Monthly Archives: July 2009

The Farsighted See Better Things

Posted on July 27, 2009

You call me demented, I call you a fool
You’ve spent the last twenty years going to school
And now that you’ve gotten your precious degree
You blame unemployment on the economy

And so you go back to your great alma mater
And end up replacing your favorite professor
You teach the same concepts and accept them as truth
Never bother to question the truths they taught you

Regurgitate knowledge and reward inhibition
For logic and change come up short of tradition
And anything learned is worth pushing on forward
To the young and the stupid to push it on forward

And oh how productive to society you are
With your head in your books and your IQ above par
I’m sure you’ll be useful when we find we need
A scholar with knowledge but nothing to heed

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From My BlackBerry

Posted on July 24, 2009

My wife, baby boy, regretfully the dog, and I are on our way to Michigan for a wedding as I’m typing this post. I managed to download the latest beta version of WordPress for BlackBerry, and like I’ve been with everything else WordPress-related, I’m extremely pleased with the ease of use and functionality (and that it’s even possible to update the blog from my handheld without having to deal with trying to do it in a crappy browser).

WordPress for BlackBerry is currently at version 0.9.0.134 in beta, but it sure does seem to be working well enough for me. Of course, it only has a subset of the full WordPress admin features, but it has pretty much everything you need for what you’d want to do on the road (full page, post, and comment viewing, adding, editing, and deleting).

It seems there’s no end to what I can do on my BlackBerry these days. It sure beats my days with Windows Mobile…

Posted in BlackBerry, Family, Technology, WordPress | Leave a comment

Old Song – Tribute

Posted on July 17, 2009

I wrote this song for my Dad and sang it live during a celebration of his ministry back in 2004. It took quite a bit of practice to get the whole picking and singing thing down at the same time. It brings my Dad to tears, which is mighty hard to do. ;) It’s also one of my favorites.

UPDATE: This recording is an outdated version. A new, full-band recording of this song is available here.

Download “Tribute” (old)

Lyrics are after the jump.

Posted in Music, Recordings | 2 Comments

Old Song – It Wasn’t Worth It

Posted on July 17, 2009

I wrote this song back in 2005, my senior year of college.  It’s a sad song about suicide that tied in with a presentation that a group of fellow students and I put together.  Our presentation was the best there ever was (I thought so anyway), but we didn’t get all that great of a grade.  We must have made the professors cry too much or something.  Anyways, it’s a tear jerker, but it remains what I consider to be one of the best songs I’ve written.

Download “It Wasn’t Worth It” or stream it live:

Lyrics are after the jump.

Posted in Music, Recordings | Leave a comment

6 Anal-Retentive Ways To Improve Your C# Code

Posted on July 17, 2009

Nothing irks me more than to have to dig through garbage code.  Working at a software consulting company, I’ve seen a whole slew of it.  And I’ve hurled on my computer monitor enough as a result to give it a pretty, brownish-green tint.  Bad code destroys hardware.  And souls.

The single biggest clue that a developer either has no idea what they are doing or simply doesn’t care about their code is inconsistency.  We all have different preferences and coding styles, but when a developer can’t pick a particular approach to take they come off as incredibly amateur, and for good reason.  Inconsistent code is difficult to read, and is thus difficult to modify in the future.

The majority (or even the entirety) of the list below revolves around writing consistently styled and consistently performing C# code.  Much of this list is admittedly anal retentive, but all of it is guaranteed to improve the quality and readability of your code.

Posted in C#, Technology, Visual Studio 2008 | 4 Comments

UpSync Version 0.5 Released

Posted on July 16, 2009

Below are the downloads for the setup and the sources for the first official release of UpSync, version 0.5.  As I stated in my previous post, it works properly in Windows XP and Vista, as well as Windows 7.  For a description of the application, and some screenshots, see the previous post.

If you use it, let me know!  I’m interested in any kind of feedback.

Download UpSync 0.5 Setup
Download UpSync 0.5 Source Code (Visual Studio 2008 required)

Posted in C#, Software, Technology, UpSync, Visual Studio 2008 | 4 Comments

New Application – UpSync

Posted on July 16, 2009

I recently started working on a new application called UpSync. From what you can probably already tell from the name, the application is meant to sync files between folders on different machines. It’s meant to be easy to use but also down and dirty enough to meet a typical system admin’s needs.

I’m open sourcing the project, and I’ll have the setup and the source code for version 0.5 up very shortly.  It works properly on Windows XP, Vista, and even Microsoft’s new, unreleased Windows 7 (the screenshots are from Windows 7).  It’s written in C#, my favorite of the .NET languages, using Visual Studio 2008.

Here are some of the key features that have already been implemented:

  • Any number of folders can be synced with separate settings for each folder.
  • Sync in one direction, the other direction, or both directions with no interaction necessary.
  • Specific settings for handling deleted files allow for all possible situations.
  • Syncing engine uses file dates and times to ensure the most recent version of files are replicated.
  • New files in either folder are automatically handled correctly and copied over to the other folder.
  • Sync process can be entirely automated or manually run.
  • Syncing engine logs every operation in complete detail so there is never any confusion as to what files were changed.
Posted in C#, Software, Technology, UpSync, Visual Studio 2008 | 4 Comments

Old Song – Believe

Posted on July 15, 2009

I will be adding some of my older recordings here as well.  Amber (my wife) and I recorded this shortly before we were married in 2005.  She played the violins and sang the female vocals.  I was still rather uneducated from an audio recording perspective when I laid it down, but somehow this recording turned out better than I would have expected.  Must have been the violins.

I wrote the song with another friend of mine from college named Catherine Crawford, who helped with the lyrics.  She’d probably murder me if she found out I recorded it with somebody else. ;)

Download “Believe” or stream it live:

You can find the lyrics after the break.

Posted in Music, Recordings | Leave a comment

Faith?

Posted on July 15, 2009

Those of you who know me well enough know that most often I really don’t care what people think.  Sure, I have the occasional embarrassing moment and/or the rare concern that I’m being judged, but generally, I don’t let this get in the way of whatever I’m doing.  This has given me a deep sense of freedom that I cannot express in any way other than to say that I am free from the public opinions and desires of society.

It should come as no surprise to you, then, that I will express my views on faith openly and without restriction.  I will hold these views as the truth, as I wholeheartedly believe them to be true.  And I will not be surprised, nor will I be thrown back, by any ridicule that is the result my expressing these views.

This is not to say, however, that I am a judge of others.  I do not consider myself (nor anyone else) to be qualified enough to judge another person, and I work extremely hard to keep my thoughts humble and to help others around me feel like they can confide in me without me judging them.

Posted in Faith | Leave a comment

New Song – Fighting for the Day

Posted on July 14, 2009

I finished the recording for this song a few weeks ago; it literally took months.  It’s hard to find the time required to get something like this done, especially with a baby boy. ;)

I’m quite proud of the final result, though.  This is, by far, the closest I’ve ever come to a professional recording.  I learned so much this time around I can only hope I remember it all.  Look for some more to come soon!

Download “Fighting for the Day” or stream it live:

You can find the lyrics after the break.

Posted in Music, Recordings | Leave a comment