Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

You see them advertised and they almost seem like a desperate attempt by companies like Parker Bros and Hasbro to recreate an era gone by: that of the family game night and the board game. In some ways, they have returned. Note the popularity of Games with Friends on iPhone - but many of the games espoused are games that SHOULD rightfully still be popular because they are unpredictable. While everyone who has ever played Monopoly always has a favorite game piece and property, the way the game unfolds is almost always a game of chance. Like playing with a deck of cards, each game is unique. Come forward (or back) to the 80s' and the introduction of Trivial Pursuit. While there are some diehards who would play TP using the board and the little pies, the game evolved into more of a "pull out a card and let's see what you know" type of game. Moving further into the 90s, and you see more of these games. SongBurst (one of my favorites) tests your music ability based on...

I've written about the SQL Transaction log before and since some of my clients don't have some of the great logging tools, I often find myself going back to the select * from ::fn_dblog(NULL,NULL) Recently, at one client, I've come across a bizarre problem that defies easy analysis. The VFP application uses cursor adapters to talk to the SQL Server and in one of the processes, updates one table while adding a record to two other tables. In certain circumstances, the two new records were being added but the update of the other table would not. While I'm still tracking down what is actively going on, I wanted to note some of the interesting aspects of the SQL Log and pose some questions A great post in SQLServerCentral broke down the various operation types but it wasn't clear on others:

When asked about the state of Visual FoxPro, I often point developers to the VFPX site on CodePlex. After all, that's where the majority of VFP source code is and where many members of the VFP community place the most of funkalicious work they do (Jim Nelson continues to amaze with his PEM Editor, which should likely be renamed IDE/X, because he's now covering far more than just Projects, Events and Methods.) But there are OTHER places to find great VFP Code. Foxite continues to get posts with very cool samples and there are other codeplex sites as well. But recently, I was looking for ways to work with VFP Data in .Net and came across: LINQ to VFP Yep! Tom Brothers has built an iQueryable toolkit for FoxPro. Started in 2009, the latest version was updated on January 9th, 2011.  FoxPro VFP

I'm doing a variety of work in both C# and VB.Net these days (as well as VFP). Every now and then, I come across helpful concepts in the languages that are likely obvious to most developers but may not be known by all of them. If I find something that is of particular interest, I'll put it under these types of posts. Today, I had a class that implemented multiple interfaces. Both of these interfaces had a similar method: SetReadOnly. So you have two choices: 1. Create a new interface that this class can implement that has the SetReadOnly interface so I only have to implement the one 2. Create two methods that implement that particular method. Most people are used to VB.Net's handling for Select Case statements where you can put multiple conditions on one line: Select Case "A","B","C" End Select What I wasn't aware of was that you can use it for Implements as well. When you add the "Implements xxxx", VS automatically adds t...

Nothing like good products for attendees. Doug reports that Southwest Fox will have draws for three copies of DBi Technologies Studio Controls for COM. As someone who has covered the dbiTech controls for many years , this is an awesome product offering. The Appointment Scheduling alone is a great reason to have this in your toolbox but there's a lot more where that came from. Doug Hennig: Southwest Fox 2011 News I wonder what other goodies are in store for attendees.

(this post started as a comment so I might come back to it - or I might just start a series on UI changes) I read Why Windows 8 Might Fail | John C. Dvorak | PCMag.com ,typical Dvorak, whom I've been reading for , ouch, just about my entire life in computers. That seems strange to write. But every article I read on Lion and Windows 8 seems to talk about this strange trend of removing scrollbars. (Comment starts now): The proof is scrollbars? Really?!?!? How many of you actually use scrollbars? I'm not talking about moving up and down through a page, I'm talking about using the scrollbar as a tool instead of just a means of identifying where you are on a page. If you're on a laptop, chances are you either a) use the keyboard or b) have gesture support which means you gesture "up" to move the page down. If you're on a PC, I still say the above still counts. New users will be confused initially but they will get it. If you're on a Mac, you're...