I'm not entirely sure yet what I'm going to do with the content on this blog. There's quite a few posts I surely want to keep around, but certainly not all of them. For now, I'm going to keep the blog up so everything stays available but after a while, I'm gonna shut it down. I might keep up some kind of static archive of my favorite posts, or I might just put them on GitHub in MarkDown format. If you have any suggestions on what I should do with it, I'd be happy to hear them.

I will remain active on Twitter and I plan to be more active on GitHub from now on. But the blogging thing ends here and now. I'd like to thank everyone for reading, especially the ones who've been around since the beginning. It's been an interesting ride for me, but it's time for something else

To everyone who's been reading regularly: thanks!

Many of the posts i've written have become irrelevant, useless or no longer consistent with how i think about things right now. And some of the posts are still important, though they too will sooner or later join the group of posts that ultimately don't matter anymore because they focused on specific technologies or approaches, all of which are sure to become outdated at some point in the future.

But these 7 posts that i selected are things i hope to still believe in 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now. Technical posts are temporal in nature, whereas i hope (and suspect) these posts will stand the test of time:

1. Start Believing In Yourself
2. Wanna Improve Your Life? Then DO Something About It!
3. Walk Out On Sources Of Negativity
4. Developers Shouldn’t Specialize
5. Favor Value Over Quality
6. If You Can’t Say Something Bad About It, You Don’t Know It Well Enough
7. You Need To Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

As you can see (unless you're reading this in your RSS reader), i've chosen an entirely new theme for the blog. The previous one wasn't actively supported anymore and it started to bore the hell out of me. This one is pretty different, but i like it. It's clean, simple and i don't think it's being used by any other tech blog

Another important change is that i've dropped the regular WordPress commenting system and finally switched to Disqus. There's nothing wrong with WordPress' commenting system but it is pretty basic and as of about 2 weeks ago, the majority of my server load came from filtering spam comments despite the CAPTCHA system i was forcing you to use. Needless to say, the ability to offer a lot more functionality to people who are willing to leave comments without having to bother them with some annoying CAPTCHA system, while at the same time offloading the burden of spam filtering entirely on 3rd party services was a no brainer

Also, no more ads. They're gone from the site as well as the RSS feed. Nobody wants to see those anyway and it's not like i need the extra pocket change so there's no reason to keep them around

But in one way, it was easy to build up that audience since i generally stayed close to one topic: .NET development. Lately though, i've been focusing on Ruby a lot which has led to some interesting things. First of all, some of my readers have complained about the complete lack of .NET related content lately. And at the same time, i've noticed increases in the subscriber count every time i publish Ruby-related posts. The thing is: i no longer want to restrict myself to a single topic or even community. I'm gonna write about Ruby occasionally, and there will still be .NET related posts from time to time as well. It all kinda depends on what i'm working with, and what piques my interest. It could pretty much go into any direction in the future. And some of my posts won't be directly related to any kind of technology, but will be targeted to software developers in general no matter what language you code in. And others will just be rants that i have to get off my chest or opinion-posts on whatever subject i want to touch on.

So, if you started following this blog because of the .NET posts that i used to write frequently, you might be disappointed with what's going to end up on this blog in the future. Then again, you might not be. And if you recently started following this blog because of the Ruby posts, you might be disappointed as well soon. But hey, you might not be. While this blog used to be predominantly about .NET, it no longer is. And even though there were quite a few Ruby posts recently, that doesn't mean that Ruby is going to be the most occurring topic on this blog either. It's not about any specific technology. It's about my journey through life as a software developer. And i'd rather not restrict the boundaries of that journey in any way.

As you can see, the numbers for the Belgians are far different than they are for each other country in that list. The number of pages they read each visit is way above the average. The average time they spend on this site is also much higher than most countries. And the percentage of new visitors and the bounce rate is a lot lower than what we see from other countries. That means that almost 4 out of 5 Belgians that visit this site have been here before, and keeping the total number of visits in mind and the fact that it has a much smaller population than the other countries in the top 7, they seem to keep coming back as well. And this isn't just an anomaly because the all-time stats for this blog show pretty much the same picture:

So that makes me wonder: what's up with these Belgians? And yes, i know that some of you are probably thinking: "well duh, it's because you're Belgian too!". But there are a couple of reasons why i don't think that me being from Belgium explains it:

• The Google Analytics plugin that i'm using does not count my own visits
• I do very, very little networking so it's not like i'm often in contact with a lot of Belgian developers to plug my blog
• I don't go to developer events to evangelize my ideas, in fact, i generally don't go to developer events
• I don't give talks or presentations, except for one that i did on NHibernate a year ago. And i don't see myself doing a lot of talks in the future either since i have no idea what i'd talk about.

