Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 30, 04
Ok... so I am kinda bored, but saw this over at Engadget
Here’s a fun thing to play around with, if you’re bored at 3am. Most Sonydigital cameras start saving photos with the following name “DSC00001.JPGâ€and a lot of people take these photos and upload them to the web, where the all-knowing,all-seeing Google later catalogs all of them. So by clicking this link you can see the first photo taken by someone with their new camera or newlyformatted card for some cameras, this is what it looks like when thousands of Sonycameras lose their photo-virginity.
Update: Bonus fun, IMG_0001.JPG is the equivalent for Canon cameras. So, that will work too. Here’s CASIO, Pentax, Kodak and Nikon. And one of our readers points out “Using DSC as a search string inP2P programs also works great for turning up things on peoples hard drives they theydidnt know they were sharingâ€.
Neat!
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 29, 04
Here at Inetium, we're doing SCRUM now for our big project. What isSCRUM? SCRUM is an agile technique forsoftware development. Similar to any other eXtremem programming paradigm that replacesRUP and the traditional waterfall processes. Every day you have SCRUM meetings where the members ofyour team get together to discuss what you completed yesterday and what you're completingtoday. All in reference to your iteration...
With that said, we had our daily SCRUM meeting and came back to mycorner of our Cubehood, to show off a product that I have been playing with, calledResharper by JetBrains ... I guess you could call thisa mini-review.. sorta like what Avonelledoes at CoolBits - Soon I will geta standard look and feel for reviews, cause I'll review software,music,and movies from timeto time.
First, this tool DOES do lots of interesting things... such as offering refactoringcapabilities, better code reference and meta data (where is this class used?), and moreintelligent code intellisense... BUT, when you add this functionality onto all of theother cool add-ins or even the IDE, you get clutter (See picture below).
When I went through school, I used Vi to do ALL of my code editing and a separateconsole for compiling and testing... in our classes where we used Ada and Java.. I usedpcGrasp which is now jGrasp as an IDE.. it was extremely basic and really helpedme learn.
But this tool.. though adds lots of efficient help, really hinders a developer tothink about his code. It's one thing to make a developer more efficient, but it's anotherto make the developer dumb (as my coworker Justin would say). Aside from that, based onpure functionality the tool does what it says it does, and it does it damn well.
Tool: Resharper 1.0.3
Developer: Jet Brains - http://www.jetbrains.com
Price: Free 30 Day Trial - $99 per seat
Pros:
- Lots of features that Visual Studio .Net 2003 does not include by default (but willcome with Whidbey)
- It's nice to see exactly what your code is doing and what you can improve simply onone-pass processing.
Cons:
- Too many colors, icons, and IDE (code) clutter when you use the tool.
- Lots of meta-data needs to be created - scares you when you first open a solutionthat hasn't been processed, makes you think you're code is being altered..“I felt violated“
- Project has to be initialized with the tool when its opened EVERY TIME. When you havea solution with 10 HUGE projects like we do for my project, it gets to be timeconsuming.
Example of code clutter by the IDE:
I took this screen shot with a wonderful tool called Cropper by Brian Scott
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 28, 04
Just when I posted that news... all other kinds of intersting things came in...
UML for .Net Developers
http://www.parlezuml.com/tutorials/umlfordotnet.htm
FlexWiki moves to SourceForge (yet another Microsoft dropplet to go OSS)
http://www.flexwiki.com/
For those of you who don't know what RSS is and how its important (C|NET Video)
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10088_7-5143656.html?tag=hed
Wondir - Ask questions to real people (a ticker that displays questions foranyone to answer) - put it on your site!
http://www.wondir.com/wondir/jsp/index.jsp
A neat way to share .Net code between Compact Framework and the full .NetFramework
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2004/09/share-code-if-fullframe_17.html
The Iowa .Net User Group!
http://www.iowadnug.org/DesktopDefault.aspx
and finally.. My roomate needs a job! Hire him (and check out the nice littleportfolio I did for him)
http://www.uni.edu/bigmac1/
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 28, 04
Scoble posted on thisalready... but the two companies (lead by NickBradbury of Bradbury Software and MarkFletcher, of Bloglines) will be releasing a rich Windows application based onFeed Demon that can synchronizewith BlogLines! I plugged yesterday about howBlogLines saves you time by always keeping whatyou havent read and what you have read completely separate... well now if you useFeed Demon, you can have yourwonderful Windows fun as well! (Down with WEB apps!)
[UPDATE:] Seems as though M. Fletcher has justannounced the news! , with a press release to go with it! Sign meup!
