Paul Hammond's Blog

Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 were released to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday just gone.  Here is a link to the main Visual Studio 2008 Developer Center.

Scott Guthrie has a blog posting about the VS2008 release here.

More importantly, he has a posting about uninstalling Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 here. 

I think I will still probably rebuild my laptop instead of risking the uninstall process.  In the past I have always ended up with random Beta bits hanging around and it just makes everything unstable.  That is the price of early-adoption I guess.

Microsoft's development tools and technologies go from strength to strength and I am proud to be part of this company.  Congratulations to all on the VS team!

Little things can sometimes make me very very happy.  I was just checking out the new options in v4 of ClearContext and stumbled across the "Mark message(s) as read when filing" option.  I have been waiting for this simple feature forever!

Usually, I would have to select each message in a thread individually and mark it as read manually before filing it.  Now I can just click "File Thread" on any message in that thread and know that it is cleanly filed away.  That will save me a ton of time and keystrokes when managing my inbox.

Yey!

Having temporarily turned this blog into the Ruby-blog when we bought our puppy, I am now turning it into the Novel-blog.  Sorry...!

Midnight last night marked the halfway point of the month.  15 days gone, 15 days to go.  To be on track I needed to be at 25,000 words by bedtime last night.

I am pleased to say I am at 25,911 words, just keeping the word count slightly ahead of the game.  The better news is that I *think* I have the rest of the story planned out in my head now, and I *think* it will be enough to fill the remaining 24,000-odd words.

Now, who wants to read it when I'm done?

So, I am seven complete days in now, and I should be at 11,667 words.  I am at 11,292, which is pretty close.  I am finding it a little easier to write than I did on days 1 and 2, and the words are definitely flowing better.  There is no guarantee that they are any good, of course, but at least I am getting them down "on paper".

In the process, I have found a nice editor that allows me to focus just on the novel - Dark Room.  They describe the tool as follows:

"Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text."

By default, it runs full screen, and is completely black.  The text is green.  It allows you to focus on only your writing, without screen clutter or distractions.  Give it a go.

My friend Casper is also working on a novel, and his word count currently stands at 1,859 according the the NaNoWriMo site.  I hope he has written more than this and has just neglected his online count, otherwise he may struggle to hit the finish line!

Also, Drew Miller has started writing, after seeing tweets (either mine or Casper's I guess) about this on http://twitter.com.  Scarily, he started on day 3, and then trashed his first effort yesterday on day 7 and started again.  He now has to write 2,175 words a day to succeed.  Doubly scary is the fact he is posting every chapter to a blog as he finishes it - I just don't have the guts for that!  Check out Drew's work here.

An update to my favourite Outlook add-in has been released today - check out the ClearContext press release here, and then run (don't walk) to download ClearContext here.

November is National Novel Writing Month.  I initially found out about this a couple of years ago, but never felt that I had the time to spend writing 50,000 words in 30 days.

This year though, having just returned from a relaxing holiday in the Caribbean and believing I had just enough spare time to do it, I thought I would bite the bullet and have a go.

The idea is to write 50,000 words in November to "win".  The only prize is your own sense of self-achievement.  Think "running a marathon" for lazy types who prefer to exercise their fingers.  You have to just let the words come, with minimal editing.  It isn't even all that important to have the plot lined up in advance (at least I hope it isn't, since I don't have a clue where mine is going).

So here I am on day 5, with 4,593 words under my belt.  45,407 to go.

Makes you wonder what the heck I am doing wasting time and words writing to you folks reading my blog!  Get back to the novel Paul, time is ticking...

Anyway, it isn't too late to catch up - you can still get 50,000 words in if you start in the next day or so.  Go on, challenge yourself...