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26 Mar 2010
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User Expectations

At least as important as the user experience itself would be the users' expectations of that user experience. Google is easily the world champ at this. Gmail was in Beta forever. It was introduced to the public as "a product in test". If it went down,
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Dean Jackson
tags: user expectations
Mar 27 2010 03:42 AM
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IE6

So, I had to give this explanation today at work, why developers don't really care for IE6. It ballooned into something postable, so here goes. IE6 was built around 2000, and ignored several significant web standards at the time. IE6 was somewhat of a
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Dean Jackson
tags: usability
Mar 24 2010 06:11 AM
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DisplayTag

C# has something that's a strong advantage over the base Java libraries; it has UI widgets. If you want to show a table of search results to the user in the UI, you can write the code for the table manually, or you can just drop in a GridView and have it
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Dean Jackson
tags: java
Mar 14 2010 11:46 PM
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One Address Book?

I have an address book on my phone, that I update with people's numbers when I get them. It syncs to my laptop's address book, but that stops there. I tried using Plaxo to sync that with other machines, but I wasn't thrilled with their service; I wound
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Dean Jackson
tags: data
Feb 25 2010 08:49 PM
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Java Enum

So, in Java 5, they added language support for enumeration types. There's a Java Trails tutorial that does a good job, but it left out one important bit, so here goes. The less good way to do an enumeration is manaully, without language support. public
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Dean Jackson
tags: java
Feb 23 2010 08:56 AM
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JQuery

I'm pretty much in love with JQuery at the moment. The last time I had to do anything complex with JavaScript, I inherited a dropdown menu system with some animation that was using 7500 lines of script pushed to the client's browser. I was able to
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Dean Jackson
tags: jquery
Feb 18 2010 09:25 AM
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Three Java Pitfalls

A coworker asked for a few gotchas in Java; things you just step your foot into and never saw coming. Three seemed a good number of things to list off at once, and they're three that have come up recently. The time and date libraries in Java are a bit
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Dean Jackson
tags: java
Feb 12 2010 06:29 AM
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Design Patterns - The Command Pattern

There's a lot of knowledge in the book Design Patterns (Gang of Four). Developers should know the material in there to write efficient and maintainable code, but the book is pretty dry. I'd say it's quicker and easier to just point curious folks at the
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Dean Jackson
tags: oop
Feb 08 2010 08:41 PM
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Scrum

So, I've used Agile/Scrum in the past, but always in a development shop that had been on that methodology for awhile. My current team is adopting it mid-project, and the results are both promising and a learning experience. Basically, there are a few key
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Dean Jackson
tags: project management
Feb 03 2010 09:35 AM
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Logging

So, we're revamping "what to log and when to log it" at work, and that has me thinking. One of the consultants we've brought on spurred us to rewrite our policy, with a very simple remark: "You not only need to log what went wrong, but tell the story of
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Dean Jackson
tags: logging
Jan 15 2010 09:27 PM
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Hosted Version Control

At work, we have the luck to have a dedicated change control team; they maintain a few separate version control systems for many, many projects. However, at home, I just work on one box and have a subversion server installed on a second. The only problem
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Dean Jackson
tags: version control
Dec 06 2009 06:45 AM
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Windows 7 Password Reset

So, the reason I needed Knoppix was that I installed Windows 7... and was locked out on reboot. I'm assuming I fat fingered the password. Moving on. My first try was ophcrack; it's a bootable ISO that starts the machine, finds all the user accounts, and
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Dean Jackson
tags: security
Dec 04 2009 10:14 PM
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log4j and developer error

I'm certain this isn't often a best practice, but I've sacked some startup time on applications before to save lines of code. Specifically, when pasting in: Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(MyClass.class); ...developers often forget to change "MyClass"
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Dean Jackson
tags: logging
Nov 29 2009 10:14 AM
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Things to Know When Outsourcing

When I lived in DC, I joined one very small company right as they were finishing several rounds of outsourcing. I scribbled down a "lessons learned" at the time, and this is an adaption of that.1. Do regular code reviews. Require that future code be
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Dean Jackson
tags: outsourcing
Nov 27 2009 09:00 PM
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AppFuse

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tags: java
Nov 23 2009 08:53 AM
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AppFuse

Not sure if it has any level of acceptance or not, but AppFuse 2.1 is out. AppFuse is a group of folks bundling together a set of technologies to build a web site using Java. Instead of starting from scratch on a new project, the goal is to give you a
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Dean Jackson
tags: java
Nov 23 2009 08:09 AM
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JDK7, Closures, Dynamic Typing Support in JVM

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tags: java
Nov 21 2009 12:09 PM
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JDK7, Closures, Dynamic Typing Support in JVM

So, some interesting items have shown up in the Java 7 specs. Equally as interesting to me is that they have more ideas they intend to implement than they have manpower; for some reason, I mentally assumed that the Java language was mature enough that
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Dean Jackson
tags: java
Nov 21 2009 09:18 AM
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Keeping up from behind a firewall.

