Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Iterate, damn you! – “Just say “no” to mutable value types. They do weird things.”
• 6 Must Have Portable Applications For Web Developers – Great list of tools!
• 6 Cool #VS2010 Quick Tips you should know when working with VS 2010 – Visual Studio 2010 is super cool. Here are few features I love most in VS 2010.
• Videos: Webcast of my 101 VS tips in 55 mins via O’Reilly is now available

Database Development 

• August 2010 Tips – Recap – Lots of tips in August.
• Deleting sequential duplicates with TSQL – “I was recently given a du-duping task which was much more difficult than I anticipated and taxed my SQL brain to its limits.”
• Comma-delimited Column with SQL 2005 – “I seem to always find myself needing a script that will create a comma-delimited column.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software

• Moments in White – Interesting photos.
• Use These 5 Elements to Compose Great Photographs – “Composing a great photograph can be done in so many different ways that it seems more logical to talk about “guides” to composition rather than “rules” of composition.”
• Five Projects to Jumpstart Your Photography & Fight Photo Boredom – “It happens to everyone. If you have photographed for a long time you find yourself in the occasional rut.”
• Processing Black & Whites – “This is going to be a short tutorial on how I process some of my B&W’s and hopefully it will give you a little inspiration to try your own.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• How to Create the Ultimate Exercise Playlist – “Studies show that the rhythmic speed of your music influences your athletic performance. Here’s how to use that information to create the ultimate playlist for your workout.”
• 8 Simple Steps To Overcome Shyness – “Shyness is simply a feeling of nervousness or awkwardness when around other people.”
• Use OneNote to Make Memorizing Information Easier – “Whether you’re just getting started in the new school year or have been out of college for years, most of us have to regularly remember new information and often teach it to others. Here’s a neat way you can use OneNote to help you memorize information with digital flashcards.”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 08/31 | 09/01 | 09/05
• Movie Trailers: Resident Evil: Afterlife | Let Me In

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design 

• Debugging Tips with Visual Studio 2010 – “Today’s blog post covers some useful debugging tips that you can use with Visual Studio.”
• Linq – Sum – “In this blog post I will demonstrate basic usage cases for the Linq Sum function.”
• Null and blank values – “What’s the best way of writing robust code so that a variable can be checked for null and blank?”
• Using C#-style Events In Ruby – “I thought it would be fun to write something that allows me to define and use events in Ruby in a way that is very similar to how it works in C#. It actually is pretty easy to do this and i think it shows some of the power and flexibility of the Ruby language.”
• Howto Install and Run the Android Emulator – “I thought I would give a quick and easy guide for folks to follow, that might be interested in getting started with Android Development and running the Android Emulator.”
• Search and Navigation Tips/Tricks with Visual Studio – “Today’s blog post continues on from the Debugging Tips post I did last week, and covers some useful searching and navigation tips/tricks you can take advantage of within Visual Studio.”
• Divide a List into Equal Parts – “A recent post in the forums asked how to divide a generic list of items into separate lists of equal length.”

Database Development 

• Interesting T-SQL problems – “With this blog post I am hoping to start a new series of blogs devoted to the interesting T-SQL problems I encounter in forums during the week.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.
• Material from SHDNUG talk – Claudio Lassala shares his presentation materials. Good thing since I have class on Wed and Thu nights this semester.

Photography: Tips and Software 

• Use These Simple Techniques to Change the Composition of Your Photographs – “A lot of the time, people miss a well composed shot simply because they didn’t take the time to seek out a slightly better alternative.”
• Greenland – Beautiful photos. My favorite is the one with the brightly colored houses.
• Getting Your Work Online With a Photography Portfolio – “An internet-based photography portfolio if designed well can really bring a touch of class to your work and allow people to view it at their leisure.”
• Nikon D7000 to be the D90′s spiritual (and actual) successor? – “With the Nikon D3100 now official and out in the open, it’s time to tilt the rumor mills back towards a successor to the company’s much-loved D90.”
• 15 Must Have Photography Accessories Under $25* – “Photography can be an expensive hobby. Cameras cost a bundle and lenses for DSLRs often cost a lot more than the camera body.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• New Fireball on Jupiter Spotted By Skywatchers – “Amateur skywatchers have spotted what appeared to be a new fireball from yet another apparent impact on Jupiter – the third in 13 months for the gas giant.”
• Evernote: A Surprising Center for Collaboration – “…the web-based notebook tool’s evolution has made it far more useful as a base for collaboration…”
• Google Earth for Android Lets You Deep Sea Dive – “Google Earth for Android update with pinch to zoom, rotate, 3D topography, and a fancy new way to canvas the ocean floor.”
• 5 Intriguing Earth-Sized Planets – “The announcement today of a newfound group of alien planets orbiting a distant star has added another candidate for the growing list of potential Earth-sized worlds beyond our own solar system.”
• Watch Netflix On Your iPhone or iPhone Touch Without a Jailbreak or Hack – “To watch streaming Netflix content on your iPhone in the past you needed to jailbreak and hack it, but no longer. Today we look at the new official Netflix app that will now stream content to your iPhone or iPod Touch.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career 

