DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by melzie215

Implementing a REST service with WCF (part 1)

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:46:14 GMT

A short how to on implementing a REST service with WCF.

How NOT To Optimize LINQ Statements

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:46:03 GMT

About a month ago I was experimenting with different ways to optimize my LINQ queries against the IdeaPipe database, in order to improve the read times. I wanted to improve the read times because our new Facebook Application was being launched and I anticipated an increase in our traffic to the server, which is used to host IdeaPipe and the Facebook Application component. I quickly realized how now to optimize LINQ statements though.

Google Chrome, The New Kid On The Block

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:04:32 GMT

So when Google announced they had a new browser that was going to break down all the barriers of the internet and the desktop I got excited at the prospects of what they were going to do and what this new user interaction would be. Well today they finally announced the release of the browser and made it public at: http://www.google.com/chrome

ASP.NET MVC Preview Release 5

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:52:25 GMT

Looks like the MVC team has put out preview release 5 of the MVC Framework today. You can get the latest version from CodePlex. Also there are many new features so check them out.

Is Stackoverflow.com really a Web 2.0 site?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:47:08 GMT

Stackoverflow.com has only really done #1 of the first 3. However what I really want to have a discussion on is if it really has advanced it self enough beyond the old forum model to really be considered 2.0 worthy or is it just a display layer on the 1.0. For all intents and purposes we are going to use the forums on ASP.NET for comparison.

Using a Parameter Attribute to set a Default Value in MVC

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:01:12 GMT

A couple days ago I came across a breaking change in ASP.NET MVC PR4 that wasn't reported. The breaking change is that defaults from routes are no longer used as defaults for parameters in the action method, if no appropriate parameter is found in the request. So I decided to take this obvious disapointment and turn it in to something I have been thinking about for a long time, but never really had the motivation to impliment. In .NET you are allowed to add attributes to anything that can be defined via reflection, including classes, interfaces, structures, and even return types and parameters of methods.

Which .NET Blogger Do Girls Like Better?

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:46:09 GMT

Find out which .NET blogger is more popular with the ladies. Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, Jeff Atwood, or Joel Spolsky I received an invite to Google Ad Planner. As I was playing around with this new tool, I was really blown away by how much information Google has collected on specific websites. So much so that I wanted to share this tool with my readers, but I couldn't come up with an interesting way to demonstrate the capabilities. Until I started looking up some of my favorite bloggers and saw the almost embarrassing balance between females and males.

Turn Google App Engine into your own Personal Content Delivery Network

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:01:03 GMT

As anybody who has run a growing website or blog knows, response time is going to get worse with the more users you have visiting your site. The users come from all angles, RSS feeds, homepage visits, search engine visits, people sealing your static files that you host, and pretty much anything else that can be served over HTTP. The solution to this problem is to off load your static content on to a Content Delivery Network or CDN. CDN providers cost a lot of money though, so it is nothing for us mere mortals with one server can afford. But thanks to Google anyone can now run their own CDN for free on Googles servers. Lucky for you and me Google has made the process really painless and you can even have the CDN under you own domain name. In my case static.coderjournal.com.

Unit tests are for functionality, not code!

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:31:02 GMT

Unit tests are meant to test functionality, NOT code! That means if you write your unit tests after the fact, you're probably not focusing on the functionality.

Why You SHOULD Have 100% Code Test Coverage

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 05:46:02 GMT

Shawn talks about why your goal should be 100% unit test coverage, despite what others may say.

Good SQL Articles To Read If You Can't Afford Books

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:01:02 GMT

You have only $50 left and you can buy two DVDs or one SQL book, what do you do? I would buy the book but not every person has the same idea of a fun time. This is the reason why I present you with a bunch of links to articles which will give you very good info. some of this you won't be able to find in a book anyway.

Gravatar Supports PNG Transparencies Again!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:01:02 GMT

Gravatar has added support for transparencies back. You'll need to go to their website and reup your avatars: http://gravatar.com

MVC Facebook == Wonderful Development Platform

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:08:05 GMT

ust recently I started experimenting with the ASP.NET MVC Framework and the Facebook Development Platform, it has been a very bumpy road, but I have ironed out some major issues that I would like to share with you today. I will start with a little history of what I am trying to do. For about a month and a half I have had one of my IdeaPipe interns, Dimitry, experimenting with creating a FBML (Facebook Meta Language) Application with MVC. MVC is an ideal platform for FBML because with MVC you have total control over your markup which is needed to have a lean FBML application. I am not going to go in to the differences of developing an FBML vs IFrame Facebook Application, because that information is easily found with a Google Search. What I am going to talk about is the hurdles I overcame and the custom software I had to develop to get MVC working smoothly with Facebook. One of the problems I ran into was creating a Facebook Session from my Action Method. To remedy this issue I created a FacebookAttribute that is an ActionFilterAttribute and a FacebookWebSession based off of the work done on Facebook.NET.

