If you have followed my blog for a while you know that there were a number of graphic issues I had to begin with. In a change of event I am noticing lately that there are features of the Windows Explorer that are coming in handy.
The first thing was the rating system for images. Many times I have heard the Lightroom experience described and its star rating system. From the day I started using Vista I noticed that it had similar capabilities, but it wasn’t clear how to use it beyond a single file. Honestly, I didn’t think it was that useful and didn’t spend the time to dig deeper.
Last week I had a large number of images I wanted to process and I was having a hard time narrowing down the keepers. It occurred to me that if I could rate the images and sort them by rating this could help me to review the similar images that were distributed randomly across the group of files. It made for a good tracking and workflow tool.
Today I started working with tags more, based on what I learned with the ratings. As my number of images have been growing I am finding it harder to locate images that I want to show people while discussing a topic. Slowly I am finding there are helpful surprises all over Vista. Time to go explore more.
Technorati Tags:
photography,
vista
Larry Clarkin of The Thirsty Developer podcast is one of the leaders of the Chicago Architects Group and makes the Microsoft office available for some of our meetings. As we were setting up for last week’s meeting Larry was recording an episode of The Thirsty Developer. There were a few things about the situation that surprised me.
The first thing was that I always imagined a large box for recording and head sets and everything hooked up to a computer. The whole setup was barely noticable except for that large professional microphones. You can actually see how simple the setup is on the most recent episode’s page.
The second surprise was how much distraction Larry could put up with and still keep on track with the interview. We were moving in and out of the room as people showed up and were setting up the food and drinks for the evening. We carried on conversations just outside the room and they never missed a beat. Then again I’m sure when Larry and Dave are recording in a bar or at a conference they have a lot more to deal with.
In all it was interesting to see just how these shows come together. I now have a new appreciation for people that do podcasts that I spend so much time listening to.
Please join us for the upcoming Chicago Architects Group meeting. The discussions during the meetings are usually lively and great for exchanging ideas. Please register at the link at the end of the information below. Hope to see you there.
Chicago Architects Group - Thurs, November 20th
Microsoft Corporation
3025 Highland Pkwy.
Suite 300
Downers Grove, Il 60515
Presentation :
Presentation at 6:00pm, doors open at 5:30pm
The Business Process Workflow Model, a case study
by Howard Edidin
Register Here
I was listening to The Thirsty Developer podcast as I was driving into work this morning and was introduced to an interesting note taking technique called Sketchnotes. It is interesting in that instead of writing notes as you listen to a talk you more or less doodle. Being a rather visual person myself this has an appeal. During the discussion I got the impression that this is based on the concept that a picture was worth a thousand words. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a word is the picture that is worth a thousand word. Too cliché? Oh well. Give the episode a listen and check out Mike Rohde’s blog. Tools like these could really help as our jobs require us to remember more and more information.
Why do we strive to write the most elegant and compact code? I was working on a piece of code recently that the most straight forward way to write it would be dozens of if statements with redundant lines of code. This bugged me so much that I actually spent an hour looking for a framework method to simplify the code. Of course this search blinded me from the quick solution of writing a simple helper function.
So why does this bug most of us? I believe that it is the mark of good developers, analysts and architects to strive to find the best solutions. This is art. You can’t just settle for painting a picture. The end product needs to make a statement.
My experience also emphasizes a balance that you need to keep in mind. That is the balance between doing things “right” and getting things done. Some times you have to work on getting things done and then come back and clean it up. To my view this is a good argument for refactoring.
Don’t give up on creating elegant code and be sure to pass on what you learn to the next generation developers.
Last night was the fifth meeting of the Chicago Architects Group at the Illinois Technical Association in downtown Chicago. Eduardo Goncalves of Daugherty Business Solutions lead a lively discussion on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Architects.
Some of the highlights included discussions about the finding business champions, keeping up with technology and evaluating trade-offs when a project is under the gun. Stay tuned for details of the up-coming November presentation.
Come and join us for the October meeting of the Chicago Architects Group. Eduardo Goncalves will be presenting on the Habits of Highly Effective Architects. It will be held on October 23rd at the CDW office downtown Chicago. Please register at the link below. I hope to see you there.
http://chicagoarchitectsgroup.eventbrite.com/
Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of a candidate or party. Please do not leave comments about either since I do not believe that GWB is the proper place for such a discussion. This is an examination of the capabilities of today's technology related to elections.
I was watching part of a political speech given by a supporter of one of the presidential candidates the other night and my bovine manure detector started going off. So what do I do? I start a Google search.
