Delicious Bookmarks

I’ve received complaints about the daily update of my Delicious bookmarks that is published via the blog’s RSS feed.  This problem has been made worse by the recent migration of bookmarks from my now defunct Xmarks account to my Delicious account.  Apologies for any inconvenience this caused you. 

I have now disabled the daily RSS post from Delicious.  If you are looking for an RSS feed of my bookmarks, you can find it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AndyParkhillsBookmarks. Note, this feed will be available regardless of where I store my bookmarks (which may not be Delicious for much longer).

On a related note, I’m currently looking at ways of improving the blog. I’m aware that I have neglected it over the past few months due to work commitments.  If you have any comments or ideas for the blog, please get in contact or tweet me at @MagicAndi.

The Weekly Links…

…are no more!! I have recently started using the social bookmarking site Delicious to manage all of my links.  You can see all of my shared bookmarks at http://delicious.com/andyparkhill. Some of you may have already seen my various tweets tagged #bookmark – these are automatically generated by Delicious.  There is also integration with my blog’s RSS feed, with a daily roundup of all links that I have added being posted.  And just to be sure, I’ve added a Links page to display my Delicious tag cloud!

All of my bookmarks in future will be shared via this service.  I will also be going back and adding links from the various weekly links posts.  This is part of a change in direction for the blog. I don’t want to just aggregate other’s people posts, I want to start generating my own unique content. At the minute, I’ve plenty of ideas to work on, and I’m working on freeing up more time to implement them. 

The Weekly Links 9

This is the 9th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• SteakyBeak – Is an advanced logging module for web apps that will log each request to your web server and also provide a easy interface to view these requests. Base on the ever useful NLog logging framework.
• PowerGUI Visual Studio – Quest have released a version of the PowerGUI IDE for PowerShell that integrates into Visual Studio.  Other options to develop and execute PowerShell scripts in VS include the VS Command Shell, and PowerConsole.
• TOAD Extension for Visual Studio – Again from Quest, a extension to manage Oracle databases within VS in the same way as SQL Server databases.
• Enterprise Localization Toolkit – An oldie but a goodie.  A colleague in work (Thanks, Mike!) came across this framework from Microsoft for resource string management via a database.
• Posterous – the easiest way to blog.  Create a beautiful looking blog with the minimal effort.  I’m seriously considering switching to use it… Watch this space.

Information

• VS 2010 Productivity Improvements, Part III – Somasegar, the Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division, continues his series of posts looking at the new features available in Visual Studio 2010.  Check out the earlier posts – Part I and Part II.
• MSTest vs. NUnit with Visual Studio 2010 & TDD – The ‘Bare Bones Coder’ compares his experience using NUnit and MSTest in a TDD project.  A well written post, but I’m including it as much for the beautiful image s/he includes as for its content.  Also, the post reminded me of a StackOverflow question I asked (and answered) a while back on switching between the two different testing frameworks.
• On Pair Programming – Andrea (AKA roundCrisis) takes a look at pair programming, and points out where it can wrong.
• Clean Code and Clean TDD Cheat Sheets – Download a couple of cheat sheets to help you with your TDD and keeping your code clean of crud.
• Introducing IIS Express – Another local blogger, Andy Poots, highlights the release of IIS Express.
• HttpModule – developing outside the product box – Ciaran, writing on the PointyHeads blog, has an interesting post on two uses of  HtttpModules to solve SharePoint issues.
• Announcing www.pexforfun.com – A post highlighting the new website to introduce developers to the Pex, an automated White box testing framework for .NET.
• Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 – Guidelines from the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team.
• TryParse vs Convert – A comparison of the two techniques as applied to parsing query strings.

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.

There are no developer events in the coming week.

The Weekly Links 8

This is the 8th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.  This post is effectively a roundup of links from the past months – apologies for the delay in posting!

Tools

• ApiChange Is Released! – APIChange is a command line tool that allows you to execute queries on against your compiled .NET code base. The main use of the tool is to determine the impact of each API change, such identifying all users of a specific type.  A useful alternative to the commercial NDepends offering.
• Chirpy – A Visual Studio 2010 Add-In for handling JavaScript, CSS, and DotLess files. 
• The Best Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools, Power Commands and Extensions – Scott Hanselman catalogues his favourite VS2010 extensions.
• OutlookSpy – A tool to allow developers to explore the Outlook object model.
• Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools – A set of templates and extensions that provides additional functionality to SharePoint developers.
• FxCop 10.0 – An insane jump in version number for the Microsoft static code analysis tool.
• Soluto – LifeHacker has an article on this Windows freeware tool that tracks all the applications in your system boot process, and tells you exactly which ones are slowing you down.

