Check out CloneVDI for resizing fixed size virtual machine file from VirtualBox.

The tool also has a compact option which  is really easy to use.

Sweet! Saves lots of time. This is the best solution I found for these tasks.

I made the drive to Ajax today, and I’m glad I did. The all day meeting covered, OData + WCF + Entity Framework,  WebMatrix, .Net Nuke, and MVC 3.  The all day session is much better than little bits at an evening meeting. However, more swag is needed. After all it is all day

Start with an open mind on WebMatrix. Notice how Razor carries over into MVC3! Razor scripting is cool. MVC3 is just plain coding efficiency…

Thanks for the great day guys!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Released for On-Premises and Partner-Hosted Deployments. I’ve upgraded my development virtual machine to the new release yesterday. It was an uninstall and re-install for me. There were some issues with the Outlook client update, but all are resolved now.  if you have any Outlook Client connection issues look at the logs first to save you some time. My issue was with the web services looking at an incorrect port, even though the server test passed in the Configuration Wizard. Then the server could not be found message appears later in  the dialog.   This was easy to fix after I noticed the error message in the log. I just changed the port for the web site back to 5555 (the default) as I had changed to port 80 after the install using IIS.

On this cold and rainy winters night I am building up a CRM2011 beta install into a virtual machine for evaluation and learning.

I purchased a new laptop for work. It’s a Dell Studio 1747 model i7 core pc. It looks like Dell is not making the i7 version 17” display Studio’s anymore as we could not get one fulfilled for the office (order cancelled by Dell.) I purchased one from the retail channels as I just wanted an easy migration from my Studio 1735 dual core. The new Dell is nice. There are advantages to the newer pc like 1600 by 900 vs. 1400 by 900 display, 8 gig of ram vs. 4, blu-ray player,  a bit lighter, and perhaps longer battery life. I’ve ordered a backlit keyboard, Intel 5300 wireless LAN card, and disk drive cage to bring the laptop up to where I want it.  The build quality looks to me to be a bit less that the Studio 1735. More plastic, but then it’s lighter. I would expect a working life of 2 years from the new model.

I removed FTP and some shares from the new web server and implemented Webdav for updating the webs. Works well with Expression Web 4 publishing.

Don’t forget to open the firewall port, if you don’t use port 80 for the service. Also, secure Webdav folders/webs using a unique user account with limited permissions.

You can also create a Wedav only web to be used like a FTP folder. When doing this I found that a web config file displays in the folder, so I just made the file hidden to change that.

I’ve been having a look at the modeling tools in VS2010 of late, and like what I see.  The book Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010 has been my guide (ISBN 978-0-470-48426-5)

Microsoft probably purchased the tools from someone, I don’t know. It is nice having them all in VS2010 (Ultimate edition.) I do like the Microsoft specific slant (domain specific language as the book says.) So far I have tried use case, activity, sequence, component, class, and layer diagrams. I used the VS2010 feature pack add-in (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-ca/vstudio/ff655021.aspx) to generate base class code from the class models (not in the book.) Cool…

I attended a TFS last week here in Toronto. It was a one day high level session put on by Microsoft and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers

The online labs are a neat new thing for this old guy. I like them. The speaker was knowledgeable and communicated well. Boot camps are my kind of learning.

I ordered a book titled “Professional Application Lifecycle Management with VS2010” (Wrox press)  hoping it will flesh out the topics. It looks like it will…and even covers the architecture tools of VS2010.

VS2010 Ultimate from my MSDN subscription offers tools for the complete life cycle. I’m stoked that the proper use and reuse of modeling tools will help with the complex software projects of these times.

TFS 2010 loaded on the development laptop now. I’m at a boot camp on TFS and it looks way cool. So much content in this product..

I have gotten SP 2010 running on the Windows7 64 bit laptop now.

Follow these instructions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx

Now if I only had 8 gig of RAM in the laptop :-)