October 2010
5 posts
The Apprentice, lesson learned: get stuck in
* Warning: Apprentice spoiler alert! *Another series of The Apprentice and another 16 vapid, egotistical, megolomaniacal yet somehow entertaining individuals sell sausages (read: their souls) to Hedge Fund Managers and Grandmothers alike in order to be Lord Alan’s bitch. So Dan’s out. He was project manager. He was testosterone fuelled, arrogant, cock-sure - but most of all he was...
Can't touch this: disabling controls or warning...
Just discovered an interesting thing with GMail, and now I can’t decide between two trains of thought - if you don’t want your users to “do” something i.e. click a button, should you disable the control completely, or display a message? Going back to the GMail example, the buttons immediately above the list of messages (Delete, Mark as read etc.) are enable at all times....
Twice the speed, half the content? What price...
I’ve been meaning to put this into words since I met up with @philcampbell last week, where we briefly touched on the subject of how content is being optimized, streamlined and piped at high pressure to whatever device we’re using in our hectic lifestyles, to get the same content we consume when we’re sat at our desktops or laptops. Should this be the case? When mart phones...
Dear Santa...
Yes please! I can see bike polo and broken limbs on the agenda… Posted via email from The wonderful world of pgdev | Comment »
Calling an MVC Action from jQuery (and doing some...
Wow, been a while hasn’t it? Anyway…I’ve recently been tricking out our MVC application with some additional jQuery goodies. The main crux of the application is about allowing the user to build up lists of people. @paulwallas designed a UI which incorporated a “star” visual - from a search, clicking it once would “light up” the star and add the person to...
July 2010
6 posts
T-SQL Script Runner
Just a quick one - I’ve made a simple T-SQL script runner which can connect to a SQL Server of your choice, then run a T-SQL script against a selected database. This is obviously the first iteration, so it’s fashionably flaky. Let me know what you think! http://tho.st/1664 Posted via email from The wonderful world of pgdev | Comment »
Peugeot Sahara - my new old project
See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from The wonderful world of pgdev | Comment »
ASP.NET MVC: Return a View from a different...
The problem: You want to return a View that’s in a different Controller to the one you’re currently in. Doing return View(“/OtherController/OtherView”); results in an exception, as MVC looks first in the current Controller folder structure, then the Shared folder structure.The “proper” solution: Copy the View you want into the Shared folder structure and...
ASP.NET: Is WebForms too uncool for school?
I’ve recently read Aaron’s great blog post on why .NET has had a very poor uptake in the startup arena, and is seen primarily as an enterprise commodity. Aaron, in my opinion, correctly states that it’s the .NET development community itself, with it’s lean towards developing interoperability of business systems and legacy systems, that keeps .NET from ever being used...
Introducing “Razor” – a new view engine for...
via weblogs.asp.net Holy moly, the new “Razor” MVC View Engine looks like it’s about to bend over the web development community and lube it up. ASP.NET MVC becomes faster, more powerful and less like a Microsoft product every day… Posted via email from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Upcoming UK development conferences for y'all...
WDC – October 27th 2010 Build Conf – November 10th 2010 Full Frontal – November 12th 2010 Online Information – November 30th 2010 DevWeek – March 14th 2011 Posted via email from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
June 2010
4 posts
Everyone hates developers
It’s true.As a developer myself, it’s hard to swallow. But, looking out into the wilderness of the industry, there’s no denying the cold hard facts - we’re loathed. Okay, a bit over dramatic maybe, but we’re certainly not loved (not as much as we should be, sob). Everyone thinks we’re bullshitting them. Nobody understands us.Everybody thinks we’re moody...
Be a consistent developer, even if you're wrong
I’ve just been reading the 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code over on nettuts+, and was really happy to see some straight forward advice that was easy for developers to incorporate into their everyday coding.It occurred to me that, even if you’re a bad developer, there’s really no excuse for not writing code that people can make sense of. Good use of comments,...
Making a mountain out of a.......mountain.
Well, Mountain Mayhem is over and we officially returned triumphant……in our own minds.Yep, we were unprepared, we had underspecced bikes, poor lights, novice riders (some of which stopped for a fag break half way round) and generally were a number of magnitudes below anything like endurance race fitness. But hey, it was for charity.In fairness, my fastest lap time was 1:26 - compared...
The art of crossing things off, rather than...
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been working towards getting two strains of our software all together for a next major release coming up next month. We’ve had a list of things to get sorted, which I wrote on the white board in our office.Now we’ve got a bug tracking system which we log all tasks to complete on which, like many other bug tracking systems, allows developers...
May 2010
3 posts
ASP.NET MVC jQuery script gotcha (for me anyway)
Might be an obvious one, but spent more time figuring this one out than was absolutely necessary - any script within the <head> of a MVC View is loaded into the page before anything in the <head> of the Site.Master. Meaning if, like me, you have all of your jQuery .js files included in the Site.Master, any jQuery script in a View will probably fall over (leading to a “jQuery/$ is...
