http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley dynamic typeof() guy Wed, 14 May 2008 15:30:13 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yesterday I received my (complimentary) copy of Douglas Crockford's new book Javascript: The Good Parts. I read it cover-to-cover in a couple of hours. I'm sure I will re-read it cover-to-cover multiple times before I manage to absorb the full import of much of it. This book is not ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/05/14/javascript-the-good-parts/ In passing during a rant about the trajectory of ethics in the field of technical book publishing, Jem Matzan accuses the book Enterprise Ajax of being simply a vehicle to shill Nitobi, the company founded by the authors. No supporting commentary or links, just a broadside blow, in ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/05/09/unsupported-sniping-from-the-jem-report/ Michael O'Connor Clarke wishes himself a happy seventh blogday, having been blogging since March 1st, 2001. I'm only a day younger, having stumbled into the light on March 2nd of that same year. Things have evolved considerably since then and I'm blogging a lot less now, but it's quite a milestone all ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/03/03/maybe-i-should-find-a-grayer-theme/ After a long stretch of successfully avoiding getting too involved with development on a Microsoft platform, I find myself taking on the day-to-day development, debugging and support of some IIS/.NET-based applications. The apps themselves are well designed, I'm content enough to deal with C# and .NET in the ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/02/01/not-nearly-enough-rope-but-im-almost-ready-to-hang-myself/ The state of the art of web development has taken a leap forward recently with the announcement of Jaxer, Aptana's new Javascript-on-the-server environment which allows you to write a web app as a single item, without having to devote much time and brainpower towards most of the distinction between what ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/01/23/it-all-comes-together-with-jaxer/ I was at the TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Night last night. It was a great gathering, and I was treated very well by the hosts - they even brought in Guinness for me! The soiree was at the new TSOT offices in downtown Toronto, on the 11th floor at 151 Bloor ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/01/09/my-home-workspace/ Just a reminder that next Monday, Jan 14, 2008 at 7pm, the first Toronto Ajax Pub Nite is happening. See http://www.ajaxcamp.org for details. http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2008/01/09/ajax-pub-nite-reminder/ Ajax Pub Nite is coming to Toronto. We always find people at tech gatherings who are interested in talking about Ajax. We decided to start a regular Ajax Pub Nite to see where it goes. I've registered AjaxCamp.org on the chance that it grows into something bigger. The ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2007/12/05/first-toronto-ajax-pub-nite-mon-jan-14-2008/ I have set up two new systems lately for friends and family. Each was a brand new low-end base Intel system with a current processor of decent speed, 1Gig RAM and a large hard drive. Each came with Windows Vista Basic pre-installed with a number of OEM utilities ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2007/11/30/bundled-crap-is-a-big-part-of-vistas-downfall/ Security expert Eldon Sprickerhoff of eSentire whispers to me from the shadows that Toronto will be the scene for a major conference on security in November. SecTor has a stunning lineup of speakers from the cream of the security community - representing hackers, law enforcement, vendors, organizations and ... http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2007/10/30/security-education-conference-toronto-nov-2007/