Technology
0 words.
247 entries. 68,208 words.
2003-07
-
Site Administration Improvements.
2003-07-07.
Before accidentally deleting the news database, I was going to report how great my new web site features were. While the new features are still great, they are somewhat diminished by the huge blank pages where the news used to be.
- Technology
-
Email Link.
2003-07-09.
You will notice that the author of news articles is now highlighted.
- Technology
-
Hackers Beware!.
2003-07-11.
For all you slavering hordes of h4x0rs out there just waiting for the chance to bust into my site and deface it, beware that I have just added a fool-proof password encryption scheme to the user account database!
- Technology
-
Tom’s Editorials Return.
2003-07-11.
You may have noticed the addition of the spiffy new menu with links on the left side of the page.
- Technology
-
Category Permissions.
2003-07-14.
Tonight I’ve implemented “protected” news categories, which require a login account and specific permission to view the protected categories.
- Technology
-
Cookies!.
2003-07-14.
Implemented cookies to save login information on your computer so you don’t have to keep logging in all the time.
- Technology
-
Other Advancements.
2003-07-15.
Tonight I’ve made the cookie login optional.
- Technology
-
Reviews Added.
2003-07-16.
By popular demand, I’ve added a news section for my insightful book and movie reviews.
- Technology
-
Essays.
2003-07-17.
I’m working to flesh out the concept of Essays in my news engine. I’ve decided they should be kept seperate from news articles and presented a little differently. There are still some bugs to work out so beware.
- Technology
-
Reviews Gone Again!.
2003-07-18.
No sooner did they appear, than I removed them again!
- Technology
-
Essays and Administration.
2003-07-19.
Last night I moved the reviews out of the news and into the essays, and I copied all of the um insightful comments along with them.
- Technology
-
Fixes for Mozilla and Netscape.
2003-07-19.
Thanks to ]CC[-Red (who is one of the six or seven people in the world who does not use Internet Explorer), I discovered that my page looked rather icky in Netscape/Mozilla browsers.
- Technology
-
Registration.
2003-07-19.
Have completed the registration page, so you can create new accounts now.
- Technology
-
Email Notification Testing.
2003-07-20.
I’m testing a feature to send an email notification to registered users when changes to the site are made.
- Technology
-
Site Updates.
2003-07-26.
I’ve been playing with the style sheet and trying to find a better news presentation, so you will probably notice something different every time you visit.
- Technology
-
Email Notifications Continued.
2003-07-27.
Have continued the email notification experiments tonight.
- Technology
2003-08
-
New Dynamic Content.
2003-08-24.
In another desperate attempt to relive the Golden Age of Internet gaming, I added a section on the contents frame which shows Crayola Clan match results throughout history.
- Technology
2004-01
-
Email notification improved.
2004-01-30.
Today I improved the email notification considerably.
- Technology
2004-07
-
Blog Protected!.
2004-07-06.
To protect my site from the swarms of hackers that try to break into it and steal my sensitive data on a daily basis, I’ve implemented some long-awaited protective measures to keep people from inserting malicious script code into their comments.
- Technology
-
Deadwood Gone.
2004-07-11.
I finally got around to cleaning out the deadwood from my site. I stripped everything out of the old Nova Design pages. Now if people should stumble upon them in a search engine they’ll get links to the real Nova Design and links to here.
- Technology
-
Account Settings Implemented.
2004-07-11.
I finally added the ability to modify user account settings.
- Technology
2004-09
-
Essays Gone.
2004-09-26.
I took the liberty of removing the “Essays” sections because, well, I never write anything there and it’s a pain to maintain it in the news desk application. So, screw it.
- Technology
2004-11
-
New Look.
2004-11-04.
Something that’s been on my web page “todo” list for ages is spiffing up the article title bars. Tonight the dream has become reality. They are, in fact, spiffier.
- Technology
-
More New Looks.
2004-11-07.
I’ve been working toward making the “look and feel” of my Blog application more customizable.
- Technology
-
Even More New Looks.
2004-11-08.
No, I haven’t yet found a look I’m happy with, and I vow to continue changing everything around until I like it again, or until I get sick of it completely.
- Technology
-
Under Construction.
2004-11-11.
I’m in the process of updating the code that runs my blog, so it may or may not work for a while.
- Technology
-
Non-Frames Experiment.
2004-11-17.
I’m experimenting with a non-frames based page, so there may be some weird stuff happening for a bit.
- Technology
2004-12
-
Threaded Discussions.
2004-12-11.
Today I have extended the capabilities of the news engine to support “threaded” discussions. That is, a heirarchical structure where you can reply to any article, and reply to the replies, and so on. This is the basis of the proverbial “discussion group” found on so many web sites these days.
- Technology
-
Old Times.
2004-12-12.
Just so you know, the time on any article that I posted before moving to the new server (around the end of November) will be off by about 5 or 6 hours.
- Technology
-
Menu Fixed.
2004-12-18.
I’m not precisely sure what happened, but tonight I discovered my main menu was all messed up.
- Technology
-
Crayola History Added.
2004-12-20.
You’ve probably noticed this already, especially if you get email updates about the site, but I’m adding the Crayola History to a blog section.
- Technology
2005-03
-
Pictures Fixed!.
2005-03-12.
Finally got around to fixing the display of pictures associated with articles.
- Technology
2005-09
-
Why I Like PHP.
2005-09-27.
Most programmers at my level of genius and experience scoff at the PHP language for web development. So why do I use it on my web page?
- Technology
2005-10
-
Avoiding That Screen Flicker.
2005-10-28.
I went to the Richmond.NET User Group meeting tonight. The main topic was AJAX and how Microsoft is implementing it in ASP.NET 2.0 with Callbacks and Atlas and whatnot.
- Technology
2005-11
-
Technical News Returns.
2005-11-07.
This category had originally been for technical news about the web site. At some point, I realized nobody gave a crap about that, and I stopped adding to it.
- Technology
2005-12
-
Overhaul Looms.
2005-12-02.
I officially hate the way my site looks again.
- Technology
-
Photo Organization And Me.
2005-12-12.
Why is it so hard to find decent digital photo organization software?
- Technology
2006-01
-
The Macedonians\’s Days Are Numbered.
2006-01-03.
For those of you flocking to this page to read my insights on programming, you might have noticed that I haven’t written much of anything in this space. Most likely, that was why I removed this Technical section in the first place. But recently I thought.. hey, here’s a good idea.. how about a section of me writing about programming!
- Technology
-
Computer Upgrade.
2006-01-03.
Oh, here’s some more technical news. I’ve ordered an upgrade for my computer for the first time since September 2003. It’s just in the nick of time, too, since my current computer has taken to dying with a Blue Screen of Death each time I try to reboot.
- Technology
-
Purple Phoenix.
2006-01-09.
I’m sure you’re dying to know the status of my computer upgrade.
- Technology
-
Quake 4 Review.
2006-01-13.
So I’m playing Quake 4 now that I finally got my new computer put together. (What was the first thing I installed after Windows? Yup.
- Technology
-
RSS Fixed.
2006-01-23.
I’m sure this issue affected hundreds of people, so I just fixed a small glitch in my RSS feeds.
- Technology
2006-02
-
Tom’s RSS Reader Roundup.
2006-02-03.
Here are my opinions about popular RSS readers, in no particular order. I just wanted to keep these somewhere so I won’t keep re-downloading the same programs over and over again.
- Technology
2006-03
-
Tom\’s F.E.A.R. Mini-Review.
2006-03-19.
