How to avoid Information Overload

2010-10-29T00:09:00.001-07:00

In the daily course of our works, we come across numerous emails from colleagues and clients as well as countless other unsavory emails uncaught by the junk filters. For the most part, it’s quick and easy to spot those unsavory emails and press the DEL key. We all know the popular sayings of “Knowledge = Power” and what is knowledge if not information? It implies, then, that having too much

Simple Creative-Interactive Development Approach

2010-10-04T10:28:00.001-07:00

Preproduction: · Brainstorm quick engagement rules. · Gather and generate content. · Construct the site map. · Develop and approve and interface. · Determine technical needs. Production: · Develop and refine content. · Establish development, staging, and hosting resources. · Get graphics production underway. · Produce server-side support. · Produce interactive

Analysis and Specification Principles

2010-09-08T19:23:00.001-07:00

More often than not, a project suffers not because of its lack of merit rather from miscommunication of intents causing grave consequences. If only we concentrate more at analyzing the subject area at the onset of a project, its probability for success can increase substantively. 1. Information Domain representation a. Information Content and Relationships This refers to the data

How to create an Excel file programmatically (Part 2)

2010-04-21T11:07:00.001-07:00

Offce 2003 XML method This method is as simple as saving an .xls file into a template .xml format. When we open the saved XML file, we'll see a rather simple format to follow and places where we can insert new data rows. ... ... {Data table location} All we have to do then is insert the data table in the XML

How to create an Excel file programmatically (Part 1)

2010-04-18T01:04:00.001-07:00

This was a fairly easy and straight-forward job without requiring any additional APIs. Microsoft Office 2003 was pretty forgiving about Excel file extension that any auto-generated Excel file would be easily accepted without much hiccup. Nowadays, with Office 2007 and the upcoming Office 2010, we again are forced to resort to a "few" different Excel-creation techniques which yielded various pros

Essential Windows PowerShell Commandlets

2009-03-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

Previously, we learned the basic commands: help and gal. I suppose now it's time to properly refer to these "commands" as commandlets or cmdlets following PowerShell's own set of terminologies. But just to note that whenever both commands and commandlets, I use them interchangeably for the same semantic meaning. Call me stubborn. Call it bad habit. But they really are all just commands to me. In

Basic Windows PowerShell Commands

2009-03-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

Windows PowerShell is relatively new shell command interpreter in comparison to the venerable CMD, CScript, and Windows Script Host. Just like any shell script, it isn't really difficult to learn simply by trial and errors as long as we get the few basic commands down so we can drill further to other commands we seek to use. The most basic command we should know is, of course, help. Get-Help

One ID to rule them all!

2009-02-24T16:48:00.001-08:00

Having an OpenID is a cool thing. In theory, I wouldn't have needed to register for any other account ever. Alas, most ideals are just that: ideals. No, I'm not saying anything bad against OpenID; I'm only saying that even with the best intention we still frequently are unable to realize the full potential of the idea's ideals. Take SourceForge.Net for example, it's one of sites I frequented.

How to write clean website layout using CSS (Part 2)

2009-02-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

The pure

approach: Positions Creating web page layout using CSS positioning really is a very simple thing to do. All we need to remember is that an XHTML element's absolute position is always relative to its container. That is the one thing we usually forget. We are so caught up in the semantic definition of the word absolute position we forget that it isn't absolute only in the context

How to write clean website layout using CSS (Part 1)

2009-02-17T16:22:00.000-08:00

There are three well-known techniques in creating a website layout using CSS: The approach. The

hybrid approach. The pure

approach. The positioning approach of absolutists v. relativists; and, The clearing float (or is it the floating clear? ). There are others of course; very advanced CSS masters like to further

How to create a new Blogger template (Part 2)

2009-02-12T14:20:00.000-08:00

Blogger's Layout Data Tags As of this writing, a Blogger's template document requires at least a skin declaration, usually placed in the document header as seen in Listing 1 below.Listing 1:

How to create a new Blogger template (Part 1)

2009-02-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

Start with a Blogger's basic default template and dissect it. Understand basic X/HTML coding. Understand Blogger's Layouts Data Tags Know where to find help for customizing Blogger's template. Dissecting a Blogger's basic default template Leave the first two lines alone. Listing 1: After

How to write clean X/HTML document

2009-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

Warning: XMP tag is an officially deprecated tag as of HTML specification 3.02. So follow this advise at your own risk. Use tag instead of the using many tags to pre-format ourmultiline texts inside a tag. We should use tag for plain text and demonstrated code listings instead of using escaped stuff (entities) such as < and > Escaping characters are such tedious chores and we are all

Confidence == Self.Comfort in {Knowns, Unknowns}

2008-09-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

Confidence != Perfection; Confidence != Arrogance.Hide(Inferiority); What do we do when a user asks for a facility for a matter of convenience and where the cost of providing such convenience far outweighs the value of the time saved from the convenience? There's a dictum that states: "Customer is King." If we want to be responsible subjects to our king, it is our duties to say to the King: "

Information is to knowledge as...

