Fun Friday
History of fun friday (and creative thursday)
Last year (2007), I started making my personal skill building more formal. Google
allows developers one free day a week to pursue their own ideas. I'm not so clever
to think I've got great ideas that need pursuing, but I do know that I needed time
to concentrate on writing better code, using current best practices and investigate
the use of advanced techniques (like SQL Server user defined functions or
Reflection to rewrite URL's). I picked Thursday, decided to stay at home and the
results have been encouraging. Valerie's schedule also sets Thursday aside for training.
We're successful about 2/3's of the time.
What did I work on?: Shared Google Map
I'm better when I work on projects. Just for fun, I tried to write a shared Google
Map. The idea was simple. Multiple people on the web could connect to a website and
share the map. One person at a time (the editor) would be allowed to move
(pan, change map types, zoom) or add
overlays (markers, polylines, polygons, etc) and the changes would be propagated to
the other participants (the viewers). It actually worked. Sort of like kindergarten
when you had to have the stick to talk. The page used by the viewers were on a refresh
cycle so they updated every 10-15 seconds. With hands-off the keyboard,
they watch the map change and move. The design was horrible; the idea was very
interesting. I learned a lot about C#, stored procedures,
web services and the complexity of Google map state.
What else did I work on?
SQL Server a lot; Scott Guthrie's Blog; JavaScript (following suggestions from
Google that JavaScript function closures were important); and more...
Fun Friday
Fun Friday meetings were a time to share what we had learned on
Creative Thursdays. We're making this meeting public and anyone
who can deal with us and our office is welcome.
After a couple of public Fun Friday's, we decided it needed to more
structured. It was too loose and unorganized, so we've put some
structure on it. Our concentration will be on:
- Sql Server 2008 Spatial
- C# in Visual Studio 2008 (LINQ for example)
- Tile Cache creation and management
- Google Map blog and to begin creating custom overlays
Skill Building...
Skill building. Training. Learning. Whatever you want to call it,
you know you have to do it. It can (or should) be fun and stimulating.
...but...
Your friends, your kids, your parents, your boss and maybe even
your coworkers might not be very supportive. Come join us one Friday morning.
If your interests match ours, you should feel at home. If not, you're not obligated
to stay or come back! To start 2008, here's our list.
SQL Server 2008 geometry data type and associated spatial functions
Visual Studio 2008 changes in C# including LINQ (language integrated query)
Building and managing tile caches
Google website Maps blog and creating custom overlays.
where we work...