PROS
- Technology
-
The Continuing War On Spam.
2006-03-19.
Recently, Cynthia and I have been bombarded with a clever variety of spam that gets past our web host’s spam filters.
- Technology
2006-05
-
Dvorak on Microsoft.
2006-05-03.
Hurray, a technology post!
- Technology
-
Google Rankings.
2006-05-15.
Vanity Watch: I currently occupy 6 of the top 10 spots in a Google search for “Thomas Krehbiel.” I also rank within the top 10 for “Tom Krehbiel,” and in the top 20 for “Krehbiel.” Woop!
- Technology
-
Meet The New Reports, Same As The Old Reports.
2006-05-17.
At work we’re planning to use SQL Server 2005’s Reporting Services for future reporting needs. (It’s main attraction is the free-ness of it compared with Crystal Reports.) We can do everything the customers need with DataGrids on web pages, but everyone thinks Report Services are cool. I’m pretty indifferent about it.
- Technology
-
Default Content Changed.
2006-05-24.
Astute observers will notice that the default content is now blog stuff, instead of the portal page.
- Technology
-
Look and Feel Changes.
2006-05-25.
Astute readers will notice that I am once again fiddling with the “look and feel” of the site, especially the blogs.
- Technology
-
SSIS.
2006-05-31.
At work, I’ve been playing with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for use in an upcoming project. (“Integration” is one of those fancy “enterprise” terms that means “getting information from different places and organizing it into something useful.”) There’s some value in SSIS, but overall I’m not terribly impressed. In fact, it’s a bit of a pain.
- Technology
2006-06
-
Avoiding SSIS query timeouts.
2006-06-07.
Just so I have a record of this: In SSIS, I was trying to pull data from a SQL Server database with a complex, slow SELECT query (written by someone else) which took a good 15 minutes to run.
- Technology
-
DS2 and CoD2.
2006-06-07.
Two quick game reviews.
- Technology
-
Site Optimizations.
2006-06-13.
I optimized the web site so it builds pages about twice as fast. There were a number of unnecessarily redundant database queries that I trimmed out. Of course, my web host isn’t exactly a speed demon so the changes are not apparent.
- Technology
2006-07
-
New Email Formatting.
2006-07-29.
This is a test post.
- Technology
2006-08
-
Doom 3 Review.
2006-08-14.
I finished Doom 3 yesterday. Overall, I liked it a lot. It was a very satisfying single-player experience.
- Technology
-
My Blog Worth.
2006-08-21.
This is pretty funny.
- Technology
2006-09
-
Removing Collection Elements During Enumeration.
2006-09-05.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
StringBuilder vs. Concatenation.
2006-09-11.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
New Styles.
2006-09-21.
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve given the web site yet another facelift today. My goal was to clean up the style sheet and get rid of a lot of tables. I’m still aiming for a “clean and simple” look – the antithesis of what most modern web pages look like.
- Technology
-
String Constants.
2006-09-21.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
Debugging Custom SSIS Components.
2006-09-22.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
Reformat Complete.
2006-09-26.
Over the weekend, I finally reformatted my main computer and upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, a task I’ve been putting off for ages. I hadn’t made any major upgrades to this computer in at least three years, so you can imagine I had quite a bit of junk on it from years of installing and un-installing software. I made tedious, redundant backups of everything before the big wipe, so I haven’t lost any data, but at the moment all I have is a blank computer running Windows XP.
- Technology
-
Easy SSIS Package Deployment.
2006-09-29.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
Agile Manifesto Not So Bad After All.
2006-09-29.
I read (most of) Steve Yegge’s blog post on Bad Agile, and thought it was great to hear someone ranting against Agile Development for a change. (Unfortunately, it quickly devolved into a “golly, Google is such a fun playground for programmers, it’s the greatest place to work ever!” rant.)
- Technology
2006-10
-
Remember, One Class Per File.
2006-10-04.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
FlatOut2.
2006-10-10.
I’ve basically finished with FlatOut2… won all the races except the one at the very end, and that’s just a bunch of derbies. The game pretty much ruled until I got bored from racing on the same tracks over and over again and, well, from winning all the time. :) I give it 5… out of 5.
- Technology
-
World of Warcraft.
2006-10-10.
Inspired by the recent episode of South Park, and being bored with FlatOut2, I finally installed my trial version of World of Warcraft yesterday, which I’d gotten with a video card about a year ago I think. I’ve been trying to stay away from MMORPGs because, as South Park indicated, you really can’t play them competitively unless you’re willing to join some kind of guild and give up your life, and really, what’s the point in playing a game if not to win? :) But I’ve heard repeatedly that WoW was particularly good for so-called “casual gamers” and people who liked solo adventuring, so I gave it a shot.
- Technology
-
My Implementation Of Active Records.
2006-10-10.
I was somewhat gratified to see that the method I had come up with to wrap database rows inside objects has a name: The Active Record Design Pattern. Furthermore, someone else (namely, Castleproject’s ActiveRecord) thought of using .NET attributes to markup the row class just like I did (though chronologically they thought of it after I had finished my first version). It’s always fun to see myself inventing the same things that the so-called “industry leaders” invent.
- Technology
-
World of Warcraft Addendum.
2006-10-11.
Addendum: So I go to login to WoW last night to see how many levels I can acheive with a 14-day trial account, and it says the server is full and I have to wait in a queue for some 30 minutes to get in! You have got to be kidding me. That seals the deal.
- Technology
-
The Crayola Clan Wiki.
2006-10-12.
Check out my new experiment, The Crayola Clan Wiki. I’m using PmWiki, which seems to be a nice little PHP-based, non-database Wiki. It was easy to setup and it’s pretty easy to edit pages.
- Technology
-
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.
2006-10-16.
I played two maps of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch this past weekend (about 30 minutes worth), so I feel qualified to write a comprehensive review of it now.
- Technology
-
Counter-Strike: Source.
2006-10-17.
I broke down and played some Counter-Strike: Source last night. This was the first time I’ve ever played Counter-Strike (CS) in all the seven years or so it’s been out. I figured it was time to assimilate since it’s like the most popular online game in the world, and runs on 6 bazillion servers, and has 7 gajillion people playing it every day.
- Technology
-
Don’t Use A Lookup Component To Find Duplicate Rows.
2006-10-19.
Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future.
- Technology
-
World of Warcraft Redux.
2006-10-23.
Perhaps this was inevitable, but in the absence of anything better to play, I’m reversing my stance on World of Warcraft. It’s grown on me like an infectious fungus, so I paid the $20 activation fee so I could keep playing past the free trial period.
- Technology
2007-01
-
uvBlog.
2007-01-19.
I’ve started working on a more streamlined PHP blogging platform, which I’m creatively dubbing “uvBlog.” You might be wondering why I don’t just get one of the millions of free, open source blog platforms out there. It’s mainly because I’m really, really picky, and frankly it’s more fun and instructional to develop my own. Also I don’t want to lose any of my content.
- Technology
2007-03
-
uvBlog March Update.
2007-03-13.
I thought it would be good to sit down and evaluate where I am with uvBlog in comparison to my stated goals. Points in italics below were my original goals.
- Technology
-
No Redirection For Data Destination Errors?.
2007-03-16.
I had the “opportunity” to fix someone else’s SSIS package that was failing because of a data overflow on a date column at one of the data destination components.
- Technology
-
Mystery Date Crisis Solved.
2007-03-16.
