Archive of Blog Entries
Any blog entries that have 'fallen off' the front page have ended up here...
Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:46:17 GMT
Back from holidays on Queensland's sunshine coast. Tanned, fat, happy, all the rest. Made big improvements to '.Net Remoting: the Quick and Dirty Guide' so if you read it previously but left feeling cheated and confused - click again, kiddo.
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Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:45:57 GMT
I'm on my way to MCADness, and currently studying for exam 70-310 ("Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework"), using Mike Gunderloy's book on the topic. Only about 3 chapters to go now - and i'll be ready to start cramming up on practice exams. Last night I finished studying .Net remoting and I must say that for such a frightening topic, it was surprisingly easy. So I've drafted up this Quick and Dirty Guide to .Net Remoting.
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Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:51:55 GMT
Justin King's blog sent me to a link, and this is the response I got from the network's censorship software... 
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Wed, 17 Dec 2003 04:48:58 GMT
Three strange and interesting reports about Dare Obasanjo have just come light.
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Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:11:37 GMT
All the sites and resources a VB.net developer needs on a daily basis.
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Mon, 15 Dec 2003 01:08:00 GMT
Wiki-Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham has accepted an offer to join Microsoft. This is the latest in a series of suprising new starters for the software giant. Their next acquisition is rumoured to be Linus Torvalds. Linus will be helping to write Microsoft's next-generation fire wall product, designed to stop the download of any malicious software. 
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Sun, 14 Dec 2003 23:24:51 GMT
Apparently, it's just some guy who likes to hide in spider-holes and who carries a little sample of saddam's DNA inside his mouth. But nice try yankies.
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Thu, 11 Dec 2003 06:08:13 GMT
Computer programmers may seem shy at first, but they are ultimately very stimulating conversationalists whose friendship brings tremendous rewards. Here's a depiction of what it's like to engage in a rowdy evening of lager drinking with the computer programmer in your office.
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Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:16:33 GMT
If not then you suck! And your site sucks! And your customers hate you! And you're a moron. So download RssBandit, subscribe to a few interesting feeds and get up to date with the world. Then get your own blog and start snding out your own Rss. Here's some nice feeds, to whet your appetite.
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Wed, 10 Dec 2003 01:22:28 GMT
The year is not quite over yet - but I'm finishing work at a client site today. So it's time to write up the technical year in review
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Wed, 03 Dec 2003 07:05:10 GMT
You have to be careful how you expose your coding objects to the outside world.
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 01:24:09 GMT
Finally put together a sitemap for secretGeek. Hopefully it covers most of the pages. Interestingly, while reading about SiteMaps, I learnt that Google punishes pages with more than 100 links.
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 01:18:29 GMT
A One page Reference to Standard Shortcut keys for Windows
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 01:16:53 GMT
Simple commands available from the DOS Prompt for checking your network status
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 01:12:00 GMT
In this article I will focus on how you can use XML to package up the details of mentally defective and physically handcapped people who possess small fortunes and seamlessly deliver their data to a syndicated crime consortium.
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 01:10:48 GMT
Coining a new term: Encrapulation. OO design without the design? Beware of Encrapulation
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Fri, 28 Nov 2003 00:47:45 GMT
Notes on how to revise a very bad manuscript. Largely gleaned from the book 'How to Write a Damn good novel' by James Frey.
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Thu, 27 Nov 2003 01:24:24 GMT
How many job applications ask for experience with 'the complete software lifecycle?' Do you have experience with 'the complete software lifecycle?'. Just as different species of fish have different lifecycles, so different species of software have different lifecycles. I've produced a chart to show a quite common example of the complete software lifecycle, as I've seen it happen. If my resume says i have experience with the complete software lifecycle, then this is what i'm talking about.
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Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:14:37 GMT
No truly sane developer enjoys writing user documentation. This is a short ntoe about fulfilling your obligation to write technical support documentation. Originally it was a comment on Roy Oshergrove's 'Iserializable' blog. Roy seemed to like it, so I've republished it here.
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Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:03:59 GMT
I've improved smartjelly's commenting engine, so people can write comments more reliably (and more safely). There were flaws in there previously that would have allowed an XSS attack to succeed, and some formatting ugliness that had to go. It's incredible how much effort is required to get the little things right. Next step is to allow comments to be posted at the end of an article (rather than in a separate page) as this makes the commenting more interactive.
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Fri, 21 Nov 2003 06:20:26 GMT
Every second rate charity seems to have its own special day, when poor office Jills and Johnnies are forced to Dress Like Idiots for an Inconsequential Reason. In an effort not to be left behind in this world of Idea Viruses, I'd like to propose that Microsoft DotNet should have its very own day, with stupid costumes to boot. Dress as your favourite namespace for 'Dot Net' Awareness Day!
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Thu, 20 Nov 2003 06:47:09 GMT
Includes such rookie problems as:
My freaking breakpoint doesn't work!
"Find" doesn't find what I'm looking for!and the famous Bypass Proxy for Local Addresses Gotcha.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
secretGeek is now available via RSS. Whether or not my dodgy RSS hack will continue to work for long I don't know... But it works okay for me.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
list of blogs i read each day. To do this, I use RssBandit (and until a week ago I used SharpReader)
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
On Life and Coffee spoons
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
A simple program for managing expectations, decreasing down times, keeping customers on their toes, getting better feedback from customers and numerous other software holy grails
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Too much blog reading?
