Digging My Blog

I finished reading Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0 this past weekend. Keyvan Nayyeri and Simone Chiaretta did a great job with this book. It should be simple enough that a pure beginner will be able to get up and running yet it contains enough depth that anyone but an ASP.NET MVC expert will learn at least...

I have four (3-shelf) bookshelves in my home office that are on the verge of overflowing with books. There is an entire bookshelf just for books that I have not read yet, but need to. Apparently I'm something of a book nut. I hadn't really noticed it myself, though. I figured it was just something that...

I had the pleasure of working on a great project earlier this year with two very talented co-workers: Wyatt Preul and Ben Tiedt . I served as the Technical Editor for their new Wrox book, Professional Community Server Themes . Between the awesome information provided by Wyatt and Ben and the excellent...

As a web application developer I tend to spend most my time writing code to make web sites do stuff. I spend a lot of time working with databases and various n-tier layers except for one. I choose to keep my nose (as much as possible) out of the UI layer. Now I'll drop a repeater on a page and hook it...

Unfortunately I didn't like The Non-Designer's Web Book by Robin Williams and John Tollett as much as I liked the last book that I reviewed . It's not that it is a bad book in any way, it's just that it wasn't what I expected. Based on the title and the blurb on the cover, "The award-winning best...

It looks like I have a couple of hours tonight to be productive. I really want to get some work done on WhatIWantMost , but I have two book reviews queued up that need to be written. I'll go ahead and do a couple of short reviews and that should free up my weekend for the project. ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks...

I recently finished the book, Google Analytics by Mary E. Tyler and Jerri L. Ledford . Like a lot of more web-experienced reviewers have reported, dave.org.uk is one example, I was a little disappointed. That's not to say that it wasn't a good book or that I didn't learn a few things. I had just hoped...

No, not me, silly! Seth Godin is offering a conference-call Q&A session on Friday, September 8th that will last "all day" if necessary. Rather than paying a fee to attend, he is asking that you buy 11 copies of his new book, small is the new big , from Barnes and Noble. The first 31 to send him a...

No offense to Phil Haack , but his timing might be a bit off. With the book not being published until November it probably cannot be the summer's must read book - but it definitely will be the Must Read Book of the holiday season! In fact, at over 1000 pages, you might need the entire holiday break to...

Last week I picked up a copy of Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin. I have a slight interest in SEO, however I try not to get drawn into it too much because it can really eat up your time and I prefer programming. There is a lot of data gathering, data analysis...

I read The Build Master: Microsoft's Software Configuration Management Best Practices (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology) by Vincent Maraia this evening. It provides a nice glimpse into Microsoft's build process for their NT operating systems from an insider's perspective. Reviewing these best practices...

Recently I've discovered there are two kinds of technical books: Big honkin' tech books that I start reading with the best of intentions, get two chapters into and wind up as part of the psuedo-furniture pile of books beside my chair for long periods of time. Professional C# is one that currently fits...

Last weekend I read two books, one had to do with developing using web standards and another was Professional Development with Web APIs : Google, eBay, Amazon.com, MapPoint, FedEx (Denise M. Gosnell, WROX). I was prepared for the API book to be a fairly lightweight book, focusing more on finding information...