Freeon Zone

Black Ops

2010-12-26T16:36:00.003-05:00

In my spare time I have been playing Call of Duty Black Ops. This game is awsome! Linked is a good guide to all things CoDBo:

http://boards.ign.com/call_of_duty/b6860/197935741/p1/

http://callofdutyblackopsmultiplayer.net/call-of-duty-black-ops-guide/

Llama is the Best

2010-12-26T16:31:00.005-05:00

I have been a long time lover the of the Blackberry but about a year ago, I traded my Bold in for an iPhone 3GS. There were a few reasons, my day job now allows the iPhone to connect to internal mail, the screen on my Bold cracked, and I was looking to explore more platforms for mobile development research.

Check out Llama for the best new iPhone app: www.llamainc.com
Having owned the phone for ~1 year, I still think its a great device and plan to buy one again.

Travel

2010-05-08T16:24:00.001-04:00

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos

Newport, RI, USA

Munich, Germany

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Find the best vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Promiscuous Integration

2009-12-20T22:46:00.003-05:00

Did the title grab your attention? Good, check out Martian Fowler's bliki post addressing parallel development techniques and how they fit with Continuous Integration.

Check it our here:
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html

Greg the Architect

2008-11-10T06:08:00.003-05:00

I found a great set of videos on youtube: http://www.gregthearchitect.com/

Each episode follows the an action figure named Greg as he tries to make sense of vendor jargon, C level buzzwords and the hype of SOA.

Direct links:
Greg the Architect - SOA This. SOA That.
Greg the Architect - ROI of the Beholder
Greg the Architect - FocusPocus
Greg the Architect - Off the Grid

Enjoy,
Freeon

New Blackberry Bold

2008-11-09T08:22:00.002-05:00

It's finally here! After numerous delays reportedly due to 3G compatibility issues, AT&T finally released the Bold on November 4th. After work I went down to my local AT&T store to find a very disturbing trend. At least two other customers were purchasing iPhones on the release day of the Bold, how can that be? It just goes to show the iPhone is gaining ground in the consumer even though the Storm is rumored to be released soon.

While researching my stocks this morning I found a interesting article that stated iPhone is now #2 in the smart phone space.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/11/07/iphone-beats-blackberry.aspx

RIMM has been slow to market with it's new touch screen the Storm and the price point still seems a bit high compared to the iPhone. The lack of new products appears to have hurt earnings and thus share price. I don't expect earnings this quarter to be much different based on my observations at the Bold launch. Although I do expect Q1 2009 to look much better.

Enjoy,
Freeon

CT .Net Developers Group - on Facebook

2008-09-14T11:36:00.002-04:00

Here is a link to the new Facebook page:
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69303965623

Take a look at the pictures to see images from the first Hartford, CT Code Camp.

Enjoy,
Freeon

Hartford Code Camp

2008-08-20T09:08:00.006-04:00

This past weekend I gave a talk on Unit Testing at Hartford's first Code Camp.

The focus of the discussion was on MBUnit 2.4, Test Driven.Net, and a brief section on Cruise Control integration.

For questions or comments on the presentation contact me at freeon.zone@yahoo.com

(post ppt here)

The First Hartford CodeCamp - an all-day .NET developer event was held on Aug 16 (Saturday 9AM-5PM) at New Horizons Computer Learning Center (Bloomfield CT). There were ~110 who attended with a very positive feedback of the event!

S&P Short Range Oscillator

2008-08-05T19:48:00.005-04:00

Jim Cramer mentioned the S&P Oscillator as in indicator to help identify overbought/oversold stocks trends. It appears this is a proprotary indicater that ranges in price from $500-$1000 depending on delivery (weekly, monthly, biweekly, weekly).

I found a post on stockpickr that explained it pretty well:

The S&P Short Range Oscillator is a market measure which takes a number of related variables of trading data into account, tracks development according to several moving averages, and results in an average numeric value which may be either positive or negative. Historically, the expression of this result has been viewed as symbolic of the condition of the market.

An Oscillator value of 50% is considered “par.” When the Oscillator reaches a value of “+4%” (meaning 4% above par, or 54%), the market is technically said to be in an "overbought” position. Markets in this standing may be considered as being poised for a downward correction.

