While doing some research on using Reflection, I came across this post today. It has some great links for starting points. The links are reposted below, but the credit is all Agha Usman Ahmed’s

1. Brad Wilson : Using Reflection for the Visitor Pattern
2. Rick Strahl: Implementing two-way Data Binding for ASP.Net Web Forms (really cool)
3. C# Reflection and Dynamic Method Invocation by Gopalan Suresh Raj (Great one)
4. Reflection Tips 
5. What's new in System.Reflection (and friends) by Joel Pobar
6. Programming C#: Attributes and Reflection
7. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.reflection.aspx
8. http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/1/Reflection_in_net.asp
9. http://www.csharpfriends.com/Articles/getArticle.aspx?articleID=308 (Small one but quick)

Useful info for sure.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

I know this is off-topic, but if you don’t know about Jeff Cooper don’t bother reading this. If you do, go here for a memorial link.

My Dad taught me his version of Jeff Cooper’s four rules, my Dad called them Laws. Either way they form the foundation of firearm safety.

The Four Rules

• All firearms are loaded. There are no exceptions. Don't pretend that this is true. Know that it is and handle all firearms accordingly. Do not believe it when someone says: "It isn't loaded."
• Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you are not willing to destroy.  If you would not want to see a bullet hole in it do not allow a firearm's muzzle to point at it.
• Keep your finger off the trigger unless your sights are on the target. Danger abounds if you keep your finger on the trigger when you are not about to shoot. Speed is not gained by prematurely placing your finger on the trigger as bringing a firearm to bear on a target takes more time than it takes to move your finger to the trigger.
• Be sure of your target and what is behind it. Never shoot at sounds or a target you cannot positively identify. Know what is in line with the target and what is behind it (bullets are designed to go through things). Be aware of your surroundings whether on a range, in the woods, or in a potentially lethal conflict.

I never meet Jeff Cooper, but I read about him a lot, he was the founder of the American Pistol Institute in 1975, the name was later changed to Gunsite. Gunsite was sold in 1992 and became something quite different. Most people that attended the original under Cooper said that what followed was a mere shadow of what Cooper had created.

A quote from the memorial page does more justice to this thought than I can.

"Another analogy, if you will: In Winchester Cathedral in SE England rests the
Round Table. One can read the legends, one can follow the code of chivalry, one
can practice skill at arms. But one cannot sit at that table ever again."

May he rest in peace with all his fellow Marines that have gone before him.

Robert Porter

Well, sort of, and, ah, not quite yet, but real soon now!

Ted Demopoulos co-author of “Blogging For Business” interviewed me for his next book titled: “What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting”. The book has been sent to the printer and is available now for pre-order on Amazon. Should be in the stores mid November?

I am one of the 101 bloggers he interviewed in putting together the book. So I guess that makes me 1/101 percent famous?!? Anyway from speaking to Ted I am sure it will be a good read. And more importantly I bet you will learn something useful from reading it. Ted did not do the typical A-List blogger interviews, he instead focused on bloggers from dozens of business areas, technical and non-technical, as well as uses that blogs are being put to. (My interview was about how I use blogs as a research tool and aide.)

I really enjoyed his first book, and I love his writing style, its easy to read, conveys the information clearly in almost a conversational style. (Which as a wannabe author myself I can tell you is hard to pull off successfully!)

He maintains several blogs himself and as joint ventures with his co-author Shel Holtz. The Ted Rap is his own blog, and then there is his book based blog called Blogging For Business, he has also guest blogged on numerous blogs, check out his web site for more info or better yet, book him to come speak to your group or company! (Tell him Bob sent you!!!).

So I have my 1/101 second? Femotsecond? Of fame coming and you all have a great read waiting for you!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

Robert Scoble had a recent blog post where he wondered why there was not much in the way of interest in the press and blogosphere around Acrobat 8.0. It reminded me why I run as little as I can of Adobe’s products.

Licensing, Code Bloat, Instability, Licensing, Cost, Instability, Cost, Licensing.  You get the point. I have not used or recommended any of Adobe’s PDF related products since version 5.

Versions 6 and 7 were crash prone, and VERY slow to load on my high end (for their time) systems. I have used numerous 3rd party rival products that load MUCH faster, and are a fraction of the cost, have clear licensing and don’t crash every 3rd time you load them.

I have participated in enterprise projects that made heavy use of creating and distributing PDF documents, and in every case the decision was made to go with anyone except Adobe, since even corporate lawyers could not make heads or tails of their licensing, and the cost was always prohibitive as well.

(For fun we had 3 different people call Adobe once, all 3 asked the exact same licensing question of the Adobe rep, all 3 got very different answers!!)

So in conclusion, Acrobat 8 is more of the same, and that makes it un-news.

Before the Internet became publically available I used to haunt BBS systems, use things like QWK mail and FidoNET to participate in what was basically an early form of Newsgroups. Then, during the early days of the Internet I used Gopher and similar tools to perform research and stay up to date on topics that interested me. Before any of that was available there were local user groups and local hobby groups. But there has always (in my lifetime) been a user community that was available if you just looked.

Blogs have replaced Newsgroups to a large degree. Let me clarify that before I get a slew of comments or email. I mean for my particular purpose which in this case is staying informed on a variety of subjects.

A good example, rather than haunt the Microsoft Web site looking for the download link to Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh, I just watched my aggregator, sure enough, within minutes of it being available someone had posted the link and I was off to the download races!

Another example, I was recently using the latest release of an Atlas component and experiencing trouble. Google shed no light, nor did Ask.com or Kodors or any of the other engines, but about 15 minutes of searching through my RSS feeds found no less than 7 posts on the same issue! 6 of which had the fix.

Blogs, tending to be more frequently updated with high signal to noise ratio content, than any other medium, are more and more often my first choice for finding technical answers.

Newsgroups are still better as an interactive medium, but I spend more time than I would rather wading through posts that consist solely of some self elected enforcer being critical of another because they did not ask their question in the right manner, or cross posted it to too many groups, or did not use the correct font and point size for a question about xyz technology!

Anyway, I love Blogs!

Cheers,

Robert Porter