Design Update

Finally, I found some minutes to update the design of my weblog. The design is now the same as the webpage and the weblog is integrated into the site. However there is some tuning left, I have to do during the next few days. Basically I did manage to replace the dasBlog theme CSS by the one I use for the homepage. since the layout is similar, I just had to modify some of the CSS classes in the dasBlog templates.

MAPILap NNTP Profile Reset

After getting a licence and re-installing the MAPILap NNTP Outlook plug-in I was kind of frustrated that the plug-in did not work anymore. Basically I found the reason in the registry settings of the tool. There the account was still disabled since I have chosen this option during a test installation before.

NNTP RegEdit

Just delete the folder with the deactivated profile name. After the next start of Outlook the plug-in wizard appears again.

Live Writer

Live Writer seems to be a quite nifty tool for offline blogging. The installations process is quite easy.

Welcome to Windows Live Writer

Choose Blog Type

Blog Homepage and Login

Select Provider

Also the handling of the tool is quite intuitive. And the support for adding images is awesome. Since I use shadows for all my images, I am quite pleased that Live Writer does support this feature which saves me some time while blogging.

ICWE 2006 and Models

Back from the ICWE 2006 conference, finally I found some minutes to re-think about all the talks seen there and papers read in the proceedings. Actually, I found out that there are many approaches to model systems. Finally, there are a few questions I think about when I hear the term model:

  1. How easy is it to create and change the model? Do I need tool support or can I do it using pen and paper?
  2. Is the model machine-readable? Can I process the model in any way? What is the benefit of the model?
  3. Do I create the model and the the artifacts depicted in the model or do I create the model with respect to the artifacts i have found? What happens if these artifacts change?
  4. In school I learned in chemistry about models. For this our teacher showed us a Matchbox car.

Krugle

Do you know this feeling?

“I know what to do, and how to solve the problem, but I do not know the bloody API.”

I just met the guys implementing the Krugle search engine over here at ICWE 2006. And it does work quite well.