Setting up you google profile

First of all this article assumes that you are logged into Gmail or Google Reader.So if you have not done that go ahead and login to either of these services.

Once logged in navigate back to the google home page(www.google.com). You will notice that you are still logged in with your User name.

Next click the My Account button in the top right hand corner. If this is the first time you are doing this you will see a blank profile picture and no details entered. To begin adding details click the Edit Profile Button.

At this point you can add as much detail as you feel comfortable with. Once done click the save changes button at the bottom. It should be noted that the coolest thing about this page is that you can create your own semi personal URL. This is usually http://www.google.com/profile/[Your Name Here] and you simply add you name at the end. The beauty of this is that its easy to give to other people so that they can look you up. It also becomes a central location for you to store all you contact details.

The paranoid amongst us will complain that we are already giving google too much info , but in the end its all up to you since none of this info is required.

~stalkerh

Email Etiquette

It seems with the wide spread adoption of email no one seems to care how they write and send emails anymore. So if you have never been taught how to write a email (or even a letter , principles are similar) please read the following article.

Email Etiquette

Most importantly (taken from the article) , i dont want to recieve Hoax or junk email from you , so never ever send those mails to me , i never read them ever and i never forward them to other people. Know that if you send them to me the email never goes any further.

Also this is not targeted at anyone  but as a old proverb goes  ‘if the shoe fits then wear it‘

~stalkerh

Does posting to twitter make SEO sense

Does it ? With all the hype surrounding twitter and the fact that just about ever person seems to be using it these days ,does posting small bits of info from your site to twitter with a link back to the site make a difference ?

Now that twitters search functions are becoming more powerful and the fact that google is indexing twitter means that by putting your company on twitter or even yourself means just that extra bit of exposure that you need.

I have also been doing some tests where i notify twitter of a post and check my stats on that day and compare them to a day on which i did not notify twitter. The results were kinda inconclusive , for one the stats stayed basically the same but this could have been because i did it on a day to day basis and users from one day ended up visiting the next as well. What i really need to do is a week to week test and compare the results then because this is frankly to small scale.

As always let me know what you think.

~stalkerh

Developer Tip

Ok so i don’t have the time to do a full post so here is a quick developer tip to use when working in VS 2008.

After you use the Go to Definition function (Right Click on a method -> Goto Definition ) you can use the back button on your mouse to navigate back to the place that called function you browsed to. The back button is normally the 3rd button on a mouse not counting the mouse wheel.

While this may not sound out of this world ,when digging deep into code it can make the world of difference.

~stalkerh

The Most Annoying Ad

Normally while browsing the random sites I browse I have just come to ignore ads that are displayed where ever they are.

But of recent times I have come across this ad that has sound included and all I can is it’s damn annoying and sometimes just a little freaky.

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

Now granted that the creators have done a decent job in getting your attention but I will never for the life of me click that ad , it’s just way to weird even compared to some of the other things I have seen.

Have you seen this ad and what do you think? Also have you found any other similar ads?

~stalkerh

Increasing Your Project’s Build Effeciency

This method of increasing build and general loading efficiency will not work in all cases and while it may make sense to me it won’t really make sense to people that have a set routine. Also this has only been tested on a C# project so I have no idea if it will work for any other project types.

First some quick basics , if you did not already the CSProj file is used to load al the files that you see in the project but it also contains all the details about files that need to be built. What commonly happens to me and I’m sure many other developers is that (hopefully) you keep your DAL in a separate DLL .This makes building and distribution amongst other things a lot easier.

This example is targeted at subsonic but I am sure if you work with another DAL generator you might have a similar problem. When you generate the required files for subsonic you will notice that the files appear as hidden first , at this point you have to include them into the project. Once you include them everything looks nice and happy but in the background VS is adding these files to your CS project. What is wrong with this you may ask? Well it’s pretty simple; as you add more files the size of the project file is going to keep on growing and causes VS to load them slower as it now needs to load a larger file.

The solution to this is pretty simple, first unload your CSProject. Next edit it using any text editor or even VS itself. Once the file has loaded navigate to the second ItemGroup section which contains a list of compile entries. Now at this point I should note that you should take some caution as to what you want to remove (you won’t lose or delete any files but it’s a pain to re add stuff that should not have been removed), what I typically is ensure that all my Generated Files are located in a generated folder so that I don’t make a mistake. Once you have found all the generated files remove them as you see necessary and replace them with this <Compile Include=”Generated\*.cs” />. What that does is instruct the compiler to include all the files in that folder in the compilation. Now reload the project again, at this point you should notice some increased loading speed depending on the size of the project.

