Search Results

Search found 12772 results on 511 pages for 'the little schemer'.

Page 16/511 | < Previous Page | 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23  | Next Page >

  • What do you do when you realize your job requires you to do something out of your depth?

    - by Billy ONeal
    For a large software project recently, I was really out of my depth. And I did actually know this; and that the only reason I was employed was mostly a lack of other qualified candidates. The job was to build a large application on top of PHP/MySQL, a system I had little experience with. (I did advise the employer of this beforehand -- I've been spoiled by C# ASP.NET/MVC and MSSQL Server) The main reason I applied was location, location, location -- on campus jobs which actually have any programming component are relatively rare. For almost a year and a half I've slogged through this, and I think I can say I know (at least somewhat) what I'm doing now. I've made some mistakes, torn out some hair, and moved on. (I'm still working on this system nowadays, but I no longer feel completely lost) In the future though, I'd like to keep my personal and professional self a little healthier than what occurred in this case. So I'm curious -- what's the best way to handle a situation like this?

    Read the article

  • Breaking up the Workday– Overcoming the Workaholic Syndrome

    - by dwahlin
    Hi, my name’s Dan Wahlin and I’m a workaholic – I admit it. It’s good from the standpoint that I get a lot done but it also has a lot of cons associated with it as well that I’m not proud of. I literally can’t watch TV without feeling like I should be doing something more productive (although I have no problem going to see movies at a theater or watching sporting events – that’s my escape I guess). On vacation it’s sometimes difficult the first few days to just “let go” of work and enjoy the time with my family. I always feel like I should be checking email and following up with different business projects. Fortunately, my wife knows me really well after 17 years of marriage and “gently” restricts my usage of laptops and other gadgets while we’re out. She also reminds me that constantly burying my face in gadgets just isn’t cool and shows a distinct lack of self control. On a given day I typically put in between 12 (at a minimum) up to 16-18 hours working on projects. My company does .NET consulting (ASP.NET/jQuery, SharePoint and Silverlight) but we also do a lot in the training space so there’s always a client project, some new courseware or some other deliverable that has to be worked on. My normal process for handling that is to just work my butt off and see how much I can get done. That process has worked well for a long time but when you start realizing that your happiness comes from how much work you accomplished that day then you have a problem. That’s especially true if you have kids (which I do….two awesome boys). It’s almost as if working more hours feels like I’m more successful or something which is of course ridiculous. It may actually mean that I’m too distracted or disorganized. Lately I’ve realized that while I’m still productive and always meet my deadlines, I’m really burnt out by the afternoon and have lost some of the excitement I used to have. Part of that’s normal I think given that I’ve been doing this for close to 15 years now, but in thinking through it more I realized that I just need to get away from the desk and take a break. By far, the happiest time of my life was my childhood. Part of that was due to having awesome parents, having far less responsibility (a big factor I suspect), being able to hang-out with friends at school, playing sports, games, etc. but I think a big part of the overall happiness came from being outside a lot. I lived on my bike as a little kid and as I grew up I shared time between riding an ATV all over the place, shooting hoops on the basketball court, playing golf and working on a golf course (all outside work of course).  Being a software developer and trainer I generally spend 95% or more of my day indoors and only see the sun when driving from place to place or by looking out the window (that’s sad because I live in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ where it’s nearly always sunny). I haven’t looked into any scientific studies on the matter, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a direct correlation between overall productivity/happiness and being outside some throughout the day (sunny or not). But, I wasn’t sure what to do about it since I do have a lot of deadlines I need to meet after all. While talking with my wife last night I mentioned how I feel like I’m in a rut and want to get the “fun” back that I used to have. She immediately said that I need to start making time for breaks (a real quick fact – she’s a lot smarter than me and nearly always right). Of course my first thought was that I’d be less productive taking breaks. If I spend 2 hours just relaxing then I’m losing 2 hours of work. But, I thought about it more and realized that I’m probably less productive when I work 10+ hours and only take less than 30 minutes for a lunch break to relax a little. I bet my brain is screaming, “Please let me relax a little so I can figure out these problems you’re trying to resolve!”. So, starting today I’m going to try to break the workaholic habit and spend time outside of the office. That could mean sitting around outside, working out, golfing, or whatever. I’ve decided that no gadgets are allowed during that time and that I shouldn’t work for more than 4 hours straight without taking a break. I have no idea how my little “break the workaholic syndrome” experiment will go or how long it will last, but I’d be very interested in hearing from others on how they keep fresh and focused without working yourself to death. If you have any specific ideas, techniques or practices you follow please share them. There’s a lot more to life than work and some of us (and I’m thinking of myself specifically) need to take a long, hard look at what kind of balance we currently have. I’d hate to look back at my life when I’m 80 years old and say, “The only thing I did was work – I missed out on life!”.