Information

• WatiN Screenshot Saver – Brian Shroer describes how to use Watin, the impressive automated web testing framework, to create a screen capture tool. 
• Observable Collections – Steve Wellens gives an overview of a collection in the .NET framework that is new to me.
• SP 2010: How to create a PowerShell Snapin Cmdlet – Tobias Zimmergren has a two part series on creating a PowerShell Cmdlet for SharePoint 2010 (Part 1, Part 2).
• SOLID Examples – Following an ongoing series of articles on the SOLID design principles at LostTechies.com, the various code samples have been brought together as a CodePlex project.
• Start Learning Ruby with IronRuby – Kazi Mansur kicks off a series of blog posts on IronRuby with a look at creating a development environment.
• The Power of Func<> – Jason Sonmez gives an introduction to the Func generic type.
• TechEd 2010 North America – NI’s very own Martin Woodward blogs about his TechEd presentation on Team Explorer, and he also links to a number of other presentations relating to VS2010/TFS.
• How to select open source libraries - Daniel Marbach gives a breakdown of the different criteria to use to select an open source library to use.
• .NET Logging Tools and Libraries – A site dedicated to cataloguing the various logging libraries available to .NET developers. My personal preference is for NLog, though I have recently become interested in using PostSharp, an AOP framework for logging.

Miscellaneous

A few more random links:

• Let Me Google That For You – The ultimate answer to dumb questions.  Simply copy the question into the search box, git the required button, and it will generate a http://lmgtfy.com/ link for you to email back to the waste of space who bothered you with the query.  Even better, kill time by monitoring what search terms are being entered in real time - http://live.lmgtfy.com/
• Script Junkie – A MSDN site dedicated to the serious web developer.  Courtesy of Simon Phillips.
• The Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever -  Exactly what it says….

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.

There are no events in the coming week.

The Weekly Links 7

This is the 7th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Outlook .PST File Tools – Jean-Christophe Cimetiere describes two open source tools, available on CodePlex.com, for working with Outlook .PST files.
• TekPub ASP.NET MVC 2 Starter Kit – Rob Conery announces the release of version 0.5 of the starter kit.
• Dropbox API and RestSharp for a C# developer - Damian Karzon describes how to connect to the Dropbox API from C# code, using the RestSharp client.
• SquishIt – The Friendly ASP.NET JavaScript and CSS Squisher - Justin Etheredge describes how to use SquishIt, a JS and CSS minimiser.

Information

• Code Contracts Part 2 – Preconditions - Part 2 of a series from Kevin Hazzard on Code Contracts.
• Code Metrics: Measuring LoC in .NET applications – Gunner Peipman has a useful article on measuring LoC in our solutions, part of a series of articles around this topic.
• C#: System.Lazy<T> and the Singleton Design Pattern - James Michael Hare describes how to implement the Singleton design pattern more cleanly using the Net 4.0's new System.Lazy<T> type.
• Test-Driven Javascript – James Shore shows how to develop your JavaScript code using the TDD methodology.
• Video – Code Leaders and Beautiful Teams – Roy Osherove offers a video on team leadership and beautiful teams that he gave at QCON London earlier this year.
• Creating Enterprise Search Metadata Property Mappings with PowerShell – Corey Roth offers another handy tip.

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.

Events in the coming week include:

• Going Deeper into Visual Studio 2010 – Another MW-MTUG event in Derry on Wednesday 2nd June.
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Hub – A full day event for mobile developers in Dublin next Thursday (3rd June).
• Idea Hacking #1 Storytelling – A new type of event for Derry on Thursday 3rd June.
• Going Deeper into Visual Studio 2010 – NIMTUG hosts Paul Fallon to give his VS2010 talk in Belfast on Thursday 3rd June.

Careers

• Citi Group (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Graduate roles with initial 12 week training programme.  Roles in Programming, Application Support or Quality Assurance, based in Belfast.
• Blue Zinc IT – Technical Support Specialist, based in Holywood.
• Fidesa – Software Developers required for the company’s Belfast office.
• First Derivatives – Various developer and consultant roles, based in Newry, Belfast and further afield.
• Queens University, Belfast – Various engineering roles in the fields of data security, network security and intelligent surveillance systems in the Centre for Secure Information Technologies
• Export Technologies - .NET Developers required for this Belfast startup.
• Aepona – Several roles available, based in Belfast.
• Southern Regional College – Web Application Developer, based at the Portadown campus.

