DylanWolf.com Blog Comments

2009-05-06 13:57:22

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

Yeah, coming from a non-MVP, it kind of looked odd. That, and there seems to be a fundamental problem with any program to give people official rewards and/or status for contribution to the community. Inevitably, it will run into problems with politics, and it will be used by people who just get involved to get ahead themselves. Creating a new program doesn't eliminate the risk of that cropping up, it merely resets the timer.

Of course, I'm naively idealistic sometimes.

2009-05-06 10:49:12

Posted by Michael Neel:

I saw some of this yesterday, didn't dive into the specifics to see where it wrong. On the surface it seemed the problem was the appearance that Oleson didn't get MVP, so he was making his own program combined with some subversive ploy by his current employer to boost it self. No idea how valid these assumptions are, but you are right in the result stopped things.

Ironically this does exist in ASP.NET - we have ASPInsiders which is an exclusive (in the sense you have to be voted in by the members) separate community group from Microsoft's MVP program. It used to be 100% separate from Microsoft, but then worked out an agreement for ASPInsiders to have NDA's with Microsoft (so we can see and comment on future project and direction). The trade for NDA was giving Microsoft veto power over the votes - in practice to make lawyers happy, I don't think it's ever been used.

2009-04-17 17:59:23

Posted by Bill England:

Dylan - Enjoyed your post here. Would be happy to discuss these offline issues with you and get into more detail. Please contact me at 604-307-2341 or bengland at colligo.com.

Cheers,
Bill

ASP.Net providers

2009-04-17 14:08:02

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

Seems like it would be possible--all you'd have to do is get a valid auth cookie and it should work just fine.

Yeah, our main problem is that we don't have control over the offline applications if they're third-party. I've held out writing our own application as a possible option. At this point we're only dealing with about six or seven lists, which are related in some odd ways (well, odd for SharePoint lists, that is). If we created a the offline app, we could probably provide a more user-friendly interface for this particular set of data. Then again, we'd likely be updating it every time we changed something if it was too specific to our application.

2009-04-17 10:19:53

Posted by Michael Neel:

I recall seeing in one of the .Net updates some classes for setting up a webservice that thick clients could use for tapping into asp.net providers. Doesn't help your case here, but something that might be useful for you later.

Feedburner

2009-04-08 08:56:10

Posted by Nathan Blevins:

I love and hate Feedburner. Since the google takeover, I have had some interesting varience in my stats. For instance, every post that I made since my blog was created has had exactly 10 click throughs... Somehow, I doubt that. Also, there seems to be odd swings in readership numbers. Of course, since I only have 19 readers, the swings are small.

Are you doing google analytics? It is really easy to set up and much more handy than the webmaster tools. I almost live and die by those stats now.

Stats are a two edged sword for me. I try to judge the success of a blog post first by the # of comments it has, then by the stats - both of which should not be used measure internet self-worth, lol.

Still gotta have the stats.

About the romance novels. . .

2009-02-25 08:26:05

Posted by Devan Wolf:

You do realize that I was jesting, I hope.

My main goal was to make you uncomfortable, but I see I came nowhere near succeeding. Darn it. Back to the drawing board, once more. . .

Not sure how I missed your comment...

2009-02-25 00:58:21

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

... but I guess I did.

I will have to try it, but I would probably rather find it at Fresh Market or World Market or something than pay... what was it, $6?

Would they be proud? I don't know; I guess it depends on whether this is high-brow historical romance, or Christian historical romance, or bodice-rippers. And they're a dime a dozen any way you go, so you either need to write them well or write something else.

Also, if you're serious about writing fiction, you probably want to just start writing and see what you come up with, and not brainstorm too much on what you're going to write but put off starting.

I hate you.

2009-02-22 00:46:33

Posted by Devan Wolf:

Not really. But dang it, if I could work from home and support the boy while he finishes school, that would be freaking awesome.

I think I would miss some of the social interactions with fellow employees, but coming from a person working in a service industry where my JOB is to deal with people ALL FREAKING DAY and make them happy. . . It would be nice to get away from them for awhile. Granted some are extremely nice people, but the ones who are not are REALLY dang annoying, ie: that table I told you about from the other night . . .

