Development & Geek Stuff

This Day in Geocaching History...

Erik Lane — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:52:00 GMT

We began our Geocaching journey 5 years ago on June 22, 2003. In late 2002 I remember seeing a show on the Travel Channel "Top 10 Lost Treasures" and #7 on the list was Geocaching (couldn't find a link). Using a handheld GPS to go "treasure hunting" was very appealing. It wasn't until the following summer when I was looking for something that the entire family could do and would also get us outside.

Being the geek that I am I immediatly started Googling and trying to remember that show or what the sport was called because I could remember the show in my head but I couldn't remember the name. I guess it didn't take long and the next thing you know I had created us an account on Geocaching.com. After just a few minutes I was amazed at all of the caches that were around our house. The next step in the process was to buy a GPS. I found a Magellan Meridian GPS on sale at Fry's and the Wife Acceptance Factor was high since Geocaching was going to be a family sport. We bought the GPS and headed out the following weekend. We didn't take the camera with us on our maiden voyage but we did on our second outing and here is one of those photos.

Fast forward 5 years and here is photo from two weeks ago when were geocaching here in Colorado. Everyone has grown up and we have added another kid to the team...not to mention I look a bit older too.

In the last five years Geocaching has really become common place with outdoor sports and there is software and tools all over the place to help out. My two favorite pieces of software are CacheStats (written in .NET) and Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK). When we started out we were all about the numbers...trying to find as many as we could and as fast as we could. After the second year we really slowed down and tried to enjoy the whole caching experience. Somewhere along the way we decided to start tracking which states we had cached in. Here is the most current map of the states that we've physically found a cache in (35 + Washington DC).

Well, enough memories for now. Since moving to Colorado we have really picked up the caching bug again and are excited about caches out in the mountains that require hiking, etc. and that has increased our enjoyment yet again. God is good!

Giddy Up!

ReSharper 4.0 beta for VS2008 is Out

Erik Lane — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:09:00 GMT

I recieved a notifcation email last night from JetBrains that ReSharper 4.0 beta is out and can be downloaded here.

UPDATE (6/10/08): ReSharper 4.0 has been released. Good Stuff!

Don't Wait To Become a Better Developer

Erik Lane — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:32:00 GMT

Yesterday I ranted a little about how some just wait until a feature shows up in a Microsoft product before they'll even look at it...and how I use to be that guy. My jumping off point was when I finally took the time to investigate Test Driven Development (TDD). He may not remember it, but Scott Dockendorf was working with me at Healthvision and he gave us a demo on TDD. Like everyone else, I blew over it pretty fast because I knew we weren't going to change our corporate dev style. Soon after he jumped ship for Telligent and never looked back. :-)

When TDD started to click for me I finally woke up and realized that if I was going to be good at my profession then I couldn't wait on my employer (or Microsoft for that matter). This profession moves too fast and for everything I think I know there are 1000 things that I don't know. I'm not an extremist either, meaning that if it has MS attached to the name or process I don't automatically discount it like some. I will, however, take the time to look at ways to increase my productivity and ability to perform my job. It is such a blessing that a company pays me money to write code for a living and that's the least I can do for them.

Giddy Up!

.NET Rocks! and the State of Visual Studio Team System 2008

Erik Lane — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:11:00 GMT

I'm no ALT.NET guru but I have decided that it doesn't have to have the Microsoft (MS) stamp to get me to look at it. I recall when I was "that guy". You know, the guy who would hear about non-MS options and glance over them. If it was that important and that good then MS would be doing it, right? The answer to that question is yes AND no. The reality is that we're all trying to do our best and serve the customers that pay us to write code. MS is the same and they do what is best for their business model which means that they can be reactive at times - just like everyone else.