By contrast, Oscillator values falling to levels below 50% may be indicative ofa trend in the opposite direction. An Oscillator value reaching “-4%”(meaning 4% below par, or 46%) is a technical indication of an “oversold”market, which may set the stage for a rally.

It should also be noted that extreme oversold or overbought market positions(Oscillator values reaching -8% or +8%, respectively) can often signify impending significant market advances or declines.

It seems he has mentioned it a number of times since there is another post about it The Tech Farm. Here they show how you can do a similar comparison using the Relative Strength Index (RSI). The Bollinger Bands represnt a similar indicator based on a 20-day simple moving average.

From what I can see RSI and BBands are similar but the BBands are definatlly easier for me to read since they have a upper and lower band arpund the security set by the standard deviation.

Testing this indicator on Yahoo I noticed a link to John Bollinger's site with a great description from the creator himself. It's amzing how much you learn by writing stuff down.

Enjoy,
Freeon

Consuming Software Factories

2008-07-28T19:28:00.002-04:00

The Fairfield / Westchester .NET User Group is hosting an interesting topic on Consuming Software Factories.
Next Meeting: August 5, 20086:30 PM to 9:00 PMWelcome time: 6:00 PM Speaker: David San Filippo Topic: Consuming Software Factories

David's also got a good comparison in his blog on some of the more recent unit testing frameworks.

Enjoy,
Freeon

BlackBerry 101

2008-07-24T20:13:00.010-04:00

Time to go back to school and learn more about your Black Berry. This is another great link that all users should check out to get the most from your BB.

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-101-how-lecture-series

Stress Pint

2008-07-19T15:23:00.006-04:00

Last but not least of all I found a cool office toy from Guinness called a Stress Bottle.

This toy may not relive all of your stress but here are a few ideas for making the day go by faster:

1. Proudly display your Guinness bottle to let the world know you will be attending the Friday happy hour

2. Convince colleges that you work so many hours in the day you have to drink a beer between meetings to keep creativity flowing.

3. Recreate great movie moments by cracking the "foam" bottle over a willing employees head. Warning: make sure said employee knows it's coming.

Looking back I should have named this post "What not to do at the office".

Oh well. Enjoy,

Freeon

Anti-iPhone Propaganda

2008-07-19T14:36:00.007-04:00

I'm reading this piece on GIZMODO called NJ Mall AT&T Resellers Hand Out Anti-iPhone Propaganda to Customers. The short version is an ATT reseller is handing out fliers that downplay the iPhone to sell more Blackberry phones. Got me what that is all about but there was one page of interest to new BB owners.

The propaganda listed a few links that are probably on every BB addicts phone by now but are very useful to first time users or those of us waiting to purchase the Bold (ME!).

And now for your nubbage pleasure, the links:
www.blackberry.com/facebook
http://m.google.com (from your phone)
http://www.operamini.com/
http://viigo.com
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go
http://moviewavs.com/
http://videos4blackberry.info/
www.blackberry.com/messenger

I'm sure these have been listed a hundred times over but here they are again. Didn't I mention this site also serves a a repository for all my links.

Enjoy,
Freeon

Read, Read, and Read Some More

2008-07-19T08:58:00.004-04:00

The more I read the more I find myself adding favorites, linking blogs and making notes of books to buy. The internet is a neverending stream of information. So as it be I'll try and keep track of those books I would like to purchase with a new Amazon Wish List.

Now you know what to get for my birthday :)

CTDOTNET CodeCamp

2008-07-19T08:03:00.007-04:00

It's very exciting news the first Hartford CodeCamp next month. The call for speakers went out several weeks ago and by the looks of it many of our regional experts have answered. I listed a few excepts from the CTDOTNET site or you can get up to the minute information here:

http://www.ctdotnet.com/Home/tabid/63/Default.aspx

Hartford CT (Saturday Aug 16th 9AM-5PM)
To be held at New
Horizons Computer Learning Center (Bloomfield CT)
http://www.newhorizons.com/content/centerSearchResults.aspx?SiteId=25

