<procrastinating>
In talking about extensions to datatypes, I keep finding my self saying “type of type” as in “any type of type, a datetime, a string…” I am trying to train my brain to say “variety of type” instead.
</procrastinating>
Monthly Archives: February 2004
Shoving circles of thought into a sentence or two
Uggh – I hate this part of preparing a presentation. Sitting alone in my office talking out loud to myself, attempting to put all of the thoughts swirling around in your head into words and trying to make them efficient and effective as the clock keeps ticking away.
Why is it that if I were just sitting in a bar talking about this technical stuff with people, I don’t need to practice, I’m just having a conversation and it’s fun. If I was on the phone with a friend who asked me to explain something, it’s not a problem. I think the brevity of the presentation combined with the scope of the content makes it hard. I really have to fly through the information, but still want to share what I have learned.
I think it’s time to go back to all of those blogs of how to do a good presentation.
I actually have a (not quite scheduled yet) LiveMeeting date with Scott Watermasysk and Scott Cate to practice.
Note to self – see if thinkGeek sells a shock device that hits you every time you say “SO” or “umm” in a presentation
What’s with this women over 40 gaming study?
I have seen mention of it in a few places. Here is the article on msnbc. Having been involved in market research in a past life, first thing I looked for was how many people were in the study: 3600. Decent number. But still, as a woman over 40 (barely, mind you… :-)) I just find this so incredibly hard to believe. I have a lot of women friends my age (early 40’s) and couldn’t imagine any of them doing it. In fact,I bet if I did my own poll of women in say the 38-45 bracket (seem to have a lot of friends in there), I bet I would come up with a big fat zero for on-line gaming.
Here is AOL’s more detailed press release.
The only thing I cna think of is that Match.com is considered online gaming. But that wouldn’t account for teh part of the study that talks about how women made friendships with each other.
Colt Kwong in Hong Kong’s first MSDN TV Video
Way to go Colt! Read his post here.
There seems to be a link missing so here it is:
http://www.mshk.com/hk/msdn/docs/MSDNVideo
Colt is very instrumental in the .NET community in Hong Kong, a busy INETA Volunteer, MVP and ASPInsider. (and weblogs.asp.net blogger…)
So you wanna be a plumber
John Bristowe explains (from personal experience) what it takes to really learn and understand all that goes on through the pipe in .NET – WSE, Web Services, etc etc. I have always been impressed with John’s scope of knowledge on this topic and having only scratched the surface of some of that stuff myself, have always wondered how he does it. He claims it’s lots of hard works. That I agree with, however, I think his brain has something to do with it, too!
Getting Directory names from your web applications
I had a problem today with some suddenly altered write permissions on my client’s webserver. So I needed to create a new directory that I had total ownership of to work with. That meant trying once again to remember how to use the darned MapPath, etc. It’s one of those things you use once a year or so…
I wrote a little web service utility that I can now shove into any web application (or web service application) on my webserver which returns
System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory
System.IO.Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(GetCurrentDirectory)
System.IO.Directory.Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory).FullName
Web.Services.WebService.Server.MapPath(“”)
Web.Services.WebServiceServer.MapPath(“\”)
From the Application Directory and the BIN folder.
It returns a string that has line returns in it (though if you just run this directly in i.e. you’ll only get one long string).
I packaged these up into a zip file here if anyone wants to use it.
Note – I would not recommend LEAVING them on your webserver after you get the needed info, since they are not at all secure and expose a little more info than you might want to!!
Of course the most fun is giving something a name. I called it What’s My Dir?.
The zip has the tiny source code (an asmx file and a vb file) as well as the compiled dll if you just want to use it, plus a little readme.txt file to be sure you copy the files in the right place (for those unsure)
If you are using .NET 1.1 be sure that this is in your web.config:
<webServices>
<protocols>
<add name=”HttpGet” />
<add name=”HttpPost” />
protocols>
webServices>
inside of the
I just whipped this together for myself and it does the trick, so you know … no warranties, guarantees, etc.
Ted Neward, Christian Weyer, Scott Guthrie, Rob Howard, Don Kiely, Markus Egger and MORE
Sounds like TechEd, but it’s not! It’s DevTeach, Montreal, Quebec in June. I am a huge fan of this conference for a number of reasons. 1) It’s less than 2 hours from my house 2) it’s very inexpensive 3) the canadian exchange makes it even LESS expensive 4) awesome speakers 5) gobs of great .NET content (and SQL and FoxPro) 6) FUN event – not too huge so it’s very rub your elbows -y.
With Early Bird special before March 31, registration ends up being only $570 US for the 3 days. If you live in the northeast, you should definitely check this out.
Werner Vogels does a serious analysis of ws-events, ws-eventing and ws-notification
Here. On the surface, these specs would seem to be similar by definition (just competitive), but Werner explains that this is not the case and then goes in to a analysis/comparisonof the three. These specs are all still “young”. Werner is one of most knowledgable people out there when it comes to distributed computing so read and learn!
okay all you smart programmers…here’s a test!
> > > Are you the weakest link? Below are four (4) questions. You have to > > answer them instantly. > > > > You can’t take your time; answer all of them immediately. > > > > OK? Let’s find out just how clever you really are. > > > > > > > > Ready? > > > > > > > > GO!!! > > > > > > > > First Question: > > > > > > > > You are participating in a race. You overtake the second person. > > What position are you in? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Answer: If you answered that you are first, you are absolutely > > wrong! > > If > > you overtake the second person and you take his place, you are > > second! > > > > > > > > Try not to screw up in the next question. > > > > To answer the second question, don’t take as much time as you took > > for the first question. > > > > > > > > Second Question: If you overtake the last person, then you are…? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Answer: If you answered that you are second to last, > > you are wrong > > again. Tell me, how can you overtake the LAST > > person?! > > > > > > > > You’re not very good at this are you? > > > > > > > > Third Question: Very tricky math! Note: This must be > > done in your head > > only. Do NOT use paper and pencil or a calculator. > > > > Try it. > > > > > > > > Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. > > Now add 30. Add > > another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now > > add 10. What is the > > total? > > > > > > > > Scroll down for answer.. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Did you get 5000? The correct answer is actually > > 4100. > > > > > > > > Don’t believe it? Check with your calculator! > > > > Today is definitely not your day. Maybe you will get > > the last question > > right? > > > > > > > > Mary’s father has five daughters: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, > > 3. Nini, 4. Nono. > > > > What is the name of the fifth daughter? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Answer: Nunu? > > > > NO! Of course not ya BIG dummy. Her name is Mary. > > Read the question > > again > >
WinFX Posters
Thanks to Brad Abrams and John Hawkins at Microsoft for shipping me gobs of the WinFX posters to give to attendees of my Whidbey Base Classes presentation (next week!) and share with some other user groups.
They had a few left over from PDC.