquors, and waking up and (I guess) repenting at church this morning, we decided to go with the model that we had seen the night before.

The center is extremely heavy - weighs about 200 pounds I'd say - but is extremely super cool with a "hidden" cabinet that opens up on the left side to expose 4 shelves that would hold about 15 DVDs (maybe more or less, haven't put any in). The other side is glass encased for storing my entertainment items (DVD, VCR, TiVo, XBox, and Receiver).

So, after borrowing the girlfriends' Aunt and Uncle's Durango, we hauled the thing home and spent roughly 4 hours putting the massive beast together. Only one time did I almost give in and start punching it, and that was trying to get the bottom feet & wood aligned. I'm glad I didn't though, because the finished (un-furnished with geeky items) product is superb.

So, now I get to spend tomorrow night re-wiring my entire system and making it so much nicer and easier to determine what is what. I ended up buying some wire wraps from Radio Shack so I could do this. So, I'm off to bed to dream about the full blown geekness that awaits me for tomorrow night. A solid 2 hours of rewiring, man it sure is a love/hate relationship. Hate to wire anything up, but love to use it when its done.

I just love it when I have to pick up my office space only to move, again. This is move number 5 in 3.5 years (I think?) for me at work. I guess they like to keep us on the ball, and again, this time its the same reason we've moved each time before.

Just a brief description - our company owns a 1 story building, in which there are 7-8 suites in it. Currently there's only 2 companies utilizing all the space, and our company seems to always get moved whenever the other company has a growth spurt.

This time is like no other except for the fact that the other company just split, and so their taking over suites 1 & 2, while our company will be taking suites 3-5, and the remaining goes to the orginal company from the split.

I seriously hate moving offices, its almost as bad as moving apartments or homes, which we all know are great pains in the you know what's. My only request thus far is to keep my desk that I currently have. I think it will happen, since our office furniture once fit where we're moving to - oh, did I forget my division is moving back to its original home from 1 move ago?

Err, well it's going to be fun, I think they're going to actually hire a company to move our office furniture for us this time. Last time we all came in on a Saturday and moved it ourselves, talk about fun, right? Okay, enough of my ranting.