Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

This is is my weekly link post.  It is here that I note the web sites and posts that I have run across that interest me – whether it be related to work or play.

Application Development/Design

• Scott Hanselman has posted a great article about the return of Terrarium titled Learning Opportunity – .NET Terrarium is back!.
• Karl Seguin talks about the .NET Extension Library.
• Ran across a good article on Dev102 that describes How To Search The File System Using LINQ Queries.
• Scott Guthrie provides an extreme amount of information on MVC in the post ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 Release (Part 1).
• John Kelvie gives his point of view for Effective Code Reviews.
• Chris Pietschmann tells us how to Enhance Enums and use Extension Methods.
• Ran across a good article on Delegates in .NET on DotNetSlackers.
• Walt Ritscher has posted an article on Understanding the x:Class attribute and Visual Studio 2008.
• David Cumps does a great job of illustrating The Facade Pattern.
• Gustav Duarte has posted a great article titled Lucky to be a Programmer.
• Ran across a good article on Digcode titled Conditional Operator (?) vs. Null Coalescing Operator (??) in C#.
• Mohammad Azam looks at several frameworks in his post Hello World in Ten Minutes. 
• Tutorial Video(s): Shelving Source in TFS ~  Introduction to LinqPad – Intermediate Usage
• Article(s) from Code project: Generic list sort function ~ Understanding Extension Methods ~ Delegates, events & namespaces using C# ~ IEnumerable & IEnumerator interfaces
• Snippet(s): Auto Dropdown ~  Nullable Int
• Tip(s):  Ctrl+Alt+B to open the Breakpoint Window

SQL Server & PowerShell

• Jeff Atwood has posted a great and descriptive article on normalizing titled Maybe Normalizing Isn’t Normal.
• Kenneth Downs informs us about History Tables. “A history table allows you to use one table to track changes in another table. While the basic idea is simple, a naive implementation will lead to bloat and will be difficult to query.” 

 Community & Technology Events

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.
• Houston Tech Fest – Sessions List

Internet, Software and General Technology

• Scott Dorman has posted a great list of Developer Tools.

Blogging and Social Networking

• Dumb Little Man lists 10 Awesome Tools That’ll Make You An Expert Twitter User.
• The Twitter Developer blog answers questions about Summize and The Future of the Twitter API.
• Craig Bailey has posted a very in-depth and well thought out article On Twitter and the Death of Blogging. I still read a lot of blogs, but have been finding that I learn about a number of those blog entries on Twitter rather than my feed aggregator.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• Mike Gunderloy has posted 5 Ways to Rescue and Unproductive Day on Web Worker Daily. All of the points are good, but I especially agree with #2. He links to another great article on Personalizing Your Music for Productivity by Anne Zalenka.
• Dustin Wax has posted an article titled Back to Basics: Your Task List.  "One minute, you’re at wit’s end, your attention divided 60 different ways, with no idea what to do next, and the next minute you’re in control, with everything neatly plotted."

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

• Joss Whedon has created Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog.  I found this very entertaining. 
• I ran across this X-Files Mythology for Dummies.  Looks like a way to brush up before the new movie starts next week.
• Movie Trailers:  Watchmen (very cool) ~ Body of Lies ~ Terminator: Salvation (Sweet)
• Funny Dilberts this week: 7/20

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Great Link Blog Sources

• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Christopher Steen – Link Listing
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Chihn Do – Finds of the Week
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Alvin Ashcraft – Daily Links
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Darren Stokes – Visual Studio Links
• Chris Love – Links of the Week
• Michael Koby – Daily Links
• Dilip Krishnan – Weekly SOA/MS Crumbs

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Happy Surfing.