Gotta love this error message I got when trying to set a password that was "too long" on Intense Debate:
Great Article: 8 steps to serving better (X)HTML
Earlier today I blogged about Tantek Çelik’s talk at The Future of Web Apps so I decided to mosey on over to his blog. There I found this gem: 8 steps to serving better (X)HTML
Simple technologies recombined, not technological breakthroughs, spur disruptive innovations
Yesterday when I blogged about simplicity I forgot to mention Clayton Christensen‘s take on simple technology. Clayton’s ground-breaking book was entitled "The Innovator’s Dilemma" and is a must-read for any developer who wants to understand the business dynamics between market incumbency and innovative uses of technology. From his extensive research Christensen states in The Innovator’s Dilemma …
Technologies are best when they are simple
What’s the next big thing? AJAX? Ruby on Rails? PC Virtualization? Open-Source Software? Data Security? Open Office File Formats? Windows Vista? Windows Live? Apple’s iWhatever? Yeah, all those things will get lots of hype, but the next big thing is something we’ve had access to all along: Simplicity Are my thoughts revolutionary? Nah, I’ve been …
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Visual C++ and LINQ – is it Needed?
Esther Schindler who is the editor of the email newsletter DevSource Update recently wrote about Visual C++ and Microsoft’s LINQ Project that adds the ability to use SQL code directly in VB and C# programs (emphasis mine): Ever since the PDC, developers and the press have been talking about the LINQ technology that Microsoft showed off. …
My blog’s been quiet, but dotNetInfluencers.org has not been…
Though my blog has been quiet for several days, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on online projects. Since I launched it over a week ago, http://www.dotnetinfluencers.org/ has taken a lot of my time, but it is coming along better than I had hoped for! If you not familiar with what I’m doing over …
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Getting Past the XSLT Error: “Expression must evaluate to a node-set.”
So I just blogged about how I find XSLT somewhat frustrating. Admittedly some of the frustration is based on my relative lack of experience with XSLT. One area ripe with potential frustration is the concept of the node-set data type for which learning has caused me a bit of hair loss recently! A typical scenario …
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Ranting about XSLT’s verbosity
I’ve been trying to learn XSLT for a few projects, and I find it both a fascinating and extremely frustrating language! I read about the designers goals (from Michael Kay’s XSLT: Programmer’s Reference) and just shake my head, i.e. : "XSL stylesheets should be human-legible and reasonably clear" and in the next sentence "Terseness in …
Announcing my Latest Project! (Well almost…I need some help first)
I’m a categorization junkie. I have always been that way. If I’m interested in something I go out and research ad-nauseum, and then create exhaustive categorized and cross-referenced lists. I think that’s why I like databases and XML and data-driven websites. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about having data in a format that it can be …
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It’s Always Something (#1): Wrestling with System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform and the Document() function
It’s always something! At Xtras, we have a rather sophisticated email broadcast system that we developed internally. Our system uses a set of tables in our SQL Server database that models the type of email, who it should go to, the mailing lists, etc. It loads each newsletter subscriber’s name and email address using a FOR XML …