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 27, 04
For those of you lucky people who actually syndicate this feed, you should seriouslyconsider using BlogLines
Blog Lines is an online RSS aggregator in which saves you bandwidth (by notdownloading the feeds) plus the server itself only keeps one copy of the feed... thussaving the web server bandwidth as well! There is a notification tool for every platformthat checks the site for updates.. just like a real aggregator.
Best benefit, no matter what computer you're sitting at... you can have the same setof feeds with only what you havent read.
Also, you can have it create a realtime blogroll (read: bookmarked blogs) for youautomatically (http://www.bloglines.com/public/whoisjake)
Check it out, have some fun and subscribe to my feed! :) and link back to me.. mygoogle page rank sucks right now HAHA
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 26, 04
So a good friend of Greg and I came up to see us this weekend! Her name's Tara...she's short and cute! We had a blast!
Highlights:
Ate at Chevy's on Friday night... watched a movie
Old Chicago for lunch on Saturday... then went DOWNTOWN baby on Saturday Night, ate atHard Rock
It was awesome seeing the look on her face when a small town Iowa girl gets takendowntown Minneapolis for the first time.. :)
We hit up a bar called drink! ... shaked our asses like it was going out of style, andI got hit on by 2 girls! w00t!
Now its just a lazy Sunday afternoon... mostly likely going to be spent watching all 3Star Wars DVDs
(btw, Yesterday, first day I didn't post in all of September so far... I guess I washaving too much fun!)
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 24, 04
A former professor of mine posed a question... “Why not program test-first?†. Out of pure experience, I hadto respond to his comment...
From: Jake Good
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 1:19 PM
To: Eugene Wallingford
Subject: TDD
Another case for which I think that TDD is often a better approach (when writing testsfirst) is the sheer complexity related to the capacity of the human brain. For instance,here we had a gigantic object model with lots of complexity with different business rulesand conditions at each spot in the model, yet the model was usable from its most toplevel point. Without writing tests at the top level first, we would have never been ableto conceive the types of mistakes or complexities related to other parts of the model.It’s almost a mix of integration testing and component testing… which can beuseful from the start.
I think when you test first; it’s not about how good you are, it’s abouthow granular you want you’re your code to be perfectly tested. Example, a blogframework, you might not want to test (programmatic test cases) the actual insert of datain your data layer, because you’ve done it a million times, but you definitely wantto write tests that fail for the abstraction of using your object model to actuallyinsert a post.
The short: I’m a fan of test first implement later
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Jake Good
Solutions Developer - code poet
Direct: XXX-XXX-XXXX
www.inetium.com
Inetium -- Business-Intimate Technology Solutions
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Then he posted another thought on how that affects education and developmentwithin the academic world, making relevance to the fact that when you do test-drivendevelopment, the intial time of development is increased (15%)... in which is not ofinterest to the common student who may be in other classes and/or have jobs. Anotheraspect is that traditional development learning and education does not TEACH theexperience or habit of test-driven development, so it's difficult for students to go from-- “Lets work on exactly what the teacher wants to happen†or the everpopular “Let's hack together a solution that generates exactly the outputnecessary, but hope that it works for 99% of the tests†... to “Let's testfor expected output first, then make sure our program passes the tests.â€
I know from my educational experience (which I used to be a student ofhis)... that the “hack†solution is good enough to get you buy at a 3.0scale. To excel, the effort has to be made to do some sort of testing on your output,whether its through TDD or other means.
Should the assignments be handed out and in cycle for longer periods oftime? No... I think in computer science education... the granularity in which you teachdevelopment has to be smaller than in other studies outside of science. The applicationof computer science relies heavily on the smaller aspects. So homework in smallersections is GOOD in that it ensures the learning of sections at a time. Applications toprove how a student learns as a whole should be taken into consideration as well. Glueingthe pieces together provides two fold knowledge: a) that the student learned the smallerpieces and b) that the student then can apply them in a meaningful fashion.
An approach taken by another one of my previous professors, Dr. Gray , was exactly what I just described. Westarted out in our Operating Systems class working towards learning the corefunctionality of an OS. Starting with memory and how to programatically alter it. Movingonto file systems and then user interaction. Each step of the way we demonstrated ourlevel of knowledge for the step, yet in the next section, were asked to build upon whatwe had and apply what we had learned so far to integrate into an entire system,eventually creating a shell application for Linux.
Another possibly scenerio is to use cooperative learning in a medium sizedapplication project , in which your granularity is not as small as each step, but youstill don't assign one long project. This allows the learning of each step, yet stillseeing the overall picture. My Western Civilization professor taught completely inthis method, it allowed us to learn more about what we were specifically researching, butnot as a whole.
http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/CooperativeLearning.pdf
To make a short story long: small steps but keep it relative and apply thesteps to see a whole.
