foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Visited a client today whose computers are infested with viruses and worms. There was even this one PC that has both NAV and McAfee VirusScan installed plus a DOS based version of PCCillin, but was still badly infected. Funny it was that simple MSCONFIG solution that eradicated the problem. Also it is good to note that sometimes if you’re running computers on win95/98/98SE/ME and you don’t have much resources (CPU and memory), it would be better if you install the older version of NAV which doesn’t hog that much memory and just update the drivers, modules and virus definitions afterwards using LiveUpdate. More on this process and that client visit later.

Foxpro-warps: March 2004 Letter from the Editor from Microsoft Visual Foxpro Developer Center. Now the VS DATA Team blogs as well.

Before i dive into the ‘work.blogs’, let me give you Tamar E. Granor’s website. Tamar wrote that Hacker’s Guide to Visual Foxpro book which i have mentioned more than once in my past blogs. If you have read this book already, or even parts of this book… you’ll know why it is a ‘must have’. Ted Roche and Doug Hennig are also credited for that book.

More or less i have prepared already for tomorrow’s visit/installation. It’s 2AM and here i am just waiting for m.sleep(dreams) to catch up with me and thinking once again about that flushed-out-from-cyberspace thing (See blogs below, dude). Had that occured five years ago when i was still maintaining my first site, i would have fret, roared and called on bolemic celestial beings of cyberspace to drag my site back online. But that’s before… and now’s different. Totally different.

You don’t need visitors to have a good site. You need a good site to have visitors. Content that is directed to your target-ed viewers, is important. Even if it means blob-blob-blobs like this targeted to bored and/or stressed programmers who want some air or just happened to stumble upon this site.

Though i must admit i still have to concretely formulate the direction of this site. The menu in the right part is not even completed (Note to self: complete that this weekend) and i still have to renovate the ‘main site’, which will hold these blogs. For now let me just end this semi-senseless blobberin’ and point you to this link: Mike Lewis Consultants.

And behold! After four years… the new offline version of fox wiki has finally arrived. Available in both HTML (16MB) and CHM (13MB) formats, this my friend, is a vast source of information.

FoxPro website of the day: Neil’s FoxPro Resources.

Don’t you just love it when websites have PDF versions of their articles? I’m such a sucker for PDF these days. We’ll just hope that Ars Technica will give out FREE PDF articles too. If you still prefer the HTML version, since the PDF is a 3++ MB file download, just move your mouse-pointer-butts here: Does Microsoft .Net measure up?

One more thing, though I know this is ancient news already, Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 is now available. I have just upgraded mine from version 5 to version 6 last night.

I’ll be starting this work week by trying out this freeware from Richard Hamm: Project Build Toolbar.

Speaking of tools, you might want to give HTTrack Website Copier a test run… read, read, experiment and learn. I’ll give the explanations afterwards – that’s the way we were taught in college. We were not even using the ‘net then for researches. These days, college students have vast resources, cheaper internet connection, well-written documentations/books, and whirlwinds of distraction that overrides the first three things mentioned.

I will explain later HTTrack‘s connection with learning VisualFoxpro. But i guess you have figured that out already.

As my friend protozoa calls it, ‘infowarp of the night’… Code Guru.

Also this afternoon, after my regular sleep on the office table, i was reading a sample chapter from that Hacker’s Guide to Visual Foxpro 6.0 book, which is one of the FoxPro books included in my ‘things-to-acquire’ list. The section i was reading was indeed a ‘hacker’s guide’… ‘hack’ in it’s original term. It explains beyond the normal description of fields and goes into the inner workings of certain database-related objects. It is _indeed_ a must have book.

You can download more sample chapters at Hentzenwerke Developer’s Studio Apartment. Will Hentzen, the publisher of those books, is one of the most respected person in the Visual Foxpro community. Quite sad to think that he is leaving Visual Foxpro behind.

I was reviewing The 24 Dreaded Questions for Visual Foxpro once again this morning and i realized that even if i am using Visual Foxpro for five years now and Clipper 5.2/’87 for three years before that, there are still a number of questions i cannot answer. Of course, i could experiment right now and have answers to these things but i’d rather leave them as it is until i’ll stumble upon them while using Visual Foxpro. Besides, the quest for learning is best done when the virtue of rushing things is eradicated from one’s system.

If there’s one question in that article which will be left unanswered for a long time, that would be the one that deals on VFP DEBUGGER. I have used debuggers for old Turbo Pascal and C/C++ programs, Clipper’s CLD.exe and even Visual Basic 3.0’s debugger during college days… but i have yet to use the one VFP has.

