The DaxMindMapper Reloaded

I’ve stopped climbing to let my right shoulder recover from RSI. Its very similar to what was happening to my left shoulder last year .. but not quite as chronic. Also the pain seems to be more at the front of my shoulder (perhaps it’s Biceps Tendonitis rather than Rotator Cuff Tendonitis).

Anyway I’m waiting for that to heal before gettting back on rock.

I don’t follow the job market too closely and I’m not clued up about any possible cycles within the contract market in particular but it does seem like there is strong demand at the moment for experienced .NET developers.

I see at least one, if not more, new, good roles week in, week out. There’s also maybe 3-5 lesser roles (low rate or not so hot technically) too.

My current contract is coming to an end so I’ve been hunting around for .NET technical interview questions .. I just wanted to make a list:

Scott Hanselman’s .NET Interview Questions
- Eran Kampf’s answers Part 1 - Eran Kampf’s answers Part 2

Mark Wagner’s C# Interview Questions (and answers)

If the ice age ever comes back I want one of these bikes:

My understanding and use of TDD is still an ongoing project

So anything that adds to my knowledge of what works and what doesn’t with regard to TDD is good for me

James Carr’s TDD Anti-Patterns

Pro C# with .NET 3.0 by Andrew Troelsen ISBN: 1-59059-823-7

This book is becoming bloody annoying .. it’s not that it’s a bad book but time and time again it simply doesn’t explain things very well. Maybe it’s trying to cover too much (the whole of .NET v3) but of the bits and pieces I’ve occasionally read in the last few weeks it has missed out usefull info on two seperate occasions .. one of which bit me in an interview for a new contract. So no .. not impressed with this book at all.

Perhaps it should be called “A really quick overview of everything in C# with .NET 3.0″?

I guess I should keep my eyes peeled for a better C# language book and keep on buying the technology specific tomes rather than books like this.

With Boxing and unboxing one can link between value-types and reference-types by allowing any value of a value-type to be converted to and from type object.

This does, however, have performance issues.

Writing up a list of links, info on Confused.com.

links with references to work relating to Confused.com

The project management and design of the Web-based consumer reviews database - Confused.Com used to be a review site. Not any more.
This link is from 1996+.

To design and develop a robust and scalable architecture on which all the back office processing components could be built. We also designed and developed the majority of the back office business components that are used to provide Confused.com�s customers with the competitive quotations. We also provided basic training and mentoring to the internal development team.

Tim Roberts, Senior developer at Confused.com. - Contractor/Owner of Kilostar Solutions Ltd. (Newport based IT company). Has own blog.

SOA underwrites insurance firms

The Poka-Yoke principle and how to write better software - “A lot of ideas in modern software development come from Zero Quality Control, Toyota’s approach to achieving product quality. Some things, it seems, have been a bit lost in translation. Here’s what ZQC can teach us about how to write better software. Zero Quality Control takes it’s name from the idea that quality does not come from controlling and sorting out defects on the end, but from building it up front.”

I’ve got some thoughts on this that I’l post up once in a fit state (the notes, not me).