So I know this guy who knew about this one event months in advance, and yet didn't think to post a blog about it until roughly 24 hours before.

What a dolt, huh? Sucks to be him.

Anyway, in totally unrelated news, Codeapalooza is tomorrow! It promises a day full of totally free .NET goodness and interesting workshops. There's a full slate of pretty interesting sessions.

In particular, there's a tasty-looking treat on rich, reusable user controls with MVC that I'm looking forward to pretty intensely. If we're going to adopt MVC at the office, feature-rich reusable controls will be a must. But there's also some lovely XNA exotica, Silverlight sexiness, a slew of Sharepoint stuff (gag, vomit, WHY HELLO MICROSOFT YES I LOVE SHAREPOINT OKAY THANK YOU) and much more miscellanea.

If you attend, I'll be the guy in the Chicago Public Radio hat who asks a zillion questions. Hope to see you there.
-Scott

P.S. - Sharepoint, I jest. Your heart is in the right place. Go get 'em, sport.

A dear friend once said on writing "You are only given five exclamation points to use in your entire lifetime." The same thing applies to blog entries about politics on non-political blogs, so don't go thinking I'm abandoning my core constituency of software, video game, and softcore historical fans.

Dear John,

Let me congratulate you on your historic pick of Sarah Palin for Vice President. I think the world of her and it's exciting to know that she could be only one 72-year-old heartbeat away from being the most powerful person on the planet.

However, I would like to suggest a new pick. It's not too late to change your mind, and nothing is more "maverick" than declaring a re-do. With that firmly in mind, I present Miss Teen South Carolina 2007. Remember her? If not, take a look at the video below (or have your wife open it up for you.)

She's right for you in all the good ways. Female? Check. Youth vote? You betcha. Experience? Well, her 365 days as Miss Teen South Carolina is marginally eclipsed by Palin's 871 as governor, but she has foreign policy creds in ways that Palin can only dream of. For instance, she proposes "helping the Iraq" (possibly involving maps, I'll have to check up on this when working with your campaign to "vet" her.)

And Palin? "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

I'm not sayin', I'm just saying. "Help the Iraq" is a slightly better stance on foreign policy. Besides, I'm imagining that MTSC 2007 (The full name is a handful, agreed? Plus this is more "hip") hopefully recalls what Vice Presidents do from her schoolin' days:

I think that "everywhere like such as" will agree that Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 is a far better choice. In that spirit, I have worked up a ROUGH DRAFT of what your bumper stickers could look like:

There's still a few things we'll need to hammer out together, John. For instance, it will be hard for some people to look at "McCAIN / TEEN SOUTH CAROLINA 2007 in 2008" and figure out when you're actually running for president. Perhaps you should go with "TEEN SOUTH CAROLINA 2007 / McCAIN," but that makes it look like you're her VP (possibly a good idea - call me). Also, while I'm sure she would consider changing her title, "McCAIN / LAST YEAR'S TEEN SOUTH CAROLINA in 2008" is going to be a bitch to fit on a coffee mug.

Looking forward to hearing back from you regarding this exciting proposition. Good luck in the Twin Cities next week. Country First.
-Scott

I am Scott Parker and I approve this blog post.

I have a bit of an insecurity obsession with the quality of my code given how long I've been at this programming thing. I know that must seem like an awfully vain thing to wonder about, the technological equivalent of thinking about every passerby "Am I hotter than that guy?"

That's not quite it though. Rather than blather on about it for paragraphs before getting to my point, I'll let Ira Glass (definitely hotter than me) explain in this wonderful video passed to me via my dear friend Nwokedi.

Ira may be talking about storytelling, but I think it definitely applies to nearly any endeavor you care about. I'm at a point where I can recognize the qualities of good code, but the code I'm writing isn't at all legendary, and I think a good number of junior-to-mid level developers have much this same problem.

