Just spent the last few days immersed (drowning?) in ASP and PHP scripting on some legacy code maintenance.

Response.Write debugging.....mmmmmm!

Oldish news now but it's the first chance I've had to play with it.

If you miss the VS.NET 2002/3 web project concept or are migrating larger legacy projects to VS 2005 then this should make your day.

The ASP.NET team have released a preview of the Web Application Project for VS 2005.

One of the neat things is that unlike in VS.NET 2003/3 the dependancy on FPSE to open/edit projects is gone, and gone is the fragile .webinfo file and hardcoded http:// paths in the solution file.

Remember it's a preview and so isn't feature complete yet.

Check out Scott Guthries blog entries:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/12/07/432630.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/12/16/433374.aspx

Web Application Project website:

http://webproject.scottgu.com/Default.aspx

Briefly....been back from NZ for a week. Decided to ditch blogging when I was there and the last week has been hellish with a bit of flu + jetlag so I couldn't be arsed.

Anyway NZ is ace.

Here's a couple of photo's :

This is looking up Milford Sound towards the west coast. They do a pretty ace boat trip and submarine thing. The weather was pretty amazing, it usually rains quite a lot:

Got through quite a lot of this too:

Anyway....more later.

There's been a bit of blog drought the last fortnight. Didn't write down my playlists for the last couple of shows and the recordings are off being ripped by a mate for my forthcoming trip to NZ - apparently my neices and nephew are big fans :). However I do remember playing these last Friday:

Neds Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television
The Go Team - Bottle Rocket
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Blackbox Recorder  - It's Only the End of the World (sounds a bit ominous given the 24hr plane ride to NZ next week)
Pure Reason Revolution's  - The Intention Craft
The Fall - Clasp Hands
The Fall - Telephone Thing
The Research  - C'mon Chameleon
Subway Sect - Ambition
Electralane - Eight Steps

I did an outside broadcrast thingy for the station on Sunday too with my mate Eric for the Pitlochry 10km run. That was a laugh and a half but also technically interesting as well to see how a radio station gets a mobile unit (bloke chasing/commenting on the runners in a radio car), their outside broadcast unit (read as stage like a radio 1 roadshow but with the behind the scenes stuff full of all sorts of mixing, switching and relay kit) and the studio all to hang together in an apparently seemless way to the listener...fascinating in a geeky sort of way.

Anyway....it's hard to believe it's only 5 days to go before Dave (long time pal from primary school) and me head off to NZ and right down to the bottom on South Island to a place near Wyndham in Southland NZ.

The intinerary is -  Edinburgh -> Heathrow -> Los Angeles -> Auckland -> Christchurch. The original plan was to fly down to Invercargill from Christchurch but I decided that the chance to catch some NZ scenery would be better placed by renting a one way car rental from Christchurch down to Invercargill over three days. The plan now is to drive from Christchurch to Lake Wanaka  where my wee bro's (Steve) wife's folks have a place and stop off and hit the pubs and generally soak up the NZ atmosphere.

Then we head my down to Wyndham and the rental gets dropped off on Sunday lunchtime at Invercargill airport. After that we're picking up Steve's motor from Invercargill airport (they're leaving it there for us - Dad's been over a couple of times this year and that seems to work quite well) and then wending our way up to Steve and Kath's place on Friday or Saturday. Although I'm a crap flyer - I've only been to the States (once), Germany (once - business), France (school trip), Amsterdam (a few times on business when I worked for Telecity) and Copenhagen (also with TeleCity on my RIPE registry training course) - I'm really looking forward for getting lost in NZ when we get there. I'm looking forward taking wrong turns, wierd map layouts and basically stumbing our way to Steve's in such a far away place that it might as well seem like going to the moon at the moment.

Anyhoo....the excitement hasn't quite kicked in yet. I'm a bit rubbish at handing my life over to a glorified metal tube with sticking out bits packed full of aviation fuel and jet engines that might as well, as far as I'm concerned, appear to be left overs from the 1950's space race. That whole bit fills me with apprehension and outright bloody fear.

The oddest/fearful/awesome thing I reckon will be flying several thousand miles over the pacific with barely a landmass below and then crossing the international dateline. The dateline malarky has got me totally confused. But all I care about is touching down in Christchurch and jumping into the rental and doing some exploring next Wednesday? Thursday? UK Time ? NZ time? I've no idea.

I'll also be spending some time down in Stewart Island at a place called Halfmoon Bay where Kath (Steve's wife) comes from. The connection to the internet is stonking for the residents (10Mb connectivity apparently) which is good because although I'm over in NZ for 6 weeks, four of those weeks are working remotely and two weeks are actual holiday.

Anyhoo...stay tuned for photo's and general rambling about the trip.

Kev

I recently stopped drinking tea and coffee after some recent unpleasant side effects. I've been drinking coffee for years and just all of a sudden I became intollerant to anything with caffeine in it. Pretty damn annoying since I love coffee.

Anyway a friend John suggested a replacement - Red Bush Tea. Lets face it drinking just water all day is pretty boring, I'm not a big fan of sugary drinks and decaf just doesn't taste right.  It takes wee bit of getting used to but if made in a pot and allowed to infuse for at least 5-6 minutes it's actually pretty damn good. Good for you too apparently because it's high in anti-oxidants etc and it's very refreshing. The trick is also to have a tea pot just for Red Bush and not use it for regular tea because normal tea leaves (no pun intended) tannins and goop in the pot that affects the taste of RB and it's healthy goodness (apparently).