Get all values passed to an ASP.NET MVC Route
Recently been having a look around the old t`Internets for ways of capturing the values that have have been passed to a particular Route, and display them in a fitting manner.Most of the examples I found involved specifying a key for a specific value to return, not just retrieving all the values passed. Eventually, this is what I’ve come up with private static string...
How To Be A Programmer
Download now or preview on posterous HowToBeAProgrammer.pdf (270 KB) This is a brilliant read, ranging in topics from debugging, error handling, memory management, design, testing right up to personal skills and project management. Every programmer/developer should read it! Posted via email from The wonderful world of...
April 2010
4 posts
Concatenate column names in LINQ
Many examples of this online, much confusion. Here’s my go at it: var query = (from t in Table select string.Format(“{0} {1}”, t.DataField1, t.DataField2)).SingleOrDefault(); Works for me! Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
ASP.NET MVC: Simply populating a drop down list...
I’ve been going round and round today, looking for a solution to what I thought was a simple problem: get some data from a table, put it into a list and populate a drop down list with it. So I searched for an answer.The Interwebs is a vast and dangerous place. Most solutions to this problem were so convoluted, the original problem had long since been forgotten to make way for the uncountable...
1981 Expense Calculator
exec awk ' $1 ~ /^[A-Z]+[A-Z0-9]*$/ { if (sums[$1] == "" || $1 == "SUM") { sums[$1] = sum # Define Symbol $1 = sum sum = 0 } else { $1 = sums[$1] # Dereference Symbol } } ($1+0) != 0 {$1 = sprintf("%7.2f", $1)} # Pretty Print {print} $2 == "*" {$1 *= $3} # Explicit Calculations $2 == "/" {$1 /= $3} $2 == "DB" {$1 = -$1} $2 == "CR" {$1 = -$1} NF ==...
Patterns in Enterprise Software
In recent years there’s been a small but useful growth in describing patterns for the development of enterprise systems. On this page I keep a list of the most notable catalogs on these patterns and some thoughts on the broad interrelationships between them. There’s no formal organization tying these writers together, but we do have a strong informal connection - frequently...
March 2010
8 posts
WebForms -> ASP.NET MVC -> Delphi
Just about finished a project at work, which will take a user from the login page of our current WebForms software, over to my new development in ASP.NET MVC (with parameters from the WebForms application), which will then allow the user to fire up our other Delphi software by creating a custom URL protocol in the registry.Brain = melted. Posted via email from The wonderful world of...
ASP.NET MVC - dipping my toes
I’m really liking ASP.NET MVC - it’s a real learning (or un-learning) curve after sitting behind the WebForms wheel for so long. I have to say though, not having to deal with crappy web controls (and the crappy generated code that goes with them) is a real delight. Sinking my teeth into proper usage of jQuery is also really enjoyable (i.e. using it to return and represent data, rather...
ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC in Harmony -...
via codeproject.com An excellent guide for getting MVC to play nicely with WebForms. Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Set maintainable, achievable goals. Then set new...
I watched “Michelin Stars: The Madness of Perfection” last night on BBC 2. It was a very interesting documentary, detailing the levels of insanity, hope, despair and self-destruction that the Michelin Star system can invoke in the Chefs around the world that seek it’s bounty.This got me thinking to general goal setting and achievement markers in the general goal environment. If...
First Principles of Interaction Design
The following principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments or the web. Of late, many web applications have reflected a lack of understanding of many of these principles of interaction design, to their great detriment. Because an application or service appears on the web, the principles do not change. If...
C# From a Java Developer's Perspective
The C# language is an object-oriented language that is aimed at enabling programmers to quickly build a wide range of applications for the Microsoft .NET platform. The goal of C# and the .NET platform is to shorten development time by freeing the developer from worrying about several low level plumbing issues such as memory management, type safety issues, building low level libraries, array...
Original Source Mountain Mayhem
via osmountainmayhem.co.uk Fingers crossed - the entry forms for both our teams have been sent off today! Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Software Development and some basics of cycling
1. Keep moving forwards (don’t let your software stagnate - always look to improve on what you’ve developed)2. Learn to fix your own bike (don’t rely too heavily on 3rd party plugins or vendors - the best code to debug is your own) 3. Be aware of other road users (stay aware of other players in the market, and be open to new trends and techniques used by other professionals)4....
February 2010
6 posts
SharpKit - Write C# instead of JavaScript
via sharpkit.net If you are missing features like auto-complete, XML documentation, syntax verification and refactoring in your JavaScript development, you should give SharpKit a try. When you work with SharpKit, you write C# instead of JavaScript. This way you don’t have to memorize the API - it’s always right there at your fingertips. Posted via web from The wonderful...
Skills to pay the bills?
Had an interesting discussion with a friend on the bus this morning. It boiled down to this: Should a person’s skill and talent make up for a lack of discipline and professionalism? Alternatively, if a person is professional, well mannered and enthusiastic, does that hold up against a lack of relevant knowledge and experience? Posted via email from The wonderful world of...
