Communicate, communicate, communicate – and the old layout with the same awesome information

hejdig.

Last letter I tried to create a better layout.
It worked. But the links crashed.
So I go for the old and tried layout below again.

In normal order it starts with Development stuff and then continues with Leadership followed by Products and Security to be ended with Miscellaneous.
And if there is one chapter you should read it is the last one. Why? Because it contains all the fun links.

Today’s top article are about
* Java 6 and 8
* Noda, Joda, CLDR, NLDR which are time and culture resources for global solutions
* Regex testing in several languages
* Yet a brief explanation of which element goes where in HTML5
* MS web tools 2012
* Why budget planning is counter productive
* Glimpse (and elmah and minprofiler)
* HDMI debunked
* The size of the universe

/OF

—-8<—-

Code and development

Top javascript MVC frameworks (web)

If javascript is the soil and frameworks the crop; then it is a good time to be a farmer in Javsacriptland. No other developer biosphere is as fertile IMHO.

MVC/MVP/MVVM is the hoot nowadays. Read my lips: Do Not Develop Client Side Javascript Without Framework Support.

Below is linked to several such frameworks.
Of these I am only familiar with Knockout, hands on wise.

Note: Backbone builds on Underscore – a lib you should look into whether you do MVC/MVP/MVVM or not.

http://www.infoq.com/research/top-javascript-mvc-frameworks

End of line for Java 6 in March (java)

If you haven’t updated your Java from v6 you are a dinosaur. And the meteor is about to hit.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/jdk6-retirement

Information about Java8 (java)

Java 8 is scheduled for September this year.
There are several new things and this article I found was easy to read.

http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/26/everything-about-java-8/

Learn F#, gratis, online (dotnet)

Microsoft has released a site for learning F#.

http://www.tryfsharp.org
http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/tryfsharp

Noda Time – date/time library ported (dotnet)

Joda Time, a date/time lib in the Java world has been ported to Dotnet.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/11/Noda-Time-1-0

GIT integrated in TFS service (win)

“Sweet men du ligger efter i GIT-TF informationen. Från och med i torsdags är GIT integrerat i TFS Services och det finns fullt GIT-support i en Visual Studio CTP. Så du kan numer välja att köra TFS VCS med TFS språk (Check Out/In, o.s.v.) eller köra TFS GIT med GIT språk (Push, Pull, Commit).”

In short this means you can mix and mingle GIT and TFS as you want.

Will this mean you don’t have to buy a license to write to the TFS store any more?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/01/30/git-init-vs.aspx

Tipthanks //E

CLDR – database over formats etc. in different countries

If you ever have done a multi language / multi culture solution you have stumbled upon all the ways to represent date, time, currency, numbers and whatnot.

Below is linked a project to create a big database of all this.
It is an open project so help is appreciated.

http://cldr.unicode.org

ncldr.com – dotnet port of cldr, a database for globalisation data (dotnet)

The Time and Date namespaces in dotnet are plenty but not perfect. There are cultures missing and there is no information about currency, names of weekday and no rules for spelling of number or capitalisation.

So therefore we have the Unicode CLDR project which I have written about before.
Ncldr linked below is a dotnet port of CLDR.

http://www.ncldr.com
http://cldr.unicode.org

Multiple carets in Visual studio (win)

Since version 2010 it has been possible to alt-arrow or alt-mouse a caret (cursor, insättningspunkt, whatever you call it) to a vertical line and to “box inserting”.
With an add-on this is taken further so one can alt-mouse to different places in the document.
Look at the animation behind the link – an animated GIF is more worth than a thousand words.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SimultaneousEditingForVisualStudioWithTheFreeMultiEditExtension.aspx

HTML5 and elements – what to use where (web)

With HTML5 coming we’ve got to read up on which element to use where. I still haven’t grokked it but below is linked a flowchart to help me. And You as I write it here…

http://html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.png

Isotope – javascript/css lib for stacking squares (web)

Say you have a text box. Say you have several.
Say you want to show them on a web page.
Then you want to add new ones, and remove, and change size and and and… and you want them to stack themselves.
This is where you give up until you read this.

Metafizzy has Isotope, Masonry and, as of late, Packery.

