For years I've been aware of DotNetKicks (I believe the stream of consciousness at the time was, "Jeepers,  this guy's put all this effort into a blog post, and someone's kicked him. Oh, it's a good thing. Oh, this site aggregates .net related links, and spreads those that are popular. That's cool!")

I only really got into it recently (shamefacedly, most likely since I started coveting those kicks as a blogger myself) and I must confess it's a struggle to keep up. What with the blog roll, the mailing lists I monitor, occasional forum posting, required daily research, links sent around the office, having more required reading so well shared via DNK can be overwhelming. Especially considering I've got to get some actual work in too.

Keeping up to date with trends and continuous improvement is an essential part of my job, so I make the time for most of it. I do sometimes wish I'd chosen a less progressive profession, though. Something like Phrenology, those guys haven't had any advances for ages...

The nifty links BlogEngine.NET had by default (note to self: one of these days I must customise this thing further) exposed me to DZone ("Oh great, more fresh links for developers"), previously unknown to me probably because they don't do trackbacks. DZone is awesome, the most polished of interfaces, and a great, wide variety of content. You can even be a bitch, and vote down. Nice.

Then today for the first time I noticed some other trackbacks appearing in blogs I read. Suddenly I noticed that people were being voted (great) on the Web Development Community, and linked on DotNetLinks. Not sure how long they've been around, but they're new to me.

Oh my. Come on guys, some of us are desperately trying to do some work over here :)

In the meantime though, I think I'll publish this to all those sites I've mentioned. Maybe I'll even discover some more...

Here in sunny South Africa we're also gearing up for elections. Granted, not quite with the international significance as those over in the US, but it could be argued that my local government is just as likely to affect my day to day existence.

I'm obviously registered as a voter, but I wanted to check on Friday where, having recently moved district. Conveniently our local Independent Electoral Commission has a site you can enter your details, and check your registration status. I popped on over, and got this message:

I haven't seen that for quite some time. Brought me right back to the turn of the millennium. It's clearly been updated recently (notice the mention of Chrome), but hell's teeth. I luckily use windows and have the option of IE (in fairness, they do mention IE 4 and greater, so in theory some adventurous mac users could have a go at it). But we're in a country whose government has openly embraced open source software. We're the birthplace and oftentimes home of he who is called Mark, arguably the one most likely to take Linux to the masses.

I took a look at the output html, and, in and amongst all the scary ASP.NET-and-Web-Forms-Designer-bastard-child HTML I think I found the reason non-IE browsers are not supported, called on load of the body:

<script language="vbscript"> 

Sub ShowMsg()

    if len(trim("")) > 1 then 

        msgbox("")

    end if 

End sub 

</script>

Now I'm no expert in vbscript (I missed that bus, and its route seems to have been cancelled), but my powers of deduction tell me that this one doesn't do much. Did anyone think to check the output html? Did anyone peruse the code that resulted in this? Perhaps a code review is too much to ask for, but having a developer on the team who leaves this in all the way to production is more a liability than an asset.

Come on guys, sort it out. This is important. I'm happy to lend a hand - drop me a line, I'll happily donate a few hours a week.

I subscribe to Tim Ferris's blog for a fresh perspective and different read to my usual development related blogs. He writes on a variety of topics, summarised, I suppose, to living the best life you can with the short time you have allotted. He's the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and has often had me questioning the value of the traditional work environment, and the games we play therein.

His most recent post (in fairness a cross-post, I didn't bother finding the source) is great. In summary, it quotes Andrew Lahde's (a hedge fund manager) farewell letter, calling it quits after reaping the rewards of the current financial 'crisis' (in which he reaped an 866% return in one year).

I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.