Monday, August 27, 2007

Daily Links - 24/8/2007

Add Google Maps to your .NET site in 10 minutes

The Yield statement in C#

Behaviour of "as" in C#:

Dependancy Injection from the trenches

How much interest is there in JavaFX?

Beware, the developer who isn't interested in development!

Web Service List
Quite a thorough and diverse listing of available web services.

... And to test calls to all those web services: free open-source tool for testing web services: SoapUI

Increase blog earnings:
Link 1
Link 2

Promoting your blog:
Link 1
Link 2

Toshiba 32Gig SD cards

Removing backgrounds quickly in photoshop

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Daily Links - 23/8/2007

Latest ASP.NET AJAX Articles

Martin Fowler's Bliki
If you haven't heard of Martin Fowler, and you're a software developer, you're loosing out. Start here and here

.NET Gmail API
Handy open-source library for automated Gmail integration from .NET

...and for those who have been on large ambitious projects:

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Daily Links - 22/8/2007

Introduction to Scrum and Agile Development

60 AJAX developer resources and tutorials

MbUnit + NUnitForms = MbUnitForms

...and finally something I think most of you have seen, but since I seem to be reminded of it on a daily basis, I thought I'd post it:

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Daily Links - 21/8/2007

Software Development:

Null Coalescing Operator
I prefer "normal" code though - this is not the most readable code. Use sparingly IMHO

Continuous Integration: (CI)
CI with Draco.NET

CruiseControl vs Draco

CruiseControl with Team Foundation Server (TFS)

CI White Paper

TFS Source Control

Golf:
Beginners Golf Swing Articles
(no "please pay us before we tell you our not-so-secret secret to a correct golf swing")

...and finally - something you'll identify with :)

Monday, August 20, 2007

Daily Links - 20/8/2007

Browse CodeProject directly in VS 2005:
VS 2005 Code Project Plugin

Something I discovered a while back which has proven quite handy - nullable types in C#:

XML Serializer:
I've actually implemented XML serialization as a persistence mechanism in my base class, but this is also a good (probably better) way of doing it. Simple and clean - I like.

Software Dev Lesson - don't under-estimate the power of eye-candy

classic dilbert







Cars:
Everything you wanted to know about the latest Astin Martin DBS

Games:
Bioshock reviews.
Seems to be living up to the hype and publicity.

Good news for warhammer & xbox 360 fans:
Warhammer 360 game
I actually prefer the 40k universe though.

Random Thoughts - IBM has the best sales team in the world!

Thought this article was quite amusing:
Top five problems in IT business: Rational VP
...while in-and-of itself, it makes quite a bit of sense, the humor lies in the source.
I have recently had some run-ins with IBM development products (Rational Application Developer / Rational Software Architect/ Websphere Application Server), and found them to be probably the most unproductive development tools I have had the displeasure of using (and not because I was a Java newbie, or because I come from a M$ development background - many of my Java Developer colleagues feel the same).
Of particular interest, therefore, was point #3: "Skills Modernization" - since IBM Websphere Application Server still only supports Java 1.4 - and good luck getting any semblance of productivity out of it.
Needless to say this was not a very happy entry for me into the world of J2EE. We have since moved the development environment to JBoss and Eclipse. (I have also since dumped a very capable Eclipse for the l33t IntelliJ by Jetbrains.)
My conclusion as to why the big corporate I work for insists on using IBM toolsets - IBM have the best sales team in the world!


Friday, August 17, 2007

Daily Links - 17/8/2007

Design your own website and have it hosted for free:
FreeWebs article

Catch is there are google ads on the top of your site (along with the usual bandwidth and data limits), but the UI for building your site looks easy and user friendly.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Handy Website Links

Below is a list of handy websites I use fairly frequently:

Common:
Google
"The" search engine
iGoogle
Custom home page for the above. Very handy for maintaining/obtaining useful information
Digg
A collection of web articles of interest. Basically a summary of what is popular on the web
Daily Dilbert
Good humor relief for anyone who's stuck (or was) in the corporate world. There's a new strip for every day.
Homestar Runner
Entertaining cartoon - excellent for those days when you need a pick-me-up
It's fuhdwagads!!!
XE
for all your currency conversion needs

