Blog entries for May 2009

So my blog software was pretty much fleshed out.  I could write posts, have tags, have a calendar of posts, an archive links.  Multiple blogs, mutliple blog writters per blog, File uploads, WYSIWYG text editing.  All in all I was pretty pleased. Now though I was starting to get into personalizing my blog with some controls that only I may care about.  Since I'd like to share this software with others and let them use it I thought it would be better if I made these features op

Okay so I had found a way to do MVC plugins, but it didn't work in my environment.  So now what do I do? Well I still wanted to work in the MVC framework somehow.  Maybe not for showing my plugin control, but I did want to somehow handle form submissions cleanly.  Mainly for administering my control (configuring it as neccessary).  So what did I do? Well I went back to the way I've done plugin architectures in the past.  I defined an interface that would get us

So I had my infrastructure in place for allowing plugins on this blog, now I wanted to add some sort of storage mechanism for those controls. My first thought was they could just connect to the database and add tables themselves, but there were a few things I didn't like about that. I wanted the blog site to just grab the plugin and be able to immediately use it.  However that would require allowing the control to add tables to the database.  Which means I'm writing code that uses a co

When I first launched this blog I found I was frequently getting the following error. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated du

Left 4 Dead is a new game by Valve Software.  The guys that brought us Half Life 1 & 2, Portal, and Steam.   I've actually had this game for a while and just haven't written something up about it. The premise of the game is that you and three others are trying to survice a zombie apocalypse.  How the zombies got there is essentially your Dawn of the Dead / Shaun of the Dead / World War Z sort of scenario.  The player and the other survivors have to slug the

AAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!  . . . . I'll post a more coherent opinion when I'm done gnashing my teeth.  

The Hanmadang!  What is a Hanmadang?  Well, honestly I don't know what the word means, but its an in house tournament at the Alpha Tae Kwon Do school where I take my Goju Ryu classes. Wait a minute I take Goju Ryu Karate classes at a Tae Kwon Do School?  Well yeah.  The chief instructor of the school, Andrew Rollinson (who also owns the school with his wife Michelle), is also studying a number of other martial arts and bringing them into his school.  So he is studying Go

So where were we.  At the annual Alpha Tae Kwon Do tournament I was the lone Goju student in a sea of Tae Kwon do.  My son had just finished up , and now it was my turn.  First up the forms.  For my form I decided to do Geki Sai Dai San.  I knew I wasn't going to have some of the flashy kicks that the TKD forms would have, but I have decent technique and power so I was hoping that would show through in the form.  On top of that the form has some elements that show o

So this past weekend I went to UFC 98 in Las Vegas.  I'm not a die hard fan of MMA, but I am definately a fan of the UFC .  I don't watch every MMA thing out there, but some friends and I usually take turns getting the UFC fights on a pretty regular basis.  I also usually try to watch the Ultimate Fighter competition whenever I get a chance. So when my wife told me that her brother was getting married in Vegas,  and it happened to be over the same weekend as UFC 98

So last week my wife and I went on our first trip to Las Vegas.  We've been wanting to go for a few years now, but for whatever reason we just never made it out there.  So we trekked out there on the Wednesday night before Memorial Day weekend and came back on Sunday.  Las Vegas is a really interesting town.  For example we got to our hotel, Treasure Island , and checked in at about 12:30 Vegas time.  Then we went out for a walk on the strip.  I have this thing wher