One of those magazines you acquire because of the cover. Forget the content... the cover is enough to shell out some bucks. Besides, it is an old and discounted issue. P60 is not that much. (1 US Dollar = P55.42) (There goes my Jollibee meal for the day.) Also... I think I need to revive Pixelcatalyst.Lair's POTD. Probably I'll continue things here. That is if I can spare some time. A lot of it is spent on client visits these days. I am usually out of the office which in part explains the minimal number of blogs.

WildFire on 02:56 PM CST [ link ]

Philweavers.net 3.0 went live a couple of days ago. An old interview/feature of The PixelCatalyst was re-uploaded in this new version.

This is an old feature already... some links discussed are non existent anymore... some views are not as 'cool' as they were, but still, some things never change.

There's no more pixelcatalyst.com by the way, I decided a couple years back to stick with the http://pixelcatalyst.plastiqueweb.com url.
WildFire on 04:15 PM CST [ link ]

New Visual FoxPro 9 case studies. (via Ken Levy)

Calvin Hsia: Create thumbnails of all your digital photos in a single table... with Visual FoxPro and GDIPlus Foundation Class.

Speaking of GDIs, here's something to look forward to.
WildFire on 04:03 PM CST [ link ]

Ah... I'm not usually online during weekends, so I'll take this time to greet the beloved essence of my life, who will be celebrating her birthday this Sunday.

Happy birthday, twuddles... : ]

Yeah... her blog is quite idle since the time she dived into Visual FoxPro database-related development.

The Altec Lansing FX6021 speakers that reside near Fahrenheit (that's how she calls her PC), along with an Audigy 2 soundcard and a 160GB hard disk upgrade are parts of the fruits of her first project.

Right now she's developing three more... but I'll leave that to her to blog about.
WildFire on 12:51 PM CST [ link ]

'Only the strongest will survive...'

One of the loudest lines from the second track inside the Halo 2 soundtrack. I haven't played the game though (nor am I into computer games for that matter) but I have a copy of the music that comes with that game.

And I must say it blends well with a coding environment. The type of music that fires up and ignites syntax and semantics formation and other countless music-fueled-sound-intoxicated-coding-related tasks. (see Music... war and neurons)

I'm adding this to my collection of coding soundtracks which include, but is not limited to... Nine Inch Nails/Puddle of Mudd/The Crow soundtracks/Industrial themes, the Swordfish soundtrack (one of the best power-up-your-coding-tracks), Paul Oakenfold beats and trance, Enigma and of course U2 (with that Go Home Slaine Castle concert).

'Only the strongest will survive...'

When it comes to PLs, my bet is on C++, Delphi, Python... and of course, by this time you've guessed it already... Visual FoxPro.

(I'll probably include CSharp once it hits version 3.00 when parts of the legendary FoxPro technology is injected into it.)

But just because I did not mention your choice of PL, doesn't mean it is weak and I have disrespected your soul. VB is still one of the most widely used PLS around and Java, which two of my friends consider a 'very elegant language', has reached Mars already.

... and from what I've heard, 128-bit .asm programs are aiming for the sun.

In the other hand, the aliens invented CGI and PERL, that's why they looks cryptic but are still reliable... and undeniably PHP is fast (which is probably because the faction of aliens who created the specs for that language runs on slower CPUs (do the math and logic.))

But aliens aside, strength, dear friends, comes from within. It doesn't need sky-rocketing budgets for marketing.

Good PLs do not show off. (Though I have heard that 'Nothing demos like the Fox' line from Ken Levy (and from other VFP gurus as well) countless of times already.)

You have to look inside it, test it, feel it and use it to see its strengths.

And bring it to the 'real world'... not just within the confines of your room, bragging about it online, sharing it with other online friends, who by the way, are also dwelling in their own world.

Bring it out to the real user... a real world task.

When it comes to the real world, real life to life database-related applications, Visual Foxpro by far is the strongest.

Heck... it even survived ten years and a month and more of pondering inside an 'are we dead yet?' mindset.
WildFire on 12:32 PM CST [ link ]

Take your time out of the coding screen and have your eyes feast on this.
WildFire on 06:27 PM CST [ link ]

A four part (Part 1A | Part 1B | Part 1C | Part 1D) blog post on sending e-mail from inside your VFP application from the SPS WEBLOG.
WildFire on 04:00 PM CST [ link ]

Chaos in computer performance. If microprocessors don't have any appeal to you... then how about teleportation..?

Andrew MacNeill mentions this VFP9 book. Exactly what the VFP community needs (And the whole 'real world database programming' communities as well).

I've been seeing too much books on the shelves in most bookstores here in our place that makes me do that 'come-on-VFP-is-much-better-than-this' grumble.

Now if only we can see more of these despite the fact that writing computer-related manuals/books is not that financially rewarding.

But not everything in this world is about money.
WildFire on 04:55 PM CST [ link ]

Some nifty WMI+VFP-related codes you can find at Stuart Dunkeld's BLOG.
WildFire on 04:37 PM CST [ link ]

Got hooked with the stuff produced from this for the past few days.
WildFire on 06:42 PM CST [ link ]

Whither .NET (Andy Kramek).

Here's a related post from Craig Bailey... .NET Return on Complexity (ROC).

Good luck... John Koziol.
WildFire on 05:28 PM CST [ link ]