I've been an attendee of both BaltoLUG and BaltoMSDN; two technology groups based North of Baltimore in the Towson and Hunt Valley areas respectively. While I subscribe to both mailing lists, I only regularly attend BaltoMSDN.
The BaltoLUG community has been great for helping me figure out newbie questions regarding Linux, but more often than not the topics were not applicable to my job or even hobby interest. It almost seemed as if there was too much diversity in interests; and overall very little emphasis on programming. The people who attended to learn more about being an effective system administrator seemed to get the most out of the meetings. (At least back when I attended.)
Ironically, I know of 4 people (besides myself) who began regularly attending BaltoMSDN (the Baltimore Microsoft Developer's Network group). These meetings are highly developer centric, both from individuals sharing from work experience and from outside experts coming in to educate us on the latest MS technologies. Most surprising between the two though, is that I have witnessed a strong community of friends existing outside of the meetings which has directly resulted in informal coffee gatherings, jobs, and social events. The same sense of "community" doesn't seem to exist at BaltoLUG.
So from my perspective I'd say that LUGs are still relevant, but ones that have a model similar to Baltimore may not be relevant to developers. (Both groups seem to consistently pull about a dozen+ participants a month.)
A similar feature is offered to users of Spamcop accounts. Unfortunately I've had mixed results...
The official RFC for e-mail addresses say that a plus symbol is valid; but roughly half of the web-forms I've interacted with do not consider a plus in a name to be a valid address. Some bigger web-sites (i.e., Xbox Live) don't allow this, and those that do may break if the e-mails they sent are from a listserv. (e.g., unable to unsubscribe, change passwords over e-mail, etc...)
Bookmarks and histories aren't the answer -- they're not very good for searching, the UI isn't very good for, say, adding notes, and they don't work offline. Also, stale URLs are a huge problem
I agree with all of the shortcomings time961 posted, but despite these I have personally found bookmarking to work rather well for my projects. The pipeline is like this...
In my bookmarks folder I have a "Projects" folder.
Within my "Projects" folder I have an alphabetic listing of folders with each project's name.
If the project is small, I fill it directly with book marks. I do take the time to add notes, because if the URL does go stale, the notes will let me know what I'm now missing. More often than not, missing information can be replaced in the future with another URL that has the same or more up-to-date information. Additionally Google Desktop searches my bookmarks file, so I just double-click ctrl and can search via keywords that way.
This whole setup is a bit of a hack, but it's worked. I'm hoping either Firefox 3.0 will have a fantastic bookmark manager or a plug-in author creates something truly wonderful for the existing bookmark system.
I've been on/off developing in C# since 1.0 (2002). Two books I'd recommend, both my Microsoft Press:
"Applied.NET Framework Programming" http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Microsoft-NET-Framew ork-Programming/dp/0735614229 - Recommend reading this first, cover to cover - It gives the gritty details of.NET, with most all examples in C#. - Services as an invaluable reference
"Visual C# 2005 Step By Step" http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-C-2005-Step /dp/0735621292 - Specifics on the latest release of C# - While guided, not too much fluff
"Accusation"? You're kidding, right? Here, they even have an AdWords FAQ entry for that: Will my ads show on parked domain sites? [google.com]. Up until your post, I hadn't heard anyone accusing Google profiting from "parked" domains. It's a rather serious accusation, and if true would change my view on Google. So I asked for the source.
I appreciate you digging up the link you posted, but I'm still having trouble connecting the dots as to how Google is profiting from doing something shady. From the link you provided, they seem to be up front with what they are doing. And as I understand it, what they're doing, putting Adwords on parked sites (if the user selects that type of exposure*) seems fine.
... That means your ads may show on parked domain sites if your campaign is opted in to the search or content networks. What am I missing, or is this just a matter of opinion?
I'm sorry if I spoke out of ignorance. I thought I knew enough about the subject, and on a search today I found the following Wikipedia entry on Apple vs. Microsoft:
In a twist midway through the suit, Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUIs. Xerox had invested in Apple and had invited the Macintosh design team to view their GUI computers at the PARC research lab; these visits had been very influential on the development of the Macintosh GUI. Xerox's lawsuit appeared to be a defensive move to ensure that if Apple v. Microsoft established that "look and feel" was copyrightable, then Xerox would be the primary beneficiary, rather than Apple. The Xerox case was dismissed because the three year statute of limitations had passed (i.e. Xerox waited too long to file suit.) If you would point me to your source of information, I will consider as well on this matter.
