Graphite is a drawing program that allows you to generate Visio-style diagrams using digital ink. I use Visio a lot in my work and, frankly, it's not a very Tablet PC-friendly application. Graphite looks like a great way to augment Visio with and ink-friendly environment for capturing ideas quickly.

More information can be found on the Graphite blog. 

Visual Xpath is a free Visual Studio addin that helps you test your XPATH statements against a source XML file.

One of my current projects is to use Microsoft SSIS to import a complex type XML file into SQL.  As I only need certain types and data from the XML file, an XPATH query using the SSIS XML Task seems like a good idea. Trouble is I have to learn XPath.  I'll add any good references I find to this post.

A good allround tool for XML work is http://www.stylusstudio.com

Reusable Functions for Reading and Writing Variables in SSIS Script Tasks

• It substitutes HTML entities for all non-ascii characters and HTML reserved characters
• It colour-codes the SQL according to the classic style of the Query Analyser
• It substitutes hard spaces for tabs
• it converts all SQL Keywords to upper case

All you need to do is to paste your code in the SQL window, and the results are rendered in the results window. You can click between the windows using the tabs.

SELECT c.*, s.*
FROM tblasd c
left outer join tblS s on s.St = c.Ct
where Office ='London'
order by s.St, c.ca

Becomes......

SELECT c.*, s.*
FROM tblasd c
LEFT OUTER JOIN tblS s ON s.St = c.Ct
WHERE Office ='London'
ORDER BY s.St, c.ca  

Bakers Hall is a fantastic venue for a Lodge meeting and dinner.  It is just round the corner from the Tower of London.  The CITO Lodge is extremely friendly and myself and my 2 guests had a very humorous and enjoyable evening.  Somehow we found our way home by train at about 2am after finishing the Dalwhinnie single malt scotch.

VNC (an abbreviation for Virtual Network Computing) is a great client/server software package allowing remote network access to graphical desktops. http://www.tightvnc.com/intro.html

I'm very fortunate to be recently acquainted with Charles Hughes, the president of the BCS.  He is a very genuine and passionate chap, and I was pleased to be able to join him for his BCS residents dinner at "The Banqueting House" in Whitehall.  It was designed in 1619 and completed in 1622 with the ceiling paneling decorated with paintings by Rubens.  The guests of honor were the Duke of Kent and Lord Sainsbury.  After dinner entertainment was most spectacular with the band of the Royal Corps of Signals marching up and down between the tables playing excellent marches and other tunes.

I never went on a Rugby Tour when I was at school, however Im making up for it now with Marlow Rugby club and my 2 boys.  This is our fourth tour (2 to Brean Sands and last year to Eindhovan).  This year we visited the Hague and Oisterwijk RFC and had a fantastic time.  There were a few hickups, such as when I left Luke in Calais whilst I sailed across the channel with Oliver, but it all turned out fine in the end.

Full details and pictures at http://www.iwaszko.com/RockersRevenge2006

In the versions of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services that are earlier than Windows SharePoint Services SP2, you could write a document library event handler that used the object model without explicit impersonation to access Windows SharePoint Services.

I spent 4 hours wondering why I couldnt get this to work and then found the following MS article saying that SP2 had "changed this behaviour by design !"

Full Article at: Document library event handlers that use object model code without explicit impersonation fail with the "Cannot complete this action" error message after Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 is installed.

(I found it via another very helpfull blog by Mike Walsh of WSS FAQ from a goggle list of WSS updates)