This has all of the information that you need to decide if you can use The Free Framework or if you'd prefer to license The Server Framework. There's also a new server example, WASP, which is a pluggable server platform that is available in compiled form and is free for non-commercial use. Over the next few months WASP will evolve to support most of the key features of the various options that are available with The Server Framework such as SSL, Managed hosting, UDP and TCP, etc.
There are forums for support, but of course you're all still more than welcome to email me directly.
Comments and suggestions welcome.]]>The support situation for someone with a subscription to the product is still far from ideal and far less satisfactory than it was with Compuware and currently the best approach seems to be to make a noise on the web about your issues with the latest release and you'll get to speak to the guys that matter...
However, from talking to the developers I can see that they care deeply about the product and that they want to ease the pain that users are feeling and that from their point of view things are better, internally, than they were with Compuware. This all seems to mean that the longer term future for the product is considerably better than it was - which is all good stuff.
Thanks to Matt and Rick for the emails and help.]]>The good news is that the x64 port is slowly slipping out to clients; the bulk of the work has been done for ages but I'm using this release to bring all of my example servers in line with best practices for using The Server Framework. Due to the number of example servers and the number of compilers that I need to test with, this is taking a while. Still, we're almost there and once we are there will be new example servers that show off the new features that my rewrite of our performance counter library has enabled.
The CLR hosting work is also going well. One of my clients now has a server that uses this technology "in anger" and, now that we've ironed out a few issues, it's working well and seems to be a good fit with The Server Framework for some types of business problems.
In other news, I've been getting into cycling... For one reason or another I've never really cycled before this year; Gaelle thought this was ridiculous and got me a bike for my 40th birthday. Last week I upgraded the 'starter bike' to a Dawes Horizon touring bike and yesterday I completed my longest ride to date, 53 miles around Guildford with the Charlotteville Cycling Club's Guildford Challenge. We completed the route after 4 hours cycling and a total of around an hour of breaks, including a sneaky pub lunch ;) I'm loving the drop handlebars and strap in peddles on my new bike; I expect I'll be after proper clips next...]]>Barry Kelly talks about the same thing in How to be happy over at Entropy Overload. It's really item 3 on his list that I find leads to the feedback loop. I already had item 1 down pat and I'm working on item 2 :)
I originally started to focus on "appreciating beauty in the smallest possible pieces", which was a bit vague, things like actually noticing the sun on the canal or the fluffiness of a newborn gosling swimming with its mother... Once you notice one thing like this and allow it to lift your spirits then you seem to just keep noticing more. It doesn't have to be something that's perfect, which is where my "smallest possible pieces" part came from, you can, for example, appreciate the pleasant curve of an ankle on someone that you otherwise don't find especially attractive, or the shape of a window on a building that is otherwise architecturally dull...
But it's not only things you see, it's all things and situations; just appreciate it all for what it is and allow it all to lift you and you'll soon find yourself in a feedback loop that keeps it all going without requiring any effort at all.
As Barry says, when it's written down it looks pretty dumb, but heh, it works for me!]]>Recently things have been a bit better but I've been "keeping busy" with lots of non technical activities; see my ski, skate and climb blog for details. The result has been that I've been out most evenings and not really focusing on writing about the technical stuff that's been going on. Luckilly I can now get in "The Zone" if I have a bit of a deadline to meet, so my client work is going OK...
I'm off to Argentina to train to be a ski instructor at the end of the month and wont be back until mid October. I probably won't have much time to blog here before I go as I have client work to complete and lots of things to prepare. Hopefully, by the time I get back my head will be in a better place and my technical work can resume; well, that is unless I decide to do another season in the Alps...]]>So, here are some of the blog posts that will give you a feel for what this blog is really about.