January 2006 Entries

We all have some knowledge of the SDLC (aka “The cluster-fuck I call work”) but many of us work within the process (Design, Code, Test, Build, Test, Release, Repeat).  What we don’t see or understand is how the SDLC is perceived by and affects the business or outside world.  Jezz Santos wrote a very thorough explanation (The Vicious Software Development Cycle) of his perception of the interaction between the software owner (the business) and the SDLC (the geeks).  Right or wrong, he has a significant number of valid points in his post that I’d like to touch on too. Jezz starts off by...

In the past I’ve been a proponent of Attensa add-in for Outlook mostly because I really like to have my email and RSS in one convenient location.  Unfortunately, Attensa brought my machine to a grinding halt. First, I expect that adding all my RSS feeds to Outlook would slow down the performance when opening the app and perhaps even when closing it.  Attensa did slow down Outlook’s performance, but not to the point that I found it unbearable.  That is until last Friday. On Friday I got home, fired up the PC and opened up my Outlook. Initially it looked like Outlook was...

This weekend I found a blog post that led me to Channel 4 and the new British sitcom The IT Crowd.  Not having read any reviews of the show, I started watching it with a clear mind (okay, you can stop laughing now) and no great expectations. One of the first things that I noticed is that it is stuffed full of every stereotype known and the attention to detail in each of those is unbelievable.  The fake phone call was one that almost made me piss myself (and we all know that the winter hasn’t been cold enough to require that kind...

I received a comment today from J who asks:  “Why is it that you still work where you do rather than looking elsewhere? It's not like the market is cold...” This is a very good question and don’t think for a second that the though doesn’t cross my mind.  Certainly quitting and running away is one way to rid myself of some of the stress I currently endure.  It could also be thought of as giving up.  There are so many reasons I want to stay where I’m at (there’s also reasons for leaving).  One of the big ones is that...

This is a follow up post to this one where I mention that a certain individual felt in was okay not to be diligent and as a result uninstalled the production servers.  One week after finishing up the staging area installation we were scheduled to install into production.  In an attempt to decrease the work required on the actual installation date, the now infamous Mr. Uninstaller prepared the environment my taking half of the servers out of the production pool a couple of days early and installing the new version of our software on these servers.  Not such a bad...

There are many vendors of training material out there today.  Equally as voluminous are the ways that people learn effectively.  Today I found the LearnVisualStudio.net site, and after watching one of their free videos I was quite impressed. Bob Tabor has created a site that has a number of short videos that range from beginner VB.Net to VSTS.  The videos aren’t long (42 VSTS videos totalling 2.5 hours), but the content that I’ve seen is clear and to the point.  Additionally the video clips show you why something won’t work rather than only showing you the correct way to do something. To top this...

Apress is offering free books for download.  They want you to subscribe to an Apress newsletter, but all you have to do is uncheck the box and click the “Download the book” button.  My look at the page shows the following titles A Programmer’s Introduction to PHP 4.0 Writing Perl Modules for CPAN Programming VB.NET: A Guide For Experienced Programmers COM and .NET Interoperability XML Programming: Web Applications and Web Services With JSP and ASP Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services Practical Common Lisp Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop  

FireFox is great.  Tabbed browsing rocks.  Extensions make me giggle with glee.  Like Raymond Lewallen states in his post here, FireFox (v1.0.7) is really starting to piss me off.  I’m getting the same type of symptoms that he does.  Sometime five tabs open, often just one.  I’ve even seen this behaviour when I click on a link that opens a new FireFox window.  The only solution is to kill the process.  I’ve tried waiting, but 20 minutes is the far reaches of my patience for something like this. To the blokes (and lasses) working on FireFox, great product and kudos all around. ...

I’m pawing through the internet tonight and I found this article on the New Zealand Herald reporting an incident of the New Zealand Labour Department’s web site being hacked.  The thing that is most astonishing is that the method of hack is believed to be “…administrator’s password has been guessed…”  What the hell is an administrator account (most likely the administrator account) doing with a guessable password?  Isn’t this one of the things that you learn in your Networking 101 class at the local 3rd rate community college? The other thing I wanted to mention today also has to do with...

This is a great ad for the XBOX 360.  Sure maybe not for TV, but, like the posting says, it should be in every movie theatre.

I was reading my feeds tonight when I saw this posting on Regex Performance by Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror. I haven’t used regex a lot, but I’m very certain that I would not have picked up on the possibility of creating such a performance drain.  Very interesting stuff, including the use of RegexBuddy.  Gonna add that to my tool box. I’m the Igloo Coder and I’m endlessly looping on this drinkwhiskey+ so I might not see you for a while.

