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March 2008 - Posts

Thursday, March 27, 2008 8:17 AM

Don't Blame the Compiler

It's been a busy week without much time to blog. In the mean time, here's a good reminder. It's Always Your Fault . Jeff Atwood explains why it's always the wrong idea to blame your tools. New programmers especially see something they don't understand
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:08 AM

Which Language To Learn Next?

Once you have mastered one programming language, it is a good idea to branch out and learn some others. Each language is optimized for different things. Knowing multiple will give you a larger set of tools one of which which may solve the problem at hand
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Monday, March 17, 2008 10:54 AM

Your Hard Drive Probably Isn't Running At Full Speed

Here's a little known fact that could speed up your life. Most SATA hard drives in the market today ship in 1.5 Gb/s mode instead of the 3.0 Gb/s mode they are capable of. I know for sure that Seagate and Maxtor both ship retail drives with jumpers set
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Sunday, March 16, 2008 9:59 AM

Ten Years Later...

It was ten years ago today that I joined Microsoft as a full time employee. When I started we were just finishing Windows 98. Microsoft was around 25,000 employees. My first job was testing DVD playback in the operating system. Since then I've reported
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Friday, March 14, 2008 7:08 AM

Audio Not Keeping Up With HD Video?

Here is an interesting read about how the audio in HD TV is not keeping up with the video. People are buying 1080p TV sets. The networks are paying more attention to the quality of their video, but they are not yet doing much with the audio. Many movies
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008 8:04 AM

Update on Windows Home Server Corruption Issue

The WHS team has an update on their blog regarding the corruption issue. In short, they fully understand the issue and are working on a fix. The issue is at a low level of the operating system and so requires a lot of testing to be sure that the fix works
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Monday, March 10, 2008 7:57 PM

Four Years and 300 Posts Later

It was four years and approximately 300 posts ago that I began this blog with a simple hello world . Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to followed me during that time. It has been an honor to write for you and to receive feedback on my ideas.
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Monday, March 10, 2008 10:09 AM

Suggestions for Smoother Meetings

A few weeks ago I attended a training and had an opportunity to try out the ideas generated from my earlier training. As part of this most recent training we had an exercise where we were divided into two groups. One group represented the technical team
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Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:07 AM

Hello World Podcast

MacBreak Tech has a recent podcast talking about learning to program. They begin with the question "how do I start programming games" and break it down. Pick a project. Don't learn for learning's sake. Learn to accomplish something. It will give you a
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:31 AM

What Tests Belong in the BVTs?

BVTs or Build Verification Tests are standard Microsoft parlance for the tests we run every day to ensure that we didn't break anything important with our checkins the day before. I've previously written about the importance of keeping them clean . Within
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Monday, March 03, 2008 4:04 PM

Drobo + Windows Home Server = Goodness

I've been using Windows Home Server (WHS) for a little over a month now. While there is still an issue with data corruption if you work on files directly on the server, as a backup tool, it is great. The system is practically foolproof. Install the server,
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Saturday, March 01, 2008 11:49 AM

Is That A Wiki In Your Pocket?

Here's a cool little tool I discovered recently. It's called DokuWiki on a Stick . DokuWiki is a PHP-based wiki that stores its data in text files instead of a database. This makes configuration and backup a little simpler. DokuWiki on a Stick takes MicroApache
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