< / rant >
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 23, 04
So I got this in my inbox today... It's interesting because it's extremely personal..I'm debating on whether or not its real... (using standard heuristics for email validity)Not that I'm hoping its real, I'm not THAT desperate (but I am on match.comhehe)
The things I find peculiar or interesting to note are bold and highlighted in red.Email addresses and story don't match, sending computer looks to be a standard *nixbox that isn't configured for a network (highly unlikely), and the phone # is 8digits (too short, add area code makes it too long)
|
| Janie<janieg@braverdoles.com> |
| Sent : | Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:09 AM |
| To : | GooberDLX@hotmail.com |
| Subject : | I relocated to Chanhassen... |
|
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: from localhost.localdomain ([69.90.200.98]) bymc6-f37.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:09:39-0700
X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jEHjJx36Oi8+YDSEg8qKPPD
Return-Path: christyc@braverdoles.com
Message-ID:
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 Sep 2004 05:09:39.0456 (UTC) FILETIME=[870B8000:01C4A12B] |
Hello there
Did you get my last email?
I saw your ad on match.com and thought I would write.
Moving here is a new experience for me as I just moved near Chanhassen from Coloradoabout a month ago andI must say I really like it here.
I haven't met anyone yet, except for my roomate who moved here a while back. She's madesome friends through the internet and she says there's a lot of nice people I might likehere.
I don't have an email connection yet so I am using my friends. I am generally a happyperson. I spend alot of time with my family members, volunteering around the community,and with kids. I love reading, renting movies and playing cards.
My roomate Christine thought I should email you and she showed me how to send it but nowIcan't figure out how to attach my picture here. Christine attached my picture onGetyourfriendlymatch.com. You can locate my number 2986262. If it interests you, you cancall me on my cell phone tomorrow at 65251418I am really laid back andeasy going. I am honest, a good listener, love to talk and learn about new things.Outgoing, love to have fun and see others having a good time.
Any way we can talk and see what we have in common and maybe get together if you wouldlike to. Bye,
Janie
P.S.
Hope you can call.
I don't know if we'll be using this address anymore so call me and let's see where itgoes. |
|
[UPDATE: 9/29/04] I have gotten TONS of responses... Thecomments keep coming and more referrals are coming from lots of places: google, feedster,and even email inboxes... I couldn't be more happy with the help that this thread hasgiven! Spread the word, this is FAKE! :)
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 21, 04
My initial impression: Freaking amazing!
My experience: So there I was, just ripping apart the celephane wrapping on the box... with my Xbox already on, anxiously waiting to put the DVD in and bust some ewoks. Myfriend Tom Johnson calls me on the cell and screams, DUDE.. GET ON NOW! I hop on Live! tobe greeted with numerous Battlefront invites! (Gamertag: GooberDLX) ...
I jump into his server, him and his boss, with 10 bots and me with 11 bots. (24players with bots to fill the non character spots)... It was Hoth and I was Imperial!(Dark Side)... I selected a basic warrior and spawned at a snowy location with... :: drumroll :: an AT-STthat I could actually get into! Then I look up.. and see an AT-AT being attaked byTWO SnowSpeeders! All I could do was scream "Holy Shit! Did you see that?" There weretons of banthas, wookies, storm troopers, and rebels to make anyone drool! Thatwas only the beginning! I can't wait to spend more time with this game...
Pros:
Object models are stunningly realistic
Scenes are very accurate!
Scale of the vehicles are correct
Plenty of characters, spawns, and vehicles!
Objective based combat with awards system
Cons:
3rd Person default - though it helps in the game, its hard to get used to
Auto Aim default - turn the auto aiming off, shouldnt even be an option
< 60 fps - the game does look like it has a slower frame rate.
Some of the maps can be slightly small, while others are just right.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 21, 04
You know you're a geek when you are actually anxious to come home to purchase DVD Box Set of Star Wars and Star Wars Battlefront for theXbox...
In fact, I ran to Target only to have the guy 2 seconds in front of me purchase thelast copy of the Xbox game... So I had to run to Target in Chaska just to get one! I even felt slightly flustered!
You know what else? I actually bought those $.25 bags of chips , a loaf of bread, andlunch meat to eat for lunch and dinner, so I could pretend to afford the games!
