Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week. Hope everyone had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Application Development/Design

• Visual Studio 2010: Test Driven Development – Good TDD tutorial.
• The Weekly Source Code 49 – SmallBasic is Fun, Simple, Powerful Programming for Kids and Adults
• What is a Senior Developer? – Eric Smith explains the characteristics of a Senior Developer.
• Reflection in .NET – Great tutorial on Reflection.
• Char Sequence: Data immutability in Java – “Shared mutable state is one of the murkiest areas of concurrent programming in Java.” 
• Visual Studio Tips: Using the New IntelliSense: Keywords

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• Querying the StackOverflow Data Dump – “Every month, StackOverflow dumps out their data to XML. You can import the data dump into SQL Server, and the whole thing is less than 10gb as of this writing.”
• A Simple Refactoring – Avoiding Table Scans – “Refactoring SQL code can be pretty easy. Just like refactoring any other programming language, sometimes you have to look around to find the culprit.”
• Top 10 Reasons Why Access Still Doesn’t Rock – I LOVE Access….NOT!

Community/Technology Events & Training

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings. 
• Presentations – Thomas Larock provides the materials from his DBA Survivor presentation.
• Presentation Materials for my C# 4.0 Dynamic Presentation – Markus Egger has posted his demos from this month’s HDNUG meeting.

• Access Your Dropbox Files in Google Chrome – I’ve started using Dropbox lately and really like it. I will need to check out this extension.
• Google Wave in Action: Real-World Use Case Studies – Includes some great everyday uses of Wave.
• APOD: 2010 February 14 – Field of Rosette – The Rosette region is about 5,000 light years distant. The entire field can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn).
• Saturn’s Moon Does Harbor an Ocean, New Evidence Suggests – “Evidence from a 2008 plume fly-through by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has turned up short-lived water ions that suggest liquid water does indeed exist inside the moon.”
• Jupiter and Venus to Cross Paths Feb. 16 – “On Feb. 16 there will be a celestial “bait and switch” as Venus replaces Jupiter as the evening star.”

Blogging and Social Networking 

• Twitter daily tip news – Great tip of the day twitter accounts. -Thanks @JohnDCook — http://twitter.com/JohnDCook
• Introducing Google Buzz – Buzz is the word of the week!
• Google Buzz Explained – Good in-depth article on Google Buzz.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• Put Things in Their Place to Get Organized – “The single-most important step you can take when organizing is ensuring you have a place to put everything.”
• Getting Ready for Job Interviews – I picked up several ideas from this article. Great read.

Health, Fitness and Recipes

• Nine Things You Can Do Every Day – Even When You Can’t Do Anything Else – I’m thinking 6, 7 and 10 apply most to me…

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

• Clash of the Titans Featurette – Meet the Characters – Can’t wait for this movie…
• Movie Trailers: The Last Airbender | Alice in Wonderland