No… it’s not the nightmares they cause at night that make me refrain from using it… nor the superstitious belief that debuggers are discontinued alien technologies for drilling holes in human brains, but rather, it was this former officemate of ours who would make of fun of us when he sees us using Clipper’s CLD debugger. We have much respect for this linux-lovin’ person that it is still fine for us even if he stands in our side taunting us as we pound those keys, solving pressured problems for clients behind the cashier waiting for us to recompile our programs so that they can check things which can be done the next day.

Listening to the music produced by a certain U2 concert DVD in the background while working on this IUMS project made me wanna shift careers. You know… be a rocker instead of a ‘coder’. (I’m not even giving you a link to U2’s site. You have to be living on a different world for the past three decades for you not to know this band.)

Seriously, i’m back to ‘real’ coding-related stuff this day after spending more than a week doing foxpro-related researches, downloading reference materials from the ‘net and at the same time finishing this site. IUMS stands for Internet Usage Monitoring System, created for three clients, while one school is already using it in two of their internet laboratories. More info on this project will be given in the days to come.

Also… a report template was created this afternoon using VFP’s default Report Designer. But before that, i get to do what i like doing with databases, creating algorithms that transfer records to another database with a different ‘information format’. Too make it simple (and clearer), that means the data entered on a certain USAGE.dbf (LONG LIVE the DBF format!) are being calculated and stored on a different database but this time concentrating on the totals… the total of HS/GS/COLLEGE students accessing the internet per month/day/year categorized by gender… odor… and so on. This would also include Faculty and NTS internet usage and the ratio of the lecture-related visits as compared to their ‘accidental porn clicking’.

Now there… i’m starting to include the work-related logs on this site. But of course, foxpro-related links will always be posted. Like an introduction to ShellExecute() perhaps?

… and at two in the morning, i stumbled upon this Public Foxpro FTP Site which contains lots of Foxpro related tools and examples, service packs from version 3.0 to 8.0 and a directory named ‘WHY_FOXPRO’ which contains multimedia files and presentations and a number of articles which probably tells why FoxPro rocks. But i think we know that part already. (“,)

I downloaded these RAS/G2 Crafted VFP Developer Tools from Rick Schummer‘s site last night. These tools are also available at G2Tools.com along with HackCX Pro and ViewEditor Pro. I still have to test implement it… maybe after i’m done with my IUMS project.

What is KBAlertz.com?

“kbAlertz.com is an e-mail notification system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night, and e-mails you when updates or additions are made to the technologies, you subscribe to.”

Check it out: kbAlertz.com

What if MS announced that the last upgrade of Visual Foxpro will be in 2005? Great discussion going there… and i strongly believe it doesn’t matter that much. More thoughts on this topic later. Visual Foxpro 8.0’s extended support will expire on March 31, 2010 not 2005. You can check the other Developer Tools Product Lifecycle dates in that link too.

Besides Europa (VF9) is coming late this year… and we expect it not only to include more features, but to extend Foxpro’s Product Lifecycle as well.

Have you ever find yourself wanting to overwrite the main .exe file of your database program but can’t do so because someone else in the network is using it and you get that windows sharing violation error..? Probably yes. Normally you would call each of the users and ask them to quit. Just imagine the hassle it would give. Magnify the problem with the amount of users accessing your program.

Now here’s a nifty loader solution to that problem as presented by Mike Lewis.

Early this day, I was tinkering with this ListView Control sample demonstration. It’s just a 142KB file but you’ll learn some new tricks from it.

From the creators of WEBConnection, the engine with a ‘fat’ customer list, comes HTML Help Builder for your application and components documentation.

Now i don’t have to click countless HTML links and save them on my hard drive one by one, i’ll just look forward for a free Fox.wikis offline version in CHM/HTML format this 1st of March 2004. Savvy, eh?

There are wiki offline mirror sites but these files are quite ‘old’ (06/03/2000) already.

SEXY Foxpro tools of the day: Developer Tools at Kirtland Associates Inc. The calendar control that does not use ActiveX component is worth checking out… the source is even included for further customization.

This is old post, around two months old, but heck… it is worth reading. Andrew MacNeill highlights Top 10 FoxPro-related news of 2003.

Hmmm… Microsoft plans to post the public beta of Europa at MSDN this coming June of 2004. Something to look forward to.

Have fun experimenting and using WIN32 functions in Visual FoxPro.