Themeless

A Nice Quick-start for SharePoint Site Design

Introduction to building SharePoint applications

If you’ve dived somewhat into the deep end with SharePoint 3.0 or MOSS 2007, you may find locating where and how to start with designing and deploying custom solutions somewhat bewildering. Most of the books I’ve worked with touch only lightly on creating really custom sites that integrate forms, e-mail, workflows and such; this despite the average weight of these texts being between six and eight hundred pages. Fortunately a good overview of just this topic can be found on-line.

While browsing old entries in the Help and How-to weblog for Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, I came across this document which describes the process and some of the techniques used in creating the template SharePoint applications available for download from Microsoft. It’s a bit longer read than most weblog entries, or indeed most web pages, but definitely worth it if you’re presently staring at a SharePoint site and a copy of SharePoint Designer and wondering what to do next.

Filed under: Web Tools, SharePoint and SharePoint Designer.

Wow! Something Worth Posting about in SL

It has been a while since my last post. Probably been spending too much time in Second Life puttering around with things that are not worth posting about (or thinking about or probably doing in the first place at all). I ran across this old entry in the SL Education Blog: Spotlight: Virtual Chemistry for Real Student. I really like the idea of just chatting out a chemical name and having a model of it spin up before me. I’ll have to drop by this spot sometime very soon.

Filed under: Harmless Fun, Second Life, Education and Chemistry.

Save XP!

From TechNewsWorld we have yet another field report from the battle to save, or kill depending on where you work, Windows XP: Technology News: Operating Systems: Ballmer: XP’s Demise Negotiable. Personally, I’d love to see XP’s availability extended one more time. However, I’m not sure Microsoft can stomach the implied admission that Vista is a near total failure.

Filed under Filed under: Software, Operating Systems, Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows XP.

More Fun With SharePoint and InfoPath

I’ve been spending a lot more time this week in SharePoint than I have doing anything with InfoPath but that’s about to change as one of our ongoing InfoPath projects is about to come home to roost on my desk. (Actually it’s already there, I just haven’t done anything with it.)

Once again I find a timely post. This time from itaysk we have InfoPath - Get the current user without writing code - itaysk. Here’s yet more handy information on how to import information that originates in AD from web services mediated by SharePoint into InfoPath forms.

It’s interesting to note that comment after comment, dozens of them, lament that not everything works even when the author’s steps are followed exactly. More worrying is the fact that many respondents are describing quite distinct failure cases. It feels like a sign that InfoPath and Forms Service may be way too sensitive to small differences in the configuration of their local environments. Are these products to complex for their own good or viability?

Filed under Web Tools, SharePoint, MOSS 2007 and InfoPath.

The Source for Gowan's Name?

I’ve gathered from assorted sources that the artist that Dorothy L. Sayers modeled Gowan after, albeit distantly, was not a great favorite of hers. She made him stand-offish, ugly, snobbish and otherwise fairly unsympathetic. I noted the name “Gowan” associated with this most prosaic of businesses in town. (Click thumbnail for a larger image.) Did it exist at the time? Was Sayers tweaking the real life artist by picking for his character the name of a distinctly non-upper class establishment? Not at all sure but the possibility amuses me.

Filed under Literary Locations, Kirkcudbright, Dorothy L. Sayers and “The Five Red Herrings”.

How to Annoy an Introvert

I ran across this article (TidBITS Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts) by Joe Kissel on TidBITS yesterday. It’s a thoughtful piece on why some of us seem to resist some of the recent trends in communications and collaboration technology. Being quite the introvert myself — I’m about as far over on the I side of the I-E axis on MBTI as you get — I found many of my own feelings about things like IM clients and telephones echoed in the article. I’m perhaps not as adverse to some of these modes of interaction as the author. My fascination with the technology tends to trump my discomfort with its implications. However, I very much understand where he’s coming from.

The thesis of the article is that many of the recent innovations in computer moderated communications could not be better contrived to annoy, bebother and otherwise cause suffering to your garden variety introvert temperament. If so, this is important to consider.

The odds are that at least 25% of your coworkers would fall somewhere on the introvert end of the personality range. My own guess is that many high-tech companies may well have a higher than average weight of introverts. This makes the article of even greater relevance. There’s much more in it than just why instant message programs irritate introverts. There’re some good thoughts on much more general communications issues between introverts and the people with which they work — while trying to hide in their caves.

Filed under Software, Instant Messaging, IM and Personality Type.

EOL for Vista?

I’ve been following the travails of Microsoft’s hangfire OS, Vista for some time. Not sure why this interests me so much. Perhaps I’m just hoping that it will go away before we’re forced to shift from XP at the office. With this in mind, I find my heart lifted by stories that have emerged over the last week (e.g., Gates hints at Vista ‘successor’> that raise my hopes that Vista may end up going into EOL before XP. That this is a good thing is of course predicated on the assumption that whatever follows Vista can’t be worse. I’m not sure just how good that assumption is.

Filed under Filed under: Software, Operating Systems, Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows XP.