It's made worse in software since many of our heroes are chaps like Linus Torvalds and Sergey Brin - people who were extremely good right away, who seem like "naturals" to us mortals. We read things like Great Hackers by Paul Graham and get the impression that if we haven't developed groundbreaking technology by the time we've left college, we're doomed to obscurity and mediocrity.

It's no small comfort then to know that Ira was still churning out less-than-stellar copy after 8 years of making radio professionally.

Does this really apply to software development, though? Facts are hard to come by, not least because "Man develops amazing software after 15 years in the industry" doesn't make for as great a headline as "Kid Doctor Can't Buy Beer... Can Prescribe Drugs." So rather than do all that horrible research and come up with a nice general overview, let's just blow one example out of proportion: SubSonic lead developer and .Net guru Rob Conery.

It just so happens that Rob posted a brief bit about his programming background recently. Thanks to a bit of back-of-the-napkin math, Rob must have been programming for a living around 7-10 years before he first publicly released SubSonic to the world. That seems about right for a bright and motivated person, even quite a bit ahead of the "Ira curve," if you'll allow me to compare software to NPR stories.

By that metric, I'm pretty happy with where I am at year 2.5 . I'm not writing any earth shattering code at the moment, but I'll get there.

Aww.
-Scott

This is just a little note to let you know that my latest project "Webster" has been published on CodePlex. Don't get excited - in CodePlex speak, published just means "made public." It does not mean "has anything you can download and play with" unfortunately.

Webster will eventually be an open-source evidence based scheduler that can take data from a variety of project tracking sources (aiming for TFS, FogBUGZ, and my employer's custom internal time tracking system in Microsoft CRM.) The idea comes from the excellent Joel Spolsky articles Beat the Odds and Evidence Based Scheduling.

Essentially Webster will run in the background as a Windows Service and convert your time spent into velocities (Estimated Time / Actual Time = your velocity on a given item). It will then use your velocities to predict how long it will take you to complete future tasks, and by extension, how long it will take a group of developers to complete a project.

This is by far the most ambitious thing I've tried to implement myself. Given the scope as well as my recent worries on architecture, it's little surprise that I've spent a bit too much time being overwhelmed by the largeness (large to me, anyway) of this project and planning it out rather than, you know, doin' stuff.

So to combat this, I've written up a little roadmap of where I'm going with this thing. The Webster Road to 1.0 represents my current brain-dump of how to design the blasted thing before I dig into code and forget I had any good ideas to start with.

Oh, and that deadline I mentioned awhile back? Make sure and listen to that lovely "whoosh" sound as it flies past. I'll blame it on my forthcoming summer vacation.
-Scott

Eyes glazed over yet? Don't do it! Stay with me!

I was like you once, in a more innocent time we all knew as "one hour ago." I heard words like Dependency Injection (a technique of making software super-loosely coupled, in a somewhat inaccurate nutshell) and reached for the closest sharp edge to find sweet, sweet oblivion. The little I've read on the subject and the ever-intimidating XML Files Born from Satan's Ass didn't really help.

Thankfully, Rob Conery was like me too, once. Unlike me though, he spent some time with the lead man behind the DI tool StructureMap, and he saw the light. You will too, once you watch his screencast on Depency Injection with StructureMap. No nasty XML, no major "OH NO MUCH CRAZINESS - BRAIN GOING INTO EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN" moments, just tasty data goodness.

I know that "screencast" can be another of those homicidal-mania-inducing phrases. However, Rob's really good at making them interesting and at packing an English tonne of information into small chunks. If you don't believe me, spend a brief five minutes with him learning how to use SubSonic. It will end and you will be stunned at how much you already know about setting up SubSonic.

It's good. It's "Matthew McConaughey and Christian Bale fighting dragons* " good. It's "Who eats yogurt at a wedding?" good.

Watching these is way better than going to that Lollapalooza thing this weekend, trust me.
-Scott

* - Why am I referencing Reign of Fire? BECAUSE I'M FINALLY WATCHING IT THIS WEEKEND YOU SUCKERS!!!!!!!!

