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In my pursuit of learning more about CSS and how to do a three-column layout without resorting to tables, I came across this nice site[^] with plenty of links to example three column layouts.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Inspired by Scott's list[^] here are the sites that I frequent most and get frustrated if I can't access them. (In no particular order)
The Code Project[^] - what more do I have to say. The best developer site on the web, probably one of the best sites on the web. Certainly my favourite forum code.
BBC News[^] - where I get all my current affairs and sports news from. They might be a little behind with some of the tech news but for quality and sheer volume of information, the BBC can't be beaten.
SlashDot[^] - whilst it has an editorial bias that borders on zealotry. It is still the best place to keep-up on what is happening in our industry and related news.
BBC Radio 7[^] - classic comedy and drama from the BBC.
Joel On Software[^] - whilst he hasn't written anything of real value for a while now. The archives of his articles are invaluable. Although once I buy the book, then I probably won't need to visit as often.
Those are the main sites I visit everyday. Others in my most visited list include
The Force.NET[^] - The best site for Star Wars related news
Outpost Gallifery[^] - with the new series getting closer, this site is the best place for keeping up with the world of Doctor Who. Although some of the comments in the forums make Linux users look calm and sensible, it is still worth a read for those interested in Classic and New Who.
Football 365[^] - despite some of the most annoying advertising on the web, it is the best place for a mix of football news and humour.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I was watching 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' on TV last night. It started me thinking about fictional heroes.
When I was growing up, we were blessed with an abundance of fictional heroes. Good guys, who we all wanted to be. 'Indy', 'Han Solo', 'Luke Skywalker', 'Captain Kirk', 'MacGyver', 'The A-Team', 'Doctor Who', 'Blake', 'Avon'. Some of them were flawed heroes but they fitted the mythic tradition.
If you look at modern day characters, there are very few people I'd class as heroes. Who do children growing up today look-up to. Who are there fictional role models? Who do they pretend to play in the playground? 'Harry Potter'? 'Captain Archer'?
Or do fictional heroes not have a role anymore? Are children too obsessed with wanting to be the rich sport/film/music "star"?
Has the desire for fame and money, quashed the desire for excitement and adventure?
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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One change that may be relevant is that the complexity of life has extended down the age line. At least on the surface it has, it's always been complex no matter your age but was never openly discussed. Nowdays young kids tackle complex subjects openly, things even I, a youngster, never tackled at that age.
Harry Potter might be a good example of that, and along with the resurgance of Spider Man, shows the beginings of a trend back to heros but heros with depth and complexity.
Luke, A-Team, MacGyver etc. were all a bit stereotypical. Bold and easily identifiable. Now we have Potter and the like who are still strong but have a bit of real-world depth to them.
But it still seems to be in it's infancy and yes kids seem to rather be a R&B star or a pimpin fo shizzling rich lout in this day and age. Hopefully that is changing a bit.
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote:
"Gassho rei, Watson-san!"
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
One change that may be relevant is that the complexity of life has extended down the age line.
One of the least appealing aspects of progress. Still I suppose it is necessary, so that kids today are more prepared for the more dangerous world we now live in. Evolution in action.
Paul Watson wrote:
and along with the resurgance of Spider Man, shows the beginings of a trend back to heros but heros with depth and complexity.
Lets hope so. We all need our heroes to lookup too. With the media-saturation of pop-stars, football players and the like, the real-life heroes tend to get lost.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Scoble[^] collects together the reactions from various bloggers.
I think we need more of this. I liked to see a "blog-publisher" who gathers together the thoughts of various bloggers on key-subjects of the day. It would certainly save me from having to subscribe to lots of different RSS feeds to try and keep-up with how my fellow developers feel about subjects that effect our development lives.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Even though I do support myself with contracting and consulatancy work, I still like to think of myself as an ISV - even if it is only me.
Eric Sink (of SourceGear fame) has a good article[^] on MSDN about Micro-ISVs.
