I am rewriting my-list.com in ASP.NET 2.0, C#. The original version was a Perl CGI web application, principally because at the time I was working for a company whose development environment was Perl. I have since changed employers where ASP.NET development rules. So … that prompted me to do a rewrite. Overall the ASP.NET development environment is orders of magnitude easier and faster then Perl. This of course assumes one knows both.

Now to my frustration. The LoginStatus control does not work in my instance. Specifically, I added this control to my splash page with a text value of “Member Login”. Clicking on the link redirects users to the login page. The login page uses the Login control with it’s DestinationPageUrl set to the proper page. The problem is that a successful login redirects the user back to the site splash page and not the DestinationPageUrl. When I remove the LoginStatus control form the splash page a successful login gets redirected properly. I am not sure why my original configuration will not work … a search of the internet did not help. If you have any ideas your comments would be appreciated.

I found a really nice journal application for the HP laptop. It is called “The Journal”. It is simple to use and from my perspective feature rich. The Journal contains two main section. First is the daily journal and the second is a notebook. Text entry has a look and feel similar to Microsoft Word. The realtime spelling checker is really nice. I really depend on the spell checker to help me not look stupid. Navigation among entries is a simple matter of moving through a tree view of entries presented in the left margin of The Journal’s window. The addition of tables and images is a snap. There are many other features, and if you are into journaling you should really check this one out. One feature was the ease of importing journal entries form other tools. In my case I imported entries from MacJournal. In my case I just exported the MacJournal entries into a rich text file format, change the file name with some Perl script to a date format of mm-dd-yyyy, emailed them to myself, and within seconds imported each to The Journal. Another feature I really like is that I can post notebook entries to my blog. The notebook is a great editor, and the page provides a nice history of what I have blogged.

Here is the Perl script …

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use vars qw($dirtoget @thefiles $file $newname @filenameparts $filenameparts);
$dirtoget=”C:/Documents and Settings/Michael/My Documents/My Journal”;
opendir(IMD, $dirtoget) || die(“Cannot open directory”);

@thefiles= readdir(IMD);

closedir(IMD);
chdir(“C:/Documents and Settings/Michael/My Documents/My Journal”);
foreach $file (@thefiles)
{
unless ( ($file eq “.”) || ($file eq “..”) )
{
@filenameparts = split / /,$file;
#$newname = $file;
#$newname =~ s/([a-zA-Z ]*[0-9]*)[a-z]{2}(, 2005\.rtf)/$1$2/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/January/01/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/February/02/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/Februry/02/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/March/03/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/April/04/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/May/05/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/June/06/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/July/07/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/August/08/;
$filenameparts[0] =~ s/September/09/;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/,//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/th//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/nd//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/rd//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/st//;
$filenameparts[1] =~ s/ //;
if(length($filenameparts[1] < 10)){$filenameparts[1] = "0$filenameparts[1]";}
$newname = “$filenameparts[0]-$filenameparts[1]-2005.rtf”;
print “$newname\n”;
rename($file, $newname) or warn “Couldn’t rename $file to $newname: $!\n”;
}
}

My transition from Apple Mac OSX to PC Windows is almost complete. Today my iBook G4 sold on eBay and I have 8 bids on my Mac-Mini. By the end of this week I will be Mac less. It’s a scary feeling. I have not been in this position for many years. If the withdrawals get to bad perhaps Sandy will let me use her iMac G5. From now on I will only have this HP Pavilion zd8000 …

I expect this transition to be short lived. Once Apple completes its move to the Intel architecture I plan to transition back to a new Powerbook. One that will, hopefully run windows natively. As a .NET developer I really need the native windows feature. Virtual PC was just to s l o w.

We are back in the Holiday Inn in Las Cruses, NM; only 5 hours from home. It will be so good to get home … 20 days away is a long time.

