Darrell Russell. A Software Contractor with over 10 years development experience. He is an experienced Microsoft .NET software developer specialising in C#, VB.NET, SQL Server Databases, ASP/ASP.NET web sites, XML, Web Services, WinForms, WCF and WFF development and consultancy work on a freelance basis. Based in the South West of the UK (Tetbury, Gloucestershire) and available to do work within South Wales, the M4 corridor, Gloucestershire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somerset including Bath, Bristol, Swindon, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Salisbury. At the moment he is particulary interested in Agile Software development methodologies including Test Driven Development (TDD).
If you ever have to sniff packets on your network (and as a softie there will always be times when you’ll have to get your hands dirty and check out what’s really happening on the net) then your best place to start is http://www.ethereal.com/ .. it’s a free network protocol analyzer and bloody powerfull with it
Once you have that then how do you use the bloody thing?
If your clued up about the basics of networking then it’s pretty obvious but I’ve just seen a series of blogs that help you get started, which look good. I haven’t read them all the way through yet but I’m sure I will sometime .. have to admit I’m not looking forward to that time cos it’ll mean I’ve got networking issues
I can’thelp myself .. as soon as my fingers are feeling OK I just want to climb interesting and difficult routes down at the wall rather than take it easy.
Anyway last night, at the Warehouse, managed to:
Got half way up a 7a slab with just one fall .. top roped .. didn’t go any further becuase it was a serious smear to the next hold on crimpy little holds .. not worth the risk. But at least this is one move higher than I’ve ever managed to get on this route before (and a lot smoother .. and just the one fall to get past that last hold).
First try on a henious overhanging 6B+ .. unfortunately had to lead it as no top rope around. Managed to get 2/3rds of the way up .. with lots of rests but the moves are all there .. just need to string em together. Not sure about leading though .. be an awesome route if I could lead it .. real cool route.
Top roped a vertical 6B+ route .. piece of cake (reckon it’s more of a 6a+ route really but hey, I’m not complaining.)
Led a overhanging 6A+ route with roof .. had two rests (not good) .. but clean straight through the roof, which was pretty nice.
.. still no running. No money to replace my running shoes and my right foot still aches so don’t wish to take any chances
After the mad two week push on climbing (8 sessions at the wall and one visit to Symonds in approx. 12 days) could only have one outcome .. my finger joints ended up feeling really knackered.
After the first week I’d wake up and the joints would feel like they’d nearly seized up .. nothing extreme .. just a certain inflexibility and aching. This would go once I’d woken up and got out of bed.
After the second week my first finger on my right hand ached all of the time and had a sharpish pain in the joints.
I stopped the traversing at that point .. and just did the Tuesday/Thursday wall visits so that:
1. By doing real easy routes and using non crimp holds I wanted to promote use* of the fingers but not overload them .. so mostly 5s then.
2. I didn’t want to go off the boil just before my climbing trip to Spain .. I wanted to just keep my system ticking over.
Obviously a difficult balancing act between making my fingers worse vs slobbing out vs improving things.
Oh and I’ve also started taping my first two fingers on both hands to help support the joints .. it really does help.
So far (3 trips to the wall) and it’s looking OK .. fingers have stopped aching in the morning and although I’m not convinced everything is back to normal everything is going better than I’d hoped
* The parts that make up the finger have a bad blood supply .. the upshot of that is that they are notorious for taking longer to heal than other parts of the body.
I started this as just things that .NET v1.1 did/didn’t do but I’ve expanded it to include all of the things going on when I develop using .NET.
I’m not saying I know what these things should do, I just know I don’t like the way they currently behave:
1. Null Object Handling - for instance, XML DOM navigation is a nightmare/clunky becuase of this.
2. Having to declare variables/objects before a try{} construct if you want to use them in the catch{}. If you declare them within the try{} construct then their scope is restricted to just the try{} construct .. makes debugging difficult becuase invariably you’ll want to interrogate those very variables in trying to understand what happened to cause the exception in the first place. (Using the Exception “Break into the debugger” mode is the quickest way to get to the problem in a large system).
Scope of objects are a pain while debugging .. full stop.
3. VS2003 - will save to the solution file even if you don’t want it to Eg IIS not running and you load an ASP.NET solution .. the default project changes from the ASP.NET web app to some other project without a “do you want to save that change” pop up anywhere.
4. Why do I get an error message such as:
‘Collection.Count()’ referenced without parentheses
The system bloody well knows exatly what’s wrong .. why can’t I just click a button to say fix it?
Smoke Tests - Wide and shallow tests built to quickly check the big picture health of a piece of software. I suppose that’s what I do most of the time with legacy systems .. slowly adding the more detailed unit tests as and when I modify the system (just before in fact).
Well I’ve made it through my first 6 months of Oracle usage .. and it’s been an eye opener.
I suppose the main thing I’ve learnt is what a pile of old rubbish developers using Oracle as their datastore have to put up with. Jeez .. I’m sure Oracle is the dog’s danglees from a DBA point of view but from your plain ol developers perspective it’s been horrible. I appreciate there will always be clash between different systems solving the same sorts of problems; different user cultures, different tools, different reference websites .. even different philosophies. But just about everything from the documentation (aaaggghh!) to the tools with which your able to create, update and debug an Oracle database .. it’s all so painfully slow .. it’s been embarrassing.
Samsung G600 - MP3 player, 5M Camera, small (check out the 3D viewer on the T Mobile site .. you can rotate the image of the phone and even measure it :))
I want to find out whether the Samsung supports the 6GB microSDHC Card .. hope so. No such luck .. looks like I’m limited ta 2G microSD cards. Mind u thats what they said about my SD card reader on my old MDA Plus (limited to 2GB but 4GB works). BTW Nokia N75 works with the microSDHC standard .. apparently there’s an 8 GB card coming out soon!
.. but, head ruling heart, the bike woud still have to be practical to own; reliable so I could commute with it, fairing so I would be warm(ish) in the winter, somewhere to bung panniers on it and probably a pillion seat too.
However ..
if money was no object .. then the Confederate Wraith is the bike I’d buy. I’d be so excited with the prospect of taking it on a track day, I’d just love to arrive at work on it .. in fact I’d just want to take it for a ride.
