Jim Holmes and James Avery announced that their new book Windows Developer Power Tools is going to be published in November.

You probably didn’t know this, but this blog is more than a technical blog. It is also your source for solving all the world’s problems. For example, there is the age old question, “Where did the matching sock go?” Did you notice the extra amount of lint in the dryer? Problem solved.

Okay, it is survey time for all you Subtext users! I would like to know which Subtext skin you use for your blog. Please leave a comment with the skin that you use. If you use a custom skin, then just say Custom.

I have been considering using a separate library for generating the RSS and Atom feeds in Subtext. My first thought was to use RSS.NET but I noticed that there seemed to be no recent activity.

In my last post, one of the restrictions listed when running in medium trust is that HTTP access is only allowed to the same domain. It is possible in web.config to add a single domain via the originUrl attribute of the <trust> element as described by Cathal.

UPDATE: Mea Culpa! It seems like Log4Net has no problems with medium trust and an external log4net file. I have written an updated post that talks about the problem I did run into and how I solved it.

Recently I poked lighthearted fun at one of the recent Apple commercials called “Network”

A while ago I had the idea of posting a picture of the day. Of course I didn’t mean every day, but the title might lead one to believe so. Therefore in order to reduce confusion, here is the next photo in my Picture of the Moment series.

Jeff asks the question, “Isn’t programming supposed to be fun?”? Ha ha ha, naive little bunny. As if the person who invented programming had fun in mind. Silly rabbit.

Working as a team against a common database schema can be a real challenge. Some teams prefer to have their local code connect to a centralized database, but this approach can create many headaches. If I make a schema change to a shared database, but am not ready to check in my code, that can break the site for another developer. For a project like Subtext, it is just not feasible to have a central database.

I got a lot of great feedback from my post on Building Plugins Resilient to Versioning, which proposes an event-based self-subscription model to plugins.

Seems like every day now someone asks me if I plan on moving Subtext over to CodePlex. I figure it would save me a lot of trouble if I just answer this question here once and for all.

You’ve probably seen the recent Apple commercials with the two guys holding hands. One introduces himself as a PC and the other introduces himself as an Apple Macintosh. They hold hands because they speak each other’s language. Along comes a Japanese woman representing a Japanese digital camera who sidles up to the Mac guy and holds his hand. The Mac speaks her language too. If you haven’t seen it, you can click on the image below to see it on YouTube by clicking on the image below.

With Ted Neward’s recent post on the morass that is Object-Relational mapping, there has been a lot of discussion going around on the topic. In the comments on Atwood’s post on the subject, some commenters ask why put data in a relational database. Why not use an object database?

Tim Heuer just published a sweet skin on his blog. He has made it available for download and with his permission I hope to include it in the next release of Subtext.

UPDATE: Added a followup part 2 to this post on the topic of granular control.

We just had a short lived but crazy loud lightning storm. I was up late working on Subtext because I couldn’t sleep when I started hearing the loud clap of thunder. The eerie part is that between the thunder claps, it was relatively silent outside until the next thunder clap.

Watched a free screening of this last night in Downtown Los Angeles as part of a film festival. Prior to the screening, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora played some live music and Al Gore was on hand to introduce the movie. Mayor Villaraigosa was also there oddly suited in a tux and comically referring to Richie as Richie Santora.

I am working on some code using the Model View Presenter pattern for an article I am writing. I am using an event based approach based on the work that Fowler did. For the sake of this discussion, here is an example of a simplified view interface.

Via a reader, I learned about iBox which is similar to Lightbox JS but with more features. It boasts the following benefits: