itSTU

A WTF from Google!

2011-12-27T10:24:00.000+11:00

I guess, because it's Google, I just expected better...

Yet more Seth Goodness

2011-08-30T06:54:00.003+10:00

Discipline is in obeying the rule you set when you were in a different mood than you are now. Seth Godin

You will SUBMIT

2011-07-27T12:30:00.000+10:00

I just received an email from HP, apparently because my email address ended up on a mailling list somewhere (I did buy an HP laptop about 3 years ago!) that is so full of marketing speak and "glossy" pictures I can't tell what it actually wants me to do. I promptly clicked on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom - or so I thought - I missed it by 3 or 4 pixels and was taken to a page containing

Seth's email checklist

2011-06-27T15:29:00.002+10:00

I was going to email this to everybody I know, but... :-( READ IT! Its great ;-) http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/06/email-checklist-maybe-this-time-itll-work.html

2011-05-16T09:18:00.000+10:00

"Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy." Saadi Quoteshttp://www.searchquotes.com/quotes/author/Saadi/

iMapMyRuns now!

2011-05-03T22:03:00.001+10:00

I’ve never really had a pressing need for a high volume mobile phone plan, the ones that come with the cool phones (for either work or personal reasons) and have never been able to justify the cost of a mobile wireless broadband modem or plan (except for a fortnight in NZ the Christmas before last – but in NZ you can get true prepaid wireless broadband where you buy data and use it – imagine that

2011-03-25T12:23:00.000+11:00

"Just because the tide is out doesn't mean there is less water in the ocean" Seth Godin

2011-03-23T09:15:00.000+11:00

When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Seneca

The Best!

2011-03-06T20:27:00.003+11:00

Voiced and Voiceless

2010-12-01T09:38:00.000+11:00

How to pronounce possessive S'es - or is it Ses, S's? or could it be S', Esses, Hmmm? http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5913/pronouncing-possessive-words-that-already-end-in-s This takes some reading, and following a couple of the links, in particular, http://forum.wordreference.com/showpost.php?p=672824&postcount=8 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_consonant

Rose coloured glasses

2010-09-02T09:03:00.003+10:00

It's fun to watch kids running around in the backyard (or lounge room as the case may be) emulating their current sporting idols in imaginary games. Currently at our place it's AFL football, but that will soon be replaced with backyard Test Matches.As you grow up you never really fully let go of the notion that you could've probably succeeded at this sport or that sport, if you'd really put the

Seth on reacting and anger - from Linchpin

2010-06-02T11:09:00.000+10:00

When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose. We lose because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful.Seth Godin -Linchpin

Lambdas - good intro

2010-04-22T09:15:00.002+10:00

Will probably need to read this again soon, but it was worth the 20 minutes I spent on it this morning...http://www.developingfor.net/c-30/upgrade-your-c-skills-part-3-lambda-expressions.html

Why users don’t read instructions

2010-04-21T18:52:00.003+10:00

Sometimes I wonder why I’m such a lazy web user – skimming around web sites, waiting for the words / answers I really need to leap out a smack me in the face (kind of the whole premise on which www.stackoverflow.com was built really) Then I see pages like this… I think to myself, “instructions – should probably read that to avoid some frustration down the track when something goes wrong…” So

I’m estimating in Apples and entering Oranges on my timesheet

2010-04-21T18:51:00.002+10:00

I’ve just had a realisation that for the past month, I’ve been making a fundamental mistake with regards to managing the schedule on a software development project I’m working on. Someone that’s tried all the various techniques that I have and listened to or read countless case studies on the matter, should never have made such a fundamental mistake. We have undertaken a massive rewrite of our

Paint.Net and Photoshop

2010-04-13T09:59:00.003+10:00

Developers don't make great graphic artists - I get that. For those of you lucky enough to work for large companies with your own designers or who can afford to outsource graphic design - knock yourselves out, for those on a shoestring budget that wear many hats, get yourself a copy of Paint.Net and include the Photoshop AddIn, which allows you to work with Photoshop files and your all set!!