    Read the article

  • OmniGraffle for iPad Now Supports VGA Output

    - by pat.shepherd
    I have (surprisingly) gotten a lot of comments over the last post about using OmniGraffle as an interactive EA tool.  The news flash/update is that it now supports VGA output.  I had sent a note to the developers and they responded that this was a highly sought after feature…well, they delivered. I have tried it informally and it works, thought there is a little lag between the drawing on the screen and the output, but it is not terrible. So buy yourself a VGA adapter and start trying it out in JAD (Joint Architecture Design) sessions. Here is a link to a couple little OG tutorials: "What's OmniGraffle for iPad", you say? Let us show you! Use the link below to see watch a guided tour of the powerful diagraming tool for the iPad. Videos - OmniGraffle for iPad - Products - The Omni Group

    Read the article

  • Build Dependencies and Silverlight 4

    - by Kyle Burns
    At my current position, I’ve been doing quite a bit of Silverlight development and have also been working with TFS2010 build services to enable continuous integration.  One of the critical pieces of a successful continuous build setup (and also one of the benefits of having one) is that the build system should be able to “get latest” against the source repository and immediately build with no errors.  This can break down both in an automated build scenario and a “new guy” scenario when the solution has external dependencies that may not be present in the build environment. The method that I use to address the dependency issue is to store all of the binaries upon which my solution depends in a folder under the solution root called “Reference Items”.  I keep this folder as part of the solution and check all of the binaries into source control so when I get the latest version of the solution from source control all of the binaries are downloaded to my machine as well and gets me closer to the ideal where a new developer installs the development IDE, get latest and can immediately build and run unit tests before jumping into coding the feature of the day. This all sounds pretty good (and it is), but a little while back I ran into one of those little hiccups that requires a little manual intervention.  The issue that I ran into is that with Silverlight (at least version 4), the behavior of the “Add Reference” command when adding reference to a DLL that is present in the GAC is to omit the HintPath element that it includes with regular .Net projects, so even if the DLL is setting in the Reference Items folder and downloaded to the build machine it cannot be found at compile time and the build will fail. To work around this behavior, you need to be comfortable editing the XML project files generated by Visual Studio (in my case this is typically a .csproj file).  Simply open the project file in your favorite text editor, find the Reference element that refers to the component, and modify the XML to include the HintPath.  Here’s a before and after example of the component that ultimately led me to the investigation behind this post: Before: <Reference Include="Telerik.Windows.Controls, Version=2011.2.920.1040, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5803cfa389c90ce7, processorArchitecture=MSIL" /> After: <Reference Include="Telerik.Windows.Controls, Version=2011.2.920.1040, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5803cfa389c90ce7, processorArchitecture=MSIL">       <HintPath>..\Reference Items\Telerik.Windows.Controls.dll</HintPath>     </Reference>

    Read the article

  • DirectWrite Producing Strange Artifacts?

    - by smoth190
    I've written the basis to my UI system around Direct2D. I like it because it's fast and easy to use (even if I had to do some messy work to get it to work with DirectX11). However, I notice when using DirectWrite I'm getting strange problems with my text. As you can see, the e is a little screwwed up, and it overall looks a little bumpy. This only happens with certain fonts in certain sizes, and with certain arrangements of letters. This particular example is Verdana in size 16.0 font. Can I fix this? It's pretty annoying to change all my words and fonts because of this problem.