For this trip I took along a new HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop instead of a Mac PowerBook G4. I love my Mac, but must admit that the HP performed admirably. I burned the book “Linked” to CDs using iTunes, three times faster then on my Mac. Windows Movie Maker was disappointing when compared to Apples iMovie and iDVD. However, I purchased Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0 and Premier Elements 2.0 and found they provide all the features of iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, and more. They were easy to use and fast. The HP has the serious advantage of duel Pentium 4, 3 Mhz processors while the PowerBooks is only a 1.2 MHz G4. The operating system, Windows XP Professional is OK, OS X is much better. The constant threat of worms, viruses, Spyware, Rootkits is really a pain. As a Mac user I am just not used to all these threats. The HP is running Symantec AntiVirus, Internet Security, and AntiSpam, along with Microsoft AntiSpyware. Am I protected? Doubt it …

Spent New Year’s Day at Moms. She fixed one of her great dinners, after which we played cards for several hours. I managed to win the first game while Sandy eked past Mom to win the second. Mom is really getting good … if we could spend a few more days with her she would start winning on regular bases.

Tomorrow we begin the drive home. Our visit with Mom has been wonderful, Christmas and New Year’s was great. We really hate to leave, as it seems like we just arrived. But every visit is to short. For our trip home, I have scheduled stops in Mobile, AL, Kerrville, TX, and Los Cruces, NM. We have only one long driving day of 713 miles.

Spent these last two days at Mom’s just relaxing, playing cards, and cruising the internet. I did acquaint myself with Python. Downloaded, installed and tested PyXML.

I finished listing to an audio book about Google. This was really an enjoyable book … once started it is very hard to stop. It’s totally amazing what Google has achieved in just a few short years. I have since gone totally Google, moving to gmail adding Google toolbars to my browsers, and installed the Google desktop. The local search feature is fantastic … seems like everything is now at my fingertips without having to really organize my stuff.

Today we went to Cypress Gardens. While there we toured the remnants of the original gardens, watched a water ski show, toured its minimalist animal exposition, watched some wild alligator’s sun bathing in the rose garden, and toured their new amusement park. We saw a few brave soles free fall for three seconds on a platform caught at the last moment before crashing onto a concrete apron. There are seven other rides, all designed to spin and flip one over until sick. The Ferris wheel was our ride of choice. At it’s panicle it towered over everything in the park.

Entering the park was an experience. We had to pass through metal detectors and have our bags inspected. Only problem … when the metal detector alarm went off you were allowed to pass without further examination. Not sure what they are really checking.

Overall I was disappointed it what the new owners have done with Cypress Gardens. My previous visit was so very different. Then the original owners were in charge; then the entire park was dominated by manicured gardens. It was such a please to meander through its many paths and enjoy the beauty. The original park entrance included some really excellent gift shops and a large fudge factory. The fudge factory had glass walls so you could watch as the fudge was folded and cooled on huge marble tables. There is one thing at the gardens that has not changed and that is the huge Banyan tree. It is over seventy years old. Walking through its many trunks is a most peaceful experience.

Today I discovered that this blog has been identified via fuzzy logic as a potential Spam Blog. It is this designation that prevents “Performancing for Firefox” from working and why I have to type in the contents of a graphic password for every post. I never really questioned why the password was required. Just assumed it was a security thing … that was dumb.

Two lazy days … just visited and played cards with mom, cruised the internet, and read. I am sad to report that Sandy won all games.

The new HP pavilion zd8000 combined with a Verizon broad band access card is working well. This ais more like a desktop, and the internet access is really good. The download rates have been averaging around 140 kbps. which sure beats the previous dialup used during previous visits.

We did go out long enough to pick up a cable, (IEEE 1394/DV cable), to transfer our Christmas video to  the laptop. To my surprise, when I plugged the camera into the laptop, Windows Movie Maker poped up. I found it really easy to upload 120 minutes of video. My only question is about the upload quality. The resulting video file size seems small. Also I noticed some distortion as I played back parts of the video

The creation of this years Christmas DVD will be a good comparative test of the movie making process between Mac and PC. For the last 4 years we used a Macintosh and found the process feature rich and simple.