Well I'm here and it's just as good as I expected.  I'm actually writing my posts a bit out of order.  My post on Jeremy Miller's presentation will come later even though it was earlier then this one.  David Laribee did an awesome presentation on "The Story, The Iteration, The Release - A Data Dump on Agile Planning" which was a discussion of agile management practices and was (in his words) an  "Opinionated and My Path".  What followed over the next hour+ was a very interesting talk on agile management processes based on David's experiences.  One...

Well DevTeach is quickly approaching and I'm getting excited.  It's my first Devteach so it should be fun.. maybe I'll even pick up a few hair care tips from the (in)famous Justice! See you there!

This post is a little late since Denim has been around for awhile but at the last conference I was at someone was asking about UI prototyping.  I had used Denim before but I had forgotten the name so I figured I should throw up a blog post about it. The idea behind Denim is pretty simple but effective.  You are given a large area where you can create pages.  Now this is where things get cool.  The program uses a gesture system so when you want to create a page you just draw an upside down v.    ...

Over the past year of using Rhino Mocks I've adopted the following pattern.. [Setup] public void Setup() {   _mockery = new MockRepository();   _mockView = _mockery.CreateMock<IMyView>();   _mockServiceLayer = _mockery.CreateMock<IMyServiceLayer>();   // etc.. } private IMyClass CreateSUT() {   return new MyClass(_mockView, _mockServiceLayer); } The reason I...

I had a talk with Jean-Paul today and one of the things that came up was the importance of doing things with your own slant on them and not just copy what others have done.  That talk helped me realize a two traps I've fallen into lately. 1. Blogs.. I am reading way to many of them instead of writing code.  Tonight I cut my blogroll down to 4 blogs.  I'm actually pretty good at blasting through blog posts to find the ones that interest me but that blasting still takes time.  Time I could be spending writing...

There is a problem I've noticed where I work with how the integration build is being done. The problem is actually caused by how the build script is working.  In terms of building the assemblies that are needed the script collects all the necessary files and uses csc.exe to compile them.  The problem with this method is it bypasses a very important piece of the development puzzle.  That of the Solution and Project files.  The purpose of the integration build is to make sure that the entire team can continue working.  When you have removed your...

This past Saturday I presented Rhino Mocks - The Basics & Not So Basics.. at Calgary Tech Fest.  I think the presentation went fairly well considering it was my first time doing this particular presentation and only my second time ever presenting.  I did end up running out of time but there was quite a bit I was trying to cover.  The actual code from my presentation is available here.  I'm thinking of doing a webcast of this presentation in the future.  Though I do have a few other things on the go so at this point that's not a...

I recently purchased a pair of Sennheiser PCX150 noise cancelling headphones for use at work.  I was having trouble with the noise levels in the office and I personally find that while playing music in normal headphones helps, it also makes it hard to concentrate.  After having had them for a month or so it's time to review them.  I purchased my pair for around $150 from The Source by Circuit City. For those of you who haven't seen noise cancelling headphones in person the idea is pretty simple.  All the ones I've seen work in the...

Well it's official.  I've taken responsibility my own blog and company site.  First off a special thanks to David Woods who runs my provider Solidhouse for all his setup help.  I recently read a post (I have to apologize for forgetting the source but my brain is fried right now) that talked about successfully building a blog.  The author started by forcing himself to write six blog posts per week.  So I think that is going to be my goal.  It's definitely going to be difficult but most things worth doing aren't easy. I'm going to cheat...