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Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled...
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The Job Decision Matrix
A Job Decision Matrix will help identify what is actual...
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Path To Green
A Path To Green (PTG) is a clear, crisp, and complete s...
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You are Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong
Most people think about their career trajectory as bein...
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The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
Always have a plan. Always. A great, simple, framework...
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STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory
My computer bluescreened with a STOP 0xC2, BAD_POOL_CAL...
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Merit Badges – A Mental Model for Success
The concept of a Merit Badge comes from the Boy Scouts...
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Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligate...
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Tenets
Tenets are a few carefully articulated guiding principl...
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Work Backwards From The Customer
At the 1996 Microsoft Professional Developer Conference...
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Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)
CBTO = Customer + Business + Technology + Organization
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Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins
Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they shou...
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One-Way and Two-Way Doors
Effective decision-making starts with understanding; in...
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Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
The companies that make the most profit are those who b...
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Be a Great Reader
When an organization has a culture where the written wo...
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Author Archives: tig
MCE Controller
In my post on XMLSerialization I mentioned that I was working on an app to enable control of MCE remotely over a TCP socket. I call this app MCE Controller and it’s basically done. Here’s what it does: Runs as a taskbar icon and allows you to view a log of what it’s doing by double clicking on the icon. Supports 45 commands. These include all MCE keyboard shortcuts (equivalent to all of the remote …Continue reading
XMLSerialization
XMLSerialization absolutely rocks. I am blown away by the flexibility and richness it provides and how easy it is to use…once you get past the initial learning curve. I implemented it for a tool I’m writing that allows me to control Windows Media Center Edition remotely via a TCP based protocol. My home AV control system uses Crestron and I need to be able to have Crestron be able to control MCE. For various reasons …Continue reading
Check constraints in SQL Server
This goes in the “here’s something I learned today” bucket. I was working on my ASP.NET based photo gallery sample/experiment and realized that I needed to ensure that the names of images I stored in the database couldn’t contain illegal filename characters. This is because I allow the user to specify a path like http://imgsample/P51.jpg and I use URL rewriting to translate this to http://imgsample/ViewImage.aspx?name=P51 or http://imgsample/ViewImage.aspx?ID=12&size=med. Not being a database guy (yet!) as I …Continue reading
Heros
Speaking of heros… This got me thinking about who my heros are. I actually have quite a few, and I think I can categorize them: Real Life My father. Duh. Geeks Jim Gray Ray Ozzie Anders Hieldberg Chris Guzak Leadership Bob Muglia Ronald Regan Abrhahm Lincoln
Ray Ozzie on WinFS & Longhorn
One of my favorite industry visionaries, Ray Ozzie, has written a great note in his blog on WinFS titled “640KB ought to be enough for everyone“. Interesting read. He references Jim Gray (another of my geek heros) and points to an old but topical presentation on the trends in storage. Jim gets it.
Problem installing VS.NET 2003 on Windows Server 2003
I’m cranking away on really learning ASP.NET by building my own photo gallery component (primarily for my ’95 BMW 540 M-Sport (www.kindel.com/bmw) registry). Even though I know it won’t perform as well I implemented it by writing the images (full size, medium size, and thumbnails) to the SQL Server. Fun stuff. Anyway, I deployed it to another server and wanted to debug. Didn’t have VS.NET installed on that server so debugging won’t work. So in …Continue reading
Polar Bears Rock
My daughter’s 10 year-old soccer team (the Polar Bears) is playing for the championship tomorrow! Three weeks ago they started the tournament loosing their second game and going into the bottom bracket of 16 teams (it’s a double-elimination tourney). For the past three weeks they have played incredibly hard and after winning two games today have emerged out of the bottom bracket to face the only team left in the top bracket tomorrow. Because the …Continue reading
Lego robot solves rubics cube
Way cool: http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html
My Premise to Crestron Bridge is now ready for beta testing!
Head on over to http://www.kindel.com/Default.aspx?tabid=31 for details. The driver is now called the Kindel Systems Premise External Control Processor Bridge. I renamed it because it is actually completely generic and not specific to Crestron at all. It can be made to work with other external RS-232 attached home control processors that support a text based protocol and can be programmed.
My Home Control System Overview
This post describes the systems in the house we completed in August 2002. I get quite a few people asking me about what I did in the house, and instead of re-typing it yet another time, I’ve decided to write it down completely. [Updated October 5, 2011 with some new details.] The first thing I did before starting this project was to think about my goals. Below are the prioritized goals I used to guide …Continue reading
Interfacing Premise with Crestron
I’ve developed a solution for integrating Lantronix’ Premise Home Control Software with Crestron. I did this for my own home and am now considering what to do next with the code. I’d be interested in hearing from people who have thoughts on this… Basically my Premise driver (written in C++ using the Premise HSDK) implements what looks to Premise like a set of COM ports. For each device in Crestron you want to expose to Premise …Continue reading
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