Eric den Doop

LinkedIn: Are you connected?

2008-09-19T07:22:00Z

In the last few months, I received a number of invitations from friends and VFP developers to join their LinkedIn Network. After giving this some thought, I decided to go ahead and sign up. I was surprised to see many names of other people who are hanging out here, including Andy, Marcia, Doug, Barbara, Anders, Mike and Boudewijn.

You can connect to my personal network here:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ericdendoop

I also set up a LinkedIn Group called <B>Foxite Community for Visual FoxPro Developers</B>. You can join this group here:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=854397

If you don't have a LinkedIn account yet, you can sign up for free here:
https://www.linkedin.com/secure/register?trk=hb_join

Free SEDNA Controls from DBI Technologies

2007-10-31T06:40:00Z

DBI is pleased to be offering VFP developers a special added bonus with this the last Microsoft release of Visual FoxPro. The following 8 DBI commercial components are ready for your development projects. This selection of SEDNA controls are fully licensed and come with a royalty-free distribution agreement for each appropriately registered VFP 9.0 SEDNA developer. More info: here

FoxPro Software Developer Event in Bunnik, Netherlands

2007-10-30T16:25:00Z

Here's your chance to meet VFP MVP's Rick Schummer and Doug Hennig. Both gents will present a number of sessions. More info and registration (in Duch) here: http://www.sdn.nl/Default.aspx?tabid=274.

Enjoy.

Web 2.0 does not work on Vista...

2007-07-18T18:12:00Z

but it does work on the Mac... This clip is SO FUNNY :).

http://www.youtube.com/v/IdmnxcClEMc

Just sit back and enjoy the 15 minutes of fun.

Prague Visual FoxPro DevCon 2007

2007-06-22T09:06:00Z

The Prague VFP DevCon 2007 was the very first multi-day VFP only conference I attended. Igor Vit and his team have done a wonderful job and the English speakers were fantastic (I'm sure the other speakers were too, but for obvious reasons I did not attend any Czech sessions).

Igor also organized a guided tour in Prague for speakers, MVP’s and other VIP’s. Our guide, Martina, was a very friendly lady who took us to some nice places in Prague and even arranged a private visit to the Municipal building. The city of Prague is old and very beautiful. You should really go there if you’ve never been there.

It was very nice to again meet up with Andy and Marcia and Simon Arnold. It was great to finally meet Steven Black of the FoxPro Wiki. Despite the fact that it was too hot in the restaurant’s basement, I really enjoyed the dinner we had there with my buddy Hans and Foxite Members Simon Arnold of the UK and Juan Antonio Santana and his wife from Spain.

Sessions I attended are:
- The Technical and Business Case for Visual FoxPro by Steven Black. This is a must-see session so whenever Steven is speaking in your area, you should not hesitate and see him. Steve is a fantastic speaker and he’s got some great tips and knowledge to share with you.
- Text Handling in VFP by Steven Black.
- Metadata to the Max by Andy Kramek. This is a very interesting session where Andy explains a different kind of software design, planning and development using metadata. Also a must-see.
- Best Practices for Working with VFP Data and Best Practices for Working with Remote Data by Andy Kramek
- Modeling Hierarchies and More than just your typical Office Automation by Marcia Akins.

If you have never been to a developer conference before, then you should really consider doing so. No matter if you consider yourself an expert.

- go to DevCons
- join or set up a local User Group or Special Interest Group
- get online and join one or more Online Communities

There are so many knowledgable people around the (online) globe you can learn from. Invest in knowledge. Invest in yourself. Like Steve says: this is all about YOU.

I'd like to thank Igor and his team again for a super DevCon.

I've setup a special photo album webpage here: http://www.dendoop.nl/prague2007.

Yes, Britain's got talent! (update June 15)

2007-06-12T16:28:00Z

Found this clip on YouTube. It's about cell phone salesman Paul Potts who sings the opera Nessun Dorma in a UK talent show called Britain's Got Talent.

