Blue Oceans Blog

Another Office Tip: Format painter (Office)

2009-05-19T08:22:00.001-07:00

The Format Painter tool replicates the formatting from one part of a document to another. So instead of manually redoing all the formatting yourself, you can use the Format Painter.

1. select the text whose formatting you want to replicate.

2. click the Format Painter toolbar button.
3. select the text you want to imbue with the format.

For bonus points,
1. select the text whose formatting you want to replicate

2. double-click the Format Painter toolbar button.
3. select the multiple texts you want to imbue with the format

Source: http://office.Microsoft.com

Another Office Tip: World Clocks in Windows Vista

2009-04-28T02:14:00.001-07:00

Within the section of “Another Office Tip” I will give some tips, ideas how to get the maximum out of your Windows products and help you to make working easier.

When working in an international environment, time zones are important as you don’t want to wake up you business partner to early :)

There are many world clock tools available on the net, but always you need to install these programs, it takes more place on your desktop etc.

This is a tip for Vista users, Windows Vista has a feature to show 2 extra clocks in the taskbar; You will always see the current local time and by clicking on the time you will get the others clocks in a visual way.

By position your mouse on the time, without clicking, you will get a simple list

How to setup different clocks in Vista?

- Go to Control Panel
- Select Date & Time
- Select the tab: Additional Clocks
- Choose the clocks you like to add and give it a name.

Naming Conventions

2009-02-09T06:06:00.001-08:00

The raison to write this article is because I still see many multi-nationals struggling with naming conventions within their IT department.

Naming conventions are as old as IT itself, but still many companies do not have proper naming conventions, and even worse, they use internal of external sources to create one.

What is the reason to have Naming Conventions in the first place?
The main reason to introduce naming conventions is to :

- to reduce the effort needed to read and understand source code
- to enhance source code appearance

The most important reason is the first one, to reduce the effort needed to read and understand source code

Code must be easy and quick readable and understandable when new employees (internal of external) enters the IT department or when other teams takes over the project..

The answer I gave to my customers is very easy: take the naming conventions found on the Internet. The goal is not only to have company related Naming conventions, but general naming conventions.

New employees or external consultancy will loose less time understanding the general naming conventions, as they were used too with their previous work, instead of learning the company related ones, which will never be followed 100%.

Some links:

BizTalk: http://wes.fehler.ca/weblog/biztalk/2005/01/biztalk-naming-conventions.html

General Naming Conventions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229002.aspx

And many more are available on the net.

Don’t let your IT department loose time to write company related naming conventions, re-use them!

Quest for Energy website now availble in English

2008-04-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

My website QuestForEnergy.com is now availble in English.

This means I will start promoting the products all over Europe.
More information will be broadcast soon!

Remember Hugo Claus

2008-03-21T03:55:00.000-07:00

Hugo Claus was a great Belgian writer, a painter, wrote stories for theatres , wrote novels, wrote poetry etc.
Too much to place everything here.

To remember a homage website is created on http://www.MemoryOfLife.org
If you have a story, a picture or just want to leave a note, please do so.

Blog About Green Energy Launched

2008-03-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

As you already know, I invested in the production of energy-saving products in China (Solar panels and lamps). But when I was talking with people around the world, I still receive many questions about green energy.

I was surprissed as this is a huge business already and many information is available all around.

Well to promote the green energy and energy-saving products, I launched a Green Blog, this website will be publishing articles about the green subject.

Have a visit on www.ApprovedByNature.com

For the moment this Green Blog is in Dutch and talking about Green energy in Belgium. Other countries and languages will follow.

New (technical) Blog Launched

2008-02-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

I launched a new technical blog, specialized in BizTalk.
As part of the IT organisation, Silversands Associates, I didn't want to mix this blog with pure technical stuff.

So if you are interested in BizTalk Software of Microsoft, please visit http://BlueBizTalk.blogspot.com

Blue Oceans becomes an OISV member

2006-09-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

What or who is OISV

OISV stands for Organisation of Independent Software Vendors.

The OISV is a co-operative of Developers, Marketers, Distributors, and Retailers that combine their resources to create better and affordable software for users. Membership to the OISV is upon approval only and members are only accepted on their past, current or future involvement in the software industry. The logo of the OISV is a brand of a professional in the software industry and can be trusted wherever it is displayed.

What is the mission of OISV?

To cooperate and work together for the betterment of all Developers, Marketers, Distributors, and Retailers in the software industry.
To create marketing, development and support paths for all OISV members to use as professional guidelines for success;
To provide Web forums and Articles in which all members can contribute their thoughts and ideas equally;
To help all members distribute and market their software using best practices and the experience of others;
To help users by creating software that solves problems and is affordable.

For Blue Oceans it is important that Independent Software developers, vendors meet eachother to share toughts and ideas.
This way we hope to give our products more visibility to the world! And I hope to post some interesting articles very soon!

The Start of the Blue Oceans Blog

2006-08-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a friend of my, Dave, asked me how it's possible that someone can talk so much, so today I decide to finally start blogging, because talking it's something I like.

I will talk about new ideas in the real and virtual world, also my opinions on the world news and how my new projects are going on.

I hope many of you will comment my postings, because there is (almost) nothing better than a good discussion.

Let's play!