JoseNet

Amazing new tech to make Green Energy

2010-02-28T20:14:00.001-08:00

The Bloom Box, will make energy cheaper with the help of existing fuel sources and with the help of oxygen already available for free in the air, brilliant !!!!

I would love to know how this stuff works, but for now I’ll have to settle with this video, check it out and see for yourself.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Bill Gates talks Energy at TED

2010-02-25T20:02:00.001-08:00

Pretty cool talk from Mr. Gates, talking about energy and discussing the importance of eliminating CO2 emissions.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Nice 3D rendering of Nissan engine

2010-02-17T20:42:00.001-08:00

I am not much of a ca motor geek, but this animation looks pretty cool.

How to make NUnit work with Visual Studio Express

2010-02-15T23:01:00.001-08:00

I am using Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition, and I had a little bit of trouble configuring my NUnint integration into the Visual Studio Express IDE I basically configured the wrong way all you have to do is use the following configuration settings to run NUnint from within Visual Studio:

After you edit the settings you should be able to run your project using this new menu item.

Testing the NUnit test runner.

Silverlight Navigation Framework Video

2010-02-14T22:02:00.001-08:00

Excellent video from Tim, explaining the navigation framework, after you see this video you would understand that the Silverlight Navigation framework is something that naturally needed to happen and despite the “framwork” on it it’s a very simple concept that can be easily understood and Tim does a very good job explaining this framework on his blog here.

Also a good idea to check out this video of Tim explaining the framework, definitely worth my and and yours.

Visual Studio 2010 Express

2010-01-28T21:32:00.001-08:00

If you are like me playing around Silverlight, and want to try the latest and greatest tools for development, don’t wait any longer head over to the Visual Studio 2010 Express website and download the beta 2 version of the express edition of 2010

Don’t forget you can download this and start playing around with the coolest tech ever (Silverlight, WPF, Astoria data services etc)

No excuse anymore for writing programs with outdated tools.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Express-2010/

Getting started with Silverlight (links)

2009-11-10T23:07:00.001-08:00

Some good links to getting started with Silverlight, its easier this this much information online

The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site for getting started

Get Started with RIA services

Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern explained

Jason Dolinger on Model-View-ViewModel

Index for Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services

Silverlight Light up the web

Trillions video shows where we are and where we are going

2009-11-10T22:17:00.001-08:00

The amount of data in and out of the inter tubes this days seems astronomical but its just little pieces of nothing compared to what is coming our way.

Fit PC 2 (super tiny desktop)

2009-10-19T22:28:00.001-07:00

I just got this supper tiny desktop the other day, got the cheapest version of the Fit PC2 that was available, came with almost everything except a 2.5 inch SATA hard drive, which is was cool because I have a few laying around, now I have to install an OS using a bootable USB drive, and it should be ready go function as a small server

FIT PC box, this this is supper tiny pc

Came with an HDMI out port, no wireless but has 1000 baseT RJ45 ethernet

Plenty of USB ports

1 GB memory directly attached to the board, and space for the hard disk, (the only moving part)

Sharper Photo: Featured Plugin

2009-10-10T09:14:00.001-07:00

Windows Live Writer pluging: Sharper Photo, is featured in the Windows Live Writer site: http://www.live-writer.net/, I was very happy to see this, as a featured plugin in this site, I had no Idea how many people use this plugin, the download site for Sharper Photo currently marks about 1390 downloads, hopefully its been helpful to many more people out there.

Also remember that if you think this plugin can be improved in any way, let me know.

Live Writer: Sharper Photo Review

2009-10-10T08:29:00.001-07:00

Out there in the inter tubes, I found a blog post a talking a little bit a about the little windows live writer plugin that I made (Sharper Photo).

it’s nice to see that other people have benefited from using this plugin, which allows you to edit the photos you insert in live writer using your favorite image editor, Hope to see more reviews like this in the future as I made more improvements to this little plugin.

If you have an idea of how this plugin can be improve please let me know, thanks.