Iritis

2010-03-22T11:32:00.000+11:00

Just for the record, Iritis flared up again this weekend...left eye...

Time to give up TV

2010-03-16T09:16:00.001+11:00

Americans watch 100 million man hours of TV ads every weekend! That’s enough time to build the entire contents of Wikipedia, from scratch. (From http://laughingsquid.com/clay-shirky-on-cognitive-surplus/)

How does this "Help"?

2010-02-15T09:46:00.004+11:00

I'm installing SQL Server 2008 on a new PC today. I decided to actually spend a bit of time making sure I install all the features I want, and only the features I want.So, what's this "Client Tools Backwards Compatibility" feature I see? Sounds to me like an educated guess might be, that it ensures I can open SQL 2005 databases with Management Studio - something like that??Well there is this

2010-02-11T10:30:00.001+11:00

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” Thich Nhat Hanh

More great advice from Seth

2010-02-11T07:04:00.001+11:00

Comfort the frightened, coach the clueless and teach the uninformed.

2010-01-28T11:19:00.001+11:00

You can be a tough guy, it's tough to be a nice guy. You can be a hard man, it's hard to be a good man. …on Twitter

Interactive Services Detection Dialog Typo in Windows 7

2010-01-07T10:24:00.001+11:00

I can’t be the only person in the world to have noticed this but Google hasn’t turned up any reference to it. A typo in the Interactive Services Detection Dialog, displayed by Windows 7 when something goes wrong with a service running in the background. Information FORM you…not something a spell checker will pick up!

Completely useless interruption to my day

2010-01-03T09:28:00.001+11:00

I was just sitting here, scrolling through my Google Reader articles when up popped a message stating that some software was searching for updates. Not so bad, as no response was needed but a dialog appearing briefly in the middle of the screen seemed a little excessive. …but then, this! …a popup, to which I had to actually click on “Finish” to acknowledge something I hadn’t even asked for,

Form_Load Event vs overriding onLoad

2009-12-23T10:30:00.003+11:00

I'm still using Windows Forms with C# (yep I'm the one.)I've been having this nasty little form painting problem on inherited forms, whereby as the form loads, it does stuff in the load events of the child, parent and in some cases "grand parent" form.The painting is ugly because as the form sizes and positions to it's last state, done in the very base form (top of th hierarchy) it repaints the

2009-12-16T09:48:00.001+11:00

“Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it and virtue is doing it.”David Starr

Back to the drawing board

2009-12-11T09:57:00.003+11:00

So we've decided to build, and we of course have a block of land. We'd picked the house we wanted to build - the Cottesloe, by Porter Davis and the wheels were in motion.I guess the first warning sign should've been when our Porter Davis sales guy, forgot to turn up to his own office, for our very first variations meeting, then when I called in a week later, clearly didn't know who I was.That's

2009-09-27T01:22:00.002+10:00

In years to come, they won't remember who had a smart comment during the match, they'll remember who was always a tough competitor, every time."Kieren's Under 10 footy coach. 2009. (Brett "Cunza" Cunningham).

We are Geelong, the Greatest Team of All

2009-09-27T00:46:00.002+10:00

At the end of what could just be the greatest day of all, I'm sitting here sipping a Baileys and trying to find a way to savor the feeling of watching (for the third time today) the Grand Final replay.Geelong have just beaten St Kilda for the 2009 premiership. Geelong are premiers for the second time in three years. It is still surreal. I hate that word, but that best describes what I feel. The

2009-09-27T00:20:00.002+10:00

"It was as excited as I've ever been in my life. Doin' it with people you love workin' with. Mmm!"Mark Thomson. Post-Grand Final 2009.

