December 2005 Entries

What the fuck is up with the use of Web 2.0 to describe emerging trends on the internet?  Sure there are bunch of newer things out there like blogging, AJAX/ATLAS, tagging, podcasting, etc. but how the hell do you label it as Web 2.0? Did some great, all-knowing internet god determine it was time to upgrade the internet to version 2.0?  Did this person come into their office one day and say “Hmmm….looks like they’ve released v2.0 of the Web.  Let’s just run the upgrade and see what happens.”  He pulls out a 3 1/2” floppy slaps it into his 8086...

After writing up the post about Chicken Little Syndrome, I had flash backs to an earlier time when I worked with this bloke Yosemite Sam who had a bad case of Rebootitis.  The first thing you have to understand is that the guy really did look like Yosemite Sam, mustache and all.  Now that you have him pictured in your head I can begin to explain how he would continually hunt rabbits and be affected by Rebootitis. I first started working at this company who, when using the Joel Test, scored an amazing 0 (if only I’d forced the test on...

Don’t remember where I found this, but damn are these tunes good.  Thanks to Mercedes-Benz for putting it out on the web for free. www.mixed-tape.com

This is great.  "The software product may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines , or weapon systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage". Java technology could lead directly to death…. Using Java Could Lead to Death

I’ve been unfortunate enough to work with all kinds of people.  Life would be so much easier if everyone were trying to be all they could be.  But nooooo….people are far to satisfied with being mediocre.  They’re happy not knowing enough to do their jobs.  They’re happy running to someone else to get their jobs done. So I’m on holidays right now.  Got the week between Christmas and New Years off (me and every other programmer on the project).  Stupid me says “Oh I’ll be in town so if disaster strikes I can be found at my cell number”.  I figured...

I was somehow led to Philip Chu's site technicat.com this morning and I found it to have a great selection of essays that cover software development process issues, company management issues and some that are just plain humourous.  I recommend you read it and I'm placing it right up there with joelonsoftware.com.

So no post from me about spreading the Christmas cheer.  Instead I'll regale you with tales of my Christmas trip. I get to my parents place at about 7pm on the 24th after driving for over 6 hours.  Luckily there was a good hockey game just starting so I could settle in and watch that until lack of sleep took over.  I settle into a comfy chair and what do I find.......the house is like a freaking zoo!  My parents have 2 dogs (not in the house thank god) and 3 cats.  My sister was visiting as well and she brought her 2 dogs (god forbid they...

Seems like the big fella in the red suit can’t help but be bureaucratic.  The least he could do is have this online and create a good mashup with an online mapping site. I’m the Igloo Coder and apparently my neighbours need to have you fill out paper work so that they have fuel for the fire on these long cold nights.

I was out last night doing the festive thing with some friends who were visiting from out of town.  We started the night at La Tapa on 99th Ave between 105th and 106th Streets.  As advertised the paella was stunning and the tapas was outstanding.  We ordered up a few pitchers of sangria which were a great way to start the night. After leaving there (and leaving behind the little kids who were with the party behind us) we were off to Sherlock Holmes on Rice Howard Way.  I’ve been there a number of times before (okay, fine, the waitress knows what...

I was poking around that little place they call the internet and somewhere I found a link to the C# Shiznit.  The last two posts include a Project MRU (Most Recently Used) Cleaner AddIn and the Property Manager AddIn.  Both are pretty cool and worth adding to your toolkit.

Call me sick.  Call me twisted.  Call me a Canadian. I love winter.  I love the way it muffles the tire sound on streets.  I love the way it turns a grimey fall into a pristine white canvas.  I love the way it scares the crap out of people when you say “-40 before the wind chill.”  I love the sense of how inconsequential we are that the weather puts in us. I love the way people bundle up in 27 layers to go to and from work, and when at work they strip darn near all of it off.  It’s like going to...

Recently I posted this on my experiences with multiple installations for multiple environments.  I got a response from David Lockwood that suggested I look into using MSI Transforms.  After reading a few things (this, this, and this) I’m pretty confident that using MSI Transforms would have worked for us.  One of the things that we had to deliver to the client was an installation that the IT department could take to the server, double click, and have installation run and complete with no more user interaction required.  I’m sure we all know that deployment environments change and this “one-click” deployment...

Okay, so my uninstall of the Visual Studio and SQL Server Betas didn’t go as well as I’d thought.  No problems on the VS side of things, but I’ll be damned if I could get SQL Express to install on my machine.  Luckily I found Aaron Stebner’s blog and his two posts (this and this) that outlined how to go about removing the remenant traces of the msi installations.  I followed the instructions and, voila, my next attempt at installation of SQL 2005 Express went just wonderfully.

I was out with Slim the other day and we discussed how our current project is using NUnit and what difficulties we were running into with it.  This certainly wasn’t a discussion about how we should be implementing TDD or unit testing nor is that the motivation behind this post. The way that we’ve built included the unit tests into our solution was to create a project that contains nothing but unit tests.  Our standard “functional” projects are all built with a mix of public, private and protected functions etc.  The unit test project then references each “functional” project, making it’s interfaces available for testing.  Each test in...

Recently I’ve started doing the installations, into a number of environments, of our software at work.  One of the requirements that we had to meet for our software deliverable was that the install, and un-install, had to be one-click.  I thought of two things when I heard this.  1)  How will we create single click installs and ensure that the person running the installation can’t screw up the values needed during the process? In the end we ended up using Visual Studio to create our *.msi files. Each installation (we have 5) was customised so that the *.msi files accepted a number of parameters that include things like computer name.  We can...

Recently I made the change away from SharpReader as my aggregating software.  I was tired of having SharpReader’s tendency to error when reading feeds.  At first my thought was to use the VSTO to write a .NET 2.0 add-in for Outlook so that I could read my feeds and email together.  I did a little searching on the web and ended up finding Attensa for Outlook.  Being the right price (free for the Beta) I decided to download and install it.  Additionally it includes a Firefox add-in that automagically detects RSS feeds and allows you to add them by right-clicking and selecting Attensa RSS – Add...

So I finally got my lazy ass into gear and un-installed VS 2005 Beta 2 and installed VS 2005 RTM.  No real big issues here.  I manually un-installed all the pieces of SQL Server Beta 2 and then used the VS 2005 Un-install tool. I installed the Standard Edition (from the Launch Tour) and realized that it doesn’t include Source Safe.  Not a big deal, but what do I use as a replacement?  I’ve briefly looked at SourceGear’s product, but it looked like I needed to have a bunch of server OSes and the such to get it installed.  I suppose...

Trust a beer company to come up with this. It's funny to see the same song (O Fortuna) being used for a beer ad in Australia and Canada (Rickard’s Red…couldn’t find a link to the ad anywhere).