But if you ever need to get out of the house and into some sunshine, just give us a call. Really. I may work a lot of nights, but I still like hanging out with you. :) I'm lucky to have an awesomely nice big brother like you.

And I am CONVINCED that if you try Lindeman's Kriek (Cherry) Lambic (or perhaps one of the other flavors) they have at Union Jack's, you might actually find an alcoholic beverage that you like the taste of, sir.

On a sidenote, I'm joking with Henry about trying to write my own historical romance novels as a way to make extra money. Do you think Mom and Dad would be proud?

Le sigh. Then again, maybe not. I tend to ramble far too much when I type/write/etc. . .

2009-02-19 13:42:34

Posted by Michael Neel:

When I worked from home (and I think it was a total about about 8 months too), I did pick up the guitar. It's not different than taking a break hear, only instead of walking or staring at an over priced vending machine, I played the guitar. I also play it sometime will looking at my code and thinking through a problem. The tweet wasn't meant as "working from home rocks, cause you screw off all day".

To balance time, I used a time sheet the same as I had at Mediapulse. Mostly because I was doing contract work and needed track my hours, but also because I could see when I hit 8 hours and then felt no guilt "leaving" work. Since there was no commute, I could knock off 3-4pm most days.

The social is where it broke down for me. Perhaps if I was involved in the .net community then as I am now it wouldn't have been so bad. I used to find excuses to meet with Daryl so I would have some social contact. I decided I had to turn the consulting into a small company so I could hire a few devs, or get back into the rat race. I wasn't ready to start a company, so I took at job at JTV. As a Java Developer if that gives you an idea of just how bad the social thing became for me.

BTW, speaking of social discomfort I totally missed that it was your sister's finance last night waiting on our table. I feel like an ass for not saying hi :/

Actually...

2009-02-19 11:14:37

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

I really don't work 10x more than I should. I probably work less now than I did at previous jobs. I just worry about it 10x more because I don't have the rigid structure, and so can't make myself let downtime pass as easily. Also, my previous job conditioned me to be extraordinarily anal about hours of work.

That said, I think you're right, Nathan would probably overwork himself if led into it. But unlike me, he'd be quicker and less guilt-ridden about abusing the freedom when he could. So it would average out. (See my comment about flexibility.)

I do worry what I'll turn into after 4-5 years of this. I think I'll end up being a calmer person as I get used to the routine, but I can't say I won't turn into a scary eccentric you'll all deny ever knowing. Still, I think it's worth the risk for this job.

Thanks for the compliment, though. I think the difference is definitely tied to social comfort. Until I reach that point with a person or group, I'm all business. I think that's changing, and maybe not for the better, as personal and professional things converge through Twitter, this blog, Facebook, etc.

nobody uses titles for blog comments... i keep intending to remove them from my site. wakka wakka.

2009-02-19 10:55:46

Posted by Gabriel:

Re: Nathan: I disagree, I think you'd fall into the same pattern Dylan has: guilting yourself into working your ass off 10x more than you would if you were in an office.

Re: Dylan: I think you're probably the best person I know for a case against working from home. You're extraordinarily witty but it only comes out when you're comfortable socially (or maybe it's that your style of witty jab takes a while to be aware of), and when you're working from home you never get any of that social interaction that keeps you in practice.

IMHO you should find another job, simply for that reason.

I hate titles too.

2009-02-19 09:20:58

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

... no, really, I do. And yet I put them in the comments section of every site I build.

WoW, etc.: I'm not even going to play the "just 15 minutes" game with myself. I'm bad enough about saying, "I'm just going to surf the web for 5 minutes" and wasting tons of time. There is home time and there is work time, and as much as I can help it, they do not cross.

I do count research towards the total. But being a contractor, we have ups and downs depending on the work available. So there are times we're covered up and there are slow times, and the slow times can be the most stressful.

Frankly, I'm good without the good ol' boy system. That's one of the things I like about this job. I also don't get as stressed out as you would think--at least not with specific people. I'm harder on myself than most other people are.