The best sketch program ever made :)

2009-10-05T23:50:00.001-07:00

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all day. Its called PhotoSketch and it looks like the coolest thing ever for creating better looking sketches, you have to see the video to believe it.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

Composite Specification Pattern and Repository Query

2009-09-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

I’ve been a huge fan of the repository pattern mainly because it allows a well known and standardized “façade” to any data access implementation, its like another layer of abstraction for your data access strategy.

Martin Fowler has very simple (too simple) explanation of the repository pattern here, and here is another example about the repository pattern, and you still don’t get it maybe you want to know: What purpose does the Repository Pattern have?

But I am here to tell you about another pattern, the Composite Specification Pattern and how is it used to query a repository.

The Composite Specification pattern is pretty cool and clever and explained in this links:

In those 2 links the guys at LosTechies.com have created a generic repository for you to use including the speciation pattern used to query the repository. Which can be very useful if you are dealing with in memory repositories, in memory filtering, searching etc, but if you have actual database you need to take it a step further and learn how to translate the specifications into something that your data access strategy, but that’s the beauty of the pattern it abstract that to a higher lever so the access strategy can vary and evolve independently of consumer user the repository.

I think next step is to take this repository pattern along with the composite specification and make an asynchronous repository pattern, I have a few ideas in mind, which I might post about in the near future.

Skype server for your house

2009-09-15T22:59:00.001-07:00

I just found out a pretty cool way to setup all your phones in your house to use Skype and your traditional land line (if you want) at the same time.

Its pretty simple all you have to do is buy a small computer to be the “always on” skype computer, and connect an skype USB adpater to the computer and to the phone line and you are set.

Very likely that you already have regular phones around your house so that comes for free, the USB skype adapter is about $20 bucks and depending on what computer you choose for the “always on” skype server it can cost you around 200 to 400 dollars, just make sure you get a desktop, not a laptop, usually desktops or nettops have a BIOS options to auto power on the PC on power failure so that if the computer looses power it will automatically re-start when the power comes back up.

Here are some Optiosn for always on Server, the cool thing about this small “nettops” is that they consume very little power and so its very cheap and green to have them as “always on” computers/servers for skype (this is the computer which only purpose is to run skype and must have internet access) you can also use them as a file server etc, maybe put a few webcams off the usb ports.

Here is the Skype USB phone adapter, this one is from D-Link but there are other brands that should work just fine too, this unit cost about $20 and this connects to the skype computer/server via USB and acts as a bridge between your pone line and your house phone

Pretty cool idea if you want to use skype for your house phone instead of the traditional phone line, or use both, and when the small computers drop down in price its going to be very cheap to set this up and very cost efficient.

32 Refactoring Techniques

2009-09-09T23:02:00.001-07:00

Sean Chambers over at lost techies.com just completed a series of blog post that' I’ve been following pretty close, since they are so useful and most of them are easy to implement its definitely a good refresh and hope to keep all of them in my mind and you should too,

Here is a list the 31 refactoring techniques:

from: 31 Days of Refactoring

Refactoring Day 31 : Replace Conditional with Polymorphism

(most of these can be found here too: Refactoring.com) but at lost techies it comes with cool explanation and sample source code.

SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes

2009-09-09T21:49:00.001-07:00

Have you heard the term SCRUM? want to know all about it in under 10 Minutes? well don’t waste more time :)

Learn the SCRUM software development methodology in less than 10 minutes. By the end of this fast-paced video, you'll know about burn-down charts, team roles, product backlogs, sprints, daily scrums and more

The History of Business Intelligence

2009-09-09T21:33:00.001-07:00

Pretty cool video I found about Business Intelligence (BI), I’ve done some work in the BI space before and I found it very interesting and fascinating.

This video explains what is business Intelligence?

Windows Live Writer Sharper Photo Paste as JPG

2009-09-07T21:35:00.001-07:00

I just finish adding a few new features to the Sharper Photo plugin for Windows Live Writer.

Firs the new plugin only depends on the API assembly dll for windows live writer this means that this plugin should work with most versions of windows live writer.