To follow up on yesterday’s mystery date problem: It turned out that one of the incoming dates had been erroneously entered with the year “1007” instead of “2007.” The date was valid on the Oracle data source, and it was valid within the SSIS data flow. However, SQL Server 2000 can’t store a date prior to the year 1753, so the data destination failed. I put in a script component to test for dates earlier than 1753, set them to “1/1/1753”, and flagged the row with an error.
- Technology
-
Another Embarassment For The U.S. Patent Office.
2007-03-19.
I just saw this on Slashdot: Linked List Patented in 2006. It prompted me to write this knee-jerk reaction: Oh my god! It’s widely known that the U.S. patent office is completely retarded when it comes to giving out software patents, but this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.
- Technology
-
Moving .NET Web Projects.
2007-03-23.
I’ve had some annoying problems opening other people’s ASP.NET web projects from Visual SourceSafe. By default, it sets up the local IIS directory in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot regardless of the location of the solution directory. I prefer setting up a virtual directory that points to the actual project location, which for me is on the D: drive.
- Technology
-
Has Windows Jumped The Shark?.
2007-03-27.
I used to be the kind of person to upgrade software immediately as soon as new versions were available, because it used to be true that upgrades meant there would be some kind of improvement. But lately Microsoft has been working to redefine the term “software upgrade” to mean “an entirely different application rewritten from the ground up without any quality control.” First there was Visual Studio 2005, which is definitely quirkier and slower than Visual Studio 2003. Then, in the same vein, there’s SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio, which I’ve had the pleasure of using for a year now.
- Technology
-
Looking Back: PopFuncs.
2007-03-28.
I thought it might be fun to review some of my earlier programming projects on this blog.
- Technology
-
Escaping {{Braces}} For String.Format.
2007-03-28.
Amazingly enough, I hadn’t run across this situation before. I was writing a quick utility to generate a C# class from a database table today, and I discovered that the following code failed.
- Technology
-
The DTEXEC /DECRYPT option.
2007-03-31.
Today’s lesson is about how to avoid those annoying messages that SSIS gives you about being unable to decrypt sensitive data in a package.
- Technology
2007-04
-
Hacknot Is Cool.
2007-04-04.
I’ve been trying to fill my news reader with good blogs on software development, both to expand my knowledge and to peek at the state-of-the-art in programmer blogging. Most of the blogs I see are not interesting, not informative, and/or not focused. But today I came across Hacknot, which hits it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned.
- Technology
-
Please Don’t Do This.
2007-04-04.
Over the last couple weeks I’ve been enjoying a lovely little application that repeatedly polls for xml data from a web service. The main loop of this application looks something like this.
- Technology
-
UvMoney: Home Banking For Mad Scientists.
2007-04-09.
My latest mad-scientist software project idea involves home banking.
- Technology
-
A Brief Look At SourceGrid 4.x.
2007-04-28.
To implement an interface that somewhat resembles a check register for UvMoney, I’m going to need a list or grid control. I wrote a semi-usable grid control for .NET 1.1 a few years back, but I wanted to test drive a more mature grid for this project.
- Technology
2007-05
-
Exploring Scraping Methods.
2007-05-03.
I’ve got a working prototype of the UvMoney system now. It’s pretty rough around the edges (especially in the user-interface department), but it works. I’m at a natural stopping point, so this seems like a good time to take a step back and ruminate on it.
- Technology
-
Easy Bot Blocking.
2007-05-07.
I’m sure this is well-documented already – in fact I’m almost positive I’ve read this somewhere else, and I’m completely positive that I’ve seen web sites using this technique – but here is a quick and easy way to keep simple bots from posting data to your web site: Add a Javascript “onclick” event to your submit button which sets a hidden form field. Verify that the hidden form field is set correctly and viola, you have a simple test for human vs. bot.
- Technology
-
DOM Manipulation Woes In Firefox and IE.
2007-05-21.
I realize that most programmers like puzzles, but I, for one, am growing very tired of the continual “find the code combination that works” puzzles that occur when trying to write cross-browser compatible Javascript. I mean, this kind of thing has been going on since the mid-1990s. Are we EVER going to get any standards??
- Technology
-
Parsing Date Strings.
2007-05-23.
Very handy information if you ever need to go beyond DateTime.Parse(): Parsing Dates and Times in .NET.
- Technology
2007-06
-
SQL Server 2005 Migration.
2007-06-30.
We recently completed a migration from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 at work. Here are some of the issues I’ve had to deal with from an application perspective.
- Technology
2007-07
-
UvMoney Goes AJAX.
2007-07-27.
It’s time for an exciting update on my UvMoney home accounting project.
- Technology
2007-08
-
GhostDoc.
2007-08-15.
I’ve been experimenting with GhostDoc for a while at work. I saw it mentioned somewhere on CodeBetter.com, and I figured if the cool kids were using it, it must be cool. At first I thought it was really cool to be able to drop comments into my source code with one click.
- Technology
-
Everything Old Is New Again.
2007-08-30.
I simply could not resist pointing out and chuckling about this article on Web Worker Daily: Offline Applications: A Brighter Future Than You Think. (I am not precisely sure why I still have Web Worker Daily in my feed reader; it seems to be geared more toward those people who think they are IT consultants because they use Gmail and Instant Messaging and setup their church’s web site.)
- Technology
2007-09
-
MySQL charset parameter.
2007-09-10.
Just in case you don’t know, in order to store UTF8 characters in a MySQL database, you have to add a “charset=utf8;” parameter to the connection string when using the MySQL .NET Connector. Otherwise you will get very frustrated. Also don’t forget to set the field’s character set and collation to utf8 too.
- Technology
-
Software Entropy.
2007-09-25.
I learned a new gimmicky programming phrase today: Software Entropy.
- Technology
-
Expressing 10.Seconds.
2007-09-25.
Regarding Extension Method Practices. The author wrote, “I can use this method [C# 3.0 extension methods] to express 10.Seconds.” I’m all for improving a programming language, but I’m sorry – if you need to write “10.Seconds” in a C# program, you are in the wrong language. Go back to Ruby, you damn hippy.
- Technology
-
Suntrust On Notice.
2007-09-27.
I would just like to state for the record that Suntrust’s web developers SUCK. They’ve added a “Please wait while we validate your sign-on information” page that comes up after the login form. It advances from there to the main page only after some kind of mysterious Javascript redirect (yes, Javascript is apparently now required to login to Suntrust banking) that is buried in a series of hopelessly convoluted spaghetti libraries.
- Technology
2007-10
-
Computer Upgrades.
2007-10-21.
Parts for my new computer came in last Monday (the 8th). I had a micro ATX case sitting around from a year ago which I was going to put my motherboard in (because I wanted front USB connectors, which my current case doesn’t have), but it turned out my current motherboard wouldn’t fit. So to avoid wasting the case, I was finally forced to buy a new motherboard.
- Technology
-
My First Look At Vista.
2007-10-21.
I installed Windows Vista on the new development computer I’m building. This is the first time I’ve even seen Vista running. I figured that with the impending release of the first Vista Service Pack, now was as good a time as any to jump into it.
- Technology
-
Perplexing Internet Explorer Problem.
2007-10-21.
I recently ran into one of the most perplexing computer problems I’ve experienced in a long time. Naturally, the resolution turned out to be head-smackingly simple.
- Technology
2007-11
-
String Comparison.
2007-11-22.
There are a bunch of different ways to compare two strings in .NET. Periodically I ponder which one is “the best.” As with most things in programming, it’s largely a personal preference.
- Technology
2007-12
-
Exceptions.
