I was looking for a good way to share events, appointments, and other activities as a family. So a quick search on Bing revealed the following web site
Well, one thing I found interesting was a way to get US Holidays into iCal on my macbook. So, a quick Bing found this link:
The American Holiday one is at: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/usa__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
I selected which calendar I wanted to add the holidays and presto!
I thought I would share this list of books for social media addicts. I have started reading book number two and so far it is a good read.
Here is the link: http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/must-read-ebooks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29
1. Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
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Most people are familiar with the sanitized history of Facebook: Harvard kid starts a web site in his dorm room, ends up changing the world. Although that’s part of the truth, and is certainly compelling in its own right, Mezrich’s take on Facebook’s founding and its behind-the-scenes legal battles is like something out of Hollywood. In fact, Accidental Billionaires is the basis for the film, The Social Network, which is due to arrive in theaters in October 2010. If you use Facebook and are curious about its history‚ or if you just love a good, gripping soap opera ‚ don’t miss this book!
Format: Kindle, Nook, others
2. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon
Bacon is the Community Manager for Ubuntu, one of the largest open source software projects on the planet. In this book he talks about the ins and outs of building, cultivating and managing a community from the ground up. This is a must-read for anyone interested in community development. In a truly community-friendly effort, you can download the entire book for free and share and modify it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial license.
Format: Free PDF, Kindle, Nook, others
3. The World According to Twitter by David Pogue
New York Times columnist David Pogue got into Twitter in late 2008 and decided to use the service as the basis for this book. Every day, Pogue asked his followers questions and compiled the best, most interesting and funniest responses. This is a great example of just how much can be shared in 140 characters.
Format: Kindle, others
4. Content by Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow, one of the voices behind the uber-blog Boing-Boing, is well-known for his opinions on technology, DRM and the future of content. Content is a collection of some of his best work and is an insightful read. Truly a man that practices what he preaches, the book is available for free in multiple formats.
Format: Free download
5. Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those people that absolutely bursts with energy. Whether he’s talking about wine, talking about marketing or just talking about people, Gary is passionate. Gary has built his business on the back of that passion and is a shining example of what can be accomplished when you push yourself and dedicate your life to what you love.
Format: Kindle, others
6. Free by Chris Anderson
The author of The Long Tail released his follow-up earlier this year, called Free. In it, Anderson argues that the best price is often no price, instead offering freemium models or incentives and services to make money, rather than charging for the “product” itself. It’s an interesting idea, and even if you don’t buy all of Anderson’s assertions, it is still worth a read. Ironically, Free is no longer available for free.
Format: Kindle, others
7. The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg
Mashable’s own Tamar Weinberg wrote this fantastic book about how to use, understand and leverage social media to market your product, your service or yourself. By focusing on the importance of community and joining the conversation, Tamar does a great job getting to the heart of why social media is so interesting and game-changing.
Format: Kindle, others
8. Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki is a legend. At Apple, he helped spread the word about the Macintosh and keep the community engaged (even when the community and the company were fading), almost single-handedly creating the job category of “brand evangelist” and as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he’s seen what works and what doesn’t. In his latest book, Guy does what Guy does best: he lays out the facts and ideas that seem like common sense (until you realize how often they are ignored) about building community and the power of networking.
Format: Kindle, others
9. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Chris Brogan is one of those guys who really walks the walk. He doesn’t just talk about how to build influence and the power of the conversation, he’s always part of the conversation. No matter how successful he gets, Chris is still Chris, and he’s still there to talk and listen. His book on building reputation and earning trust on the web is genuine, just like he is.
Format: Kindle, others
10. What Matters Now by Seth Godin and others
Seth Godin’s latest book, which features essays by himself and a host of other brilliant minds is available for free. In What Matters Now, each essayist focuses on something that matters to them. Think of this as your New Year’s Resolution in an eBook.
Format: Free download
I have had an interesting bug in Snow Leopard 10.6.2 that has been irritating me for some time.
So, the bug is to do with name resolution. I have an internal network DNS as well as rely on my ISP DNS as a fall back in case of a power outage or configuration issues.
I think that the issue has been tracked down to the mDNSResponder. At the moment, when I try to ping just a host name the DNS resolver has issues, so then I try FQDN and still get problems. I have both DNS entries – internal and external in my DHCP/DNS issued config.
