Site Point on their new Deal Fuel website at http://www.sitepoint.com/sa... are offering all of the Sitepoint Christmas Deals again.The books include topics like CSS, Javascript, WordPress and general web design. Online training courses are also available at a good discount...
It’s time to dust things off here at DotGeek and get busy with learning some newer things in 2012 and in turn, hopefully providing myself some more opportunities in the long run too. I kind of let 2011 get away from me, but I had a later start to be fair. So what better time to start than at the first of 2012 and with a plan of action. So I’ve known for sometime that I wanted to become more than just front man and I wanted to be involved more with the backend operations of various projects. Whether...
I originally heard about this website several years ago when I was attending user groups with Rob Reynolds and Dru Sellers. At the time it was still early on in my career and I didn't feel it was the right time to start something like this. Now, 5 years later, I feel it's tje right time to start giving back, or at least trying to, and hopefully help someone like so many have helped me along the way.I am a programmer in Topeka, Ks. I moved here after graduating from Kansas State University and began...
The list of 30 free programming books at http://citizen428.net/blog/... has been updated and there are now 59 links listed...
Until Jan 19th, O Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/cat... are offering 7 weeks of gift ideas.Areas already available are:JavaScriptHTML5ArduinoL... DesignProgrammingIn previous blogs I have recommended various books that I am familiar with. O Reilly Books are written by experts, well type set and reasonably priced. With a 50% discount on E-books and 40% on print, they are a bargain!Have a look through the list and see if there are any you need...
Yes, we all know that the IT field is ever-changing. Yes, we all know the importance of keeping up to date on emerging technologies. Yes, we all know that you may never have the opportunity to use a lot of those technologies in your day-to-day role. So here is where the great divide comes… Those that are believers that the responsibility lies with their employer to provide ongoing training, and those that inherently take on the responsibility for themselves. The difference between the two views is...
At http://www.red-gate.com/pro... Redgate are offering a free copy of Oracle Essentials, 4th EditionO Reilly books are written by subject experts on the basis of practical experiance...
It's after midnight and I'm resting after a long vacation day with the family. What am I thinking about? Scrum, naturally.What I'm thinking about is this: Why don't Agile practices work on some teams? Why do some teams pick up Agile and run with it, and others either fail to pick it up or actively fight against it?It's taken me about two years to come up with the words to summarize my conclusion, which is stated in the introduction to many books on Agile and Scrum: Agile practices are what great...
On 23/24 Dec Site Point at http://www.sitepoint.com/sale/ are offering a very specical deal - all the special offers that they have made this month are available again! This includes some excellent books on CSS and JQUERY...
At http://shop.oreilly.com/cat... there is an excellent deal of programming books including how to buy for the geek in your life:The hardest person on your list to shop for is Andrew. Why? Because he just won't tell you what he needs or wants. It's not because he doesn't want anything; it's just that telling you isn't logical. If he needs it or wants it, he'll get it himself, right? In the meantime, you're left with trying to figure out the perfect gift for someone who spends...
I just finished reading new book on Microsoft BizTalk 2010 written by BizTalk colleagues Kent Weare, Richard Seroter, Thiago Almeida, Sergei Moukhnitski, and Carl Darski. There are many good books that explore core BizTalk features for beginners, intermediate, and advanced developers. This one stands out by the fact that it covers relatively less documented aspect of BizTalk development – integrating with different line of business applications. The subject is vast and diverse so attempt to fit it...
Our TFS instance had been humming along for some time when I noticed that the full and incremental cube refresh jobs started failing. Using Grant Holiday’s “Team Foundation Server 2010 Administrative Report Pack” I was able to better visualize and diagnose the problem. The Problem The full error message was - OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: Login timeout expired; HYT00; A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found...
At http://shop.oreilly.com/cat... O' Reilly are offering 50% off on ebooks and 40% off on print books with discount code HDCKBK. This offer is good to January 19, 2012. Some of the books on offer that I like are:...