2007-12-07.
This short article on Devlicio.us about the wrong way to catch exceptions is pretty funny.
- Technology
-
Build Scripts.
2007-12-07.
Coding Horror advises, “So, if you don’t have a build script on your project, what are you waiting for?”
- Technology
-
Named Pipes.
2007-12-08.
At work we have a Windows Service that runs continuously, doing important stuff. I wanted to write a lightweight WinForm monitor that I could run independently from the service (on the same machine) to watch what it’s doing in real time, without the hassle of continually re-loading a plain text log file. Performance Monitor was not sufficient because I wanted actual text messages.
- Technology
-
UvMoney Status Report.
2007-12-08.
When I last reported on UvMoney, I had just created a web interface for entering transactions. Since then, I’m pleased to report that all five of my bank readers now use direct HTML access instead of AutoHotKey scripts, and they have been working more-or-less happily for months. (Every now and then banks will upgrade their web sites, though, which is a pain.) The system works pretty well, but now I’m starting to make some more changes.
- Technology
-
Software Review.
2007-12-08.
Each time I setup a new computer with a fresh operating system, I re-evaluate the software I install on it.
- Technology
-
Vista Administrator Tip.
2007-12-28.
Here’s a quick Vista tip: Make sure the built-in Administrator account is enabled with a password before you go and remove your normal login from the Administrators group.
- Technology
2008-01
-
Excel Spreadsheet Table Names.
2008-01-08.
If you have the unfortunate need to use an Execute SQL Task SSIS component on an Excel spreadsheet, make sure you specify the worksheet name as “[Your Sheet 1$]” in the FROM clause of your SQL statement.
- Technology
-
Google Reader Blows.
2008-01-09.
What is up with Google Reader?? Half the time I click on anything the entire browser freezes up for minutes on end. I can only assume it’s doing some kind of asynchronous request that would probably take a fraction of a second on a non-sucky network connection.
- Technology
-
Blu-ray.
2008-01-09.
Sounds like Blu-ray will be winning the high definition DVD format wars, according to Slashdot. If memory serves, Blu-ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD, so this might be one of the rare cases where the better technology wins in the marketplace.
- Technology
-
Stepping Into The Framework.
2008-01-18.
Recently I learned that you can debug into the Microsoft .NET Framework. Other than idle curiousity, I can’t think of any reason why I’d want to do that, except to confirm or deny that there is a bug in the Framework. This suggests to me that Microsoft is basically trying to outsource analysis of framework bugs onto the community, and I’m guessing there won’t be too many payments for that service forthcoming.
- Technology
-
What’s Not To Understand?.
2008-01-18.
Consider this post: Syntactical Molasses. The author claims that his test method is “syntactical molasses” which “makes the intention of the code so much more difficult to understand:”
- Technology
-
My First Look At WWF.
2008-01-22.
So out of curiousity I started trying to figure out what “Windows Workflow Foundation” is and why Microsoft thinks we need to re-write all of our applications for it. Here’s the introductory paragraph that I found on MSDN.
- Technology
-
That Mysterious requirePermission Attribute.
2008-01-25.
I started upgrading an ASP.NET 1.1 project to 2.0, and I got this error: “Unrecognized attribute ‘requirePermission’ (C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727Configmachine.config line 14)”
- Technology
-
Where I Am With TDD.
2008-01-25.
Test Driven Development is one of the buzzwordy things that Agile and Extreme programmers like to push as the most important programming advancement since sliced bread. (Although, recently, TDD seems to be losing out in favor of a new thing called Behavior Driven Development (BDD), which as far as I can tell is the exact same thing as TDD, except instead of naming your tests “TestWidgetProperty,” you name your tests “Determine_if_the_widget_property_is_working_correctly.” (That is a humorous observation not meant to be taken seriously.))
- Technology
-
UvMoney Back to XML.
2008-01-27.
Note: This has been sitting in my drafts for months.
- Technology
-
MVPs Should Not Publish Bad Code Samples.
2008-01-27.
Some programming blogs are informative and trustworthy. Unfortunately, most aren’t. For example, in an otherwise good post explaining new features in C# 3.0, I found this shocking sample C# 3.0 extension method among the blogs at the popular site ASP.NET Weblogs.
- Technology
-
Keep It Simple.
2008-01-31.
Ran into another post from our MVP friend Dan Wahlen: How Would You Refactor this Code? #1. I don’t normally respond to these kinds of things because it always devolves into a my-code-is-bigger-than-your-code conversation (if you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
- Technology
2008-02
-
Interview Questions.
2008-02-02.
I was asked recently to sit in on an interview to evaluate a candidate’s .NET experience. I thought about what kinds of questions I could ask, did some Googling, and thought back to some of the technical interviews I’d been through.
- Technology
-
UvMoney Concurrency.
2008-02-03.
I’ve been thinking more about concurrency issues in UvMoney. The last time I posted about UvMoney, I was switching over to a database back-end mainly to handle concurrency. Then I decided that was pretty silly, considering that in my current “production” environment, there are only two people that can possibly use the data at the same time.
- Technology
-
NuSphere PhpEd.
2008-02-03.
I’m trying out NuSphere’s PhpEd. For lo these many years, my PHP IDE has been a text editor and a web browser. Yep, that’s it.
- Technology
-
Developing vs. Communicating.
2008-02-06.
In response to Caio Proiete’s How to be a better developer? (Which is, in turn, a response to Rodrigo DÃaz Concha’s How to be a better developer?)
- Technology
-
Visual Studio 2008 and WPF.
2008-02-15.
I’ve started migrating to Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 for my home projects, for whatever that’s worth. (We aren’t allowed to use it at work.) Nothing in my projects actually require .NET 3.5 features, mind you, so it’s not that great of an experiment, but hey, it’s a start.
- Technology
-
WPF: Skinning a TreeView with Resources.
2008-02-16.
In my first WPF project (a port of a WinForms picture viewer), I needed to create a TreeView with icons on each node. It doesn’t take long to realize that the WPF TreeView doesn’t have this functionality built-in anymore.
- Technology
-
WPF: Finicky About JPEGs.
2008-02-17.
Gah! I’ve found that WPF’s BitmapImage is quite finicky about the kind of JPEG files it will load.
- Technology
-
My FTP Broke.
2008-02-20.
I installed Vista Service Pack 1 this weekend. Now, I can’t seem to FTP into my web site with FileZilla anymore. I think it’s just a coincidence and that my web host’s FTP server is down for completely unrelated reasons, but they aren’t usually down this long and I’m starting to wonder…
- Technology
-
Sharing Files Between ASP.NET Projects.
2008-02-25.
These rambling thoughts document my search for a way to share files between Visual Studio web projects.
- Technology
-
Shell Schmell.
2008-02-29.
I’m reading The Pragmatic Programmer, supposedly one of the Bibles for modern programmers. It came highly recommended by one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror. (Well, it used to be highly recommended… I’d swear there were only two books on his recommended reading list before.) Anyway, it’s a good book so far.
- Technology
2008-03
-
Text Manipulation Languages.
2008-03-07.
I said before that The Pragmatic Programmer seems biased toward Unix environments and lacks much real-world experience with Microsoft environments. Here’s another example of that.
- Technology
-
Design By Contract and Spec#.
2008-03-07.
I’ve ragged a bit on The Pragmatic Programmer lately, but I wanted to mention one concept in the book that I really liked: Design By Contract.
- Technology
-
NAnt MissingManifestResourceException Tip.
2008-03-09.