Packery does more intelligent packing. I see lots of use for this, say for instance you are moving and filling one and only one lorry with stuff.

http://metafizzy.co
http://isotope.metafizzy.co
http://metafizzy.co/blog/packery-preview/

BCL is an immutable lib (dotnet)

BCL is a lib still in experiment for doing immutable stuff.
“Immutable stuff” are stuff that doesn’t change, instead you have to create a new instance. Often in parallel computing, which is coming fast, you want to have immutable objects for having thread safety.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/Immutable-BCL

Micro formats and schema.org (web)

There is something called Microformat. It is using (X)HTML for creating semantic data. If you need to send Person data to someone, why invent a new format? Instead reuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat
http://schema.org

Introduction to Rx – dotnet reactive framework (dotnet)

Rx (Reactive Extensions) is a dotnet library for using IObserver and IObservable. With Rx you can get events when a collection is added to or removed from. It is like having a form *inside* your app. Sort of. Liksom.

The site below is an introduction and tutorial for this.

http://introtorx.com

Online regex testing in several languages

Every language has its own implementation of regex and they might differ. So when googlingwithbing for an online regex tool one has to make sure the right language is used.
For instance is the very good Rubular.com written in Ruby. Most are written in Javascript. No usable was written in dotnet.
Until now.

Through the link below is linked to online Regex testers in 10 different languages.

http://www.regexplanet.com

Windows shell commands as… commands (win)

As heavy Win developers we are aware of %temp%, %appdata%, %systemroot%, and %programfiles% as shortcuts for c:… but what about “shell:”?
Open a prompt or the Explorer address bar and write “shell: cookies” to get to cookies, “shell: common startup” for the common startup and “shell: startup” for user user’s or “shell: system” for the system path etc. You get get idea.

Follow the link below for more information.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2013/02/13/windows-shell-commands.aspx

Six hours of video for getting started at aspnet programming

Building web apps with aspnet jump start: 6 hours of free aspnet video.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2013/02/28/building-web-apps-with-asp-net-jump-start-over-6-hours-of-free-asp-net-video-training.aspx

Getting the name of the calling method in dotnet (dotnet)

Anyone hacking WPF should read this.

When doing logging it is sometimes nice to know the caller so instead of

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public void MyFunction(){
MyLogger.Write( "MyFunction", "Start");
...

one can write

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public void MyFunction(){
MyLogger.Write( "Start" );

All it takes is to call a stack walking method like so:

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public static class MyLogger{
public static void Write( string message ){
Console.WriteLine( CompulsoryCat.CallingMethodName() + ":" + message );

That is the reason I wrote CompulsoryCat which is a helper lib to, among other, get meta data out of methods.
It is my plans to move it to CompulsoryCow but maybe I won’t since some of the functionality already exists in Dotnet4.5. Since Microsoft has a grab on the compiler in a fashion I don’t they could also make the syntax nicer.

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public static class MyLogger{
public static void Write( string message, [CallerMemberName] string callingMethodName = null ){
Console.WriteLine( callingMemberName + ":" + message );

Now think INotifyPropertyChanged, made famous of MVVM and WPF. If you program in WPF then you know of INotifyPropertyChanged. And then you know of all the hard coded property names.
That can be made a thing of the past with Dotnet4.5 and above syntax.

Well… to be honest- one can get to the property names through lambda which makes part of the problem disappear.

http://code.google.com/p/compulsorycat/
https://github.com/LosManos/CompulsoryCow
http://10rem.net/blog/2013/02/25/using-callermembername-for-property-change-notification-in-xaml-apps

Advanced Html/Css and polyfills (web)

Advanced. Html. Css. Shiv. Shim. And how to use.

Do not read if you are a Html newbie – the crooked and confused way of Html and Javascript might scare you off to more well paved paths.

For the die hards – the site contains more advanced stuff.

http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/feature-support-polyfills

CSS tools – noise texture (web)

Noise is not something you want in an image. But when hipsters design blank areas of colour, noise is suddenly in demand.