In a loose worst-to-best order, here are some random thoughts about books on video games I've been reading recently. Most are worth reading but if you can only read one, the best of them, "My Tiny Life," is also the most free.

This entry makes me good on the "software" and "video games" portions of the description above; softcore hist-rom fans, you're just going to have to wait.

Book: Game On! by Simon Byron, Ste Curran, and David McCarthy Synopsis: Three authors highlight their favorite games Rating: 7 / 10 Two-thirds of this book's authors host two-thirds of the world's greatest video game podcast that doesn't talk about video games all that often, One Life Left. Unfortunately the magic of their shows doesn't really translate into an engaging book. It's interesting mostly to see what games they like you may never have played (I need to play Animal Crossing sometime, I guess) and what games you agree are unfairly overlooked (Bangai-O is indeed genius). However, the book fails to really convey anything meaningful for those in-between games. For example, when I saw they devoted several pages to the joys of Super Mario 64 I was thrilled as I was hoping someone could explain what it was I missed in this game everyone else seems to adore. But instead they describe it in generic terms of freedom, authenticity, and the likes. Sadly, that's the same style that most of the book takes.

Book: Trigger Happy by Steven Poole Synopsis: Games are important. Rating: As if Tomb Raider & Metal Gear Solid birthed a paper baby. "Games are worth paying serious attention to." This is the central thesis of Poole's ground-breaking 2004 work. Yes, four years later and already bits of it haven't aged so well. Yes, he talks about Tomb Raider. All. The. Time. But these are minor complaints in comparison to the wealth of new ideas contained within. In 240 pages, he touches upon questions of gender identity, get a rough understanding of how 3-D rendering works, and trying to identify the common elements that make both Resident Evil and Defender effective games. All while keeping it light, understandable, and engaging.

Book: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell Synopsis: A year in the life of the vanguard of online gaming in `93. Rating: Worth every free cent. (That means it's free.) Before there was Second Life and EverQuest and even DOOM, there were online text-based worlds that allowed people to be anyone and create anything, as long as they could describe it in words. Worlds were created, love was found, and friends made. Then someone was publicly raped. Or they weren't, depending on where you stand. In response there was a lynching, or justice, or the deletion of a simple record in some database far away. I'm still not sure what I think, it's tough to sort out. Years before most people even heard of the Internet, Julian Dibbell was exploring one particular online world in depth. He chronicled his own personal friendships as well as the larger problems of the world. This means you're right there with him as anarchists and socialists have to come to uneasy settlements on how much virtual government they need, as well the first time he explores the meaning of cybersex and its impact upon his real-world relationship. It's heartbreaking, enthralling, and unlike anything else you're likely to read. And thanks to the magic of expiring copyright, it's also free, although there's a marvelous print version available for purchase as well.

EXTRA BONUS!
Soon I Will Be Invincible is a work of fiction that has nothing to do with video games other than the author used to make them. But it's quite good and it recently came out in paperback. If you ever wanted to be a super-villain, check it out.

-Scott

The August 2008 meeting of the Chicago Alt.Net group has been announced by fearless leader Sergio Pereira. It will be on August 13th, 2008 at 6:00 PM (or 6:30P if you don't want pizza, but c'mon, pizza!) in the Chicago ThoughtWorks office at 200 E. Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60611.

It's free to attend, but if you're interested in attending you should register for the event. Otherwise you'll have trouble getting in the building.

The topic will be Continuous Integration (CI). The meeting will start off with a talk from the lead developer of Cruise, a soon-to-be-released commercial continuous integration tool from the makers of open-source CI darling CruiseControl.Net, and then branch out into general discussion of CI best practices / whatever-the-crap-else-comes-up.

It should be interesting, as according to the developer, "CC.Net is deprecated." Big words.

If you're new to Alt.Net (or .Net in general), you're absolutely welcome to attend. For more information on what the whole Alt.Net thing is about, please visit the Alt.Net Community.
-Scott

My next project "webster" is starting officially, as of tonight. I've been scoping out the various components I'd like to use, and I'm fairly satisfied that I can get something together in the 30 days I have before CodePlex kills my project stub.

