Git

Signed up for github and started using git bash, the commands are a little clunky but then I am used to svn with tortoise as a front end which makes it so easy.

Couple of things that help with setup, paste is insert, change directory cd and ls to list all files within the working directory.

Talking of commands, I have been harassed about not resetting IIS properly, proper way apparently is using an admin prompt and issreset /start /stop as needed, without the args iisreset will reset IIS.

Had a minor issue with go daddy DNS this week, meaning some of the dev team could not access any of usual servers for staging, demo or production. To work around this just add the IP address to your machines host file.

To get the server address for those with access you can use prompt and ping which will show you the address in the first line.

If the rest of the team are not awake yet, getip worked for me.

A short cut I always forget, alt + printScreen to take a screenshot of the current window.

Monitors

After reading the pragmatic health book I looked at a number of monitors, only one I could find that is light sensitive and low blue, the BenQ BL2410PT. Lots of good points and a few not so great.

 Note: The worm is for rubber duck development also makes the place look a bit cooler.

The good over my old 24" monitor, no eye pain and headaches. I do not know if this is the low blue, height adjustment, flicker free or reminder to look away however it just works. The only bad point is that it cannot be set to low blue and auto brightness however the auto brightness works well in standard mode for gaming.

I got talking to the guys at work about second monitors and context switching, I am limited by desk space at the moment. They are very much fans of multi-monitor setups. Behold the bosses beast setup.

Been reading quite a bit, handy to have tech book and book about tech which doesn't require a lot of learning. This book is packed with tips and some I am trying out already. 

The whole use your right brain thing to complete tasks is useful. As someone who can't draw and getting the right brain to draw was amazing for me to actually do it (close enough).

I am yet to try the personal wiki, as I take a lot of notes and they are disorganised so this could be the thing I need.

Using the SQ3R method of reading text books, I am going to give this a go with T-SQL fundamentals although not a massive book will take time.

I am also planning for unemployment, this sucks as I like to work and slows down my own development as I cannot buy books and other fun things like pluralsite. Do I go mad with OU and do as much as I can or code like mad have a look at open source projects and see what I can do. Lots to think about. Sad really as I have seen the project become so much better over the last two years.

Clean Code

One of the few books that has truly changed the way I code for the better. The other book being pragmatic programmer. 

Some sections were tough, especially chapters 14-16

Most books will get a positive review as I put a lot of research in to what I will read next.

 

Some things found, 

UVA online judge , good site for code challenges, they can be quite time consuming, my solution 3n+1 undecided how to leave code examples as some are large. Quick examples can be left as simple text documents so anyone can view easily.

Talking to the boss about Kata's and he found what looks to be good a collection of them code challenges to help train your brain.

Some bits learnt this week, 

Win + x, power user short cut, device manager, admin prompt etc.

When using collapsible panel extender, if the default expanded view crushes the content, then works when you collapse expand the panel. Easy solution is to set the target panel style and it will just work.

#targetPanel {
  height: 0;
  overflow: hidden;
}

 

 

Improving my home network

I have been trying to improve my home network, first of all I thought I would get rid of the massive amount of cat5e and coax from behind the desk. 10m of decade old cat5e has been replaced with new 1.5m of cat6, 15m of coax has been replaced with 5m of low oxygen copper coax cable. Hoping this would reduce my ping by a small amount and tidy up behind the desk, doing this has seen no difference to pings. Researching, each meter of copper cabling adds ~5.48ns, meaning I have saved 0.000129ms.

Results have been much better with power line adaptors over wireless for watching netflix and general browsing.

Less stutter and much quicker response, the adaptors have a network health lamp, which when green has a connection of at least 100mbps.  Fitment can be a bit of pain as the plugs extend downwards and the network socket plugs into the bottom of the adaptor. Only one network connection per adaptor which was easily fixed with a gigabit router. I was going to write up a setup guide however it was all just plug in, worked first time. 

Things learned this week, 

Be careful copying mark up and macros' from notepad into Kentico editable text regions as this has created some strange errors, save publish then a small edit via the in page editor left this working fine. 

Kentico 6 does not support embedded code blocks which contain markup, two ways of doing this. Split up page content into regions, content that has to be hidden having its own region set by the visibility property. Advantage that the content editors can still manipulate the content, I went with an in line control so the content can be reused elsewhere without editing the template. 

Kentico 7+ does support embedded code blocks which contain HTML using k#. 

Alt+F12 in visual studio 2013 for peak definition is so handy, as you can type whilst looking at the definition of what is being used, this also has a bread crumb feature to go back and forwards through definitions.

Always check IE for minor layout changes even if it works in chrome, firefox, and opera.

Lots more to come but I will save it for when I have finished reading clean code.