    Read the article

  • Bullet Time in Real Life: Impacts Slowed Down with High Speed Cameras

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Combine a little shooting range fun with a camera capable of shooting a million frames per second and you’ve got yourself the basis of pretty hypnotizing video. In the video above various rifle and handgun rounds are fired at a variety of materials–sheet metal, plate metal, gelatin–and captured in a halo of fragments and splatters. Have an equally enthralling high speed video to share? Throw a link in the comments! [via Mashable] How To Be Your Own Personal Clone Army (With a Little Photoshop) How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume

    Read the article

  • Humor in Documentation

    - by Lex Fridman
    Is a small amount of lighthearted wording or humor acceptable in source code documentation? For example, I have an algorithm that has a message hop around a graph (network) until its path forms a cycle. When this happens it is removed from the queue of the node it last resided on which removes it from memory. I write that in a comment, and finish the comment with "Rest in peace, little guy". That serves very little documenting purpose, but it cheers me up a bit, and I imagine it might cheer up other people I'm working with as they read through the code. Is this an acceptable practice, or should my in-code documentation resemble as much as possible the speeches of 2004 United States presidential candidate John Kerry? ;-)

    Read the article

  • Recommended: git-completion.bash

    - by andy.grover
    If you use git on a daily basis like I do, git-completion.bash is a great way to make your life a little easier. While I guess it does add tab-completion for git commands, the most useful feature for me is the ability to put the current branch into the cmdline prompt. Now that I am comfortable working with multiple git branches and remotes, a little reminder where I am prevents time-consuming mistakes. git-completion.bash lives in git's git tree.git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.gitcopy git/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash to ~/.git-completion.shFollow the instructions in the file to set up, and enable showing branch in $PS1I also use this alias in my ~/.gitconfig, which is convenient:[alias]        log1 = log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commitHave fun!

    Read the article

  • A Short History of the GIF [Video]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    From the earliest blinking “Under Construction” signs on web sites to joke images still passed around, the humble little GIF has been with us a long time. Check out this video to learn more about it. Courtesy of LEGS Media, we’re treated to a cute claymation-style look at the birth, revision, and long life of the ubiquitous little GIF. [via Geeks Are Sexy] Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

    Read the article

  • Are nullable types preferable to magic numbers?

    - by Matt H
    I have been having a little bit of a debate with a coworker lately. We are specifically using C#, but this could apply to any language with nullable types. Say for example you have a value that represents a maximum. However, this maximum value is optional. I argue that a nullable number would be preferable. My coworker favors the use of zero, citing precedent. Granted, things like network sockets have often used zero to represent an unlimited timeout. If I were to write code dealing with sockets today, I would personally use a nullable value, since I feel it would better represent the fact that there is NO timeout. Which representation is better? Both require a condition checking for the value meaning "none", but I believe that a nullable type conveys the intent a little bit better.

    Read the article

  • Installing gdm on headless Server Edition

    - by Andrew Koester
    I have Ubuntu Server running on a headless box, which is right now, almost entirely doing only software RAID and feels a little underused. I'd like to get into using Ubuntu as a desktop a little more. What do I need to do (install/etc.) to get Gnome while keeping the box itself headless? I'm not sure which packages to install or which steps to take. I figure I'll just use X over the network (Xming or the like) but something like NX might work.

    Read the article

  • Functional programming readability

    - by Jimmy Hoffa
    I'm curious about this because I recall before learning any functional languages, I thought them all horribly, awfully, terribly unreadable. Now that I know Haskell and f#, I find it takes a little longer to read less code, but that little code does far more than an equivalent amount would in an imperative language, so it feels like a net gain and I'm not extremely practiced in functional. Here's my question, I constantly hear from OOP folks that functional style is terribly unreadable. I'm curious if this is the case and I'm deluding myself, or if they took the time to learn a functional language, the whole style would no longer be more unreadable than OOP? Has anybody seen any evidence or got any anecdotes where they saw this go one way or another with frequency enough to possibly say? If writing functionally really is of lower readability than I don't want to keep using it, but I really don't know if that's the case or not..