Truely amazing what this amateur can do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA
Here's Luciano's (longer and ofcourse better) version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUCPKdGcrk

-- update June 15 --:
So this guy has made it to the finals. Kudos. Here's his semi-final performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDB9zwlXrB8
And here's Bocelli's rendition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhh8MaRnzMc.

Visual FoxPro DevCon Prague 2007

2007-05-02T12:14:00Z

Microsoft Czech Republic and DAQUAS will organize the 10th year of a conference for developers who create applications using Microsoft Visual FoxPro. "Visual FoxPro DevCon, Praha 2007" will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on 19th - 21st June 2007.

You will find more information on the conference Web site: http://www.daquas.cz/fox/devcon2007an

Visual FoxPro DevCon, Praha 2007 will comprise of approximately 30 sessions out of which more than 10 are presented in English by worldwide respected FoxPro experts. This year is the 10th year of the event and it has been the largest out of any other FoxPro conferences worldwide for last several years!

In one phrase, Visual FoxPro DevCon in Prague means just

a different conference experience
you will meet Visual FoxPro experts for a fraction of the cost of other conferences
(Prague attendance fee is around 100 EUR; including meals and the developer party!)
you will get in touch with hundreds of fox community developers from the Czech and Slovak Republics
you may visit Prague, one of the most beautiful cities in the world

If you are interested to find out more about past years of the conference, you may have a look at http://www.utcoverage.com/Prague/2006/

For additional information about Visual FoxPro DevCon, Praha 2007 you may also use following e-mail address mailto:devcon@daquas.cz.

My buddy Hans and I will be there. Let me know if you plan to go too.

Me Tagged?

2007-01-12T14:51:00Z

OK so Cesar wants to know more about me... [and so does Andrew (update January 14)]. Well here are 5 things only a few people know:

When I was seventeen, I created a fake crime scene on our high school playground, in the middle of the night. There were police signs and a chalk drawing of a dead body. It was great to see the WTF-look on the principal's face the next day when he arrived at school. The joke got even better when the police arrived to investigate my murder scene.
The island of Bali (Indonesia) is my favorite vacation destination. Go there if you love good food, friendly people and beautiful nature.
I haven't started a new Visual FoxPro desktop application project in almost three years.
I watch the episodes of CSI and 24 in bed on my Ipaq pocket pc.
My favorite actors are Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Al Pacino.

So now I guess it's my turn to tag others right?
Boudewijn Lutgerink
Ken Murphy (he signed up for a weblog here only recently so this would make a great first post for him!)
Kok Kiet
Andy Kramek
Simon Arnold (he has been away from his blog way too long ;))

Windows Vista Ultimate

2006-11-18T12:11:00Z

I just finished installing Windows Vista Ultimate RTM on my Dell Inspiron 9400 dev laptop. I used to run Windows XP and Windows 2003 on this machine.

I was impressed by the fact that Windows recognized ALL my hardware, including the onboard WIFI and bluetooth radio's. This was not the case when I installed XP on this laptop.

I think it's going to take a while until I'm used to all the new icons though.

After I've installed Visual FoxPro and VS2005, I'm going to create an Acronis image of my drive and then I think I'm going to relax for a while and take off with my Cessna 172. Yes, the other day I received a copy of the Flight Simulator X and this looks like a really cool sim.

It's time...

