I was signing up for the ThoughtWorks Studio forum today and received this wonderful/insightful error. There has been tons of discussion around the interblogs about what to do with errors and how to notify the end user. Normally these posts end with commentary that says something like this:

“If a user gets an error, let the know through the UI. Let them know what they did wrong, or how they can help alleviate the situation. If all hell broke loose, just let them know something went wrong and give them an email or phone number to contact – or even better… let them contact you from the site. Note: However, this can get overwhelming if you site is very heavy on traffic.”

From the screen shot below, it looks like they had an “All hell breaks loose” type of error.

[image got lost in crash]

My Advice?

Knowing that ThoughtWorks Discussion runs on Beast I assume there would be a way to edit the default error page. I advise to at least give the user a message stating that there was an error (such as they have done) and give them a way to contact support (which has not been done). That way, the users can feel comforted that they’ve done their part in notifying whom-ever needs to be notified to get the problem rectified.

Seeing that I was activating my account when I got this error … I think its rather high priority for them to get it fixed. I still cannot log into my account, but I have sent an email to their support (after digging around on the site for a bit). I don’t know about you but if my app throws on account activation, I HAD BETTER KNOW ABOUT IT FAST. Because otherwise, I’m losing users.

Losing Users == Losing Money == FAIL

… and dat my friend, is no bueno. :)

I tried it out, and well … at first I twittered that it was cool, but nothing really sparked my interest about it until I decided to run EVERYTHING I did for a couple of hours through it.

Before I get too far ahead of myself…

What is Ubiquity?

Ubiquity is a new Mozilla Labs add-on for Firefox. The add on lets you interact with the web in a way that's completely “not normal” feeling in any way, shape or form. After you install the app you can hit ‘CTRL + SPACE’ and then start typing like you would normally (sort of).

Download it here

This is best explained by an example:

Hit CTRL + Space, then type “weather Bronx, Ny” (Have to check to see how the family has it compared to us!)

And we get…

Hmm… very snazzy.

Ok, lets try something else.

How about looking up the wikipedia entry on “dependency injection”.

(either delete the command, or hit ESC to close)

CLTRL + SPACE, then type wikipedia

And we get:

Hmm.. very nice.

Emailing someone:

Hitting [ENTER] opens GMAIL (for me) and it looks like this:

Nice.

My Favorites

I love the weather one (as shown above) but I also love the “define” and “translate”. I’m always wondering what some word that some english ninja used on some writing blog meant, this enables me to look up the word quickly. I’m also into learning other languages (not booger-eater dork-geek languages, real human languages) so it helps in translation. key word: HELPS.

Define:

Translate:

Possible Enhancements

Lets face it man, this is a 0.1 version product. Its very rough right now. There are many things that I could list here, but I’ve decided to trim it down to one. Ubiquity needs to provide the users with some feedback about what’s going on. During my wikipedia search above, the screen sat still for 30 seconds saying “searing wikipedia”. When translating, the translation said ‘replaces the selected text with the german translation’ for about 20 seconds. I had no idea what was going on, if any thing was going on. I was able to tell that something WAS happening when I moved my cursor over the Ubiquity window and it changed to vista spinny clock thingy (super technical term, like it, dont ya!).

Its going to be interesting to see where this goes. Thus far its looking fairly promising. This is nothing that will change my life, but it might make it easier at times when I’m running in FF all day.

Jason Bock had a similar title to this post awhile back … and I found a forehead-slapper today when reviewing some code in a app I’m working on during my free time. I seriously said “What the <ExplativeGoesHere>”.

Here’s the code:

There is absolutely no need to do this. This is exactly WHAT the IPAddress class does. The worst part is that the programmer who developed this knew that the IPAddress Class existed.  I’m amazed daily.

I will be presenting at the 5th Twin Cities Code Camp on October 11th.