• Five Thoughts about Making College Great – “…you end up finding your own path in life and it’s not a path dictated by your college major.”
• Speed-reading – “Here are some things that might help you read and learn faster.”
• Finding, Losing, and Reigniting Your Passion – Great post!
• Evernote As Your Resume Database – “The beauty here is that Evernote is not your resume, it is a personal, resume database.”

Social Networking and Blogging

• Social Bookmarking – The land time forgot – “In an online world filled with likes & retweets the lowly bookmark is in a state of severe neglect.”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 08-24 | 08-26

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

•  .NET X12 Parser – A .NET C# implementation of an X12 Parser.
• Getting Started with PowerConsole – An extension called PowerConsole that is basically a PowerShell console window that lives inside of the Visual Studio. – interesting.
• Learning Scala – Great introduction to Scala.
• 13 books for a .NET Summer reading list – Interesting list of books.
• C# reference types are passed by value! – “There are two types of objects, the value types (structs) where the variable is the object and the reference types which only points to the object.”
• Videos: PowerShell in C#Application

Database Development

• Be wary of using UNC paths in SSIS packages – Good warning.
• Convert VarChar to Currency in SQL Server – “To convert a varchar to currency, the recommended practice is to do the formatting in the front end.”
• SQL Joins – “This article is written to describe all the different types of Sql Joins.”
• Snippets:  Count the number of occurrence of characters in the string | Function to Retrieve First Word of Sentence

Community/Technology Events & Training

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.
• BarCamp Dallas Review – “I went to my first Barcamp today, held at Improving Enterprises in Dallas.”

Photography: Tips and Software 

• Landscape Photography For the Serious Amateur – “some tips which I hope others who are just starting out in the world of landscape photography will find useful.”
• Five Great Photography Magazines You Should be Reading – “The Internet is an amazing thing, and we take pride in providing you with content to help you with your passion for photography…”
• Is Using ‘Auto’ Mode Cheating? – “Sure, the camera get’s to decide on some of the fun stuff, but in the end, it doesn’t matter what the camera did, it matters what the photographer did.”
• Nikon D3100 Announcement – “Nikon announced the D3100 and four new lenses. The D3100 is a game changer for those who shoot video and here’s why.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 12 – “Here’s the 12th and for now, final installment of my fast photo tips.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career 

• What’s Stopping You? – “Sometimes simply being aware of something can change the way you approach it.”
• The Shy Connector – Great presentation!

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Cool pictures I run across: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05
• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 08-17 | 08-18
• Movie Trailers: Monsters | Skyline | Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Microsecond and Millisecond .NET Timer – A microsecond and millisecond timer in C# that is used in a similar way to the .NET System.Timers.Timer.
• Enum.TryParse – “If you work with Enum values, you may often need to convert between the Enum, an integer representation of the Enum.”
• Enums in C# – Mapping enum constants with user friendly names.
• Programming Languages Should be Simple – “I am disappointed with many of the newer languages which I earlier thought showed great promise of making programming easier, quicker, and more robust. And it boils down to one thing. Simplicity in learning.”
• Taking steps in the right direction: WebMatrix/Razor learning path – “Whether you’re new to web development or moving from another platform or language, such as PHP or classic ASP, you’ll want to know as few key languages/technologies before getting started and diving into a new web development stack.”
• Visual Studio Tips: Search in Class View

Database Development 

• A deadlock was detected while trying to lock variables in SSIS – “I’ll try and explain a few key concepts about variable locking.”
• The Power of Reporting Services Subscriptions – Processing Options and Parameters – “You’ve decided to harness the power of SQL Server Reporting Services subscriptions – congratulations!”
• Writing IF-ELSE code in TSQL – “The following are the examples on how to use the IF..ELSE clause effectively for various purposes.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software 

