Scott Hanselman

Hanselminutes Podcast 230 - Continuous Deployment with Jon Tørresdal

September 07, 2010 Comment on this post [2] Posted in Agile | ASP.NET | Podcast
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JonTorresdal

This week Scott talks to Jon Tørresdal from Norway via Skype. Jon is an Architect for a Norwegian insurance company, and an editor for InfoQ. His agile team practice Scrum and Jon shares his experiences making web deployment a no-click affair. What are the tools and techniques you need to make your automated build automate deployment to a production web farm?

NOTE: If you want to download our complete archives as a feed - that's all 230 shows, subscribe to the Complete MP3 Feed here.

Subscribe: Subscribe to Hanselminutes Subscribe to my Podcast in iTunes

Download: MP3 Full Show

Links from the Show

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

Telerik is our sponsor for this show.

Building quality software is never easy. It requires skills and imagination. We cannot promise to improve your skills, but when it comes to User Interface and developer tools, we can provide the building blocks to take your application a step closer to your imagination. Explore the leading UI suites for ASP.NET AJAX,MVC,Silverlight,Windows Formsand WPF. Enjoy developer tools like .NET reporting,ORM,Automated Testing Tools, TFS, and Content Management Solution. And now you can increase your productivity with JustCode, Telerik’s new productivity tool for code analysis and refactoring. Visitwww.telerik.com.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Hanselminutes Podcast 229 - OpenID and OpenAuth with DotNetOpenAuth open source programmer Andrew Arnott

September 07, 2010 Comment on this post [4] Posted in Podcast
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image Scott talks to Andrew Arnott about OpenID and OpenAuth. What are these two protocols, how do they relate to each other and what do we as programmers need to know about them? Do you use Twitter? Then you use OpenAuth and may not realize it. Andrew works at Microsoft and works on the side on his open source project DotNetOpenAuth.

NOTE: If you want to download our complete archives as a feed - that's all 229 shows, subscribe to the Complete MP3 Feed here.

Subscribe: Subscribe to Hanselminutes Subscribe to my Podcast in iTunes

Download: MP3 Full Show

Links from the Show

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

Telerik is our sponsor for this show.

Building quality software is never easy. It requires skills and imagination. We cannot promise to improve your skills, but when it comes to User Interface and developer tools, we can provide the building blocks to take your application a step closer to your imagination. Explore the leading UI suites for ASP.NET AJAX,MVC,Silverlight,Windows Formsand WPF. Enjoy developer tools like .NET reporting,ORM,Automated Testing Tools, TFS, and Content Management Solution. And now you can increase your productivity with JustCode, Telerik’s new productivity tool for code analysis and refactoring. Visitwww.telerik.com.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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A New Podcast for Developers - This Developer's Life

September 03, 2010 Comment on this post [12] Posted in Podcast
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My friend Rob and I don't always agree on technology but we do agree that This American Life is one of the best, if not the best podcast in the world.

That podcast is all about storytelling. It's masterfully produced, thoughtfully narrated and generally loved. It's cared for, curated and shepherded. It's nurtured.

Rob's new experiment, This Developer's Life is, on its surface, a straight and unapologetic rip-off of This American Life; but in the flattery is the sincerest form of flattery sense. It's brilliant because it works. The narrative flow works, the "stew on that and think for a second" musical interludes work.

If you love being a developers, then this show will resonate with you. Even more, if you are around developers (and perhaps not one) then this will explain our psychoses.

There's no talk of code, no hand-waving or explanations of architecture diagrams. There's just our stories. I think This Developer's Life has the potential to bring back some emotional context that's been missing in our space. Why DO we choose this job? What drives us and how far will we go?

Perhaps this format will resonate with you, perhaps not, but it is a breath of fresh air (!) in the developer community space.

I had the pleasure of being a part of episode two so check it out.

You can subscribe to this experiment via RSS or subscribe on iTunes. You can also listen to it directly on http://thisdeveloperslife.com.

I look forward to working with Rob some more on this venture. I think, even after just two episodes, he's got something special and I encourage you to give it a listen.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Two Must-Have Tools for a More Readable Web

August 27, 2010 Comment on this post [61] Posted in Tools
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Here's how most folks use the Web. You get a link in email, Twitter, Facebook, IM, whatever and you open it in a new tab.