With NAnt 0.86 Beta 1, I found that I couldn’t use the element to include *.resx files in my task. For example, this didn’t work.
- Technology
-
The Magic Two-Faced File.
2008-03-09.
I was in a store recently where the clerk vehemently declared that we should stick with XP and not install Vista until there was absolutely no choice.
- Technology
-
Open Source Licenses.
2008-03-19.
I’ve been thinking about releasing some open source stuff, so I’ve been reading up on Open Source licenses. They all seem to have a significant hole in them: It looks to me like a nefarious person could slap any GPL software onto a CD and sell it to the nearest gullible corporation for $5000. Granted, anyone could get the software from non-nefarious sources for free, but still, the nefarious person would probably be able to con a few people into handing over money for the free software, which is bad, but it’s even worse that the actual author – the person who did all the work, in other words – gets absolutely nothing out of the transaction.
- Technology
-
Company Smell.
2008-03-20.
I found this recent post on ASP.NET Weblogs sort of funny: Please question the need for whitespace. This person is actually suggesting that blank lines in your source code (which, for most normal people, are used to improve readability) could be a “code smell.” Then at the bottom of the post we learn that they are hiring. Hrm.
- Technology
-
Close But No Cigar.
2008-03-22.
I just got a 71% on a Microsoft 70-536 practice test (80% is required to pass). I got creamed in Globalization and Security topics (things I’ve never had an occasion to use before). I guess I should probably read over the material before I take the tests for real.
- Technology
2008-04
-
C++/CLI Properties.
2008-04-11.
Properties in C++/CLI are great and all, but, um, what if I want to put my class implementation in a different file from the class definition? You know, like, oh, every C++ program ever made in the entire history of the world. Microsoft even encourages the separation of definition from implementation by creating a .cpp and a .h file when you make the new managed class.
- Technology
-
Carl Sassenrath’s Blog.
2008-04-14.
I recently found out that Carl Sassenrath, creator of the Amiga Exec and (at the risk of starting a holy war) arguably the single most important force for bringing preemptive multi-tasking to the personal computer, writes a blog. He now spends his time developing the REBOL language. (He’s the only former AmigaOS developer that I’ve found who blogs.)
- Technology
-
UvSignalProcessor.
2008-04-14.
I’m calling my latest .NET project UvSignalProcessor. This follows UvMoney and UvNotes, if you’re keeping track, and neither one of those is anywhere near finished, so yes, I’m skipping around. But hey, nobody’s paying me for this stuff, so (insert Cartman impersonation) I can do what I want.
- Technology
-
Linux Core Distribution.
2008-04-15.
I got to wondering if there was a way to install just the Linux kernel on a computer without all the useless bells and whistles you usually get in the big Linux distros (which, as far as I can tell, only serve to clone the slow, bloated Windows OS that everyone in the Linux world hates so much – go figure). The closest thing I could find was the (unfortunately) defunct Linux Core distribution.
- Technology
-
Best Practices.
2008-04-23.
Rescued from my Drafts folder…
- Technology
-
Stack Overflow.
2008-04-23.
Two of my favorite modern software development bloggers and role models – Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror and Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software – are joining forces to create a new developer community site called stackoverflow (not sure if that’s the correct casing, but that’s how it is on the site). Because, you know, there just aren’t enough “community” startups on the Interwebs. But seriously: I listened to their inaugural podcast which described their vision for the site and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
- Technology
2008-05
-
Twittering.
2008-05-05.
I’m starting to play around with Twitter. It took some work, but I finally figured out how to send tweets from behind The Firewall Of Doom. If you don’t know what Twitter is, you probably don’t care.
- Technology
-
Web v. Desktop.
2008-05-08.
I’ve been following Jeff Atwood’s Twitter feed for a little while now. I find that I enjoy his blog much more than his tweets, which sometimes tend toward preachy elitism. For example, in a recent tweet he said: “[T]he desktop is dead.
- Technology
-
Spolsky on Podcasts.
2008-05-15.
Joel Spolsky said that most people only listen to podcasts while they’re distracted.
- Technology
2008-06
-
The Cloud.
2008-06-18.
I saw an article by John Dvorak – someone I usually find pretty abrasive – in the latest PC Magazine (it’s not online yet) that I actually agree with. He was (again) putting the smack down on computing “in the cloud,” which is yet another term for (basically) the trend of conducting business by running applications soley in a browser on the web. (BlackBoard is one example of this type of software, fyi.) Personally, I – and most likely any programmer over 35 – think this is a step backwards in the evolution of software technology, because we are simply re-creating the old days of dumb terminals connected to a mainframe.
- Technology
-
Opera Pretty Cool.
2008-06-19.
I downloaded Opera 9.5 the other day and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’ve wanted to try Opera for years, but I just never got around to it. Now I’m sorry I haven’t been using it all along.
- Technology
-
Programming Goals Revised.
2008-06-30.
At this halfway point of the year, I thought it would behoove me to examine how I’m doing on my programming goals for this year. Back in January, I wrote down some things I wanted to work on this year. I didn’t publish it, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that those things were.
- Technology
2008-08
-
LINQ query syntax.
2008-08-26.
I’m starting to learn a little bit about LINQ. I am only doing this because I was starting to learn a little bit about the forthcoming ASP.NET MVC Framework by watching some handy screencasts, and the authors of the framework seem to think that we should all be using LINQ, too, so amidst the discussion of the MVC Framework they throw in quite a lot of tutorials about LINQ.
- Technology
-
GhostDoc Redux.
2008-08-27.
I had previously written that I tried GhostDoc but removed it because it didn’t write very useful comments. Well I re-loaded it today because it does have one very handy feature: Adding comments to classes that implement interfaces. It’s incredibly tedious to copy comments from the interface code to the class code, but with GhostDoc you just have to right-click on the class member and hit “Document This” and it will automatically bring the comment from the interface to the class.
- Technology
-
Opera Road Test.
2008-08-27.
Previously I wrote about Opera 9.5. Since then, I’ve been using it for almost all of my browsing at home (at work we still have to use IE6 rolls eyes). So far I’ve only encountered two real problems with it.
- Technology
-
Agile Wall.
2008-08-29.
I learned a new software development term the other day: “Agile Wall.” For those of you who aren’t into renaming things that already have names just to sound more important, it is: “A bulletin board with project notes all over it.” Okay, okay, the notes are supposed to be arranged into three columns for “todo,” “in progress,” and “done.” Yeah, I can see how it’s a totally different concept now.
- Technology
2008-09
-
Finally != Inevitable.
2008-09-19.
For future reference: I had always heard that there were cases where finally blocks were not run. The other day I actually witnessed one of those situations: In a .NET console app, if you hit CTRL-C to exit the application, finally blocks are not executed. Fortunately garbage collection will still handle standard cleanup of objects for you (at least I assume so).
- Technology
-
Sorry IE7 Users.
2008-09-26.
By the way I’d like to apologize to anyone who has viewed my site recently with Internet Explorer 7. Sometimes it rendered very badly, randomly writing text all over the place, shifting boxes around and generally looking ugly (see below). It had something to do with an overflow:hidden CSS attribute in the rounded boxes, which apparently is not well liked by Internet Explorer.
- Technology
2008-10
-
Sitemap.xml and Google Webmaster Tools.
2008-10-14.
I just read about Sitemap.xml on Coding Horror. I’d never heard of it before (yeah, I’m not exactly wired into the whole SEO thing). Anyway, I just implemented a site map for my page, for what it’s worth.
- Technology
-
Me vs. the MMO Engine.