2009-09-27T00:15:00.001+10:00

"You don't catch up with blokes that won other "Norm Smith's" you catch up with blokes that you won Premierships with."Paul Chapman *Norm Smith Medalist and dual premiership play. September 26th 2009

2009-09-15T06:40:00.009+10:00

We've been "toing and froing" lately regarding the "buy vs build" question. I think we've been secretly hoping for the perfect house to land in our laps, and given our budget it would probably have to be about $20K or $30K under priced. In fact we did find one almost perfect house, and as expected, our offer was about $20K too low.So last Sunday, after trolling through the display village a the

Unconditional

2009-09-09T22:08:00.001+10:00

Just for the record - the sale went unconditional today!The couple and "her" mother came for a quick look through this afternoon. Sounds like they are really excited about moving in which is great! A young couple, ready to start a family, and they're really excited about moving into "our" (well "their") house. Cool.

Counting records in a SQL Server table

2009-09-09T09:58:00.003+10:00

Counting the number to records in a table is something you need to do from time to time. Especially for long running processes where you need to have some clue as to what's instore, if for no other reason than to provide feedback on progress, in terms of percentage complete.Until this morning, I though select count(*), or select count(field_name) was my only option. That bugged me because select

In the name of Security

2009-09-08T15:41:00.003+10:00

My bank sent me a letter last week stating that there was a suspicion of some fradulent activity on my debit card and that they were taking the precaution of replacing it.Now the card was not cancelled. I could keep using it until such a time as I could make my way into my home branch to collect my new card, at which point the old one would be cancelled and destroyed.I found it strange that my

House under contract

2009-09-06T12:31:00.003+10:00

So the we accepted an offer which was really the first serious one and right in the middle of the acceptable price range and the house is now under contact. We're just waiting on the purchases finance to come through, supposedly this week and it will go "unconditional".We currently change our mind two or three times a day about how much we should spend on an established home, or whether should

Moving House

2009-08-16T14:41:00.002+10:00

We've been toying with the idea of moving house on and off for years. The time has now come! The house has been on the market for a couple of weeks now and yesterday we had our first serious offer. Still a little too low, right at the bottom end of the expected price range. Being only our first weekend of open homes, and considering 26 parties looked through our home in two half our sessions, we

Back to reality

2009-08-13T11:28:00.005+10:00

Back from the much anticipated Queenland holiday and as always, desperately trying to find a way to bring that "holiday mood" back with me to everyday life.There's something about having a daily grind to stick to, that kills off any feeling on "holiday freedom" though - I think the two moods are, by necessity, mutually exclusive.Anyway, we just spent a week lounging by the "lagoon pool" at

Interesting Mobile Phone bill

2009-04-27T20:58:00.002+10:00

I just checked our first mobile phone invoice from 3 Mobile (www.three.com.au). Interesting.Two numbers are linked to one account. There is a $19 cap on each phone.On the first phone, the monthly spend was $19.25. There was a 25c cap limit discount, making the total $19. So far so good. On the second phone, the monthly spend was $16.65 plus a "Minimum spend not reached" charge of $1.45. No

Camping Trip #2 - Port Fairy at Easter

2009-04-15T21:41:00.000+10:00

Now this is the one we've been waiting for. I say it every year but I do love the Easter break. This year we extended things a bit and took the Thursday before Easter and the Tuesday after Easter off work and headed back to the Port Fairy Big 4 caravan park, this year, with our trailer in tow, chocked full of fold up chairs and tables, portable BBQ and cooker and of course, the new 3 room

Camping Trip #1

2009-03-22T21:22:00.011+11:00

Well we've finally done it!Last weekend we packed up the tent, the BBQ, all our brand new tables, gas cooker, air mattresses, kids, etc and headed off for a couple of nights "camping". I'm told staying at a "Big 4" caravan park in Ballarat is not "camping" as such, but when you've never really pitched a tent in anger before, that will do.Everything went pretty well all things considered. Not much

2009-03-10T09:55:00.002+11:00

Be the chess player, not the piece...Ralph Charell

A couple of today's photos

2009-03-02T21:41:00.002+11:00

That's it, I've got the bug. One little photography course and I'm off taking photos in my lunch break. I like these two from today, I can't decide which of these two is my favourite.