    Read the article

  • Graphics system failure

    - by anonymous coward
    I just upgraded two versions of Ubuntu to Oneiric after a recent set of updates broke Audacious 2.4.something in Maverick for me. When it was all finished my Asus Eee 1215N with the 1366x768 screen and the notoriously unsupported Nvidia Ion2 Optimus chipset was working on minimum compatibility fallbacks at 1024x768 resolution. So I did a little bit of reading (not enough) and tried deleting a couple parts of the graphics system to see if I could force a retry on the autodetection. The result: No graphical shell works now. Attempted so far: -reinstalling xorg/nouveau, didn't work. -installing bumblebee/nvidia-current, didn't work. -sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh -a, didn't work. I'd like to stress that this is otherwise a perfectly functional installation that I had spent some time setting up already (including a successful compile of Audacious 3.21 that was working with all the plugins). Is there a way for me to rebuild the graphics system from scratch or should I just give up, cry a little, backup data, wipe partition and reinstall with a USB drive?

    Read the article

  • Own an iPad, iPhone, or Touch? Add GWB to your Home

    - by Staff of Geeks
    I know it is goofy to geek out about such things, but I am a pretty goofy geek.  Today we published support for the Apple icons for devices like the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.  Now when you add Geekswithblogs.net to your home screen (via the little + in Safari) it will load the icon to the left instead of a screenshot of the site.  We have been using my iPhone and iPad to surf to GWB for awhile and we were tired of that screenshot.  Simple Google/Bing search and a little Photoshop CS5 (Amazing!!!) work and there it is.  Next step we are taking in the Apple iPad/Phone arena is getting our developer kit and seeing what possiblities there are for Geekswithblogs.net and a custom App.  Got any ideas? Here is a shot of my iPad 3G: Also, would anyone be interested in a Geekswithblogs.net custom background for the iPhone or iPad?  I can put something together real quick if there are any takers.

    Read the article

  • Visiting China

    - by Bill Graziano
    This summer I had the chance to visit China.  My brother and his wife are living in China and teaching English.  I spent a little over two weeks in Shanghai, Suzhou and Yancheng.  During that time I wrote some detailed updates for family and a few close friends on the impressions of a good Midwestern kid visiting the Middle Kingdom. I dumped them all into one document, did a little editing and now they’re posted.  You can download it here.  Below you can see my futile attempts to eat using chopsticks and me posing as a tourist on Nanjing Road in Shanghai.  The only thing I can say about chopsticks is that I didn’t starve.

    Read the article

  • Direct Code Support?

    - by Josh Kahane
    A few times in the past I've hit a major wall and simply couldn't progress with a certain aspect of an app as Im a beginner and still learning the ropes (Objective-C specifically). I was curious if anyone knows of any services which support programmers in real time, paid or free and will over video, audio or text chat sit and work a problem out till its fixed and look through your code? I understand Stackoverflow does a super job at this! However Im in need of something a little more tailored where someone can spend a little time to sit and look and what Im dealing with and delve into my a code if need be. Thanks.

    Read the article

  • CMS vs Admin Panel?

    - by Bob
    Okay, so this probably seems like an unusual, more grammar related question, but I was unsure of what to call it. If you use a software such as vBulletin or MyBB or even Blogger and you're the administrator (or other, lesser position such as moderator) of the forum, or publisher/author of the blog, you generally have access to something of an "admin panel". For example, vBulletin's admin panel looks like this and Blogger's admin panel looks something like this. While they both look different and do different things, the goal is fundamentally the same: to provide the user with a method for adding, modifying, or deleting content... to let them control and administrate their forum or blog. Also, they're both made specifically by the company for use in a specific product. Now, there's also options like Drupal. It seems to offer quite a bit more and be quite a bit more generalized. How does something like this work? If you were freelancing, would you deploy a website with Drupal, or would it be something the client might already have installed on their own server? I've never really used Drupal, only heard about it, so please let me know. Also, there seems to be other options like cPanel, a sort of global CMS that allows you to administrate over your entire website. How do those work in comparison to Drupal, or the administrative panels with vBulletin? They seem to serve related, but different purposes. Basically, what is the norm? If I'm developing a web application for a group that needs to be able to edit their website without the need to go into the code or the database (or rather, wants to act in a graphical, easy-to-use content-management/admin panel), would it also be necessary to write my own miniature admin panel? Or would I be able to send them off knowing that they have cPanel? Or could something like Drupal fill this void? Again, I'm a little new to web development, and I'm working on planning out my first, real, large website. So I need a little advice on the standards and expectations for web development - security and coding practices aside, what should I be looking for as far as usability and administration for the client (who will be running the site once I'm done creating the website)? Any extra tips would also be appreciated! Oh, and just a little bit: I'm writing the website using Ruby on the Sinatra framework (both Ruby and Sinatra are things I'm fairly comfortable with) and I'm not being paid to make the website (and I will also be a user, and one of the three administrators of the website) - it's being built for a club I'm in.

