http://kaledavis.com This is a blog, it goes bit bit Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:03:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This little blog is by no means popular or that useful...for now it is just a collection of random thoughts that come to me, fixes, or sites that I think others would find useful. With that said, I still find it puzzling that no one from Wyoming has ever ... http://kaledavis.com/2008/07/28/hello-wyoming/ Wordle is a cool concept and fun to play with. You can enter words manually or give it a RSS feed to digest and it spits out a word cloud that is just nice to look at. Here is an example I just did from the NY Times site: http://kaledavis.com/2008/07/20/everyone-likes-word-clouds/ As I look more into Information Architecture I have found these sites useful: Boxes and Arrows - The best place to find articles and experts. IA Institue - If you are at all interested in IA you have to visit this site. Step Two Designs - Found some very good tutorials here that ... http://kaledavis.com/2008/07/03/links-information-architect-sites/ http://kaledavis.com/2008/04/05/check-out-commandshift3/ From the BBC TV show Top Gear, a great shoot-out... http://kaledavis.com/2008/03/23/ford-vs-ford-vs-ford/ A quick way to add multiple lines to a text file (in this case my todo.txt, but it could be any text file) (from aKB article): You can add a line to the end of a file, such as your CONFIG.SYS file, without using an editor if you use the ... http://kaledavis.com/2008/03/16/add-multiple-lines-to-a-text-file/ Watch Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki Live http://kaledavis.com/2008/03/07/steve-ballmer-at-mix/ Check out the 2008 Scripting Games over at Microsoft.  I am doing the advanced Perl division and having a great time trying these out.  Overall they are on the easy side so they are quick to write, but still fun to think about and a good challenge.  I will post ... http://kaledavis.com/2008/02/18/2008-scripting-games/ Ruby is an incredible language that can really open your eyes (especially if you come from the Microsoft world).  When ever I tell people I am learning Ruby and using it for future projects I get a "huh?", so here are a couple of my favorite Ruby sites that might help: Ruby ... http://kaledavis.com/2008/01/13/links-top-ruby-sites/ As I work with IA more on my projects I realize that in the past I had thought IA and usability were very related. In many ways they are, but you are looking at two different areas. After reading Information Architecture is not Usability I now realize how ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/11/21/what-an-ia-isnt/ Through the course of a day I browse to a lot of sites. I bookmark a large number of those, and probably revisited a small portion of the sites using them. Where does that leave me? I don't really know...that would require more browsing. So here ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/10/21/links-some-favorite-sites-vol-1/ Are you using Google Analytics yet?  Overall I am very pleased with it and you can't beat the price (free). Did you know you can use it with a intranet as well?  One thing that you have to watch out for though is if you use http internally and SSL (https) externally.  If ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/08/28/google-analytics/ Have you tried to use the SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for SPS? I had used the previous version of this for SQL 2000 last year , but hadn't used it for a while. I remember having issues with the install of that previous version, and sure enough I had ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/06/11/incorrect-syntax-near-wsslist-in-dbspsreportingsql/ Lately, after reading the Pragmatic Programmer, I have tried to follow the DRY principle whenever I can.  One thing that I have to do every so often is clean up log files that are X many days old.  Today when I had to do that again I found this bit ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/04/17/delete-all-files-x-days-old/ Attending the SharePoint Connections event this week in Orlando.  So far it has been mixed, with a couple great sessions along with some that missed the mark.  Looking forward to today's breakout sessions and hopefully I will have more to post about afterwards. The keynote meeting Sunday night was a mixed ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/03/27/sharepoint-connections/ Via "So, a booth babe and a geek walk in to a bar...": As I get ready to take my first of two tests for the MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications Certification I found this table of the total number of people Microsoft certified worldwide, broken down by cert, interesting.  Not ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/03/21/21081-and-counting/ I've posted before about our issues with the Live Meeting Add-in Pack and Outlook 2007, so when I received this from Live Meeting support a week ago I was hoping for the best: This issue has been identified at the this time and is being tested and reviewed for inclusion at the ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/03/20/not-so-live-meeting-update/ Update 7/10/07: kerwin left a comment about a new KB article and hotfix that Microsoft just released.  We tested it yesterday on a machine with both 2003 and 2007 Office components and it seemed to fix the error.  Note that although both the article and hotfix specify WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007, it also should work with 2.0/2003 (which ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/03/15/the-exception-unknown-software-exception/ A picture is worth a thousand words right?  So how come everyone tries to explain everything with lots and lots of boring words?  Check out this unique periodic table of visualization methods and maybe on your next project you can dazzle your customers with something useful. http://kaledavis.com/2007/02/10/visualization-methods/ Over at Smashing Magazine they have a great round up of cheat sheets.  I like using sheets like this when I am learning something new and to make notes on it as well.  Another great thing about them is they help you master 'simple' things like Google searches.  Check out ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/02/10/cheat-sheets/ One thing that has come up even before the start of our SharePoint 2007 upgrade project is dashboards, which to me is a great way to present tons of critial information in a consistent and easy to read manner.  The possiblites of how to do (especially with SharePoint, Excel Services, BI) ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/02/09/dashboards/ http://kaledavis.com/2007/01/29/23/ From:  Microsoft previews next version of Dynamics CRM - Yahoo! News I am looking forward to the next version of CRM due out this summer.  We have used it for two small internal projects.  One quirk about the current 3.0 version is having to install each CRM instance on it's own ... http://kaledavis.com/2007/01/18/microsoft-previews-next-version-of-dynamics-crm/ If you want to use CRM 3.0 with a named SQL instance you first have to disable the Environmental Diagnostics Wizard (EDW).  How to do this?  I couldn't find a way except for a couple blogs/newsgroups pointing me to a support call with Microsoft.  The Microsoft CRM Support Team might ... http://kaledavis.com/2006/12/30/using-crm-with-a-sql-named-instance/ Thought this little utility might be helpful.  They have regular and count up/down clocks that you can easily embed into your site to display.  I was going to post an example here, but just found out that you can't embed javascript within a post with WordPress.  Oh well, you can check out ... http://kaledavis.com/2006/12/23/clocklinkcom/