This edition of the festival is hosted on Fat Pitch Financials.

Click on over to check out all the featured articles.

If you have been following inMessment specifically for the Freedom posts, please check out HistoricWords.com and you can follow there.

Moving the Freedom Category to the New Blog

It was a pretty big process for me to start HistoricWords.com. Here are the basic steps I went through:

Choose Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is always a hard task for me. I tried sever variations on “history” and “writing”. Then I would check if the names I came up with were available. The first choice I wanted, “WrittenHistory” is not a valid website but it is held by a domain auction site. They are willing to sell it to me but I am not ready to pay at this time. I came up with “HistoricWords” and now I like it better than my first idea. I was able to register it for $16 and I own it for a year.

Set Up WordPress

Next I had to Install WordPress and set up the theme for the new blog. I used a lot of what I had done with inMessment. At this point I use the Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. It has an Export/Import feature that allowed me to start with the same settings I have on inMessment. From there I adjusted the color scheme and sizing to fit the new vision I have for HistoricWords.com.

Exporting an Importing The Freedom Category Posts

WordPress has an Export feature that will export your blog to an XML file. Then you can import it to another WordPress site. It has filtering options that allowed me to export only the posts in the Freedom category. The export includes everything about the posts, including any comments, so when I imported them on the new blog they looked the way they did on inMessment.

Cleaning up the Messy Parts

The import process brings in all the categories and tags from the first site, so I had to delete the ones I did not want on the new site an make sure the posts were categorized and tagged the way I wanted them. This was a somewhat tedious process.

I also had a lot of links to the inMessment blog in the posts. I started going through them one-by-one and then I thought there must be a better way. I searched the WordPress Plugin site and found a plugin that will do Search & Replace. This allowed me to search through all the posts and replace links and other things that I wanted to change.

Add Redirects For The Moved Posts

One of the big things to worry about when moving posts from one blog to another is Google and other search engines. I was starting to get a lot of search engine traffic for the Freedom posts. I did not want to loose these searches. The way to handle this is to create a “301 Redirect” for each post. A 301 Redirect does two things, it redirect the old URL to a new URL and it notifies the user that the URL has been permanently change. Google and other search engines will take 301 Redirect and update their indexes.

I found another WordPress Plugin called Redirection which does exactly this. I started creating a single redirect for each post and again I thought, there must be a better way. After a little thought, I recategorized each post from Freedom to “Redirect to HistoricWords”. Then I was able to use the regular expression feature (really geeky stuff) of the Redirection Plugin to redirect any post in that category to the new blog. Then all I had to do was change the category on each post and the redirects were done.

There are lots of other tweaks and I am sure I will come across other issues, but those are the major steps I went through. Check out HistoricWords.com and let me know what you think.

This is a Guest Post by Varada. Varada is a software industry professional who lives and works in India. She is also a doting mom, hobbyist, crafter, and blogger at:
http://naari-thewoman.com and http://mealtimes.blogspot.com.

I needed some way better than that. I am a wife, mother of two princesses, a software industry worker who manages two project teams side by side, and a person with at least three hobbies I love to spend time on (making jewelry, cooking & writing). It is crucial for me to manage my activities within the time available if I am to get at least something done by the end of a day.

This post explains what I found to work for me. If you have been struggling to make sense of your daily activities, you can try this out too. These are not ground rules or universal truths. They are simple, easy to master ideas which anyone wanting to manage their activities can learn from. So, off we go:

#1 First things first: Know what you want to get done

• First task for managing anything would undoubtedly be knowing *what* you want to manage. So, you can start by creating a list of tasks you would like to achieve within a given day.
• You can derive this from what you want to achieve in a week. It is also a good idea to set aside some time each day for activities that add value to your life. (That needs a separate discussion, so let’s not digress right now.)
• At this point we are simply writing all that we want to do. We’ll prioritize and schedule later, so don’t restrict yourself just yet with questions like ‘what if’.