• 10 Quick, Easy and Intuitive Tips to Improve your Photography – Great article!
• Embrace the Weather with Your Photography – “Unlike other hobbies, photographers can go out in all weathers and make the best of a bad situation.”
• Shutter Speed Numbers – “Shutter speed can be a bit difficult for many digital photographers to wrap their heads around.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 11 – “Here’s the 11th installment of my fast photo tips.”
• Photographing the Perfect Landscape – “Rolling hills and vales, enchanting areas of woodland, rugged shorelines and a dappled spring meadow can all become the most obvious of subjects for the landscape shooter, often yielding strongly emotive and awe-inspiring results.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• Export Your Evernote Notes in HTML or MHT Format – “Here’s how you can export everything stored in Evernote in HTML or MHT format.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career 

• How to Build Self Esteem – “One of the first things to go, when our self-esteem is low, is our perception of our strengths.”
• 12 Tips for Getting Regular Exercise – “Exercise is a KEY to happiness. Research shows that people who exercise are healthier, more energetic, think more clearly, sleep better, and have delayed onset of dementia.”
• Tips for Handling Information Overload: Too Much Content – “The biggest problem with information overload for most people is that it is cumulative and it comes in from a variety of sources.”
• Top 10 Ways Your Brain Is Sabotaging You (and How to Beat It) – “Here’s a helpful list of the mind’s weird ways.”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 08-12
• Movie Trailers: Tron-Legacy | Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Android Development Environment – Instructions on setting up an environment for Android programming.
• Microsecond and Millisecond .NET Timer – A microsecond and millisecond timer in C# that is used in a similar way to the .NET System.Timers.Timer.
• Developing an Android Application – “After setting up your Android development environment, it’s time you implement your first (simple) Android application.”
• DateTime.Now Causes Boxing – “Perhaps you weren’t aware of it, but every time you access DateTime.Now, you cause to a dynamic memory allocation through the boxing of an Int32 variable.”
• The Weekly Source Code 55 – “NotABlog: A Local XML-RPC MetaWebLog Endpoint That Lies To Windows Live Writer”
• Free C# and VB.NET Training Videos – Good list of free tutorials.
• WebMatrix: What is it, Why use it, and Who’s it for? – “WebMatrix is a free, lightweight Web development stack that makes it easy to build web sites that can grow with you, from installation to product deployment & maintenance.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software 

• Hitting the Mother Road – Very cool podcast interview with a couple (both photographers) who took a month long road trip of the entire Route 66.
• The Three Types of Photographic Criticism and How to Handle Them – “Part of taking photographs is the enjoyment you get with sharing them.”
• How to Make Your DIY Water Droplet Studio – “This tutorial will focus on how to create a homemade Water Droplet Studio to get those great macro shots of a water drop splashing against still water, creating an explosion of colors.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 10 – Here’s the tenth installment of my fast photo tips. 

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• 7 IT career rules worth breaking -  “It may feel especially risky to break the rules in today’s down job market, but blindly adhering to the status quo can actually hinder your career.”
• Jailbreak Your iPhone or iPod Touch with iOS 4 the Easy Way – “In case you haven’t heard the news over the past couple of days, there is now an incredibly easy way to jailbreak your iPod Touch or iPhone running iOS 4.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career 

• 10 Keys To Becoming a Better Communicator – “It’s easy for us to accuse others of being poor communicators, poor listeners or poor speakers, but the thing about communication is that it’s not one-sided – it’s 2-way.”
• 7 Simple Ways To Say “No”  – “Rather than avoid it altogether, it’s all about learning the right way to say no.” 

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny:  08-03 | 08-04 | 08-05 | 08-07
• Movie Trailers:  The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Top 20 Java Websites – Good list. I am sure I will be checking a few of these sites out while taking Advanced Java in the Fall.
• New C# Yellow Book Now Available – “The new version of my famous C# Yellow Book is now available for download.”
• How to add method in Sealed class – Nice and in-depth with lots of code samples.
• Links to Scott Guthrie’s Using LINQ to SQL Tutorials – Looks like a great set of tutorials.
• F# asyncronous programming – “Async programming in functional languages such as F# is such a breeze….”
• 12 Absolutely and Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers – Nice list of utilities!