1 tag
DJ Sneak - Back In The Box
via amazon.co.uk This compilation is making me very happy at present, reminding me of younger days and really making me want to get back DJing in the very near future. Being DJ Sneak, it’s a very housey-housey affair, but it’s top quality stuff. Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Make Better Software: The Training Series
via training.fogcreek.com This looks brilliant! I hope we can get someone to put their hand in their pocket for this…. Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Lessons for Software Developers from Gordon Ramsay
From revonrat’s post on reddit: 1) Cultivate high standards and demand those around you meet them (including your management). 2) Taste your food (unit test/integration test/dogfood/usability tests). 3) Keep a clean kitchen (well organized tree/invest in tools).4) When you get in the weeds, don’t collapse, work harder/smarter. 5) Use great ingredients (use open source/fight NIH).6)...
1 tag
Aptana + XAMPP + Dropbox: portable development in...
I’ve been playing around sorting out some things for my wife’s school website recenty - some of it from home, some of it from work, both on Aptana Studio, all files on Dropbox. I got to thinking, surely there should be an easier way of keeping everything together? Dropbox does that for files, but what about the webserver settings, IDE settings etc.? They’re specific to the...
January 2010
13 posts
I love .NET: The asp:UpdateProgress control
One of my favourite controls of recent is the asp:UpdateProgress .NET Ajax control. It’s a control that really tugs at my user interface heartstrings, as it’s primary objective is to keep the user happy whilst your application is “doing stuff”. Just like the BackgroundWorker class found in Winforms applications, the UpdateProgress control allows you to keep the user...
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom...
…is waiting for me at home. Basically the most excited I’ve been about a game release since Spy vs. Spy 3 on the Apstrad CPC 464. Posted via email from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Push then pull: Validation and confirmation in...
Being one of the main developers for my company’s web software, I often find myself in conversations involving the “could we?/should we?” scenario. One aspect I’ve been concentrating a lot on recently is validation - not necessarily standard web forms validation like dates, field length etc., but actively validating what a user does as they traverse the application. This...
How long does Vista take to restart?
This long. Really. Posted via email from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
The rantings of a mad developer?...
…or the beginnings of a new and exciting method of online communication, never before envisaged?Or just frog spawn? Too early to say really. Posted via email from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
When the Build breaks...
1. Check your own code. 2. Check source control. 3. Blame any developer who isn’t running around shouting and screaming. Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Updating & rebuilding designer.cs files in VS2008...
I ran into a problem with Visual Studio last night, where adding a standard control to a .aspx page was not being updated. Looking around the web, there seemed to be many others with exactly the same issue - but no formalised solution to getting things back up and running. I followed one method, which suggested the following: 1. Delete the offending designer.cs file 2. Right click the .aspx...
ASP.NET 2.0 CSS Friendly Control Adapters
Check out this website I found at asp.net From the site: “ASP.NET is a great technology for building web sites but it would be even better if it provided more flexibility for customizing the rendered HTML. For example, the Menu control makes it simple to add a menu to a web site, but it would be better if it didn’t create tags and was easier to style using CSS. Happily, it’s...
4 tags
Web service testing with WCFStorm
via wcfstorm.com At my company we’ve started doing a lot with web services, and as we primarily code in C#, that means a heavy usage of WCF. WCF is notoriously hard to debug, and, as we’ve found out with dealing with a number of customers, fixing client issues can be a nightmare. To return to sanity, we’ve been using WCFStorm. In a nutshell, it’s a full test client...
The 3 D's of handling tasks
1. Do itGet the job done, under your own steam, the way you think it should be done. But think about: Can the task be carried out by yourself, as well as anything else on your plate right now? What is the priority of the task? Are you able to carry it out within a set time frame?Do you have the skill set to carry out the task to the quality that is expected for it? 2. Don’t do itDon’t...
My new favourite music site - RCRD LBL
via rcrdlbl.com Cool electronica? Great remixes of already great indie tracks? Free MP3 downloads? This site is seriously the business… Posted via web from The wonderful world of mrgeesbigcircus | Comment »
Does best practice stifle innovation?
I’ve been thinking about the various areas of my role - be it core programming, database development, user interface design, coffee making - whatever discipline it may be, you can be sure of one thing: there’s a best way for doing it. But we have so many “best practices” for so many areas, particularly in design and development, do we really try anything radically...
To enumerate or not to enumerate - that is the {...
Having recently worked through a lot of bug fixes for my company’s software, time and time again I’m coming up against regularly used constants, value ranges and strings - all implemented in many different ways (and even typed incorrectly). Okay, so the main application works, it’s just a little messy. So should you enumerate? Is there any point if you’re not going be...
December 2009
8 posts
HelloRacer by HelloEnjoy™
via blog.helloenjoy.com This has kept me amused for most of this week. It’s also caused my jaw to hit the ground more times than I care to remember. I’m really impressed with these guy’s portfolio - I just hope that a lot of their “sandbox” stuff makes it’s way into main stream UI design… Posted via web from The wonderful world of...