#2 Set an order: Prioritize

• Now that you know what you want to get done, sort the listed tasks in order of their importance and relevance. Typically classifying them as urgent / important works as well.
• Urgent ones are those that demand immediate attention. Important ones are things that are not really urgent, but need to be taken care of to avoid hassles later. Take for example, servicing my bike is *important*. Getting my broken brakes replaced right away is *urgent*. If I take care of servicing on a regular basis, the chances of me getting into urgent situations like replacing brakes will be reduced considerably.
• If your activities have been chaotic till now, you will find yourself spending more time on urgent things when you get started with this new routine. Once you get into a habit of identifying important things before they become urgent, things will become a lot easier to handle.

#3 Allocate time in chunks

• This point is the crux of this post. Instead of trying to all at once, set aside time for each item.
• I personally find that I can work in an intense concentrated fashion for 30 to 40 mins. After that I need some change. So I’ll go with the plan of dividing bigger tasks or aligning smaller ones so that I can work on each collection within a sprint of 30-40 mins.
• For example, if I have to review documents created by others, I’ll line up 1 or more documents based on their length to fit one sprint. If I plan to write articles, I’ll set aside time for all writing activities aligned together or in successive sprints. I feel that once the writing flows, it becomes easier to go on. If I am creating schedules or task plans for my teams at work, I’ll do these activities one after the other. That way I can tackle them more easily.
• One important technique that focuses on time chunking is the Pomodoro (Tomato in Italian) Technique. They call one sprint of 25 mins as one Pomodoro and the rest remains more or less same.
• Whether you follow the 25 mins pomodoro or 30 mins sprint or something else, bottom line is to give yourself small, achievable goals and keep completing them. Each pomodoro or a sprint is indivisible. Either you complete the whole of it or you cancel the whole of it. You cannot work on part of the task and then go do something unscheduled within one 25 / 30 mins slot.

#4 Schedule breaks

• It is also essential to take breaks in between every two sprints. These help refresh your mind.
• Having completed the sprint successfully also gives you a feeling of having earned a break.
• Breaks can be anywhere between 5 to 15 mins. You can get yourself a cup of coffee or freshen up and talk to a friend during a break.

#5 Execute the plan

• Once you have chalked out what you want to do and when, get started with the execution. As they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Initially you might find it hard to even complete one sprint. But push yourself into this for at least 21 days so your brain can really absorb this routine.

#6 Dealing with interruption

• Phone calls, emails, chats or people asking for help – anything that takes you away from executing your current task at hand is an interruption.
• To deal with distractions like phone call or emails, you need to get more self disciplined. Resist that urge to quickly open the mailbox or check on your aunt in the middle of a sprint. Close off email programs, online chats and if possible, even your phone.
• To deal with people who come asking for help, explain to them that you are in the middle of an important task and will get back to them as soon as you are done. Do make sure that you go and follow up with them during your break time.
• In an ideal world people can take care of all distractions or interruptions when they are in between a sprint. But in real life, this may not be the case always. You are the best judge to decide whether the interruption is important enough to cancel your sprint or you can postpone the interruption.

#7 Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 throughout your day.

#8 Analyze

• At the end of each day, take a stock of what you have achieved. Analyze your planned vs. actual tasks. This will help you become better at estimating time required for various activities. It will also add focus to the next day’s activities.

Once you get your activities under control, you will have each day under control. With each day you’ll find yourself becoming more disciplined and confident. But till you reach a stage you are satisfied, keep yourself motivated. Every week give yourself something to look forward to. If you manage to complete 70% of your planned activities within the first week, it can be something as simple as a day of sleeping till late. After all that hard work you’ll deserve it!

Before I stop typing I will remiss if I do not cite the sources for some of the ideas. I stumbled on this site: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ and really found the material they have very helpful for anyone wanting to go for time chunking.

Have you ever wondered why a certain SQL process takes so long in SQL Server? SQL Server Profiler can really help out this situation. Here is what Microsoft says about the tool:

“Microsoft SQL Server Profiler is a graphical user interface to SQL Trace for monitoring an instance of the Database Engine or Analysis Services. You can capture and save data about each event to a file or table to analyze later. For example, you can monitor a production environment to see which stored procedures are affecting performance by executing too slowly.”

Profiler can be a little intimidating the first time you use it. It was for me. There are a lot of options and it will give you a whole lot of information to try and dig through. This brief guide will walk you through getting started using a real-world example.