If it weren't for Microsoft, Apple would be Microsoft. I believe your statement. I remember in high school hearing about the Apple vs Microsoft case regarding Windows. I thought (and still do think) it was lame for Apple trying to maintain a monopoly on the GUI; they had been using it for so many years why not let others now innovate with it. (This was also before I learned how Apple ganked it from Xerox.) It was political moves like this which helped fuel the decision for me to upgrade from my Apple ][ to a 386dx-40 instead of an Apple Macintosh.
Now here I am 12 years later, typing on an AMD based computer running Windows XP, with my semi-new Mac Book Pro getting more and more use each day; I'm trying to "switch"(back). Much of this desire to switch is fueled by Microsoft's political moves, and not their technology. 2 examples...
Good tech: Coding C# in Visual Studio hands down is more efficient than Objective-C with XCode. Bad Politics: Renaming the Vista frameworks to.NET 3.0 even though the CLR remains 2.0, despite the backlash in the MS dev community.
Good tech: Microsoft Office is a really fantastic program. Bad Politics: Not supporting open standards for documents; creating and pushing a convoluted "standard" and calling it open.
In my perfect world, Microsoft, Apple, and a major Linux distribution each get 1/3 of the market share, with plenty of room for new up-and-coming OS's.
For about a year I had "The C++ Programming Language" book by Stroustrup, but only used it for reference. Then when I had some free time, I got the idea of doing the problems in the end of each chapter. Not just the easy or hard problems... all of them.
What I found out was a lot of problems that I thought were trivial, weren't. It really forced me to push ahead, learn STL and the Zen of pointers. The few times I got stuck, I'd send an e-mail to a few other geeky developers (like me) on my work team the next day at lunch, and had a good time trying to solve what appeared to be a simple problem.
I found that at the end of a few weeks of going through the first few chapters, I just "knew" STL and C++ that much better.
So my recommendation: 1. Find a good book that ranked well in your area of interest 2. Be sure the book has a set of solve-your-own problems at the end of them 3. Solve them;)
Thank you for the link. I hadn't heard of "Monodevelop". It looks promising. If they get to the point of making a native Mac installer, I will take it for a spin.
Regarding.NET development, if he's like me... it's not about targeting the.NET platform, but creating software to run on Windows that leverage.NET. I'm a developer on the MS platform, and a month ago just bought my first laptop, a 17" MacBook Pro. Right now I'm doing the same type of stuff as "Bystander" but hope in a few months I'll have found enough free time to be natively developing in XCode and Quartz Composer.
It will most likely be at least a year after that before I can make a pay check doing so though.;)
Just got back from the trenches, pre-ordering my Wii. Here's what it looked like at a North Baltimore Game Stop...
7:30am - Arrive to meet friend. One person is already in front of us.
8:00am - Four more people are behind us. Manager is already there to make sure things are okay. Tells us there are 12 units for pre-order (and 2 which the store is allowed to let employees pre-order.) Also informs us they are openning up at midnight on the day of the Wii launch.
8:15am - Some guys join the line, they came from a line of 20 people at the Game Stop in the "Hunt Valley" mall area.
8:30am - Line is full. Manager tells people in line that anyone else who shows won't be able to pre-order.
9:00am - Some hard core games show up and tell us it's crazy they don't have more pre-orders because "5 million units are being produced"... walk away very pissed.
10:00am - Manager opens to the doors and we rush in; not so much to pre-order... but also because we were all freezing. (Temp started at 37 and only rose to 50 by 10am.)
$50 pre-order. $30 for a 1yr warranty.
Everyone in line was getting one for themselves, except for one mother... determined to get a unit for her sons as a Christmas gift.:)
By now I've performed about 80-100 tech interviews for a variety of IT companies. I will ask the brain dead questions, but ramp up accordingly. I essentially want to ask just enough to know whether or not I can say with confidence "HIRE" or "NO HIRE". ( Recommend reading: Joel On Software )
If relevant, I will ask for some white-boarding of UML, or a code fragment to perform a simple task.