CodeCamp Speakers & Presentations List
(Bio & more
details to come soon)
Becky Isserman - SharePoint Development - Differences between normal ASP.Net and SharePoint Development
Travis Laborde - SRP/DI/IOC - Don't Leave Sub Main Without Them!
Chris Bowen - XNA Game development for .Net developers
Sunil Kadimdiwan - SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
Michael delaMaza - Agile software development
Joseph Hill - Cross-Platform .NET: Mono and Moonlight
Christian Drouin - MBUnit , TestDriven.Net & Continuous Integration
Rick Minerich - F# Functional Programming in .NET
Brian R Nalewajek - Object Role Modeling Architecture tool using DSL & LINQ
Lee Rodgers - Silverlight development
Reddy Kadasani - LINQ development
Sam Nasr - 1). SQL 2008 for Developers 2). Developing SharePoint Web Parts
Mike Gerety - Topic pending
Allan Da Costa Pinto - Topic pending
Aaron Junod - Ruby development in .NET (IronRuby)
Michael Ruminer - Silverlight RIA (Rich Internet Application) using Agile/TFS
Michael Lotter - SharePoint development - Branding features
Steve Andrews - Visual Studio 2008: Introduction, Team System Tips & Tricks, MSBuild & Code Development
Jim Bonnie - Unit Testing with DotNetNuke
Talbot Crowell - Silverlight as a front end to Excel Services
Dan Mezick - 1). Scrum 2). .NET Attributes 3). LINQ Development 4). .NET OOP

Introduction to Game Development with XNA

2008-07-08T17:55:00.005-04:00

Summer is upon us, so what better excuse to break away from the norm and discuss games? This meeting is for people who enjoy games, and have always wanted to know more about how they’re made… and maybe how to make their own.

XNA is a game development platform based on the .NET Framework that helps to make it easy to develop games for Windows, Xbox, and now the Zune as well. Using the free XNA Game Studio, you can use those same C# skills that pay the bills by day for creating your own games by night (or really whenever you'd like.)

We'll introduce XNA, show you around the XNA world, then create a simple 2D game from scratch to give you a feel for game mechanics and the architecture of XNA.
This session requires no game development experience, only a passion for coding and for games!

There are two sessions both by Chris Bowen
The Boston .NET meeting is on Wednesday (7/9) in Waltham and the Beantown .NET meeting is on Thursday (7/10) on State St. in Boston, both are from 6-8 PM.

Beantown is about 10 minutes further away for me but going out for beer after the meeting is always good call.

source: Chris Bowen's Blog

The Old Lighthouse

2008-07-04T15:52:00.004-04:00

So my wife read the last post about Ireland and informed me she already picked out the place we will be staying http://www.gtunlimited.com/kinsaleluxuryhouserental.html

Code Camp - August 16th

2008-07-04T07:02:00.003-04:00

Call for Speakers
CTDOTNET CodeCamp - Hartford CT (Saturday Aug 16th 9AM-5PM)
To be held at New Horizons Computer Learning Center (Bloomfield CT)

http://www.ctdotnet.com/Home/tabid/63/Default.aspx

Fame and Fortune
We are seeking talented .NET developers to make a presentation or two at the First Hartford CodeCamp on August 16th (Saturday). If you have ever wanted fame (& perhaps fortune) - this is your opportunity! We are giving away one MSDN Premium subscription and other prizes for presenters (judged by evals from attendees).

Ireland

2008-07-04T06:22:00.004-04:00

I was reading a pair of stories about Ireland here:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/06/23/storiesfromireland/
It's pretty crazy seeing a donkey in the street.

My wife REALLY wants to visit Ireland. We'll end up going someday after the kids are all grown up and we retire. That should be sometime around our golden anniversary.

My Favorite Little Ladies

2008-07-01T22:35:00.008-04:00

Here is a picture of my two favorite little ladies running around during an easter egg hunt at their friends house.

On the left is "Big" and Right is "Little". Ya we have way too many nicknames for the kids.

Gotta love it.

Freeon

Bold Video

2008-06-15T18:02:00.004-04:00

Great preview from CrackBerry.com
This site is one of my favorites and one I ready regularly. It's also in my BlackBerry blogrol to the left.