InfoPath and SharePoint Groups

I haven’t posted much about software here for quite a while. Been to busy soaking in it to write much about it. From Bits of SharePoint we have this timely post: Get User Collection from a SharePoint Group. In amongst a great deal of work trying to get an InfoPath form to populate its controls from an SQL Server table while posting its results to a SharePoint list all managed by InfoPath Forms Services — about which more later — I also found myself wanting a drop-down list of site users. Unfortunately, while the post might point me in the right direction, it’s not all the way there. I need a list of domain users within particular AD groups. The process described in the post appears to be relevant only to SharePoint groups.

Filed under Web Tools, SharePoint, MOSS 2007 and InfoPath.

Maximal Minimalism

This Sunday’s News & Observer contained this: newsobserver.com | Living in a work of art. It all looks very nice but I have to say I find I was a bit irritated with the use of the term ‘minimalist’ to describe a 4,750 square foot single family dwelling. Yes, I know that the usage refers to the style and not the scale but still, it smacks strongly of newspeak.

Filed under General, Raleigh, Architecture and Minimalism.

McWhan's Funeral Parlor, Site of?

I don’t recall that it is made clear in “The Five Red Herrings” whether Mr. McWhan runs his establishment out of Kirkcudbright or Gatehouse. Kirkcudbright being the larger, it may be fair to guess that such a business might be more likely located there. In any case, lacking any other good candidates, this location on Castle Street as the most likely.

Filed under Literary Locations, Kirkcudbright, Dorothy L. Sayers and “The Five Red Herrings”.

Memories of Ma Bell

An entry from Modern Mechanix that brings back memories: “Ever Seen Your Telephone Switchboard?” As it happens, I have. Way back I had the good fortune to tour Ma Bell’s switch in Dranesville, VA. All electro-mechanical relays at the time, a whole gymnasium sized room full of racks of ticking relays. Everything it did then probably now fits in a pizza box.

This was back when we were still planning on being nuked someday and as many of DC’s long lines came in through the Dranesville station, it was sunk twenty or so feet underground and accessed through double blast doors. The upper works were supposed to look like a farm house. The massive air intakes might have been a bit of a giveaway though.

I wonder what’s happened to all that space. I would guess that the same region could be served by a couple of rows of racks by now. They'd look awfully lonely in that room.

Filed under General.

Update: Hey, what do you know? Here it is, still trying to look like a farm house.

MacLellan's Castle

“Wimsey made his way past the castle, up the little flight of steps…” In his walk from his lodgings to Waters’ studio, Wimsey passes “The Castle”. This is MacLellan’s Castle which is really a castellated mansion in the heart of Kirkcudbright. The picture here (click for larger image) is taken from just across the end of the High Street toward downtown.

Filed under Literary Locations, Kirkcudbright, Dorothy L. Sayers and “The Five Red Herrings”.

Blue Gate Close?

“he had this year chosen to rent a small studio at the end of a narrow cobbled close, whose brilliant blue gate proclaimed it to the High Street as an abode of the artistically-minded.&rdquo — The Five Red Herrings.

Here’s my best guess at Wimsey’s lodgings in Kirkcudbright. The house fronts on the High Street just down and around the corner from the “McClellan Arms”. There’s a well kept close through the green, not blue, gate. In general the property appears to match the description in the book completely but for the color.

Filed under Literary Locations, Kirkcudbright, Dorothy L. Sayers and “The Five Red Herrings”.

French Women Don't Get Fat?

From Boing-Boing we have this French people eat until they're full, Americans eat until the food’s gone. I presume that this refers back to the book that came out last year, “Why French Women Don’t Get Fat”. All I can say is that based on my visit to France, there is at least a minor conceptual problem with this title. Can’t say I noticed that much difference.

Filed under General.

Kirkcudbright High Street

One of our favorite authors for many years has been Dorothy L. Sayers and one of our favorite works of hers is “The Five Red Herrings”. Most of her stories that take place outside London are set in contrived locations. However, in this case, the events described in her novel take place amongst the almost unaltered landscape in and around Kirkudbright. This naturally put this small town high on our list of places to visit when we finally made time for a visit to Scotland.

If you are a fan of the book and happen to find yourself in town, you can drop by one of the local bookstores and see if they have a copy of “Dorothy L. Sayers in Galloway”, a small monograph by a member of the Sayers Society. It details where in the area many of the locations in the book are to be found. If the bookstores do not have a copy, the stewartry museum, worth a quiet afternoon in its own right, does.

The pictures I post here are in the somewhat incoherent order in which we visited or discovered them, not the more logical order in which the appeared in the book. Haven’t the time to sort things to that level of detail I’m afraid. The first image is from right outside the inn we stayed at. This is the High Street running west-north-west toward the tollbooth and the Dee. The “McClellan Arms” is behind us on the right side of the street and Wimsey’s logings are around the corner ahead to the right.

Filed under Literary Locations, Travel, United Kingdom, Scotland, Dumfries and Galloway, Kirkcudbright, Dorothy L. Sayers and “The Five Red Herrings”.