Below is linked a tool that does what the head line says.
Plus a gradient generator, the-most-awesome-thing-of-html5 rounded corners and box shadows.

http://www.cssmatic.com/noise-texture

Web tools 2012 (dotnet)

Update for your Visualstudio. Syntax highlighting for Coffeescript, must ache, handlebar and jsrender (like query templates but without the DOM), more odata, more signalr, mvc like routing in web forms, device dependent page name in web forms just as in mvc, 4 new spa templates, more azure and more functionality.

It is an update of earlier release with more functionality than I care to write about.

Did I say it is gratis?

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/02/18/announcing-release-of-asp-net-and-web-tools-2012-2-update.aspx
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/07d54d12-7133-4e15-becb-6f451ea3bea6

Webpagestest.org – hit your site with a hoard of speed tests (web)

How fast is your site?

Enter your site’s URL in the site below and behold the answer.

http://www.webpagetest.org

Kulmedkod – site om att lära barn programmera

Med lite ojämna mellanrum dyker nyheter upp på siten nedan.

Den är inte en-site-för-all-info-om-att-lära-barn-att-programmera tyvärr; jag har fortfarande inte hittat en sådan site. Men letar. Och när jag hittar få ni reda på det.

Under tiden har jag kulmedkod i min RSS-feed (och min twitter).

http://kulmedkod.wordpress.com

How to version and write release notes – a proposed standard

For versioning of a program the semantic versioning has risen to an almost standard.
But how does one write release notes?

Semantic release notes is a proposed standard (in the same way as Markdown is a standard) for writing release notes. I haven’t tried it but I will because I do write release notes and I do have to compile them later. Having an almost standard would help my work.

Even if you aren’t interested in semantic release notes, do look into semantic versioning.

http://www.semanticreleasenotes.org
http://semver.org

Projects and leadership

Jämför lån- och sparkonti

Jag hittade snabbt ett sätt att låna pengar till 838% effektiv ränta, “vardagslånet”. Det skall jag inte ta.
Även om man inte ser hela sanningen så är det ett intressant projekt.

Man kan också jämföra sparkonti och jag fann raskt ett sparkonto som ger mycket mer än det bästa min bank erbjuder.

http://www.bank24.nu

Compare more CMSs than you have ever heard about

There are tons of CMSs out there. How to find the right one?
Use the link below to compare the ones that interest you.

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix

Planning a budget is sub optimating

Have you read Valve’s Personal handbook? It is good.
Have you read your own company’s Personal handbook? It most certainly sucks.

Valve did something different, instead of writing the same boring handbook as every other company; they decided to make something good out of it.

The same counts for how Vale hires employees.

The same with The blogging terrier. He is co owner of a company and decided to go for equal salary. At first it felt like a bad idea but it soon became an advantage. Read more through the link below.

http://jockeholm.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/am-i-a-socialist-how-a-small-consultancy-approach-the-tricky-questions-surrounding-power-and-money/

How Valve hires, fires and pays

I have earlier written about Valve’s awesome personal handbook.

You know the concept your company has with rules and regulations and policies and stuff? The concept that is out of date, impossible to understand, too long to read and presumably signed by all employees.
Valve has one too. But their is awesome!

I still haven’t read the personal handbook for where I am employed. But I have read Valve’s. That is how awesome it is.

Now to today’s subject. Valve’s routine of hiring people. And firing. And the salary in between. This isn’t in a handbook though but in the mind of the People. Awesomeness in life.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/How_Valve_hires_how_it_fires_and_how_much_it_pays.php

Daily Sync for five teams

Scrum meetings in a team isn’t that difficult. But how does one do the scrum of scrums? the synchronisation between teams I mean.

Should one do the scrum of scrums before the scrum? If one does; one can send the helicopter view back to the teams. On the other hand, if one does the scrum of scrums after the team scrums one has better input for the oval guiding.

MarcusH doesn’t have the answer but some good insights.

http://www.marcusoft.net/2013/03/daily-sync-for-five-teams-and-get.html

Producing open source software book

Running an open source software project is not easy.
Below is linked a book on the subject to read digitally or as tree killer.

I have not read this book, just glanced through some pages.

http://producingoss.com

Products and releases

Phonegap with WinPhone8 support (mobile)

As the head line says

http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/phonegap-2-3-0

Discourse

The guys at Stackoverflow revolutionised the Q&A webs. Before Stackoverflow every Q&A site was bad. Now everyone know what a Q&A site _should_ look like.