Instapaper - Google Chrome

Then, at some point in your copious free time, and possibly while reading other more pressing things, you'll read these 43 tabs, right? Even better, some of the articles are 8 pages long so you'll load up pages 1-4 and 6 and you don't even know why.

Then, maybe your browser crashes or your system reboots or something locks up or you get confused as to why you wanted to read that in the first place.

This is not cool and I refuse to use the web in this way anymore. Here's what I do.

Consider this new workflow. You'll either Read It Now or Read It Later.

First, Reading Stuff Later

Workflow Flow Chart - sorry if you are blind. There's text about this soon.

Whenever you find something long that you KNOW you want to read but you just don't have time now, don't open a tab. Save it to Instapaper. I've got a bookmarklet for Instapaper in my bookmark bar on all my computers in all my browsers. This important, hence the bold.

image

If it's not setup on all your machines in any browser where you might find content, you'll fall back to old habits and not use it. Take the 10 minutes and do it. The bookmarklet even works from within Google Reader. Anywhere you find stuff you want to read later. You can even have your Instapaper queue sent over to your Kindle if it makes you happy.

Example Workflow

Lets say I see this article by Phil Haack tweeted. I visit the page and while it looks interesting, he's SO loquacious and I'm busy now. I'll read it later.

We’re Not Paid To Write Code - Google Chrome

I'll click "Read Later" in my bookmarks bar, and I see this notification.

image

Fast forward some hours. I've got time and I've collected a few interesting bits that I'm looking forward to reading. I visit Instapaper and see this:

Instapaper - Google Chrome (2)

There's the articles I've saved lately, with new ones first. It knows what I've read, what I've starred and what's been articled.

Here's an interesting bit, while I can click the link for Phil and visit his site, I don't. I'll click "Text" for Phil's article using a filter. The Instapaper filter is a lot like Readability (more on that later) in that it removes the non-content parts of the article. It also adds a little bar at the top where I can select between readable fonts, change the width, font size and line spacing. Everything here is focused on text and making the content I'm consuming more soluble.

We’re Not Paid To Write Code - Google Chrome (2)

I can of course also read from my phone (I'm working on a Windows Phone 7 version) or whatever device makes me happy. It's the same queue.

Instapaper in iPhone Instapaper in iPhone

Second, Read It Now - with Readability

Sometimes I want to read something right now, but the site I'm looking at is just too busy. Recently I wanted to read this article on overclocking my motherboard. However the site looked like Las Vegas.

I have another bookmarklet called Readability.

Introduction - Gigabyte X58A-UD9 Extreme Motherboard Review  [H]ardOCP - Google Chrome

There it is...

image

And as Rob Conery likes to say pressing it "is like closing the car windows while driving on the freeway."

Introduction - Gigabyte X58A-UD9 Extreme Motherboard Review  [H]ardOCP - Google Chrome (2)

I find that the simple introduction of these two tools, Instapaper for Reading Later and Readability for Reading Now not only allow me to consume and collect MORE information than before, but I'm slightly less stressed out while I'm doing it. Goodbye 43 tabs.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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The Programmer's Body

August 27, 2010 Comment on this post [86] Posted in Musings
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150568960I am broken, my friends. I've blogged before on:

Today I'm wearing a neck brace. Yes, I'm one of the "looks like they are suing someone" people. I hate those people and now I'm one of them.

I was totally fine, all was well, playing at the playground with 2 and 4 when I decided to do some chin-ups on the monkey bars. I can usually do ten good ones so I didn't think it was a big deal. I worked out like a fiend from age 15 to 25 so I thought I had some decent muscle maturity. Turns out that's not true and I'm tight as hell.

Sitting in front of a computer for the last 20+ years has broken me, my friends. I'm tense and some muscle in my neck ripped on chin-up #2 quite nicely. I dropped and haven't been able to move my head since Sunday. Now I'm doing physical therapy, chiropractic, exercises, stretching and generally being sad.

Fortunately Microsoft is pretty cool about this and only want to me to get my ass back to making money for the company get better, so they're getting me a desk that will be motorized and go up and down so I can sit AND stand while working.

I'm hoping this experience will be the kick in the head (and neck) that will get me back in shape. I'd hate it if I ran out of keystrokes.

 

163_25_e 

Let this be a lesson to YOU, Dear Reader. Take breaks, stretch, make sure your desk area is setup ergonomically.

How do YOU keep your body, hands, back and neck from breaking down completely?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.