Connecting ideas to code
Good news! You can now find and follow Snowmoon Software on Facebook. I’m still working on the facebook page for SMS; it’s an organic work in progress. I’ll be adding a site porfolio in the near term and connecting this blog as well.
Head on over to facebook and ‘like’ us now!
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Filed under: News
No, not THAT Lost….
A few years ago during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a friend of mine found out he was being deployed to Iraq for a year. Before he went, I helped him set up and run a blog called LostInIraq. He wanted a way to share stories and pictures to his family and friends back home and figured a blog would be the perfect vehicle. Little did he know how much attention he’d bring upon himself and his unit. He and the site were featured in more than a few stories in the Sun Chronicle and on more than one occasion Todd was ordered to shut the site down. He always managed to stay one step ahead though and kept the site alive. Though he did contact me more than once to, um, “clean up” the site before his commanding officer saw something he didn’t like…
After Todd’s tour and he was settled back into the private sector, he took the blog offline but after a five year hiatus, it’s back. Check it out!
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Filed under: News
I found this post on estimating user stories via the Stack Overflow podcast. Since my only experience with Agile/Scrum estimating was with planning poker, I found this an interesting approach. T-Shirt estimating is a great way to get a feel for the size of a user story (a task); the team estimates how long a story will take by saying “This task is an XL”, or “This one’s a small”. The sizes correspond with how long that team member thinks it would take to complete that task. You don’t need long drawn out discussions here — the idea is to get a quick feel for the size of the task in order to do your planning. Planning Poker, on the other hand, is a more granular methodology, requiring more discussion and thought.
By having less values to use for the estimates — T Shirt estimating uses 5 sizes, Planning Poker uses up to 10 — allows for faster consensus building among the team. Once the stories have been selected for the next sprint using T Shirt estimating, more precise estimation using Planning poker can be done if desired.
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Filed under: Development
For a limited time, you can get FreezBeat for just $5. Use coupon code FOURFORFEB at checkout to save $4.
It’s a pretty cool little utility, if I do say so myself! FreezBeat does it’s job quietly, and does it well and you will wonder why the “big guys” didn’t just build this in to their products in the first place.
If you’re not ready to buy just yet, there is a 30 day trial available.
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Filed under: News
Feature Branches
Martin Fowler has a good article on cherry picking features to compose a release. Check it out so that the next time your manager wants to pick and choose what to include in a release you’re ready with why it’s not that easy1 (0)
Finding style as an engineer
Very interesting article over at Stephano’s blog. Worth a read, and then another. Packed with links to useful tools too. (0)
Fixing bugs
Brad at 30sleeps writes about Death by a Thousand Service Packs. Well said, Brad and let us know what your itch is. (0)
Excellent paper on HTTP Sessions
Just finished reading a whitepaper on Web Based Session Management, worth a read. It lists the advantages and disadvantages of the three main forms of session management and common attacks.
Go forth and read! (0)
Stretchy Designs
If you’re afraid of using em-based layouts, or just haven’t got around to using them in your designs, head on over to Jon Tan’s blog and read his great article, The Incredible Em & Elastic Layouts with CSS . He does a great job of demonstrating how easy it is to create an elastic layout in terms even engineers can understand. (1)
Is Google Evil? Here's Proof!
Many people wonder if Google is evil, despite their motto. But I have discovered proof that Google is Evil. See for yourself!
What's a Snow Flake?
There are times when I want to make a quick point without having to write an essay on the topic. Apparently there’s a whole meme of a blog within a blog, aka a sideblog or “asides”. I found a nice plugin that lets me do the same thing. I needed a name for this feature and since it’s just a little piece of Snowmoon Software, that “Snow Flake” would be a good name. Like it? Hate it? Leave a comment! (0)