The beard I keep trimmed. Although, admittedly, I let it go unless I have a meeting scheduled. Which, as I've said before, is one benefit of growing one--it's easier to tell when I've gone too long without shaving and actually care about it.

[I hate titles]

2009-02-19 08:45:40

Posted by Nathan Blevins:

To be totally honest, I really don't see how you pull it off. I am a very undisciplined person in that I like to push the envelope at any point. Due to this, I need the structure of the office to make me roll out of bed and actually focus. This is generally effective for me, even though there are the 'infrequent' exceptions(such as now while I am writing on your blog). Anyway, I am sure that I could force myself into the pattern that you are having to deal w/ but it would feel very constraining for me. I hate to feel constrained. I would probably have to institute a reward system in which I could work for 3 hours and then play WOW for 'just 15 mins'. :)

On the flip side, you do make it tougher on yourself than what I think most people would. This is not neccessarily a bad thing, but I can see you totally stressing yourself over not getting your whole 40 - even though it was a slow week or b/c you were puesdo-multitasking. Although they are cut-n-dry, hours are hard to track as a programmer b/c so much of what you do overlaps w/ other things. So, if you did a bit of research to learn something, is that on your time or theirs? Clearly you both will benefit...

Finally, there is the people thing. I would probably miss that the most b/c I love to BS around and work on buidling relationships and trust w/ my co-workers. It provides a nice sanity check and it also is great way to simply blow off some steam when you are totally stressed. Plus, it is adding to the all-powerful good ol' boy system.

Anyway, I am glad that you like what you are doing and also that you prefer your current setting as opposed to what you had before. I remember remarking that you would become hermit dylan w/ a 10ft beard and slot in your door in which everyone can slide you food now and then. I see that you have started on the beard thing so maybe that is still a possibility.

New job opportunities?

2009-01-25 23:10:08

Posted by Devan Wolf:

You know, I've already heard of a handful of people I know/know of being laid off, this year. I'm just glad I have a job, and am somewhat secure in it. People always have to eat, and as far as servers go. . . My managers definitely like me a lot, and would let go of many others before me.

But if a company can't tell me exactly what it is that they DO? I'm PRETTY sure it's a scam to get to my money.

I need my money, dagnabbit.

It was not you...

2009-01-24 15:16:12

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

... but perhaps you'd like to take this opportunity to tell the listeners at home all about this exciting new opportunity for explosive growth!

Thanks for not naming me...

2009-01-24 11:31:29

Posted by Michael Neel:

...economy is rough, and I figure it was high time I got in early on a Ponzi scheme (I hear they work, but onfy if you start it)!

xkcd, not xckd

2008-12-19 23:48:41

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

I should not write posts at 2 in the morning.

memcached ftw

2008-11-12 00:34:12

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

OK, I just set up my photo section to use memcached.

Pretty easy to set up, despite the fact that you have to compile it on Red Hat/Fedora.

Good Python library, although with very sparse documentation.

Found an extension here that supports "namespaces," so more than one application can share the same server.

And here's the best part: it very nearly matched the interface I'd written. OK, it isn't that much of a coincidence; it's a no-brainer to implement get(key) and set(key, value) for something like this, but I barely had to change any code to get it working.

w00t.

memcached

2008-11-11 11:00:44

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

Cool, I'll try it out.

There seems to be a Python API available, which is what I was worried about. And memcached is available through Ubuntu's apt-get... but I'll have to compile it on my actual VPS server.

memcached

2008-11-11 10:05:14

Posted by Michael Neel:

Take a look at memcached - since you're already on linux this is a no-brainer. memcached is how the big boys scale up (like MySpace) - an in memory, distributed (though you only have one server) cache.

Unlike the other post, this makes sense as it can solve the problem, and it also a great point to have on the resume.

Hmm.

2008-11-11 09:53:48

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

Yeah, the robots seem to be breaking the web service calls. At least that's the only thing I can think.