I do all of this because, I have found that age means nothing. I've worked with some seasoned geeks who taught my colleagues and I alot on the latest technologies. I've also worked with a guy I hired who had well over 20 years experiences and was absolutely useless. I can personally say the same to guys just a few years in the field.
It's a crap shoot...and I don't like to gamble.
Another way I look at it... I've also been on the receiving end of an interview at least a dozen times. When this happens I try to show my patience when going through the brain-dead questions, because I know acting rushed or anxious is a sure way to send bad mojo to the interviewer, even if I've nailed all the tech questions.
I know I'm interviewing for a good contract when the interview switches to more challenging questions based on my answers. If the interviewer just runs through the list or makes self-contradictory statements, there is a good chance it's either a manager who doesn't know the subject matter or possibly a technie called in to give the interview and isn't good at it. At which point, it can be a fun challenge to turn up the charm with the interview, because I know the questions coming are no sweat. The degree of confidence shows leadership skills and does stick in their mind when making decisions. (Especially if the interviewer WAS a non-technie.)
P.S.: Also regarding semantically incorrect or self-contradictory statements... I sometimes deliberately throw out a misstatement to see how the interviewee responds (if at all).
You are correct...and Monday a warrant was issued.
The one that is currently out is for the children to be returned (and so the police can now act on this), but not to arrest the father. The judge is hoping that this will provide him incentive to bring them back on his own accord.
With a warrant you can also get local media involved... a friend of mine (camera geek) who works for Fox 45 might be able to get their pictures up on the news tonight.
Last thing that I've learned about this who thing... to get the FBI involved in a case regarding kidnapping (and possibly stolen property?) is that there must be proof that the offender has left the state where the crime was committed.
Thanks for the comments, and I appreciate those who have taken the time to glance at the photos.
My friend's 3 kids was "kidnapped" yesterday by their father here in Baltimore, their location is unknown.
After a 4 day custody trial, which ended Friday, he was orded to turn them over at a Police station at 8pm on 8/18/06. He neve showed.
I've spent the day riding with her to and from multiple Police stations as well as the Towson commissioner's office. Everywhere we go we hear the same thing, "Without a bench warrant our hands are tied."
Today I learned 2 things:
1. It's nearly impossible to get a hold of a judge on a Saturday 2. Commissioner's can be downright cruel and unhelpful
While working with the Baltimore police, most all have been very friendly (many have agreed with us about Commissioner's!) but none of them are able to do more than write down what we say. We're quickly losing hope; and even if an amber alert goes out... it may be too late if he has left the country. I have almost no faith in the Baltimore legal system and how it interacts with the police is non-existant. (Note: I blame this interaction between the two, not the Police themselves.)
Regardless, I wanted to tred on the border of being on topic as the Baltimore police and their inability to act on this may cause us to lose 3 children to an unstable man. If any Slashdoter's have 5 seconds, please click on the web-page below I made, and let me know if you see him or the kids.
With luck and more leg work, we'll get the amber alert up ASAP.
I take stock in the article; I'm about to switch, yet many would peg me as an unlikely candidate.
You see, I'm a contractor who specializes in Windows solutions. Microsoft technologies are my livelihood. Microsoft is all over my resume: MCAD certified, a member of BaltoMSDN, etc... I attended a few DevDays and even spent the money for a Universal MSDN subscription back in 2004. But tell me I'd be a PC guy 15 years ago, and I would have said you were crazy.
Not until late 1991 did I change my plan of tossing out my Apple ][e for a Macintosh and instead went with a 386dx-40. Maybe it was the stack of VGA games, or Deluxe Paint Animation's power, but after seeing a 386 run... I knew it was where I wanted to geek out. And I think that for awhile it was the right choice. But no longer...
Despite the programs and speed for my AMD64 it's still not as "cool" as the Mac's I use at my church every Sunday. I don't know how to quantify what this "cool" is, but I'm sure the fact the GUI paradigm is both simple & slick, and I can drop down into a Unix Shell feeds the geek in me. The fact Parallels exists for Mac is what has convinced the "IT consultant" within me (who needs Microsoft tools to pay the mortgage) that a not-too-painful transition path is possible.