The organization I work for is large, and doesn't have a roles-based firewall, so most things titled "blog" are right out from 9-5, Monday through Friday.As a short question, how does anyone else reading keep up on posting technical related thoughts you
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Dean Jackson
tags: firewall
Nov 21 2009 08:58 AM
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Version Control

So, we're coming up on moving to a more Agile development cycle at work, and the primary problem this might cause is some issues with the way we do version control.Currently:- Every release has a branch. There is no longterm "main" branch. Every release
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Dean Jackson
tags: source control
Nov 07 2009 02:27 AM
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Version Control

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tags: agile source control
Nov 07 2009 02:19 AM
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Knoppix Static IP

As part of something today, had to run Knoppix, but it couldn't find DHCP. As a note to myself, more than anything, from a terminal: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.100 ifconfig eth0 netmask 255.255.255.0 echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 >> /etc/resolv.conf route
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Dean Jackson
tags: linux
Nov 04 2009 10:14 PM
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Reading about Development

We had a new developer start about three months ago, and they've been a great hire. Meanwhile, I sat down to chat with them the other day, and they voiced the concern that the rest of the development team felt so much farther ahead than them, they
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Dean Jackson
tags: education
Oct 23 2009 07:49 PM
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Reading about Development

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tags: education
Oct 23 2009 07:33 PM
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Keeping up from behind a firewall.

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tags: firewall
Oct 22 2009 12:09 PM
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Stackoverflow.com

I've become a bit addicted to the programming question-and-answer forum at Stackoverflow.com. If you're bored, join me over there?
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Dean Jackson
tags: external sites
Oct 15 2009 05:41 AM
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Stackoverflow.com

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tags: external sites
Oct 15 2009 05:40 AM
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Maintainable Code

How do you define maintainability, in terms of software? I've watched many an interaction where one group lists "maintainable" as a requirement, another team implements code that they feel is perfectly within requirements, and the original group doesn't
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Dean Jackson
tags: maintainability
Aug 20 2009 05:59 PM
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Maintainable Code

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tags: maintainability
Aug 20 2009 05:57 PM
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Education

Rejoined the ACM today, mostly for the online content; it's pretty damn good, actually. The trophy take away today was something by Bjarne Stroustup, creator of C++. Not sure of posting fulltext and/or excerpts from the ACM; I need to find out their use
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Dean Jackson
tags: recruiting
Jul 09 2009 04:54 AM
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Education

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tags: education recruiting
Jul 09 2009 04:26 AM
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Database Naming Conventions

So, there were a few articles months and months ago I didn't get to post, on database naming conventions. I still haven't drank the proverbial Koolaid yet, but Ruby on Rails provides a really well thought out way to name your tables and columns, that
Multiple Hats
 
Dean Jackson
tags: languages
Jul 08 2009 08:10 AM
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Database Naming Conventions

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tags: ruby best practices database languages
Jul 08 2009 07:48 AM
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Kickstart - Productive Scheduling

So, I've been behind on this blog. It's been about a year at the current position, which filters every blog at the firewall. I may actually ask for them to allow me to keep posting here, because I've had some interesting stuff on my mind.One of them was
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Dean Jackson
tags: management
Jul 08 2009 07:47 AM
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Kickstart - Productive Scheduling

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tags: management
Jul 08 2009 07:40 AM
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Usability

I've been working part-time on refactoring a larger application (200+ pages), focusing on developer maintainability, scalability, and also look and feel. The maintainability is pretty simple; adhere more closely to style guidelines in the code, make more
Multiple Hats
 
Dean Jackson
tags: user interface
Apr 28 2009 08:47 AM
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Usability

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tags: usability user interface
Apr 28 2009 08:25 AM
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Project Management

This is an amazing article on how to be a program manager. It breaks into three chunks of knowledge: Program managers should Represent the customer's point of view. Design the UI, in a working click-through prototype, based on what the customer needs.
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Dean Jackson
tags: management
Mar 20 2009 05:06 AM
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New iPhone OS

Apple fixed almost every gripe I've ever had with my iPhone in the 3.0 release of the OS. Full bluetooth - stereo headphones work in iTunes, file transfer, contacts transfer MMS - send and receive pictures. this took embarrassingly long, but is finally
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Dean Jackson
tags: apple
Mar 20 2009 05:06 AM
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Project Management

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tags: management
Mar 20 2009 05:06 AM