software Passions and Tools I'm of the (unpopular) opinion that being excited about the framework or platform you're using as the focal point of the work you're doing, you're focused on the wrong thing. People are going nuts about Ember and React, .NET coming to Mac, Rails or Django. All of these are just
travel A Guide to New Orleans Coffee New Orleans is oft talked about as a party city - and indeed it is - but it is also much more. We went armed with recommendations from some friends and co-workers, but without any solid plans - just a list of ideas of things to do or places to
climbing Rocky Face Yesterday I had the opportunity to climb at Rocky Face Mountain Recreation Area [http://rockyfacepark.com/rock-climbing/]. Rocky Face is a man-made crag. It's the remnants of an old quarry that has been cleaned up, bolted, and permitted for climbing. I enjoyed Rocky Face a lot. The climbing can be
technology Featured Tesla Still Can't Harvest Lightning Today, in a shocking moment at a Tesla press conference Elon Musk, CEO of the electric car manufacturer, admits "No, we don't know how to harvest lightning yet." In the wake of being named Consumer Reports top overall car for a second year in a row, investors were expecting to
climbing Clarification on some climbing terms A few weeks ago, Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell completed a grueling 19 day free climb of the Dawn Wall, a face of Yosemite National Park's gargantuan mountain El Capitan. I wanted to write a brief clarification of what constitutes different types of climbs: Free Climb: Climbing a wall using
technology How to Identify a Scam On Social Media Scams and Phishing are pretty common in email, and email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are getting better and better at letting you know when an email might not be totally legitimate, or might put you at risk. They can do this because there are a number of very
charity Give I'm raising $4000 for the San Francisco HIV Foundation and cycling 545 miles to do it. Every year, thousands of cyclists raise money to fight HIV and ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles as a part of the AIDS/LifeCycle. Unfortunately every year, thousands of more people are infected
climbing Off The Wall I (not so) recently self-diagnosed myself with an A2-Pulley injury. It's the most common injury for rock climbers, and most commonly occurs in rock climbers. An A2-Pulley is the fibrous soft tissue that wraps all the way around your finger, binding your tendon close to the bone. It keeps your
climbing A Day on the Mountain I woke up in the cool morning, my face open to the morning air, with the smell of pine and new spring growth on Pilot Mountain. The new growth covers the mountain floor, renewing life after the annual burn. I rolled out of my hammock and got ready for the
climbing Going Over the Edge This fall, I'll be taking a big rappel - 300+ feet from the top of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Raleigh. This is a fundraiser for the Special Olympics. I love rock climbing and rappelling, so this is an exciting chance to raise some money for a great cause.
software Markdown Preprocessor I recently added a feature to my application to serve arbitrary markdown documents from a directory. This is designed to allow authors to populate a folder full of help documents, and be able to view them without any code changes. However, because this is an MVC application, I needed a
climbing First Outdoor Lead Climb This past weekend I completed my first outdoor lead climb. I only got to lead once, because it started getting crowded, and we only had part of the day, but it was great. We went up to Pilot Mountain [http://www.ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/pimo/main.php], which is
software Get Your Feet Wet Before You Ask "How's the water?" One of the most important things we try to teach our non-tech-savvy family and friends when we're helping them with their computers and devices is this: > Experiment. Play. Learn. Teach yourself. You're not going to break it. This is even a lesson we teach to kids, when learning about almost
software Creating an OpenId Relying Party and Provider In .NET Preamble/Motivation I'm working on an MVC web app that will soon be moving to Azure. The big roadblock to moving the application is that it uses LDAP to communicate accross our local intranet to our Active Directory domain controller to authenticate users. The de facto method of authenticating users
technology Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard Review I'm typing this post on my new Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard [http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop]. This is the latest in a line of highly reviewed ergonomic keyboards from Microsoft. Since I spend a lot of time on the computer - a lot of time typing -
technology iPad Mini with Retina Display Review For a while at work I was using an iPad Mini (first generation) for development, and I was able to take it home for general use, too. I finally got my own iPad (mostly because another developer needed the mini for a long project and this left me without a
software Calling Open Source Software Unpaid Labor and GitHub a Resume There's currently quite [http://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-cv/] a bit [http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community] of discussion [http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume] flying around [http://anti-pattern.com/github-is-your-resume-now] regarding whether GitHub should be used in place of a resume when considering candidates for a software position. Part
technology Self Improvement 2.0 and the Role of Software It used to be that the term "Self Improvement" meant reading a book about eating better, exercising more, or controlling anger (maybe that's self help?) In any case, it was usually confined to you reading, watching, or listening to someone else tell you what you should probably do (most likely
technology The Best Shortcut You can Create on Your iPhone The best shortcuts are easy to remember, easy to use, and very beneficial. The ratio of effort to benefit approaches zero. The best example? ctrl + c to copy. It's intuitive, one handed, and saves a 2-3 mouse movements and clicks. The best shortcut you can add on your iPhone is
athletics Climbing Training with a Hangboard I've had a Blank Slate and hangboard [http://xdumaine.com/the-blank-slate-hangboard/] for a little over a year now, going through various periods of more-or-less actual rock climbing, so I'm going to take a look at how much I use the hangboard, on what schedule, and how. Compared to Climbing The
technology Putting the "Smart" Back in "Smart Phone" According to Go-Gulf [http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/smartphone/] (see the info graphic below), there are 1.08 billion smart phones in the world. This means there's a smart phone for about every 7 people on Earth. People are starting to take these smart phones for granted. In the past,
software FizzBuzz Code Golf in JavaScript The FizzBuzz problem is defined as: > For the numbers 1 to 100, print "fizzbuzz" if the number is divisible by 3 and 5, "fizz" if it's only divisible by 3, "buzz" if it's only divisible by 5, and nothing if it's divisible by neither 3 nor 5. Each printed word
software Ghost Beta Review I've been using Ghost [http://ghost.org] as my blogging platform for a couple of weeks now, and I wanted to give it a brief review. It's important to note that it's still in a fairly early beta stage, so many features are absent and bugs are present. However, I
technology An Attempt to Explain the Joy of ASP.NET MVC Development > This post is a follow-up to An Attempt to Explain the Pain of SharePoint Development [http://xdumaine.com/an-attempt-to-explain-the-pain-of-sharepoint-development] to show that I'm not all pessimistic, and that there are parts of my job that I really enjoy. The Development Environment If you're developing an ASP.NET MVC web application,
software Fixing Error: Invalid File Name When Generating Entity Classes for SharePoint with SPMetal Don't look at me like that - the long title was for SEO. If you're developing in SharePoint and at one point included a list in your solution that you later removed from the solution, but didn't first delete from the site, you'll find that that list is now corrupted.