I didn't realize that Flickr has built-in paging. But the module I'm using for Flickr may not support it. But as far as paging goes, the caching I have set up sort of works for me the other way--if I have three pages of photos, it retrieves them all, and caches the entire list. So pages 2, 3, 4, etc. don't have to make a call back to Flickr--assuming you get the same process, that is.

Good point on the no-follows on lower-level pages. I hadn't thought of that. Of course, when I had my photos on my site, I got some pretty good search engine traffic from them if they had descriptive titles (for example, a lot of the photos from MGM Studios). Of course, (a) that's not really good traffic, since they're just here for a photo, and (b) I haven't captioned any of my Flickr photos yet.

Actually, page output caching isn't a bad idea, in a sense. The photo pages don't change that often (no sidebar boxes to deal with), so I could set up a caching module that would associate the URL with the HTML output of the page. Then, unless (a) the page was a POST, (b) the URL/query string didn't match, and (c) the user wasn't logged in, it would just dump that HTML output from the database.

For that matter, it wouldn't be hard to serialize/pickle an object and toss it in the database to cache across threads. Obviously, this would be pointless for blog posts/comments (or would it, if I stored whole lists?), but it would work really well for Flickr.

Spelling

2008-11-11 08:49:16

Posted by Nathan Blevins:

Just realized that the spelling in the previous post was horrible. I am ashamed to even read it. Oh well, thats what I get for multitasking...

2008-11-11 08:47:53

Posted by Nathan Blevins:

I think that "Twitter'd" is the new "Slashdotted"...

So, you are saying that the robots are crapping out your photos b/c the web service call is taking too long? If you are doing the thumbnail + descriptions and linking to a larger images, you might want to add the "nofollow" attribute to the thumnail in order to limit the number of requests that google would make against the API. Seeing that flickr has built in paging anyway, it should keep your requests small enough that it will not crap out on you.

I started to reccomend turing on / up your output caching on this page... however, that might not work so well for you, ;) .

Definitely

2008-11-10 09:41:24

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

Yeah, honestly, your rewrites are part of the reason I think this way. :) I'm not saying I want to rewrite my blog... I'm sort of justifying to myself why I'm still using Snakeskin Chainsaw Buffet or Sakura Tees. Which, as you point out, I wouldn't be using if I thought anyone else would be doing major work--I'd be using ASP.NET (Windows) or PHP (Linux). (In fact, this was one of the things I discussed with Charlie--I wanted to use CakePHP on Sakura Tees, but it got too time consuming to figure out all the little intricacies. That's when I realized that "making it accessible for another developer to replace me" was probably not high on the list of priorities since it's a small business site for a friend.)

But otherwise, it's a bit oppressive to worry more about whether I'm doing things the right way or using the right framework/technology/whatever, than it is to just do it. I'm finding the less I worry about that stuff, the more I like programming in my spare time.

You have to realize, the facade between what I actually think and what I present to the community/employers is very thin. I can't put forth the appearance of "passionate developer" that people seem to expect... well, not without actually being excited. And as everyone who reads this blog probably knows, I don't get excited about much (curse my innate tendency for balance and realism), so I sometimes think something must be wrong with me. Plus, too much of my self-worth is dependent on what I produce, so "not using the 'right' tools and methodologies" ends up translating to "not good enough" depending on what mood I'm in--but at the same time "hacking something together with stuff I don't fully understand yet" also translates to "not good enough."

... I may need to refactor my mind and add in some additional tiers there.

Craziness

2008-11-10 08:47:09

Posted by Nathan Blevins:

I can understand your feelings there. It is easy to get caught up in the constant changes that are going on and one should avoid changing for the sake of change. Once you go down that route, it becomes a very slippery slope. (I have learned that one about 10 times over... lol)

In may case, I love to take on new ideas / techs but I do my very best to keep it in moderation or, at least, only where it makes sense. Obviously, my website is one giant bleeding edge, as I work to try out these new techs in a context that I know very well. This allows me to focus on the new stuff rather than implementation and new stuff, if that makes sense. Although I have a blog, my site is more of a way to have a production entity that I can play with as time allows.