So, it can't be because i've been pushing this blog among the Belgian developers. So what is it then? Is it because we Belgians are generally quite thorough when it comes to learning about stuff we like? Or are we just lazy and do we love to waste a lot of time online? Both are true to some degree . Either way, it's nice to see Belgium among the top of a list (even if it doesn't mean shit) that isn't related to female tennis, chocolate, beer, organized crime or fraud.

Seriously though, i do find this kind of stuff interesting so if you are Belgian (or are familiar with how Belgians are) and have some ideas on why those numbers are so different from other countries, please do share

Sorry, but you’re just talking.Where’s the code ?I mean you seem to have all the time in the world to just say things on your blog , but no time to put together a simple sample up.I seriously doubt you understand what you talk about.

As you can probably tell from my reaction, i got pretty pissed off. Normally, i don't let comments like that get to me. But in this case, i have been spending quite a bit of my personal time working on a sample and preparing the blog posts. I'm actually planning to spend quite a bit of my weekend on this (as i did last weekend), not to mention that i'm also gonna spend a couple of hours working on it during my day off tomorrow.

I'm not getting paid for any of this. In fact, i'm only getting shit for doing this. The handful of people who are looking at this because they're tired of the MSDN-way of developing things will appreciate it, but the vast majority of people who're gonna read it are going to complain because "it's too complicated!" or "i have to think too much!". Well, you know what? You're not the kind of developer i'm targeting anyway. If you stumble upon a post of mine about Silverlight or anything else that's hot in MSDN-land, you probably got here through a link-blog or a link on twitter. And in those cases, odds are pretty high that the way i think about software development and the way you think about it don't exactly match. And that's ok. I'll do what i wanna do in the way i feel it's right to do so, and i suggest you do the same. But pressuring me into backing up the stuff i say with code is not really gonna get you anything sooner. I'm still gonna do whatever it is that i'm gonna do in a time frame that suits me, not you.

And to top it all off, i just got the following reply from the same guy:

"I’ll just say this.

When you make a public statement , you better have some code ready to prove it."

Priceless, ain't it?

So... any tips from you twitter addicts on how to keep the signal-to-noise ratio down and how to make the whole experience as valuable as possible?

Top 10 All Time:

1. Career Advice For Young Developers
2. At This Point, I’d Prefer Java Developers Over .NET Developers
3. NHibernate Mapping Examples (pretty outdated by now though)
4. Build Your Own Data Access Layer Series
5. Upgrading To NHibernate 2.1 (this is what happens when people are too lazy to read exception messages)
6. A Reading Guide To Becoming A Better Developer
7. Data Access Layer With NHibernate
8. Managing Your NHibernate Sessions
9. Sending NHibernate Entities Over The WCF Wire (i wish i never wrote this)
10. Request Response Service Layer Series

Top 10 Of The Last 100:

1. Why You Shouldn't Expose Your Entities Through Your Services
2. Using NHibernate In Your Service Layer
3. Hey Microsoft, Our Databases Aren't Services!
4. Unit Testing An NHibernate Application
5. Avoiding Leaking Connections With NHibernate And TransactionScope
6. Agatha Vs NServiceBus
7. Do You Know What's Really Going On?
8. Dependency Injection Inversion Rejection
9. Real World Benefits From Loose Coupling, Inversion Of Control And Dependency Injection
10.  Virtual Method Performance Penalty

So… on to the next 100 i guess

Well, time for another short vacation. I'll be chilling and hanging out at the Côte d'Azur next week. I will have internet access but i'll probably make very little use of it. So, emails probably won't be replied to until July 13th and obviously, there won't be any posts either

See you in a week!

Once i got back from my trip i sorta took my time in catching up with the insane number of blog posts that i missed and i wasn’t really making a lot of time to write posts or to write code in general.  And i do have somewhat of a social life which for various reasons, took up more and more of my time after that trip.  That is the first reason why the posts started slowing down. 

