My son and I returned from a week long vacation to visit my parents in Anchorage Alaska last night. Apparently, having the boys out of the house was quite the vacation for my wife as well. :) We had a great time watching the World Cup and going on outings to the zoo as well as hiking. Well, at least one of us was hiking while another was just enjoying the ride. We hiked up a trail to Flattop which has spectacular views of Anchorage. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it all the way to the top as the trail became a bit too much while carrying a toddler who was more interested in watching Go, Diego, Go episodes on his iPod. Funny how all that “hiking” works up an appetite. Also, while in Alaska I gave a talk on ASP.NET MVC 2 to the local .NET User...(read more)
I saw a recent Twitter thread discussing the arrogance of Steve Jobs. One person (ok, it was my buddy Rob ) postulated that it was this very arrogance that led Apple to their successes. I suppose it’s quite possible that it had a factor, but I tend to think Steve Job’s vision and drive were much bigger factors. This idea is a reflection of a pervasive belief out there that arrogance is excusable, perhaps even acceptable and admirable in successful people and institutions. In contrast, I think we’d all agree that that arrogance is universally detestable in unsuccessful people. But is arrogance necessary for success? I certainly don’t think so. I think there’s an alternative characteristic that can lead to just as much success. Joy. My example...(read more)
The June issue (also in pdf ) of the online PragPub magazine, published by the Pragmatic Bookshelf has two articles on ASP.NET MVC. The first is called Agile Microsoft and is an introduction to ASP.NET MVC geared towards those who’ve never seen it. It’s nice seeing ASP.NET MVC featured in this magazine which in its own words tends to cater to a non-Microsoft crowd. To some developers, Microsoft’s technologies are a given, the river they swim in. To others, not using Microsoft’s tools is the default. PragPub being an open source- and Agile-friendly kind of magazine, we tend to connect with the latter group. So when we get an article titled “Agile Microsoft,” we are naturally intrigued. And we think you’ll also be intrigued by Jonathan McCracken...(read more)
The last time I wrote about one of my hiking adventures, it started off great, but really didn’t end well . But I survived, so on that scale, yes it did end well! It’s a matter of perspective. On Saturday, I went on my first hike of the spring to Lake Serene and Bridal Veil Falls . This hike is really two hikes in one. The main destination is Lake Serene, but there’s an absolutely wonderful half mile (1 mile round trip) side trip to the Bridal Veil Falls on the way to Lake Serene. The trail starts in the small town of Index in the county of HomeController ( sorry, I couldn’t resist ). The entire trail is lush with greenery as you would expect in the pacific northwest. All along the trail are many little waterfalls and river crossings like the...(read more)
Last week I spent a few days in Las Vegas attending the Mix 10 conference . Mix is billed as … A 3 day conference for web designers and developers building the world's most innovative web sites. Which certainly reflects its origins as a conference focused on the web and web standards. But this year, it seemed that the scope for Mix was expanded to be about, well, a Mix of technologies as the Windows Phone 7 series figured prominently at the conference. Scott Hanselman and I are seen here attempting to tutor this young man about a language called “JavaScript” Mix of communities One aspect I love about Mix is it’s also a Mix of communities. Sure, it’s heavily Microsoft dominated, since it is, well, Microsoft that puts it on, but this conference...(read more)
If there’s one impression that Austin left on me, besides the one that Rudy’s “extra moist” barbecue left on my gut, is that it’s a developer friendly town. This past week I spent three days in Austin meeting with all sorts of developers and had many great conversations about technology. I met with companies and people with a passion for technology that couldn’t be suppressed. Meeting with Dell The reason I was in town was to give a couple of presentations at a mini-conference for Dell employees. On my first day in Austin, the day before the conference, I met with a team working on the next generation of Dell.com . The site is undergoing a large scale rearchitecture based heavily on ASP.NET MVC 2. I fielded some questions on ASP.NET MVC and...(read more)
The stars at night, are big and bright – clap clap clap clap – deep in the heart of Texas ! Hold onto your ten gallon hats, I’m visiting Texas for the first time! I’m very excited to visit the second largest state in the union. ;) The purpose of my trip is to meet with some developers at Dell doing interesting things and to give a talk there as well. But since I’ve heard such good things about the vibrant tech community in Austin, I am trying to make the most of my short trip. On Thursday, February 25, I’ll be speaking at Austin .NET User Group meeting at 5:30 PM CST ( Location TBD, I’ll post it here when I find out or follow @ehexter on Twitter ) . So be sure to come by and say hello. I’m also going to visit my good friends at Headspring as...(read more)
One question that came up recently during my mid-year review is how am I measuring customer satisfaction with the products that I work on? For example, how can I measurably demonstrate that customers are happy with the work we are doing on ASP.NET MVC and that my team is responding to customer feedback? Umm, I can’t? At least not right now in a measurable manner. I don’t have any such metric and I’m not sure how reliable any metric I might come up with will be. But perhaps that’s simply due to a lack of imagination on my part. In the past, we’ve tried various unscientific online twitter polls. One thing we did was ask the world for a list of ASP.NET pain points and compile them into one big list. Then at the end of the product cycle, we could...(read more)
Just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or a Happy whatever you are celebrating at this time of year. I hope you are spending it well with family and friends! :) As you can see, I’m still hard at work watching the kids on paternity leave. My brother is a drug dealer and the name of the drug is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the X-Box 360. I’m totally hooked right now, and I don’t usually get so hooked on games. At least I am managing to still get some fresh air outside and enjoy the weather. Here I’m walking with my wife (taking the photo), my mother, my son, and my brother. Of course, every walk we go on ends up with me lugging my son around. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. :) Technorati Tags: christmas , holidays...(read more)
Ok, it wasn’t necessarily my ass that was saved, but it was years worth of images which were important to me! As I wrote yesterday , my blog’s hosting server had a hard-drive failure effectively wiping out my virtual machine, taking my blog down with it. Fortunately, I was able to get back up with a static archive of my site provided by Rich Skrenta, but I was missing all my images and other content (code samples). As Jeff mentions, I have learned the hard way that there are almost no organizations spidering and storing images on the web. Keep in mind that the images are not just mere eye candy. In many cases, they serve to illustrate key concepts: “ As you can see in the screenshot above, if the screenshot were still to exist, but through the...(read more)
June 28, 2010