My session is entitled …

Smooth Operator: Using the Workflow Rules Engine Within WCF

Ever changing business logic requires rule systems that are flexible to business demands. The majority of the time the business requires that these rules systems must be consumable by other applications. Come see how we can utilize the Rules Engine within Windows Workflow Foundation to evaluate our rules and simplify our rules configuration. We will then encompass this functionality within a Windows Communication Foundation Service which will enable consumers to utilize the service.

Visit twincitiescodecamp.com to sign up!

Update: I’m having big issues with the host. Please hang in there while I take care of them.

The Twin Cities Give Camp site has been updated.

If you would like to volunteer, you can sign up on the volunteer page and if you or your company would like to sponsor the event, you can sign up on the sponsors page.

If you have any questions, please email us from the contact us page.

Side note: I have been having an intermittent problem with Grafffiti loading properly on the site. At times when you visit you will receive the graffiti cms error page. If you try to access the site again, it will go away. If you get an error, please let me know as I’m trying to sort it out with the host. Thanks!

I was on my favorite travel pricing site today and I was looking up how much flights were from MPLS to Des Moines. Now I'd probably never-ever fly to Des Moines because I believe its only about 3.5 hours away via car. But with gas prices these days you have to check it out. When I used to live in Phoenix, a group of friends and I would always go to Vegas every year. We drove a couple of times but we eventually found out that flying was actually cheaper (back then - 6-7 years ago). A round trip ticket would cost us 80 dollars. Talk about DEAL!!!!

 So, wondering if I could score the same for another short flight such as Des Moines would be awesome. 

 YEAH. RIGHT. 

 Look at this scree capture: 

Seriously. Over $700 dollars for a ticket? YOU GOTTA TO BE CRAZY! - or as the New Yorkers in the Bronx where I lived for awhile would say it "Yo dawg, dat price is banana's!"

Its apparent the airlines no longer have deals (at least in this case). If I do go, I'll be driving. :)

I’ve presented at code camps and given presentations to technical audiences and institutes and I will continue to do so. I have a passion for giving back to the community that has helped me become the what I am today. I’ve decided that I want to give back to the community even further. After doing some research to find someone (or a group) who might already be setting up a Give Camp I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t exist here in the Twin Cities.

Therefore, I’ve decided to start up the Twin Cities Give Camp (site not complete). The web site is www.twincitiesgivecamp.org.

I’ll be updating the site this week with all relevant info in regards to the Give Camp. No dates have been set, but as soon as we have one the site will be updated.

What is a Give Camp?

A Give Camp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new web site for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

…

At the Give Camp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at Give Camp, Stays at Give Camp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

Source

More in depth info can be found here: www.givecamp.org

Do you want to be a part of this awesome experience?

We are in need of volunteers, developers, designers, DBA’s, volunteers, Project Managers, Charities, Prizes, Giveaways, sponsors and more volunteers. If you would like to participate or sponsor this event, please let me know. I will update this blog as soon as www.twincitiesgivecamp.org is updated. I will be in contact with the local PMI, IIBA, and ISSA, AITP and local .NET User Groups.

More info to come soon!

DiscountASP just won. Argh! I wrote a long blog post (because I dont have access to Live Writer on this PC) and then clicked Publish and it logged me out. Dont understand what I'm talking about? Read on .. 

Unfortunately, what DiscountASP.NET does not tell you is that due to Community Server 2007’s large memory footprint (~100 megabytes with little to no activity), DiscountASP.NET has to recycle the application pool frequently, sometimes as often as every 5 minutes. The DiscountASP.NET policy is to recycle an individual website’s entire pool once it reaches a size of 100 megabytes.

Here are the consequences of being forced to recycle the application pool on a CS 2007 server:

* All logged-in users are logged out;
* any posts that you may have been writing will be lost if you try to press the submit button;
* the entire website is brought to a crawl with slow load times;
* and in essence it makes Community Server 2007 unusable.
Source - http://www.marketing-ninja.com/hosting/discountaspnet-and-community-server-do-not-mix-despite-what-discountaspnet-advertises/