The Weekly Links 6

This is the 6th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Identity Finder – An article on LifeHacker.com describes this very useful tool. 
• .NET Framework cleanup and setup verification tools - Aaron Stebner announces the release of new versions of these tools for .NET 4.0.  I didn’t even know that these tools existed within the .NET framework!
• OpenWrap – Robert Pickering describes on his blog the OpenWrap project, an open source package management system for .NET projects.
• RAMMap v1.0 – The SysInternals guys have released a new tool to  help you analyze your use of RAM memory.

Information

• Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers – Scott Guthrie blogs about a new community site that allows you to download Visual Studio 2010 themed images that you can use for your Windows desktop background.
• Most Common ASP.NET Support issues – Another Scott, Hanselman this time, has an article on the most common issues behind support calls for ASP.NET.
• JavaScript local alias pattern – Betrand Le Roy describes how to implement a common local alias pattern form JavaScript in C'#.  Neat!
• How to: Create an OpenSearch Provider for SharePoint – Corey Roth has another great time saving tips for SharePoint 2010.
• Code Contracts Part 1- Kevin Hazzard starts a series of blog posts on Microsoft Code Contracts

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.  I have further work planned for the calendar, and the format of these posts. 

Events in the coming week include:

• Barcamp Belfast – The barcamp is being held in Belfast this Saturday (17th).
• DevDays 2010 (Belfast) – Tuesday 25th May, in Belfast.
• DevDays 2010 (Dublin) – Thursday 27th May, in Dublin.

Careers

• ASG Software Solutions – Quality Assurance Analyst required for the Belfast office.
• Latens – Senior Software Engineer and Software Engineers being recruited by the Belfast firm.
• Terex Corporation (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – A Data Warehouse Architect required for the Dungannon office.
• GE – A number of development and technical support positions are available with the company in Lisburn.
• Larsen and Toubro Infotech (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Various positions available for the company’s new office in NI.

The Weekly Links 5

This is the 5th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Style Cop – Version 4.4 of the code style checker (and it is now open source!) is available for download.
• Solution Converter – a much needed tool to convert between the various Visual Studio solution formats (2005, 2008, and 2010).
• PowerShell Community Extensions – V2.0 of this useful extensions library is released.

Information

• Build Tools Roundup For .NET Systems – Derick Bailey of the LostTechies.com blog site gives an overview of the various build automation tools available for .NET developers.  Just to note, PSake does it for me every time.
• JavaScript Coding Standards – Simon Ince announces the release of Microsoft’s first public coding standards for JavaScript.  The standards are aimed at developers using the Ajax Control Toolkit.
• The Power of Enum – Jason Sonmez looks at the use of the humble enumeration in .NET to produce elegant code.
• Easy creation of code generators in Visual Studio 2008 - Sebastian Negomireanu begins a series of posts that look at code generation in VS2008.  A welcome relief from the tsunami of posts on VS2010 following the recent launch.
• Use Extension method to write cleaner code – Fredrik Normen looks at using extension methods to write cleaner, more maintainable code.  In his article, he gives an excellent breakdown of the various steps in refactoring as well.  It ties in well with the number of links in last week’s roundup on extension methods.
• Make your XML strongly-typed – I’m including this link  as much for the excellent design of Doug Rathbone’s blog, Diary of a Ninja… , as for the article content!  It puts my blog to shame!
• Updated C# all-in-one file - Kirill Osenkov offers an updated file demonstrating the entire C# syntax.
• Starting and using Git successfully – Jimmy Boggart has posted an article on how to make the best use of the popular distributed version control system.
• All About Assemblies – A Code Project article on how to manage assemblies.
• Growl for Windows Target for NLog – A fantastic article  for developers on how to log output to a custom notifications using Growl and NLog.
• And finally, a spoof post on the history of Programming Languages.

SharePoint Information

• New advance SharePoint 2010 training material released – an overview of the training available from Microsoft on SharePoint 2010.   Much of the same material (i.e. virtually identical) can be downloaded here.
• Create your own SharePoint Server 2010 RTM Virtual Machine – Andrew Connell’s announces that a free guide to create a SharePoint 2010 VM is available form his company, Critical Path Training (Andrew, if you reading this, no promo link for the firm until the cheque arrives).

Events

• No new events, just a reminder about Barcamp Belfast – the postponed Barcamp is now rescheduled for 22nd May.

