Kieft is my best friend!

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StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ Beta Test – Invite a Friend

Congratulations! This is an additional invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ for you to share with a friend! You are receiving this email because you are currently participating in the StarCraft II beta test, and we want to encourage you to test out some of the social features of the revamped Battle.net® online-gaming service by inviting one of your friends to play with you. This email contains your additional beta key for you to send to a friend, along with instructions to help your friend get started.

This key can only be used once to upgrade a Battle.net account to participate in the beta test, and while we encourage you to share this key with someone you know, it must not be traded or sold.

Once your friend has joined the beta test, be sure to add him or her as a Real ID friend by opening your friends list in the bottom-right corner of the Battle.net interface and selecting Add Friend. Enter your friend's Battle.net email address in the Real ID Friend field that pops up, and then send your request. Once your friend accepts the request, you’ll be able to communicate more easily, quickly join parties together for some team-based 2v2 games, and more.

So what are you waiting for? Send this beta test invitation below to your lucky friend and start playing some exciting team games!

Beta Test Invitation:

As a beta test participant, you’ll have the opportunity to experience the multiplayer gameplay of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and explore the social-networking, matchmaking, and other new features of Blizzard Entertainment’s revamped Battle.net® online-gaming service. Throughout the StarCraft II beta test, you’ll be able to take part in cooperative and competitive battles as the terrans, protoss, and zerg -- and at the same time, you’ll be helping test the stability of the Battle.net service and fine-tune the game balance prior to launch. The developers look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing you on Battle.net!

Getting Started:

In order to participate in the beta test, you must have an active Battle.net account. If you don’t have a Battle.net account, visit eu.battle.net to create one.  Note that you are required to accept the Battle.net Terms of Use before you can create a Battle.net account and install the StarCraft II beta client.

Below is a beta key that will allow you to upgrade your Battle.net account to participate in the StarCraft II beta test.

HIER STOND DE KEY :)

PLEASE NOTE: Each beta key can be used only once, so please make sure you are upgrading the Battle.net account you wish to use to play the StarCraft II beta. Once claimed, your beta key cannot be transferred to another Battle.net account.

1. Apply Your Beta Key - Log in to your Battle.net account. Under "Manage My Games," click "Add or Upgrade a Game." Enter the above beta key in the "Enter Game Key" field and select "Add Game."

2. Get the Installer - In your list of games, click the “Manage Game” button under the StarCraft II beta image to download the installer.

3. Install the StarCraft II Beta - Once you’ve downloaded the installer, run it and follow the directions to install the StarCraft II beta client on your machine. Note that your participation in the StarCraft II beta test is governed by a Beta Test Agreement that you are required to accept before you can install the beta client.

4. Run the Game & Log in to Battle.net - After the StarCraft II beta installs, the launcher interface should automatically appear on your screen. Log in with your Battle.net account and you’ll be able to begin playing. You can launch the client at any time by clicking the desktop shortcut or by going to the Windows® Start Menu.

Any questions? Check out the FAQ.

Please retain this email for your records. If you experience any issues setting up your Battle.net account, please contact Blizzard Entertainment Account Services via webform at https://eu.blizzard.com/support/webform.xml?locale=en_GB or email at beta.accountsupport@eu.battle.net.

Sending Feedback:

Once you’ve had a chance to play, please share your feedback by posting on the StarCraft II Beta Forums. The game is still a work in progress, and one of the purposes of the beta test is to identify any issues and improve the player experience before the game ships. The developers encourage you to report any in-game issues you experience via these forums.

Troubleshooting:

If you run into any difficulties installing the StarCraft II beta client, please contact Blizzard Entertainment technical support either by posting on the appropriate forum at http://forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=25352533&sid=5010, via webform at  https://eu.blizzard.com/support/webform.xml?locale=en_GB, or by email at beta.techsupport@eu.battle.net.

** IMPORTANT ** To avoid graphical bugs and other technical issues, please ensure your video card drivers are up-to-date.

Enjoy the game!

Hilco is now on Twitter

I can be found on Twitter now. My first follower is a girl who wants to share sexy pictures with me :)

Some new Visual Studio 2010 Features

In the new version of Visual Studio 2010 there is more than only a new User Interface which is in my opinion a lot refreshing and distinguished then the previous versions of Visual Studio. But a new UI will not only give the developer new ways of faster development. In this article I will explain some highlights of the new Visual Studio 2010 who are in my opinion most beneficial for the common .net programmer. This article will not explain all the new features of Visual Studio 2010 but a few I personally discovered.

The first improvement is the intellisense and code snippets for ASP.net page development. In the earlier versions of Visual Studio intellisense and code snippets were only available for C# or VB.net code programming, in visual studio 2010 this option is now been added to ASP.net pages so HTML or JavaScript can be developed a lot faster.

Another improvement with intellisense is that results will be better sorted on the function, event and property name as show below. In the earlier versions of visual studio the intellisense function will show all the properties, functions and events which contains the search characters.

 

 

The left figure shows the intellisense in Visual Studio 2008 which shows a lot more information than necessary. In Visual Studio 2010 this information has been filtered more to get the best result of your “search”.

Something complete different is the ability to set labels on breakpoints when you are debugging your project. In a case where you have multiple breakpoints the overview of your breakpoints can get lost. With this new feature you can easily organize your breakpoints and even exchange breakpoints with your colleague developers. This can be easily done by exporting the breakpoints to a xml file which another developer can load into in his project.

SSIS Initial Startup

Hi All,

On a project where we used SSIS for the import of data we've encountered a problem with the initial startup of a task. It took almost 45 seconds just to start the SSIS package before executing it. After some research we've found that the problem was caused by a simple internet setting. Before that the SSIS package starts it will check if there is a certificate for it, because the production database was not connected to the internet a default timeout of 45 seconds was kicked in.

The problem is easy to resolve by unchecking the following in the Internet Settings -> Advanced tab.

1. Uncheck for publisher's certificate revocation


2. Uncheck for server certificate revocation

After this your SSIS package will run a lot faster. A nice extra feature is that your SQL Management Studio will start a lot faster :).

Regards,

Hilco

Eerste bericht

Hi all,

A first message on my new created Blog site! In the future I will publish here some articles regarding .NET Development or just some cool stuff I've found on the web.

Regards,

Hilco