Philosophical GeekPhilosophical GeekDiscussions about .Net, C-sharp, Cpp, code in general, design, and occasional deep thinking about what it all means. Also my current projects and lego building. Articles
Door to Door Organics
2007-11-30 19:32:00 A few months ago, Leticia and I signed up for a service called Door ToDoorOrgan ics. Simply put, this is a way to get farm-fresh, organic produce from local farmers, delivered to your door. How it works is this: Create an account, decide on the size and type of box you want. Decide how often you want–every week or every ... More About: Personal
How to really have Middle East peace
2007-11-29 14:22:00 With the talks in Annapolis this week between Middle East governments, peace is on a lot of people’s minds. A meeting like this, while it won’t solve anything immediately, does illustrate the point that you can’t reasonably talk and fight at the same time. With that in mind, I have a permanent solution. How do you ... More About: Peace , Funny
The Benefits of Having Too Much Processing Power
2007-11-28 17:03:00 Do an experiment: keep Task Manager or any other CPU activity monitoring program up on your screen for a few hour or days, glancing at it every so often. Do you see it EVER above zero (other than momentary spikes)? Here’s mine, from a Google sidebar gadget: I’ve got a Dual Core and 2GB RAM. Currently ... More About: Power , Tech , Benefits
Difference between ConfigurationSettings and ConfigurationManager
2007-11-26 20:13:00 If you upgraded a project from .Net 1.0/1.1 to .Net 2.0, and it used application configuration files, you will soon come across the compiler warning message ‘System.Configuration.Configuration Settings .AppSettings’ is obsolete: ‘This method is obsolete, it has been replaced by System.Configuration!System.Configuration .ConfigurationManager.AppSettings’& #160; You have to add a reference to the System.Configuration assembly, but once you do, you can just ... More About: Code , Difference , Ager , Diff
The Effective Software Developer?s Book List
2007-11-21 23:24:00 What books should all serious developers read and study? This is a list of books that I have either found particularly helpful in my own growth as a programmer, or that are popular on various required-reading lists. I have bolded books I consider absolute required reading (probably multiple times) for all software developers. I’ve gathered these ... More About: Software , Books , Developer , Book , Code
Resume Help
2007-11-14 13:00:00 FreeResume Review.org is my latest sponsor to my Buy Me a Lego campaign. The cool thing about them: they actually really are FREE. The tips section is useful on its own, but the really cool thing is that you can upload your resume and cover letter and they’ll review it for free. Free Resume Review dot ...
Instant Searching and Filtering in .Net - Part 4
2007-11-14 00:47:00 This is the final part of my series on instant searching and filtering using C#. The only further issue that I wanted to cover was efficiently using a ListView when the items will change so often. ListViews already have the concept of a virtual mode, where the consumer of the class must supply the items that ... More About: Articles , Code , Part , Searching , Forms
Tip: Mouse back and forward work in Visual Studio 2005 too
2007-11-09 13:00:00 You know how you can use the extra mouse buttons to move back and forward in Internet Explorer? The same shortcuts work in Visual Studio . Suppose you right-click on a function call, and select Go To Definition. Once you’re done looking at the definition, hit the back button on your mouse: You’re taken right back to ... More About: Work , Code , Back
digg for developers
2007-11-08 14:59:00 I was thinking the other day that there should be a digg-like site that is only for software developers. Well, it turns out there is! I was analyzing my web traffic and the list of recent referrers. A few were coming from dzone. Apparently, somebody has been submitting some of my articles to this site (thank ... More About: Sites , Digg , Code , Developers
Thoughts on Writers Guild of America Strike
2007-11-07 15:11:00 This strike is a big deal, but it’s much bigger deal for Hollywood, the producers and writers than for the rest of us. I think they are facing some specific dangers that they had better think about before they drag on too long. The actual points the union and producers are arguing about are probably ... More About: America , Thoughts , Writers , Guild , Strike
How to make money from telemarketers (or just annoy them)
2007-11-07 13:00:00 My father-in-law is absolutely fed up with telemarketers calling. But rather than just hang up on them, why not try to get some money out of them? So he made a recording, to be played next time he gets a call: Listen to this recording he made. Ok, it’s a long shot, but I think it’s hilarious. ... More About: Funny , Money , Make Money , Make , Anno
Cell phones, water and wireless mice
2007-11-05 17:24:00 I’m embarrassed to say that the link took me a long time to figure out. If you’re wireless mouse or keyboard is having connection problems, signal weaknesses, or similar signs of problems, make sure your cell phone isn’t anywhere around them! I did this at work for a long time–it screwed up the signal strength, and ... More About: Wireless , Cell Phones , Phones , Tech , Cell
Easily Getting Last Two Digits of Year
2007-11-02 17:19:00 This is an easy one, but some people don’t know it: if you need the last two digits of a year, say 2007, it’s very easy to get, without converting to a string and getting the last two characters: int lastTwo = year % 100; Now that you know, it’s obvious, right? And if you want the last ... More About: Code , Year
The War on Being Different
2007-11-01 17:06:00 Bruce Schneier has a wonderful essay on his site today about how our culture of fear of harmless people and objects is being propagated. I think this is my favorite essay of his. I really like this paragraph about how this happens: Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says ... More About: Diff
Neo Must Die - Give us the Matrix
2007-10-31 16:18:00 We don’t want to be free. Neo is our enemy, not our savior. Most of us have seen The Matrix , or are at least familiar with the story. Neo is our hero in the movie, a virtual god in training, selflessly seeking to destroy the Matrix and free the enslaved humans therein. Yet, curiously, one of the ... More About: Philosophy , Tech , Give , The Matrix
Problems with null character in WordPress feed?