Recently I was Listening to an episode of .NET Rocks!. It was show #328 with Joel Semeniuk on the State of Team System. All I can say is - what!? I mean he's talking about the new Continuous Integration (CI) feature of Team System 2008 Suite and how valuable it is. No doubt, CI is valuable but what get's me is that they all are discussing it as though CI is a new concept. Let's be fair and mention the fact that MS is being reactive and Team System is late to the CI party. The sad fact is even tough CI has been around for a long time most enterprises will not even look at it until it has the MS stamp of approval.

Giddy Up!

Review - uCertify PrepKit for Exam 70-528

Erik Lane — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:45:00 GMT

I was contacted by uCertify requesting that I do a review of their certification PrepKit software. I agreed because I was already studying for the MCTS exam 70-528 and wanted to see if their software would really be an asset to passing the exam. Initially, I wanted to use only their software to study for the test and then write my review. I felt that would be a great way to write a quality review of their product. Since agreeing to do the review my study efforts have diminished (moving to Colorado, taking a new job, etc.) but I still wanted to put together a review of their product.

Product: 70-528-CSHARP PrepKit
Cost: $59.99 (use discount code “ERIKLA“ and receive 10% off)

Likes:

The UI is very well done, easy to navigate, and easy to look at.
The quiz feature is the strongest feature of the program. You can select the number of questions from each focus area and then take the quiz. One nice touch is that after you answer the question the timer goes directly to 5 secs. and then goes to the next question. That's enough time to see your answer but yet you don't have to take your hands off of the keyboard to go to the next question.
Study notes are useful as they match up with the exam objectives. They state the objective and then provide a summary review of that objective.
Exam objectives with notes are nice as well. It is similar to the study notes but instead of a summary it provides an in-depth review of the objective.
Reports are a nice feature that show your progress from the diagnostic exam through the simulated test.

Dislikes:

I didn't like the flash cards feature. The main reason is that it gives you a text area to type in your answer. Although this may be helpful to some, I didn't want to take the time to type out my answer when I can just think it and then compare to the actual answer.

So-So:

Articles are nice for further development but not critical for studying for the exam.
Study tips, again, are nice for further development and are great for someone who has never written code associated exam but it's not critical for the exam.
HowTo's are not critical but are a nice feature that walk you through, via screen shots, how to do a lot of the tasks associated with passing the exam.

Conclusion:

For me, the uCertify product is great add-on for prepping for the exam. I say add-on because I don't feel comfortable saying this tool could be used as the only source to prepare for the exam; especially if someone has no practical experience in the area covered by the exam. My study style will still be to write code and use technical books and study guides to ensure I know how to do the tasks that are covered in the exam. I certainly would use uCertify for their quizzes and test simulations as I get closer to taking the exam. I think that's a good strategy and for $60 it's a good deal as well.

Update: The great people over at uCertify will give a 10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit of your choice when you use discount code “ERIKLA“.

The Great Calendar Sync Debacle

Erik Lane — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:24:00 GMT

Over the last few weeks my wife and I have come to the realization that knowing each other's schedules would be really helpful and we've started down the path of sharing our calendars.

Our setup:

Me (work): I use Outlook 2003 100%.
Me (personal): I use my Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) calendar.

Wife: Outlook 2007 100%.

One of our primary goals was to try and find a free way to accomplish this task. After some looking around, the consensus is that we will use Google Calendar (GCal) as our go-between. I looked at what Scott Hanselman is doing since I've heard him talk about this on his podcast. He uses SyncMyCal which can probably do everything my wife and I are needing except that it fails the free requirement.

I then looked at Google's Calendar Sync tool but it will only sync up with the primary calendar. That's no good - even if my wife and I shared our GCal's we couldn't sync with each other's and so it didn't seem like that would work either. I threw out a tweet looking for suggestions and I got some great feedback (Twitter is great for things like this).

Prokrammer had the best idea that I thought might work for us and still be free. He recommended that I use the Google Sync tool since it was free, but create a GCal for my wife on my domain and have us both sync with it. Because this new calendar was in my domain I could grant myself full rights to it and could edit as needed. With this setup I would one-way sync my work calendar to it and then my wife would 2-way sync it with her Outlook calendar.