The first site that I happened upon was FactCheck.org. It seems to be even handed and run by a university. I actually saw a news anchor asking a party representative about a "Fact Check" that had been sent to him at the end of the speech. Since then ads have come out even misquoting FactCheck. Nothing like when you start fact checking ads where you yourself are involved.
Now you have to be cautious. Since most web sites do not have anything to hold them accountable they can contain falsehoods as well. Check their affiliations and the facts that they present. Don't just rely on one source.
The next site I found is votesmart.org. This one seems to be more about making the position of the opponents available. This is a nice contrast to FactCheck which focuses on debunking lies and bends in the truth.
So where does this all go? I urge you not to take what you hear or see as the truth. Investigate to the best of your ability and make a decision from the information you have available to you. Read beyond the hype and use the tools available to us in this digital age to educate your vote.
My children always teach me so much. I got back recently from a vacation with my family. We were coming in for a landing on our 2.5 hour flight when my youngest son asked what was behind the wing. It was a condensation cloud forming right behind the trailing edge of the wing.
So how do you explain condensation and vortices in terms that a four year old will understand? You have to put it in terms that they already understand. Describe the swirl that they see in a bath tub when you let the water out. Now put some glitter in the still water and it really isn't that noticeable until you create a vortex which brings it all together. It isn't exactly accurate, but at least it is something that they can relate to.
This got me to thinking about talking to stakeholders. No, I am not suggesting you talk to them like four year olds. You do need to talk to them in language that they understand though. If you talk in technical jargon you might as well be explaining physics to a four year old.
The important thing to do is learn the language of the business. It is your job to turn that business need into a technical architecture. The bonus that is gained from this effort is a better understanding of why the company is going through the trouble of building the systems in the first place. It also allows you to anticipate areas that could produce a competitive advantage from the implementation of a software system.
Soft skills are always our greatest asset as architects. Take every chance you get to improve them.
I guess it can happen to anyone. This weekend I started getting emails from friends and automated rejections form mail servers. It seems that my Yahoo account got hit with a virus that sends spam from my mail account to everyone in my address book. Now the surprising part is that this happened while running a web mail browser session which did not give an indication that a message was sent either visually or leaving a message in my sent mail. It also occurred without setting off warnings from either my local virus software (which is automatically updated) or any software that may or may no exist on Yahoo's servers.
So what can be learned from this experience. Nothing is ever 100% safe. We need to improve our detection systems to keep this sort of incident to a minimum. I know there has been talk of software that will search for virus patterns instead of specific virus signatures.
The whole experience left me feeling vulnerable. As a result I ended up checking all of my online accounts and changing passwords to make sure that nothing else was compromised.
Stay safe (or at least try).
The August Chicago Architects Group meeting will be held on Thursday the 21st. Carl Franklin of Triton-Tech will be speaking at CDW downtown. For more information and to register please follow the link below. See you there.
http://chicagoarchitectsgroup.eventbrite.com
The July Chicago Architecture Group meeting will be held at the Downers Grove Microsoft office. Mike Smialek of Daugherty Business Solutions will be speaking on the Evolutioin of Architecture. Please join us and meet your peers in the Chicago architecture community. You need to pre-register because of building security and it also helps us to know how much food to order. Please visit the link below.
http://chicagoarchitectsgroup.eventbrite.com/
Wow! The learning curve for WPF is pretty steep. It is at least when you compare it to WinForms or ASP.NET. I guess the price you pay for flexibility is complexity.
Discoverablility is definitely a problem with XAML. How do these silly tags work? Most of them don't have properties as you would expect. You have to add child tags which may or may not have properties. The children may also be extensions of the parent object.
Certain tags seems like they will have an effect, such as wrapping content, but like styles they seem to be ignorable base on some unclear hierarchy. As you learn more you will find that inheritance is explicit instead of implicit like CSS.
Another interesting learning is that binding a directory full of images to image controls can bring your system to its knees. As with most powerful development environments you can take as much rope as you want, but you may hang yourself.
I think in the future you will see some of the Expression tools incorporated, at least in part, into Visual Studio. At that point the learning curve will ease some. Until then, be prepared to work hard to create a well performing application.
Tonight was the first meeting of the Chicago Architecture Group. David Dickinson made a wonderful presentation on real life SOA. This was accompanied by a lively discussion with the 19 people in attendance.
Thanks to Carl Franklin, Stephan Rylander and Larry Clarkin for making this such a success.
We have a meeting planned for July 10th at the Microsoft Downers Grove office. Stay tuned for more information.