Thursday, January 26, 2006 Last week I posted a few remarks on the lack of a free Personal or Trial Edition of Borland Developer Studio. A friend of mine wanted to give Delphi a try but unfortunately he cannot because Borland does not provide a way for him to do this.
As it turns out on the same day Marco Cantu made a newsgroup and blog posting on the exact same topic. And there were a number of replies from both sides regarding the issue, which I have included below.
Still I think it is a mistake for Borland to not have a Personal or Trial version available for download available today.
More of the topic from Marco Cantu.
And a differ point of view. posted by Kirby | January 26 09:14 AM | comments (0)
My wife and I have actually moved from New York City to Salem, Massachusetts. It's still a bit surreal for us. As we were driving out of the city yesterday, it didn't feel like we were really leaving. It felt more like we were making a quick trip and will be returning in a few days. I think it will hit me in a few days that we're not returning to the city to live. Then again it might take longer for that to happen since I will be returning to New York next week for a meeting.
The move was the smoothest and easiest move I have ever made. The movers from Oz Moving were outstanding. I highly recommend using Oz.
The only problem that occurred yesterday was a flat tire in Connecticut. The moving truck got a flat on I-95 which delayed their arrival into Salem. But they did arrive. We got everything unloaded, and now all that awaits us is the process of unpacking. posted by Kirby | January 26 07:57 AM | comments (2)
This blog site has been up since March 2002 and since that time it has never once received a spam comment posting. That was until Tuesday of this week.
The site gets lots of traffic. Not as much as this person or that person, but enough to make me happy. I knew the day would come when a spammer would finally make a posting but I didn't think it would take this long. Now I'm not asking for spam comments to be posted on this site but I find it interesting it has taken almost 4 years before a spammer successfully posted comment.
What makes this more interesting is that a number of attempts by spammers to post spam comments have been made over the last 4 years. This is especially true for another site I have, the Melanie and Kirby wedding site where attempts by spammers to post comments in the guest book are made daily.
So what's my secret to warding off spammers? I'm not 100% sure. All my sites including this blog site are custom written using ASP.NET. Maybe that has something to do with it. What I do know is that I will probably start seeing an increase in successful spam comment posting to this site unless I make some changes. posted by Kirby | January 26 07:39 AM | comments (0)
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 Today is our last full day in New York. The movers arrive tomorrow at 8 AM. We have almost everything packed. We ran out of boxes last night so we couldn't finish.
I'm not sure how soon we will have Internet access from the new home. That's one of my projects today...to schedule cable TV and Internet hook up. So don't expect a quick reply to emails and forum postings for the next few days.
So how will we spend our final day in New York? We have a few more things to pack, and the DVR/cable boxes need to be returned to Time Warner. I'm meeting a good friend this afternoon for a quick happy hour drink followed by date night with my wife. We are going to dinner at the place of our first date. Unfortunately it won't be a late night because the movers are coming early tomorrow but I'm sure it will still be a special time for us.
I thought leaving New York was going to be hard, but as it turns out I'm ready to go. The fact we spent our last weekend up in Vermont is probably a sign that we need to move. We just don't enjoy the city the way we use too, and there are so many other things we want out of life that are hard to obtain from here unless you have lots of money. So it's farewell to New York, hello Salem. posted by Kirby | January 24 09:14 AM | comments (0)
Saturday, January 21, 2006 I received an email today regarding an immediate need for 3 to 4 Delphi consultants with XML experience to work on a client project in Omaha, Nebraska. Let me know if you are interested and I will put you in contact with the right person. posted by Kirby | January 21 08:46 AM | comments (0)
Thursday, January 19, 2006 The January 2006 issue of the online magazine Bitwise Magazine has a good review of Borland Developer Studio. The reviewer makes some very good points, although I do not complete agree with one point, C# programmers will prefer Visual Studio. As someone who also writes code in C# I prefer BDS over Visual Studio. I'm more productive using a single IDE then using two separate IDE. Using two separate IDE means I have to remember two sets of the hotkeys, how-to's, and so on. posted by Kirby | January 19 12:02 PM | comments (0)
Monday, January 16, 2006 A good friend of mine is interested in doing some Delphi programming for personal projects. Unfortunately he has no way of using the latest release of Delphi without spending money on a new user license. On the contrary, the hobbyist programmer who wishes to learn C# can download and use Microsoft's Visual C# Express free of charge.
