DeepZoom is just plain cool.

25 August 2008 17:22

I love Silverlight.  I haven't had the opportunity to create anything with it yet, but I keep seeing samples that just blow me away.  The famous DeepZoom example, of course, is the memorabilia site at HardRock.com, but I just found www.deepzoomobama.com, and it's pretty cool. 

 

 

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Stupidity, or the dunce award goes to....

25 August 2008 11:41

Me.  I've always felt that one of the most important things you can do in software development (as well as other areas of life) is just admit when you've made a mistake.  Especially if you can laugh at it, at least a little.  The bigger the mistake, the more important it becomes to ensure that you can fix it and go on.

Last week, I made that mistake.  I deleted a database at my hosting provider that was on a SQL Server 2000 instance.  Thinking that with the newer version of the application software I was running, I had certainly migrated my databases to the 2005 instance, I blindly deleted the SQL 2000 database.  This had the effect of killing two of my public web sites.  As in Gone.  I didn't back them up.  No history.  The backups that I have are too old to be useful. 

The odd thing with this is that when it comes to working with clients, I preach and practice good backups.  Nobody gets to click DELETE until we're sure we can recover from what we're about to do.  I'm incredibly meticulous, and very aware of what's about to happen.  To others.

Lesson: Be more cognizant of the enviroments.  Verify the facts (a la connection settings) prior to performing maintenance tasks.  Even if it's your own stuff.

Lesson learned.  Now off to rebuild a couple of web sites.  At least I'll get to I'll have to redo them the way I want.

 

 

 

 

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Combining Work and Passions

22 August 2008 08:25

I have an interesting dilemma that I deal with on a daily basis.  I love what I do.  Most of the time, anyway.  But it's not the sum total of what I'm passionate about.  A couple of items about my background: I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but I've actually never done any mechanical engineering work.  I'm also a low time private pilot. 

One of the comments about being successful that I tend to hear from successful people is "Do what you love".  But my dilemma then is this: How do you go about combining engineering work, .Net development, and aviation?  At present, I work as a .Net consultant on what amounts to medical software.  In the past, I've been involved in quite a few engineering projects from a control systems aspect, but not so much with .Net, with a few exceptions.  And I only get the occasional time to spend with my hobby/passion, that of flying.

So how does one combine these?  I'm stumped on that one.  I have a project in mind that might combine a little bit of software development with my interest in general aviation, but I'm not completely sure of the chances for success, nor whether that project could in any way provide any measurable income. 

Basically, then, I'm throwing this out there to see if there might be any feedback as to how to make this approach.  Any ideas?

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My "famous" family

20 August 2008 14:49

It looks like it's happened again: My son is on the cover of our city's recreation guide.  There's a program here called "Soccer Tots" that he participated in earlier this year.  If you've ever wondered what it's like to watch two year olds try to follow direction....well, you know that they just don't.  Especially when there are soccer balls to play with...and cones, and balloons, and so on.  It's one of the funniest things you can watch though.

Anyway, so here's the guide.  My son is the one holding the soccer ball along the bottom.

You can download the document here.  The source page is here.

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A bit of fun

20 August 2008 13:32

I just found www.clocklink.com.  It's just a fun site with a variety of clocks you can embed in your web pages, just like this:

or this

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

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