Chris Garty's WeblogThoughts on business softwareGeek humour: The search dog- December 14, 2004 Rory is the co-host of the DotNetRocks online talk show and a Microsoft MSDN presenter. His blog is quite funny most of the time, and occasionally it is completely hilarious. I just saw a post he pointed to last week. Check this out.http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/14/301251.aspx Ultimate Ears: The best earphones in the world- December 14, 2004 I splashed out a little a couple of weeks ago and ordered some Ultimate Ears UE-5c's. They arrived on Friday and they are nothing short of brilliant. Imagine sitting in a sound booth with really good sound isolation and really nice dual-driver speakers. Now imagine getting that experience in the convenience of some earphones. The only downside is that you can't wear them running or walking around town since they block out so much noise you won't hearing the honking horn of an approaching car ;).http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/14/300182.aspx Bob Muglia on WinFS: Just after Longhorn, or not until Blackcomb- December 13, 2004 On Friday, I read coverage on News.com about an interview with Bob Muglia. In it he talks publicly about some of the options they are looking at for the WinFS file system timeline. This morning, ARSTechnica and TechSpot had coverage of the same announcement that is a little more WinFS focused. And TechSpot had an interesting quote: "Microsoft spokesman said that the company is trying to pull something unique with WinFS, something no one has ever done before, meaning we should be.http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/13/282191.aspx Steve Ernst on serialization to XML- December 10, 2004 You my have heard about how everyone at Microsoft has an office. Well... that is true of Redmond, but in Fargo they have chosen to bring us closer together, to foster a tight knit community spirit, and to create the kind of team environment that only a cube farm can create :). I had never worked in a cube farm before and it has been a fun experience. It creates some separation and privacy, while keeping you close enough together so that you can absorb information (I prefer the term osmotic...http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/10/279602.aspx Ward Cunningham on Patterns and XP- December 9, 2004 Ward Cunningham recently did a great interview with TSS.Net. In the interview he talks at length on some great topics including XP, patterns, team development, communication, simplicity, testing, and feedback. If you haven't seen it already, it is definitely worth the bandwidth. It is available in two sizes for 56k or DSLhttp://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/09/278794.aspx Extreme Programming Explained: 2nd edition- December 8, 2004 Recently I noticed that Kent Beck had released the 2nd edition of one of my favourite IT books (along with PEAA). I wasn't sure how much of it was new or if the changes would be worthy of the purchase. My good friend, and agile guru, Steve Hayes is excited about the new content and after reading the excerpt he has on his blog (all of which is new material) about Taylorism, I can see why. I especially love this sentence: Putting QA as a separate department within the engineering organisation...http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/08/278453.aspx My New Obsession: The Humble Weather Report- December 8, 2004 Ever since I got to Fargo I have been fascinated by the weather. I have never lived in a place where I had anything more than an overnight frost, even in the dead of winter. I find it funny that even though it has snowed a couple of times already, everyone keeps telling me that it is still only 'cool' and not 'cold'. Well, as of next week, it'll be permanently below freezing... and continuing to get 'cooler'.http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgarty/archive/2004/12/08/278433.aspx |