Todays deal from SitePoint is three books about CSS See http://www.sitepoint.com/sa...
APress's Cyber Monday sale is today - all books are $15 (except for The Definitive Guide to Berkeley DB XML which as book of the day is $10)...
At http://oreilly.com/store/sa... O Reilly have put together a list of all their their sample chapters from books - enjoy...
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.000... mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} My friend asked me where to...
I've got a bunch of technical books I'd like to get rid of. Some are more current than others. 3D Programming For Windows Introducing LINQ VB.NET Class Design Handbook ASP.NET MVC 1.0 ASP.NET MVC In Action FBML Essentials Test Driven Development in Microsoft .NET The Rational Guide To Building Technical User Communities Expression Web Step By Step Applications = Code + Markup I don't really feel like dealing with the hassle of ebay (or Amazon), and I'd hate to just throw them away. Craigslist / Freecycle...
Today's deal of the day from O'Reilly at is a shootout between Vi/Vim and Emacs "The realization that Vim just turned 20 reminded us of the passion developers have for their editor of choice. We've published books about the two most popular, Emacs and Vim, and love them both. Today only you can cast a vote for your favorite, and take advantage of a special offer. We'll report on the results next week, both of your votes, and the sales percentage for books on the respective editors."...
During the last months, I was (for some reasons that are not related to programming) working for a dev shop where software development was done the 'traditional' way: You just write your application's production code, do it as good as you can, and hopefully it will be good enough and no problems will occur in production (this is HDD: Hope-driven development). Anyway, after I had finished this contract, I felt the need to review some core aspects of what I think is Test-driven development. And while...
Today O'Reilly have two excellent deals! Data Science Starter Kit Fundamentals of Microsoft .NET Programming Grasp the basic concepts that drive all Microsoft® .NET-based languages—and prepare yourself to learn .NET programming. If you have absolutely no previous experience, no problem—simply start here! This ebook provides the foundation for all other .NET programming language books in the Start Here! series. You’ll explore programming concepts and techniques with clear explanations, easy-to-follow...
UPDATED Dec 8th 2011: Added Kanban book by David Anderson “Send me a list of books to read” – that is what I am often asked. No more, as this list is an answer to those request! I have divided it into different subject areas, and each area hold a small number of the books I have found most appropriate and covering for that area. I do love reading books, and there are so many good ones, but the list can’t go on forever. If you feel there are books I have not listed that you feel should be on this...
Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Previously, I had created some posts about the Task Parallel Library’s Concurrent Collections – which are very efficient collections designed for concurrent use with minimal contention – but in this next series of Little Wonders posts, I’d like to explore the parts...
If you enter the 101 Books prize draw at http://www.101ftb.com/T00G7... you stand chance of winning one of the one hundred and one raffles in a given month...
First let me say that this is a “what I like” post and not a comparison of platforms. The Windows Phone is the first smart phone that I have owned (no, I’m not 100 or 15 years old). Now that I have done the full disclosure I did want to talk about the features of the Windows Phone that I really enjoy. I have had the Samsung Focus since shortly after it came out. I have found it extremely capable and enjoy the performance of the device. It is light, durable and bright. My wife has the LG Quantum that...
Full Disclosure: I was one of the technical reviewers on this book. I think my friend Tomislav did a great job on this book and it would make a valuable addition to the bookshelf of anyone that is working with MDX. I really enjoyed reading this and there were even a couple of interesting techniques that I have added to my toolkit. As far as I know there are not any other MDX books on the market quite like this one. It's more aimed at the intermediate level of MDX user and assumes that you have some...
In the hours since Steve Jobs death was announced, the world has seemingly fallen into a conjoined state of mourning…well, at least according to my Twitter feed. Quotes Steve made over the years fill the stream, along with reports of people gathering at Apple stores with some garnering memorials outside their doors. Very rarely has someone from the corporate world garnered such a response to their passing. Even more rarely does a corporate individual get a statement from the US President. But its...
