Greetings.  The password generator has been working well and a number of folks have found it.  I just recently added a checkbox for making a password mixed case.  Next I am going to write the admin edit page for the widget.  From that page the site admin will be able to constrain the character list for each type of password.  Once I complete that page I will provide a packaged widget available to anyone interested in how it works with some of my notes.  I have been very impressed by how simple the process is to develop a BlogEngine widget.

I spent some time today playing with some of the newer photo tools available.  I must say, I am surprised by how many tools are available for free.  Some of the ones I played around with include:

• Microsofts Deep Zoom Composer (Sea Dragon / Silverlight)
• Microsoft Photosynth
• Microsoft ICE (Image Composition Editor)
• Adobe Lightroom 2 / Photoshop 4

Below you will find some of my initial thoughts and reactions to each of the tools / technologies. I will be following up with a post about each of these individually with more detail and an example.

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I have just added my first Blogengine widget.  It is not a hard thing to do at all.  For those of you using the previous password generator page on my wordpress site, sorry it took me a while to get this back up on the new site.  I hope you will find this widget as good.  I realize I did not add the checkbox for "mixed case" which I will add soon.

Ultimately adding a custom widget is easy.  Pretty much all you have to do is create a user control and identify it as a widget.  In an upcoming post I will go into more detail, but for now the Password Generator is back.

I recently added a widget to this blog and struggled to find a way to maintain the scroll position after clicking submit.  It turns out this is an incredibly easy thing to do (once you find it). All that I needed to do was add the following to the code behind of my master page.

Page.MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback = true;

It requires java script to be enabled; however, it works very well.  In searching for how to do this I found many other solutions, most of which were much more complicated and involved.  Though I am not sure this is the best way, it works for what I needed.

Wow, I am in the home strecth of a clean install on my W500 Thinkpad and it sure has been a headache.  I have never experienced this much of a pain.  I did a 64bit Vista installation (not provided by Lenovo).  The operating system install went as expected, but then it became fun.  Getting the drivers collected was a pain in the ass.  Once you download everything you think you are going to need, you need to run an installer to extract the files.

Would it be too much trouble for Lenovo to append the file names with the device they are for?  I am sorry, but I just don't know what 7vrv17ww.exe is for!  Would 7vrv17ww-IntelProLanAdapter.exe be too muc... [More]

I recently found a game I remember foundly.  Gazillionare from LavaMind.  I admit, it is a simple and mindless game, but it can suck you in.  Though I don't remember when I originally found it or began playing it, I know it was a long time ago.  Today I discovered that they have been continuing development of the game (though probably minamally).  It has been re-compiled to work on Vista and they have added some additional planets, ships and characters.  I encourage you to give it a try.  Not a bad way to kill a little time.