A week or two back while working on a new software release our developers made a change to an existing SQL Server Stored Procedure. This change required looping through hundreds of thousands of records and conditionally processing each one. After the change we ran a few tests on small data sets and everything seemed to be working fine.

Then we started a test with a much larger data set. At this point, the procedure continued to process but it ran for three hours without completing. The old procedure would usually complete in less than 20 minutes.

I thought to myself, “Something must be wrong!” – Duh! Normally I would ship this back to the developers and have them research the issue. I was under a time crunch so I started looking into it myself.

It was not my code so I was not really sure where to start looking. I started up SQL Server Profiler so I could see where the process was taking the longest. Here are the steps I went through.

Choosing a Profiler Template

There are several templates to choose from. I do not know what all the differences are but I have found that the Standard (default) template covers my general needs. It is good for general performance monitoring.

Events Selection

This is where profiler can get very confusing. There are way too many options to choose from. The Standard template starts with a pretty good set of events. I start by getting rid of all the things I don’t need or don’t understand (oops! did I say that out loud?). I only want to see the events that will help me understand what is slowing down my process.

From the Standard template, I remove all events except those under Stored Procedures and TSQL. I limit the events to the Completed events, these are ones that show Duration and that is my focus when reviewing performance. I also add the SQL:StmtCompleted under TSQL. To add events or columns you will have to check the “Show all” check boxes. Then you have to scroll down about a mile through the million options to find what you want.

I also remove all the columns except TextData, ApplicationName, CPU, Reads, Writes, Duration, and SPID. (I really don’t use ApplicationName but it’s in the screen shot so I am listing it here.) You can include other events and columns that you may find interesting. These are all the columns I need for my simple performance test.

Column Filters

The next step is to add column filters so Profiler only returns results for the process you are looking at. In my case I know the SPID of the process so I filter for that SPID. If you don’t add a filter, you will get the activity for all processes on the server. If you have a busy server, this can be nearly impossible to sort through to find what you are looking for.

Run Profiler

After I have defined the events and columns and I have added my filter, I run Profiler. At this point Profiler will start to list events and scroll them on the screen as they happen. If your process is fairly short you can Run Profiler and then run your process to completion and then stop profiler. In my case, the process was running for hours. I started Profiler and let it fill several pages of events and then I stopped it. After stopping it, you can scroll through the events and see what is going on.

Since I was looking for items that were slowing the process down, I scrolled down to items that had longer Durations. In the screen shot below, I highlight a line that has a duration of 83. The CPU and Reads are also higher on this item. You can also see another line, four items down, that has similar CPU, Reads and Duration. BINGO! These are my problem.

The TextData column shows you the SQL statement. I know the Stored Proceure where these SQL Statements are so I go to the code and make a couple changes. I will share the changes in another post so I can stay focused Profiler for now. After making the changes I run the process again. It runs in the normal amount of time now and my problems are fixed. Yeah!

I ran Profiler again just to see if I could find anything else to tweak. Below is a screen shot of the same lines as shown above. Now the Durations are 0. BIG IMPROVEMENT!

SQL Server Profler is a very powerful tool to help you spy on running process and see what is going on. As in my case, this can be extreemly helpful when you are not sure where to start. If you have not used Profler yet, I hope this helps get you going.

Please leave me a comment about your experience with Profiler. Please share any aditional tips that you may have.

This Guest Post is by Arjun Marwaha. Arjun graduated with a Technology degree from Kurukshetra University in 2005. Since then he has worked with some of the leading software development companies in India. In his spare time Arjun enjoys basketball, watching movies and listening to techno music. I have had the pleasure of working with Arjun for several years in my day-job.

One of the new features of .NET Framework 4 and ASP.NET 4 is related to the handling of the client Id of the controls generated by the ASP.NET. With this new feature, the client Id’s can be more cleanly handled and also provides some level of control to the user to decide how the client Id’s would be generated.

Up to now we only had ClientId property which gave us the Unique Id of the control to be referred at client side. However this Id generated is very long and unpredictable which made life tough for developers doing client side programming. Also the Ids were generated based on their location in the control hierarchy. So if they were moved around or any modification on the page, the Ids would change and thereby break the Javascript code written based on them.

With ASP.NET 4.0, a new property “ClientIdMode” has been introduced which gives control to the developer upon the ID generation of the control and generate much cleaner HTML markup.

