by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/05/29 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/05/29/10017167.aspx
It has been almost a week since the new platform was rotated in, with its new version of Community Server and the new look and feel for MSDN Blogs and TechNet Blogs.
Raymond Chen included a Welcome to The New Old New Thing, 2010 edition for when the new site went live, and although I have done blogs like that in the past, I decided not to this time.
Since most of the problems pointed out get fixed right away anyway.
Anyway, if you find anything that looks wrong, from missing images to incorrect links to unreadable formatting in the thousands of blogs on this Blog, let me know. I'll try to fix it up.
On the whole I can't claim to be especially happy with the change; there is too much stuff that just looks wrong to me and that I really miss, especially things like collapsible panels. I'll get used to it eventually, or else eventually I'll dive in and figure out how to add them back (or Raymond will, he has threatened to do it already at least once!), but fotr the most part I am much more interested in adding stuff to the blog itself (aka CONTENT) rather than in the Blog (aka FRAMEWORK).
Maybe if the Blog were about blogging itself I'd have a different take on all of this.
So, getting back to the content....
I have been oscillating back and forth between being over a month ahead on blogs to being less than a day or two ahead.
The former is a bad thing for me since I keep going back and reshuffling and editing, which wastes time. The latter is kind of fun since I never know what I'll will see here until after its up.
It's weird, but the other day someone was asking if I would do some trainings for them and she kind of started the request off with "As one of the most popular faces in the Globalization world" which I am pretty sure made me blush when I read it; that sort of thing doesn't integrate cleanly with my own self-image.
But if more people are going to look at me as being less an outlier and more of an actual something or other in the space, I suppose I should pay them the compliment of taking it a little more seriously. :-)
One of big "backend changes here in the content department" is that for the first time ever I have a management structure above me that actually looks at Sorting it all Out as an asset to the group. This change has both good points and bad points to it, though the benefit of being able to write during normal hours while at work alone outweighs most of the bad I could list.
I suppose that has added a bit more discipline to the content adding process.
There is a part of me that realizes I could have moved the entire blog somewhere else during that period when I had management that didn't care that much for the blog, leaving nothing but a single-page pointer to the new location. Too late for that now!
I will get around to removing some of the specific "disclaimer" text I was required to add from that time when I was a little less appreciated than I am now. No hurry, just something I will have to get to eventually.
If you are a regular (or a consistent even though irregular!) reader than thanks for your support, I really do appreciate it.
If you count back to the very first blog here in the end of 2004 (very few of you can make that claim, I mostly know who you are though!), it has been a very long, strange trip.
And who knows what it will look like tomorrow? :-)
Evan on 29 May 2010 5:30 PM:
Well, despite how you do not perceive your self as the girl mention in your blog does - I's true... You are one of, if not the most recognized people in respect to the field of internationalization, and Microsoft for that matter [With the exceptions of Ballmer and Gates]... I remember reading about you back in 2000, I think, about your book "Internationalization for Visual Basic 6" [I think that was the title], and subsequently asked for it for xMas [I was 14].
I, for one, wish to congratulate your achievements over the years, and thank you for sending out non-stop streams of information regarding these subjects, and all the work required in doing so, to help the rest of the wold understand how important internationalization issues really can be...
Keep up the good work.
Long time reader,
Evan K. [Segoe Script error pointer-outter :-þ ]
Michael S. Kaplan on 29 May 2010 7:43 PM:
There are plenty of Microsofties more well-known than I, so I'll have to disagree with at least that part. But you are very kind, and I really do appreciate your words, Evan. Thanks!
Michael S. Kaplan on 29 May 2010 7:45 PM:
Internationalization with Visual Basic. As a Christmas gift? Cool! :-)
Pavel Minaev [MSFT] on 31 May 2010 10:17 AM:
@Michael: it probably depends on who you ask, but there aren't _many_ Microsofties more well-known than you. Most certainly not in this area. Among other things, your blog ranks high on Google for searches on globalization-related issues, largely thanks to popularity - which, in turn, is driven by quality of content.
I had both seen references to "... this excellent blog post by Michael Kaplan that covers this issue in much more detail" numerous times (on places such as StackOverflow and various forums), and made many myself. Simply because you really are that good at explaining those things in a way that us laypeople can understand.
Oh, and here's some evidence:
and the very first link:
"Michael Kaplan (a recognized authority on culture and character handling such as this) ..."
so there :)
Pavan on 1 Jun 2010 3:37 AM:
Could any body give me the function of comparing the strings with respect to locale in VC++
Michael S. Kaplan on 1 Jun 2010 5:37 AM:
CompareString/CompareStringW (Win32) or wcscoll (CRT)....
Michael S. Kaplan on 3 Jun 2010 3:01 PM:
Fair enough, Pavel. Nothing like info that proves one is wrong to help force re-assessment! :-)