Can someone help me with my DVD and video game addiction? Is there a girl out therethat could help? Maybe I should put in a rule where I only buy new DVDs or games when Isell back old ones! Yeah thats it... wait no... I still own my NES and games, I couldntpossibly do that..
So by now you're asking, why am I posting this and not playing or watching... Well..it just so happens that my roomate Greg, is watching Mean Girls ... YES you heard correctly.Thankfully there were no sudden rushes to the bathroom or bedroom, but still .. I willleave you with another reminder of why I think I'm going to watch mean girls. (Aside fromthe fact it was written by Tina Fey)
The star of the movie , once again I present: Lindsey Lohan (SFW)
show / hide
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
So today I grabbed the content from my RSS feeds... and came upon something I havebeen really interested in for quite a while...
Enter Robosapien,the most affordable consumer biomorphic robot. An amazing piece of robotics developed byMark Tilden, a robot physicist who has a career path through NASA, DARPA, and JPL (LosAlamos Nat. Laboratory).
To the average person or consumer, he looks like a child's toy thatcan walk and talk and dance. But when you look at the amount oftechnology and science behind him, it is amazing. His battery efficientsmooth motions are controlled via an infrared controller that comes with him. Operatingwith 4 D batters, he can last up to 12+ hours (reported 20)!!! The average radio controlcar that weighs as much as him, can last 15 to 20 minutes on the same batteries.
What happens when a software developerhears about this amazing piece of work and buys one?
He thinks of creative ways to make the Robosapien do what he wantsit to do. So I'm not the only one to have thought of this, butI do think that when I come up with a creation.. it will be of equal value.
Maybe this is a way that I can spend my technology bonus I got this year? :)
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
"http://justinramos.myftp.org/articles/232.aspx">and a tissue
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
Ok .. so I'm a huge dork.. but seriously
QUADRUPLE STAR WARS TOMORROW!!!!
DVD Box Set of the original Trilogy
AND
Star Wars Battlefront for theXbox
as my friend put it best:
I can't wait to shoot the ewoks for fun HAHA - Tom Johnson
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
But seriously, I'm waiting for the new season of The O.C. to start!
November 5th, 8/7c
To give you a preview and two reasons why I watch the show... here's your after dinnermint for the night
Rachel Bilson & Mischa Barton (SFW)
show / hide
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
Here at Inetium , I'm a resource... it doesn't bother me, but I bet it bothers a lot ofpeople..
Quote:
â€And, nobody at Microsoft has referred to me (at least to my face) as aresource.†- Rory Blythe
I have seen other blog posts in which people say that Microsoft does not call them aresource...
Ironic part?
Check out Microsoft Project Server 2003 - What are the people involved with certain taskscalled? - Resources
What happens when you don't have a specificname tied to the resource? it gets set to Generic - evenbetter
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 20, 04
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 17, 04
This is a true testament to the “Test First†crowd...
So we had anarchitecture decision to make a few days ago and we decided to implement aone-to-one fully synchronized object heirachy (one heirarchy with two different possiblestates).
We named this pattern the Templated Fully Synchronized Parallel ObjectHeirarchy Pattern.
TFSPOHP for those who like Acronyms... and for the “Sequel†crowd, I'dlike to hear your pronounciation of that acronym :P
So where's the testament? How in the world would you EVER expect to use or trust apattern like this without knowing (through tests) that it works. Before we startedimplementing the synchronization, we wrote test cases that would cover every aspect ofthe heirarchy and how it should behave. Of course the tests failed because we didn'timplement the logic.
Point to the story: testing first doesn't always make sense for every project/class,but in a case where you have complex logic and object interaction... it defintelyhelps.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 16, 04
This one comes from our very own Tom Johnson...
Name your top 5 video games of the 90s..
Very very difficult to narrow down the MOST INFLUENTIAL AND DEFINING decade in videogame history...
Mario 64 - Nintendo 64
Zelda : A Link to the Past - Super Nintendo
Mortal Kombat - Arcade
Sim City 2000 - PC
Quake II - PC
What are your picks?
Ohh and check out this book...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0919637264//qid=1093467287/sr=1/104-7042732-9275110?v=glance&s=books&vi=reviews
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 16, 04
Check out what this guy did...
Summary: He has collected EVERY spam, virus, or regular email for his accounts... andplotted them on a graph. SINCE 1997
http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/16/230388.aspx
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 15, 04
But seriously, I need something to do!