My Basic Digital Photography Course

2009-03-01T22:33:00.004+11:00

About three weeks back, I started a basic, emphasis on the basic, digital photography course, for beginners with "Point and Shoot" digital cameras.It has really sparked an interest for me, which I think could become...if not a passion, then at least very expensive.I've learned lots of things - remembering them and what's more applying them will be the real test.Here's a quick grab of a handful of

2009-03-01T09:13:00.004+11:00

Over a year ago, nearly two actually, we decided that if the annual Easter Holiday to Port Fairy was going to continue, and if we were going to be able to manage "other" holidays as well (fancier, beach and resort related ones) we'd probably have to give up the $180+ per night cabins we were staying in at the Big 4, and opt instead for, dare I say it, camping!We bought ourselves a tent not long

Documents, Images etc in a database or the file system, and looking after you clients

2009-02-16T13:08:00.001+11:00

I've had cause in the past to do a little bit of research into the "right" way to store files that relate to a Windows Application. Do you embed the whole image, document, spreadsheet...whatever, into a massive binary field and store it away in you database, or do you let the file system do what it does best and manage it? There are arguments for and against each way - mostly I must say, for

Streams demystified

2009-02-11T20:04:00.004+11:00

I must admit that even though I've been using .Net and C# for about 8 years now "Streams" have never really "jelled". There's all these Streams, StreamWriters, StreamReaders, TextStreams, MemoryStreams, FileStreams. I must be honest - it's been pure laziness that has prevented this. This is a bit of a pattern with me. Just getting stuff to work. Hacking it together. Anyway, as I was copying

Iritis back again

2009-01-29T12:55:00.003+11:00

The iritis is back again - left eye this time. Thankfully, the referral to the eye specialist, from last July was still valid and I could just call and make an appointment. I was able to get straight in this morning.The doctor has suggested that an indefinate referral from my G.P. for this condition may now be in order. I'll request that next time.I also left things a little too long this time. I

My LINQ stuff won't compile after Visual Studio 2008 SP1

2009-01-22T11:49:00.002+11:00

That'll teach us to play with Beta stuff.Anyway, import links here:Changes to the schema element for the SSDL content... http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3386038&SiteID=1Other changes... http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/pages/entity-framework-breaking-changes-visual-studio-2008-net-3-5-sp1-beta.aspxAlso seems as though the System.Data.ProviderException has been replaced, I think

A BitWise Calculator

2009-01-14T17:01:00.001+11:00

This was really useful when working out the constant vlues required to build a "magic number" used in some code I found on the net.It is a bitwise calculator...http://www.fuelledoncoffee.com/tuition/bitwise/

public T Find (Predicate match)

2009-01-07T14:23:00.004+11:00

Like Delegates and Events in c# - at first - predicates and dynamic functions, Find and Exists on Generic Collections, confuse the !@#$ out of me everytime I need to use them.I'm going to write some stuff down here that gets me over the line - it makes some sense to me, so that I can refer back to it. This post will probably change as I "grow wiser", but for now, it is here to stop me having to "

Buying tickets online versus over the counter

2009-01-02T10:09:00.002+11:00

Yesterday I had cause to purchase one adult general admission ticket for the upcoming Twenty20 cricket match at Skilled Stadium. (Why? - Well my Milo In2Cricket group of kids is lucky enough to be taking part in the pre-game entertainment.)Anyway, as co-ordinator I receive a ticket as does Kieren being a participant. Toby, being under 6 yrs old, is admitted free of charge, so Rachel needs a

Using Personas really helps!

