Mark Monster

I’m .NET developer not a database developer. But the customer I’m with since June this year wants to have as many things on the database as possible. Yes, as many THINGS as possible. First I thought why would you want to, but now I start getting it. The customer has a long history of Oracle application and as I understood everything is done in the database in case of an Oracle application.

Most of the time I would use a database as a data-store. Using it for creating, reading, updating and deleting data. If the client requires the usage of Stored Procedures, I basically create an Insert, Update and Delete Stored Procedure for every table, nothing special. For the selection of data I create a select by id, and selects that are required by the functionality for the specific table.

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I’ve had a lot of different personal knowledge bases in the past. But not everything was working the way I wanted it to work. So just around a week ago I started my own personal Wiki. I used the free service of wikidot.com to create my personal private Wiki.

As a technologist I organized my Wiki based by the different technology I work in. I have code examples, solutions, helpers, and other things. Also I often find interesting things on the net which I kind of copy to my Wiki by linking to the source and aggregating the needed information so I can use it fast. This is my own personal short-cut to technology knowledge.

Years ago, during my study Computer Science I developed in Java. The last of my Java years I made use of IntelliJ IDEA as my Java environment. IntelliJ IDEA is a very intelligent IDE from the same guys as ReSharper. I wasn’t using a source-control system but made use of a very nice feature: Local History.

I just found out a CodePlex project: Visual Local History 2005. Visual Local History is a Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 add-in that will provide some kind of Local History. It can integrate with some predefined comparison tools. Sadly it is still in Beta, but will that prevent us from using it? At least it is  released in GPL.

I’m not advocating using Local History as a replacement for source-control, but sometimes the changes you made are very large and it takes some time before you are able to check your into your source-control. I think Local History can work without any trouble side-by-side with your source-control. This way you won’t loose any control by not using a source-control. You’re even gaining control by the ability to browse through your local changes.

This all sounds very nice. This kind of local history could be nice for using with all kinds of documents.

It’s been a while since I last posted about me gaming on the Nintendo Wii.

Yesterday I bought the just released Super Mario Galaxy. I didn’t have time to play it yesterday, but today I played Mario Galaxy for about 2 hours. I really like it, it’s a very nice game to play, the whole game has some very nice gravity. You are attracted or not, it’s all very naturally.

Take a look at the dutch Super Mario Galaxy site to get an idea about the game-play. Also Google Video about Super Mario Galaxy.

In the past I talked about Personal Performance Indicators. The last months I’ve had a few hours to build basic tool support for Personal Performance Indicators. It’s all pretty basic. The UI looks like the following.

The whole tool is based on plugin-support. The two personal goals are configured using a ‘periodic’ plugin which will be part of the first release.

I can think of other plugins, build by others, or by me. Think about an excel-sheet you use for keeping track of your productivity in hours a week. You already use this excel-sheet, but it could be nice to have an indicator showing if your productivity is on track, isn’t it?

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Since a week I’m the proud owner of the Philips Wake-Up Light. It helps me wake-up.

A lot of people are using music to wake-up, I was used to this also. But from now I’m getting awake by some sort of sunset. Half an hour before wake-up time the light gradually increases. The light has to fall on your eyes to send some kind of message to your brain. And if you cannot get awake by only the light it also starts with a chosen sound on wake-up time.

But how does it work for me. Last week I awoke three times from only the light and two times I awoke after hearing some virtual birds. Besides this I felt a lot more awake on the early hours of the day. I just have thrown away my old alarm clock, let’s hope the Wake Up Light keeps working.