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November 2007 - Posts

Friday, November 30, 2007 8:55 AM

Design Principles To Live By

Object-oriented design and design patterns can seem complex. There are a lot of ideas and cases to consider. However, there are a handful of principles that, if followed, will result in code that complies with most if not all of the patterns. These are
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Thursday, November 29, 2007 7:17 AM

Inbox Zero

If you're anything like me, you have way too much e-mail to read it all. To try to cope with this, I've resorted to a collection of rules that sorts my mail into a Byzantine structure of folders. This helps a little, but has the problem of helping me
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Sunday, November 25, 2007 9:12 AM

Video Podcasts

With my new Zune, I've started watching some video netcasts. Here are the ones I've found the most interesting so far: Tekzilla - Feels a lot like old TechTV. 1/2 hour an episode talking about everything from routers to Black Friday sales. The GigaOm
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Saturday, November 24, 2007 5:57 PM

The New Zune Revue

Over the past few years I have become an avid podcast listener. I've been using Creative MP3 players until this point. I have owned a Zen Nano, Zen Stone Plus, and a Zen Vision M. The first was good its 1 GB size became restricting. The second was a good
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Thursday, November 22, 2007 8:49 AM

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is Thanksgiving today. My wife and I will be having a small gathering of about nine family members. I always enjoy getting some time to put work aside for a few days just hang out with family. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving today and that
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:04 PM

Resume Advice

Some resume advice from Steve Yegge. I don't agree with all of it but it's good stuff to consider when writing your technical resume.
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Friday, November 16, 2007 8:05 AM

Phone Screen Questions

Steve Yegge from Amazon offers his Five Essential Phone Screen Questions . It's an old post, but a good one. His advice is solid. It's always disappointing to bring in a promising candidate for an interview only to have them bomb. It would be much better
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 11:28 AM

"Everyone" Is Not A Valid Owner

Saw this over on {Codesqueeze}. He talks about the danger of self-organizing teams. When people aren't given clear responsibilities, things get dropped. If there is a task which belongs to everyone it will in the end be accomplished by no one. Everyone
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007 8:01 AM

Analog to Digital Conversion

If you want digital audio in a computer, you have to get it from somewhere. Usually that means taking analog sound out of the air and turning it into the bits that a computer can understand. Ars Technica gives us another installment of the AudioFile.
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Monday, November 12, 2007 6:17 AM

Always Question the Process

Let me recount a story from the television show Babylon 5 . In one episode there is the description of guard posted in the middle of an empty courtyard. There is nothing there to protect. When one of the characters, Londo, questions why, he finds that
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Saturday, November 10, 2007 9:01 AM

The Ultimate Geek Jacket

With Christmas approaching, here is a cool idea for the gadget-lover. The ScottEVest Evolution Jacket is a waterproof jacket with 25 pockets for all the cellphones, Zunes, PDAs, pens, etc. that we tend to carry these days. The jacket also has special
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Friday, November 09, 2007 9:17 AM

Keep Process Simple

Year ago one of our Software Test Engineers was tasked with documenting our smoke* process. It should have been something simple like: Developer packages binaries for testing Developer places smoke request on web page Tester signs up for smoke on web
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
Thursday, November 08, 2007 7:17 AM

The Need for a Real Build Process

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a good post about how " F5 is not a build process ." In it, he explains how you need a real centralized build process. F5 (the "build and debug" shortcut key in Visual Studio) on a developer's machine is not a built process.
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Thursday, November 01, 2007 7:28 AM

Don't Blame the User for Misusing Your API

A conversation the other day got me thinking about interfaces. As the author of an interface, it is easy to blame the users for its misuse. I think that's the wrong place for the blame. An interface that is used incorrectly is often poorly written. A
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