Not being content with creating the world’s best Q&A site they have looked at discussion sites, forums. Think phpBB. They equally suck in one way or another or more usual several ways.
So they set out to fix this.

Discourse.org is their product.
I have great beliefs in it. If it is half as good as Stackoverflow it will still be the world’s best forum.

Did I mention it is free? Free like in Libre.

http://www.discourse.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs

Which does hold the most RAM, Win8Pro or MacAir?

TL;DR

It’s equal.

Longer

There has been some mud slinging about this and it boils down to two things.
1) Whether one counts a megabyte in 1000s of bytes or 1024s of bytes.
2) Fanboys.

Next time someone throws you some data about one or the other and the amount of RAM; return this link to them. It is a lengthy article about calculations and how to get more even more RAM and just plain old debunking.

http://www.zdnet.com/surface-pro-versus-macbook-air-whos-being-dishonest-with-storage-space-7000011009/

Lorempixel – lorem ipsum but for images (web)

When you need place holder text you go looking for lorem ipsum.
But when you need images? There are several solutions for this, like bing. Another is lorempixel. One can choose image size by tweaking the URL and even image category (sport, cats etc.)

http://lorempixel.com
http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports/

Open source HTML5 game engine (web)

Somewhere HTML or Javascript means a product has to be open source. So with this one. It’s a game engine for HTML5.

http://www.gameclosure.com

FullCalendar – jquery plugin web calendar (web)

A web calendar with drag and drop implemented as plugin to jquery.

I haven’t tried it so I can’t tell if it only does US datetime or also more international ones.

http://arshaw.com/fullcalendar/

Glimpse 1.2 (dotnet)

If you do asp net programming you should already have looked into Glimpse.

It is like a procto camera into your web server.
Do like this: install it in your web project through nugget. There are a few lines added to web.config. Then surf to your site and to the page Glimpse.axd. Press the button shown.
Now, when you surf your site you see not only network information but even database calls! (well… you have to do EF or something else Glimpse compatible but anyhow: it is cool as hell is hot)

If you like it.
Correction.
When you like it.
Search for Elmah and MiniProfiler.
Equally awesome.

http://blog.getglimpse.com/2013/03/19/glimpse-1-1-released-with-support-for-mvc-4/

Miscellaneous

Devops reactions – say it in moving pictures

Small flicks of fun showing my working day in both glory and fail.

http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com

Tipthanks Anonymous

Why all HDMI cables are the same – debunking

Warning audiophiles. Don’t read further or you will feel cheated. Your 100€/m HDMI cable isn’t better than mine.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20056502-1/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57540275-221/still-more-reasons-why-all-hdmi-cable-are-the-same/

The universe is big. It is even bigger than that. And then plus some.

Following the link below might give you some clues about how big it is. Note “might”. Because all I got was headache.

If the video doesn’t show – click in the sidebar to the right “How big is the universe compared with a grain of sand”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2013/feb/11/how-big-universe-sand-video1

Play house model “big”

Some with air conditioning(!)

http://imgur.com/a/8Dqv8

Remote controlled paper plane

A battery. A rod. An airscrew. A wind rudder. For about 30€.
Just add a folded paper.

Geniously!

Me gonna buy for sure.

http://www.nyteknik.se/popular_teknik/teknikrevyn/article3637689.ece

Tipthanks Lasse

Blanda egen spolarvätska och dyr är inte bättre än billig

Jag kan underteckna att Statoils gördyra spolarvätska luktar Mycket.
Enligt test är den dessutom dålig.

Miljöpåverkan har inte testats.

Bosse bildoktorn blandar egen, billigare och säkert bättre också.
Dessutom har han moussserande vin för festligare tillfällen(!)

http://www.teknikensvarld.se/2013/02/24/38288/billig-spolarvatska-battre-an-dyr/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Yjw0QqXAs

Tipstack Lasse

A ridiculously large swing

Disregarding the fact that I would piss in my pants I still want to go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdJc1_IBKJA

William Gibson Alien iii script

William Gibson is a good writer.
Alien is a good file series.

Together…

It is a film script so it is a different read than a normal novel.

http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/alien3/gibson.htm

*EOF*

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