Author: Eric D. Burdo Page 5 of 6

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
I could still hear him frantically clicking the mouse.
Was he still building websites? Could it be PPC?
I looked at the clock-it said quarter to three.

For months he has said it will soon change our life,
but faith can be hard for an IMer’s wife.
The stockings were hung and we’d put up the tree,
with no help from him, just the children and me.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while their daddy was posting on more forum threads.
I don’t own a kerchief, but had jammies on
and I hoped he would come on to bed before dawn.

When all at once there arose such a clatter,
I had to get up to see what was the matter!
I raced to the den and peeked ‘round the door,
his chair was turned over and lay on the floor.

The shade on the desk lamp was sitting askew,
and my dear IMer was nowhere in view.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but my wild-eyed IMer who shouted “Come here!”

He’d been on the floor and I didn’t know why;
I thought he was hurt and I started to cry.
He gave me a smile that could not have been cuter
and drying my tears I approached the computer.

More rapid than eagles his words, how they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called out these names;
On Google! On Yahoo! On MSN, too!
With Adwords, and Adsense and articles too!

To the top of the list! To the number one spot!
I’ve launched my campaign and the sales are red-hot!
His eyes, how they twinkled, his dimples so merry,
I wondered if he had been nipping the sherry!

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
soon let me know I had nothing to dread.
He laughed and he whistled, just like St.Nick,
as the sales just kept coming, click after click.

He sprang from his chair and he hugged me real tight
and he whispered these words on that Christmas Eve night.
“I found a great system to rinse and repeat…
and from this Christmas forward our lives will be sweet.”

I’d heard this before so I asked how he knew.
He gave me a folder – it was labeled CommBlue.
He spoke not a word, but went straight back to work.
I felt bad for the times I had called him a jerk.

That one little site became two, and then three,
and I knew we would soon be financially free.
So to all you CommBluers, don’t give up the fight…
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Written by Honey and posted on one of the Commission Blueprint (aka, CommBlue) forums. If you haven’t checked out Commission Blueprint, and want to get into Affiliate / Internet Marketing, I suggest you check it out today!

Christmas Fun – The Night Before Startup

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.12.09

In Misc

‘Twas the night before startup
and all through the house
not a program was working,
there clicked not a mouse

The users were nestled all snug in their beds
with visions of systems alive in their heads.
The programmers slumped round their screens in despair
and felt that a miracle now would be fair.

Then from the back office there rose such a chatter
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter
and there to my marveling eyes did appear
a wonder programmer with a six pack of beer.

His resume glowed with experience so rare
he turned out great code with that bit-pusher’s flair.
He spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
turning specs into code like a sitcom berserk.

A wink of his eye and a nod of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
More smoothly than salesmen his programs they come;
he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

On update, on add, on inquire and delete,
on batch jobs, on closing on functions complete.
His eyes all glazed over, hands nimble and lean,
from long days and nights spent in front of a screen.

He tapped and he hammered, he nothing did shirk,
turning specs into code; then he turned with a smirk,
and laying his finger upon Enter key,
the system came up and worked perfectly.

The updates updated, the deletes all deleted,
the inquiries inquired and the closing completed.
He tested each whistle, he tested each bell,
and with nary an append it all had gone well.

The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
the client’s last changes were even included.
Then the user explained in apocalypt font,
"It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want."

Author unknown… Just some Christmas fun I was sent via email. Thanx Chad!

Being Self Employed

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.12.06

In Entrepreneur

Being self-employed (not entirely by choice), I’m dabbling in things on the side to bring in some extra income.

I’ve been buying and selling on ebay, trying my hand at internet marketing, and doing surveys (yes, the online kind where you get paid). I’ve made a couple of hundred dollars now (over several months) and some Amazon gift cards (always useful).

So far, the best place I’ve found to do surveys is SurveySavvy. They pay for many different types of surveys, and some of the surveys can lead to a “focus group” that has it’s own payments (like the Amazon gift cards I’ve been getting).

So, if you want to do surveys, head on over to SurveySavvy and sign up. You complete a couple of “profile surveys”, and then you get the paid survey links in your email. :)

Microsoft Roadshow – Augusta Maine

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.11.15

In Misc

The Northeast Roadshow will be in Augusta this year (well, the Maine venue is). It’s scheduled for December 16th (a Tuesday). They’ve moved the venue, since the previous location was packed to overflowing.

