Yes, I finally installed Office 2007. It looks great and the new ribbon does need some "getting used to" but I'll manage. The only thing that drove me a bit crazy was that first it didn't want to install. Seemed that the installed conflicted with the installation of Expression Web Designer Beta. After uninstalling that everything went just fine. Pity though that the installer couldn't immediately tell me which program was causing the conflicts.

Anyway: Merry Christmas to all!!

Grz, Kris.

Ok, if you like the new Vista Aero cursors but don't have Vista installed yet you can download them here. Just unzip the file in the c:\windows\cursors\ location. I noticed that I had to move the cursors still to that location before I let the .reg file run in order to get them installed as being the current cursor set to use on Windows XP.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening VISUG, a .NET related Belgian user group in which I participate, organised a geek dinner in Antwerp. 12 participants showed up and we had a blast. Talking about work, tech stuff, .NET (of course), comics, movies, ... There were some people I haven't met before so it was also great to socialize with those as well. The food, spare ribs à volonté, was also delicious and if you visit Antwerp on an occasion I can recommend the Amadeus restaurant.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I attended with several of my friends the concert of Clouseau, a famous Flemish band. The concert itself was great with a terrific atmosphere in the Antwerp Sportspalace. After that we went further celebrating the 30th anniversary of one of the gang. I was the designated Bob of the evening, driving everyone home safely. Luckely I don't need alcohol to enjoy a good time so I didn't mind.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday I attended the meeting of Visug, a Belgian user group of which I'm a member, with as meetings subject Exception handling and logging. It wasn't a traditional way of presenting but was more like an open discussion which became quite lively at moments. Especially when we reached the stage of discussing the differences between logging and auditing.

It was very interesting to hear different oppinions because of the mixed audiance: architects, developers and even an IT pro who wanted to learn more about .NET and see what the impact could be to the servers he maintains.

I'm already looking forward to the Geek Dinner next week in Antwerp with the fellow members of Visug. If you want more information you can take a look at the site.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday evening I attended an MSDN Technical Evening about VSTO 2005 Second Edition presented by Patrick Tisseghem of the company U2U. Although it's been a very long time since I developed some small things with VSTO it was an interesting meeting to attend. Especially when you look at what's available with the latest VSTO, although for the real cool stuff it seems we have to wait for the Orcas Release of Visual Studio. We saw several techniques, the good and the bad, of creating a simple add in for Office 2007 and how to make one for Outlook. One of my collegues, one that almost whole the time spends his development time with Office, was glad to hear that VBA isn't the big thing anymore but .NET languages like C# and VB.NET are the way to go.

Grz, Kris.

Today I went to see the A & B ranked badminton competitors in the Flemish Badminton Championship with my badminton partner Guy, who's also a friend of mine for more than 26 years now. Since I play the sport myself it was nice to see the people who are far better than me at work. I just like to play it recreational, although we also go for the win of course . Nothing as good as playing a couple of sets against equals after a day of sitting in front of a computer screen.

If you don't know the sport or haven't tried it yet I can really recommend it. It requires technique, you use practically every musscle in your body and it helps you to focus better.

You can learn more about it on wikipedia.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday I attended a workshop about WPF, WCF & WF given at Ordina. One of the presenters used a little tool that I saw Ingo Rammer use also a couple of months ago. The tool itself's called ZoomIt and is able to zoom in during a presentation and also provides a pen to draw on the screen while viewing.

It's free and if you're into presenting you can definitely use such a handy tool.

Grz, Kris.