2008-12-09T17:42:00.001+11:00

I recently read Alan Cooper's book - "The inmates are running the asylum". What a life changing (or developer life anyway) book that was! It really got me thinking. At first I was depressed about the state of affairs in computer software development, but then, I started noticing changes in software that have taken place in recent years, since this book was published, and realised that it really

I never knew this was called "Monty Hall"

2008-12-08T11:48:00.001+11:00

Several years ago I walked into an office with a group of guys having an animated argument over a game on a white board. "Pick one of these doors" (drawn on the board). "If I tell you there's a brand new car behind one of them, then after you make a choice, I'll tell you which one of the remaining doors is incorrect, should you change your choice to the other remaining door?" So you could be

Google search results: 19 pages in 5 days

2008-11-12T22:42:00.005+11:00

Last Friday, I started researching just how to improve our Page Rank, or more specifically, position in search results at work. Our product, an Estimating and Accounting Software Package for builders, turned up, 19 pages deep in the Google search results, and that link was to a 3 year old PDF file that was completely obsolete.I found a podcast on IT Converstations that helped a bit, and read some

AVG Free - Update was unsuccessful

2008-10-23T11:45:00.001+11:00

A particularly useful error message today when attempting to update my "out of date AVG Free virus database". It hadn't updated automatically for some reason, so I investigated. The particularly un-helpful, "update was unsuccessful" error message was mentioned in a few posts about the place, mostly quite old, and usually to do with manually downloading files, restarted etc. I was in a hurry

Reporting Services Printing error

2008-10-21T10:50:00.001+11:00

Line: 20 Char: 4 error: Object doesn't support this property or method "Error on Page" displays in IE, bottom right hand corner, when clicking the print button on a Reporting Services report. Thanks to this post, for solving the problem: http://www.themssforum.com/SVCS/Print-Button-81892/ Remove the KB956391 windows update. (In Control Panel / Add Remove Programs - you have to click

2008-10-03T06:47:00.000+10:00

If it's a core business function -- do it yourself, no matter what. Joel Spolsky

Error referencing web service

2008-09-19T17:10:00.002+10:00

When trying a add a web reference...even to a web service project within your solution, you get this message:Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately. Parser Error Message: Could not create type 'WebService'.Source Error: Line 1: Source File

Add In for VB6.0 (Change Menu Caption)

2008-08-29T12:47:00.003+10:00

I really hope I never need to remember this ever again, but, I was fixing up a little AddIn for VB6.0 that we still use here!The Add In kept showing a caption of My AddIn. Really annoying.You can change most other attributes of the add in, in the designer for the Connect class. But changing the menu caption involves changing the code behind it.Right click on the "connect" class in your Solution

VSS and VB6.0

2008-08-07T14:41:00.003+10:00

Geez I hope I never need to refer to this again, but just in case, I've been rebuilding my PC again this week and needed to setup VB6.0 as "Constructor" is still written in that...anyway, I installed VB6.0 then VSS 2005 but couldn't see the Source Safe option on the tools menu...Turns out, you need an entry in the vbaddins.dll in the windows folder like this:[Add-Ins32]vbscc=1See this post...http

Billy Joel - Again

2008-07-24T11:45:00.001+10:00

While looking for something completely different I just stumbled across this old post - http://itstu.blogspot.com/2006/07/billy-joel-tickets-but-events-were.html - and it reminded me, we just bought tickets for the latest Billy Joel concert. Last time my ticket purchasing efforts were a bit of a fiasco but this time, I let Rachel do it, we spent about $280 extra, but it's going to be worth it!

Iritis

2008-07-24T11:05:00.001+10:00

Iritis cleared up quickly as usual last week, but the short sightedness is hanging around much longer than I remembered. It's very annoying, but Ive resorted to cranking the fonts on my computer up to "Extra Large" and you should see the size of the fonts in my Visual Studio editor. (Courier New 14 point! I think I like it...)

Internal Classes!

2008-07-24T11:02:00.001+10:00

I wanted to make a class available to only other classes within the assembly - not outside it. I stuff around for twenty minutes, the "Joel" to the rescue - http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?dotnet.12.355095.3. (May need to remember this again someday.)