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software 

• Don’t Get Hung Up on Photography Gear – “Having the best photography gear does not mean you will get the best photographs.”
• Prevent dSLR Camera Shake With These 3 Techniques – “Let’s face the facts; lugging a tripod isn’t always a fun way to take pictures.”
• 8 Things to Inspire You to Keep Shooting & Sharing Your Photography – Great article. Very inspiring.
• Five Photo Ideas for Shooting Close to Home – “You pick up your gear bag, take a step towards the door and then stop. What are you going to shoot? The inspiration bank is suddenly empty.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 9 – “Here’s the ninth installment of my fast photo tips.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• Introducing Wolfram|Alpha Widgets for Everyone, Everywhere – “The beta version of Wolfram|Alpha Widgets is here! They’re free, mini apps that are easy to make, customize, and share on your blog, website, and social networks.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• Don’t Get Hung Up on Photography Gear – “Having the best photography gear does not mean you will get the best photographs.”
• Prevent dSLR Camera Shake With These 3 Techniques – “Let’s face the facts; lugging a tripod isn’t always a fun way to take pictures.”
• 8 Things to Inspire You to Keep Shooting & Sharing Your Photography – Great article. Very inspiring.
• Five Photo Ideas for Shooting Close to Home – “You pick up your gear bag, take a step towards the door and then stop. What are you going to shoot? The inspiration bank is suddenly empty.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 9 – “Here’s the ninth installment of my fast photo tips.”

Blogging and Social Networking

• ChumpDump is an interesting Twitter unfollow game called CD . Basically, the game selects, at random, one of your followers and you, based on some info, choose to keep or dump them. Here are a few reviews: 1 | 2 | 3

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• How to Turn Your Backyard into a Bird Refuge – “If you’d like to see more wildlife of the feathered kind in your backyard but had written off attracting birds as too time-consuming, expensive, or complicated, this simple guide will help you get started without much fuss or cost.”
• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 07-25 | 07-31
• Movie Trailers:  Scott Pilgrim vs The World | Tron: Legacy

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Great Link Blog Sources

• The Simple Dollar – Weekly Roundup
• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week
• Brian Auer (Epic Edits) – Link Roundup
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• The Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools just got better… – Looks like a nice update.
• C#: System.Lazy<T> and the Singleton Design Pattern – “Make no mistake, Singletons can be abused and are often over-used — but occasionally you find a Singleton is the most elegant solution.”
• A Simple C# Labyrinth and Maze – An application and algorithms for best path in maze.
• Using a DataRader like a list in F# – “This article demonstrates a technique how you can write recursive algorithms in F# using a Reader instead of a list, so you don’t have to load all your data into memory first.”
• Programming languages for beginners – “Rather than outright recommend a language I thought I’d summarize some of the things I think of when recommending a first language.”

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• Search for two keywords within the maximum distance of one word between them – “This challenge is all about searching for two keywords in a string with a maximum distance of ‘one word’ between them.”
• VALUES() and Long Parameter Lists – “To make progress as a relational Database programmer, you have to think in terms of sets, rather than lists, arrays or sequential data.”
• Calculate Age from Date Of Birth using SQL Server – “Here’s a query to calculate the Age in Years, Months, Days, Hours and Minutes.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

• Houston Area User Group Meetings – This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.
• Time for Dallas TechFest! – Friday, July 30, 2010

Photography: Tips and Software

• Five of the Best Photography Tips Ever That Don’t Involve Gear or Camera Technique – “Some of my audience don’t like these tips as much because they require you to stop and invest your soul into a photo.”
• 25 Stark and Remarkable Desert Landscapes – “While many people think of deserts as boring and featureless, those of us who are into photography know that they can be the subject of some of the most remarkable images.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 8 – Here’s the eighth installment of my fast photo tips.
• 8 On-Camera Flash Tips: How To Get Better Lighting From Your On-Camera Flash – Great article on flash.
• How To Find The North Star And Why You’d Want To – “…as I’ve traveled I’ve been amazed at how many people, while sitting around a campfire or on a beach, can’t find the North Star or Southern Cross.”
• Using Negative Space – “In Japan there is a principle called (Yohaku-no-bi.) This loosely translates in English to the beauty of empty space – looking for what is implied by the absence of something.”
• Three Filters Every Landscape Photographer Should Always Carry and Why – “Shooting landscapes is obviously all about the location, however another major factor that plays into the overall photo is the light, time of day and what you choose to do with the available light.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• Add Dropbox to the Send To Menu in Windows 7, XP, and Vista – Dropbox is one of the coolest utilities available today to backup and share files and folders online. If you want easier access to it, you might want to add it to the Send To Menu in the Context Menu.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• There is No Substitute for Hard Work – Good read!