I would be providing my wife with my work calendar and she would be giving me her personal calendar via GCal. I would then use her shared GCal as my primary calendar and will make all of my personal appointments on it. Then, she too would get them when she synced up.

This sounded like it would do the trick...All the planning in the world doesn't take into account software failure. The GCal sync tool, for some reason, can not access my wife's calendar. It gives a beautiful error "Could not connect to Microsoft Outlook: error -2147319779, code 0".

Unless Google provides and update with the fix I guess we will have to bail on the free requirement and purchase something.

Giddy Up!

Some Stuff

Erik Lane — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:06:00 GMT

Things around here have been busy that's for sure. After spending the last year in Baltimore with Advertising.com I'm now a full time employee at Ciena. In addition to the new job we've also moved to the Colorado Springs, CO area and we're loving it. I'm getting the opportunity to work from home most of the time but have to make a trip up to Denver a couple of times a week and work in the office. The commute isn't bad and even when it's slow it's still nothing compared to DFW traffic.

Nothing special on the technical front is happening at the moment although I am enjoying the challenge of introducing Continuous Integration and Test Driven Development to my new team. I've got a couple of blog posts on using Entlib to create your own providers, etc.. but I don't think I'll be finishing them. However, I am using Entlib for audit logging so I may try and piece some of them together for something technical.

On a personal note, I did pass the Microsoft 70-536 exam at the end of the year - so I guess now I know I can pass a written exam to prove my knowledge? I know there are discussions on how much value certs add and I'm on the side of “they are worth the effort“. While I don't think they imply you're a coding superstar I don't think they hurt. In studying for exams (or interviews) I've learned a lot that I wouldn't have known about just in my daily coding. Now I have that knowledge in my tool belt for later use.

Because I no longer work in an office of developers everyday I've really taking a liking to Twitter. I can now have some pretty good technical discussion on there. Onward and upward.

Giddy Up!

Amazon MP3 Downloads

Erik Lane — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:08:00 GMT

I was itching for some new music and so I took the opportunity to checkout the Amazon Mp3 service. I downloaded and installed the Amazon MP3 Downloader and I was off and running. The first album to buy was a toss up:

New Thousand Foot Krutch - The Flame in All of Us
Old Project 86 - Songs to Burn Bridges By

You can see that I opted for the new TFK album.

You can have the downloader automatically add your tunes to your iTunes library but I like my file names in a particular format. So I use Media Monkey to rename all of the files and then manually add them through iTunes.

I've been using iTunes since I purchased an iPod (like most people) and it is OK. Since it's just "OK" I'm on the lookout for a way to completely move away from it. With the Amazon Mp3 service out I feel like I am one step further in than plan.

I really need a good podcast solution first before I'll be able to drop iTunes all together. If anyone has one please share it!

A Great Visual Guide to Source Control

Erik Lane — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:53:00 GMT

I've expressed by thoughts on source control and I still believe it is a vital part of any development project. I guess it's just misunderstood. Thanks to BetterExplained.com we now have a great visual example of it.

[via RossCode]

Remote Assistance with Copilot

Erik Lane — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:11:00 GMT

Copilot's tag line is "Safe. Secure. Simple". I would agree 100%.

I used Copilot this past weekend to help out my in-laws and it was easy to use and well worth the $5. I love helping people with their computers but doing it over the phone, where you can't see what's happening on the other end, can be very painful. I wanted something that would be simple to use for my in-laws but give me the control that I needed.

With Copilot all my father-in-law did was go to Copilot.com and enter the invitation code I read to him over the phone. He then downloaded the small app, click a couple of buttons, and then I had control of his machine. I needed to work on my monther-in-laws machine too and the $5 was good for 24 hours and no restrictions for the number of machines I could connect to. Cheap and easy!

Giddy Up!