Julien Cheyssial's Blog

I'm moving my blog

My new blog is now at the following URL : ScotchFicelle.com

Blogging Frequency

I haven't been blogging for a while now... Indeed, I'm currently working at Microsoft France and it takes up quite a lot of my time... Moreover, during the past three months, I spent all my spare time working on many different professional projects...

But now I've finished these projects, I now can work on my personal project which will combine a weblog publishing system combined with an RSS aggregator. It's been a year now that I want to release this service and things of all kind prevented me from releasing it... I hope I'll be able to publish it in the next month. Stay tuned !

Some Links #19

Here are some blog posts I flagged:

Weblog Systesm vs. Aggregators : An article explaning why blogging tools don't incorporate an aggregator
RSS, Atom, And the Syndication Standards Dance : Sean Gallagher analyzes current syndication standards
The 22 Imutable Laws of Marketing : Famous Eric Sink is currently publishing some nice posts about Marketing

BlogJet 1.1.0.19 is out

The new beta version of the excellent blogging tool "BlogJet" is out. This new version doesn't crash anymore at startup so I finally can use it again to post on my blogs.

XMLSpy Home Edition is now free

XMLSpy Home Edition is now free (via Scott Hanselman)

WxEdit: A cool HTML Web Editor

A friend of mine is the creator of a really nice WYSIWYG HTML Web Editor : WxEdit. I know there already are a lot of editor out there but this one is really beautiful and has a lot of nice features. It's not ASP.NET specific so you can use it in every web applications using PHP, ASP, etc.

SharpReader VS RSSBandit

I've been using SharpReader for a year now and I recently started to feel the lack of new features, and getting tired of having 200+ Mb of memory used by SharpReader. So I decided to download and test (once again) RSS Bandit, which never really satisfied me (UI was way too slow and froze all the time).

I have to admit that the new version of RSS Bandit is pretty cool and it doesn't seem to freeze anymore like it used to do... It's even damn fast (maybe my new computer is a little for something here). RSS Bandit doesn't consume more than 10Mb of memory and provides some mandatory features for an aggregator, such as the ability to flag an item for follow up, etc.. So I guess I'll stay with RSS Bandit, well, until my own aggregator goes public. Oooops, did I gave a clue on my personal project here ? :)

23" Flat Screen

Please don't make me regret for having bought a dual 17" flat screen... This 23" flat screen is really beautiful !

(via Omar Shahine)

SP2 et .NET Framework

It seems that the .NET Framework will be included in the Windows XP SP2. It would be really nice. Look at this article on "The Register" (last paragraph) : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/xp_sp2_rollout_impends/

MONACO !

WOOOHOOO ! My favourite soccer team just got qualified for the final of the Champion's League, by defeating the londonian Chelsea Football Club (3-1 at Monaco and 2-2 at Chelsea) ! GO MONACO ! GO !

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

The final version of the excellent guide "Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability" has juse been released on MSDN ! IT'S A MUST READ ! GET IT NOW !

Top 10 Programs

Stefano Demiliani tells us about his first 10 installed programs after the first OS installation. Here's my Top 10 (well my Top 15) :

Winamp
WinRAR
EmEditor
XMLSpy
Fantom CD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Acrobat
DivX + VLC (Video Lan)
Nero Burning Rom
SharpReader
SmartFTP
Sothink SWF Decompiler
UltraMon
BlogJet
eMule

Database Design: Table max column number

As I mentionned it in many of my previous posts, I'm currently working on a personal project. Since it's going to manage a lot of informations, tables of my database have a pretty big number of columns (like 30 columns)... I know what you're going to tell me : Normalize your database ! Of course I did and it's normalized, but these 30 fields really are native properties and core data of my entities.

Since the application will have a lot of users and a real need of scalability, I was wondering if 30 columns in a table is a problem or not... Does it have any consequences at the performance level ? If so, I guess I would have to normalize a bit more, but another problem appears here : over-normalization which is also a performance degradation cause... Do you guys have any advices about that ?

UltraMon : a must-have for dual screen owners

When I plugged my second screen on my new computer, I wondered why the Windows task bar didn't expand on both screen.. So I searched around on the internet and I found UltraMon. It's an excellent utility that lets you leverage the power of a dual screen with many different features ! A must have if you are a dual screen owner.

Got a new computer !

Woohoo ! I recently received my new PC. It's a Dell Dimension 8300, with a P4 3.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2 * 74 Gb (10000 tpm), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb RAM), Dual Flat Screen 17", etc... Here are some pictures :

(That's me on my snowboard in the French Alps, at "Les 2 Alpes" station.)

Do you guys have any good wallpapers for dual screen ? I know there are some excellent ones on Digital Blasphemy, but I'm not in the mood to buy them...