Careers

• Seagate (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Software Engineer with both Java and .NET experience, based in their Derry plant.
• Relay - .NET developers and Junior Developers required for their Belfast office.
• Gem – Technical Support Agents and Web Application Developer (via NIJobFinder.co.uk)  are required for the Belfast company.
• Fujitsu – A number of software developer roles are currently being advertised for my previous employer.  Roles are in both the Belfast and Derry offices.
• Randox Laboratories (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Software Engineer required for the Crumlin plant.
• Openwave – Software and Quality Engineers in the Belfast office.
• Parity – My current company is continuing to recruit for their Centre of Excellence in Belfast.

The Weekly Links 4

This is the 4th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.  As I was working in London last week, this is a bumper post incorporating two weeks worth of links. 

Tools

• TFS 2010 Power Tools – Buck Hodges of the VSTS team announces the release of the TFS 2010 Power Tools.
• FlairBuilder Desktop – My colleague Andy Poots blogs about this handy wireframing tool.
• Ook! .Net Compiler – another esoteric language to add to the ranks of BrainF*@k and LOLCODE.  I learned about the Ook! language by following the Irish Open Spaces Coding Day II on Twitter which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend… But Andrea tells me it is likely to be repeated again in August/September.

Information

• Extension Methods Are Helper Methods That Taste Like Candy – John Sonmez looks at how to make use of C# extension methods.
• C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend... – In a related article, James Michael Hare discusses when you should write an extension method.
• Breaking through the class sealing - Jason Crease gives the lowdown on using the sealed keyword in .NET.
• Back to the basics: constants vs read-only fields – A review of the differences between constants and read-only fields in the .NET framework.
• 6 important .NET concepts: - Stack, heap, Value types, reference types, boxing and Unboxing – A handy reference article on the Code Project site that describes these essential topics.
• Dynamically Read, Compile, and Run Source Code From a Text File – Does what it says on the tin… Interesting article, but I prefer using CSI, a simple C# interpreter written by David Anson, a Microsoft developer.
• 15+ hours of free Visual Studio 2010 – Free online training from Microsoft and AppDev.

SharePoint Related

• An Expected Error Has Occurred – Todd Carter describes how to create custom error pages in SharePoint 2010.
• SharePoint Visio Stencil and Template – Maxime Bombardier on her MSDN blog makes available a Visio template for the easy design of WSPs and features.
• Temporarily disabling List View Threshold on a large list – This article from the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog discusses how to view large lists (> 5000 unfiltered items) in SharePoint 2010.
• How to: Build a SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Cmdlet – Corey Roth takes you through how to create your first PowerShell cmdlet for SharePoint.
• Service Application Framework Architecture – An overview of this framework in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 (the successor to WSS 3.0).

Events

• DevDays 2010 – Digital Circle and the All Island Software Network are organising a conference for all those developing mobile applications in Ireland, in Belfast (25th May) and Dublin (27th May).
• Azure Self-paced Interactive Learning Course – A free online course from Microsoft, starting on the 10th May.
• Idea Hacking #1 Storytelling – A very different event happening in Derry on 3rd June.
• Barcamp Belfast – the postponed Barcamp is now rescheduled for 22nd May.

Careers

• Barclay Communications – iPhone developer and web developer required for the Belfast office.
• CyberSource – A number of roles (QA and Software Engineers) at various levels are being advertised for this growing company, based in Belfast.
• 8over8 – This Derry based company is continuing to advertise for .Net developers.
• Latens – Software Engineers required for the Belfast office.
• ASG – Software and QA Engineers required for their Belfast office.
• Kainos – Graduate Developers required for the Belfast software company.
• Singularity – Various roles being advertised with the Derry based company.
• Learning Pool – The Derry based company are seeking PHP developers (intermediate and advanced) and technical support agents.

The Weekly Links 3

This is the 3rd post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Robert Bruckner blogs about the latest major release of the SQL Server platform.
• Tekpub MVC 2.0 Starter Site – Rob Connery releases a MVC V2 starter framework on CodePlex.
• Studio Styles – Stylish IDE schemes for the discerning Visual Studio user.
• Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 - Grigori Melnik announces about the latest release of the venerable Enterprise Library.
• Launchy – My personal tool of the week is Launchy, a replacement for the SlickRun, my previous program launcher.

