Jean Hibbert's Blog

Work in progress...

2009-11-23T15:46:00Z

Wow! Finally... I've returned from the dark side... and although I am wiser I have yet to fully recover from my battle with the demon of the deep. (Just like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings). As a ninja programmer I now wear a white belt rather than a black one with 3 red stripes. I have transcended and finally walked through the gates, although these were a different set of gates. Gates that were erected in my mind during my adolescence phase as a programmer. I now understand what I need to know...(read more)

Software Tools

2009-06-18T10:14:00Z

Power commands for VS2008 Useful commands for the VS2008 IDE. Ghost Doc Useful for auto documenting your code. TestDriven.net 2 [Not really necessary if you have the VS2008 Test Suite] Subsonic 3 : ORM A good ORM to get a project up and running quickly. XML Liquid A useful tool for displaying Schemas graphically. Balsamic mocks A brilliant tool for generating screen mockups in a very short time. VLC Media Player Very cool media player that plays most types of media without complaining about codecs...(read more)

Jean Hibbert's Terminator Salvation.

2009-06-09T11:01:00Z

Terminator Salvation (Alpha Version) - a Story by Jean Hibbert. Some of the ideas have been stolen from the movie, and most of the scenes in the movie can be re-used on my take of Terminator Salvation. The reason I have re-written the story is because I feel that the story did not live up to my expectations. Yes, and an egotistical way I feel that I could have done a lot better. Despite Sam Worthington's appearance as different breed of terminator(i.e. a robot with a human brain & heart)...(read more)

Dynamically loading assemblies for reflection without locking the files.

2009-05-11T21:35:00Z

I was recently asked to write a class which dynamically loaded assemblies, and perform reflection on them, without permanently loading the files into the application domain and without locking the files. Unfortunately, and surprisingly the Assembly.ReflectionOnlyLoadFrom(string filename) method also locks files, which in my opinion defeats the purpose. So I had to fall back on the strategy of loading the assembly into a temporary application domain, reflect on the assembly and unload the application...(read more)

Terminator Salvation : Understanding the human conciousness.

2009-04-16T22:52:00Z

"I think therefore I am". Or am I? Does the fact that I am concious and have some kind of "experience" of what is around me, mean that I actually exist? A robot can have an "experience", but at what point would you say the robot is actually concious? Facets of what I would call "intelligence": 1) Memory 2) Creativity 3) Logic 4) Intuition 5) (I can't believe I almost forgot the most important facet....) Common Sense In the trailer to the up and coming terminator...(read more)

Why Windows Sucks

2009-02-12T23:32:00Z

I've been working with Microsoft "Technologies" now for over 10 years, and the idea of moving over to Apple OS / Java has crossed my mind quite a few times. During those times I felt that if I managed to escape the Windows environment the Mac environment would be like breath of fresh air although I can imagine that the Mac OS also has it's fair share of problems. Have you ever tried to uninstall Internet Explorer?? It's impossible. This blog post is not about Microsoft's...(read more)

Maintaining Consistency

2009-02-09T17:19:00Z

Another long awaited, highly anticipated blog post. I realised something yesterday evening while I sat on the bicycle machine at gym preparing myself for the mental trauma of forcing myself through an hour and a half of mindless weight pushing ... I realised that if I wanted to maintain consistency I had to : 1) Relieve myself of the psychological pressure I put myself under when I go to gym. 2) Avoid high expectations in terms of what I'm able to achieve within the hour and a half, from a cardiovascular...(read more)

Write your own web server in less than 40 lines

2008-11-25T23:01:00Z

I've recently been toying with the System.Net.Sockets namespace... and this is how easy it is to write your own web server: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.Net; using System.IO; using System.Net.Sockets; using System.Threading; namespace MyFirstWebServer { class Program { static void Main( string [] args) { TcpListener listener = new TcpListener ( IPAddress .Parse( "127.0.0.1" ), 8010); listener.Start(); TcpClient client = listener.AcceptTcpClient...(read more)

Patterns and Practices Summit 2008 - Day 5

2008-11-07T23:11:00Z

1. John De Vos, David Hill & Ajoy Krishnamoorthy - P&P Looking ahead : These guys are the P&P architects and they wanted to know how we felt about the current set of Enterprise Library tools. They also did a bit of horn blowing by providing us with the general usage statistics for the Enterprise Library in the development community. I made a point of standing up and stressing the importance of having StarterKits for the different Ent Lib tools. I also stressed the importance of the Astoria...(read more)

Patterns and Practices Summit 2008 - Day 4

2008-11-07T22:34:00Z

1. Keynote - David Treadwell: This talk focused on cloud computing and David gave a demonsration of the how a "mesh" application would work. 2. David Hill & Kyle Huntley - Composition and presentation patterns : What a brilliant talk! David and Kyle took us through a WPF/Silverlight applicaton where the only differentiation was the UI skin!!! He showed how by implementing this pattern a WPF application can be easily upgraded to a Silverlight application. The application leveraged the...(read more)

Patterns and Practices Summit 2008 - Day 3

2008-11-06T16:04:00Z

1. Keynote - Pat Helland : Pat gave a brilliant speech on the energy consumption of data centers. He gave us insight into the setup of Microsofts data centers and the strategies Microsoft use to conserve energy and keep costs low. This was an unexpected subject, but Pat is somebody definitely worth keeping an eye on. 2. Data Access - Don Smith : Don gave us a talk and demonstration on the Entity framework. At the end of the session I had a chat with him and asked him what Microsoft is doing to facilitate...(read more)

Patterns and Practices Summit 2008 - Day 2

2008-11-05T15:51:00Z

1. Keynote - Kent Beck : - This guy is the father of XP programming. The talk he gave was about the philosopy behind problem solving, and a few key techniques we can use to tackle problems. They were. a) Have the guts to make the LEAP sometimes. b) Somtimes its critical to SIMPLIFY c) Sometimes it's usefull to REWRITE the system in paralell to maintaining the system. d) It's always important to REFACTOR. 2. Architecture without big design - Peter Provost: This was an introduction into Architect...(read more)

Patterns and Practices Summit 2008 - Day 1

2008-11-03T20:30:00Z

1. Keynot Jeff Teper - This guy did an overview of sharepoint and the future of the product. 2. Functional programming - Erik Meijer : I've been looking forward to this talk for a while. Erik M. is one of the architects that works with Anders H. Erik gave some brilliant insight into the evolution of programming languages and pointed us to a Language called Haskell which is a pure functional language and would be an ideal introduction into this sphere. A book we were advised to read : Graham Hutton...(read more)

Seattle Day 1 - Sunday

2008-11-03T15:19:00Z

The jet lag was pretty rough.... I still find myself waking up at wierd hours of the night and checking the time. I also have a lot on my mind at the moment, and am looking forward to the conference which kicks off in 1 hour. This blog post is about yesterday though. I managed to watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Philidelphia Eagles, ... the "Battle of the Birds". American football has always made more sense than rugby to me.You can tackle whoever the hell you please and you can throw...(read more)

Patterns & Practices Summit 2008

2008-10-31T16:02:00Z

I will be attending the Patterns and Practices summit 2008, which starts next week. A list of speakers http://www.pnpsummit.com/west2008/west2008.aspx General topics http://www.pnpsummit.com/West2008/west2008sessions.aspx I attended the 2005 patterns and practices summit(the year before I joined m35) and found this conference extremely informative with regards to: 1) Gaining insight into the .Net Framework, and design patterns. 2) Learning about the Enterprise Library. 3) Learning about the new Infragistics...(read more)