Chris Bowen (one of the speakers) has more details (including the agenda) on his website. I’m planning on attending.

New Input Devices on the horizon?

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.11.15

In User Interfaces

Chris Harrison (a PhD student at CMU) is working on a new input method. Scratching.

Yes, scratching.

Johnny Chung Lee (from the Wii remote fame) posted an article with some videos. The technique looks rather interesting. You can scratch and tap on a surface, and use it to control your computer, PDA, etc.

The full article is here (including a video of the scratch method).

Scratch Input and Low-Cost Multi-spectral material sensor

Here is another user interface. It uses a space and time method to keep track of what you were doing. The video explains it better than I can.

SpaceTime

Want to play the old Super Nintendo games?

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.10.07

In Misc

I started to use ZSNes. But I found that the development had pretty much died about 1.5 years ago. So I checked to see what was good, but still had active development. I found BSNes. It doesn’t play all the games, but it does play most of the ones I want to play.

You can download the emulator here. I’ll let you find your own Roms. I’ve been playing Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda and Mechwarrior no problems.

bsnes – Super Nintendo Emulator

Here are the system requirements. They are a little hefty compare to many emulators, but, it plays very smooth on my dual-core machine. :)

Minimum system requirements:

2ghz Athlon 64 or Core Solo
32mb RAM free

Recommended system requirements:

2.4ghz Core 2 Duo
64mb RAM free
Video card that supports Direct3D9+
Sound card that supports non-standard sampling rates natively (32khz, 64khz, …)

One quirk I found. It didn’t automatically detect and use my MadCatz XBox 360 controller. All I had to do was configure the “joypad” and it worked fine.

PHP Development? From a .NET Perspective

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.09.24

In Misc

I’m a .NET Developer. Primarily Visual Basic, but I’ve worked in C# before too. I’ve also done some RPG (on the AS 400) and some PHP.

I’ve recently been contacted to do some contract PHP/MySQL work again. So I started looking to see what was available for IDE tools. I wanted something that would appear familiar to me. I didn’t want to have to relearn the PHP language, AND learn a new IDE.

I found VS.PHP – It’s a PHP IDE that sits in the Visual Studio IDE. They have several versions depending on what you need. I chose the Standalone version, since I develop in a Virtual PC Windows XP box. I didn’t want to install my VS 2008 license there, and not be able to use VS 2008 under Vista (where I do most of my .NET development.

I’ve only completed some sample projects, but so far, I’m impressed. The IDE is familiar to me, and I get syntax checking, intellisense and the F5 functionality to test. Reminds me a lot of doing ASP.Net development. I’m still using the free trial, but for the price of $99, it’s a definite “Must Buy” if I get the contract.

For the MySQL front-end, I’m trying MySQL-Front. It has a trial version, so I’m using that. So far, it’s decent. The UI is a little old, but fairly easy to figure out. I’ll be looking around for other visual front-ends for MySQL. I like the SQL Server Management Studio, and I’d like something similar for MySQL.

Are you running in the IDE?

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.09.23

In Code

Two methods, one for .NET (Visual Basic, but easily adjusted for C#) and the other for VB Classic (VB 5 and 6)

To check and see if the .NET code is running from the IDE:

More specifically, the .NET method checks to see if there is a debugger attached. It is possible to attach a debugger to a compiled exe, so this would return True.

<code>
If System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached Then
‘This is a way to see if we are running in the IDE.

End If
</code>

And, if you’re using VB Classic, you can use this:

<code>
‘Since Debug commands are compiled OUT, this will never return an error
‘when the code is compiled.
Private Function IsDebugMode as Boolean
On Error Resume Next
Debug.Assert 1/0
IsDebugMode = (Err.Number <> 0)
On Error Goto 0
End Function
</code>

Northeast 2008 Roadshow

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.09.23

In Misc

Chris Bowen and Jim O’Neil are on the road (starting today).

I’ll be at the Augusta show, on October 3rd. I’m definitely looking forward to the RoboLunch.

Here is the address for the Augusta show (you can find the other addresses when you register).