Steal these project ideas or let me know which ones you want to see:
- Infopath Viewer/Data entry application for Pocket PC (Microsoft has no plans ofsupporting Pocket PC for this platform)
- Completely online Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for .Net
- Refactor and port a group project I did during Intelligent Systems in college (Genetic Algorithm Framework) from Java to C#
- Intelligent Database Agent - monitors DB activity and uses the genetic algorithmsframework to create stored procedures, UDFs, etc on the data and suggest betterapproaches to your data access. SQL (read S.Q.L. not sequel) does internal optimizationbut relies on a human to be intelligent on their queries.
- Visual Studio plug-in that simplifies boolean expressions based on theorems. -generic parser (?)
- Intelligent agent that is plugged into an IDE (see above), that can learn your codingtendancies (inheritently your company's standards) to create templates and codesuggestions on the fly.
- Create a mumps to C# interpretation component... bring Mumps to the .Net platform(this one is for Dr. O'Kane, whom woulddisapprove of my blog
)
I have ideas for projects all the time, but they usually end up being too ambitious oralready done by someone else. So here's a question I pose for all my devotedreaders...
What is ONE thing that you wish your computer did for you that you haven't figured outhow to do yet? (No sexual favors or kitchen work)
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 15, 04
In Visual Studio, you can add a comment with a TODO tag so that your IDE can list outall of your to do's...
Hunting through code, I found one that my “developer manager†left..
// TODO: Mark for persistency
Classic...
Disclaimer - John IS my well respected, very intelligent, and cute developer manager.He actually found the typo and trusted my character to not disclose the eventto the world. Pending his personal breakdown, I decided to add this disclaimer for fearof my expulsion from Inetium. Thank you for your time and attention.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 13, 04
:: drum roll ::
Celebrate a victory with: Mary Beth Decker (From Road Rules South Seas)(NSFW)
show / hide
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 13, 04
So the game JUST ended
Green Bay 24 - Carolina 14
Way to start the season off..... w00t w00t!
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 13, 04
Challenge:
We have three object heirarchies in which we would like to have a certain precendcebetween the heirarchies themselves.
Heirarchy 1 : You can essentially call this a template. These heirarchies have to bereusable and can be changed at any given time. When altered, this base class must alsoalter the other heirarchies that extend from this to reflect the changes made.
Heirarchy 2: This should behave exactly as heirarchy one except for the changes beingmade. This heirarchy knows how its different from its base heirarchy and stillreflects the changes made at the base level. This is an actual application of changes toa template.
Heirarchy 3: This can be any combination of levels or objects in the heirarchy (stillretaining precendence within the heirarchy). This heirarchy can be applied to Heirarchy 2in the same fashion as Heirarchy 2 can change itself. Basically this would be a set ofoptions to apply to Heirarchy 2. This is not tied to a Heirarchy 1, so there should be noneed to change Heirarchy 3 outside of managing itself.
Solution 1:
The solution that was devised was that in Heirarchy 2, only store the deltas,including what is removed from Heirarchy 1. So at each level of our heirarchy, we storewhat was added and removed relative to the Heirarchy 1 that it is associated with. Thisprovides a smooth implementation as we can see the differences, plus the add/removedobjects from Heirarchy 1 are still references to Heirarchy 1 objects, thus showing thechanges made to Heirarchy 1.
The only problem, does this make object sense? When do objects in the real world, thatneed to act like another object, only know of its changes?
Solution 2:
This is just a hypothesis, but what about the use of explicit type conversions andoperators? When a Heirarchy 1 object gets casted into a Heirarchy 2 object, the typechanges but the objects are still tied to a Heirarchy 1 object. Thus the changes arereflected and you could still store the removed objects in a separate collection.
To me this makes more object sense. I feel as if Solution 1 doesn't take advantage ofPolymorphism or Inheritence.. :: shrugs ::
Solution 3:
Heavy use of “flag†or “bit†variables to check which objectsare part of the template and which aren't. Not an elegant solution as it requires moreinference on the objects than necessary.
Anyone out there have any patterns for object heirarchies and storing deltas?
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 12, 04
What do they put in the water these days? The only reason I ask is because this girljust turned 18 on July 2nd of this year...
Today's Sunday Snack: Lindsey Lohan (SFW)
show / hide
<<IMG alt="" hspace=0src="http://www.whoisjake.com/images/Lindsay_Lohan_Vanity_Fair_June_2004_01.jpg"align=baseline border=0>
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 11, 04
I can remember exactly where I was that day... Let me share my story.
I had just entered the Union at the University that morning after classesto find some TVs setup and tons of people being a little more talkative than usual. Iwent to grab a coffee, wondering what the excitement was. Racing back to my dorm room, Iflipped on CNN to see the horror. Running next door, I found Ben and Mike sitting therewatching the same broadcast. We were speechless. We didn't know what had happened and wereally didn't know the impact.
