Rob Mensching's Blog - page 3

My son plays in a year round soccer club. The pandemic shut down games for all of 2020 after March. When games resumed in 2021, only one parent was allowed to attend. I was already recording practices for my son to review using my phone when I decided to level-up my technology to record his games. I figured with a bit better technology, I could capture the boys' games and share the video with all the parents via YouTube. Everyone was very appreciative and a couple parents asked about the technology I use. So let's break it down.

Me recording the game my son is ready to enter.
WiX

WiX Toolset v4-preview.0

In WiX v4, a new .NET tool named wix replaces the command-line tools with cute names like candle.exe and light.exe. The new wix tool combines the functionality of those different tools into commands such as convert and build. Let's dig into those two commands to demonstrate how to upgrade your v3 .wxs source code to v4 and then compile it.

Personal

Forty Four and a Year of Pandemic

Today I turn 44. Like each year before this, I want to take a moment and reflect on the last year and look into the next. In particular, I haven't written about life here during the COVID-19 pandemic and I want to capture some memories. I'll also look ahead a bit.

I want to talk about reciprocal Open Source licenses for a minute. Most major projects are permissively licensed so you might be thinking, 'Why should I care about reciprocal licenses?' Well, there is one very important difference between reciprocal and permissive licenses: how they support their community.

Nicola Barnett, https://www.flickr.com/photos/n_corboy/
Personal

I am Forty Three

Today I turn 43! That means it is time to take a moment and reflect on last year and what is to come. Now last year I signed off with the hope that today's birthday review would be "a lot more interesting".

Personal

Forty Two

Last year I mentioned that I've felt like I am 28. That still holds true today. But, for the last year, I was somehow convinced that I was 42. It wasn't until something like September--discussing plans for my wife's birthday if I recall correctly--that I realized I was mistaken. But, today I actually turn 42. So here's to a second year as 42!

The Crystal Method has been my favorite band since I discovered them as an intern at Microsoft. That's 30 years ago now! Well the next album drops September 28th.

Personal

MSIX Conjectures

Last month at the Windows Developer Day event Microsoft announced MSIX as the future for Windows application installation. The technical details were pretty light during the presentation. But that lack of detail means some pretty crazy conjectures are thrown about. So, I thought I'd posit some of my own theories before real details came about.