In early December I had an idea about running a developer event which will run across 3 cities and be available online to bridge the gap between developer communities and speakers. With a little help this event has become a reality and will be called DevRally.

I have moved hosting a few times in the last 2 years, however the lastest move is possibly the most exiciting since Diago.co.za and all my other sites, including the Eskhaleni corporate sites and my wifes blog HoneyB.co.za is now hosted on a VPS supplied by UltimateHosts.

There seems to be a big twitter frenzy around desktop configurations lately, and I have spent some time getting mine tweaked to exactly what I need everyday. Doing some small changes and using the right software, you can get a complete minimalistic desktop quickly and easily.

SA Developer.Net has finally gotten a new home after more then a month offline. This has again highlighted the importance of sponsorship to keep these communities alive and well, even with the current recession.

I decided that it was time for the home network to get an upgrade, since testing the new Visual Studio 2010 TFS, developing 3 new websites, sky rocketing bandwidth usage and overworked machines where beginning to take its toll. Unfortunately I should have seen my wife packing up her MacBook and moving to the lounge as a sign that this was not going to be anywhere as simple as I claimed it would be.

With Tech-Ed 2009 arround the corner I am extremely proud to announce that Dave Coates, the Port Elizabeth community lead has taken on the challenge to run and manage the 2009 Community Lounge. Dave will be managing one of the most exciting parts of the Tech-Ed event.

I have not updated my blog for over a week, however the lack of updates where do to moving the domain and all my other hosting solutions to a new provider in the United States. Because of a few new requirements in my development projects I needed to use provider that support Windows Server 2008 and IIS7, as well as Framework 3.5 SP1 and Asp.net Mvc.

I have come to realize there is confusion around what is required for running 64Bit guests virtual machines. I put together a wiki entry at work on this topic recently and decided to publish it on my blog as well.

During Tech-Ed I was interviewed by Ruari Plint about South African Communities, in particular on what it means to be a community lead and also on what challenges communities face. The video has been posted on the Tech-Ed Online website.

During a recent career evening held at my offices, the question came to mind about the misconception created to students about success in the IT Industry. Althought there is a few success stories, the impression is somehow created that success happens early in the industry with the least amount of effort. Does the fact that successful individuals always talk at these events the reason for this perception?

We are in the middle of planning for Tech-Ed 2008 and this year the communities are high on the agenda with the biggest ever community lounge planned. Please join us at the Durban ICC for 3 days of technology and information sharing brought by some of the industries best.

While purchasing licenses for ecto for myself and my wife I made a very stupid mistake when registering, a mistake I did not pick up myself but a helpful support person did.

Overall overview on Tech-Ed 2007 held at Sun City. The event was packed with 2000 attendees and the speakers and sessions where filled with an amazing array of new information from the Microsoft Stable.

Another life update this time featuring information about project statuses, networking hassles and naughty puppies.

I downloaded and installed the official release of Vista, and althought I am very happy with the operating system, the lack of driver support from Acer is shocking considering that they are selling computers listed as Vista ready.

When developing software for Windows Mobile there is a way to connect ActiveSync to the device emulator in Visual Studio for testing.