Coders4Charities 2010 planning is well underway! For those of you not familiar with the event, C4C is an event where developers, DBAs, graphic designers, business analysts and other geeks come together to provide free software implementations for local non-profit organizations over the course of one weekend.
This is the 3rd year for C4C, and it will be taking place Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, 2010 at Centriq Training in Leawood, KS.
We’re still looking for geeks willing to volunteer for this great event, and we’re looking for non-profits in need of a new website or a web site overhaul, a database implementation, or any other cool technology implementation that will make it a fun event! Also, if you’re not a geek, but you would like to help out with organizing or just want to volunteer to help out at the event, contact us at the address below.
If you’re a geek who’s looking to give back to your community with your unique and valuable skillsets, or if you’re a charity rep who’s tired of dealing with an antiquated technology to promote your good cause, get in touch with us at http://coders4charities.org or info@coders4charities.org, and let us know!
Hope to see you there!
I was IM’ing with a co-worker recently, and both of us were working on writing Unit Tests for code we had just completed. He was saying that his car was having trouble, was in the shop, and that they really didn’t know what was wrong with it.
I was going to tell him to not take any excuses from the mechanic, when the RhinoMocks IgnoreArguments()option popped into my head. I said something like “'tell him ‘FixMyCar.IgnoreArguments()’”, and it was a downward spiral of geek humor from there.
Below is a list that we have compile from that IM, and subsequent discussions. Feel free to leave comments with your own crap.
-Doug
I said to my wife:
1: Expect.Call(GoingFishing()).IgnoreArguments().Return(true);
She said:
1: Expect.Call(GettingLoving()).Return(null);
And:
1: Expect.Call(SleepLocation()).Return(LocationConstant.Couch);
Here’s the result of a bad expectation:
1: ExpectationException(MowLawn(): Expected, 1, Actual 0)
I then suggested that the humor shouldn’t be limited to just RhinoMocks, but should include C# (and other languages in general)…
1: if ( You.Want(MyBody) && You.Think(IAmSexy) )
2: {
3: ComeOnBaby.LetMeKnow();
4: }
Just stumbled across some pretty cool functionality with Jet Brains ReSharper 4.0 (you may already be familiar with it, but who cares, it’s still cool!)
Basically, ReSharper has a Surround With tool that allows you to surround a selection of code with… more code. It comes with a bunch of predefined templates, like if..else, using, while, try..catch blocks, but you can edit existing templates and also create and organize your own custom templates.
To get to the Templates Explorer, select ReSharper > Live Templates… from the file menu. Select the Surround Templates tab. Once you’re in there, click on the New Template icon and a new File will open in the IDE, and filled by default with the text $SELECTION$. This is the code selection that will be wrapped when your template is applied. Below is a cap of a sample wrapper with some sample template code.
To apply the template, highlight your code selection
Select ReSharper > Code > Surround With… from the File menu (or CTRL + E, U).
Choose More… from the menu. Find your template in the dialog and click OK.
When your template is applied, your selection will be replaced with the wrapped text, like below.
This is just the basic stuff. You can categorize your templates, choose which language they will apply to, add them to the quicklist (so they get assigned a quick key), and a whole bunch of other stuff that can be found on the ReSharper help pages.
I was trying to regenerate a Silverlight proxy, but I kept getting this error:
Turns out, Win 7 sometimes adds an <extendedProtectionPolicy policyEnforcement="Never" /> element to your Web.config.
Here’s the workaround according to the Silverlight Web Services team:
On Windows 7, when you use the Silverlight-enabled WCF Service item template, an <extendedProtectionPolicy /> element may be generated in Web.config. This element is not supported by Silverlight. Simply remove the element from Web.config and try regenerating the Silverlight proxy.
Here’s the link to the article that talks about this, and other issues in Silverlight 3 Beta.
Just a quick post to talk about the Smart DJ feature in the latest release (Version: 4.0.740.0) of the Zune software.
There are several web sites that read from a database of music-listening user preferences, and display music maps based on an artist or song (music-map.com, for one).
Zune has taken that one step further with their Smart DJ feature, which allows you to select an artist, album, or a song, and have the Smart DJ create a playlist based on similar songs, artists, genres, or whatever black magic it uses to determine the relationship between two pieces of music.
As you can see above, hovering over an artist displays the Smart DJ feature.
Once you select Smart DJ, it will create a playlist and display the Zune music player window (which has been revamped and is gorgeous).
And Yes, at the time of this writing, I was in an 80’s alternative mood.