Last year I bought a mini-mac for my TV. I love that machine. After WWDC I plan to purchase a 17" Mac laptop pimped out with a lot of RAM and Parallels.
Hopefully in two years I can be adding insightful posts about being a Mac Developer using XCode.;)
I had a brief run-in with Mega64 in San Jose last week.
This was my second year I worked the GDC as a Conference Associate (CA). When not seeking out parties, many of the CAs will just hang around the "CA Lounge" and play games like "Witch Hunt" (aka: "Mafia") or "Spoons". A few of us were about to kick off a game when we see these 4 or 5 guys just hanging out in the hallway between the conference center and Mariott Hotel. I go over to them and invite them to play a game. The whole time one of these guys has a mini-DV recorder and is shooting everything around him. A bit odd, but hey... I'm the same way sometimes with taking photos on my Canon A80.
After some brief introductions, they tell me they are part of a group "Mega64" and that they are showing their videos the next night at the awards show. I had seen one or two of there sketches, but didn't realize how big they were in the game scene until we had started playing spoons and another CA walks by, looks confused and says, "What are you guys doing playing spoons with Mega64?"
Throughout the conference I ran into them one or two other times. Their videos were successful, as the shorts were the highlight for many (me included) during the awards show Wednesday night.
I still remember in the early 80's, day my dad bought an Apple ][e with not one, but two 5.25 inch floppy drives and a green tinted monitor.
At school they started teaching us Applesoft BASIC in 3rd grade. By middle school I was writing my own "action" video games in low resolution graphics. In early high school I continued onward with Beagle Brothers BASIC compiler, which gave me significant speed increases for my games.
In the early 90's I eventually gave up the Apple ][2 and switched to 80386 (my first PC) and switched to programming games in Turbo Pascal, utilizing Michael Abrash's Mode X. I have stayed with PCs since then, except for my Mac Mini hooked up to my TV.;)
I have limited experience with your specific situation but do have a Mini MAC connected to my HDTV and can offer the following:
- Should you figure a way to directly play the streams off of the Mac (I know little about PVR streams), be sure overscanning is not an issue. Both a Windows based PC and my current MiniMac overscan on my TV (with it's DVI connection), and this seems to be the standard rather than the exception when talking with a friend who has a similar setup. In my situation, currently the only solution is to buy a 3rd party product, as neither MacOS nor my TV let me set the visible bounds.
- Should you decide to remotely control the computer, I recommend a blue tooth based solution. The media room in my house use to use an infrared keyboard and mouse which were quite problematic. When I purchased the MiniMAC, I decided to risk going blue tooth and it's been fantastic.
I'm grateful for the information about Trac (never heard of it until this thread.)
I have heard of GForge, and have a partially installed copy on a box with SVN. I'm in the process of setting this up for a game development project, but still have some time before I commit the team to a SCM...
Trac looks "tighter" than GForge and may have some features GForge doesn't. Would someone express what they feel are the benefits of either one? And regarding multiple projects...does "multiple projects" mean multiple SVN's or mean many projects contained in one SVN?
Eric Sink has recently started writting a detailed HOWTO off of his personal website titles "Source Control HOWTO. He doesn't just cover his own companies project "Vault", but also touches on CVS, VSS, and Subversion.
In my IT career I've used VSS, PVCS, a bit of CVS, and now becoming more familiar with Subversion behind GForge. Of all the documentation I've consumed, Eric Sink's article has so far been the most thorough (and least dry!)
As for the comments regarding source control being overkill for personal projects; I feel there is a misconception that source control will add continually overhead to a project. The initial setup may be a pain, but when refactoring components, it's much easier to perform differences along a file's history from a source control system than diff directory which you manually copied to perserve a "version". I've done it both ways, and found using source control with my solo projects to provide a multitude of benefits. I could list them out here, but I believe they're all addressed (and then some) in the HOWTO.
Most of my "side job" time is spent in leadership at my church, Horizon in Towson, MD. I give of my time in both a technical and non-technical capacity. I tweak the flash web-site (made by a truly talented web-designer), help administer the phpBB forums, lead a "Link Group" (aka: small group), sometimes create Power Points and Keynote files for Sunday, as well as just chilling with guys at Starbucks to stay connected with whats going on in their lives.
