I am very excited about this book!  I don't like murder/crime mysteries, but this one is different.  (Disclaimer:  Tom Cavanagh is an old friend of mine, so my opinion may be a little skewed!)  When I found out that my old friend Tom is now an author, I didn't even hesitate to order this book.  How could I not read it?  I'm even going to post a link to his website:  http://www.thomasbcavanagh.com/ 

Murderland is a story of Central Florida (where I spent 20 years), Theme Parks and tourists (where I spent 3) and murder.  Kevin Lonnegan is an ex-cop turned private investigator who is asked by a old friend to investigate a pair of murders at the Empire Realm theme park.  His friend is also an ex-cop and happens to be head of security at said theme park.  Lonnegan is called in discretely because the head detective from the Orange County Sheriffs office is a former colleague of both of them whom they have little more than disdain for.  So he goes under cover picking up clues that could endanger his life and that of his new friend Sheila with whom he struggles to figure out his own feelings for in the wake of his young wife's tragic death.

Ok, I started reading this book only because Tom wrote it.  I then found it to be very amusing from an setting perspective.  Tom lives in Orlando, as did I, and it is very evident in his writing.  There are many insider references to the area, that Tom does a great job of exposing to the reader.  And it seems to me that he did an excellent job of describing the theme park that is NOT Disney World, but certainly is to me!  Suddenly, I discovered that I really cared about the characters and settled in for a very fun read.  Only took me a few days, which these days is remarkable!  Turns out, I really enjoyed the book!  I don't know if it's a great mystery novel, for I am not the one to ask about that, but I know what I like. 

I wish Tom the best, and many more novels (he already has 2 more).  It is my hope that he become bigger than some of the less deserving authors I have read...  And continue the poking at the mouse!  I LOVE it!

Continuing with one of my favorite authors, Warrior Class is the next in the series by Dale Brown.  In my last post I described the series as "stories of near-future geopolitical conflicts with an emphasis on air-power.  What's not to love?"  Well, unfortunately, in this book we find out.

Warrior Class returns us to the modern political arena, only with the increasingly divergent stories with larger than life events, it's hard to say it's the modern world so much as an alternate history anymore.  And that's great, really.  A new isolationist president has been elected with little foreign policy experience and starts a policy of removing all U.S. presence around the world and slashing military budgets.  (Sounds like a certain candidate running now that scares the crap out of me....)  A Russian mafia boss takes the opportunity to make a buck in the Baltics and poor General MacLanahan must do something.

I was disappointed with this book.  Is this really the same Dale Brown that wrote Flight of the Old Dog and Night of the Hawk?  I will be giving the series a rest for a while, partly because I have a whole lot of other books to read.  Hopefully, the next in the series will get back to the solid writing I have come to enjoy.

There are a few articles online covering SVN and VS, but many are out of date and a bit more complicated than necessary with advances in both products.  For a current install (Oct 2008:  SVN 1.5.2 / VS2005), you only need 3 files:

• Subversion Win32 binaries (currently: 1.5.2 version w/ MSI install)
• TortoiseSVN Shell Integration Utility (currently: 1.5.4.14259)
• AnkhSVN Source Control Provider for Visual Studio (curr: 2.0.5250.202)

Subversion is, of course, the Source Control server itself.  The MSI install contains everything needed to run on a Windows server.

TortoiseSVN is a plug-in for Explorer that gives a great deal of control to the source repository using the right-click context menu.  Check-ins, updates, merges, etc. can be done through this interface as well as full repository browsing and maintenance.

AnkhSVN is the most important tool for the .NET developer.  It integrates the controls needed for team development directly in the environment.  Much like the integration offered through VSS, but much better.

Installation of Subversion itself is very easy.  Just run the installer.  I installed into C:\SVN\ instead of the default "Program Files" directory, but I am lazy and hate spaces in filename on the command-line.
NOTE:  The installer only puts the files in place and sets the important environment variables.
Once installed, the following command is used to setup a repository:

svnadmin create "D:\SVN\Repository"

You can create as many repositories as needed, but one for now.  Before we activate the server, two config files need to be edited.  They were created with the repository above.  They are svnserve.conf and passwd in the conf sub-dir of the repository.  Uncomment the following:

~/conf/svnserve.conf
[general]
anon-access = read
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

~/conf/passwd
[users]
harry = harryssecret
sally = sallyssecret

Now the installation can be tested. Execute the following command in a command window:

svnserve --daemon --root "D:\SVN\Repository"

To create a project, execute:

svn mkdir snv://localhost/newproject

Now would be a good time to install TortoiseSVN if it hasn't been yet.  Connect to the running server from within an explorer window by right-clicking and selecting TortoiseSVN > Repo-Browser.  Enter the name of the server to see the interface using the following URL:  svn://servername/  The project "newproject" should be viewable there.

And now the most difficult part of all:  Installing SVN as a service in windows.  The following command will accomplish this.  Syntax and proper spacing is critical.  (I was having problems until I realized the space after each '=' in the command.)  Here it is:

sc create SVN_CSTeam binpath= "c:\svn\bin\svnserve.exe --service --root D:\SVN\Repository" 
    displayname= "Subversion Repository for CSharp.NET Team" depend= iisadmin

And that is why I do not use the default paths.  Spaces have to be delimited with quotes, which have to be escaped, and it just is not worth it.  All on one line of course.  Also note that the name after the "create" parameter can be anything desired and allows for multiple repositories on the same server, along with unique displayname.  I chose to use iisadmin as a depend, not because it necessarily is, but because it is sure to load other depends such as Tcpip and such.

The last step is to load AnkhSVN; a solution I leave to the reader.  It's not hard.  If you are familiar with source control at all, it is pretty obvious.

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I'd like to thank the following sites for very useful information in helping me through the installation and the creating of this post:

• Team System (Vertigo Software) - Setting up a Subversion Server under Windows (January 16, 2006)
  Jeff Atwood shining as an industry giant in a bit outdated article.  I used this as my guide.
• svn.collab.net - Windows Service Support for svnserve
  From the Subversion developers, I gleaned the info needed to create the service calls.
• Multiple Articles - Scott Hanselman's Computerzen.com
  Scott Hanselman is, of course, a huge influence in the .NET community and has many good articles steering us the right way including Subversion.  It was his article comparing CVS and SVN that convinced me for ASP.NET development.

Here we go again.  As mentioned previously, I have finally purchased real hosting.  With my own domain name, I am finally fully managing my blog.  I am going to use DasBlog again, like in the old days of running it on my home server.  It's not as clean (yet) as WordPress, but it is much, much more configurable.

Let's see how long this run lasts.  Ironically, I am able to finally post almost all of my old content again.  The only posts missing are the really old ones from when I was crafting it with JavaScript and DHTML.  Maybe I will get those in one day too.