I’ll be speaking on “REAL Studio for the VFP Developer”. As all of you know, I love me some Visual Foxpro. The Visual Foxpro development team has done an incredible job with that product over the many many years of it’s active development. Thank you Fox Software! And yes, a big ‘Thank You’ to MicroSoft for version 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and (especially) 9 of Visual Foxpro! Many, many sincere gratitudes go out to all of the VFPX developers as well keeping the progress of the open-sourced parts of Foxpro going! The hard labors of genius developers are moving Foxpro forward.

So, what you won’t hear at my presentation in May is that I want you to abandon Visual Foxpro for REAL Studio.

What you will hear, is that I do think you should add REAL Studio to your development toolbox. I found that my Visual Foxpro skills and Visual Foxpro mindset is a natural fit for the REAL Studio development environment. I find that joy in development that I have doing Visual Foxpro, I can also have in REAL Studio.

What I’ll be going over in the presentation:

• How VFP and REAL Studio compare
• What are the strengths of REAL Studio
• What are the weaknesses of REAL Studio
• Development ‘gotchas’ in REAL Studio
• How to build a desktop application from scratch
• How to call one window from another
• How to access databases
• How to create and run a report
• How to build for target Linux, Mac and Windows platforms
• A small bit about building Web Applications with REAL Studio
• More!

If you are in the Detroit area, on Thursday May 12th, please stop in and say ‘hello’!

• ctEggTimer for Winders [1.5M]
• ctEggTimer for Linux [4.1M]
• ctEggTimer for Mac [10.5M] untested

INSTALLATION NOTES:

[For Windows]
Unzip it into your local work area or other safe location.

[For Linux]
Place application to where you want to run the program. Make sure to set the executable attribute!

[For Mac]
I don’t have a Mac so this is untested. You’ll need to decompress the file. Perhaps set the executable attribute? Let me know how it runs on the Mac! I’m always looking to improve.

Keep the suggestions coming and I’ll make adjustments as they come along. So turn off the email and browser and don’t answer that phone for the next 25 minutes and be productive!

I have Comcast Internet which has blocked port 25 in sending email, and now allows port 50. That port can change any day now, and without warning, no thanks to spammers. I upgraded my MEPIS Linux to version 8 last night and it went without a hitch. I was configuring Thunderbird for email and I could receive email, but not send. I knew that I needed to add a TCP port of 50 to Guarddog as you can see in this picture.

The second part I had forgotten. You have to go back to the PROTOCOL tab of Guarddog and go into the “User Defined” section to enable that protocol. Click the “Apply” button and all of a sudden Thunderbird is as happy as a clam.

I hope this helps someone else out on the Intertubes. That someone might be me, after I’ve forgotten this in a couple of months.

Kevin Ragsdale, FoxForward “Best Presenter” winner, is running for congress.  His top priority just happens to be my top priority for this election: our budget crisis.

I’ll be keeping my eye out to see what Kevin’s stance is on the Fair Tax legislation.  There’s nothing like bringing Trillions of dollars back into the US economy and giving power back to the people, like the Fair Tax.

Good luck Kevin!!!  Give ‘em heck!

Here’s my: Technorati Profile

Current setup: Internet:Comcast ; TV:Dish with PVR ; Home Phone:AT&T Local ; Business Phone:Vonage

The telemarketer called to offer me a deal on switching to Comcast for my cable, Internet, and phone for just a little less money than I am paying now, for just a couple less channels than I’m getting right now. I told him that it didn’t sound like a good deal to me.

He was flabbergasted. Why wouldn’t I switch?!? I told him that the deal didn’t provide sufficient cost savings, or sufficient benefits to get me to switch. I also let him have it for how slow my Internet is. Other countries currently enjoy a much higher speed experience, for the same or less money than we experience in the USA. He stated that he wasn’t aware of any company offering that kind of speed in the US. I told him that I was aware of that but I’m wondering why we’re falling behind other countries so fast.

He then went on to say that our computers wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of Internet feed (> 30Mbps). I almost choked. I informed him that my computers handle feeds over my 100Mbps network just fine and wouldn’t have a problem with the 30Mbps feeds. He then fell back on the “I’m not aware of any other companies in the US offering that kind of speed.”

Yes, I’m aware of that but I said that just because your company isn’t any crappier than all of the other crappy companies, doesn’t mean that you’re not crappy in the first place.

I can be bought! I will switch over! Just give me reason to go through the hassle. More speed? Better channels? Better PVR? Less money? Something. Just give me a reason.

I’m waiting.

http://cullytechnologies.com

I’m also trying to finish the design of the shirts.  The attendees will be getting t-shirts and the presenters will be getting white collared shirts.  I’m not sure how a printed shirt will look with a collar but Bo Durban assures me it will look good.  There.  See how I passed the buck on that one?!?

It’s also time to remind the sponsors that the conference is approaching and to prepare to get me their glossy materials and give-aways for the conference.

I’ve also scheduled a meeting with the hotel to pick the menu for the conference.

So many details, so little time.

Please help me spread the word about the conference.  There is still lots of room for more attendees.  If you know of someone that would benefit from the conference, encourage them to attend.  Getting to Atlanta from almost anywhere in the US is cheap, cheap, cheap!

I can’t wait.  The conference is going to be a blast!

In talking with them, they wanted to make sure that the atmosphere of the FoxForward conference was a good combination for Servoy to get the word out. I definitely think it is. One of the mission goals of FoxForward is to be able to look at complimentary, and even competing technologies along side of FoxPro. FoxForward isn’t a hard sell on any product. We’re honestly take a look at other technologies, strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a session on Servoy at the conference but I look forward to learning more about their product. I could definitely imagine a scenario where there is a FoxPro desktop application hitting a SQL Server, or MySQL, or PostgreSQL back end and the web application deployed (internally and externally) with Servoy. That would be a killer business application combination.

I think Servoy is a good fit with the mission of FoxForward and will be of interest to the attendees. Check them out … or … register for the conference and learn more in September!

As we were talking, I was thinking … I should become a sponsor of the Southwest Fox Conference. As any developer, I don’t have a lot of money to throw around especially after financing my own conference, but I’m able to sponsor at the bronze level which is only $250! I’m proud to do it. I encourage more people and small businesses to consider becoming a sponsor of the Southwest Fox Conference, and of course, my own FoxForward conference. It really does make a world of difference.

If you haven’t signed up for a conference this year, please do so. You’ll get much more out of the conference than your expenses by being more productive.

http://swfox.net