A few weeks ago, my company purchased a Blackberry for me to use. This is the first time that I’ve owned a mobile device that has had a constant connection to the internet. However, I’ve been surprised at how having a connected device can actually cause me to get less work done if I’m not careful. here are a few reasons why:
Dangers of Mobile E-mail
September 29, 2009
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Posted by Ben McCormack
Pass the IP Address of a User to Silverlight as a Parameter
September 26, 2009In my beginning attempts to learn Silverlight, one of the first ideas for a project was to make a Silverlight video player that could change the source of the video file based on the location of the user. The goal was to reduce network congestion between the branch offices back to the main office by having the Silverlight client download the media file from their local branch. I wanted to give all users at the company the same URL to watch the video but the source of the video would actually change depending on the IP address of the user. This is the problem I had:
How do I make Silverlight aware of the IP address of the user and then make that data available during the lifecycle of the Silverlight application?
It turns out that there are quite a few ways to accomplish this task, both in how to make the Silverlight client aware of the user’s IP address as well as how to make the variable accessible during the life of the application.
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Posted by Ben McCormack
Learning Software Development and Plato’s Cave
September 22, 2009When I went to the Atlanta Silverlight Meetup Group this past Thursday, I met several people whose college degree (or lack thereof) was completely unrelated to software development. As someone who is trying to become a “professional” software developer and is beginning the tedious process of learning several new technologies, this discovery was very heartening and caused me to reflect on my own background in philosophy and a connection I made to learning new development technologies.
Learning software development technologies can be difficult. It’s as much about culture, language, and the greater community ecosystem as it is about making a bunch of lines of text do cool stuff. Sometimes it can be really difficult to understand the importance of technology without having an appreciation for where it fits in to the big picture. The following is a thought experiment to try to help you understand what I mean.
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Posted by Ben McCormack