Give Your ASP.NET Applications Velocity

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:16:03 GMT

Scaling ASP.NET Application just got easier with a new technology that Microsoft has just released that they have dubbed codename "Velocity". This product is still in the early stages of development, but it is meant as a direct competitor against memcache.

Joins, Grouping, Aggregating w/ Linq2Sql

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:46:02 GMT

Short video showing how to use Linq2Sql to perform various tasks such as joins, grouping and aggregating w/ Linq2Sql

Sysinternals, now easier to get than ever

Sat, 31 May 2008 14:01:07 GMT

The sysinternals team has placed all their tools on a network share... on the internet. Now you can copy and run any of their tools from the command line. Anywhere. With no installs, website googling, unzipping or anything. \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Released

Tue, 27 May 2008 17:40:53 GMT

Get the latest MVC Source Code while it is hot.

Microsoft Source Analysis Still Needs Work

Sat, 24 May 2008 01:50:44 GMT

However, I am one of those strange developers, according to Microsoft, that likes to use tabs and have my declartion of using statements outside of my namespace. If I were to take this tool seriously I would have to be shunned from the Microsoft Campus and shammed in to never coding again. I guess I should start including the Rob Conery SupressMessage on my code: [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Design", "1000:YouShouldntBeCoding", MessageId = "1#", Justification="That's not very nice... but I'm used to it :p")]

Creating a non-Native jQuery event that returns a value

Fri, 23 May 2008 19:16:15 GMT

Today I had the need to create a custom event using jQuery, in order to launch a customized form validation event from a global submit event. I did this so I could focus in on the first form field that had an error. But I needed something more than the standard bind() and trigger() that jQuery offers because I needed the validation event to return true or false based on if the form validated or not. So this is what I came up with...

World Of HTTP/1.1 Status Codes

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:55:55 GMT

Most developers are familiar with the HTTP 1.0 Status Codes, that have been recently popularized by the SEO guys. We have all heard that you should use 301 Moved Permanently instead of 302 Temporary Redirect. What many of the SEO guys won't tell you, because they don't know any better, is that they are using the RFC 1945 HTTP/1.0 Standard that was released in May 1996, that is right it is about 12 years old. The newest HTTP/1.1 Standard, RFC 2616, was released in June 1999, and made some pretty drastic changes the the 3xx Redirect Status Codes. The goal of this post is to inform and familiarize developers with the HTTP/1.1 Standard, specifically the 3xx Redirect Status Code changes. This can have drastic effect on how you handle requests on your website and optimize your site for search engines.

WiX 3.0 Hates Subfolders

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:52:15 GMT

Using WiX 3.0 in Visual Studio? Don't add subfolders to your project or you'll spend a day figuring out why your work is E_FAILing

How to create a YUI Compressor MSBuild Task

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:30:26 GMT

The YUI Compressor yielded exceptional results, however it was missing one thing. Integration in to my build and deployment process. In IdeaPipe I use a MSBuild script to compile, manipulate, and prepare for publishing. So naturally I built a MSBuild Task to minimize my JavaScript and CSS files.

Do you depend on sp_depends (no pun intended)

Fri, 16 May 2008 17:46:04 GMT

Why you cannot depend on the sp_depends proc when checking for dependent objects in SQL Server

What I learned about SEO from Celebrity Jeopardy!

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:23:41 GMT

As you can see Norm MacDonald playing the character of Burt Reynolds transforms the category in Celebrity Jeopordy!, on purpose for comedy reasons. In my analogy Google is going to be the Burt Reynolds of your search, however instead of finding the wrong words on purpose it is going to do it because it is a dumb machine that does what it is asked even if the results are not contextually accurate. If you don't control your URL, which is one of the highest ranking keywords on your site. You could end up decreasing the effectiveness of your keywords, as an almost duplicate keyword penalty. Granted I don't know if something like this exists as a penalty, but when you are dealing with SEO it never hurts to be as careful and precise as possible.

Software Developers Never Change

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:31:24 GMT

So if you are to take anything away from this rant, take this, do what you love, and become the best at it. And if what you love isn't your 9-5 job, deeply understand this and get out of the way of people who's 9-5 job is what they love.