To a much lesser degree I throw Raves and occasionally DJ a middle school or high school dance.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been an attendee of both BaltoLUG and BaltoMSDN; two technology groups based North of Baltimore in the Towson and Hunt Valley areas respectively. While I subscribe to both mailing lists, I only regularly attend BaltoMSDN.
The BaltoLUG community has been great for helping me figure out newbie questions regarding Linux, but more often than not the topics were not applicable to my job or even hobby interest. It almost seemed as if there was too much diversity in interests; and overall very little emphasis on programming. The people who attended to learn more about being an effective system administrator seemed to get the most out of the meetings. (At least back when I attended.)
Ironically, I know of 4 people (besides myself) who began regularly attending BaltoMSDN (the Baltimore Microsoft Developer's Network group). These meetings are highly developer centric, both from individuals sharing from work experience and from outside experts coming in to educate us on the latest MS technologies. Most surprising between the two though, is that I have witnessed a strong community of friends existing outside of the meetings which has directly resulted in informal coffee gatherings, jobs, and social events. The same sense of "community" doesn't seem to exist at BaltoLUG.
So from my perspective I'd say that LUGs are still relevant, but ones that have a model similar to Baltimore may not be relevant to developers. (Both groups seem to consistently pull about a dozen+ participants a month.)
Last week on Gamasutra was a good article on memory leak detection, and how to role your own tool:
"Monitoring Your PC's Memory Usage For Game Development"
While the title says it's for game development, I found that the meat of the article applies to any windows developer.
A similar feature is offered to users of Spamcop accounts. Unfortunately I've had mixed results...
The official RFC for e-mail addresses say that a plus symbol is valid; but roughly half of the web-forms I've interacted with do not consider a plus in a name to be a valid address. Some bigger web-sites (i.e., Xbox Live) don't allow this, and those that do may break if the e-mails they sent are from a listserv. (e.g., unable to unsubscribe, change passwords over e-mail, etc...)
In my bookmarks folder I have a "Projects" folder.
Within my "Projects" folder I have an alphabetic listing of folders with each project's name.
If the project is small, I fill it directly with book marks. I do take the time to add notes, because if the URL does go stale, the notes will let me know what I'm now missing. More often than not, missing information can be replaced in the future with another URL that has the same or more up-to-date information. Additionally Google Desktop searches my bookmarks file, so I just double-click ctrl and can search via keywords that way.
This whole setup is a bit of a hack, but it's worked. I'm hoping either Firefox 3.0 will have a fantastic bookmark manager or a plug-in author creates something truly wonderful for the existing bookmark system.
I've been on/off developing in C# since 1.0 (2002). Two books I'd recommend, both my Microsoft Press:
.NET Framework Programming"w ork-Programming/dp/0735614229 .NET, with most all examples in C#.
p /dp/0735621292
"Applied
http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Microsoft-NET-Frame
- Recommend reading this first, cover to cover
- It gives the gritty details of
- Services as an invaluable reference
"Visual C# 2005 Step By Step"
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-C-2005-Ste
- Specifics on the latest release of C#
- While guided, not too much fluff
Good luck!
Sony's PR contacted Kotaku, they talked, and while continued to disagree reverted on their decision to ban them from their press channels:
e up-240922.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/sony-and-kotaku-mak
Everyone makes mistakes; I'm glad to see Sony realized their err and wasn't prideful about maintaining their snap decision.
I appreciate you digging up the link you posted, but I'm still having trouble connecting the dots as to how Google is profiting from doing something shady. From the link you provided, they seem to be up front with what they are doing. And as I understand it, what they're doing, putting Adwords on parked sites (if the user selects that type of exposure*) seems fine.
... That means your ads may show on parked domain sites if your campaign is opted in to the search or content networks. What am I missing, or is this just a matter of opinion?What's the source of your accusation?