I'm always talking up the benefits of Delphi to my friends and I'm constantly telling other developers to give it a try. But the sad reality is that those interested in looking at Delphi for the first time or the hobbyist slash student who wants to use Delphi for personal projects and to learn cannot without spending lots of dollars for a new user license.
Get a clue Borland! Make a Personal Edition free for those programmers who wish to learn more about Delphi or use it for personal projects. And make it downloadable from your web site. You will have more Delphi customers in the long run if you do.
As for my friend, Borland has just lost a potential customer by not providing a freeware version Delphi.
Update: Seems I'm not the only one talking about the lack of a Personal Edition or trial version of Delphi. What about Delphi 2006 Trial and Personal? posted by Kirby | January 16 12:15 PM | comments (1)
Nick Hodges has created a set of Delphi Live Templates for VB developers who have moved to Delphi. This templates work with the latest version of Borland Developer Studio. The developer to type VBish code and the templates spit out Delphi code. For instance, type "MsgBox" and you get "MessageDlg". posted by Kirby | January 16 12:13 PM | comments (0)
I spent the day migrating various Visual Studio projects to Borland Developer Studio 2006. For the most part the projects easily moved over but I did have some problems with one project group.
This project group contains multiple C# library projects and an ASP.NET C# web application. The BDS converter for the project group did not set the parent reference for some of the .aspx and .ascx files. However, I was able to quickly fix this using a text editor.
One Visual Studio feature I do miss since moving to Borland Developer Studio is Copy Web Project. I really like this feature to xcopy an ASP.NET web application to a new directory that contains only the files needed for runtime. The Professional Edition of BDS does not have this feature. However, I was able to quickly clone this feature using FinalBuilder.
Right now I'm very happy with the move to Borland Developer Studio. Using one IDE for all my development work (Delphi, C# and ASP.NET 1.1) is making me a more productive software developer. posted by Kirby | January 16 12:11 PM | comments (0)
After installing FinalBuilder for the first time, I looked through the list of actions to see what 3rd party tools were supported. I was pleasantly surprised to see an action for every tool I use in software development except one, DUnit. I thought this was odd but I soon realized that DUnit is supported, just not as a custom action.
Follow these steps to use DUnit in FinalBuilder:
1) Add a Compile Delphi Win32 Project action to your FinalBuilder project.
2) Point the Compile Delphi action to your DUnit project and configure it as needed to compile the project.
3) Add an Execute Program action to the FinalBuilder project. This action is found under the Windows OS action group.
4) Point the action to the compiled bits from the Compile Delphi action. In other words, point it to your DUnit program.
5) Mark the Log Output option, which should be marked by default.
That's it. FinalBuilder will run your DUnit unit tests as part of the build process and the output from the tests will be captured by FinalBuilder. And of course you can configure the FinalBuilder project to act accordingly based on the pass/fail result of your unit tests.
Some people might think FinalBuilder should have a custom action for DUnit. However, the action would only be a direct copy of the Execute Program action. Or maybe it would combine the Compile Delphi and Execute Program actions into a single action. But as you can see a custom action is not needed. DUnit unit tests are support through the Execute Program action and a custom action specific to DUnit would just be a waste of time for the folks at Vsoft Technologies. Their time is better spent adding support for more tools and adding more features to an already great product,
FinalBuilder. posted by Kirby | January 16 12:10 PM | comments (1)
Friday, January 13, 2006 Heinz Tschabitscher posted a review about SMTP Diagnostics on About Email. I have to say I agree with Heinz when he says "SMTP Diagnostics does not help you understand or fix errors." It is true SMTP Diagnostics will help you understand what is happening assuming you understand the protocol message, but the tool would be more useful if it explained things in plain English, which I believe is Heinz's point.
