When my Grandpa was 17 he joined the Canadian Navy just for the free boots. Little did he know that during his service in the Navy he would meet Winston Churchill, become one of the first Candians to learn how to use radar, chase the Bismarck, ram a U-Boat and storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

I loved hearing his stories about the war but despite the many adventures he had, he always spoke out against war. If you asked him, he would say that his greatest achievement was the family that he raised after the war.

My Grandpa passed away today. He was a great man who I respected a lot. The impact he had on my life will be carried with me until the day I die. I am not very good at putting it into words but I will miss him a lot.

My friend and fellow team member at work Jonas is blogging. His stuff is definetly worth checking out.

NYAHHHH!

I have to disagree with Don on the use of enums instead of booleans. Using an enum instead of a boolean may be more readable but you are bound to run into a true, false, maybe wtf.

Instead of a long parameter list I like to use a parameter object. 

So instead of:

string SomeStringManipulation(strInput, true, false, true, true, false)

I would use the following:

string SomeStringManipulation(StringManipulationArgs args)

Now if I want to change the number of arguments that are passed into the SomeStringManipulation function I only have to change it in one spot and the code is more maintainable.

Tonight I finished my examples for the upcoming Edmonton code camp. I think that they really show the strengths of the effort that John Lam has been putting in to bridge Ruby and the CLR.

After the code camp, I think I will create a couple of screencasts showing how to setup the RubyCLR (something that I am going to skip in my presentation because it isn't easy) and I will also add my code samples to the code camp site for download.

I also spent a couple of hours on Saturday putting together the swag bags for code camp and I still have more swag to add to them. Just for showing up everyone is going to get some great stuff from our contributors. If you are reading this and you have not yet signed up, I suggest you head on over to http://registration.edmontoncodecamp.com and sign up because we are getting pretty close to being full.

Last night I played poker with Catherine, my uncle and my cousin and I pulled off a Royal Flush with clubs!!!

For those that aren't familiar with it, a royal flush is the best hand in poker and the odds of getting one are about 650,000 to 1. Unfortunately, I didn't win much money off of it because everyone else had crap.

After watching John Bristowe's demo on Atlas last Thursday and seeing him use Windows Vista RC1 during the demo, I have decided to install Windows Vista RC1 on my desktop.

It is a quiet Saturday and I am hung over so I figure I will  have a lot of time to sleep while I wait for the long installation process. Hopefully, I will go to bed and when I wake up Vista will be installed. I will update this post as it installs.

 Update #1: I currently see a gray and black screen telling me "Please wait a moment while Windows prepares to start for the first time". There is also a lot of this action "..............................."

Update #2: This isn't taking as long as I thought and I haven't went to bed yet. It is completing the installation now. How will I sleep off my hangover now?

 Update #3: Completing the installation is taking forever. I am off to bed. Hopefully it will be done when I get up.

Update #4: I am awake now. This post must be popular because it seems like everyone read it and knew that I was sleeping and tried to phone me. I now see a screen asking me for a username and password, and login icon. Being a geek, I am going to pick the robot icon. 

I have made it through all the setup screens and now Vista is checking my computers performance, I hope Vista isn't disappointed with it.

Logging in for the first time now...Success! This rules, the experience is pleasant and my video card is only a NVidia GeForce2 Ti. Too bad I have a poker game to go to or else I would play around a bit more.

[ Currently Playing : Kill Me In My Sleep - Chad Vangaalen - Infiniheart (5:59) ]

Scott's post about changing his colours in his Visual Studio IDE to be closer to the colours in TextMate got me thinking about how I customize my environment and how my environment is different from other developers.

The first thing I do when i start VS on a new machine is change my background colour and my font. Currently I am using a gray background and although Scott takes a shot at us gray backgrounders I find it a lot easier on the eyes. Also, since I sit by a window there is less reflection on my monitor with a gray background than there is with a black background.

The font I am currently using at work is called AnonymousRegular, it is a Windows version of the popular Mac TrueType font Anonymous 9. It is quite slick looking give it a shot.

Next I add-in NUnit, FxCop, and NAnt into my external tools list. You will save tons of time if they can be launched right from your IDE.

The last thing that I do is change my mouse buttons so that I can mouse lefty. I switched about 2 months ago and although I am left handed I recommend it to people who aren't left handed by nature. You will feel like a complete asshat for about 2 weeks but once you get used to it you will find that the soreness in your arms and wrists is reduced significantly. Plus as an added bonus, when you move your hand from your mouse to the keyboard, you have less distance to travel.

 Let me know what settings you change either in the comments or on your blog. I am interested in finding out what other developers do to make their IDE unique.

September 23rd, Catherine and I will be doing the Parkinson's Superwalk at Rundle park here in Edmonton. I have been doing this walk for the past 3 years hoping that it is contributing to a finding a cure for Parkinson's.

Every year I do the walk for my Grandpa. This year is going to be tough because on my birthday this year my Grandpa was sent to the hospital suffering from the effects of Parkinson's and has not came out since.

This weekend, I am going back home to see him for what may be the last time so it would mean a lot to me if you could sponsor me (or if you don't like me sponsor Catherine) in this year's SuperWalk by clicking the link below:

Sponsor Me in the 2006 Parkinson's Superwalk

Thanks!

Update: I have been informed that people had problems with the previous link, I have updated the link but you will now have to put in the following information to sponsor me:

• First Name: Steven
• Last Name: Rockarts
• Province: Alberta
• City: Edmonton

I have been waiting for GeoTagging to come to Flickr for a long time and now it is finally here!

Here is the definition of GeoTagging from Wikipedia:

"GeoTagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and place names."

Basically, it maps the locations that you took your pictures so that you can give people a virtual tour of your trip, here is an example I made up tonight of our trip to Vancouver in 2005:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenrockarts/map/

Adding the GeoTags to our pictures was fairly easy and will convince me to renew my Flickr pro account when it expires. I am also probably going to buy a GPS that I can bring along with me when Catherine and I go on vacation later this year.

One gripe that I do have with Flickr GeoTagging is that it uses Yahoo Maps for its map layer (since it is now own by Yahoo). The Yahoo maps don't have the level of detail that Google maps has and I found myself switching over to Google maps to get a better satellite view of Vancouver.

A couple of us geeks are getting together 7:30pm Thursday September 14th at Muddy Waters (8211 111 Street NW) to talk about Rails. It is a fairly unofficial meeting and definetly nothing like Edmug. This is probably the beginnings of a new Rails group in town, you can check it out at http://www.edmontonrails.org (site may be down)

The meeting is just going to be a bunch of people geeking out and talking about Ruby and Rails so if you are interested feel free to come out and grab a beer or coffee with us.