While watching the footage, we witnessed the second plane crash into thetowers and the other planes making the headlines. It was then that the coincidence turnedinto speculation. Being the types of intellects that Ben, Mike, and I are ( hehe ) , westarted discussing possibilities of what was happening, who did it, and why they did it.The news kept rolling in and news speculation was filling the air... Sadly enough itstill hadn't hit us (the impact) until the buildings collapsed. I stayed home fromclasses the entire day and kept my eyes on the news. It's my nature to take things ofsuch timely importance and research (such as the Olympics and the War of Terror inIraq)... I had a few friends in the area that day, nobody had made contact withthem....
The day will always be remembered... Sadly enough, not only being rememberbecause of the tragic event, but the consipiracy theories, propaganda, war mongering, andthe other negative side effects of having a nation being torn apart at the heart.
A moment of silence.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 10, 04
AND
IN
artwork courtesy of their respectful owners... altered by our very own TomJohnson
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 10, 04
Saw thisover at Kent Sharkey's blog:
What's in the box? (it's a big box)
- Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional
- Windows Server 2003 Standard
- SQL Server 2000 Developer
- Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System
- Four self-paced guides to the MCAD exams
- 50% off voucher for the MCAD exams (one of them, anyway)
Holy crap, the amount of opportunities for developers these days (especially thosestarting out) makes things “just that easyâ€.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 09, 04
What a wonderful day at work today, trying to help a few coworkers resolve an assemblyissue...
Context: ASP.Net application with an old version of an assembly in the GAC and the newon in the root /bin folder of the application.
Problem, the ASP.Net application was looking in the GAC first, only to find an oldversion which did not have the type that the application was referencing... Is this notDLL hell? I thought the whole point of the GAC was to eliminate DLL hell? Xcopyis practically useless if you use the GAC.
I won't go into any of the other reasons, as Chris Sells likes to spoutoff about them, but I do have to say that the idea of a versioned assembly that can runside by side old versions, and have your application pick out the one it needs, isnice... but it has to work invisibly. Imagine a world of assemblies with typeswith versions that are invisible to the application. Could it be possible? What arethe implications and difficulties.. I feel that we're real close by somehow held back byfactors.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 09, 04
Professor Burm
English 10110:45
01 September 2004
My Most Memorable Christmas
As Iopened my eyes to look at the clock, I realized what day it was. This frigid wintermorning was the just the beginning of a great Christmas. I peeped between the curtainsnear my bed and saw the beautiful, white, untouched snow that had fallen overnight. Thewindows had frosted over, making it difficult for the morning sun to pass through. Justlike all kids my age, I had been waiting for this day all year long. Each year I promisedto sleep in a little longer, but this year was no different. It was just after seven a.m.and I knew that both of my older siblings were still asleep. I just didn’tunderstand how they could sleep when there was so much to do. Determined to have all ofmy gifts unwrapped, opened, and ready for action within an hour, I began my awakeningritual. Making as much noise as possible, I violently stomped down the clunky steelladder of the bunk bed that my older brother Jake and I shared. Each footstep caused aloud ring from the metal vibrating against the frame of the bed. Jake, being the lazyteenager he was, angrily squinted his eyes open and groaned in obvious disapproval. Afterseeing me on the ladder and remembering what day it was, he rolled over in submission,realizing there was no option but to wake up. Stretching and yawning, he threw me onelast glare before we headed towards the living room.
We slowlymade our way to the living room where the giant Christmas tree was waiting. Our parentswere expecting our early arrival, and they were armed with tall mugs of coffee. Jake andI gazed in wonder at the array of colorful gifts that had been stacked under the glowingtree. As the youngest of three kids, it was known that I would receive more gifts thananyone else. This didn’t exactly make either my brother or sister very happy, andthey let everyone know one way or another. I eagerly approached my parents, fearing forthe worst.
“Mom, can I start opening mine yet?†I asked with a huge smile.
“Tadd, you know we can’t start without your sister here. Just let Jessicasleep a bit more.â€
Jake knewvery well that it wasn’t possible for him to fall back asleep, so he was determinedto wake his younger sister up one way or another. Like usual, Jake was devising an evilplan in his head, a plan he knew he wouldn’t be executing. He knew that as long ashe didn’t actually follow through with his plans, he was off the hook. That’swhat little brothers were for. I would have done almost anything he told me to, and heused this to his advantage. While our parents shuffled into the kitchen for a refill oftheir highly caffeinated coffee, Jake challenged his plot to me.