It's been on my feature list for a while now to change this. SMTP Diagnostics should provide more help and understanding in plain English. The challenge has been to correctly interpret the error message. For example, I recently was troubleshooting an email problem for a web application. In my tests using SMTP Diagnostics I enabled SMTP Authentication and provided the correct credentials for the mail server. For the From and To I used the same email address. The sender was checked and determined to be okay but the recipient check failed with "550 no such user here", and I knew for a fact that the email address was valid.
To SMTP Diagnostics the problem is clear. The recipient address is invalid, or at least that is what it is told by the mail server. However, the address is very much valid and the problem is actually caused by a check on the outgoing mail server that does not allow a message to be sent from an address to the same address where the domain name in the email address is different than the domain name for the outgoing mail server. In other words, using this particular mail server you cannot send an email to validaddress@domain.com from validaddress@domain.com from a mail server at the domain anotherdomain.com.
The reason for the setting is clear. The setting is used to help prevent spam mail. However, it is impossible for SMTP Diagnostics to properly interpret this error into plain English that accurately describes the problem.
Another test on the same mail server further illustrates why it is hard to correctly interpret the actual error. The same error message, "550 no such user here" is received for a valid recipient address when the From address used is not a valid maildrop but of the same domain as the outgoing mail server. In other words, the mail server for anotherdomain.com will report "550 no such user here" for the recipient validaddress@domain.com when the From address no-reply@anotherdomain.com is used and no-reply is not a valid maildrop.
These are two very different scenarios where the mail server reports the same error message, and both result from server settings used to prevent sending spam.
Personally I'm glad mail servers are incorporating settings that help prevent spam mail from being sent. But at the same time it makes it more difficult to determine the actual cause of the problem when sending outgoing emails. Still, I plan to take the feedback from Heinz's review and improve on SMTP Diagnostics for the next release. posted by Kirby | January 13 05:08 PM | comments (1)
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 And the good stuff keeps coming from Bob. He just told me about a new web site for small software company that is going live today. Be sure to check it out. posted by Kirby | January 11 04:50 PM | comments (0)
Bob Walsh's book Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality is finally on sale at Amazon. You can also buy the eBook version from directly from APress.
I've not read the book yet but I'm looking forward to it. I ordered my copy and should have it in a couple of days. I'll post a review once I read it, but I know it's going to be a great book for those looking to start a software company and for those of us still in the early years of running our own software company. And if that doesn't convince you to buy the book then maybe the fact that my interview from Bob is on Page 263. posted by Kirby | January 11 03:50 PM | comments (0)
For years I have relied on custom built build processes for software I develop. For instance, on a recent large-scale .NET solution I used a combination of NTScheduler, VMware Workstation, CVS, NAnt, and the .NET SDK (along with other tools) to build an automated build environment. However, doing something similar for every one of my software projects is time consuming, and I have to rely on different tools for different projects. For example NAnt is useless for a Delphi Win32 project. So I finally decided to give FinalBuilder a try.
FinalBuilder is the ultimate tool for constructing a build process. Within minutes I was able to automate a build process for a box inventory program I am working on. Of course projects with a more complex build process will take more than a few minutes to setup, but you should be able to automate a build process in minutes and not hours or days for most projects.
I'm amazed at the flexibility provided by FinalBuilder. It supports a wide array of compilers and tools. And it has an easy-to-use GUI for construction of the build process for every time of project I'm working on.
I decided to see how long it would take to setup a build process for SMTP Diagnostics. Although SMTP Diagnostics is a simple product, its build process involves a number of steps. It is the perfect product to evaluate FinalBuilder with.
Here are the steps in the build process that I wanted to automate through FinalBuilder:
- Create a build directory sandbox
- Retrieve the latest source code from CVS
- Compile the GUI program (using Delphi 2006 compiler)
- Compile EurekaLog into the GUI program
- Compile to console program (using Delphi 2006 compiler)
- Compile the licensing framework into the GUI and console programs (using Armadillo)
- Generate the help file system (using Help&Manual)
- Generate the installer (using Inno Setup)
- Generate a zip file containing the generated installer
- Update and commit build number changes to CVS
- Tag release in CVS
In less than 30 minutes I was able to setup the SMTP Diagnostics build process in FinalBuilder. I can now make a complete build of SMTP Diagnostics in under a minute with a click of a button.