    Read the article

  • This not having job, is driving me nuts!

    - by Ratman21
    I had two jobs lined up (temporary but, hey they pay), one of which was in IT. A very low paying IT job for only 30 hours a week and only 3 weeks. At a large high tech company and a government (a not in my field job) temporary, paying a bit more, for little longer and for up to 40 hours a week. I was going to happily work my little self raged for the next 3 weeks. Guess what, the IT job fell thru and I now feel so let down. This I felt was my chance to get back in to IT, even if it was only for few weeks and maybe get note-us as hard working IT guy. I still have the other job but, let me add that there is no chance that it will turn in to something longer (I have been told that point blank). As I said this is nuts.

    Read the article

  • Why should most logic be in the monitor objects and not in the thread objects when writing concurrent software in Java?

    - by refuser
    When I took the Realtime and Concurrent programming course our lecturer told us that when writing concurrent programs in Java and using monitors, most of the logic should be in the monitor and as little as possible in the threads that access it. I never really understood why and I really would like to. Let me clarify. In this particular case we had several classes. Lift extends Thread Person extends Thread LiftView Monitor, all methods synchronized. This is nothing we came up with, our task was to implement a lift simulation with persons waiting on different floors, and theses were the class skeletons that were given. Then our lecturer said to implement most of the logic in the monitor (he was talking about class Monitor as THE monitor) and as little as possible in the threads. Why would he make a statement like that?

    Read the article

  • Please Stop Voting Against a Candidate

    - by Brian Lanham
    DISCLAIMER:  This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”.  This is not a post for whom I am voting.  This is simply a post to address an issue that I cannot ignore any longer.  This two-party system that we have allowed to establish a foothold is killing this country.    More than 2 Options I was recently asked, “If you had to choose Romney or Obama who would you pick?”  I replied “Non sequiter.  The founders of this nation ensured that I never have to pick from only two candidates.”  But somehow that is the way this country’s citizens think.  I told someone last week that there are around 20 candidates for president and she was genuinely surprised.  (There are actually 25 candidates.)  She had no idea there were that many and, even though she knew there are more, she didn’t know any names beyond Romney and Obama.  Well, I am going to try and educate people like her on other options. Vote for a Candidate, not against another Candidate So this post is the first in a series with a little bit of information about each candidate for president.  I implore you…I beg you, please do your civic duty and conduct a little bit of investigation and research on your own to find the right candidate for you.  Hey, if your candidate is Romney or Obama, that’s fine.  As long as it’s an educated decision.  But please…stop voting against a candidate.  Start voting for a candidate. A List of CandidatesAs I mentioned, I am going to write a little something about each candidate and I’m going to go by alphabetical order by PARTY, then by CANDIDATE LAST NAME so as to not show any bias. P.S. – If you want to know the candidate I selected I am happy to tell you.  But that’s not what this series is about.PARTYCANDIDATEAmerica's Party   Tom HoeflingAmerican Third Position PartyMerlin MillerAmericans Elect PartyNo candidates met the requirement to enter into the online caucus.Constitution PartyVirgil GoodeDemocratic Party   Barack ObamaGrassroots Party   Jim CarlsonGreen Party   Jill SteinIndependent American Party   Will ChristensenJustice PartyRocky AndersonLibertarian Party   Gary JohnsonObjectivist PartyTom StevensPeace and Freedom Party   Roseanne BarrReform PartyAndre BarnettRepublican PartyMitt RomneySocialism and Liberation PartyPeta LindsaySocialist Equality PartyJerry WhiteSocialist Party USAStewart AlexanderSocialist Workers PartyJames HarrisIndependent Candidates Jeff BossRichard DuncanJerry Litzel Dean Morstad Jill Reed Randall TerrySheila Tittle Michael Vargo

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23  | Next Page >