2006-11-18T09:57:00Z

I'm proud to announce Foxite 5.0. New features include:

- Cross browser support: the site should now behave almost the same in any popular browser (IE6, IE7, Firefox/Mozilla, Opera, Linux Konqueror).
- Resizable thread window.
- Thread date range filter is increased to 60 days (was 30).
- The Author search textbox in thread filter window has been replaced with a Keyword search textbox (you can still enter a Name).
- You can submit FAQs, Tips and Tricks etc to the new FAQ section at http://www.foxite.com/faq/. The new FAQ section has an RSS feed: http://www.foxite.com/faq/rss.aspx
- You can specify your local culture settings in your account options. Date fields will automatically use your culture's date formatting rules and language.
- There's a new Black theme.
- You can now submit feedback to Downloads, Articles and FAQ's.
- Sticky Threads to keep important threads visible and accessible at all times.
- Borislav Borissov has optimized a number of VFP queries and should now execute up to 3 times faster than the old version.
- Auto Login: the site will now automatically create a user session if it can authenticate logon information stored in a cookie.
- There's a new "Open Thread In Forum" button on the archive pages (available only if you're logged on).
- Expanded/collapsed state of tree nodes is now preserved (server-side) (IE6+, Netscape, Mozilla/FireFox only, still working on support for Opera).
- Ratings page now also displays the number of postings.
- You can now see who's rated a message by clicking the "# Ratings" link on the message reading page.
- Added new account option called "Category Sort Order". With this option, you can change the way the Category dropdownlists are ordered.
- Since foxite requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser, the site will now display a warning message if you login while javascript is disabled.
- When refreshed, the Thread Window now sets focus to the last selected node. Unfortunatly, I cannot instruct the browser where to display that node after the refresh. IE and FireFox display the node near the bottom of the treeview, while Opera displays it in the middle.
- I've removed the line decoration from the links in the treeview
- I now display your Drafts in the treeview. Your drafts are not visible to other members. I'm doing this because too often, people think they have posted a message, but forgot to click the "Post This Message" button on the Preview window.

I'd like to thank the beta testers for giving me feedback. I'd also like to thank Infragistics for providing me with a complimentary license of their NetAdvantage controls library that I'm using on the new site.

The new site has been rewritten from the ground up. No doubt I left a number of bugs for you to find :). Please report problems to the "Foxite: Feedback" category or contact me by e-mail: eric@foxite.com.

Enjoy!

Google's UPS Tracking

2006-11-16T07:27:00Z

I accidentally pasted a UPS Tracking ID into Google's search box and hit Enter. Google returned a link to the UPS Tracking Information page. Cool feature!

Try it yourself: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1ZX580116610863280

Cool new network toy: Maxtor Shared Storage NAS

2006-11-02T14:18:00Z

The other day I picked up a Maxtor Shared Storage NAS system from the local computer shop. This system has a 500 gig hard drive, two USB connectors and a 100mbit ethernet LAN connector.

After I hooked up the MSS to my network switch, it automatically requested an IP address from my DHCP server and it worked.

The NAS has a web interface to configure shares and users and other maintenance tasks. If you go to the management site, you can assign a work group / domain name. If you do that, the Maxtor shows up in the windows network environment and pretends that it is a normal computer. As you can see in the screen shot, the device can also share printers. Just connect your USB printer to the Maxtor and there is your network printer!

I did install the software that comes with the box, but you really don't need it. It's just another crappy icon in the notification area sitting there doing nothing.

If you connect your USB memory stick to the USB port, the MSS shares the memory stick with the rest of the network.

Microsoft Recommends.... Download Visual FoxPro!

2006-10-26T17:53:00Z

Take a look at the MS downloads homepage (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en)

SDN FOXPRO DEVELOPER EVENT - NETHERLANDS

2006-10-13T07:17:00Z

- when: 13 november 2006
- where: Mercure, Bunnik (near Utrecht)
- speakers: YAG, Beth Massi, Uwe Habermann and Venelina Jordanova
- more info: http://www.sdn.nl/Default.aspx?tabid=257 (in Dutch)

Free ZIP library for Visual FoxPro

2006-10-01T13:22:00Z

VFP MVP Craig Boyd has released a free ZIP FLL library for Visual FoxPro. Read more about it here:
http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com/SPSBlog/PermaLink,guid,9d77301c-460e-44ec-abd5-855d06829b31.aspx