My belief that this whole Web 2.0 thing is nothing but a giant crock of marketing hooey has been proven by the venerated site TechCrunch.   Web 2.0 is nothing but a giant ploy by our four legged canine and feline associates to take over the world.  Here’s the proof.  Ten million hits in December.   Pffffttttt…..Web 2.0 whores…. I’m the Igloo Coder and i remind you that eating yellow snow isn’t as bad for you as your parents led you to believe.

Got this through Steve Rockarts today.  The Unit Test song by Tim O’Day.  Waltzing Matilda will always hold a special spot with me, but this will be what I think of when I’m sitting in my cube and working late.

Back in the day...okay, it was 2000....I scoffed at the idea that people would use this USB thing that everyone was talking about.  What good would it do?  How much easier would it be than plugging a printer into LPT1?  Today I have a USB keyboard, a USB memory key, a USB mouse and a USB memory card reader, to name a few. I'm fine with the fact I've had to eat my words on that point.  For all my ignorance and lack of forward thinking I have to say I'm pretty happy that...

So through my whole Community Server upgrade I had forgotten to figure out how to get BlogJet working.  It’s pretty easy (thanks to this post from Tiernans Comms Closet). Originally this was a post to rip the bloke over at Fire in the Hole.  Fine it wasn’t to rip him, it was to eat a little humble pie.  I wasn’t trying to vilify Web 2.0.  I was trying to emphasis that websites falling into this category are predominantly “Beta” or they’re doing something that doesn’t have the legs to survive past the end of the hype.   As an example (yes I’ll...

I took the dive today.  No, not an Ilya Kovalchuk swan dive at center ice when the backup goalie sneezes.  Instead I installed Community Server 2.0.  Was it fun you ask?  Well.......no.  Was it easy you ask?  Well......no.  Here's what happened. I backed up my 1.1 site and database through the UI my hosting company provides.  Everything is great, I've got copies on my home PC for rollback purposes.  I delete all folders relating to CS 1.1 from my site. I download the web install from www.communityserver.org so that I can get my grubby little mitts on the SQL upgrade...

Once again I’m going to comment on Web 2.0.  Ever since I made my first post (Web 2.0?) I’ve been finding more and more people writing with similar disdain for Web 2.0.  This has been somewhat surprising as I haven’t been searching out the anti-Web 2.0 crowd, but instead just reading the feeds (I subscribe to approx. 70) in my aggregator.  This morning it was Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror and his post entitled Getting Back to Web Basics. Jeff’s border line rant focused on how the technology has become more important than delivering the message.  The basics that Jeff mentions in his title are taken from Jakob Nielsen’s...

I saw this post on .Net Delirium today saying that Steve McConnell has a new book, called Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, coming out towards the end of Q1.  For those of you who don’t recognise the name Steve McConnell is the guy who brought us the must read book Code Complete.  If you haven’t read it, stop everything and read it.  Your coding will improve immediately.

Why won't these thoughts on Web 2.0 just escape my poor little head?  Don't they know that there's limited real-estate up there and that most of it has been allocated to remembering the locations of great pubs around the world? I thought this post by Paschal summed up my "web consumer" point of view on Web 2.0.  As per my thoughts, the Web 2.0 is pretty, but still beta.

Well I see today that a couple of people actually have commented on my alcohol induced (that is a fact, not an excuse) rant on Web 2.0.  Steve Rockarts responded in support on my stance while the good bloke over at Fire in the Hole responded less favourably.  So, in the spirit of stirring things up a little more (and the fact not many people drop by the igloo) I’d like to respond to the Fire in the Hole. The first thing that I’m going to say is that I think that my views of the Web 2.0 phenomena was from a web...

Sahil Malik has a great post about The Graying Software Industry.  I have to say that two things popped out at me.  First, that I fall into the “Around 30” group of developers. And second, that I’m no longer the early 20’s techy that can “type type type for 18 hours” neither physically or in work practice. We are like prostitutes, that joke has circled the internet for years, and when you work for a consulting company, or you do your own consulting, you better realize it on the first day.  If not you’ll get used and in a couple of...

Just saw this post, with a link to a video of a Jesper Johannson Window’s Security presentation, linked on Steve Rockart’s blog.  The videography pretty much sucks, but the content is great.  I’ve always wondered what the hell was used to get into networks.