- The Sims (16 million)
- Diablo II (15 million)
- StarCraft (9.5 million, includes StarCraft: Brood War)[3]
- Half-Life (8 million)
- World of Warcraft
- Myst (6 million)
- The Sims 2 (5 million)
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (4 million, including Xbox release)
- RollerCoaster Tycoon (4 million for the original in North America alone)
- Half-Life 2 (4 million)
That's 4 out of 10 that is a sequel. But on the console it's a different story.- Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES - 18 million)
- Super Mario Land (Game Boy - 14 million)
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (14 million)
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2 - 13 million)
- Super Mario 64 (N64 - 11 million)
- Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PS2 - 11 million)
- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2 - 11 million)
- Gran Turismo (PS1 - 10.5 million)
- Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES - 10 million)
- Final Fantasy VII (PS1 - 9.8 million, includes Final Fantasy VII International)
Pretty telling. I suppose there is some truth to the statement.Cheers.
Now here I am 12 years later, typing on an AMD based computer running Windows XP, with my semi-new Mac Book Pro getting more and more use each day; I'm trying to "switch"(back). Much of this desire to switch is fueled by Microsoft's political moves, and not their technology. 2 examples...
Good tech: Coding C# in Visual Studio hands down is more efficient than Objective-C with XCode.
Bad Politics: Renaming the Vista frameworks to
Good tech: Microsoft Office is a really fantastic program.
Bad Politics: Not supporting open standards for documents; creating and pushing a convoluted "standard" and calling it open.
In my perfect world, Microsoft, Apple, and a major Linux distribution each get 1/3 of the market share, with plenty of room for new up-and-coming OS's.
What's your source for those #s?
For about a year I had "The C++ Programming Language" book by Stroustrup, but only used it for reference. Then when I had some free time, I got the idea of doing the problems in the end of each chapter. Not just the easy or hard problems... all of them.
;)
What I found out was a lot of problems that I thought were trivial, weren't. It really forced me to push ahead, learn STL and the Zen of pointers. The few times I got stuck, I'd send an e-mail to a few other geeky developers (like me) on my work team the next day at lunch, and had a good time trying to solve what appeared to be a simple problem.
I found that at the end of a few weeks of going through the first few chapters, I just "knew" STL and C++ that much better.
So my recommendation:
1. Find a good book that ranked well in your area of interest
2. Be sure the book has a set of solve-your-own problems at the end of them
3. Solve them
Thank you for the link. I hadn't heard of "Monodevelop". It looks promising. If they get to the point of making a native Mac installer, I will take it for a spin.
.NET development, if he's like me... it's not about targeting the .NET platform, but creating software to run on Windows that leverage .NET. I'm a developer on the MS platform, and a month ago just bought my first laptop, a 17" MacBook Pro. Right now I'm doing the same type of stuff as "Bystander" but hope in a few months I'll have found enough free time to be natively developing in XCode and Quartz Composer.
;)
Regarding
It will most likely be at least a year after that before I can make a pay check doing so though.
Just got back from the trenches, pre-ordering my Wii. Here's what it looked like at a North Baltimore Game Stop...
:)
7:30am - Arrive to meet friend. One person is already in front of us.
8:00am - Four more people are behind us. Manager is already there to make sure things are okay. Tells us there are 12 units for pre-order (and 2 which the store is allowed to let employees pre-order.) Also informs us they are openning up at midnight on the day of the Wii launch.
8:15am - Some guys join the line, they came from a line of 20 people at the Game Stop in the "Hunt Valley" mall area.
8:30am - Line is full. Manager tells people in line that anyone else who shows won't be able to pre-order.
9:00am - Some hard core games show up and tell us it's crazy they don't have more pre-orders because "5 million units are being produced"... walk away very pissed.
10:00am - Manager opens to the doors and we rush in; not so much to pre-order... but also because we were all freezing. (Temp started at 37 and only rose to 50 by 10am.)
$50 pre-order. $30 for a 1yr warranty.
Everyone in line was getting one for themselves, except for one mother... determined to get a unit for her sons as a Christmas gift.
By now I've performed about 80-100 tech interviews for a variety of IT companies. I will ask the brain dead questions, but ramp up accordingly. I essentially want to ask just enough to know whether or not I can say with confidence "HIRE" or "NO HIRE". ( Recommend reading: Joel On Software )
If relevant, I will ask for some white-boarding of UML, or a code fragment to perform a simple task.
I do all of this because, I have found that age means nothing. I've worked with some seasoned geeks who taught my colleagues and I alot on the latest technologies. I've also worked with a guy I hired who had well over 20 years experiences and was absolutely useless. I can personally say the same to guys just a few years in the field.