2008-10-16.
So I decided to write an MMO game engine*.
- Technology
-
New Collection vs. Collection.Clear.
2008-10-18.
Quick, which one of the following implementations is faster to use in a time-critical section of code.
- Technology
-
Evaluating MMO Engines.
2008-10-18.
Before I embark too far on the insane idea of writing my own MMO engine, I thought it would be instructive to peek at some open source engines out there (gathered from the first few pages of a Google search).
- Technology
-
Moving C++/CLI Properties Out Of Headers.
2008-10-18.
A while back I railed against C++/CLI for its nonsensical inability to separate property implementations from the header file. Well, it turns out you can do it – it’s just not widely reported. Almost every example of a C++/CLI property shows it implemented in the header file.
- Technology
-
MMO Prototype Progress.
2008-10-20.
Here’s the progress I made on my MMO engine this weekend.
- Technology
2008-11
-
Azure and C# 4.0 at PDC.
2008-11-07.
Most of the buzz from Microsoft’s PDC is about Azure and C# 4.0. I don’t usually pay too much attention to bleeding edge Microsoft technology until it might actually be used in real-life situations, but I thought I’d break from tradition and peek at these two shiny new things.
- Technology
-
Disabling Pluralization in Visual Studio.
2008-11-11.
I noticed with some concern that the Visual Studio 2008 designer puts an “s” on the end of table names when it builds LINQ to SQL classes. If you want to disable that, open Tools/Options, go to the Database Tools O/R Designer page, and change “Pluralization of names” option to false.
- Technology
-
Fed up with SyncToy.
2008-11-17.
I’ve been trying to use Microsoft’s SyncToy for my directory synchronization tasks, and I’m just about fed up with it. For reasons I can’t fathom, it routinely “forgets” what to synchronize. I frequently synchronize to and from a USB stick, and I find that SyncToy usually wants to copy far more files than have actually been changed.
- Technology
-
CookieContainer, HttpWebRequest and Secure Cookies.
2008-11-20.
I ran across a troublesome problem that took several evenings to debug. I couldn’t find a solution with Google so maybe somebody else will benefit from this.
- Technology
-
LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Classes.
2008-11-21.
I’ve been starting to work a little bit with LINQ to SQL and now the ADO.NET Entity Framework* (to implement ORM** for UvMoney, my home banking system). There’s something that troubles me about both frameworks. Both require you to build a “model” of your database with a designer, from which strongly-typed classes are generated, which you can then use in your LINQ queries.
- Technology
-
Corporate GMail.
2008-11-21.
I didn’t realize this, but you can actually brand Google apps. The place where my wife works got some new computers, and their new web-mail system is actually GMail with a different logo up in the corner, which they get to through their own domain name. After a little digging, I found that it’s “corporate GMail,” apparently a component of Google Apps.
- Technology
-
When It’s Okay To Use C# 3.0 var.
2008-11-21.
I ragged a little bit on “var” a while ago, but there are some cases where I think it’s a handy shortcut. Those being when it’s abundantly clear what the underlying type is, like when creating new objects. For example, it makes perfect sense to change this.
- Technology
2008-12
-
New Blog Platform for 2009.
2008-12-26.
As I’ve hinted, I decided to rewrite my PHP blog platform again. I’ve been working too hard to shoehorn features I want into the old code, so it’s time for a re-imagining. Besides, it’s just fun to write new code.
- Technology
2009-02
-
Get Microsoft Virtual PC.
2009-02-16.
I’ve heard about “virtualization” for years, but I never thought it was anything I needed to worry about. I just thought it was something for network engineers to tinker with in big, expensive data centers. It turns out there are plenty of handy uses for virtualization, using Microsoft’s Virtual PC, in your everyday computing life.
- Technology
-
Recent Aggravator Updates.
2009-02-16.
In case anyone uses it, there’s been some minor changes to the Aggravator lately.
- Technology
-
How to Rename a Windows Service.
2009-02-17.
I came across a situation where I wanted to rename a Windows service that had already been installed. (In this case I wasn’t able to rebuild the application to alter the service installation properties, which would of course be the ideal solution.) Google was spectacularly unhelpful, so this is how you do it.
- Technology
-
Zune Obtained.
2009-02-24.
I bought a Zune last week. Yeah, a Zune. Big woop.
- Technology
2009-03
-
Development Software I Use Now.
2009-03-01.
I’ve setup a new development PC, so I thought it was time once again to review the software I normally install and use for development (I last did this in December 2007).
- Technology
-
Comment Model.
2009-03-13.
Just so there’s a record of it, here’s how I’m planning to implement comments in the new blog platform. It’s geared toward a small community size.
- Technology
-
Upgraded to AMD and Vista x64.
2009-03-15.
I recently upgraded my home computer to a 2.6GHz AMD Athlon X2 5050e with 4GB of memory. Parts for this upgrade, including a whole new case, motherboard and hard drive, cost about $350.
- Technology
-
Eclipse and PDT for PHP Development.
2009-03-20.
I started looking for a PHP IDE again to replace the venerable TextPad. Last year I looked at NuSphere’s PhpEd, which was actually not bad but I couldn’t bring myself to spend $100+ on it just to get a little Intellisense. Now I’m looking at Eclipse with PHP Development Tools (PDT), which is free and open source.
- Technology
-
uvBlog 2.0 Code Released.
2009-03-23.
I posted uvBlog 2.0 (the PHP code that runs thomaskrehbiel.com) on Google Code under the GPL3 license. That basically means you can use it as long as you release the source code, too.
- Technology
-
This Week In Tech Snobbery.
2009-03-25.
I’ve been listening to a lot of tech podcasts lately, and I find it fascinating to hear that there is just as much of a “bubble” in Silicon Valley as there is inside the Beltway.
- Technology
-
My URL Shortening Service.
2009-03-26.
As part of my continuing effort to take over the world, I’ve created my own personal url-shortening service: http://uvurl.net.
- Technology
2009-04
-
Sun VirtualBox running Ubuntu.
2009-04-09.
Some time ago I wrote about the merits of Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007. This time I’m going to write about Sun VirtualBox, which has an advantage over VPC: It can run Linux distros without crashing.
- Technology
-
Setting Up CruiseControl.NET.
2009-04-22.
As an experiment, I’ve been working on setting up CruiseControl.NET at work, but I’ve run into a few annoying snags.
- Technology
2009-05
-
Lessons Learned from the New Blog Platform.
2009-05-04.
Recently I upgraded the software running my home page. I spent a fair amount of time adding a feature I called “nano posting,” which was essentially a way to insert Twitter-style updates into the stream of posts. In the intervening time I’ve discovered that I don’t much like my implementation of that feature.
- Technology
-
Incorrect usage of SUBQUERY and feature is disabled.
2009-05-09.
I just looked at my home page to find it reporting a database error. “Incorrect usage of SUBQUERY and feature is disabled by allow_view_trigger_sp_subquery in /etc/my.cnf”.
- Technology
-
Amiga Web Browsers Still Not So Great.
2009-05-10.
One of the reasons we all had to leave the Amiga behind as our main PC was the inability of the tiny Amiga developer community to keep up with the armies of Windows developers and consumer demand.
- Technology
-
How To Fix IE8 Links Not Working.
2009-05-18.
If you’re having trouble with Internet Explorer 8 not opening links in Vista, try running IE once as an Administrator.
- Technology
2009-06
-
Sending Signed Emails from Windows Live Mail.
2009-06-14.