In regards to your site, if it is not broke, don't fix it. Unless you have a purpose in changing you should keep what you have. Now, if it gets to the point where maintenance is long and hairy, hosting is hard to find, or new dev become difficult - that is the time for change.

In regards to Linq 2 SQL... it is not really "dead." I get irritated at this approach b/c it makes everyone start running for the hills, so hold your horses on reading about NHibernate. There is no reason to change any past development that was done w/ L2S. L2S is supported and will remain to be so. M$ is pushing to support the Entity Framework in the long scope and to make it have the same easy features that we see in L2S. To paraphrase their annoucement, "over the long run LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities will merge. In the mean time, development work on LINQ to SQL will not end entirely." Also, all L2S work should port rather easily. In fact, your LINQ queries can be used directly against the EF by simply changing the Data Context (assuming the same DB structure). Assuming that you approached L2S with some measure of OO techs, you should not have any worries either way... /end-rant ( Btw, I am fully aware that Mike was being broadly accurate / flippant in his post about L2S, which makes it unfair for me to respond in such a detailed manner, but it is a sore spot for me, lol )

Now, with all this being said, I think .Net is a viable choice for a framework when doing web dev. It, most likely, has the the highest ease of access. In other words, I would not recommend someone firing up Snakeskin for their new website unless they have direct reason to do so (such as being in a development shop that can benefit from rolling their own framework or having had previous experience).

@Gabriel - No joke! C++ devs rock. I have no clue why he would be embarrassed... Kudos to him and I had time to be in his place...

2008-11-08 22:46:16

Posted by Gabriel:

I met this guy yesterday that said he was a programmer. I simply assumed he was a C# guy and asked and he was actually embarrassed to admit he was a C++ developer! I was like... Holy crap! A C++ developer! How rad! And he was busy apologizing for not using C#. Craziness.

Ninject

2008-11-08 09:50:36

Posted by Michael Neel:

IoC/DI and Mixins have the same goal - that's the key. In the vein of your other post, don't get too bogged down in the tech details - they don't matter as much as most people think.

Basically, in both cases you class holds a reference to something that deals with Session State (for example). You class doesn't care about the details of how Session State is stored, only that it respect an agreed upon interface to use it. You class may not even know until run time which Session State implementation it is using - and doesn't care. Code wise, this gives you separation of concerns and easy of testing (because you can mock the session object in unit tests).

If you go down the path of IoC/DI you'll want something to help - normally called an IoC container. I really like Ninject because it follows KISS and doesn't use crazy XML configuration files to setup. I also think the Ninject Walkthrough is one of the best intro on the subject: http://dojo.ninject.org/User%20Guide.ashx (and also shows the "by hand" method - which for simple projects is just fine imho).

Yeah.

2008-11-07 17:02:30

Posted by Dylan Wolf:

The main reason for the blog post isn't that I wrote this site in SnakeSkin--I was still using that professionally when I originally coded it. The real reason is that most of my newer projects--Chainsaw Buffet and Sakura Tees (a site for a friend's business, which I haven't even started on) are SnakeSkin, too.

But whether or not I rewrite in the latest .NET/Rails/PHP framework is sort of beside the point. The thing that I figured was really heretical about this blog post was the fact I kind of like using a framework with no community around it (or at least a community that I don't pay attention to). That means I focus on the task at hand rather than whether I'm using all the right methods/technologies/whatever. (The downside, obviously, is that many times I have to reinvent the wheel or accept that certain things won't have a Python library.)

I heard about LINQ to SQL. I don't know much about the Entity Framework, so I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing. Most of my exposure to it was via Shawn Wildermuth's talk at Alabama Code Camp (IIRC)--and his point was that LINQ to SQL was for quick-and-dirty projects while EF was time-consuming, but is really worth the time for more complicated long-term projects.

Good enough

2008-11-07 15:44:41

Posted by Michael Neel:

No, you are right on - any change made based on technology alone is a bad one. I wrote my blog in .Net because a) didn't have a blog and b) wanted to get more experience with .Net.

LINQ to SQL is dead btw, EF killed it. Alas, poor L2S, we hardly knew ye!