Tim Hoolihan

I was asked by a fellow developer how I keep up to date on the variety of technologies that I’m expected to understand when doing my job. I intended to write a short answer, and generate a blog post as a longer answer. I got this idea from Scott Hanselman, who in his talks about [...]

One of the projects that I work on uses NuGet for library management. We have a rake task that runs build, clean, etc. One of the rake tasks runs NuGet.exe which is stored in a tools directory. That way, everyone uses the same version of NuGet even if they have different versions installed in their [...]

This post is intended to go through the process of writing and publishing an app. It will be a high-level introduction. The idea is that future posts that will dig into specific topics in depth. This post will be updated to link to those future posts as an index of mobile development topics. The app [...]

When altering a table to an Oracle reduce a columns size, you’ll get a ORA-01440 error, indicating that you can’t make the adjustment because of the potential data loss. I had to do this to recently to a bunch of columns, as I had incorrectly specified the size of numbers that would end up as [...]

…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 [...]

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 [...]