Iritis

2008-07-15T17:31:00.001+10:00

Just for the record - Iritis flared up again this week. Back on the Predeferin Forte eye drops causing annoying short sightedness for awhile. I've got the font size etc cranked right up to ExtraLarge and still find I'm dragging the monitors forward on the desk. Drops usually clean it up pretty quick smart though. The eye actually started aching a bit last weekend, but I lived in hope it would

"Unable to load the specified metadata resource"

2008-07-15T17:24:00.001+10:00

Being fairly new to LINQ I have struggled for a bit to set up connections to databases other than the default one against which the Model was built. Anyway, after a bit of hunting I found some useful stuff on MSDN describing how to build firstly, an SQL string, then build an EntityConnection string based on that SQL string. I then use that EntityConnectionString to build an EntityConnection

LINQ OrderBy

2008-06-30T11:10:00.001+10:00

I'm extremely new to LINQ, okay?... But today I discovered, this... var currentValues = from c in metricsEntities.CurrentMetrics join m in metricsEntities.MetricsSet on c.MetricName equals m.MetricName where m.HideFromView == false orderby m.DisplayOrder ascending

Ankylosing Spondylitis

2008-06-12T11:21:00.001+10:00

I suffer from a condition called Ankylosing Spondylitis. It's not the end of the world - there are far worse things out their and I'm not fishing for sympathy. I thought my blog might be a good place to document that aspect of my life. I sometimes blog about work, sport whatever, and AnkSpon or AS as it's known to it's "friends" is something that might actually add some value to the "noise" that

Seek first to Understand

2008-06-11T15:36:00.001+10:00

I think it's the third of fourth habit in Steve Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" right? Another lesson in this today. We've had an interesting support issue over the past couple of days regarding our payroll system, and Time in Lieu. This is where an employee works a 40 hour week, is paid for a 38 hours week but accrues 2 hours each week, towards an RDO. The catch is, all 40

Keep It Simple Stupid

2008-04-18T10:24:00.001+10:00

If ever a case was needed to extol the virtues of Google's design simplicity and ease of use (and there is not), well surely the MSDN site is it! I love MSDN as a product/service - don't get me wrong, but why is it the MSDN site has to change, every time you go back. It has just taken me about 1/2 hour to locate a product key for Visio 2003 (I'm reinstalling it as I'm not on the Office 2007 band

Bug in DateTime.TryParse and/or DateTime.CompareTo

2008-04-14T15:16:00.001+10:00

Today I stumbled over what can only be described as a bug in the DateTime.TryParse function in C#. Consider the following code (useless but to prove a point); DateTime myDate = DateTime.MaxDate; DateTime myParsedDate = DateTime.MinDate if (DateTime.TryParse(myDate, out myParsedDate) { // We have a valid date (of course) if (myDate.CompareTo(myParsedDate) == 0) { //

Running Classic ASP on IIS6

2008-04-09T15:02:00.001+10:00

I was moving an old ASP web site onto a new web server. I moved the folders, database etc, then created a Virtual Directory on the new web server, pointing to the location of the newly moved, old web site. All standard settings etc in the properties. When browsing to the virtual directory, using either right-click, browse, in the IIS service manager, or navigating to what should be the url in

2008-01-17T10:38:00.001+11:00

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work” Thomas Edison

2007-11-12T09:39:00.001+11:00

"A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it". Albert Einstein

Time Management

2007-10-31T17:10:00.001+11:00

I don't mean to be a prima-donna developer here but...A big part of my job is development (say about 60% - 70%). The rest is made up of user support, development iteration planning, requirements tracking and prioritisation and change control. Now the development portion - given all these other responsibilities should be less, but that's another issue...or is it. How to you prevent, phone calls

Windows Tithe Day

2007-10-30T10:07:00.001+11:00

A classic quote from Joel Spolsky in this post - the concept of a semiannual Windows Tithe Day, where you dedicate a day (usually more) of your precious time, to do nothing by reinstall everything from scratch, on your main development box - something we can all relate to no doubt. To me it's a bit like forking out hundreds of dollars because your old "fridge" just blew up. You a few hundred

Reporting Services setup

2007-10-29T16:14:00.001+11:00

Every time I have to stuff around with Report Services configuration I end up frustrated! I never bother to store encryption keys to a disk anywhere, so when I change anything (often the Admin password coz I'm lazy and often use that user to run scheduled reports) I usually end up having to re-activating the service, and re-configuring all the encrypted info with the new password. (Even if my

Dim x As new as opposed to set x = new...

