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The Daily Grind 594

By Mike Gunderloy
Tuesday, April 5, 2005

This spring's royalty checks say it's time to concentrate on projects other than computer books for a while.

Software

Easy Assets .NET : Demo - Now you can try out this ASP.NET-based asset-management system yourself.
Inquire4D - Speech recognition and text to speech tools for the 4D database system.
Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator - A solution that involves running software to drop your rights before doing dangerous things. I prefer the solution that involves being smarter than a box of dirt, but some people would rather trust technology.
Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Internet Information Services (IIS) - If you're running IIS and Reporting Services, this helps you make pretty reports from your IIS log files.
C# Toolkit - Recursion Software has put together a library of data structures, algorithms, function objects, predicates, and other goodies. $299, but you can download the nearly 2000 pages of API documentation for free if you want to see what it includes.
CruiseControl.NET 0.9 - This .NET continuous integration project is actually starting to be in danger of hitting version 1.0 soon!

What's New in ADO.NET 2.0 for SQL Developers - A quick summary from Dino Esposito.
Windows Server System Reference Architecture (WSSRA) - More information than most of us will ever need about setting up Windows servers. I really should brush up on this stuff in my copious spare time.
Simulation Technology - Microsoft finally has more info out on the simulation questions on the MCP exams, including a web-based demo of the simulated Windows exam questions (twice removed from reality!). (via CertCities)

Why I'm Not Smoking the Podcasting Dope - Darren Barefoot sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.
Brian Nantz wrote to point out that That Indigo Book is not a blog morphing into a book, but a blog hosting a beta version of a book that's going to be published anyway, in hope of community feedback and a better final product.Sorry for any confusion.
Why is it that so many managers have missed this crucial lesson? - The secretGeek wonders. I don't know the answer, but the observation goes a long way towards explaining why I remain mainly self-employed.

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.