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.
technology Renaming a SharePoint Server Preface: I've only done this in a development environment, but I've done it twice and it worked pretty well. Rename the Server I did this the default Windows method, through PC info, as if it was any other machine rename. Rename the SharePoint Server Googling for how to do this
technology Staying Relevant In My Field Staying relevant in your field is ridiculously hard. It's even harder when your field is broad, and even harder when you're not quite sure where in the broad spectrum of your field you want to land. I read an example of a financial success story recently. A woman who drew
technology Reusing SharePoint ListView and ListForm Web Parts When creating custom pages in SharePoint, you may, at some point, simply want to display a ListView web part (XsltListViewWebPart) to display a whole view of a list on your custom page, or you might want to display only a list form. A list form might be the default Display,
athletics Slab Climbing The last few times I've been to my climbing gym, I've worked problems on the slab wall. Slab climbing is (usually) a climbing on a pretty flat wall with a positive slope (leaning back, not forward - so it's not overhung or vertical), and pretty small hand and foot holds.
technology Setting up Wordpress URL Structures for Ghost This is a pretty hacky solution, but since dynamic routing and custom URL structures are on the roadmap for Ghost, I just wanted a quick and dirty solution to getting my old WordPress links to work in my new Ghost blog. The permalink options for WordPress allow you to choose
technology Do Yourself a Favor and Unsubscribe from Everything The other day my wife's phone died early in the day and was off for almost 8 hours. When she charged it back up and turned it on, she had 30 some emails waiting for her. She was instantly stressed, not because they were work emails - she doesn't even
