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Have you ever been asked to program something as simple as this chain lock for a door: And after it has gone through the design process, usability groups, your corporate intigration team, and any Tom, Dick, or Harry that wants to put their finger print on the project to get credit. You end up with something like this: At least it looks pretty, and functions once as intended. However every time the door opens after that it fails to work as the user would assume, and gives a false sense of security. ...

You can now use the Amazon Look Inside feature to view many parts my book that is going to be released June 22, 2009. So if you are interested use the links below to go to different parts of the book or search for specific things. Front Cover Table of Contents First Pages Index Back Cover Surprise Me! Search Inside This Book:

I am happy to announce the 3.0 release of the Managed Fusion URL Rewriter & Reverse Proxy. Since my previous release in February I have been working hard on a significant rewrite of the core, that to be honest really needed refactoring if I hoped to extend the rewriter is some interesting ways in the future. Download: Binary Release View: Source Code Discuss: Forum Issues: Report Release Notes If you would like to find out more about the past releases please visit us at http://www.managedfusion.com/products/url-rewriter/release-notes.aspx ...

A question that I have been hearing a lot lately is: How do I change the view location in MVC? But what they really mean to say is: How do I create a new ViewEngine that uses the view locations of my choosing? It is actually very simple to do, and once you see it, I think you will agree with my assessment. The first thing we are going to do to create our custom ViewEngine, is define the paths that we want to use for our master pages, view pages, and shared pages. I have taken the liberty to define the following paths, you can customize them however you wish: ...

I have always been driven by the idea that computers and to the greater extent the internet should be as transparent as possible to the users. People shouldn’t care about what the hot new websites are to meet people with similar interests. In fact I think this is most of the problem why people are becoming more and more disconnected from each other on a personal level. And more and more disconnected from the human experience, of social interaction. There is so much communication that is lost when you cannot see a person face to face, and experience things in the same environment that they do. Wouldn’t it be great if you could find and meet new local people with similar interests, hobbies, and ambitions, whatever they maybe. The Internet currently excels at all of this even getting people physically together to meet. ...

Over this past weekend I installed Windows 7 (64-bit), and I have to say that it is a great upgrade from Windows Vista that nobody should be disappointed with. Even as a release candidate it is rock stable and has been able to cope and recover from many of the failing drivers I tried this weekend, with out the need for a single reboot. This is impressive, because I remember when I first tried Windows Vista as a beta almost 3 years ago, that I received blue screens left and right from faulty drivers that didn’t yet support Windows Vista. Blue screens have always really bothered me, because as a avid Windows supporter, I have heard all too often the mantra of the uneducated. ...

The Managed Fusion URL Rewriter, that I work on and that runs this blog, was featured in PDC 2008 by CJ Saretto (Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Home Server). He used it as a reverse proxy to demonstrate streaming video and music from Windows Home Server to the internet from a simulated internal home network. I have cut down the actual video presentation to the segment that mentioned the Managed Fusion URL Rewriter. If you want to skip to the good parts in this segmented video, I recommend: ...

Here is my presentation from Code Camp 2009.1: You can download the software seen in this presentation at: Microsoft Visual Studio Express http://www.microsoft.com/express/download Microsoft SQL Server Express w/ Tools http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/download And Sara Ford’s best selling book on the subject, appropriately called Microsoft Visual Studio Tips. And because she is such an awesome person all the royalties from the book are going to a scholarship fund to help pay for the the costs of sending Hurricane Katrina survivors to college. So if you are interested go pick up a copy. ...

I will be speaking at the Philly.NET Code Camp 2009.1 tomorrow. So if you read this blog, come up to me and say hi. I don’t bite. :) After my presentation tomorrow on “Gooey GUI… Programming in Visual Studio”, I will be posting my presentation and links for everybody that couldn’t attend or did attend and wants a quick reference. See you tomorrow.

In this economy you have to do everything to keep your skills fresh and current so that employers find you a desirable hire. I really though the tips provided in 8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career where spot on when this article came out last year. And now that the TechRepublic has released 10 kills developers will need in the next 5 years. I have decided to give you some of my favorite Wrox books that align very well to this TechRepublic article. ...