Misc

BitlyDotNet just got more awesome

Noah — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:17:07 GMT

Mike Gleason Jr has a bit.ly client library written in C# called BitlyDotNet (it’s hosted on here on Google Code). If it wasn’t cool enough before, it just got more awesome.

I submitted a new version with the following improvements:

Added support for error code 208 ("you have exceeded your hourly rate limit for this method")
Overload to shorten multiple URLs in one shot
Fixed bug that occurred when hourly limit was exceeded (SingleOrDefault throws InvalidOperationException because of multiple errorCode nodes)

This library saved me time on a recent project and I’m glad I could contribute. Go check it out!

Help me build a great software development course

Noah — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:17:45 GMT

It looks like I might be giving a course on Beginning .NET Development to non developers with IT backgrounds. I'm putting together my lectures and it's really hard. I want to make sure that I explain things so others can understand them.

Even though this is a .NET course (with a web-based slant), I really see it as a fundamental software development (crash) course. You can’t become a great developer without understanding what’s going on behind the scenes. If you have any thoughts or advice on any of the topics at hand (am I missing a topic? are they poorly ordered? do you have a great analogy for something?) or just some general thoughts or advice, I'd be grateful if you would pass them along.

Here's what I have in regards to topics for the course:

Principals in software engineering

What are numbers (decimal, binary, hex)
Memory & microprocessors (rundown on how code gets executed)

Into to OOP

What's assembly language
C and low level languages
Beginning OOP (concepts relevant to OOP)

Microsoft .NET Platform

Native executable vs intermediate language (history, how it works)
Basic types & operators
Pass by Value vs reference
Using Visual Studio

Principals of web architecture

What's the internet?
State vs stateless

Fundamentals of ASP.NET

What is ViewState?
Configuration

Proficiency in C#

Basic structure
Flow control, ifs, fors, whiles, methods
OOP (classes, interfaces, polymorphism)
Generics*
Lambda expressions & functional programming*

* These topics might have to be left for the next, more advanced course depending on time contraints

Gunnar Optiks glasses update

Noah — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:55:26 GMT

All I can say is I love my Gunnar Optiks Rx computer glasses. My whole body just feels better at the end of the day and I have a lot less sensitivity to light at 10pm. In general, during my day, I concentrate more and lose myself in my work more since I got these glasses. I highly recommend them to everyone who spends most of their day in front of a computer monitor.

Failed upgrade: Wordpress to SubText

Noah — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:02:24 GMT

Well, that didn’t work!

I thought it would be pretty easy to convert to Subtext from Wordpress (even though it’s a bit of a hack) as I mentioned in this blog post. However, I was very mistaken. I was able to export from SubText to BlogML (after installing Wordpress on my local machine etc) but the outputted BlogML file caused an error while importing to SubText.

After spending a couple hours on it I decided I would be better off just taking the important posts from Wordpress, downloading them into Windows Live Writer, and uploading them to SubText.

That, too, had it’s share of difficulties. First there were the missing posts, then the posts and now I have posts that show up on blog.statichippo.com and in Windows Live Writer but not in the SubText admin.

Anyway I’m probably just going to leave it as is. The important posts (the one’s people actually read) are here even if the comments are not and it’s not like I had anything that earth shattering on WordPress anyway.