This property can be set at:

1. Control Level: This sets the ClientIdMode property for individual controls.

   <asp:panel id=”pnl” runat=”server” cssclass=”newStyle1″ ClientIDMode=”Static”> </asp:panel>

2. Page Level: Use this to set the CLientIdMode property for all the controls on the page.
   <%@ Page Language=”C#” ClientIDMode =”Inherit” AutoEventWireup=”true” CodeBehind=”Default.aspx.cs” Inherits=”WebApplication3.Cat” %>
3. Application Level (Web.Config): This sets the ClientIdMode for all the controls throughout the application.

   <system.web>

   <pages ClientIDMode=”Predictable”>

   </pages>

   </system.web>

The ClientIdMode property has 4 Mode Types to select for the Id generation.

For further explanation, let’s take an example.

ClientIDMode=”AutoId”

This is the same algorithm used in ASP.Net 2.0. In the above example, set the ClientIdMode for the “TextBox” to AutoId.

The output HTML would look like:

You can see the ID of the control is modified to refer the ContentPlaceHolder name with an AutoId just before the Id. AutoId mode is best when you don’t want to handle the uniqueness of the control id yourself and want to rely totally on ASP.NET.

ClientIDMode=”Static”

It makes the ClientId static. In other words, whatever the developer enters for the ID that will be used as is for the ClientId. So the output HTML in case of “Static” would be

This mode comes in handy when we do not want to change the ID of the controls on clientside. However the uniqueness of the ID would not be taken care by ASP.Net; in fact is the responsibility of the developer.

ClientIDMode=”Predictable”

This is primarily for data controls like Repeater, GridView etc. It concatenates the ID property of the control’s naming container however the ID would not have strings like “ctlxxx” prefixed. As databound controls generate multiple rows, a sequential number will be suffixed with the ClientId for uniqueness. This suffix/sequential number can be controlled using the ClientIdRowSuffix property of the control. For example, we can set the ClientIdRowSuffix property to the name of a data field which would be used as a suffix. The default value is suffix value if ClientIdRowSuffix property is not specified is 0.

For Predictable mode, if the markup is

With no ClientIdRowSuffix defined, the output would be:

In the above output, note that the auto incremented number is used to create the unique Ids. Now let’s say I want to use a data field to make it more meaningful. In that I case the ClientIdRowSuffix property would be used as shown below.

With this change, the output HTML would be

If we see the output, the Id is still somewhat long. We can shorten the ClientId of the child controls with a few permutations.

Set the ClientIdMode for the parent to “Static” and for Child to “Predictable”.

The output would then be:

ClientIDMode=”Inherit”

When using this algorithm, the control inherits the ClientIdMode property of its “Naming container” and not the parent container.
ASP.NET Markup:

The output would be:

The Inherit algorithm is a bit trickier than others and the documentation is slightly misleading. As per the documentation, “The control inherits the ClientIDMode setting of its parent control”. However if we see in the above example, the control derives its Id from the “Naming Container” i.e. “ContentPlaceHolder1”. As the ClientIdMode for “ContentPlaceHolder1” is set to Static and for the TextBox it is “Inherit”; the TextBox inherits the mode from the “ContentPlaceHolder1” and have the same ClientId as in markup i.e. “txtName”.

We all experience it everyday. Every time you surf the internet, it’s one script after another that gives you the content that you are looking for. Coders and programmers know it is the essence of every program.

One of the most effective ways to improve the efficiency and scalability in a program is to use loops. The programmer saves time by sending the script into a loop and therefore bypassing the need for more work to be spent adding things in.

In comparison to this technique, have you ever thought about loops in your daily life? How many things are you bypassing by reverting to your routine? Let’s take a look at some examples.

For

The most healthy pattern of a lifestyle is to use a For Loop. Although there is still repetition of the same-old-same-old, a limit is clearly defined. “I will only do this x number of times.” “I will only let this happen x number of times.”

We clearly set boundaries for the things that we do. Sometimes these situations are tedious and we don’t want to do them. Sometimes they are a guilty pleasure and we have to cut ourselves off. How many times have you said, “I’ll just have one more piece of cake?”