I bought a Dell Studio 17 a few months ago, and as much as I love it, the TouchPad is like crazy-annoying sometimes. Not too long ago, touchpads starting allowing scrolling functionality by sliding your finger up and down the right-most side of the touchpad. Cool feature, but it forced me to stay more to the left side of the touchpad. The wonderful folks at Dell decided that the left side of the touchpad should not be a scrolling feature, but a zoom instead. Nothing like browsing a web page and have it either zoom in to the nose hairs of your elementary school teacher on Facebook, or zoom out to satellite imagery height.
In addition, there’s a scrolling zoom feature, which seems to require 3 hands to invoke. My kids can do it, of course.
As always, I blog when I discover a solution to a problem that is not readily found by Binging it, so here is what I found.
On your machine there, should be a folder called DellTPad, most likely in the C:\Program Files\ folder. In that folder is an application (.exe) file called DellTPad.exe.
Run (double-click) DellTPad.exe and the Dell TouchPad settings window will appear.
From this window, you can make all kinds of changes, like disabling the scroll/zoom/circular scroll, adjusting pad sensitivity, swapping buttons, completely disabling the TouchPad, etc. One especially cool feature I like is the ability to disable the TouchPad when a USB mouse is present. The TouchPad is there when you need it, gone when you don’t!
I hope this helps.
Just a quick post to show my appreciation for the KCDesignCore user group support tonight. I'm sitting here at Johnson County Community College, Reigner Center, Room 255, to be exact, and I'm witnessing the magic of over 20 Kansas City graphic designers working on a flyer for the event.
The KCDesignCore group meets the first Thursday of every month, and this month is a "lab" to design the best PDF flyer to be used to promote the Coders4Charities event April 24-26, 2009.
Special thanks to Buck Sommerkamp for pulling this all together, and even special-er thanks to the members of the KCDesignCore user group!!
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What a lot of fun today was. The last session is going on right now, and there are still a lot of attendees hanging around. We had about 190 registered, and a little over 100 actually showed up. A little more drop off than we would have hoped, but still a great turnout. I would have thought some sessions would be more popular than others, but there seemed to be a fair balance of session attendees, which was awesome. Sounds like Lee Brandt and Becky Isserman picked the right blend of tracks.
Many thanks to TriCom for having Mr. Goodcents delivered for lunch. They brought so much food that there is a ton of leftovers.
Special thanks to Lee and Becky for pulling this off, and for allowing me to be a part of it, and thanks to all of the speakers who showed up (especially from all over the country!) to present to today's topics. Let's do it again next year!
The Kansas City .NET User Group will be hosting a Day of .NET on Saturday, December 6th from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
It will be held at the Centriq Training Center in Leawood, KS (map). The day's training will consist of three main tracks:
- Developer
- Architect
- SharePoint
Feel free to mix and match, attend half a session, or whatever suits you.
Breakfast and Lunch will be provided during the day, and door prizes will be awarded following the last session. The cost of a day of .NET training? Absolutely FREE. The entire cost of the day will be covered by our sponsors.
Register for the event today! See you there!
Go to the Kansas City .NET User Group site for more information.
Clint Edmonson called me out on this trip down memory lane and, since I want to use up as much of his Google juice as I can, I thought I would jump in.Initially, this very much reminded me of those "Surveys" that go around in chain e-mails and (gasp!) MySpace pages, but this idea quickly caught my interest.
Here is the current link(ed) list:
Michael Eaton (post) —> Sarah Dutkiewicz (post) —> Jeff Blankenburg (post) —> Josh Holmes (post) —> Larry Clarkin (post) —> Brian Moore (post) —> Denny Boynton (post) —> Clint Edmonson (post) —> me
How older were you when you started programming?
I must have been 9 or 10. Like most people in this chain, I started off programming BASIC on the Commodores, VIC-20, C-64, and the C-128. I remember typing in, number-for-number, all of those DATA lines on the last 30-or-so pages of BYTE magazine that was supposed to yield this amazing game. I think the best app was Lemonade Stand, which I promptly saved to my cassette tape (comma-8, comma-1) since the Commodores had no storage capability.
What was your first language?
BASIC - I can't even describe the feeling of my first Hello World! application. The door was open. This is what I was going to do.
What was the first real program you wrote?
Gosh, I wrote a LOT of code as a kid, but nothing that lasted longer than my C-64 could keep in it's memory. I tried several times to write my own video games, but so many of those times the games ended up looking like a pixelated Jackson Pollock.
What languages have you used since you started programming?
