January 2008 Entries
Earlier today, Scott provided us with, what I think is, a pinnacle post on getting people to understand the Zen of the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Scott says, This is a not just a different tune, but a whole different band playing all new music. Not everyone will like the music, and that's why the world has more than one band. This is a Good Thing. I like to think of ASP.NET MVC as the raw, acoustic version of the more heavily produced and multi-layered ASP.NET WebForms we use today. ...
I just finished reading the article Computer Science Education: Where Are The Real Software Engineers of Tomorrow? and I must that I'm pretty impressed with its very compelling argument: Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. As some of you know, I attended ISU for my CS degree. During the latter part of my tenure (junior/senior years) there, I started to realize that the "boring" stuff that professors were pushing down our throats, actually had a meaning! In particular, my OS theory, algorithms,...
That's right, remember a while back when I blogged about FlickrNSurface? Well, since then, I've been showing people the demo code and some of them have been wanting to know how they can get their hands on it for their own website/projects. At that point, I thought to myself, what is the best way to share the code and any changes that I make to it? That's when I realized I should make this into an open-source project! What better way to share ideas and implementations with community than by allowing them to contribute directly to it! Again, I've...
Wow! I stumbled into this "blast from the past" the other day, I just had to share it with you. Here's the background story...
A couple of years ago, I encountered some source for a C# compiler written in pure C# by Mike Stall. I downloaded the source and started messing around with it seeing how it worked. At around the same time, I had a conversation with Nick about how English is the dominant language for technology and that most (if not all) programming languages are written in English. Granted, this is a good thing since it establishes a convention...
For a while now, we've been using "hot" backups for our SVN repositories using the hot-backup.py Python script file that is part of the Subversion tools and contrib project. A "hot" backup is a way to take a complete snap shot of the repository so in case your repository goes awry, you cake take the hot back up and drop it straight in! For those of you interested in learning more about the backup features of SVN, check out Repository Backup section of the online SVN Book.
Here's an excerpt from the SVN book that describes what hot-backup.py provides for you:
This...
I've been using my MacBook over 4 months now and I must say that I'm pretty impressed with the experience. By no means do I consider my self an expert on the Mac, it's still a journey. ;-)
For those interested, here's a list of my top tools that I use everyday on my Mac.
VMWare Fusion -- This is a most have for those of you doing WoM (Windows on Mac)! If you have a bootcamp partition, then it's just as easy as pie to get Windows up and running on...
That's right! The University of Iowa:ITS, CRIneta and Iowa .NET user groups are joining forces to bring the first code camp to Iowa on 5/3/2008 at the University of Iowa Conference Center in Iowa City, IA!! You might be asking, what is a code camp? Well, here are some of the basic ideas: Its for and by developers Free (for attendees) All about code, not PowerPoint presentations What you present on should be available to share with people who attend Never during...
Thanks to Mitchel Sellers from IowaComputerGurus for presenting to our user group last night! We had a pretty great turn out and some really nice swag to give away! For those of you that were there, thanks for your support! As I mentioned during the meeting, we're going to try something a little different for distributing demo materials (code, ppts, etc.). I've setup a iadnug, a Google Code open source project, to host our code. (yeah, clever name I know...) So for those of you that have SVN or TortoiseSVN installed, you can check out the code. If you...
Running a user group is not easy. It takes quite a bit of coordination to get sponsorships, line up the venue, line up speakers, find swag, schedule the logistics and the most important, order pizza...just to name a few. At times we've been contacted by our members asking when the website will be updated with the meeting info or when will Levi send out the email blast reminder. Well, I'm sorry to say, but we get busy with our jobs/families and we end up dropping the ball at times. Wouldn't it be nice we had a tool to...
Well, it's a new year which means new exciting challenges both in my personal and professional life. I wanted to use this post so I can share with you my (three) readers, what my plans are for the content for blog for the upcoming year.
Theme for 2008: Simplicity
That's right, simplicity. For those of you that know me personally or have worked with me, are now saying, "Simplicity, WTF?!? You?" Just kidding...well, not about the simplicity theme. ;-) Over the past year, I've learned that the "best" approach to a problem does not mean that it has to...