For Each

Like the For, the For Each loop also has a point of limitation. At some point, we will stop or cut ourselves off of whatever we have applied the loop to.

The downside of this one, is that this will fire with EACH new object – or in this case, EACH day. “For Each Day that I work here, I must complete 25 TPS Reports.” “For Each Day that I drive to work, I must commute 37 miles down the interstate.” “For Each Day that I am a stay at home parent, I must consume .7 gallons of coffee.”

These tasks don’t last all day and they certainly don’t repeat an extravagant number of times, but the thing is: they reoccur – Everyday! We get burnt out by the same thing happening every 24 hours. Things become so monotonous we can tell the time, to the second, by when things happen.

Do While

I was never a fan of the Do While because, in my opinion, it is for developers that can’t make up their mind. Something could happen that might make this sequence happen again, or it might not. But this is another daily routine style. Some of us live by the philosophy, “Try it. If you like it, do it again” and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But think about the hidden dangers of the Do While.

When you got hired into your first job, I’m sure the manager probably said, “This is a new opportunity for you! You never know what kind of experience you might get. Every day could be a different adventure.” So you start out and find out at the bottom of the first day, you have to come back and do it all over. You can put in your two weeks notice of leave, but you still have to wait for the Do While to let go.

Addictions are another danger. Trying something just once can capture you into a habit for a long time. Think of all the times you’ve said, “I’m just gonna do it and see what happens from there.” Chances are, you probably did it again.

While

Lastly is the While Loop. The most classic of them all. Not only are they used most commonly in applications, the While is what keeps us breathing. While !dead, keep living. This is the entire drive to our very lives.

I like to call this the Tolerance Loop. While Loops will terminate when a certain condition is no longer met – better said, when the tolerance of a condition is no longer met, a While Loop will terminate.

Some common phrases indicating the use of a While Loop are: “He is such a bad employee. When he breaks the final straw, I will fire him.” We let our tolerance of a condition go only so far before we have to cut it off.

End

All of these loops contain a crucial element: The Condition. The Conditions are the points at which we cross the line. They change from person to person and they change from day to day.

In code, the conditions are most often expressed by using variables. The reason they have that name is because they can be changed. We all use loops in our lives – it is the Human Function. But let your days vary. In short: focus on the variables in your life.

I have been using Facebook and LinkedIn for several years now. I recently started trying to use Twitter. I could not get into using Twitter because had to open another webpage just to tweet.  I stated seeing others update their status via TweetDeck, so I thought I would check it out.

I really like it!

What is TweetDeck

The website states, “TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more.”

Basically it is a consolidation tool to view and update all your social networks from one place. Awesome!

TweetDeck is available for iPhone and iPad or for a Mac, Linux or PC Desktop. Since I do not have an iPhone or iPad (read lots of tears), I am using the Desktop version on a PC.

Viewing Social Updates on TweetDeck

TweetDeck creates a column for each social network that I want to display. I can choose wide or narrow columns depending on how much I want to see at one time.

I display my Full News feed from Facebook, my Network Updates from LinkedIn and my All Friends feeds from my two Twitter accounts. There are a lot more options but this is all I need for now.

The the updates are displayed cleanly and are easy to read. I find it much easier to follow what is happening in real time now.

You can also view friend profiles just by clicking on their name in an update. You can set an option to view profiles inside a new column in TweetDeck or outside in your default browser. It will also display pictures in a window when a friend uploads pictures. This is cool!

Updating My Status on TweetDeck

TweetDeck allows me to easily set my status on all of my networks at once or I can choose to set them individually. This is smartly done by clicking on or off each network that you want to update. This is very easy and probably my favorite part.

It knows to limit Twitter tweets to 140 characters but if I want to update just Facebook it does not limit me by characters.

TweetDeck will automatically shorten links for me. It uses Bit.ly by default but it has several other options. It allows input of my Bit.ly API key so I can track my shortened links – very nice!

TweetDeck says it allows upload of pictures and video but I have not tried this yet.

My New Favorite Social Network Tool

TweetDeck is now my new favorite social network tool. Instead of opening Facebook first thing in the morning, I open TweetDeck. I am now a full-fledged tweeter and micro-blogger, thanks to TweetDeck.