It's a good read with some good advice to prospective Micro ISVs.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Hi Eric,
I just read the article you mentioned in your blog post. I'm thinking to develop a product. At the moment, I'm fully aware of the development route I'll be taking since I have already developed a product in the past of same type. I know another person who used to market his own product. He doesn't have time to develop a product like I'm thinking of. We discussed the opportunity of me developing it and he'll be marketing it. I'm just confused that how it should work; revenue wise. I know its funny, the product hasn't been completed yet but i'm just confused that once its finished how should I take it further. Infact, any developer I discuss the idea is willing to join the team but nobody ever contributed any single hour on it. Its just when I describe to them that what the potential of the product could be, everybody gets excited and shows interest to be a part of it. I'm just confused. I just don't find the motivation myself to develop it unless theres some prospect in future. But I do believe it can get me somewhere once its finished. You can say i'm lazy  . What do you think if you would be in my situation, any suggestions? hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks
Ali
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I'm currently adding a new feature to one of my old MFC/C++ based apps.
I'd forgotten how much work is involved in old ADO. Even with my old wrapper classes, it is still time consuming. It has made me realise how much of a god-send DataTable, DataSet and DataAdapter are in .NET
Not to mention having to do all the manually binding of controls to the data. I've become spoilt by .NET, C#, MyXaml and the rest. Luckily this is the only database based app that I still maintain in C++. The customer will never spring for a .NET rewrite, so I guess I'm stuck with it for the moment.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I'm just starting on designing my own personal website. I want the design to follow the traditional three column model, but I don't want to use too many tables or spacers gifs. In my research, I came across this site CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit[^]. To me, the novice web-developer is appears to be a great resource.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Nice feature on Miguel de Icaza,[^]
There aren't many 'names' in the open-source community that I admire or respect but Miguel is certainly one of them. I'd be interested to see what he could achieve if he wasn't spending so much time playing catch-up with Microsoft.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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I picked this one up from Paul's blog[^]
Throwing Tables Out the Window[^]
It is a good article on CSS. I like the example used too. A nice real world example. Certainly something I'm going to show to my web-designer, because I much prefer CSS based sites but don't have enough web development knowledge to understand her own arguments against using CSS for building an entire skinable site.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Thanks Michael. Interesting to know that someone actually reads that Quickies blog of mine (I don't get stats on RSS usage, alas).
How is the life of Butler going? Still working from home?
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Christopher Duncan wrote:
"I always knew that somewhere deep inside that likable, Save the Whales kinda guy there lurked the heart of a troublemaker..."
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Interesting analysis of Joel's attitudes towards software development at SoftwareCEO.com[^]
Read it whilst its hot, as when it is archived you'll have to pay to read it. Although a few more articles like this one and maybe I'll pay for a subscription.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Good article, thanks for pointing it out. I'm not sure I completely agree with Joel, but many of his points are lessons that I've learned myself over the last 15 years.
David
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David Cunningham wrote:
I'm not sure I completely agree with Joel, but many of his points are lessions that I've learned myself over the last 15 years.
I like a lot of Joels stuff. Particularly the stuff on specifications and scheduling. He also makes good points about rewriting code.
But a lot of his stuff is really unique to his own situation. A nice world to be in but not much use to the rest of use. The marketing referred to in the SoftwareCeo article is a case in point. Not many companies could pull it off.
The nearest model is the CP/Dundas relationship. Since Dundas became involved with CodeProject, have sales increased or do most still come from other channels. Could you use CP as your exclusive marketing resource? Probably not.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Michael P Butler wrote:
Could you use CP as your exclusive marketing resource? Probably not.
When we were primarily selling MFC/C++ tools, CodeProject was a really good fit, because the products we had were targetted at developers themselves. Our data visualization products (Chart, Diagram, etc.) are more often considered 'strategic' purchases and so it's more important for us to reach executives in software companies, product managers, etc. and while there are lots of those people visiting CodeProject, there aren't enough that we could advertise exclusively through CP.
