I hate configuring a new dev machine. You know you’re going to have to kill a few hours downloading and installing components and getting things working nice with each other.

I always wished there was a tool where I could click one button and get IIS, SQL, Visual Studio and the .Net Frameworks installed and running.

Of course, now I don’t have to build dev machines and write code every day for a living… along comes a tool that does just that!

The Web Platform Installer is pretty much the answer to my prayers! It allows you to take a default build or customize exactly what gets installed (including out-of-band features like bit rate throttling, URL Rewrite and Web Playlists and some unexpected extras like the SQL Server Drivers for PHP – yes, PHP runs really well on IIS7).

It’s currently in beta so now would be a really great time to check it out and use the forums to provide lots of feedback to make it great.

Thanks to Scott for the pointer to this.

We have a new member of the family – a 2 year old Pit Bull / Chow Chow cross called Sasha.

As you can see she’s integrating fairly well!

Bryn and Rhiannon are working out the various logistic, dominance and pecking order things while Sasha finds her way around the house and garden.

Luckily the kids all play well together – but it’s getting a little crowded on the sofa in the evening, and driving back from the park with two dogs steaming up the windows is going to be interesting!

She was a very spur of the moment addition – she needed a home and luckily when we met her it was a good fit. She’s very welcome as long as she can cope with the mess!

Over the last decade I’ve worked on many website projects, but I’ve never been able to answer a fairly simple question: “what’s actually involved in building a site” without the discussions rapidly spiraling off in many different directions as I try to describe the many dependencies and skill sets that somehow come together to deliver the magic.

Now, thanks to the talented folks responsible for A Website Named Desire, I no longer have that problem. I can simply point them to a great visualization which sums up all of the aspects of the job that people sometimes try to describe when they say “designer” or “developer”.

If you want the Javascript that delivers the random image from the poster above feel free to snag it below but make sure you check out the site it all it’s glory for the full effect!

   1:  <script type="text/javascript">

   2:  var v1= Math.round(Math.random() * 4);

   3:  var v2= Math.round(Math.random() * 3);

   4:  var ZoomLevel= 11;

   5:  document.write('<br><a href="http://awebsitenameddesire.com"><img src="http://awebsitenameddesire.com/ClientBin/awebsitenameddesire/GeneratedImages/dzc_output_files/' + ZoomLevel + '/'+ v1 + '_' +v2 + '.png" border="0" alt="A Website Named Desire"></a>');

   6:  </script>