2007-10-17T11:15:00.000+10:00

Just a really old tip I once got - so old I couldn't remember why, until today when I wanted to explain why I did it this way...Dim x as myObjectset x = new myObjectRather than,Dim x as new myObjectThe former is more efficient as, using the later, the compiler will need to insert heaps of code around the "x" object each time it is used.See this link for an elegant expalnation http://

Triggers that cater for multiple record updates / deletes.

2007-10-16T15:18:00.000+10:00

I recently experienced a probelm with SQL Server triggers not enumerating through multiple records, in a batch delete. I was uing using variables in the T-SQL statements as follows;Select @masterID = master_id, @value = the_value fromdeletedupdate table_name set field_name = field_name - @valuewhere id = @masterIdI was assuming the trigger would fire for each record deleted. Not so.If “deleted”

The Best Weekend Ever

2007-10-02T08:45:00.000+10:00

Geelong - Premiers - 2007.I really never thought I'd see this day. Geelong are reigning premiers. I'm 37 years old. I've been consiously following the Geelong Football Club for 30 years. I was a member for about 10 years late '70's and through the '80's and finally re-joined with Kieren this year (Kieren, at 6, doesn't realise how lucky he is that 2007 was his first year as a member). I'm sure

My Favourite Link of all time

2007-09-22T12:09:00.000+10:00

http://www.theage.com.au/multimedia/cats/index.html(You have to be a fan of Aussie Rules Football to fully appreciate this...)

User experience is key to software design - You can't have one without the other!

2007-09-05T08:53:00.000+10:00

I read an FTP Online article this morning on how important it is to focus on customer experience in web design.While I agree entirely that a postive user experience is key to widespread uptake (read success) of a software product in general and more specifically a web site, I am hesitating to send this on to other developers I know, as I think, to in-experienced developers in particular, it could

Upload from Picassa

2007-09-02T21:52:00.000+10:00

Here is a shot of the Geelong waterfront, uploaded from Picassa - just because I'd never done it and I wanted to see it work. Hmmm - not bad, pretty easy.

Agile Communism - what is Agile anyway?

2007-07-22T11:19:00.000+10:00

For a long time now, I've considered Agile a good thing - I've listened to Podcasts, read a book or two and plenty of Blogs.A recent post on Agile Advice - comparing (or questioning) Agile's parallels with Communism, sent me on a web surfing frenzy as I followed link after link, reading post after post and comment after comment.Along the way, I stumbled on a few key points, that made me think

Debugging ASP.Net with VS2005 and Vista

2007-07-02T21:15:00.001+10:00

This post explained it to me - explaining that on Vista, IE 7.0 requires the localhost, to be a trusted site, because it is considered an Intranet, and Intranet permissions are not configured automatically under IE7.0 and Vista...or something like that...

Context Switching...

2007-06-20T11:29:00.000+10:00

A small conversation struck up at the office today, ironically in the middle of the morning, about Context Switching, and the effect on develoepers.I recalled an old post from Johanna Rothman on this topic and looked it up. It's here (be sure to read the comments too).It's kind of related to the post I did a few days back about developers taking support calls.And there are heaps of others having

Sub-pixel rendering

2007-06-13T09:21:00.000+10:00

It's amazing what science goes into things you take for granted. Here's (www.grc.com) an great explanation of sub-pixel rendering and an insight into the techniques used to display characters and graphics...discovered from a link in this Joel post.