For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how to send digitally signed emails in Windows Live Mail (or Windows Mail) in Vista. Both consistently reported, “The message could not be sent. An error has occurred.&rdquo.
- Technology
-
How to Create and Manage Certificates with OpenSSL.
2009-06-15.
Lately I’ve been on a crusade to digitally sign my emails. I tried some free email certificates from StartSSL and Thawte, but neither one was quite what I wanted (they just show an email address with something like a generic “free member” as the common name). So I decided to try making my own certificate authority with OpenSSL.
- Technology
-
Gave Up On Ubuntu.
2009-06-28.
Recently I put an old 1.8GHz P4 computer in the living room to use as a dedicated media player for music, pictures and video. As an experiment, I first tried to install Ubuntu Linux as the operating system, thinking the Linux desktop had surely matured enough by now to perform this simple task.
- Technology
-
A Router Firewall In Action.
2009-06-28.
Is this normal for a home router? :) I get a report every week filled with scary-sounding log messages like the ones below. I guess it’s good to see that these things are caught, but it makes one wonder what kinds of things are not getting caught.
- Technology
-
What We Didn’t Have For Amiga Development.
2009-06-29.
While using Cloanto’s Amiga Forever to massage the source code for Rend24 into something that actually compiles*, I was amazed at the basic functionality we had to live without during the time I did Amiga development.
- Technology
2009-08
-
Technology Bits.
2009-08-20.
Updating the status of technology in my life, in no particular order.
- Technology
-
Aggravator 3.0 Plans.
2009-08-20.
I’ve started working on a major update to my RSS feed aggregator. With this new 3.0 version, I hope to resolve a lot of outstanding problems and polish things up.
- Technology
2009-09
-
Russia’s New Holiday: Programmer’s Day.
2009-09-13.
Happy Programmer’s Day!
- Technology
-
Exploring New Programming Fonts.
2009-09-13.
I’ve been a Consolas user since it came with Visual Studio 2005, but now I’m exploring some new programming fonts. Unfortunately, there are surprisingly few choices out there if you want a nice anti-aliased font that scales well.
- Technology
-
Windows Live Writer, Remember Password and Atom Authentication.
2009-09-26.
I was working on an Atom publishing API for my blog, since I want to use more secure authentication than is possible with the MetaWeblog API. But I had no luck getting Windows Live Writer to authenticate against my API even though it tested out correctly in every other way. I finally discovered it was a quirk of Windows Live Writer.
- Technology
-
Silverlight 3: Web App Development That Doesn’t Suck?.
2009-09-30.
I’ve had some ideas for a more, let’s say, “animated” web site, but frankly large-scale Javascript development is tiresome and the thought of delving into Adobe Flash or Flex or AIR or whatever they call it now is too depressing to contemplate. With the release of Silverlight 3, I figured it was a good time to take a hard look at the Silverlight platform to see what it can do.
- Technology
2009-10
-
Google Wave.
2009-10-13.
Google Wave is all the rage among the digerati: If you don’t have a Google Wave invite, you are a nobody in the industry. (The super-elite even have more than one account!) LifeHacker is already running tips and tricks even though nobody can access it. My opinion on Google Wave?
- Technology
-
ASP.NET Can Be Annoying.
2009-10-23.
I’ve been working on a new ASP.NET app at work, which gives me a new opportunity to complain about ASP.NET.
- Technology
-
Exploring Java Web Development, Part 1.
2009-10-25.
Out of curiosity and recent disgruntlement with ASP.NET I decided to look into Java web development. I haven’t done this since around 2002, so of course I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about it. Herein I will attempt to document the knowledge I uncover.
- Technology
-
Exploring Java Web Development, Part 2.
2009-10-26.
Day two of reacquainting myself with JSP development, wherein we learn that IDEs are powerful tools but they are not very friendly to newcomers.
- Technology
-
GridView, UpdatePanel and PopupControlExtender.
2009-10-26.
This is a nightmarish combination to deal with in ASP.NET 3.5. I will attempt to document what I learned today about how to get this combination working.
- Technology
-
Exploring Java Web Development, Part 3.
2009-10-29.
I’m happy to report that I’ve completed resurrecting JWebTrack, the terribly feature-incomplete bug tracking project I did for a Java class oh so long ago. After building an appropriate database and populating it with some data, the app worked like a charm.
- Technology
2009-11
-
A Peek at Google Web Toolkit.
2009-11-01.
So I’m looking over this Google Web Toolkit thing since someone around here thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. I hate to disappoint but it’s conceptually the same as the much-hated ASP.NET WebForms - it’s a framework to abstract HTML and Javascript away from the programmer. But instead of .NET and Visual Studio, Google’s version is based on Java and Eclipse.
- Technology
2010-01
-
Looking Back at 2009 Goals.
2010-01-24.
A look back at how I did on my goals for 2009.
- Technology
2010-04
-
NoSQL is Coming.
2010-04-03.
There has been an explosion of talk about “NoSQL” lately (ie. I’ve seen a few posts about it), and since it is every blogger’s obligation to follow the crowd and re-write what everyone else is saying, I shall now present my thoughts on NoSQL.
- Technology
-
What To Do With An iPad?.
2010-04-19.
I saw an iPad the other day. It’s very slick and stylish, but I don’t quite know what I’d do with it (other than show it to people and say, “I have an iPad”).
- Technology
-
Choosing an Incredible Verizon Smartphone.
2010-04-26.
So I saw that Verizon Wireless is having a ridiculous promotion on the Palm Pre Plus ($49 with a second phone free) and the Pixi Plus ($29) right now, with a 2-year contract. Which reminded me that my contract ended last year and I’m long overdue for a new phone.
- Technology
2010-05
-
HTC Incredible Road Test.
2010-05-13.
If you’ve seen my Twitter feed lately, you probably know I got an HTC Incredible (aka. Droid Incredible). It’s my first smart phone so I have nothing to compare it to.
- Technology
2010-07
-
Future versions of CSS (and OSes).
2010-07-06.
Future versions of CSS (and OSes) should have the ability to set the color of underlines differently than the color of the text.
- Technology
-
Thoughts on Diaspora and Distributed Social Networks.
2010-07-09.
[…]Like many people, I read about Diaspora a while back and thought it was a great idea. It’s one of the few open-source projects I could see myself contributing to. Unfortunately, it’s not “open” in the sense that the technical architecture is open to discussion - it will only become open after they define the architecture, good, bad or indifferent*.
- Technology
-
Velocity Micro’s Cruz tablet An Android.
2010-07-13.
Velocity Micro's Cruz tablet - An Android tablet from Chesterfield County of all places??
- Technology
2010-09
-
Froyo Arrives on the HTC Incredible.
2010-09-04.
Verizon pushed Froyo (Android 2.2) to my Droid Incredible this past week. In a nutshell, the changes are unremarkable.
- Technology
-
The Importance Of The Robots NoIndex Meta Tag, Or: What’s The Opposite of SEO?.
2010-09-16.
I’m not much into SEO (search engine optimization). It’s a booming industry for some, but I still have this crazily naive idea that good content will just naturally rise to the top of search results. That said, there are a some basic SEO guidelines that I try to follow on my site.
- Technology
-
A Diaspora Code Review.
2010-09-20.
I was curious to see the Diaspora code base when it was released on September 15. Ever since I heard about Diaspora, I – like many other developers before me – have been pondering how I might architect a distributed social network myself, so I was curious to see how they had solved certain problems I was running into. The short answer is: They didn’t.
- Technology
2010-10
-
The 2010 Macbook Air.