The version of TweetDeck I am using at post time is v0.34.3 which means it is still in Beta testing. I can’t wait to see what improvements come in the full release.

If you are frustrated with trying to keep up with all the social networks, I recommend checking TweetDeck out.

Happy tweeting!

Hey – Let me know if you have any other social networking tool recommendations!

How does one start investing? This is a common question. I have a really simple answer: One has to start giving.

Finance

To invest money, I have to spend less than I make and save the leftover amount for a long time. This means I have to give my money to a savings account, mutual fund, stock broker, etc. I lose control of my money for a time with the hope (hopefully educated hope) that when I get it back it will have grown.

Family

To invest in my family, I have to give up some of my personal time and give it to my wife and my children. The more time I give to my family the greater relationship return I get. The more quality time I spend now building relationship with my girls when they are six and three, the more chance I have of a quality return on that investment when they are older.

Faith

To invest in my faith, I have to spend time with God. Time in prayer. Time in the Bible. This produces returns of building the character of Christ into my life. I also need to invest time cultivating relationships with those who can encourage me in my faith. Faith grows as others give input into my life of what God is showing them. Faith also requires giving of time to serve others. Faith without action is dead, and dead things do not grow! openbible.org has an excellent page of Bible verses for being a good steward.

Freedom

To invest in my freedom, I need to give up my free time and Vote! I need to spend time educating myself on how to have an influence in the political arena. This education will produce a return of quality voting and quality actions. Education will also return confidence that can allow us to start taking part in politics and not be afraid of it. If we will invest the time to get ourselves and our children involved we can gain returns of increased freedom.

Function

To invest in function for me right now means investing time learning more about blogging. In general we need to spend time improving our skills whatever they may be. Time reading, taking classes and practicing returns greater and greater excellence in our productions.

So the first key to investing in anything is to give. Give your money, your time and your efforts. Also the returns are often in proportion to the amount given.

In learning more about blogging, I have found that guest posting is a common way for fellow bloggers to help each other out. If you have a post you think would go well hear, please send it to me.

What will you get?

New readers of your work. In your post you can have two links back to your blog or website, one in the body and one in the author blurb at the top. The body link can link to any page on your site. The link in the author blurb must link to your home page. This can be a great way to bring new visitors to your site. And it provides links from my site back to yours which helps with search engine ranking.

What will I get?

I get new material with your excellent perspective. And, possibly I will get a much needed break from the need to publish consistently.

Guidelines for what I am looking for:

• Between 500 and 1000 words
• The post should be worth the investment of time to read it for inMessment readers
• The topic should fit within one of the inMessment Category topics: Faith, Family, Finance, Freedom, Function (these can be interpreted pretty broadly so this should not be a major hurdle – just let me know where you think it fits)
• Original work – it should not be posted anywhere else. (You can write a separate post on your site and link back to here – this is encouraged.)
• Only one link within the body of your post linking back to any page on your site – the author blurb will contain a link to your home page.

Final details…

If you want to post but can’t fit within the guidelines, let me know. We can probably work it out.

I do reserve the right to:

• Accept or reject all posts
• Edit for content and readability
• Format for look and feel
• Add links to previous inMessment posts that may relate

Send me a post and we will see how we can work together.

True authority – whether in public policy, business, Christian leadership, or wherever - benefits others.  Real authority serves.  It lifts.  It frees.

A good author uses authority in a good way.  She originates something.  He creates something.  An author moves in authority for the service and benefit of others.

There are messages that want to be heard.  The message releases the opportunity to move the dial, to change something for the better.  This is where the communicator, the author, finds passion … energy … joy.

Christian leaders communicate fresh Kingdom themes that advance the Creator’s purposes.  Business leaders communicate vision, addressing needs and multiplying value through their services and products.  Good public policy leaders envision a preferred future for their communities and region as well as the nation.  And then they effectively publish that vision to their constituencies.

Publishing the message of your life and work will accelerate the speed of trust.  It will multiply who you are and what you do.  Referrals and healthy connections will show up.  Credibility and integrity will be further established.

Do you sense resistance?  Act in the face of it.  Ship it.  Get it out the door.  They are waiting on your message …

Brian Del Turco blogs weekly on writing and the new publishing revolution at TrueNorth Publishing Services