abstract vs virtual

2007-06-07T14:14:00.000+10:00

How's the confusion between whether to make functions in a class that is intended to be inherited, abstract or virtual.I don't pretend to know the answer, so I "Googled". Here's a discussion I found...It seems, while there are different opinions (how I'm not sure), that abtracts must be overrideen, but virtuals can be overridden.Well, I have a base class (a form) doing a fair amount of standard

ReadOnly collections with Generics

2007-06-06T10:33:00.000+10:00

Use ReadOnlyCollection<> instead of List<>Thanks to hereIt's in the System.Collections.ObjectModel namespace.

Developers doing support...Waste of time or not...

2007-06-05T12:05:00.000+10:00

I work for a VERY small company developing software for the building industry. My main role is to lead a small team of developers (3) to continually roll out product enhancements (we aim for quarterly) and fixes. As luck would have it.we are also undertaking a major .Net rewrite at the moment...Couple all this with, as anyone who works in a company of six people would know, you end up wearing a

Covariance

2007-06-05T09:28:00.000+10:00

Last night I tripped on something that after a little bit of Googling, I discovered was quite a trap for young players in the OOP / C# development arena...covariance.This occurs when you build a nice little hierarchy of objects, with a base and several child objects then try to introduce Generics into the equation.So I have a BaseEntity, and a class that exposes a collection of BaseEntity thusly;

Character

2007-05-17T09:09:00.000+10:00

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

Grey scope screep

2007-05-15T22:10:00.000+10:00

"The gap between code complete and feature done is bigger than it appears" (Here)

Outlook Auto-complete

2007-05-07T12:01:00.000+10:00

For the third time this week, I've just sent an email to the home address of the guy who sents right next to me.This is because Outlook pops up a list of suggestions - I don't read them or anything like that I just see his name and hit enter. Dah! Anyway, it turns out if you just select that annoying incorrect suggestion that keeps popping up because you once sent an email to some address that

Google's April Foolsday Joke

2007-04-14T12:41:00.000+10:00

I know it's two weeks old now, but I just stumbled across this: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html

Using Custom Forms for data entry with Outlook/Exchange Public Folders

2007-01-30T10:30:00.000+11:00

An interesting learning experience today regarding the use of custom forms in Outlook.I was attempting to customise folder in our Public Folders, for use with customer contact details. The bigger picture is that our back office user registration system, has to update a public contacts folder used by sales guys and management to track support renewals and just generally log activity with our

That ol' chestnut - software development estimates

2007-01-24T09:29:00.000+11:00

This old chestnut keeps rearing it';s ugly head - the customer has to know how much the job will cost, before they'll commit - the devleopers can't say until they know more about what the users want. Big design up front with "sign off" in blood is next to useless - we've all seen that - the one constant thing is "change".There is an interesting post and related discussion related to this topic

ASP.Net AJAX

2007-01-21T19:46:00.000+11:00

Lately I've been playing with the new Release Candidate for AJAX, albeit being guided by video tutorials, firstly for the CTP version, then later, for the Beta version. Anyway, thanks to a little help from the ASP.Net forums I'm starting to make some progress.Last year I helped out a small company I worked for some time ago, with some ASP work - they have what amounts to a good proto-type for a

A battle of best intentions...

2007-01-12T13:15:00.000+11:00

I love the line in this New York Times Technology article that says It is a battle of best intentions: productivity and convenience pitted against security and more than a little anxiety. - that's so true! This article is talking about the network adminsitrators security nightmare that is Web based mail accounts. It's true that sales and marketing guys just want to be as "efficient" as they can -

Lottery scams

2007-01-12T09:39:00.000+11:00

I received another one of those lottery scam emails today - nothing new there, it's at least a weekly event for me and probably more like daily for anyone who is particularly active online.Anyway, I read through it for a laugh - it made through the GMail spam filter, and got to wondering how anyone can actually make any money out of one of these scams.Of course - the goal is broader than that -