I found a lot of discussion about this issue on the following link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2140119&start=105&tstart=0
The only way to get around it at the moment is to have an entry in my /etc/resolv.conf, which is a pain. But it works for now.
If you are looking for a free Windows Vista anti-virus and anti-malware solution, then look no further. I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials for a couple of weeks now and have been very impressed with it.
Though, you need to go to the download link as there are two versions of it, that is a 32 and 64 bit versions.
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx
You can see from the image above that the User Interface is simple but effective.
I recommend this product for those who are looking for a simple yet powerful anti-virus and anti-malware solution.
This is great to have this type of application that allows anyone to potentially save a life.
Free CPR iPhone Application
Download a free CPR training application for your iPhone. Review all the videos you see on this site at the touch of a button where ever you go.
The videos were produced with the assistance of the University of Washington, the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, The Medic One Foundation, King County Emergency Medical Services, the Seattle Fire Department, and the Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine. They, like us are convinced that teaching these life saving techniques to as many people as possible will save lives.
Apple, the Apple logo, iPod, and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in
the U.S. and other countries. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc.
So, I have been looking into a side project of mine to provide a better volunteer experiment in the fire department.
Given, my research background, as I am in my final period of my doctorate. I decided to investigate further how I could automate a scheduling process which is a time consuming task. No pun intended here. So I came across a theory, which is grounded in Machine Learning called “Constraint Programming”. As I dug a little deeper, I cam across a number of works from Philippe Laborie and Wim Nuijten, who are with a company called ILOG. They have taken Constraint Programming approach a little further, with an theory called “Constraint-Based Scheduling”.
The Basic Principles of Constraint-Based Scheduling are the following:
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Constraint-Based Scheduling = Scheduling + Constraint Programming
- Scheduling problems arise in situations where a set of activities has to be processed by a limited number of resources in a limited amount of time.
At a high-level, Constraint-Based Scheduling has a number of components, that in turn will make up my project within Python and Django.
So far, I have been working on the core engine component which encompasses the boxes above.
I will put some example code up when I happy with showing it to the world. 
Cheers.
Jun 022009
I passed this exam which was to do with Developing Applications using .NET 3.5 for Windows forms. I found that this exam was very much like the old 2.0 .NET windows form exam. Areas that I concentrated on were all the new updates such as clickonce, security of the form applications, and using certificates.
It appeared that this study method worked well. I also did some experimentation with Mdi forms and this was also another area where some questions were asked. Be sure that you understand how 32 bit and 64 bit applications install and how they are package in respect to using msi packages.
I recommend this exam, if you have a good knowledge of developing windows based applications. I found this exam pretty easy. Probably, too much time was allowed for it.
This was a very interesting exam. I was very nervous about this one as I know a lot about ADO, but I was just starting to understand the data entity framework, which the exam had a lot of questions about. What was interesting, is the exam did throw in the odd question or two about connecting to Oracle databases and of course using the Oracle provider was an easy choice.
I think what helped me is that I know a lot about establishing connections, whether it is in Office or web applications. This assisted me greatly in understanding what the question was asking of me. Be sure to be comfortable with transaction management, as I got a few on this at the connection level and query level. Also know how errors are collection by class type or general exception level.
Anyway, on to Windows Form Development exam, which is 70-505.
There is a lot of new stuff in this exam, but also a lot of the old stuff from earlier .NET versions. So, it should be okay. I will build a few sample applications to make sure I am completely comfortable, plus go through the study guide book. I have put a reference over in my suggested reading books section.
Happy exam taking!
May 082009
Yep, I did it and passed the 70-503 exam today. It was tricky, as long as you know WS-* I think you can get through it.
Security played a major role in the exam, in that you needed to be aware of who was doing the communication in the exam, the client or the server and whether the client was a windows client with .NET 3.5 framework or just a web service client. This has a big bearing on what security setting you select. Also, if the security is done at the message level or not.
I suggest those prepping for the exam to read up on the WS-* standards and you should be fine. Have a good working knowledge of where you set the service attribute, at the service or method level. If you take your time and read the questions carefully it easy to discover what is required.
