Category: Uncategorized

TechNet magazine is now free! in the UK and US

Personally, I have been waiting this for a long time.  US have had free TechNet for a while, but we in the UK have been missing out.  Now, we too can have free TechNet magazines.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/subscribe.aspx

I have subscribed, also renewed my subscription to MSDN Magazine.  Why TechNet? While my heart is with Development, I do have a keen interest in everything Microsoft/Software related, and so this is just another way to keep me updated.  Plus I find networks and administration really cool and interesting.

Just finished my first read of GTD.  Very interesting, identified a lot of areas which related to me (some didn’t), any ways I know it will help me.  Got a lot of ideas now, one thing I didn’t do is actually follow what it was saying – wanted to get a good overview of the concepts first.  So now, I am going to read (quickly) over it again and actually do everything and get all the ideas on paper (using paper because I haven’t found any good software just yet).

If anyone knows of any good software – then please let me know.

I will let you know how I get on after the second read…

I came across this article today, it’s a shame more managers don’t pay attention and read articles like this (or maybe they do, comments welcome).

Top 10 ways to motivate geeks
http://www.retrospector.com/2006/06/21/top-10-ways-to-motivate-geeks/

Classic!

http://c9park.wordpress.com/2006/07/03/9-patrol/

My first project has appeared on codeplex!!  If you don’t know, codeplex is a project setup by Microsoft for people to host their own open source projects and get feedback from the community.  Very cool idea and a site I really like.  Plus it’s all run off Team Foundation Server!

Read all about it here.

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=ASPnetDeploy

I will post more in the next few days.

So today I am going to start GTD (Getting Things Done).

Found this link which talks about the approach from a student point of view.
http://www.studenttabletpc.com/gtd/

Not sure how well it will work – but I will give it a go. Might solve all my problems, or might be a week wasted reading the book.

I think it could be important at this point to set out some objectives, or things I would like to solve by trying this approach.

• Not get so distracted by what I have to do
• Not get so distracted by tangents
• No more down time – this morning I have spent 2 hours trying decide on what to do. This happens a lot and I hate wasting the time.
• Have some time off to watch DVDs (still haven’t watched 24 Season 2) without feeling like I should be doing some work
• When reading a book, not to stop half way and move onto another completely different topic (Design Patterns > C++ coding)
• Have a system in place for when I return to University so things don’t get forgotten and mismanaged and I have time to successfully do all the work required.

Think I should point out that I am not doing GTD to help me study, but to allow me to study without being distracted (procrastinating http://www.43things.com/things/view/225 & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastinate), to allow me to read all the books required, develop applications, spend time with the girlfriend and basically work on everything I want (the list is endless).

Even if I don’t follow GTD to the book, I am hoping I will be able to take some tips from it.  Just a shame I didn’t start this time last year.

Blog from Word 2003

So Word 2007 works just great once I saved the FTP user/pass into the website.

This post is using the add-on for Word 2003. This has the nice ability to Open previous posts.

First one posted fine onto blogger but didn’t make its way onto my website via FTP.  

Edit: This one worked
    

Blogging from Word 2007.

 

So this is just a test to see how well word performs as a blogging tool. Already found one problem I think – I don’t save my FTP details in blogger and there isn’t an option to enter this within word

So my placement year as a trainee system developer has come to the end.

I have learnt a lot of the past year! And would like to thank everyone who has helped me (inside and outside of the company).

So what now?

well I have until September to learn as much as possible which I couldn’t over the past year.

This includes: .net 3.0
UML and Patterns
C++
Code Complete and Writing Secure Code books
IIS7 Modules

How much will I get done? Not as much as I hope i’m guessing, but I can but try.

Hopefully I am going to be blogging a lot more as well….so I will try and post useful information.