Riverview Psychiatric Center

250 Arsenal Drive
Sebago Room Augusta Maine 04332-0011
United States

Here are the available dates, with the link to registration:

Burlington, VT: September 23rd [registration] New Venue

New City! Albany, NY: September 24th [registration]

Rochester, NY: September 25th [registration] New Venue

Augusta, ME: October 3rd [registration] New Venue

Farmington, CT: October 14th [registration]

Waltham, MA: October 15th [registration]

The Agenda:

8:30 – Registration

9:00 – Understanding the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Abstraction is frequently used to create difficult-to-appreciate artwork, but when applied to software, abstractions can improve flexibility, independence, and the ability to compose higher-level concepts. ADO.NET Entity Framework, now shipping as part of Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1, helps you create models of your data that enable a familiar object-oriented programming experience. Entities map flexibly to data sources while providing insulation from schema changes at the same time. LINQ makes an appearance as well, using the familiar syntax we’ve seen with LINQ to Objects, SQL, and XML to query entities. You’ve got the picture, so get out there and model some works of art!

10:30 – Discovering Dynamic Data

ASP.NET Dynamic Data, introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release, breathes immediate (i.e., code-less) life into LINQ To SQL and Entity Framework data models by providing a customizable, template-driven, scaffolding framework. Put on your wizard hat, you now have dynamic power at your fingertips.

11:15 – Exploring Internet Explorer 8

Ahoy, developers! The release of Internet Explorer 8 is just around the bend. Of course, we’ll pull out the spyglass and take a look over the sea of new consumer features, but what does this next version mean for you as developer, and what should you do to navigate to glory? You’ll see how treasures like accelerators and web slices can be a differentiator for your company, see the new wave of compatibility features and options, and unearth the tools available for developers to make for smooth sailing on the sometimes turbulent web development waters.

12:00 – RoboLunch

Grab a lunch and join in as we delve into the world of robotics programming with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Think robotics is mostly for manufacturing systems, toys, and those cool little floor cleaning bots? You may be surprised at how the things we cover may come to affect your professional development life! Perhaps you’ll find yourself saying, “Thank you very luncho, Mr. Roboto!”

1:00 – UI, UX, U Confused?

One thing not missing from Microsoft’s development offerings is a choice of options. In this session, we’ll compare and contrast the various .NET technologies available for building client experiences (Windows Forms, WPF, XBAP, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Mobile) to give you some insight in to making the best choices for reaching your applications’ target audience.

1:45 – A RESTed Development

REST (Representational State Transfer) is what all the cool developers are using these days to communicate among distributed resources and services. So that you’re not left standing idly by on the sidelines, we’ll look at the rationales of the approach, why it’s cleaner than SOAP, and how Microsoft has adopted REST in technologies such as WCF and ADO.NET Data Services.

3:15 – Befriending Unit Testing

Unit testing could be your new best friend, and we’re here to help make the proper introductions. A practice that ultimately results in reduced overall efforts, unit testing is a focus on crafting test code that verifies your application code isn’t misbehaving. In this session, we’ll focus on what unit testing is, how it can be done, and some of the proven and effective practices you can employ to help your unit tests pay dividends over time. If Humphrey Bogart were a developer, he would have agreed, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

4:00 – Wrapup, Giveways, and Bon Voyage!

Information and links courtesy of Chris Bowen’s Blog. And remember, Chris Bowen will be doing the BAND meeting on October 2nd (topic is XNA Game Studio!)

Virtual Machines

By Eric D. Burdo

On 2008.09.20

In Tech Tips

Since I’m a contract developer, I work for many different clients. That means, I need many different work environments. The simplest solution to this, is to use Virtual Machines.

I used to use VMWare. Now that I have a TechNet subscription, I’m playing with Virtual PC 2007. So far, it works pretty well. Very similar to VMware.

I’ll be researching tips on how to keep the VM’s as small as possible, yet still fast. I plan on setting up a base Windows XP with SP3, and then copy that as my starting point for each client. It’s rare that I use any OS other than XP.

I will make a VM of Ubuntu though. I want to play with that some more, and I don’t want to dual-boot at this point.

Note: To get the Virtual PC to release your mouse, hit the [hostkey]. By default, this is the Right Alt.

There are more Virtual PC Tips here.