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Chaos ensues at secretGeek
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Thursday, November 13, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Insults are the new marketing
Thursday, November 13, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
If I had my way
Adults would be allowed to play with Lego. And turtle logo. Life would have an undo button. Infact, life would have full revision control.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Warning: Only follow these guidelines if you have no ambition of completing the novel or of ever being published. Otherwise, think of them as what not to do.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Testing is for wimps.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Quick reviews of The Bear Went Over the Mountain by William Kotzwinkle, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves. by P.G.Wodehouse and The Mayne Inheritance by Rosamond Siemon
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Quick reviews of Lovers by The Sleepy Jackson and Get Born by Jet
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Monday, November 10, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
According to Microsoft's Paul Vick, Refactoring support in VB.net will differ from that in C#. Terminology and structure of available features will be simplified to cater for the less rigorous intellect of the VB developer.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Apparently Steve Ballmer from Microsoft wears women's clothes. See:
LongHornBlogs
Thursday, October 23, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
a brief field guide detailing the Exotic Birds of Fraser Island, and relying on a unique nomenclature
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Friday, October 03, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Are humans becoming cyborgs? Here is a list of software applications that I for one might actually die without.
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Wednesday, September 24, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
In 1995, Dr P Makuba, of the University of New Mexico, broadcast an email out across the universe, hoping for a reply from an intelligent, computer-aware lifeform.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
Signup to receive an occasional email
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Monday, September 22, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
You know you've been spending too much time thinking about website usability when: While repainting your house, you insist that your wife only show you colour swatches based on the 216 web safe colours. Here they are...
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Monday, September 22, 2003 (12:00:00 AM)
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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Archaeologists digging at a site in France have discovered the earliest known web page, first written some 53 000 years ago.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Scott Adams fired for writing computer programs when he should be working on Dilbert.
Monday, September 15, 2003
A guide to using the latest defensive programming techniques in your code.
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Monday, September 15, 2003
The following quote from Bill Gates got me thinking: "Every now and then i like to pick up a copy of TIME magazine and read every article from beginning to end, not just the articles that interest me most. That way you can be certain to learn something you didnt know previously."
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Monday, September 15, 2003
Girl forwards chain email to ten friends. Now has only six friends.
Friday, September 12, 2003
secretGeek now has its very own Privacy Policy. The email newsletter it speaks of isn't yet off the ground though.
Read the policy...
Friday, September 12, 2003
Don't have the time to write Culturally Aware applications? Now Culturally Ignorant applications are easier than ever, thanks to a new CulturallyOffensive webservice from racist.epithets.net.
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Thursday, September 11, 2003
No matter what other interesting skills you acquire, an ability to write DOS batch files is a skill that you will cherish throughout your life. And should you survive to a hundred and five, batch programs may be the one thing that remains unchanged.
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Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Articles I'd like to write one day
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Monday, September 08, 2003
Just as writers are prone to writer's block, programmers are prone to GeekBlock.
Maybe we can't find the cause of a particular bug, or maybe we just can't stop surfing the web when we know there are things we should be doing.
Having found myself in the clutches of GeekBlock more than once, I've put together some notes from the inside.
Read on...
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Articles
 What then, is b?
SQLike: A simple editor
Yet Another BizPlan Generator.
HOT GUIDS: A hot or not site for guids
How does life get better? One tiny hack at a time.
24 things to do, and 100 things *not* to do (yet) for building a MicroISV
Venture capital won't kill Jeff Atwood, it will only make him Jeffer.
A handy workflow image for newbie mercurial users
Fractal Feedback, a diversion into recreational programming
Hump-Jumping: How the Education of Computer Science can be Saved, err, maybe.
Suggested User Experience Improvements for DiffMerge
SQL Style Extensions for C#
The Movie Hollywood (And My Wife) Doesn't Want You To See: Weekend at Jacko's
Sysi: the ultimate administrators toolkit
 .: secretGeek :: Complete Archives
TimeSnapper.com
Version 3.3: true productivity boost
NextAction
Managing the top of your mind
World's Simplest Code Generator
25 steps for building a Micro-ISV
3 Minute Guide Series
Universal Troubleshooting Checklist
Top 10 SecretGeek articles
ShinyPower
Now at CodePlex
RealTime Online CSS Editor
Gradient Maker
How to be depressed
You are not inadequate.
Recommended Reading
 The Best Software Writing I
 The Business Of Software (Eric Sink)
Recommended blogs
Jeff Atwood
Joseph Cooney
Phil Haack
Scott Hanselman
Julia Lerman
Rhys Parry
Joel Pobar
OJ Reeves
Eric Sink
Aggregated Links
proggit
dzone
hacker news
dot net kicks
Human Link Machines
interesting finds
a continuous learner's weblog
arjan's world
weekly link post
LogEnvy - event logs made sexy
ShuffleText - fuzzy search for .net
PC Smart Buys - Computer Hardware in Australia
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