Software Development:
DZone
Current posts of interest for general software development - mostly for the Java world, but other languages / subjects are also included
DotNetKicks
Current posts of interest for .NET specific topics.
InfoQ
Articles addressing more general enterprise software development trends
Planet Source Code
Great resource for "how-to"'s for source code for multiple languages
The Code Project
another great resource for "how-to" source code (.NET specific)
Resources For Geeks
Links for tools that come in handy for PC Geek activity

Sport:
Cricket Info
All the current cricket info, including live scores
SA Rugby
Rugby news (specific to South Africa - go Bokke!)
PGA Golf
News and live scores for the PGA Tour
Golf Review
Community reviews of everything golf - I use it for equipment reviews
Golf.com
Another handy golf site for news / reviews

Writing:
East Of The Web
If you're in need of short doses of reading - some good short stories to be found here. (Unfortunately they decommissioned their short-story community site IMO it was the best one available on the web)

Gaming:
MetaCritic
Collective reviews for games on most systems. They collect reviews for other things like film / movies / books / tv / music as well.
bits bytes pixels & sprites
Cool blog with latest gaming news
Gamasutra
Site for the latest news in the gaming industry

Movies:
Movie Trailers
Download latest movie trailers
IMDB
Database of all movies / actors with ratings / info etc.

Other Handy Website Links:
Handy Website Links - South Africa
Handy links specific to South Africa

Got any to add? Post a suggestion.


Daily Links - 15/8/2007

Full vs Compact Framework Development:
I wanted to know if I could use a common DOM (Domain Object Model) assembly that was written in .NET 2.0 using the .NET 2.0 framework, and apply a .NET Compact Framework UI on top: Here's an article which was kindly forwarded to me: (Thanks Carel)
Merge Full and CF .NET Development

Writing mobile games on the compact framework:
Writing Mobile Games using CF

Cool face that follows mouse:
Just something cool I came across while surfing Digg
Moving Face

Visitors World Map

Locations of visitors to this page

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Correcting a golf slice

I've only recently started playing golf, and am still learning the very hard lessons on how to play.
I recently purchased a Ben Hogan CS 3 Driver (IMO the best value for money driver on the market - if you can find one).
When I first started playing, I couldn't hit a Driver at all, resorting to the trusty 5-iron, which would go a reliable 180 meters off the tee. I eventually progressed to my Spalding 3-Wood, and then the Spalding Driver.
Convinced I could now hit the "big dog", I purchased the Ben Hogan with a draw tendency.
Wow - 230 - 250 meters with a slight draw - excellent!
...but I soon ran into problems, which are described here:

Problem #1: Massive hook, with very little distance gained.
Solution: Turned out that my back-swing was way too short, and inside the "swing-plane", resulting in my hands turning over the ball ala tennis top spin. I adjusted my back-swing to pull further back until I could see the club in the peripheral vision of my left eye (which usually meant that the club was horizontal to the ground)
Yeah! Perfect Drives for the next 5 weeks.

Problem #2: Massive slice, traveling about 40 meters right, and 250 distance (which usually meant I was in irrecoverable hazards, or the neighboring fairway.)
Solution: Turns out there's a very fine line in my swing between slice, produced by and outside-in swing, which was further enhanced by my stance being a little too upright and a perfect drive with slight draw. I found that if I stood a little further away from the ball (leaning forward with straight posture), and tried to swing around the body (as apposed to the normal iron swing), then the old Drive was back. But as I mentioned, it's quite a fine line, so I found that some balls were still producing the banana flight pattern.
At least now I know that if I want to slice around a dogleg right, all I need do is stand more upright, and produced a more vertical swing plane (this strategy contributed to a birdie yesterday :) - which for a high handicapper is quite an achievement!)

Edit: When all else fails, you can hack the slice by closing the club face

Edit: I've also found that the following has helped:
- teeing the ball just inside the leading foot, and so the bottom of the ball is sitting just below the top of the club.
- Make a straight line with the leading arm and club shaft at address.
- Bend your spine 30 degrees away from the ball, so as to get underneath the ball at impact
- Swing 80% of power, accelerating from the top of the swing (ie: start slow). If you try and hit the cr@p out of it, it'll more than likely go wayward.
- Make a deliberate slow back swing (good for maintain balance)
- Concentrate eye contact on the ball at impact.
- Make sure your elbows are pointing away from each other at address(leading elbow toward the target)
- At the start of the backswing, keep the club low and away from the body.