The only remaining question mark is a charting component in C#. "Free" required, "good" and "open-source" strongly preferred. If nothing else, I can fall back on the Google Charts API but I'd prefer not to as portions of this will be fairly chart-intensive.

Any recommendations, anyone?

Otherwise, it's looking like it will be my excuse to learn WCF, SubSonic, xUnit, and possibly MVC, dunno yet. August 20 is my drop-dead date imposed by CodePlex (I need deadlines, so no complaint there). If you haven't heard anything else by then, I am a failure.
-Scott

NPR API OMG

If you've seen me in person even once, odds are you've seen my Chicago Public Radio hat. I'm just a bit of a fanboy.

Imagine my surprise when I saw NPR come up in the ProgrammableWeb "New Programming APIs" RSS feed. But strewth, it's true! So take a moment (if you are so inclined) and check out the NPR API Overview.

Some initial thoughts:

• "The default format of the results is NPRML..." - Seriously? Your results are so different that they need their own markup language? Granted, it's a subset of XML so it doesn't sound too crazy, but that's alarming.
• It has a lot of features to return queries against their story database as RSS feeds. That means you could theoretically set up some crazy feed that just gets stories that involve Barack Obama, oranges, and the movie Homeward Bound.
• "... audio from most NPR programs dating back to 1995." Hot damn, thank you technology.

Another Reason I'm Not Playing WoW

Level 70 = 480 hours. At my probable rate of about three hours a week, I would make L70 in 37 months, with a total subscription fee of about $480 USD.

I think I'll stick with Rescue: The Beagles.

On a side note, that blog, We Can Fix That With Data, is great. It combines interesting MMO facts with interesting statistical facts. It's enjoyable if you enjoy either, a must-read if you enjoy both.

You Got Pasted!

Copy and paste programming is one of the more pervasive software anti-patterns. It means that you are programming and designing by simply copying and pasting bits of code rather than thinking about how they fit together and what they mean.

Adopting this anti-pattern can lead to situations like these:

For those of you who are wondering, Swing Vote "follows the story of Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), an apathetic, beer-slinging, lovable loser, who is coasting through a life that has passed him by. The one bright spot is his precocious, over-achieving 12-year-old daughter Molly. She takes care of both of them until one mischievous moment on Election Day, when she accidentally sets off a chain of events which culminates in the election coming down to one vote... her dad's."

By contrast, The 25th Hour "depicts the last day of freedom for a young man before he begins serving a seven-year jail term for drug dealing. Prowling through the city until dawn with his two close male friends and his girlfriend, he is forced to re-examine his life and how he got himself into his predicament."

For those of you who are instead wondering why I was looking for information on the movie Swing Vote, go away.
-Scott

The first full version of FlySpy, "the world's premiere GameFly queue management tool" that can monitor and manage your GameFly account, has been released.

The name has changed in order to protect the innocent, and also to avoid any potential copyright infringements. Inside however, it still has all the same goodness that my one brave downloader has come to expect, as well as the following new features:

• Supports all game systems in the GameFly library. This means that you can get a list of all 5,000+ GameFly games in one convenient location.
• Includes an options screen that allows you to specify what systems you want to monitor, and which systems you want to automatically add new games from.
• Includes a "Welcome to FlySpy!" screen for new users.

As always, you can visit the FlySpy project homepage or go straight to the newest release.

Already, plans for v2.0 are underway. Right now, I'm looking at an early Q4 2008 release most likely. I'm hoping to add queue management support, running at startup, and possibly giving things a fresh coat of paint UI-wise (It's a bit garish). We'll see what happens though.

I expect development to take 4-5 weeks to get that all in, but the reason to put it off is to get some time to work on some other things of interest.

So until then, FlySpy, I kiss you goodnight and wish you a sweet (and hopefully critical-bug-free) rest.
-Scott