March 2006

One thing we discussed at OzFox Lite was getting a list of Australian Fox developers together, the aim being that we could then contact each other as required. You can check out the Networking presentation here:

http://www.svfpug.com.au/assets/2006/VFPBusinessSkills/index.htm?page=_1PC11HGY6.htm

One action item was for everyone to add their details to the new page on Fox Wiki. So, here's a reminder to Australian devs to jump over and add your details:

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~AustralianVFPNetwork

I'm hoping someone from NZ will do likewise for the Kiwi network...

I know this is old news now, but if you haven't heard, Universal Thread is making their two magazines available free to Universal Thread members. You can read about it here:

http://www.universalthread.com/News/MagazineFree.asp

Even at Sydney VFP UG the other night there were still some people who don't use UT - if that is you then what could possibly be stopping you now?

Start here:

http://www.universalthread.com/wconnect/wc.dll?2,12,1

For OzFox Lite attendees that loved Larry's excellent session on Visual MaxFrame, you should check out Burt Rosen's article on VMF in the Dec 2005 edition of UT Mag.

Since OzFox Lite on the weekend, I've been trying to catch up on work - I'm way behind. So, one thing I am lagging on is explaining our thoughts for the full OzFox (or OzFox Heavy as some have started referring to it as).

For now I have put a brief summary of the feedback from attendees at OzFox Lite (you can see that here). Whilst I haven't had a chance to talk to potential speakers yet, I thought it best to get this up asap as I know some people from the conference are talking about it already.

I've posted a few more of the sessions from OzFox Lite up on the site. They include Andrew Coates' session using VFP with SQL Express (see also his blog post pointing to the management tools), Eka's on SQL Tips and Rahul's awesome whitepaper on converting VFP up to SQL (22 pages of great discussion).

www.ozfox.com.au

I'm still getting through my thank yous from OzFox Lite. And one that I should have mentioned earlier is a big thank you to Anatoliy for generously donating a few copies of his excellent Win32 Offline viewer to the conference.

I know you all know this, but I'm gonna say it again anyway - I reckon the Win32 Api site is one of the best resources around:

http://www.news2news.com/vfp/index.php

Great to see Doug Hennig blogging here:

http://doughennig.blogspot.com

With Craig and Rick this means the full admin team of SednaX is all blogging now

Also great to see Jamie Osbourne blogging again - I agree with his thoughts on Dev tools driving the real cash cows...

Here's another reminder to Australian developers to get along to CodeCampOz in just under a month's time.

Covering .Net, SQL 2K5 and BizTalk aswell as general developer skills, this is an excellent 2 days of learning.

It is organised by Greg Low and Mitch Denny.

btw if anyone is interested, here's my post about last year's event.

Scotty Wakefield blogs about how our Team Foundation Server went down over the weekend. Most likely due to a Windows Update on the SQL Server, but we're still not sure. And no, before you ask, we don't have Automatic updates on (who in their right mind would on a production server?)

But in Australia we've just had the Commonwealth Games and someone in their wisdom (the same kind of person who would have Automatic updates on me thinks) decided to extend daylight saving by a week (I'm not joking - I can see O/S readers shaking their heads).

In possibly one of the worst Microsoft patches to have been released, there was an update sent to handle this on servers, client PCs and some applications (eg Outlook). We needed to get the update onto some of our servers and so we had to install the update. I don't know for sure, but I'm thinking it likely the update (or tag alongs that came with it) clobbered our TFS SQL Server instance. We had a bunch of other problems throughout our servers too - some had their time adjusted, others didn't - all in all a bit of a debacle.

Two days downtime really hurts. Fortunately Scotty managed to keep the dev team working even though TFS was out (and source control, project management and client portal with it). He had it all up before close of business today, but was looking pretty frazzled after two days of frustration.

One of the great things about an event like OzFox Lite is that you get to see how talented some of our local Fox developers are. What a shame we don't see more of them speaking at user groups. In fact, what a shame we don't have more user groups!

So, let me remind you (and I am directing this primarily at the Australian Fox community) that Andrew Coates said he would organise Microsoft support for anyone who made the effort to start a FoxPro user group. Sydney and Melbourne have user groups going already, so now the call is out for Fox User Groups in Brisbane (Vic, we need you mate), Adelaide (Sid - is this going to be your baby?) and Perth (Larry - you da man!).

And as an incentive to bring out the great speakers lying dormant in the community I am working with Andrew to get prizes for anyone who gives a presentation at a Fox user group... stay tuned!

C'mon Australia let's get the Surge happening! Next will be New Zealand (Tyron, are you ready...)

At OzFox Lite I encouraged people to start blogging (especially the speakers... why present to just 50 people when you could be presenting to hundreds all around the world?). I figure the more people blogging about Fox the better.

And in response I've had a number of people ask how they can start blogging. So, here are two easy options to get started blogging asap... (both are free)

1. Blogger

I personally use Blogger. Go to www.blogger.com and click on the 'Create your blog now' button. Blogger will guide you through the rest. At the end it will tell you the URL for your blog. You can start blogging immediately.

2. Foxite

This is a blogging site specifically setup for the FoxPro community. Go to http://weblogs.foxite.com/user/CreateUser.aspx and create your account. The administrator will send you notification when your account is ready.

Both options are good, and whilst Blogger has more flexibility in site design, Foxite has the advantage of new bloggers appearing in the list instantly (in contrast if you blog on Blogger it might be a while before you are found by other Fox developers...)

How to add blog entries

Both sites allow easy adding of posts via their web site. However if you blog a lot this will become tedious.

I use Qumana for adding blog entries as it supports Blogger (btw I am using 2.0.2.96 - I have not used the beta of 3.0 yet), I don't think it supports Foxite (but someone may correct me on this).

What to blog about?

Blog about anything Fox related, even (as Andrew Coates suggested) if it is just a snippet of code you post because you want an easy way of finding it again!

Once you've added your blog, email me or leave a comment here so I can get you in my list.

Craig Bailey on Microsoft

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VFP: Australian Visual FoxPro developer network

VFP: UT Mags available to all

VFP: OzFox 2007?

VFP: More OzFox Lite sessions up

VFP: OzFox thanks Win32ApiViewer

VFP: Doug is blogging about FoxPro, Jamie too

NET: CodeCampOz is coming up at the end of April

TFS: The pain of Windows updates?

VFP: FoxPro User Group speakers to be given prizes?

VFP: How to start blogging