Blackberry Bold

2008-06-15T16:48:00.001-04:00

The Blackberry Bold looks so sweet! I was planning on getting a BB Curve when my contract is due on 11/29/08. The wait is killing me but now there is a good chance a new device will be ready and waiting.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2302315,00.asp

Key Features (I know of) that are better than the curve:

624 Mhz Processor
3G High Speed Networking
320 * 480 screen resolution
WI-FI
1GB on-board (secure) memory
OS 4.6
DataViz - DocumentsToGo for editing .doc and .ppt
Video play at 30 frames per second

A very nice lineup of features. In the future I'll work up a direct comparison chart of Curve vs Bold

Freeon

Battlefield Heroes

2008-05-13T00:18:00.002-04:00

It's a great new FPS in the Battlefield franchise that features a play for free system.

Great for us older guys because as they say "Your not getting shot in the face repeatedly by a swearing, ultra skilled 15 year old boy who plays the game every day for 8 hours".

http://www.battlefield-heroes.com/videos/release-announcement

The specs are realy low
Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista
CPU: 1.0 GHz
RAM: 512 Mb (1Gb on Windows Vista)
Video Card: 64Mb DirectX compliant video card with at least pixel shader 2.0 support
Hard Drive space: 1Gb of space is required to install the game
Internet connection: 256kbit Cable/DSL connection

See you on the battlefield,
Freeon

Light Speed

2008-03-11T11:31:00.000-04:00

The guys really kicked it into high gear to make up for lost time. Today the font siding was put up.

Bay Window

2008-03-08T02:30:00.004-05:00

Woot, we have a new front window! It's great I can see the whole neighborhood.

When we checked it out last night the kids were just as excited as we were.

Moving Right Along

2008-02-26T01:59:00.006-05:00

Third Month - February

Things are really starting to shape up. The garage & bedroom are frammed and the new roof is up. The snow caught us before the garage foundation could be poured so that will go in later.

Here is the stick built garage. It's hard to see from here but there is a rear garage door for the lawn mower.

Garage from the backside pointing back at the street.

Here is the new bedroom addition. On the left is our master bath and right is the walk in closet. You can see the heat loop covered by wood (for protection) splits the two sections for now. The plan is to remove all the baseboards and link a forced air system into the existing boiler.

The AC is a bit extra but can use the same ducts and controller. We'll see how bad the expenses get racked up before we address that one.

Can you see the white styrofoam circles? Those are caps for the blown in insolation. We had a crew come out and insolate the whole house in one day. It increased out R value ~13 points.

That's all for now.
Freeon

Still in Demo Mode

2008-01-30T10:27:00.009-05:00

Second Month - January

We are running a bit behind as we are still in demo mode. There was also a suprise survey the bank needed to confirm our garage was far enough away from the property line.

I don't have any new photos for January so here is one from last month.

Here you see the freshly poured foundation of the new walk in closet and master bath. It's not much to look at... yet.

Here is a picture of the pourch before we removed half of it. It was nice and big but had a nasty leaky ceiling and some window issues.

Enjoy,
Freeon

Demolition Begins

2007-12-13T15:02:00.004-05:00

First Month - December
The first month is mostly demolition, excavation, and getting the frost walls & foundation in before it snows.

The truck is parked where the carport used to be. We ripped that one down in favor of a new garage.

My best girl is standing in the middle of what used to be the screened in porch. It breaks my heart to see the beautiful screened in porch cut in half. But the new bedroom extension will more than fill the void.

Here is a good shot of the excavation work being done in the back yard. They have the big guns out rushing to get things done before it snows again.

Construction Plan

2007-12-01T15:27:00.001-05:00

Work on the house will begin soon. The plan is pretty simple. Gut everything we can afford in as little time possible.

We are targeting a 4 month construction period

December - Demo and Excavation
January - Framing Garage & Bedroom, Roofing, and Insulation
February - Windows, Siding, Interior Construction, and Drywall
March - Finish it all off and paint

It's a pretty aggressive plan so we'll see how it goes.

New House

2007-10-17T09:05:00.007-04:00

We found a new house! It's been a long time coming but we finally found one. It's a cute ranch that we have big plans for. We love the lot too. It's a perfect level rectangular 1/2 acre lot with the house centered right in the middle. This one is going to be a joy to mow compared to our last house.

Brave New World

2007-10-16T13:03:00.001-04:00

Late to the party is more like it ;)

I have had several personal web pages over the years but this is my very first blog. We have a major construciton project so I'll document some of that here between rambelings on technology and pictures of my three favorite ladies.

I hope you enjoy reading this and you come back often.

Freeon