Dotmad.net

As 31/8 is BlogDay, I decided to find some blogs to recommend.
I have tried recommending relatively new/unknown blogs (at least as far as I can tell), and also focus on people publishing new posts at least once a week.

1. Blonde 2.0 - Recently opened, and already quite a success, focuses mainly on web 2.0 items.
2. Latest gadgets and the technology used - As the name says, the focus here is on electronics and gadgets.
3. Israely VCs blogs - An aggregation of the blogs behind the major VCs in Israel.
4. Gray’s Matter - I started reading this blog after Justice posted his plan to take over the world (and becoming a better developer) by reading a new professional book each week.
5. Information Technology Dark Side - David Christiansen’s blog about the IT profession.

Technorati tag: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007

I have read Oren’s post, in which he writes (again) why he thinks Asp.Net is a bad web platform.
I have been reading about various tools like Ruby or MonoRail and people promoting over using simple Asp.Net.

Coincidentally, I have recently listen to an Arcast episode with Markus Frind, the founder of http://plentyoffish.com/.

This dude is the only employee in the “company” (acting as the developer, architect, CEO, janitor, etc), running the web site on two servers from his home. He wrote the site as a programming exercise.

And why is he using Asp.Net?
“Well I use ASP.NET now because it’s trivial and easy and gets the job done. There is just so much to learn out there and every six months it completely changes. So I stuck with what I knew, used it a lot, and I’ve gotten really, really good at it. “

It’s beyond me why Microsoft doesn’t make him their spokesperson for their platform.

I am working on a C4I application using GIS engine, and since the engine uses the CPU for it’s calculations (not many GIS systems use the capabilities of graphics cards so far) the effect of the processor is critical in terms of performance.
We recently ran a test of the same system and scenario, once with an old processor, and once with a new, faster (both in clock speed and FSB), HyperThreading capable processor.

According to some benchmarks, the new processor performed twice better than the old one, and so did the application in the tests I ran - the processor load with the new processor was 50% of the load with the old one, meaning 100% improvement, the same as the processor showed in the benchmarks.
So if your system’s configuration’s specification was set up long before the final release, consider upgrading it - replacing a CPU may save you month of development optimizing performance.

I’m working on a C4I application using GIS maps.
The map is refreshed (redrawn) by calling the Control.Invalidate() method.
What got my attention was seeing few thousands of page faults on each refresh, resulting in CPU usage of 3-6%.

After some research, this is the response I got from Hans Passant in the MSDN forums:
“GDI+ bitmaps use memory mapped files. The bitmap data gets loaded into memory through page faults.“

Now if I only could figure out why in older versions of the application there were no page faults, especially if he is right and this is the normal mode of operation.

Trying to simply copy/paste code to a blog (especially one you manage online) can create a very ugly block of text.
There are two ways to solve this problem:

1. Visual studio addins - CopySourceAsHtml creates HTML formatted code to paste into the blog.
2. Online tools - This tool from Manoli.net creates HTML formatted code online.

Some times you need to measure the value of something while running the application.
Using a logger is not comfortable, since you don’t want to monitor gazillion rows of values.
The solution: create a performance counter and use Perfmon.exe to view it while the application is running.

Here is a code for creating a counter:

private PerformanceCounter CreatePerformanceCounter(){        string categoryName = "My Category";

    if ( !PerformanceCounterCategory.Exists(categoryName) )    {        CounterCreationDataCollection CCDC = new CounterCreationDataCollection();

        // Add the counter.        CounterCreationData myCounter = new CounterCreationData();        myCounter.CounterType = PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64;        myCounter.CounterName = "My Counter";        CCDC.Add(myCounter);

        // Create the category.        PerformanceCounterCategory.Create("categoryName", "This is my cateogory", CCDC);    }

    PerformanceCounter result = new PerformanceCounter(categoryName, "My Counter", false);}

Note: You’ll need an administrator account to create a new category, but once it’s there any account it OK.

It has been more than a month since I got back from Berlin, so I need to backup my memory of hot spots in there:
Wifi is actually pretty expansive in Berlin - there are many hot spots, but to surf you need to either pay directly to an ISP, or use your own account (assuming you have one).
Here are the few locations I found:

• Cheap connection in the Häagen-Dazs cafe in Kurfürstendamm street
• Free access in Europa center
• Tegel airport