Fear and Loathing

Here’s the slide deck and links from my presentation at SharePoint Connections last week “Rabbit Test: Building Unit Testing Web Parts with TDD and SharePoint”.

Slides from Presentation

Text file for demos

NUnit Demo Code
Northwind TDD Demo Code
SharePoint Mock Code

Please be sure to read the text file before you run the demos and let me know if you have any problems!

Here’s the slide deck and links from my presentation at SharePoint Connections last week “Hard Core Logo: A Deep Dive into SharePoint Branding”.

Slides from Presentation

Resources referenced
Branding SharePoint Portal Server Part 1
Branding SharePoint Server Portal Part 2
Customization Site for SharePoint
Heather Solomons Blog

Tools used
Style Under Cursor CEWP
TagWalker
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
SharePoint Style Designer
SharePoint Predefined Theme Selectors

Just a note about the last item. This is an aspx page that I have but I can’t track down where I got it from. If you’re the author, let me know. Just drop this file in anywhere (the LAYOUTS directory is a good place as it’s accessible anywhere) and point a page viewer web part at it. It’ll render all the CSS classes on your SPS/WSS page using the styles that are available.

Enjoy!

Just a bit of a diversion for a second while I get the DevConnections postings up. I’ve always found that, from time to time, you just have to pave that XP desktop. Even if it’s your main one like I have, every year or two it just gets so screwed up with so many apps being installed/uninstalled/reconfigured that it really needs a fresh restart. I’ve always found that I just pave it over with a new install of whatever the current OS is (or maybe take a leap and run Vista, but I want to be productive here so I might save that for my laptop) and after the install, everything works lickety split.

However I think I’m at that crossroads again but don’t want to take the leap in the lions mouth.

I have a zillion programs installed so it’ll be a few days of just figuring out what I have, what I want, and where those disks are. That alone is telling me to keep my current setup going.

I have gobs of data with My Documents filling up about 150gb on a 350gb drive. This would include a giant collection of eBooks, MP3s that keep me sane, pictures that I really should upload to Flickr and delete them from my system (but I can’t!), and a host of other snippets of stuff.

All of which is just too much to backup onto tape/cd/dvd/marsupial. I mean, I would need a blank 350gb drive (about $250 bucks these days) just to back everything up which might be an option, but even the backup will take forever and a day.

There’s just so many things you have to worry about. Favorites, cookies, pst files, local settings, application data, configuration files, wallpapers, etc. The list goes on. Some of these things are just plain impossible to actually backup (try backing up your local settings folder when Windows is running). Also try restoring some of this stuff as it’s in a weird state that sometimes you can’t just copy it in from a backup (sometimes you can, but not always like cookies).

So anyone with suggestions or ideas? What do you guys do. I mean, I know my system has dust bunnies and I’ve tried a million of the “clean your system better than Windows can” products, but nothing really works that well. The only way I ever find to clean your system is to pave it and re-install. Maybe someone has some alternative options I could explore.

Okay, I've had to set the comments to be moderated for now. I've been hit the last few days but some jerk off maggot spambot who enjoys filling my blog comments with links to penis enhancement drugs. The first batch didn't work so like I really need more of those. Anyways, comments will be moderated for now until the drugs stop pouring in. Hey guys, where is our CS upgrade for weblogs.asp.net?

Hi guys, I’m just in the middle of an install of Vista (yeah I know, what a great time to pull that rabbit out of my butt) and have two blog postings to do (probably one of them later tonight once the external drive is free from being backup slave). The first is the slide deck and links to tools for my branding session I gave and the second is the TDD session I gave. No code for the first session but links to all the tools. The second session has all the code for the following demos:

• NUnit with SharePoint
• TDD with SharePoint (complete with the Northwind site data)
• Mocking with SharePoint using PocMock

Back later!

We survived the day yesterday after miles of walking, pounds of eating, and thousands of screaming rugrats. Maybe a post on the days events is yet to come but since we couldn’t convince the Disney organization to switch to SharePoint from their silly DisneyPoint software, this blog isn’t the place for it.

Of course, I can’t get that freakin’ song out of my head right now.

You can check out the full set of pictures here on my Flickr page.

Now for a day of security probes, checking in bags, flying around the country, airport terminal food, and landing on concrete sometime 12 hours later.

DevConnections is over and we’re off today to visit the Magic Kingdom. No blog entry later on how Goofy I got, but check my Flickr site for pics (DevConnections Set, Orlando Set). Then tommorow it’s airplane day as we spend the better part of the day in large metal tubes floating over the planet as we return to the western part of Canada and Earth again.

It was great seeing old friends (Julie Lerman, Brad Smith, Bob Mixon, Michael Herman, Daniel Larson, etc.) and meeting new ones (Mark Miller, Carl Franklin, Rick Strahl, Scot Hillier, etc.). Hope to see more people at TechEd 2006 in Boston with many more blogs in between.

Back inna few days!

Well I survived my first DevConnections, hope you had the same experience. This day has been pretty busy with two sessions, a few hours in the sun and some R&R. I’m wiped and just taking it easy tonight as tommorow we’re off to the Magic Kingdom to live amongst the screaming kids.

I have two blog entries I need to put together for each session that you’ll be getting in next couple of days. Each will contain the updated slide deck for each presentation I did (the decks I was using are modified from the CD in your bag), the source code and files that I put together in each session, and links to all the tools I used in each session and where you can get them. Like I said I just need a couple of days to recover, visit Pooh, and put together the notes for you guys.

Thanks for everyone who came out today. My second session on branding SharePoint seemed to go better than the morning one, but then I was a little more awake and the demos were a little more co-operative with me. Hope you enjoyed them if you were able to catch them and you’ll be seeing follow-up posts with more TDD, branding and SharePoint stuff to come!

Back tommorow with lots of crazy pictures of Goofy and us trying to get Disney to go SharePoint.