It's a crap shoot...and I don't like to gamble.
Another way I look at it... I've also been on the receiving end of an interview at least a dozen times. When this happens I try to show my patience when going through the brain-dead questions, because I know acting rushed or anxious is a sure way to send bad mojo to the interviewer, even if I've nailed all the tech questions.
I know I'm interviewing for a good contract when the interview switches to more challenging questions based on my answers. If the interviewer just runs through the list or makes self-contradictory statements, there is a good chance it's either a manager who doesn't know the subject matter or possibly a technie called in to give the interview and isn't good at it. At which point, it can be a fun challenge to turn up the charm with the interview, because I know the questions coming are no sweat. The degree of confidence shows leadership skills and does stick in their mind when making decisions. (Especially if the interviewer WAS a non-technie.)
P.S.: Also regarding semantically incorrect or self-contradictory statements... I sometimes deliberately throw out a misstatement to see how the interviewee responds (if at all).
--
Help me find 3 kidnapped children!
Cheers.
You are correct...and Monday a warrant was issued.
The one that is currently out is for the children to be returned (and so the police can now act on this), but not to arrest the father. The judge is hoping that this will provide him incentive to bring them back on his own accord.
With a warrant you can also get local media involved... a friend of mine (camera geek) who works for Fox 45 might be able to get their pictures up on the news tonight.
Last thing that I've learned about this who thing... to get the FBI involved in a case regarding kidnapping (and possibly stolen property?) is that there must be proof that the offender has left the state where the crime was committed.
Thanks for the comments, and I appreciate those who have taken the time to glance at the photos.
My current situation: http://www.tronster.com/missing/
My friend's 3 kids was "kidnapped" yesterday by their father here in Baltimore, their location is unknown.
After a 4 day custody trial, which ended Friday, he was orded to turn them over at a Police station at 8pm on 8/18/06. He neve showed.
I've spent the day riding with her to and from multiple Police stations as well as the Towson commissioner's office. Everywhere we go we hear the same thing, "Without a bench warrant our hands are tied."
Today I learned 2 things:
1. It's nearly impossible to get a hold of a judge on a Saturday
2. Commissioner's can be downright cruel and unhelpful
While working with the Baltimore police, most all have been very friendly (many have agreed with us about Commissioner's!) but none of them are able to do more than write down what we say. We're quickly losing hope; and even if an amber alert goes out... it may be too late if he has left the country. I have almost no faith in the Baltimore legal system and how it interacts with the police is non-existant. (Note: I blame this interaction between the two, not the Police themselves.)
Regardless, I wanted to tred on the border of being on topic as the Baltimore police and their inability to act on this may cause us to lose 3 children to an unstable man. If any Slashdoter's have 5 seconds, please click on the web-page below I made, and let me know if you see him or the kids.
With luck and more leg work, we'll get the amber alert up ASAP.
http://www.tronster.com/missing/
I take stock in the article; I'm about to switch, yet many would peg me as an unlikely candidate.
;)
You see, I'm a contractor who specializes in Windows solutions. Microsoft technologies are my livelihood. Microsoft is all over my resume: MCAD certified, a member of BaltoMSDN, etc... I attended a few DevDays and even spent the money for a Universal MSDN subscription back in 2004. But tell me I'd be a PC guy 15 years ago, and I would have said you were crazy.
Not until late 1991 did I change my plan of tossing out my Apple ][e for a Macintosh and instead went with a 386dx-40. Maybe it was the stack of VGA games, or Deluxe Paint Animation's power, but after seeing a 386 run... I knew it was where I wanted to geek out. And I think that for awhile it was the right choice. But no longer...
Despite the programs and speed for my AMD64 it's still not as "cool" as the Mac's I use at my church every Sunday. I don't know how to quantify what this "cool" is, but I'm sure the fact the GUI paradigm is both simple & slick, and I can drop down into a Unix Shell feeds the geek in me. The fact Parallels exists for Mac is what has convinced the "IT consultant" within me (who needs Microsoft tools to pay the mortgage) that a not-too-painful transition path is possible.
Last year I bought a mini-mac for my TV. I love that machine.
After WWDC I plan to purchase a 17" Mac laptop pimped out with a lot of RAM and Parallels.