2008-04-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

Bit is to Byte. Byte is to data. Data is to information. A computer is such a nice tool to collect, prepare / process, and consume knowledge. But nice is different from easy. The level of ease in using computer for the aforementioned activities however are usually inversely proportional to one another. For example, if it could be considered easy to collect data, it can be reasonably said (

Joy is...

2008-04-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

A smile in spite of what's around. You know... these days I sensed a lot of unhappiness around me—not from me, mind you—around me. So I took a few minutes out of my day and scoured the Internet to see if I could find some quick, inspirational statements people say about how we can reach happiness since I don't seem to be doing well in inspiring happiness for others. Here's what I found: From

To be gainfully employed is...

2008-03-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

A rather challenging act to perform. It's not just about having a job nor about the money that the job brings. It is a constant juggle to balance our personal and professional lives. I've shared with many people I encounter in my careers a personal attitude that may help reduce one's own stress in a work setting and be able to feel secure on and of our own: that work is just a vehicle for us

A customer is NOT always right

2008-03-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

1. If he is belligerent and makes my team and employees unhappy. 2. If a customer makes me choose between unreasonably serving his business or my relationship with good colleagues and employees. My employees come first. (This is along the line of: "If an employer makes me choose between unreasonably serving his business or my devotion to my family. My family comes first.) 3. If his business is

Holy chocolate fudge!!! Quick! Show the window pronto!

2008-02-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

The first month of 2008 came and went. We've gone through 31 days of a new year so quickly, we barely had a chance to reflect on the past year due to piles of backlog tasks that seems to increase faster than we can keep up. It's a blessing and a curse. Speaking of a curse, I was in the middle of debugging an application last night and was unable to find the Immediate Window in my VS2005 IDE. It

What a great {insert a nerdy title here} feels:

2008-01-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

I don't need to prove I'm 1337 to know I am one. I don't understand the end-user, but I'll always try to. My end-user is the reason I have a job. Patience really is a virtue. Nobody likes complicated stuff. It's better to be perceived as inexperienced but a quick study, than experienced but a slow poke. Knowing the subject well is better than knowing how to code well.

2008

2008-01-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

A few days into the new year, a sleeping sick baby and an offline HQ—I found a few moments of peace. So here's a piece of advice: When trouble brews, be calm and proceed to the nearest exit, brew a cup of hot cocoa, lounge, and read. If your trouble is specifically of the message: "The current identity (NT AUTHORITY NETWORK SERVICE) does not have write access to 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET

The 道 of Writing, the sublime of Work Ethics...

2007-09-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

Be it software, technical documents or emails. If any man wish to write in clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Learn as much by writing as by reading. ~ Lord Acton I too am an apprentice, always—learning as much by failing as by succeeding, as much by following as by

Software Entropy

2007-07-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Software entropy refers to the amount of disorder present in a system. Entropy usually creeps in by way of logical inconsistencies at the thought-level, even before any tangible work begins to implement said system. As the system and its parts are developed, these logical inconsistencies manifest themselves in various forms of errors of all sizes. The smallest ones considered negligible are

Consistent Efficiency Is Key

2007-06-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Task: Find today's calendar period starting and ending date, where if the starting date is the 1st then the ending date should be the 15th, and if the starting date is the 16th then the ending date should be the last date of the month. Short of writing the date with a string, which of the two following methods demonstrates a clear logical thought? (Disregarding the conciseness of the code

Doing the right thing to do

2007-03-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

It's easy to say; it's hard to understand. The right thing for a relativist unreliably varies from context to context. For an absolutist with an extremist mentality, the right thing may turn out to be just the opposite. It's complex, yet so simple. For when one's inhibition is gone; when one's civility is in ruin; when one's regards for morality, law and politics vanished; and,

State of the consulting industry

2006-11-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Jane Doe and Richard Roe are a couple of consultants discussing and sharing their experiences in the consulting business from their viewpoint. Jane: "Consulting is not at all what I thought it would be when I started in the field eight years ago." Richard: "What and how do you think it would be?" Jane: "My vision was that we would be called in as helpful experts, work with business

Database

2006-10-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

Ahhh... the base of the world's data. The repository where all the secrets of the universe is contained. We can consider anything to be a database. And database can be in any forms. The speed with which we come to a full understanding of what a given set of data is about is what determines its usefulness. How we come to that understanding is the process applied against it. For a database to

Overture

2006-10-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Several friends suggested that I blog. Blogging has been the rage these past few years. It's been one of the many activities that helped usher in a new way of thinking and communicating one's thoughts in this Web 2.0 era. The commercial world is weird that way. What used to be considered an amateurish personal activity is now considered by many as legitimate sources of information. What was

extended simplicity