I've just got back from a very relaxing week on a farm in Cornwall with friends and am not looking forward to returning to work. I guess it has to happen though... Anyways, I have a large number of photos from the week but as yet no captions.

In addition my camera also takes pretty good web-sized movies so here are a couple of my favourites:

• Cally and Angus showing off one lunchtime
• Angus attempts to blow bubblegum

I just got my latest geek toy this morning... A USB phono/line in adapter for my laptop so I can record direct from a mixer.

To celebrate I had to record something so here is the first mix. It's what I would call lunchtime house - nothing too demanding on the ear. There are a couple of dodgy mixes in the middle that come from trying to mess around too much. Future ones will be more professional, I promise. Tracklisting is as follows:

1. Choo Choo Project - Hazin' + Phazin' (Vocal and Original Mixes)
2. Missy Elliott - Lose Control (Jacques lu Cont dub)
3. Mylo - Drop the Pressure (Club Mix)
4. DJ Gregory - Elle (Copyright Re-edit)
5. Kathy Brown - Never Again (Classic Mix)
6. Milk & Sugar - Let the Sun Shine (Vocal Club Mix)
7. The Knowledge - As (Until the Day) (Solar Mix)
8. Daddy's Favourite - I Feel Good Things for You (Original Mix)
9. David Morales presents The Face - Needin' U (Original Mistake)
10. Audiobullys featuring Nancy Sinatra - Shot You Down (Bang Bang)

Now playing: James Snape - Mix 1

If you live in the UK and need some more memory for your computer then you can't do better than this item that I'm selling on E-Bay. It's brand new and unopened, I just made the mistake of buying it before checking that my motherboard could handle it. It's just about the fastest memory you can buy, specifications are as follows:

• 1GB (2x512 matched pair)
• OCZ Dual Channel EL DDR PC-3200 / Platinum / Revision 2
• 400MHz DDR
• CL 2-2-2-5
• Unbuffered 
• Mirrored Platinum Copper Heatspreader 
• Manufacturers Lifetime Warranty
• 2.75 Volts 
• 184 Pin DIMM

The auction ends on 12th September 2005 10:00 am BST and the full URL for the item is:

• http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6798412786

I have some pictures of Ryan and I DJ'ing at TJ's party. Koan also managed to take a few but none of me playing - was my music that bad?

This animation pretty much sums up a recent conversation I had with the tech support of a well known webcam manufacturer. Warning, it contains extreme language (think Southpark) so don't watch it if you are easily offended.

• http://uploads.ungrounded.net/192000/192820_tech.swf

To that manufacturer: come and talk to Exony and we'll show you how to optimise your calls and avoid annoying your customers with stupid requests.

Whilst browsing the latest FireFox extensions this morning I found one for http://www.stumbleupon.com/. It adds a button to your toolbar which surfs to a random page on the Internet as recommended by someone else. This is a prefect compliment to Google and I've just spent an hour or so clicking the "Stumble" button.

Along the way I found some pictures that made me laugh out loud which doesn't happen often when I'm alone. I've added them to a gallery too but here they are:

I guess it had to happen sometime, the spammers have found the Blogger site I cross post to. Since their anti-spam guards are no where as sophisicated as dasBlog, I'm forced to remove the ability to comment. If you are reading on Blogger then why not come over to my main site where life is so much better.

I've had to install a few new pieces of software lately for work and some of them have decided to take over my system. Some of the worst offenders are as follows:

• Cisco Systems VPN Client - if I try and move it's shortcut on the program menu then it decides to reinstall. Why do that? Shouldn't I get to choose how I structure my menus?
• MSN Messenger 7 - if I remove the shortcut from the program menu then it causes errors when Outlook loads. Why?
• RoboHelp - this is the biggest offender. What right does it have to remap the "Open .CHM" extension (i.e. help files for all programs) to its editor? I don't want to edit the thing, I want to read them.

So, a message to people writing installers - it's my computer, my rules so please don't presume to know better than me.

Just a quick post to say I've moved the blog to a sub-folder because upgrading every virtual directory under the root every time I upgrade dasBlog is a pain.

You shouldn't notice anything different except you have now come through to /blog instead of the root. I have redirectors on the site so any old permalinks should still point to the correct place. This goes for my feeds as well but some readers don't understand redirects and you'll have to update.

If you are developing Reporting Services extension assemblies that require <appSettings> elements in application configuration file (e.g. <add key="SqlConnectionString" value="Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=(local);" />) then you will need to modify a couple of files:

• To design reports successfully, add the configuration to the VisualStudio app.config file
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config
  
• To deploy successfully, add the configuration to the ReportServer web.config file
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportServer\web.config

Microsoft Patterns and Practises have finally released the tool they use to automatically generate the resx resource files in their Enterprise Library. My thoughts on the library itself are covered elsewhere in this blog but this tool is fantastic. It's a real time saver because each string only requires a single line in the strings file and no angle brackets which is no worse than typing into your source file. Grab the zip file (you will need to join the workspace to download), install and read the docs.

On the subject of tools, don't miss Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List.

Now playing: Koan Bremner - CO-010-20050703 - CrossOver Session Ten