Hopefully in two years I can be adding insightful posts about being a Mac Developer using XCode.
I had a brief run-in with Mega64 in San Jose last week.
This was my second year I worked the GDC as a Conference Associate (CA). When not seeking out parties, many of the CAs will just hang around the "CA Lounge" and play games like "Witch Hunt" (aka: "Mafia") or "Spoons". A few of us were about to kick off a game when we see these 4 or 5 guys just hanging out in the hallway between the conference center and Mariott Hotel. I go over to them and invite them to play a game. The whole time one of these guys has a mini-DV recorder and is shooting everything around him. A bit odd, but hey... I'm the same way sometimes with taking photos on my Canon A80.
After some brief introductions, they tell me they are part of a group "Mega64" and that they are showing their videos the next night at the awards show. I had seen one or two of there sketches, but didn't realize how big they were in the game scene until we had started playing spoons and another CA walks by, looks confused and says, "What are you guys doing playing spoons with Mega64?"
Throughout the conference I ran into them one or two other times. Their videos were successful, as the shorts were the highlight for many (me included) during the awards show Wednesday night.
I hope they are hired again next year.
I still remember in the early 80's, day my dad bought an Apple ][e with not one, but two 5.25 inch floppy drives and a green tinted monitor.
;)
At school they started teaching us Applesoft BASIC in 3rd grade. By middle school I was writing my own "action" video games in low resolution graphics. In early high school I continued onward with Beagle Brothers BASIC compiler, which gave me significant speed increases for my games.
In the early 90's I eventually gave up the Apple ][2 and switched to 80386 (my first PC) and switched to programming games in Turbo Pascal, utilizing Michael Abrash's Mode X. I have stayed with PCs since then, except for my Mac Mini hooked up to my TV.
I have limited experience with your specific situation but do have a Mini MAC connected to my HDTV and can offer the following:
- Should you figure a way to directly play the streams off of the Mac (I know little about PVR streams), be sure overscanning is not an issue. Both a Windows based PC and my current MiniMac overscan on my TV (with it's DVI connection), and this seems to be the standard rather than the exception when talking with a friend who has a similar setup. In my situation, currently the only solution is to buy a 3rd party product, as neither MacOS nor my TV let me set the visible bounds.
- Should you decide to remotely control the computer, I recommend a blue tooth based solution. The media room in my house use to use an infrared keyboard and mouse which were quite problematic. When I purchased the MiniMAC, I decided to risk going blue tooth and it's been fantastic.
Good luck.
I'm grateful for the information about Trac (never heard of it until this thread.)
I have heard of GForge, and have a partially installed copy on a box with SVN. I'm in the process of setting this up for a game development project, but still have some time before I commit the team to a SCM...
Trac looks "tighter" than GForge and may have some features GForge doesn't. Would someone express what they feel are the benefits of either one? And regarding multiple projects...does "multiple projects" mean multiple SVN's or mean many projects contained in one SVN?
Cheers.
Eric Sink has recently started writting a detailed HOWTO off of his personal website titles "Source Control HOWTO. He doesn't just cover his own companies project "Vault", but also touches on CVS, VSS, and Subversion.
In my IT career I've used VSS, PVCS, a bit of CVS, and now becoming more familiar with Subversion behind GForge. Of all the documentation I've consumed, Eric Sink's article has so far been the most thorough (and least dry!)
As for the comments regarding source control being overkill for personal projects; I feel there is a misconception that source control will add continually overhead to a project. The initial setup may be a pain, but when refactoring components, it's much easier to perform differences along a file's history from a source control system than diff directory which you manually copied to perserve a "version". I've done it both ways, and found using source control with my solo projects to provide a multitude of benefits. I could list them out here, but I believe they're all addressed (and then some) in the HOWTO.
Most of my "side job" time is spent in leadership at my church, Horizon in Towson, MD. I give of my time in both a technical and non-technical capacity. I tweak the flash web-site (made by a truly talented web-designer), help administer the phpBB forums, lead a "Link Group" (aka: small group), sometimes create Power Points and Keynote files for Sunday, as well as just chilling with guys at Starbucks to stay connected with whats going on in their lives.
To a much lesser degree I throw Raves and occasionally DJ a middle school or high school dance.