Monthly Archives: January 2006

Podcast interviews tell a bigger story than most blogs

Posted on January 29, 2006 by Todd Huss

I just received my first iPod from Amazon the other day and have been playing with it a little here and there. Having music to go is great but I’m really enjoying listening to podcasts! Just as blogs have become … Continue reading →

Posted in Software Engineering, Web | 6 Comments

Well formed validation of XHTML pages

Posted on January 28, 2006 by Todd Huss

Validating XHTML pages is an interesting subject because no high traffic site I’ve ever tried it on actually successfully validates XHTML against a W3C validator. Most folks I know take it for granted that it’s unrealistic to write large sites … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Software Engineering, Web | 1 Comment

More powerful database constraints with regular expressions

Posted on January 26, 2006 by Todd Huss

Is it just me or do you agree that we should be able to easily apply regular expression constraints to a column in a table without writing a stored procedure? For example if I want to guarantee that a varchar … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, Software Engineering, Systems Administration | Comments Off

Behind Closed Doors

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Todd Huss

A great book I read recently from the Pragmatic Programmers is Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is either a manager or executive or aspiring to some form of a team … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Management | Comments Off

Apple’s PR genius

Posted on January 14, 2006 by Todd Huss

I don’t know what kind of koolaid Apple puts in their PR but it’s working on me! When they announced the Intel MacBook Pro it took all my will power not to drop 3 G’s on a pre-order the minute … Continue reading →

Posted in Desktop | Comments Off

The time has come to upgrade to MySQL 5

Posted on January 13, 2006 by Todd Huss

We’ve finally hit the point at work where we’re ready to upgrade from MySQL 4.0 to 5. Data integrity has been a problem since I started at this job. Part of the reason is that MySQL 4.0 has an odd … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, Software Engineering, Systems Administration | Comments Off

SMART objectives in moderation please

Posted on January 12, 2006 by Todd Huss

As a technology manager a big part of what I do is trying to help people do their jobs well. That includes removing obstacles, being an advocate when there is a problem, making sure the team is operating efficiently, ensuring … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Management, Software Engineering | Comments Off

SEO Toolbox

Posted on January 9, 2006 by Todd Huss

At work when we design a new page that we hope to drive people to via search engines we often consult with our search engine consultant to ensure we’ve thought through the page design and that the HTML is up … Continue reading →

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | Comments Off

Google Analytics, if you’re not using it you should be

Posted on January 9, 2006 by Todd Huss

I’ve been using Google Analytics for about a month to track 4 of my sites (and more recently this one as well) and I am impressed! The key (in my mind) to Google Analytics and other high end commerical solutions … Continue reading →

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Systems Administration, Web | 4 Comments

Blogging software

Posted on January 7, 2006 by Todd Huss

In moving from my old blog at JRoller to one on my domain I had to choose which blogging engine to use. After evaluating a number of systems such as Movable Type, Typo, Blogger with sftp, etc… I ended up … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems Administration, Web | 9 Comments