My next step in exploring FinalBuilder will be to generate the online help as HTML files and upon successful build of the product push the HTML files and the installer out to SMTP Diagnostics web site. Given the time I spent playing with FinalBuilder, I'm confident I will be able to automate these steps as well. posted by Kirby | January 11 12:34 PM | comments (0)
Friday, January 06, 2006 For Christmas Melanie gave me a copy of Dead Or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360. The game wasn't released until the end of the December so I had to wait. But it finally came in this week and last night I got a chance to play it.
My review can be summed up in 4 simple words: My thumb is sore!
I must have played 8 hours or so last night. And yes my thumb is sore. The game is awesome. Story Mode can be frustrating at times but I was able to finish it in one night. The frustration is not a bad thing although it seems like it when you are playing. The AI in this game is incredible, which made Story Mode challenging and frustrating at the same time.
Like other Xbox 360 games DOA4 supports leaderboards. You can, for example, compare your best Survival Mode score against other players world wide. My current ranking is around 10,500 out of 25,000 players. I definitely need to work on improving that ranking.
As I have mentioned before, Xbox Live really makes Xbox 360 a great console. Having the ability to compare my ranking and achievement to other players causes me to play more, and in turn leaves me wanting to buy more games. Xbox Live is really the shining star of the Xbox 360 for the moment. But this review is about DOA4, not Xbox Live.
DOA4 comes with online play as well. I played "Versus" challenges for a bit last night online. Unfortunately I didn't do as well as I had hoped. There are some top notch players out there. Online play was fun but the game play was a bit choppy. I couldn't tell if the performance problem was caused by my DSL line or if the problem was coming from the DOA4/Live servers. I need to check the forums to see if other DOA4 players are experiencing the same choppiness. I have not noticed any performance problems with other Xbox Live enabled games so I have to believe it is not my DSL line.
Another feature I like about DOA4 is Sparring Mode. There is a feature within this mode called Exercise, which is a great way to learn all the button combinations for a given character. I will definitely spend more time in this mode to learn more of the advance moves and combinations.
Overall, DOA4 is great. The graphics are amazing. The game play is fun. The leaderboards are addicting. And online play is a blast.
Thanks Melanie for getting me this great game. posted by Kirby | January 6 11:48 AM | comments (0)
Monday, January 02, 2006 Okay, I probably shouldn't post this screenshot because it is ugly and far from the final Vertigo UI. But what the heck. I have been talking about Vertigo for a year now and this screenshot shows the world I'm actually working on it (finally).
Click the image to view full size.
For those wondering, Vertigo is a desktop email client that is being developed by White Peak Software and will be released later this year. Feel free to post your comments, suggestions, and questions to the Vertigo forum area. posted by Kirby | January 2 04:48 PM | comments (0)
2005 has come and gone, and man was it fast. 2005 was a very interesting year for me. I learned a lot about running a software business and I have a better idea of what it means to be a self employed computer geek turned aspiring entrepreneur. I have my success stories, made mistakes, changed directions, lost sleep, and spent more time with my wife. Here's a brief recap of 2005:
Success Stories
- Release White Peak Software's first product, SMTPdiagnostics.
- Released 4 custom software solutions for customers.
- Elected Chapter President of ICCA NYC Metro.
- Met target revenue goals.
- Became more focus on where I want to take White Peak Software.
Mistakes
- Over obligating myself and my time.
- Lacking focus for the first half of the year.
- Did not release Beta version of Vertigo.
- A poor job of networking and keep in touch with customer.
So what are my resolutions for 2006?
2006 Resolutions
- Complete Vertigo version 1.0.
- Increase product revenue by at least 60%.
- Do a better job of staying in touch with customer.
- Do a better job of going to the gym.
- And find more ways to spend more time with my wife. posted by Kirby | January 2 12:42 PM | comments (0)
