Tim Hoolihan

…or some other catchy metaphor that will grab your attention. These technologies were hot over the last 5 years. Flex gained a particular amount of popularity in the Java community where UI technologies have a bit of a spotty record (that’s like saying my Bengals have a bit of a spotty record over a lifetime). [...]

I’m not sure why, but Windows Search Service is broken on my installation of Windows. I’ve posted on Microsoft forums, and found other people with the same issue, but no fixes that have worked for me. The service will work, but every time I reboot, the service is disabled and stopped. I have to change [...]

A while back, I bought a Windows Phone 7, specifically an HTC 7 Surround. I bought it used via ebay (for under $150), so as to not have it count as my contract subsidized phone. It was not an unlocked phone, and I was able to switch my SIM card from my main phone (an [...]

I have an Acer netbook from a couple of years back. I use to get a fair amount of use, for times when I wanted to read pdfs, browse the web, etc. It was great to have at the hospital to upload pictures and post updates to facebook when my daughters were born. All that [...]

Let me say up front, Steve Yegge is my favorite blog writer. I think I started reading his blog in late 2007, and really picked up digging through the archives in 2008. He is the reason I still write blog posts. This blog does decent traffic for a hobbyist technical blog, but it’s still like [...]

“Beware of becoming an Agile zealout, because this can backfire and put people off. Don’t treat people who are not applying Agile as fools who just need to see the light! This is disrespectful, and people simply won’t listen to your rants.” -Rachel Davies in Agile Coaching1. Why is this comforting? Good communities self-monitor. Many [...]

Through the years, a fair amount of my projects have been with small companies and startups. One thing I notice almost universally, is that members of smaller teams tend to have hunger for success, and a real feeling of ownership over their product. They take personal pride and consider themselves invested in the project. That [...]

Build answered a lot of questions for developers who wondered about the future of the Microsoft platform. WinRT is the new API for “Metro ” applications, which are streamlined enable both tablet and pc inputs. These applications can be built in .Net or native C++ using XAML, or in JavaScript with Html5. The traditional desktop [...]

In a prior post, I wrote about using php to implement a simple version of layouts, or what are called masterpages in ASP.Net. In it I mentioned that you could go directly to the content part for ajax purposes. I want to show how to support that in a language like php when not using [...]

Things are often more complicated than they seem. Certainly in the worlds of economics and nationalism. It’s no wonder that as the largest economy in the world, America wants to protect that place and Americans are sensitive to any efforts to move jobs elsewhere. Certainly that is true today, with unemployment currently at 9.1%. In [...]