Tonight was the 82nd Oscars. I’ve never really paid much attention to events like this before but tonight I was glued to the TV watching to see who would win. One of my clients, Ryan Bingham, was nominated for Best Original Song for “The Weary Kind”, the theme from the film “Crazy Heart”.

If you also watched tonight you will already know that Ryan won! I would like to congratulate Ryan Bingham for his excellent work over the past year and and congrats also to his crew and team that helped make this possible.

Visit Ryan Bingham’s website at www.binghammusic.com.

If you didn’t catch the awards ceremony, you can watch Ryan’s acceptance speech.

I was working on a feature at work this week on a ASP MVC project. I was attempting to use UpdateModel to update an object retrieved from the database with values from the POST. If you aren’t familiar with it, ASP MVC has a “magic method” to map these POST values to an object. One simply needs to call

UpdateModel(myObjectFromDatabase);

and the new values will be changed on the object.

That is all fine and dandy unless it doesn’t work. I had checked everything. I could verify that the values were in the Request header. I could verify that UpdateModel was called and did not fail. The values simply were not updated.

I finally found the key (thanks to my supervisor). The object I was updating had a mix of auto-properties and fields. Apparently, UpdateModel will only update properties. A quick change from a field to an auto-property and everything worked as it should. Thanks Aaron!

I’ve been working with a lot of person type data recently at work and I’m using data from multiple sources. Not just two databases but two separate systems with similar and yet incompatible data. One of the biggest messes was the phone numbers. I need to convert a phone number from a completely un-normalized format to a very strict format. I’m no regular expression genius so thankfully a quick Google search produced a nice PHP method of doing pretty much exactly what I was looking for. (http://cnanney.com/journal/code/cleaning-phone-numbers-with-regex/) I took that method and re-wrote it in C# and tweaked it a little for my application. I’m sure this isn’t the absolute best way to do this but it works for me.

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const string pattern = @"\D*\(?(\d{3})?\)?\D*(\d{3})\D*(\d{4})\D*(\d{1,8})?";
string num, ext;
var matches = new Regex(pattern).Match(number).Groups;
if (matches.Count > 0)
{
if (matches[3].Length > 0)
{
if (matches[1].Length > 0)
{
num = "(" + matches[1].Value + ") " + matches[2].Value + "-" + matches[3].Value;
}
else
{
num = matches[2].Value + "-" + matches[3].Value;
}
}
else
{
num = null;
}
ext = matches[4].Length > 0 ? matches[4].Value : null;
}
else
{
num = null;
ext = null;
}

Earlier this week I blogged about how Google announced their Fiber internet access experiment. Later this year Google will pick one or more communities to build an experimental ultra-high-speed fiber network. This will deliver internet to residents at over 100 times faster than the current high-speed internet providers.

Since this post I have received amazing feedback from my local community and I have started working with the help of a few others to push this initiative along.

We want Google Fiber to come to Fishers, Indiana.
And we can do it.

This is a two-fold plan. First the residents and anyone else that cares. And second, the town and it’s official representatives.

UPDATE

The IndyStar ran and article about this! http://www.indystar.com/article/20100211/LOCAL0102/2110496/
Indy.com ran the same article here: http://www.indy.com/posts/fishers-man-leads-effort-to-attract-google-project

Google recently announced that they are planning an experiment to make Internet access “better and faster for everyone.” Google will pick one or more communities to build and test a high-speed fiber network. This network will feature speeds of up to and over 1 gigabit. This is much faster than most household internet connections, which typically range from 1 megabit to 15 megabits.

Why does this matter?

The average person doesn’t really notice the difference between fiber or DSL or cable internet connection. Browsing websites, reading email, or using social networks like Facebook don’t require a super high speed connection. On the other hand, there are a few uses that will make a difference. One of those is streaming video. Services like Hulu or Netflix require a high speed connection, and yet even with a high speed connection sometimes we have to wait for the video to buffer, or load. With a super connection like Google’s new fiber service, there would not be a need to wait for these streaming video services. This is the direction the TV and movie industry is headed – It’s been months since I’ve rented a movie from somewhere like Blockbuster and soon I believe that all of our television and movies will be delivered over the internet. There’s no reason to rely on traditional sources like cable or over-the-air broadcast. We want content now, we want content in HD, and we want choices. The internet provides a delivery channel for those exact needs. A fiber network provides the framework for this to be possible.

Watch this quick video about Google’s plan:

What can I do?

From now until March 26th Google is accepting nominations for your city. After this, Google will decide where they will place this test network. From there all we can do is wait and see how it goes! You can read more about this and nominate your city here:

• http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/

You should follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my blog for the latest information.

Apple recently announced their newest product, the iPad. Every blog now has a review, and either loves it or hates it. I’m going to take a different approach and just link to a few really good reviews and points of view. I hope you enjoy these, as they are hopefully a little different than most of the common reviews.

• http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been
• http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?990
• http://www.1938media.com/you-deserve-to-be-fired/

I’ll try to update this list as I find new ones.

You should follow me on twitter.

All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
-Conan O’Brien

If you are familiar with jQuery you might know that John Resig is jQuery’s creator. He is a JavaScript genius and this blog post I found has a very nice set of jokes about him. If you like Chuck Norris and you know jQuery, you will find this very entertaining. Nice work Ben!

http://benalman.com/news/2009/12/john-resig-javascripts-chuck-norris/

Well I guess it’s about time I write about what has happened in the last 12 months. This past year has been the biggest year of changes in my life thus far. Here is the rundown:

• Started January at IWU, my final semester of college, living off campus (since September 2008)
• February 25th I joined Twitter
• In February I began my job search
• February 16th I took and passed the Zend PHP 5 Certification
• In April I was hired by FORUM Credit Union
• April 25th I graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University with a B.S. in Computer Internet Development
• April 26th I moved to Indianapolis, IN
• April 29th I began my new job at FORUM
• May 21st I proposed to Katie Stipe, and she said YES!
• In August we had engagement photos taken
• June, July, August, September and October was a blur of wedding preparations
• October 17th I got married! (photos)
• In December we took a vacation to Disney in Florida (I hadn’t been there since I was 6)

It has been a great, full year.  I’m very much looking forward to a slower yet just as fulfilling 2010.

You should follow me on twitter to get the latest from 2010.