2010-10-22.
So I’m looking over the new Macbook Air announced the other day. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, but at 11" and 13" and only a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo it seems like more of a “couch” netbook than a productivity laptop.
- Technology
2012-03
-
ICS Virtual Keyboard.
2012-03-13.
How the crap do you close the virtual keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich, if the app doesn’t provide a way? I love my Galaxy Nexus but sometimes I miss the HTC Incredible’s Sense UI. Particularly the HTC clock, calendar, and weather apps.
- Technology
-
Why Must Data Binding Happen After Control Events?.
2012-03-21.
Okay, I know why. But just pretend like it could be different for the sake of this rant. Let’s say you have a GridView using a SqlDataSource on an ASP.NET page. Each row displays some data from a table. No problem.
Now let’s say you want to put a RadioButtonList in the first column of the grid. You want to update the underlying row when the user clicks one or the other radio buttons. You do NOT want to use the standard ASP.NET patterns for updating data because they suck and this is a slightly special case. You want to put a “Y” in a column if they click one of the radio buttons, and an “N” in the column if they click the other radio button. And you probably want to put it inside an UpdatePanel so it looks all AJAX-y.
- Technology
-
When 4G Beats WiFi.
2012-03-24.
So here at the house we switched from FIOS Triple Play back to plain old Comcast Internet, not because there was anything wrong with FIOS – in fact, in my opinion, it’s a thousand times better than Comcast in every possible way – but because of an overall strategy to lower household expenses.
So now we only have two choices for TV: Over-the-air HD television using vintage rabbit ears, or Netflix on a PS3. (Guess which one I usually pick.) And we don’t have a land line anymore. None of that is the slightest bit of concern to me, in fact I’ve wanted to “cut the cord” for a long time.
- Personal
- Technology
-
Email Lemmings.
2012-03-26.
Here’s a quick way to disable a large mail network: Wait for an email titled “World wide distribution list test,” hit Reply All, and write something like “I got it.” Watch the lemmings destroy email capability.
- Personal
- Technology
2012-04
-
LTE Outage?.
2012-04-02.
Verizon 4G LTE has been pretty bad today south of Richmond. :/
- Technology
-
Cultural Fit and Ageism.
2012-04-08.
I was reading a Coding Horror article by Jeff Atwood about how to hire a programmer. I agree with most of it, although he is clearly hiring his programmer to work in some fancy schmancy Internet startup in Silicon Valley, not out here in the real world of enterprises and business intelligence.
Here’s the part that irritates me when industry people talk about jobs and hiring: “Cultural Fit.” To me, that basically means you’re not going to get hired if you don’t have the right kind of personality and attitude. Your skillset doesn’t matter; you’re being evaluated as a roommate more than a skilled worker.
- Technology
2012-05
-
Mobile Internet Obtained.
2012-05-13.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I am on a 1 Mbps Comcast connection for the time being (until I find another place to live, where I can hook up FIOS again). You might think that this would be sufficient for most Internet tasks. At least, that’s what I thought.
It works for email. And some web surfing. But unfortunately, there are these things called “streaming video” and “games.” Guess what? 1 Mbps is not enough to watch high definition streaming video. It’s barely enough to watch low definition streaming video. And remember when I could see a game on Steam and do an impulse purchase and download 8Gb of files in 15 minutes? Yeah, I can’t do that anymore. I did an impulse purchase of TERA, and then sat and watched the estimated download time remaining crawl all the way up to one and a half days. During which time, I could do absolutely nothing else on the Internet because the bandwidth was saturated.
- Personal
- Technology
2012-06
-
The New MacBook Pro.
2012-06-15.
Apple announced their new MacBook Pro model. It’s a beast of a laptop, and it looks beautiful. But is it worth it?
- Technology
-
Surprise, Vizio Makes Laptops.
2012-06-18.
Just when everyone’s done talking about the new Apple MacBook Pros, along comes a slick new PC laptop from Vizio.
- Technology
-
Verizon Galaxy Nexus continuously rebooting after Google Maps update.
2012-06-29.
My Verizon Galaxy Nexus started rebooting continuously after I updated Google Maps.
- Technology
2012-09
-
The Kindle Fire HD.
2012-09-07.
Is it finally time for me to get a tablet media player? It suddenly seems
very convenient to have a dedicated Netflix player that I could set on the
table while I’m computing, or I could carry into the kitchen or living room
or bedroom, or whatever.
Coincidentally, Amazon just announced a new line of Kindle devices.
First they announced a new e-reader called the Kindle Paperwhite. This is a
no-brainer, and I have already pre-ordered it. It has a slightly higher
- Technology
-
Jelly Bean Arrived.
2012-09-25.
Got Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus this morning! (Otherwise known as Android 4.1.) It’s … um … better? I can’t really tell much difference, to be honest. It might be a tiny bit snappier. And the notifications look slightly different.
- Technology
2013-01
-
It’s 2013 And It’s Still Hard To Publish To A Blog.
2013-01-02.
It is now 2013. This is an incredibly advanced, science-fiction-sounding year. Yet still, it is an incredible pain in the butt to compose and publish long-form blog posts.
- Technology
-
Thoughts on Laptops.
2013-01-04.
So I’m trying to come up with my future plan for computers.
- Technology
2013-02
-
Tunguska’s Revenge and Moons.
2013-02-21.
It was a big day for Near Earth Objects last Friday. And why does Pluto have more moons than us?
- Personal
- Technology
2013-03
-
Tech at Night Like A Barrel of Fish.
2013-03-11.
I stumbled onto a blog called Tech at Night hosted by RedState. That’s right, you heard me, it’s a tech blog by the hyper-partisan right-wing blog RedState.
- Politics
- Technology
-
Searching For News Readers.
2013-03-16.
It’s time for me to search for a news reader.
- Technology
-
Google Keep Is What Now?.
2013-03-23.
I’m not sure I get the point of Google Keep.
- Technology
2013-04
-
Google+ No Good As A News Reader.
2013-04-06.
Google+ sucks as a news aggregator.
- Personal
- Technology
-
On Feedly.
2013-04-06.
I want to like Feedly. I really do.
- Personal
- Technology
-
Android Calendar Date Entry Sucks.
2013-04-06.
In what world is it easy to enter a month and day using these stupid radial spin dials?
- Commentary
- Personal
- Technology
2013-05
-
GIFs In The News Again.
2013-05-24.
The debate over how to pronounce GIF is back in the tech news again.
- Technology
2013-06
-
Is Facebook Like A Telephone Book?.
2013-06-08.
Is Facebook like a telephone book?
- Commentary
- Technology
2013-08
-
Throwing Away Batteries.
2013-08-08.
So at work I have a stack of dead laptop batteries from a handful of old Dell Lattitude laptops.
- Technology
2014-12
-
Symbols in Passwords.
2014-12-22.
Why limit the symbols that can go into passwords?
- Technology
2015-01
-
Minecraft Text Editor.
2015-01-08.
Text editor created in Minecraft.
- Commentary
- Gaming
- Technology
2015-02
-
Netflix Makes Passwords Hard.
2015-02-06.
I have forgotten my Netflix password.
- Personal
- Technology
2015-07
-
ThinkServer Ready For Action.
2015-07-24.
I bought a Lenovo ThinkServer so I could experiment with Microsoft server software, maybe even take an exam or two.
- Technology
2017-09
-
Subresource Integrity Script Attributes.
2017-09-22.
I discover SRI attributes for script tag in HTML.
- Technology