“Idare you to just blast into Jessica’s room and jump on her bed. That should wakeher right up!†he said with an evil grin.
Being thenaïve youngster I was, I decided to take his idea and run with it. I was determinedto wake my sister up, make my brother laugh, and to rip my presents open as soon as Ipossibly could.
I slowlycrept to the coat closet to construct a suit that was both funny and scary. I thoughtback to the old black and white mystery movies and decided that every good disguiseneeded something covering the face. I slipped on my black cotton ski mask I had used toplay in the snow earlier that week. Now I needed something to cover my body. Mymom’s long, wool, dress coat looked like it was straight from a movie set. Pullingit over my scrawny shoulders, the bottom of the jacket touched the floor, covering mybare feet and Mighty Duck pajamas. Looking at myself in the mirror, I realized my outfitwas a bit too scary. I decided to add a few accessories to tone down the mobster look ofmy attire. Sliding my mom’s oversized sunglasses from the interior pocket of herjacket, I knew they would go great with my ski mask. My outfit was almost complete.Grabbing the nearest object, my sister’s maroon umbrella, I headed down the darkhallway to my destination.
Tiptoeingthrough the hallway, I began to have second thoughts. I wasn’t sure if I was goingto make her scared for her life or make her cry laughing. Either way, I knew I would geta reaction, so I decided to go for it. When I reached her bedroom door, I read the homemade paper sign that read “do not enter.†Ignoring it, I inhaled deeply,unsure what would happen in the next few seconds.
I raisedmy arms above my head, ready to strike. With all of my force and strength, I slammed myfists into the door, sending it swinging into the wall. I entered the dark room screaminglike a banshee. Swinging the open umbrella over my head, I yelled her name at the top ofmy lungs in the most terrifying voice any grade-school kid could attempt.
“Jessica, Jessica, wake up now!†I yelled.
As soon asJessica caught her first glimpse of me, it was as if she had seen a ghost or Satanhimself. Clutching her chest for air, she jumped back into the corner of her bed. Hereyes showed fear I had never witnessed before in my life. Her bed rattled against thewalls as she slammed her back into the steel frame and shook in utter fear. She screamedfor help in a scared, whimpering voice.
“Ohmy god! Somebody help! Help!†she cried.
Tearsbegan to stream down her cheeks as she thought her life was over. She clutched the barsof her bed, making her muscles stand out and her knuckles white. In a panic myself, Itried to calm her down as quickly as I could by ripping off my mask, revealing myface.
“Calm down! I’m sorry! It’s just me, Tadd!†I reassuredher.
Aftergasping for air and finally catching her breath, she looked at me with fire in hereyes.
“I seriously hate you so much! What is yourproblem?†she asked as she wiped the tears from her face.
“Merry Christmas!†I said with a nervous smile on my face.
In theother room, I heard my brother rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter. This was aChristmas that nobody would forget.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 08, 04
So there we were at lunch, sitting there eating at Chipotle with Andy, Erik, and John... when I came through thedoor just in time to see Erik's lunch being tossed into the air and land in hislap...
The moral of the story, when there is a bee flying around your food and your food iscontained in an object that can be tipped, don't smack the fly while its on your tip-ablecontainer, the food is bound to go flying...
"I can't believe I did that" ... was the expression from Erik the BeeWarrior...
I would post a picture of the results, but I guess everyone takes me as beingperverted?
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 08, 04
So I came upon this problem recently while working on a proof of concept for one ofour clients...
I was developing a Pocket PC application in Visual Studio that I wanted to connect toa web service for data. I created the service and tested it with a Windows Formsapplication, worked fine. Did the same thing for a Pocket PC applicaiton and it failed.It took me a while to figure it out... but I made a common mistake, that for some reason,isn't really mentioned in any of the mobile books I've read.
When you create a web reference in your project and your web service is on yourdevelopment box, its natural for Visual Studio to use “localhost†as thereference to the service. This works fine and dandy for Windows Forms applicationsbecause they are in the execution environment of the same box as the service. But on aPocket PC, localhost works the same way, thus the reference is pointing to the PocketPCitself, and not the development box with the web service. Quick fix, use an IP or netbiosname in a dynamic reference for the web reference to your service.
If it still doesn't work, remember... .Net CF does NOT contain XML serializationlibraries, therefore it can only do the basic XML serialization built in with datasetsand simple data types, not custom ones. A project might be under way to write an XMLserialization library for http://opennetcf.org ,because theirs isn't complete.. it only does one level of properties and nocollections.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 08, 04
I got this tip from a cool blog - It works awesome!