Today is a weird day. I just got the news, as I woke up, that Steve Jobs passed away last night. This news affected me more than I thought it would. I felt the need to write about these emotions, and about my history with Apple. This is probably more for myself than for the reader, so feel free to skip ahead if you don’t like this, but it felt appropriate to keep a few thoughts at this time. I first used a computer at pre-university, probably when I was 15. It was an Apple Macintosh SE. Before that...
Apart from Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, there's two other dictionaries in the BCL - SortedDictionary<TKey, TValue> and SortedList<TKey, TValue>. On the face of it, these two classes do the same thing - provide an IDictionary<TKey, TValue> interface where the iterator returns the items sorted by the key. So what's the difference between them, and when should you use one rather than the other? (as in my previous post, I'll assume you have some basic algorithm & datastructure...
Today, Microsoft Press is offering Sharepoint books at 50% off. See http://feeds.feedburner.com... http://shop.oreilly.com/cat...
I’ve been a bookworm for years and have amassed a significant volume of books of all kinds. Most of my collection is technology related, but volumes of Conan, manga, astronomy, philosophy, genetics, personal productivity, science fiction, fantasy, and just about everything else abound. After getting my Kindle Christmas before last, and later, my iPad, I’ve grown steadily more comfortable with reading and utilizing digital printed media. This comfort level, coupled with my semi-new found desire to...
One benefit of my recent experience on a BA flight was that I got plenty of time to read through “Microsoft BizTalk 2010 Line of Business Systems Integration”. I’d promised the publisher weeks ago that I would take a look and publish some comments, but August has been such a busy month for me, and they have had to be patient. I should point out that, for the sake of transparency, that with another BizTalk book about to be released (next week) which I helped co-author, I have an urgent and obvious...
Today's $10 Deal from Apress at http://www.apress.com/97814... is Pro LINQ Language Integrated Query in C# 2010 "Most books show the simplest examples of how to use a method, but they so rarely show how to use the more complex prototypes. This book is different. Demonstrating the overwhelming majority of LINQ operators and prototypes, it is a veritable treasury of LINQ examples."...
Welcome to my blog! This is my first blog, so I’m learning as I go. I’m excited though. Let’s get started with some background on me. I started down the IT road as a QA tester for a large financial firm. At the time I was in the middle of getting my BS degree and wanted to get my hands dirty a bit. So I moved to a developer role in the same company. I was working on the Siebel CRM implementation for said company and did that for about a year. I wanted to get into some real-deal coding (building from...
Using Xslt along with XPath we can transform any xml document in the way we want and use it e.g. to create the html page. At this time, we have Xslt 2.0 and XPath 2, but unfortunatelly .Net Framework doesn't support them. We can only use Xslt 1. We have two ways to work with Xslt 2. One is to use a 3rd party library, e.g. XQSharp or Saxon. The second option is to manually implement the missed in Xslt 1 functions. How to do it I want to show in this post. First is the sample code. The goal is to create...
I’ve learned, from conference sessions and user group meetings, that Agile is best learned in action – being part of a game or activity that explains Agile, having lively discussion with people, or (best yet) being part of an Agile project. We still get a large amount of learning from books though, and so while Agile books may do a good job explaining the methodologies and techniques, its never as good as having some context to stand it up against. Enter Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken...
Everyone has a journey. You start off young & stupid, and 2 decades later, you're closer to understanding the nature of reality. That’s one of the main goals in life, to seek knowledge (justified, true beliefs – pick any 2 J ). I must have read 5000 books in my life. From some of my readings it could be construed that reality computes itself, It from Bit. From others, it can be concluded that Entropy is decreased by increased rates of computation, and in the short span of human civilization,...
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.000... mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans... mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} There remains a lot of complacency concerning...
Recently I began studying for the 70-400, System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuration. Before I was told that we needed someone certified in SCOM I didn't even know what it was! I began like every student does. I went to www.google.com. I learned that this was a very powerful tool that Microsoft has developed which is part of the System Center product line. This particular piece of software focuses on monitoring and recovery of systems. So instead of realizing that a server is offline, you...
