I was reading Jeremy Miller's post on Code Smells and another classic .Net code smell occurred to me.  (I have to say I love the term 'Code Smell' - I use it all the time now. Thanks Jeremy.) The most insidious .Net coding smell I've run across is: GC.Collect() If you search your application and find this call, stop everything you are...

I was reading Ranjan’s post on user-centered-design techniques that provides insight into the user interviewing process.  This got me thinking about how we actually apply those results and some of the biases and assumptions we bring with us into those designs.    Every application has a data view which encapsulates the rules...

I've been spending some time checking out Duncan Bayne's blog where he is discussing some of his run-ins with InstallShield.  I ran across a particularly interesting post where Duncan and some commenters got into a debate over which product is worse - InstallShield or Wise. 

Whenever I deal with disposable objects, I always wrap them in a using() statement religiously.  Now that I am writing a graphical application where the drawing engine may paint on different surfaces (24-bit bitmap vs. black and white), I've abstracted a 'Pallet' object with concrete implementations for each Pallet type. This allows me to...

I ran into a system infected with the Aurora spyware a couple of weeks ago.  The company maintains that it is not spyware, but it has no removal tool, it throws popups like crazy and it monitors the system and moves itself around using random file names.  As of today, Norton Anti-Virus identifies it but can't get rid of...

I just bought my PDC tickets today. I sure hope I win the contest - here's my pdc contest entry post.  I'm going to hold off on the airline and hotel reservations until I'm sure everything pans out. If I won I was thinking about taking my video camera and posting bits about the show.  I think I'll still take the video camera, but...

Here is a handy GraphML primer that I'm referencing frequently.  The primer starts with a basic node/edge example and builds to more complex graphs and even conversion to an SVG format.

Agile's 'Allegory of the Cave' reads like this... The one cave member walks to the cave opening but is so entranced by the reflections on the cave wall that he stands with his back to the sunlight and never sees it. He leads others to see the amazing reflections on the wall, but most of them still fail to turn around!...(read more)

Agile's 'Allegory of the Cave' reads like this... The one cave member walks to the cave opening but is so entranced by the reflections on the cave wall that he stands with his back to the sunlight and never sees it. He leads others to see the amazing reflections on the wall, but most of them still fail to turn around!...(read more)

I need to check out Rolling Wave project scheduling when I have a chance.  I've been looking at Mark Graban's kanban blog and digging into the articles he has linked - it's fun reading.  I've got a couple of blog topics that will fall out of this, but in the meantime this Rolling Wave approach is very interesting...    

A good friend turned me on to a Lean Manufacturing blog over at blogspot.  He talks down computerized systems, however he has a lot of content on lean topics that appear across the web. I really liked his blog entries titled "Is Your Mediocrity an Emergency?", "New Book Focusing on Lean Failures" and "The Talent Behind China...

I just did some number tests on the new version of WebGrid.NET and it looks like a considerable amount of the javascript has been refactored into .JS files.  While an in-place editable grid with calendars can still require about 700KB of supporting javascript, 640KB is contained in obfuscated .JS files that can be fully cached by the...

I went to the John Deere site last night and this morning with Firefox - the activity indicator goes for a second and then stops with nothing but a blank white page.  I figured their site was down. Then, for kicks, I went to the site using IE - it's all there! I've never seen an entire site that simply doesn't display in one browser...

The company I work for, American Standard/Trane, in White Bear Lake, MN is now hiring a Lead Development Software Test Engineer.  White Bear Lake is a northern suburb of the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metro area and located merely 12.5 miles from Jay Kimble's adopted hometown of Stillwater, MN.   Part of the position involves...

A couple of months ago I came across a link on Amazon to a 2nd Edition  of Jim McCarthy's "Dynamics of Software Development" While it's a bit dated now, the first edition remains one of my favorite books and I was excited to hear that an updated edition was in the works.  I checked out my Amazon wish list and found that the link is...