My first passion (and nemesis) was Borland C++, which quickly transitioned into Microsoft Visual C++, sitting on top of MFC, using COM/DCOM methodologies. I used to scoff at VB programmers, calling it a "prototyping" language, until VB6 came around and I realized the glory of it all. VB6 became VB.NET with the introduction of the .NET framework, and C# came pretty far behind. I still prefer VB over C# any day, and I'm sure the commenters to this blog will voice their opposition and ridicule. Bring it on.
What was your first professional programming gig?
Wow. I guess I was in college was when that went down. I was asked to build an Access database for an auction that was taking place in my town. I had to design the database schema, build the UI's, code some business logic, and generate reports for printing receipts at the auction. Results: crash and burn. I forgot to configure the database to allow more than one user, so the other 5 "checkout" stations at the auction locked up, and we were forced to funnel all 500 auction attendees through one terminal. That is the first time (and certainly not the last) I wept over an implementation gone wrong. I hope this admission doesn't affect any future job opportunities.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
You betcha! I love problem-solving. That's what keeps me going every day. I love looking at a problem, designing a solution, and tackling it head on (apply directly to the forehead).
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
"Run away!" Just kidding. Seriously, it would be "plan ahead". Without a design plan for your implementation, your code will get way out of control very quickly. It's one thing to just sit down and start renegade-coding, but without a thorough plan of attack, you'll be lost in the weeds. This is advice that I still have to remind myself to follow to this day.
What's the most fun you've ever had... programming?
Most recently, I would have to say it was our April Coders 4 Charities event in Kansas City. We spent a weekend providing free software implementations for local non-profit organizations. There was a ton of food, a ton of Rock Band, and a ton of coding.
Who am I calling out?
Lee Brandt
John Alexander
Jeff Julian
Becky Isserman
Tim Hibbard
Very happy to announce that the KC .Net User Group site is live!
The site is intended to announce upcoming meetings and presenters at the User Group, and to promote the adoption and use of the Microsoft .NET framework and related technologies to the Kansas City community.
It will be evolving as future needs arise, but I think it's a great starting point for keeping local developers in touch with all things .NET!
So... what are you waiting for? Check it out now! Register! Post a thread on the forum!
Doug
Last night (July 22, 2008) I presented on Windows Communication Foundation vs. Web Services at the Kansas City .NET User Group.
I talked about Web Services, and how they existed in the .NET 2.0 Framework, and compared them to the new WCF framework in .NET 3.0 and 3.5.
There was a turnout of 57 developers, and Modis brought Gates BBQ!
I've uploaded the presentation to my SkyDrive here.
Many thanks to everyone who showed up to hear me ramble!
Well, it was a great weekend! 25 developers showed up to help out 5 charities, and each charity ended up with an awesome implementation. I've already written the main C4C Event Wrap-Up on the C4C site, as well as wrap-ups for each of the charities.
The event write-up, as well as the write-ups for each charity can be found on the news page of the C4C site.
The 5 charities who were helped this weekend are:
- Boy Scouts Troop 813
- Berean Bible Church
- Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
- Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
- Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
Many thanks (again!) to all those who showed up to develop, volunteer, and donate their time to this amazing event!
These are the final teams who volunteered this weekend at the Coders4Charities event.
Many thanks to all who showed up to help!
Charity Name: Boy Scout Troop 813
Needs: A basic website to announce activities, give information, and promote Scouting. We would like to be able to update it remotely by authorized users. We must follow BSA guidelines to ensure we protect the identity of our Scouts.
Team Lead: Lee Brandt
Team Members:
- Becky Isserman
- Blake Theiss
- Joe Loux
- Timothy Wright
Charity Name: Berean Bible Church
Needs: The Berean Bible Church would like to have a membership tracking web application built to be able to keep an up-to-date list of members and regular attendees of the church and relevant information about each member.
Team Lead: Steven Hildreth
Team Members:
- Jill Kirkpatrick
- Joseph Cook
- Jim Heavey
- Kevin Shaffer
Charity Name: Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
Needs: MOCSA would like their web site to be enhanced. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.
Team Lead: Patrick Herrington
Team Members:
- David Rogers
- Buck Sommerkamp
- Alex Sommerkamp
- Cody Inman
- Rashid Hoda
Charity Name: Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
Needs: Needs: MPR would like a new look for their web, more professional-looking, and easy maintenance. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.
Team Lead: Tim Hibbard
Team Members:
- Hong Chen
- James Clemons
- Yuriy Lyeshchenko
Charity Name: Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
Needs: New web site. They currently have a MySpace page. Need to support eCommerce functionality for online donations.
Team Lead: Shawn Mannen
Team Members:
- Jason Atcheson
- Jacob Dubin
- Joe Seaman
- Mary Stayton