In about 3 weeks, specifically August 11-13 we will be already going strong with SharePoint Saturday The Conference in Washington, DC. Are you registered? Have you made your plans? This is a great opportunity to get together with many of the SharePoint names that produce outstanding solutions, amazing books and overall give great guidance. Join us! Are you a Student or an Educator? Check this out … http://www.spstc.org/blog/L... Hotel Info: http://www.spstc.org/blog/L...
So, there are a few large SharePoint events coming up including SPSNYC, SPSTC, and the pinnacle of SharePoint conferences The Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, CA. As these events approach it becomes more and more important that we label each other effectively. We need to know who is cool and who to avoid. Should I walk up and shake your hand when I see you or quickly cross to the other side of the room?? These are important questions! Are you a SharePoint Rock Star with legions of adoring...
My dear fellow programmers/developers, how you kill your time while you're not coding? Some people go jogging, some listen to their favourite tracks, some catch movies, some read, and the list goes on and on. For me, one of the stuff I enjoy doing is Go. So what the heck is this Go, you may ask (of course if you're already playing and enjoying it, you won't need to ask me). Go is an ancient board game carrying the 5000 years history with it, while still keep getiing improved on the rules and styles...
In my quest to read all the books I have lying on my bookshelf I have finally got round to finishing C# Concisely (ISBN 0-321-15418-5). While this book was fairly old, I found it to be quite useful for a student wanting to learn C# for the first time, and a nice way to review and make I hadn’t missed something when I was learning the language. The book is simple and explains the basic concepts in a clean manner, but is really intended for the beginner programmer – it also had a few chapters dedicated...
As I discussed in my previous posts, divisions and project teams within Red Gate are allowed a lot of autonomy to manage themselves. It's not just the teams though, there's an awful lot of freedom given to individual employees within the company as well. Reasonableness How Red Gate treats it's employees is embodied in the phrase 'You will be reasonable with us, and we will be reasonable with you'. As an employee, you are trusted to do your job to the best of you ability. There's no one looking over...
I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system...
If you would like to help me out, you can Tweet this story OR email Expedia and ask them to make things right for me and my wife. This is the story of how Expedia made my new bride cry. When Expedia followed up their failure with our honeymoon trip with a complete and total lack of acknowledgement of any responsibility for the problem and endless loops of explaining the issue over and over again - I swore that they would make it right. When they brought my new bride to tears, I got an immediate and...
I wrote a post last August with details about what materials I used in order to study for the two Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Exams (70-667 & 70-668) : http://kellydjones.com/arch... This question still comes up a lot, so I thought I’d post an update with some more learning materials. First, I’ve recently discovered Safari books online. Safari books online has a lot of SharePoint books, including Wrox books – which I’ve found that I keep gravitating to. There’s...
At http://www.codeproject.com/... there is a hilarious list of ways to shoot yourself in the foot in various programming languages. C You shoot yourself in the foot. C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there." FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively,...
(A picture that I took on 6/3/2011 waiting for the keynote by Charles Petzold to begin at the Bijou Theater in Knoxville, TN) Day One (Thursday Night) I headed out on Thursday morning with my friend Daniel Heisler for CodeStock. We were driving from Birmingham, Alabama so it was going to take us about 4.5 hours to get in. After stopping a few times, we finally arrived at the Knoxville Hilton. After checking into our rooms, we met Rafe Kemmis and Spede Bryan in the lobby and headed over to Barley's...
GIF is a file format that should not really be used for prepress, it is far more suited for web design or to exchange images through e-mail or newsgroups. Unfortunately, GIF images keep popping up in pages made by amateurs (not to mention books about the internet ) so it is worthwhile to know a bit about the format. You can also use this description to explain to people why GIF is not suited for prepress use. General information GIF is the abbreviation of Graphics Interchange Format. It was originally...