Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

Doesn’t seem like too much of a difficult question, but when asked to developers some sit with blank stares. I’ve listened to that question be asked in three interviews this past week, and I really didn’t hear any decent answers. One candidate actually asked us what we do to stay current after a long pause without answering the question.

I recall when Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin what magazines she read to stay current. I thought that was a silly question to begin with because who actually reads printed news material anymore? Still seems like a question you either know, because you do, or don’t because you’ve never tried to. Those people who don’t know often pause, mumble, and just in general seem very confused.

Just thought that was an interesting take away from this week’s interviews.

Ok, I built something I am excited about. The one biggest gripe I’ve had with blogs is that it’s often hard to sort and filter the posts to find the posts I’m most interested in. In comes Microsoft Pivot. Microsoft Pivot allows for viewing data in an intuitive filterable manner in a completely visual context. Incredibly cool for filtering images, magazines, or even the magic the gathering card collection. Take that single column blog lists!

My idea last night is to view blogs through Pivot. I set about programming the cXML schema into a series of .Net classes, and then built an input mechanism to build a static cXML file with my blogs postings. It’s still in the early phase of just the roughest information, mainly blog title and descriptions, but given another day of polishing will have additional meta data with appropriate blog links. I also realize how terrible my categories are since the Pivot category filtering is very limited with my junk data input.

Below is a screen shot of the very rough data output I created with cXML for viewing in Microsoft Pivot. Now that I have my framework together I can expand the idea to anything with categories.

I will keep the cXML path displayed in the Pivot screenshot so if you’re interested you can also view the generated blog Pivot output as it goes through the transition to getting cleaned up totally.

Coming from a C# background I was a little jealous of VB literals (still hate VB.) Recently I was flung into the VB.Net world on a new project, and my only consolation was finally being able to work with VB literals first hand. The first thing I needed to do was iterate a collection of objects to custom build an XML message. I did a little Google, and Bing action to no real results on looping a collection within XML literals. Eventually I found the solution as XML literals do not directly support loops as we know it. Fortunately that is where LINQ steps up to the plate:

 1: Dim xml = <Processes>

 2:  <%= From process in Processes 

 3:  Select <Process><%= process.Name %></Process>

 4:  %>

 5:  </Processes>

In this example I’ve created an XElement variable called “xml” that contains the literal XML. Using a LINQ query within the “Processes” element the select query will iterate through the items in the processes collection object. Each item will output a process element that will be included within the processes element.

Ditched Sprint. I’m saving $70 a month with Cricket’s unlimited text and unlimited talk. My new phone service plus iPad data plan costs exactly $70 per month combined, and still ends up with me saving $40 per month compared to Sprint. If Sprint had the EVO in stock I might be talking about my EVO instead of a new carrier.