It’s also at this point where some people may decide not to use this method. Basically if you run you generator and new files are created in the folder that we specified the only way to include them to unload and reload the project. On this point I again think it’s faster than manually finding each file and selecting include.

There are other little edits that you can make to get the load and build to run a little faster but i will have to leave that for another time. Let me know what you think and also if this did increase your project load speed.

~stalkerh

Servicing yourself

So one of the many things I love about being a programmer is that if I don’t find a tool that does something I need I just create one that will do it for me. Also if I don’t like the way a program I use works, I can just change it the way I want it to (assuming its open source).

Now granted I don’t distribute a lot of my apps as they are created for flaws or annoyances I found, this usually means that my apps don’t apply to most other people or at least confuses a lot of other people. I have released some of my apps for others to use and they have been used with varying success, so any project I have started or worked on has never really been a failure in my eyes. With enough effort and time I could probably make them public ready.

Unfortunately for most people that are not programmers bringing their ideas to life can sometimes become problematic as conveying there ideas and thoughts to others doesn’t always translate into what they envisioned.

The other alternative is to learn a programming language in the field that you want to distribute your app (web, desktop). This tends to have mixed results depending on how long and how much the user grasps the different programming concepts. The worst that can happen is that the user publishes the app and has a programmer maintain the app, the usually ends in frustration on the programmers side as they realize just how little the original person understood about programming. This problem becomes compounded when the idea of a re write is suggested and the original person doesn’t want this because they feel the app already works for them.

So what I want to know is this, do you write custom one time apps to sort/fix problems that you have? Are you a programmer or not? If you are not a programmer do you use a dynamic language to make it easier to get your apps working?

The reason I ask these questions is because it seems the most non programmers that get into development start of with some dynamic language and move on from there. This usually becomes their answer for everything and I can understand why (being able to make simple changes and see the results without having to compile etc.)

So what are your thoughts on this leave a comment and let me know.

~stalkerh

Die spammers die

Ok so recently my blog has been hard by spammers so if you are a real person that was trying to comment please forgive me.

If you really want to leave a comment , either register or drop me a mail at jameelhaffejee at gmail.com and i will gladly allow your comment through.I just don’t have the time to sift through 270 spam comments for one user especially if i dont know the one user is there.

Thanks

~stalkerh

Finally

So for a while now i have had to many things pending that i was wondering if i should just put life on pause and take a nice long holiday. But time waits for no man and any time i don’t invest wisely is wasted.

With this in mind i am quite happy to say that i worked out a ‘work’ plan for myself so that i can get things done at home. First of all i have started using RTM a lot more to the point where i bought the premium version so that i can sync it up with my mobile (and well support their work as well), i have also started using evernote a lot more thanks to their new twitter integration (taking notes has never been easier). Having put this all into play i actually got some personal development done and while it was not my own personal work i was at least able to help some one out.

It also seems that once i sorted out alot of my time wastage other things out of my control fell into place. For one i got my xbox 360 to work using the towel trick while i was waiting for it to be collected by MI Digital and as luck would have it ,2 days after i got it working they brought me my new xbox 360.

Now all i have to do is prioritize my projects and wait patiently for my new NDS Lite to arrive. Thankfully to keep my motivated till that arrives , i won second prize on twitter competition thanks to @DulceCafe .So now everyday when i get home there is a 40% chance of me getting a gift :P.

Finally riding the train of happy thoughts is the new that StevenMCD is going to be a daddy , congrats again dude and may it be everything you expect it to be.

~stalkerh

Things that mess up my day

So one thing i have to say firstly is that i am a morning person and a late night person any other time and i am likely to bite your head for something small or trivial.

Part of being a morning person i tend to get up pretty early in the morning and leave for work when most people are still asleep. What this allows me to do is beat most of the traffic and have a nice relaxing drive to work. Now for the past few months there has been some serious road works on the way to work but the only time it ever really caused a problem is if there was a accident (because they removed the emergency lane the vehicles in question have to remain on the highway causing traffic).

Now while the removing of the emergency lane was not to bad this week they decided to make a 3 lane highway into a 2 lane highway. Now no matter what time i leave there is always traffic on the highway and this frustrates me big time and to make it worse today there was a accident in the fast lane of the now 2 lane highway which made it a 1 lane highway which made traffic even worse.

Finally to top it off some idiot drive with flashing red lights on his bakkie. Now everyone thinks that a ambulance is coming though and slows down even more , but the problem for me was that it was not even a ambulance. It was just some companies personal security car or something.

These days the only future i see is to work from home ,travelling our roads is just to painful and frustrating :(.

~stalkerh