Brian Hartsock's Blog

How many times have you tried to open a file in Windows, only to see it is already in use by some another program? Thus begins the witch hunt of process destruction, until you can open the file.

Process Explorer gets rid of this problem. Just search for a file name, and it tells you which process has a hold of it. This is only a small piece of its functionality, but a huge piece of my sanity. Why doesn’t Windows Ship with all the SysInternals stuff?

My dad was early adopter of webcams. I was not. Looking back on it, he understood their power to bring people together that aren’t geographically close at all. During that time, he experienced the pain of bad internet connections, terrible drivers, and installation hell. I waited until all that disappeared.

I bought the Quickcam Pro for Notebooks because I have an increasingly growing number of people I want to talk to that aren’t anywhere close to me. This model caught my eye because it works for notebooks, but has an awesome stand for desktops. Not to mention it is super sleek and small.

Aesthetics are always important, but the quality is where the substance is and this camera has amazing quality. Skype HQ video is really awesome and I use it all the time.

Most importantly, the installation is super easy and lightweight. Pop in the CD, install, and it works. No problems, at least for me.

I highly recommend buying this webcam to anyone out there, you won’t regret it. Unlike the Arc mouse, I have had this camera longer and would buy another one if it broke tomorrow.

Not only do I recommend this webcam, but I recommend video conferencing for anyone that needs to talk to people remotely, but that’s a different story for a different day.

Refactoring to Patterns provides some of the glue that Design Patterns (GoF) and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (PoEAA is missing. The concept of the book is very simple: to provide examples of how to use design patterns to refactor code. A side product of this is the reader should really have an understanding of the two books previously mentioned before reading this book. If GoF and PoEAA is the bible, then Refactoring to Patterns is the Sunday school teacher. I definitely recommend it to every developer.

What I love most about this book isn’t the content, but how it attacks problems. Every developer has created code that isn’t beautiful. Code that quickly becomes unmanagable. This book bridges the divide between that code and a beautiful, design patterns based solution. When I first skimmed through some of the refactorings, I thought really? Compose Method made it into this book? But then I started thinking that it is probably the simplest, yet most under utilized design pattern around.

Much like GoF or PoEAA, this book should not be read once, but regularly. I would encourage readers to try and take one or two things away from the book, not everything. Memorizing the steps or refactorings isn’t as important as understand where and when they should be used. Personally, Compose method, Move Accumulation to Collecting Parameter, and Replace Constructors with Creation Methods are the refactorings I took away from the book.

Although I wrote this whole review, the afterword of the book contains the best summary of what this book means to developers.

The true value of this book lies not in the actual steps to achieve a particular pattern but in understanding the thought processes that lead to those steps

Three weeks since I purchased it, and a broken scroll wheel. My Amazon review has changed from 5 stars to 2 stars. I would not recommend this mouse to a friend.

Back to Logitech mice for me. And I was so happy when I got this mouse… I guess aesthetics only go so far when a device’s functionality is what really matters.

Yesterday I found this gem of an article on Amazon’s website. I wish I had known about it sooner.

I got home, and immediately tried it out. After about 1 minute, I was watching an on-demand video on my TV, through my XBox. Before, I thought I had to go through a VGA cable directly from my laptop, which is a pain. This is much better.

The quality isn’t HD; it looks to be about DVD quality. Even still, I think it is enough for me to cancel my satellite subscription and be completely on-demand. I only watch 2 TV shows, and the rest just waste my time. If only Discovery and History channels streamed over the internet, I wouldn’t miss satellite at all.

Also, I think this is the catalyst to get me to ditch my Ubuntu desktop for a Windows machine. Being able to easily have on-demand video is a perk like none other. At long last, I have given up what I so fell in love with a few years ago. I am sure this isn’t are last meeting, goodbye Ubuntu.