Information

• What's new in T4 in Visual Studio 2010 – A comprehensive breakdown of the improvements in T4 (the Text Template Transformation Toolkit), Microsoft’s code generation tool.  Check out Scott Hanselman’s post on T4 for an introduction to it.
• Cyclomatic Complexity – What Is It and Why Should You Care? – a breakdown of what Cyclomatic Complexity is, and why you should care about it from the Java Metrics site.
• C# TDD Videos – Brett Schuchert releases a series of videos showing how the Shunting Yard Algorithm was implemented in C'# using TDD.
• SharePoint 2010 reaches RTM! – Old news now, but SharePoint 2010 was released last Friday…
• Learn Windows Phone 7 Development in 7 Minutes Each – A series of videos introducing developers to the Windows Phone 7 platform.
• Eliminating Comments: the Road to Clarity – John Sonmez describes how eliminating comments improves your code’s readability.
• Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Poster – Download a handy PDF of the VS2010 keyboard shortcuts.
• SharePoint 2010 Developer Videos – A series of Channel 9 videos demonstrating the new features available for developers using Visual Studio 2010 to develop solutions for SharePoint 2010.
• Top 25 security issues for developers of web sites – exactly what it says it is…
• What is SharePoint Out of the Box? – Bill Simser blogs about what SharePoint OOTB means to him, following a recent series of blog posts on the topic.

Events

• SQL Immersion: Dublin 2010 – Advanced SQL training with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp in Dublin this June/July.  Via Bob Duffy’s blog.
• Epicenter 2010 - The 2nd Annual Irish Software Show, epicenter 2010, takes place in Trinity College Dublin between Tuesday 8th and Friday 11th June.

Careers

• Aurion Learning – ASP.NET developer required for the educational software ISV based in Belfast.  More details via NIJobFinder.
• Asidua – Software Developers and Graduate Developers, based in Belfast.
• First Derivatives – A number of developer roles are currently being advertised by the Newry based financial software firm.
• Navinet – Various developer roles based in the new Belfast centre of excellence for the American healthcare firm.
• Isaac Agnew – A senior Software Developer required in Belfast.
• CitiGroup (via NIJobFinder) – Several development roles, based in Belfast.
• QUB – Software Engineer (Grid Computing), based in Belfast.
• Moy Park (via NIJobFinder) – Information Assistant, based in Craigavon.
• Parity – A number of roles available with my own company, based in Belfast.

Links Roundup

This is the first in a series of weekly roundups of links that will be useful to developers.  This is based on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew, but will also include additional links on SharePoint development, and will focus on events for developers in Northern Ireland.

Tools

• QuickUnit – A Visual Studio add-in to design and generate unit test projects within the IDE.
• Mono Tools - Miguel de Icaza of the Mono team announces the release of Mono Tools, an IDE add-in to allow .Net developers to build solutions using the Mono framework directly from Visual Studio.
• ASP Classic Compiler – A CodePlex project that allows developers to package classic ASP pages as executables so they can run within the ASP.Net environment. I think this is insane, but possibly very useful for those working with legacy projects.
• Switch project files between VS2008 and VS2010 – Given the imminent release of Visual Studio 2010, Steve Dunn’s command line tool allows you to open an existing VS2008 project file from VS2010 without converting the project.

Reference/Information

• Windows Programming: The “it works on my machine syndrome” – Patrick Smacchia of NDepend fame writes about issues that catch the unwary .Net developer when developing applications that run on Windows.
• Precision and accuracy of DateTime – Eric Lippert writes a useful post on the precision of the DateTime struct, and how the StopWatch class should be used to measure elapsed time accurately.
• Visual Studio Myth Busters – An extremely cheesy interactive page on MSDN to tell you the benefits of the various versions of Visual Studio.
• Extreme Programming (XP) at a Glance – A handy blog post giving a concise breakdown of what XP is by J.D. Meier.
• Moving to Visual Studio 2010 – An eBook from Microsoft on what to expect when you upgrade to Visual Studio 2010.
• SharePoint 2010 Certification Details – Tobias Zimmergren gives a breakdown of the new Microsoft certification exams for SharePoint 2010.

Events

• BarCamp Belfast – The unconference returns to Belfast on Saturday 17th April.
• Open Coding – The second Irish open spaces coding day is in Dublin on Saturday 24th April.  I am definitely attending, so let me know if you are also going!
• Visual Studio 2010 Launch Events – Martha Rotter gives details of the various launch events for later this month. She also has created a Twitter alias for all Microsoft tech events in Ireland - @MSIrlTechEvents
• Microsoft Office and SharePoint Roadshow for IT Pros – Read details of the venues and dates for the joint release in Ireland.

Careers

• Replify – Software Engineers (various levels), based in Belfast.
• South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust – ICT Officer, based in the Ulster Hospital, Dundonald (via NIJobfinder).
• Randox Laboratories – Software Engineers, based in either Co. Antrim or Co. Donegal.
• Fluent Technology – Support Manager, based in Belfast.
• Lagan – QA Engineer, based in Belfast.