Bryan Hinton's Blog

Notes from reading Lean Software Engineering Book

2009-12-29T17:35:23Z

These are notes that I took a while ago while reading the book. They have been housed in my OneNote notebook long enough – pushing them to the web where they are more accessible. Eliminate Waste Seeing Waste Partially Done Work Extra Processes Extra Features Task Switching Waiting Motion Defects Value Stream Mapping Amplify Learning Feedback Iterations Synchronization (CI) Set-based development versus point-based (multiple options - I am available from 9 to 12 versus can you do it at 9) Decide as...(read more)

Community Development Opportunities at the LDS Church

2009-08-31T18:15:11Z

This email went around at work the other day and I got permission to reprint it here. A key initiative for the Church’s IT department is to engage with the broader community of software developers who would be interested in working on sanctioned projects that the Church needs to complete. Over the years I have seen and used many applications produced by individuals in their spare time that helps with the work of the Church. This effort by Church IT (called ICS) is trying to expand the amount of work...(read more)

Should Computer Programmers use company time to learn new things?

2009-02-19T17:20:32Z

There is a site I commonly read called Worse Than Failure (WTF – they redefined what WTF meant to them a while back to make the site more palatable to people – perhaps when they started taking ads). The site publishes programming horror stories and frequently has very funny stories to brighten the day. A recent article departed from the norm and was more serious in nature. In it the author made the comment that Learn Off The Job. Self-improvement is a tenet of every profession, but the place to do...(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 WPF Designer crashing on XAML files from certain projects

2009-01-12T23:41:11Z

I know that is a pretty specific title, but after wrestling with this problem for the last couple of days (with a break in there for a very nice weekend!) I figured I would try to put something specific enough for Google to index it and so that some poor soul might benefit from my frustration. The WPF designer randomly crashing is not an uncommon thing – Google it and you will see that the solutions are hit and miss and somewhat black magic. Things like – pin the toolbox when opening a file or create...(read more)

.NET Framework Source Code to the Rescue

2009-01-02T20:50:55Z

On Tuesday I got a call up from a developer that was dealing with an unusual ASP.NET problem and was looking for some help. I am not an expert with ASP.NET at all, but we booted up in a Shared View session to look at the problem (that had been stopping him for the better part of a day or two at that point). He had sub-classed a dropdown list and was trying to use it in his site. The new dropdown list had a read-only property added so that when set it would render as basically a label instead of as...(read more)

A Suggestion for Windows Live and Windows 7

2008-11-05T07:14:16Z

In playing around with the Windows 7 bits I got at PDC I had a small idea that I submitted through the feedback link for Windows 7. The feedback is more related to how Windows Live works with Windows 7, but I thought I would submit it through that avenue as well as post it here. The note I sent through the feedback link was I installed the Windows Live suite of products. One of the immediate things that came to mind is I would rather have one deskbar icon rather than one for each product. It would...(read more)

Requirements Definition : The Danger of Failing Before You Have Really Started

2008-11-04T23:07:57Z

Requirements, Stories, Use Cases, or whatever a team wants to call them form a key part of the execution plan for a development team. It should tell them what a customer wants. The artifacts in whatever form they are tend to have varying degrees of detail. Getting the right amount of detail at the right time is critical to the process of producing successful software. My thoughts on Requirements definition form around a process with three key elements. Development Prioritization Definition Development...(read more)

Meshified Car

2008-10-31T01:02:37Z

I am sitting in LAX waiting for my flight home and just finished a video done by Channel 9 with Ori Amiga who is one of the stars of the Live Mesh Development team. He was showing a custom gadget that he built to integrate with his car that included integration with Live Mesh so that he had a Meshified car. It was pretty cool so I thought I would link to it – With everybody excited about the release of the Mesh client for Windows Mobile this is A different kind of Mobile Mesh ....(read more)

Watching Internet Video in double time

2008-10-31T00:59:30Z

I watch a lot of podcasts and videocasts. So much so that I often wish I could watch them in a “faster” mode. Which I can do with podcasts that are in WMV format. When they play in Windows Media Player you can right click on the play button and select “fast” playback. It isn’t double time, but it certainly is sped up. I listen to all I can with that setting – it helps me get through them faster while still being perfectly understandable etc… Not all WMV support this so I suspect it may be an encoding...(read more)

Analyzing Windows Azure

2008-10-27T22:32:26Z

Azure is/was the product formerly known as Red Dog. It is more than just a Cloud OS. It is a hosting platform as well (ala Amazon EC2) with components that give it S3 and Simple DB capability. The Simple DB capability comes from SQL Server Data Services which has been renamed SQL Services or SQL Server Services. The name change comes from the added capability to support Reporting Services and Analysis Services. So the Data story of Azure looks to be much deeper than Simple DB as MS fills it out....(read more)

Check out Twitter for PDC updates

2008-10-27T19:57:18Z

I will try and add posts here as I can – but Twitter is much better for sharing the bite-sized updates that are captured as part of sessions. You can catch my Twitters at http://twitter.com/HintonBR . A summary post will be coming sometime soon to capture my notes from the VS2010 session I went to plus the Dublin session I am in as well as others depending on when I get it done. Technorati Tags: PDC08...(read more)

Microsoft Surface hands-on

2008-10-27T16:50:21Z

Here are the pictures I took of my time hands-on with Surface Snowboard Design app App list that you can flick through Photo app grouping photos by categories Virtual Earth app – I loved it – no 3D mode yet – that would be even better – but cool to use Multi-Touch movement to navigate the map Keynote stage Technorati Tags: PDC08 , Microsoft Surface...(read more)

PDC is finally here

2008-10-27T05:14:28Z

Over the last few months it has seemed like every interesting discussion about MS products has some how involved a “just wait until PDC” statement. Thankfully PDC is finally here. Tomorrow Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia kick it off with a keynote starting at 8:30 am PT. On Tuesday there are two keynotes one from 8:30-10:30 with Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie, and David Treadwell and then another one from 11:00-12:30 with Don Box and Chris Anderson. The second one is for sure about Oslo and demoing that. If I...(read more)

How many choices are too many choices?

2008-10-01T22:44:17Z

Americans are constantly faced by a myriad of choices. When we go out to eat we have to pick between Italian, American, Chinese, Greek, Thai, Mexican, Indian, etc…. Once you have picked a type then you have to choose between Applebees, Chili’s, Outback, etc… The same thing happens on trips to the grocery store, picking a dentist, or what movie to go to. Many times we sit and spin on making a choice about something that likely doesn’t truly matter that much. In the technology world this problem continually...(read more)

Hotmail gets a Wave 3 Update

2008-09-28T06:46:58Z

Hotmail was updated this week as part of the Wave 3 rollout. When the Live Calendar Wave 3 update rolled a couple of weeks ago we got a good idea of what the UI for the new Hotmail would look like. I like the cleaner look a lot. In my previous post about the Client pieces of Wave 3 I commented that the UI change on the client didn’t do much for me. That is not the case with the UI changes for Hotmail and Calendar, I like the changes a lot. The performance as promised by the team seems great. The...(read more)