Another addition was the publish notification hook, which starts Sharper Photo before the post is published in case you forgot to edit the photos before publishing the blog post, (this can be turned off from Tools-> Options-> Plug-ins)

And the last addition was the ability to Paste a clipboard image as a JPG image instead of the default PNG format, this way you can change the photo file size right from the Sharper Photo plugin.

Note: Get the latest Sharper Photo plugin from this link:

Windows Live Writer Sharper Photo Plugin (gallery.live.com)

New Version of Sharper Photo is Available

2009-09-01T22:30:00.001-07:00

The new version of Sharper Photo is available at:

Windows Live Writer Sharper Photo Plugin (gallery.live.com)

Windows Live Writer Sharper Photo Plugin (skydrive)

Sharper Photo is a the Windows Live Writer plugin that I created a while ago, but ever since I started using Windows 7 and the latest version of Live Writer, it was not working properly, Now it should work as long as you have the latest version (if it does not work let me know)

This plugin will only work if you already added pictures to your blog post and don’t have any pictures selected, It allows to make the photo file size smaller as well as edit the photo that live writer will upload using your favorite image editor.

New Template for JoseNet.com

2009-08-27T21:09:00.001-07:00

So I am getting some inspiration to update my blog more often thanks to the new template I found on the interwebs it’s called “Inove” I first saw this template on Tim’s blog (http://timheuer.com/blog/) but he is using wordpress, thankfully someone manage to port it for blogger and I really like it.

If you are want to install this template for your blog use you can find the link here (Inove) one things is that this is just the xml file, the images are hosted somewhere but as long as the images are still up, it should work. If you want to host the images in your own site or do what I did and put them in you google Picasa account, I have the images and the xml template in the zip files linked here:

Note: if you are thinking on hosting the images yourself on your Google account, the recommended step is NOT to upload them via Picasa, instead create a new post and add all the original images (make sure live writer does not resize the images) and save the post as draft or publish temporarily, this will give the images a Url that is more likely to not flake like it sometimes does if you upload the images using Picasa. Also don’t forget to remove the last part of the image ural like ?maxlenght=blablabla.

Update: Windows Live Writer Plugin (Sharper Photo)

2009-06-03T23:55:00.001-07:00

So its been almost a month since I’ve uploaded my Windnows Live Writer Plugin (Sharper Photo) and I see that i’s been downloaded about 250 times, which perhaps is not a big number but its more than I would have expected, the pluging is cool and I think I still can inprove it a little more but for now I don’t have much time, anyway its nice to see some people have at least check it out. I don’t plan on making any updates to the pluging anytime soon but I might post a link to the WIX installer file that I used to create the MSI installer file.

New Windows Live Writer Plugin

2009-05-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

I finally finish developing the first version of a windows live writer plugin which I ended up calling “Sharper Photo” with the idea is that the plugin will help you modify you post photos to make them sharper (better).

It took me a while to get the pluging finished because I needed to create an installer package (.msi) but since I was using c# express i was out of luck so i had to learn a little bit of WIX and with the help of the SharpDevelop .NET editor I was able to use the WIX tools to create the installer for the pluging. I submitted the plug-in to the Windows Live Gallery and now I am waiting for approval, hope it gets approved soon so it can be available soon.

Need a new template for my blog

2009-05-10T12:44:00.001-07:00

So far I am not very happy with the look of my blog, its almost the way i want it but I am still missing a nice image header and perhaps some thing that looks a little bit more pro. if you know of a cool blogger template let me know i really like the colors that I have specially the red post tittles.

Windows Live Writer Plugin (update)

2009-03-30T22:25:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since the last update to the windows live writer plugin that I am developing so I’ll give a quick update about the progress: so far so good :) it is coming along very nice, and very slow because I usually get to work on it on my “spare” time.

The plugin is looking pretty cool I added some cool icon, refactored some code and now the “quick fix” feature works for reducing the image quality, pretty much now I need to work on the integration with the major picture editing programs out there.

Windows Live Writer Plugin Project

2009-03-24T20:44:00.001-07:00

So I’ve been working on a pet project of mine, a windows live writer plugin, and I figure I would like to share the organizational structure of my Visual C# express edition project that I use to create the plugin. I’ve called it Jplug for now (short for Jose’s pluging)