Get Acrobat Reader to open up faster –Go to your AcrobatReader folder and take everything from the "plug_ins" folder and moveit into "Optional" except the following: Search.api, Search5.api, IA32.api, EWH32.api,EScript.api. Printing and search will still work, and it will load 75% faster. This is onReader 6.0.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jroller/archive/2004/09/08/226760.aspx
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 08, 04
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whethersubmarines can swim.
~Edsger W. Dijkstra
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 08, 04
This is how it will work... I'll show you beautiful pictures of women from time totime... Most of these cases are SFW (Safe for work) , but the ones that aren't will beclearly marked with NSFW (Not safe for work) and there will ALWAYS be an option to showor hide the picture, which will start as hidden.
Tonights after dinner mint: Elisha Cuthbert (SFW)
show / hide
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 07, 04
Happy Plug Day!
Some guys I know up at ISU have decided to take action for the love troubled youth inthe world...
www.geekloveradio.com
Go there, download the show, and tune in every Monday!
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 07, 04
A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
~ Donna Roberts
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 07, 04
This blog is hosted at www.WebHost4Life.com aswith many other .Net blogs! :) Check them out!
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 07, 04
Never... EVER subscribe to your own events when creating a user control or Windowsforms...
private void MainForm_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e){// Don't do this. It doesn't make sense}Always OVERRIDE the methods instead.. like..
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e){// Do your main work here for the OnLoad.base.OnLoad (e);}
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 06, 04
The end has come to a fantastic weekend... Good food, good company, and plenty of goodtimes...
Some highlights:
Keya getting a lil' tipsy off an Amaretto Sour...
Arnold impersonations at 2:30 AM in Perkins... “Would you like your cheeseburgerwith American or Swiss?“
“I'll just sleep up in Greg's bed“... “Ohh well“
Anna, Amber, and Spring...
“And this robber came and he shot at us, it went up into the air and into theground, you won't be able to find the bullet“
Prestidigitation...
That sounds “nummy“
Plus, I recieved an awesome house warming gift, aside from Greg being totally spoiled byhis parents... I'll post a pic once I put it up! :)
To my girl Jackie: I love you! :) You drove ALL the way up here by yourself just to seeme. What more could a guy ask for? Soon enough I'll be down there partying it up St. Astyle... All I can say , is that 30 isn't coming soon enough...
I just wanted to thank everyone for coming up and reminding us that we're Iowa boys...OHHHHHHH KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 05, 04
Welcome true believers to this wonderful tale of romance, passion, adventure, andlaughter. Well I don't know about all of those but this will be a story of how ourfavorite single white black male showed his break dancin' moves at a bar in Minneapolis.Who am I talking about? Why it is Keya, our single white black male! Well, we walked intothe bar not really sure what to expect of the place. There was a live band playing thatlooked to be as old enough to have been and 80's tribute to Whitesnake. I bought Keya adrink since I knew he wouldn't waste it if I got him something. Not to poke fun but hedrank that so fast it almost scared me. Then it happened.... The tribute band of TwistedSister started playing Micheal Jackson tunes. WTF? Then played a few different tunes thenKeya ran out on the dance floor and started to “bust a move.†This kid almostwould talk about how he could dance or rap, but damn it was like watching a fat kid playDDR. It was just incredible. Who knew Keya could move. Well I think it that time of theday to finish off this rant. I'll come back later with more info on the crazy events thathappened this labor day weekend.
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 04, 04
This morning when I stepped in the door...
One could say that I went out last night andhad a blast. Spent some money and actually got out of Chanhassen. It was great and I havethis notion that people have jobs to make money (obviously) , but for whateverreason they need money, I could care less... I'll support the economy.
Today's Menu: Sleep , lunch at Quiznos... then the house warmingparty. How we're goingto fit 15+ people in our two level townhome style aparment, you got me. Butnone-the-less, we're not going to let the amount of people stop us! :) Party in thehizzouse! Headsprung.. if you're not here, you're not cool.. (j/k)
Posted by Jake Good
on Sep 03, 04
Welcome to who IS jake? ...
forwhatever reason, you're here to either:
- Find out who Jake really is...
- Listen to Jake's infinite wisdom...
- Laugh at Jake's priceless anecdotes...
- Check out the latest in music, movies, and video games...
- Or you really don't know... and you have a hard time remembering your own name.
Regardless, I'm almost 100% positive that it would bebeneficial to click that little link for my RSS feed or heck, let Microsoft send you an alert through your MSN Messenger when I post something new!:)
So sit back, pop a bag of popcorn, watch the RSS feed and enjoy... and finally figureout, who IS jake?
