Blogging

NetFlix’s Corporate Culture

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:22:00 GMT

Here’s an interesting look at the internal corporate culture at NetFlix.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

Technorati Tags: NetFlix,SlideShare,Corporate Culture

Unintentional Summer Blogging Hiatus

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:16:00 GMT

If you’ve noticed that the frequency of blog posts around here have gone down recently, you’re not alone.

This hasn’t exactly been a nice, relaxing Summer.

Most of what’s going is good stuff: baby prep, writing a book, and CapArea Silverlight is going strong.

Work’s keeping me busy, too.

Between all the WPF I do for work and all the Silverlight I do for fun, I think I’m beginning to see XAML everywhere.

In case you’re wondering, the Mrs. already nixed the idea of naming the child so that the initials would be X.A.M.L.

I can’t get anything past her. ;)

The important thing is that I tried.

Neurons and Social Networks

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:37:00 GMT

Interesing look at how people in social networks are similar to neurons in the brain.

Does that make the internet like a brain? If so, are we all just neurons in the brain of the internet?

You Are A Neuron

View more presentations from grasuth.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking,SlideShare,Deep Thought,Brain,Neurons

Happy 5th Blogday to Me

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:53:00 GMT

In the early 2000s, I had a blog previously on BlogSpot since 2001, but I wasn't good at maintaining that one. I usually would update it when I was living in Germany to keep friends and family updated.

Five years ago this week, I made my first blog post on this site.

I remember that cold February night so vividly, working into the night installing .TEXT and getting it to play along well with my DNS forwarding account I had at the time.

Since then, I've done a pretty good job updating the blog. This is post number 2650, giving me an average of around 530 posts per year; 44.1 a month; and 1.4 a day.

Technorati Tags: Blogging,BlogDay

A Special Number of Posts

Frank La Vigne — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:09:00 GMT

The number 2600 holds a special meaning to geeks.

It's a number that has a long and rich history.

I couldn't let the moment I hit 2600 posts on this blog go unmarked or uncommented.

So, grab a bowl of cereal, curl up with a good book and play a retro game system to mark the occasion.

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Geek,Milestone

Wordle

Frank — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:40:00 GMT

Wordle is a cool tool that creates artistic tag clouds out of a blog, del.icio.us feed, or other collection of text.

You can customize the layout, fonts, and colors or randomize and see what you get.

Obviously, I need to blog more about Tablet development more. ;)

Maybe I should talk more about that secret Tablet project Craig and I have in the works.

[found via Restonian]

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Wordle,Tagging,Tag Clouds,Interesting,Tablet PC

A Bit of Perspective

Frank — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:13:00 GMT

I saw this Pearls Before Swine comic yesterday and you can easily swap the word blog for Twitter.

The next time Twitter's homepage sports the "fail whale," I'll keep in mind that human civilization existed before Twitter and will likely go on if Twitter's offline for a few hours.

Technorati Tags: Pearls Before Swine,Blogging,Twitter

Community Megaphone Plug-In for Window Live Writer

Frank — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:44:00 GMT

Community Megaphone is a great site that Andrew Duthie put together.

Recently, the site has gone national and Andrew has been working hard at improving it.

His latest feature: geocoded RSS, which Glen Gordon put to good use by making an app that find developer events nearest you based on your location.

Here's my addition to the CM utility kit: a Plug-in for Windows Live Writer.

The plug-in adds an entry onto WLW's sidebar and Insert menu:

Once you click on "Insert CM Event," this dialog box comes up:

Browse to Community Megaphone to see the EventID the site assigned to the event you wish to blog about and enter that number in the text box.

Click OK and you'll see the following added to your blog post:

For instance, CMAP's August 2008 meeting has an EventID of 320, so if I plug in 320 to the dialog box, I get:

[ Event Details | Map | Add to Calendar ]

Future versions of the plug-in will eliminate the "browse to Community Megaphone site" step.

But for now, this is a fast and easy way to provide a link to a map and iCal file for events.

Installation

First ~~download the DLL file~~ download version 1.0.0.0 of the DLL and copy it to the C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins directory, assuming it's installed in the default directory.

Make adjustments if you've installed it in another location.

Let me know what you think!

Send bug reports, feature suggestions, gratuitous praise, etc to me via my contact page.

Technorati Tags: Community Megaphone,WLW,Windows Live Writer,Plug-In

Twitter in Plain English

Frank — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:37:00 GMT

At my Introducing Silverlight talk on Saturday, I mentioned Twitter.

Most people in the audience hadn't heard of it and I found it somewhat hard to explain.

Actually, the concept is easy, the purpose of Twitter takes some clarification.

Thankfully, there's this video: "Twitter in Plain English"

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

If you like the idea, you can follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/Tableteer and the happenings of the Silverlight DC area community at http://twitter.com/SilverlightDC.

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Silverlight,Twitter in Plain English

Twitter Feed

Frank — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:11:00 GMT

I'll be updating my Twitter feed this week with updates from MIX and my whereabouts at the show.

Keep an eye on it, if you're looking for me or curious as to what's going on there.

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Mix08