Dot Net Monkey

A friends sent me some images using charts to represent songs, worth a chuckle

You never know when you've got to entertain kids with some shadow puppets...

Over on CodePlex there is a free guide to developing with TFS. Looks like a How To / Best Practice kind of document.  I'm currently using TFS in my current work engagement, however, I'm pretty sure we are not using it as it was intended. 

Maybe it's time to download and read this guide.

Smashing Magazine has released some PDF's with the good guff about web design and css.

• 35 Designers x 5 Questions - 35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world.  Available online, or download it in PDF.
• 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding - We’ve taken a close look at some of the most interesting and useful CSS tricks, tips, ideas, methods, techniques and coding solutions and listed them below. We also included some basic techniques you can probably use in every project you are developing, but which are hard to find once you need them. Available online, or download it in PDF.

Just thought I'd keep some links to web based javascript photo galleries.

CSS Play ~ Slideshow

Lightbox 2

Ever wondered how in Vista it manages to do live preveiws of windows whilst Alt-Tabbing or even more impressivly using the Flip3D feature of WIN-TAB?   I know I have, so here are some resources that may be useful if I ever want to implement this:

• Live Window Thumbnail Previews in .NET
• Scott Hanselman's Expose and Vista-specific Alt-Tab Task Switchers

Interesting framework for implementing a Rules Wizard (ala Outlook style) within your own applications over at The Code Project.  This is the kind of thing that I suspect is a lot more difficult to write than you first think.  File away under Useful Frameworks.   

Here is a link to the Code Project Article

Here is a 3 hour talk by Krzysztof Cwalina (co-author of Framework Design Guidelines) on API design.  If you want to hear a person with an enormous brain you should check this out.  (now I've just got to get a spare 3 hours)

Read this on What's the next action blog and thought it was pretty cool:

"...No matter how though it gets, no matter how swamped you are in work and you have bad days with a big honkin' backog of things to do. There are, really, only two problems in your life. Want to know which one and how to deal with it?

First problem: You know what you want but you don't know how to get it.

Second problem: You don't know what you want.

Isn't that great? Think about this for a minute or so and you will see that every open loop, every issue you have, little or big, can be reduced to the above two problems. 

So, if there are only two problems, there must be only two solutions right? Right. And look at the above problems. You know what the solutions are? Make it up. And make it happen. It's that simple. You don't know how to get from A to B but you know you want to in B? Well, make up the next action. Think, brainstorm about the possible succesfull outcomes and how to get there. And then think about your Next Action.

You don't know what you want? Same thing. Is it because you can't decide? Think about the succesfull outcome and go back to your next action. Or is it because you don't have all the information yet? There is your next action. Make sure you get the info. Call, email, walk into a library, talk to someone, whatever. But make it happen.

So when you look at those two solutions, make it up and make it happen, it really boils down to the heart and soul of GTD. What's the succesfull outcome and what's the next action?"