David
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David Cunningham wrote:
Our data visualization products (Chart, Diagram, etc.) are more often considered 'strategic' purchases and so it's more important for us to reach executives in software companies, product managers, etc. and while there are lots of those people visiting CodeProject, there aren't enough that we could advertise exclusively through CP.
Good point.
David Cunningham wrote:
When we were primarily selling MFC/C++ tools,
Speaking of the MFC tools. Will we be seeing a C# port anytime soon, especially Ultimate Grid?
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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Which of those do you actually use and how and why?
Snippet Compiler I do use. FXCop too. The rest, not at all.
I tried Regulator but found it overcomplex. Useful for an incredibly complex regex but otherwise overkill. Incredibly complex regex I get from Google.
NUnit, never tried it. Will give it a bash though.
NDoc, one day. My code is XML commented but haven't had a need to format it with NDoc yet.
NAnt, not needed. Builds in ASP.NET I assume are vastly simpler than Windows Apps.
CodeSmith, I tried, I really did. Just never managed to get into the habit.
ASP.NET Version Switcher and the Visual Studio .NET Project Converter, nope, not needed except in very rare cases.
.NET Reflector, tried it for fun. Sounds useful but haven't really actually done anything practical with it.
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Christopher Duncan wrote:
"I always knew that somewhere deep inside that likable, Save the Whales kinda guy there lurked the heart of a troublemaker..."
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
Snippet Compiler I do use. FXCop too.
I use both these for the obvious reasons.
Paul Watson wrote:
I tried Regulator but found it overcomplex. Useful for an incredibly complex regex but otherwise overkill. Incredibly complex regex I get from Google.
Don't use Regulator. I don't do a lot of regex and if I do, I do a google for it. Lifes to short to be messing around with that kind of stuff.
Paul Watson wrote:
NUnit, never tried it. Will give it a bash though.
Very useful tool. Especially seeing as I have to do my own QA.
Paul Watson wrote:
NDoc, one day. My code is XML commented but haven't had a need to format it with NDoc yet.
I rarely use it, but it is useful for documenting my class libraries - just incase I ever get around to making them public.
Paul Watson wrote:
CodeSmith, I tried, I really did. Just never managed to get into the habit.
I need to use it more. I want to see if I can use it for generating MyXaml code. Just haven't had time to look at it yet.
Paul Watson wrote:
.NET Reflector, tried it for fun. Sounds useful but haven't really actually done anything practical with it.
Great tool for looking at the Microsoft assemblies and finding out how stuff actually works. Whilst I love blackbox programming, it is nice sometimes to know what is going on behind the scenes.
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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>Very useful tool [NUnit]. Especially seeing as I have to do my own QA.
Do you have any good tutorials or example usages for this? Specifically for ASP.NET apps. I want to get better testing into our production line and NUnit seems good but so far I have seen lots of simple exampls on just blocks of code really (or is that the point of unit testing?)
regards,
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
South Africa
Christopher Duncan wrote:
"I always knew that somewhere deep inside that likable, Save the Whales kinda guy there lurked the heart of a troublemaker..."
Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Paul Watson wrote:
want to get better testing into our production line and NUnit seems good but so far I have seen lots of simple exampls on just blocks of code really (or is that the point of unit testing?)
Yeah, thats pretty much the point of unit testing. Testing individual methods. It's more about code testing that application testing. Unit testing is what developers should do before it gets to the QA team.
Paul Watson wrote:
Do you have any good tutorials or example usages for this? Specifically for ASP.NET apps.
This[^] has been pointed out to me in the past. I don't do a lot of ASP.NET so I'm probably not the best person to ask. Maybe a post in the ASP.NET forum might provide more details.
AspToday[^] did have an okay article but it seems to have disappered behind the subscription wall 
This one[^] is a good primer, even though it is aimed at the VB.NET developer.
David Hayden has a few good links on his blog[^]
And finally,
everything you ever wanted to know about test driven development but were afraid to ask[^]
Hope this of some help
Michael
CP Blog [^]
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