2007-10-31 14:07:00 In a recent post, I had this sequence of characters (which I’m expressing this way to avoid repeating the problem): <single-quote><backslash> <numeral zero><single-quote>. That’s the NULL character, if you didn’t know. It broke my feed. I’m not sure if it was IE or WordPress, but either way is bad so I replaced the offending sequence with a ... More About: Wordpress , Tech , Problems , Feed , Character
Software Spoilage
2007-10-29 21:06:00 Jeff Atwood had an interesting post about software spoilage, in which he quotes PC World’s list of no-longer-good-too-bloated applications which includes Windows Media Player 11. Are they kidding? WMP11 is a LOT better than WMP 9 and 10. It has better organization, and the fact that I can do instant filtering on albums, genres, artists, songs, ... More About: Software , Music , Film , Theater , Tech
Instant Searching and Filtering in .Net - Part 3
2007-10-29 12:00:00 This is part three of my series on fast searching and filtering of text using C#. The previous article developed an indexing method using a hash table. This article develops a method using a trie structure. If you don’t know tries, I highly encourage to go read about them before continuing. This filtering method is much more ... More About: Articles , Code , Part , Searching , Part 3
West Virginia Cabin for Rent
2007-10-29 00:18:00 One of my co-workers (and a contributor to my still on-going BuyMeALego project) has some family members with a beautiful home in West Virginia , available for rental to anyone interesting in a get-away to one of the most beautiful parts of the country I have ever been to. The surrounding area is wooded, there are ... More About: Personal , For Rent
Encouraging child creativity
2007-10-22 22:22:00 One of the most interesting sponsors to my Buy Me a Lego campaign is a company called Kidz Worxx. They have a unified line of artwork-related items aimed at children. I think this is stuff my sister, who is an artist, would have loved as a kid. From the site description: A child friendly, easy to use system ... More About: Creativity , Child
Instant Searching and Filtering in .Net - Part 2
2007-10-22 22:11:00 This is part two of my series on fast searching/filtering of text using C#. In the previous article, we developed the filtering interface, built up a testing framework and implemented a naive indexer. For many purposes, that indexer performs more than adequately. Still, there are other possible implementations that might work better (or not…let’s wait and ... More About: Articles , Code , Part , Searching , Erin
Instant Searching and Filtering in .Net - Part 1
2007-10-19 02:37:00 Even though I recently wrote about just using naive algorithms when they’re sufficient, it helps to know about other options and their characteristics. With that mind, I’m beginning a little series (4 parts planned–I’ll update this list as I go along) in C# documenting how I developed a few different approaches to doing fast (instant) ... More About: Articles , Code , Part , Searching , Erin
Fantasian Kingdoms
2007-10-17 13:00:00 Fantasian Kingdoms looks like a very interesting game, and they are one of the more interesting sponsors of my Buy Me a Lego campaign. From the homepage: Fantasia is a distant planet ruled by a mysterious race known as Fantasians. This planet is stuck in constant turmoil due to the magical force hidden deep within it’s ... More About: Personal , Sites
Bricks that Stick
2007-10-17 00:50:00 Thank you Paul, for your contribution to my Buy Me A Lego campaign! Paul runs a store at BrickLink called Bricks that Stick . He’s got quite a few parts. If you need Legos, please go check him out! Technorati Tags: Lego, Legos, BuyMeALego More About: Personal , Tick
Serial Port Code Library
2007-10-16 14:58:00 Need to interact with some hardware via serial port? I’m having to do some serial port communications in a project at work, and it is officially Not Fun. There was some original code that was doing only reads from the port, and I needed to some significant functionality that would not be possible with the ... More About: Library , Port , Code , Libra , Serial
Microsoft really is the Borg!
2007-10-12 20:39:00 And they really do have all power. Specifically, they can hide and unhide nation-states at will! Don’t believe me? SPUtility.HideTaiwan Proof! Technorati Tags: Taiwan, Microsoft , API, Windows, SharePoint, humor, geopolitics More About: Funny , Ally
Simpsonize Me
2007-10-10 19:00:00 If you haven’t seen this by now, you really need to check it out. Simpsonize Me - upload a photo of yourself and it will analyze it and generate a Simpson-ish lookalike. Very cool, and a big time waster. More About: Funny
Data Brick
2007-10-10 01:36:00 I just wanted to thank Data Brick , a sponsor of my Buy Me A Lego campaign. They’ve got a bunch of LEGO sets for sale, so go check them out! Technorati Tags: Lego, BuyMeALego More About: Personal
Getting the most out of Outlook 2007
2007-10-08 14:30:00 I’ve been trying to organize my life lately, and this weekend, I decided to get my Outlook under control–respond, file, or delete the hundreds of e-mails in my inbox, create necessary tasks, delete obsolete ones, reorganize the folder hierarchy, etc. Also, I’ve recently been introduced to the Getting Things Done methodology and was interested in ... More About: Personal , Outlook 2007 , Process
A DC Video Production Company
More articles from this author:2007-10-08 13:00:00 Here’s a shout-out to “Memories in Motion”, Video Production Technology, a great videography and production company in the metro Washington, DC area. Frank also does great video work for the news wire service my wife works for. They were generous with a donation to my BuyMeALego campaign, and I wish them the best of luck. If ... More About: Personal , Company 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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