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 07-20
• Movie Trailers:  Monsters

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Great Link Blog Sources

• The Simple Dollar – Weekly Roundup
• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week | 7-16
• Brian Auer (Epic Edits) – Link Roundup
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Thoughts on WebMatrix – “The WebMatrix announcement last week triggered a range of reactions on Twitter. It also brought back some personal memories.”
• Types and Collections in C# 3.0 .NET – “Defines collections and types and explains their use in the C# 3.0 language.”
• DevCheatSheet.com, The Developer focused cheat sheet aggregator – Awesome!
• NOSQL Movement!! – “Think of NOSQL as NOT ONLY SQL and not NO T-SQL and your blood pressure will remain in stable condition.”
• Tutorial Videos: Parallel Programming w/ Task Parallel Library | Colin Melia – Windows Phone 7
• Visual Studio Tips:  Reset All Your Development Settings

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• SQL Server and case sensitivity – “Case sensitive comparisons do come up from time to time. By default, SQL Server creates case insensitive databases.”
• The Self Join – Inner Join and Outer Join – “Self Join has always been an note-worthy case.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software

• Five Outdoor Portrait Photo Tips – “Here are five tips aimed at beginners that will improve your outdoor portraiture.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 7 – “Here’s the seventh installment of my fast photo tips.”
• Three Great Photos and How They Were Taken – “One of the most important abilities you can have as a photographer is deciphering how other shooters captured their photos.”
• A Simple Method for Creating Composite Photos – “Composite photos are made up of two or more different images.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• Android App Inventor lets you be the developer (video) – “Google is following in Nokia’s footsteps today by offering its users a simple-to-use DIY app maker.”
• I Bought An iPad… And I’m Returning It – “A while back I posted that I would buy an iPad when I found a very specific type of app for it. Well I found that app thanks to the comments on the blog post and I’ve had my iPad for about 24 hours now…”
• Tutorial Videos: Awesome Dropbox Tricks 

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• 7 Tips for Making the Most of Your Coworking Space – “Here are some of my favorite coworking tips.”
• 9 Expert Tips For Better Writing – Good tips!
• Want To Be Happy at Work? Dozens of Tips, Plus a Few Quizzes, To Consider. – “One issue that comes up frequently in the area of happiness is — no surprise — the relationship of work to happiness.”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Rangers Ballpark In Arlington – Cool wallpaper
• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 07-15
• Movie Trailers:  The Town | Due Date

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Great Link Blog Sources

• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week
• Brian Auer (Epic Edits) – Link Roundup
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• Some Good Visual Studio Tips from Deborah Kurata: Accessing any Window from the Keyboard | Pinning Projects on Start Page
• Starring Gists – Nice new feature.
• Difference betweenTryParse and Convert in C# – Good post on the difference between C#’s TryParse and Convert.
• WebMatrix – Microsoft’s new web tool – “WebMatrix is everything you need to build Web sites using Windows.”
• July 9th Links – ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Silverlight, WPF, VS 2010
• The Weekly Source Code 54 – Can’t have Multiple Attributes of the Same Type when using a TypeDescriptor
• Designing with Patterns: Sketch Notes – Love sketch notes. Just wish I could draw…
• Tutorial Videos: Going Out Of Browser w/ Silverlight
• Visual Studio Tips:  Navigate Among Errors in the Output Window | Sorting Items in the Toolbox

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• Using Indexed Views to Replace Triggers – “…think triggers have their place, they just need to be used with care. One reason for this is that triggers are synchronous. That is – trigger actions will block a command from returning to the client until the the trigger’s actions have completed.”
• Using OVER, PARTITION, and RANK – “I wanted to try using a new method, OVER, with PARTITION and RANK.”
• Running Visual Studio 2010 Generated Deployment Scripts in SSMS – “There are two options to deploy a database project.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software

• How to Review & Clean-up Your Images Quickly and Effectively – “Almost any scanned image will have unwanted “stuff” that needs to be removed. Digital cameras are generally far better in this regard, but they can suffer from similar problems…”
• 36 Fantastic Fireworks Photographs! – Beautiful photos!
• Want To Make A Better Photograph? Do It Again – “If I have ever made an image that didn’t rock my world, I found the simplest and surest way to solve that problem was to do it again.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 6 – “Here’s the sixth installment of my fast photo tips.”

Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

• 5 Celestial Lights to Brighten July’s Nights – “Five of the sky’s brightest and most dazzling lights will make appearances in the western sky on several nights this month in a promising celestial show for skywatchers with clear skies.”
• Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks – “Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career 

• 9 Ways To Manage People Who Bother You – Great advice.
• Productive Sleep: 5 Things You Should Know – “How we sleep affects our memory, learning ability, mood and health.”
• Arrow-Tip #63 Outlook Has a Journal? – “Probably the least well know not to mention the most misunderstood folder in Outlook is the Journal folder.”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 07-04 | 07-05 | 07-06
• Movie Trailers:  Vampires Suck | Resident Evil Afterlife

–

Great Link Blog Sources

• The Simple Dollar – Weekly Roundup
• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week
• Brian Auer (Epic Edits) – Link Roundup
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

• TryParse vs Convert – “question: “lets say you had to pick up a query string param in WebForms/ASP.NET and make it an Int32… would use Convert or TryParse?” This is a very practical question, and given the choices it is interesting to examine for the best practice.”
• C# Fundamentals: Beware Of Implicit Hiding – “I wanted to start off with a problem that I’ve seen bite many developers over the year because it’s one of those areas where C#’s default behavior differs substantially from that of its predecessors (C++ and Java).”
• Language-Integrated Query | Simple LINQ Queries – Looks like the start of a good tutorial on LINQ to Objects.
• Ten recent programming books that will make you a better developer – “Programming books can be enlightening and provide guidance while one attempts to hone their craft in the pursuit of mastery.”
• The Nullable<T> Structure – “One of the problems with most value types is the inability to specify that they contain an undefined value.”
• The Weekly Source Code 53 – “Get’er Done” Edition – XML in the left hand becomes HTTP POSTs in the right hand
• Tutorial Videos: MVC Music Store Part 1: Intro, Tools, and Project Structure | MVC Music Store Part 2: Controllers | MVC Music Store Part 3: Views and ViewModels
• Visual Studio Tips: Improving Performance by Changing the Visual Experience | Cycle Through Your Open Tool Windows | Closing Tool Windows

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

• TSQL Beginners Challenge 10 – Clean up alphanumeric strings by splitting digits and letters into separate columns – “This challenge refers to sanitizing text data. Your task is to read an alphanumeric string and create two output columns one containing all the digits found in the input string and the other with all the letters of the English Alphabet. ”
• Binary Trees in SQL – “A number of hierarchies and networks are most convenently modelled as binary trees.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

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

Photography: Tips and Software

• The 5 Worst Habits of New Photographers – “Avoid these 5 habits that could negatively affect your photography and photos and enjoy the hobby so many of us love.”
• Scott Bourne’s Fast Photo Tips – Week 4 – “Here’s the fourth installment of my fast photo tips.”

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

• 5 Simple Ways To Be A Better Listener – “In my journey toward better communication, here are 5 ways I’ve found to help reduce the distractions we face in communication.”
• Where to Start Your Minimalist Movement – Here are five simple steps you can start your minimalism from.
• Maintaining Inbox Zero – “What about those every day emails that seem to stick in your Inbox either because you don’t know where to put them or you’re worried they will fall through the cracks if you move them?”

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else 

• Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 06-23 | 06-24
• Movie Trailers:  Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows | Little Fockers | Predators

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Great Link Blog Sources

• The Simple Dollar – Weekly Roundup
• Rick Minerich – F# Discoveries This Week
• Brian Auer (Epic Edits) – Link Roundup
• John Clayton – Weekly Web Nuggets
• Jason Haley – Interesting Finds
• Alvin Ashcraft – Morning Dew
• Steve Pietrek – Links
• Arjan Zuidhof – LinkBlog
• Mike Gunderloy – Double-Shot
• David Vidmar – Links of the week
• Sam Gentile – New and Notable
• Craig Bailey – On Microsoft
• Chris Alcock – Morning Brew
• Jonathan Gardner – Links
• Greg Duncan – A Feed You Should Read
• Johnathan Giles – Java Desktop Links of the Week

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Happy Surfing.

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