And then i was presented with a huge opportunity which would involve me relocating to a different country and basically starting my life all over.  I gave that some serious thought, and it took me about 3 weeks to realize how great my life actually is.  I already have an absolutely great job which i love (even though i bitch a lot at work), and i’ve realized a few other things as well.  I’ve got a truly great group of friends that i wouldn’t trade for anything in the world and i’ve got a great family that i wouldn’t want to miss either, even though i don’t spend enough time with them.  In a way it’s sad that i didn’t realize that until i had to think about giving that all up (well, not entirely but definitely in a significant manner) but i’m very thankful for finally coming to that conclusion.  As you can probably imagine, having to think about something like that isn’t very conducive to blogging or writing code so again, i didn’t really make any time for that.    

A couple of weeks ago i made my final decision that i want to stay where i am and i’m pretty sure i’m not gonna regret that.  So i figured “alright, now i can get back to actually getting some work done!”.  And then something else happened.  I met a woman who goes way beyond everything i ever wanted from a woman.  She’s basically the coolest, and well, the hottest girl i’ve ever met and so far, things are working out pretty good.  Now, i’m the kind of guy who realizes that something like that can end anytime, but until that happens, i’d much rather prefer to spend my time on her than on writing blog posts or writing code.  I’m pretty sure you can all understand that

And last but not least, i no longer feel the pressure or the drive to keep writing good blog posts.  I’ve always been very focused on growing the audience of this blog and i’m very proud of what it has become.  Sure, it’s not the greatest or biggest .NET blog that you can find, but it is something respectable and that’s something that i’ve worked hard for to achieve.  But i no longer really care about it like i did in the past.  I’m always going to continue writing blog posts, but it’s only gonna happen when i actually feel like writing something.  I’m no longer gonna write posts just for the sake of keeping the stats up.  That might mean that there will be weeks of very low activity here.  It might also change again in the next couple of weeks or months.  I really don’t know and only time will tell i guess.   The one thing that i am sure of is that the posts that i am going to write in the future will be good

So anyways, that’s the story behind the lack of activity on this blog.  I’m sure most of you can understand, and well, i can’t really pretend to care about those who don’t

Well, i'm sort of busy right now... I've got some personal stuff going on, some interesting non-IT related stuff, and the little time i currently have left besides that is spent trying to catch up with a lack of sleep. Things should probably be back to normal in about a week or two though. Until then, i just wanna throw some teaser-blog-post-titles out there that should make their way to this blog soon:

• Red/Green/Refactor... Well, Not Really
• How I Currently Feel About Automated Testing
• Got Memory?!
• If You Can't Say Anything Bad About It, You Don't Know It Well Enough
• Don't Touch Production Data
• Isolation At Work Isn't Necessarily Bad

I'm actually looking forward to them myself :p

Ok, i'm back from my trip to New York. The picture above shows me and the 2 friends that joined me on the trip on top of the Rockefeller building. For those of you who have no idea what i look like (and i'm assuming that's most of you since i never put a picture of myself on this blog before), i'm the dude on the left (your left). The entire trip was simply fantastic... we did so much stuff that we often didn't remember what we did over 2 days ago without pulling out the digital cameras, but some of the highlights include:

• The statue of liberty... it's a bit cliche, but seriously, the level of detail on that statue is truly astonishing... the French really did a fantastic job on it (yea i said it )
• Going to a taping of David Letterman's Late Show... i was sorta hoping in advance that we could get in, but we really didn't plan on it. We went into the Ed Sullivan's theater asking for tickets, and luckily we were 'selected' (the fact that it was freezing and that this was the tourist low season obviously helped) to attend a taping a few days later.
• Brooklyn Dekker... anybody who knows me in real life knows i have a soft spot for good looking women, but when Brooklyn Dekker (the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover model) got on stage during the taping of the Late Show the entire audience kinda got silent for about 2 seconds.. she really looked that stunning.
• I'v been an NBA fan for the last 16 years or so... i finally got my first chance to see an NBA game in real life. Ok, it was the Kincks vs the Kings (2 of the worst teams right now) but it was still a great experience... and i was actually at Madison Square Garden! (if you don't know the significance of that, don't worry... only basketball fans will understand)
• My pancakes with strawberries and ice cream breakfast... yeah seriously, it was that good
• Me asking an NYPD officer holding an M16 politely if i could take a picture of him and answering "oh... ok then" when he said he didn't want me to take a picture of him
• Walking through Brooklyn during Snowmaggedon looking for Grimaldi's Pizzeria only to (finally) found it being closed.

Those were the highlights but pretty much every single moment of the trip was memorable and i truly hope that i never forget a single one of them. I took 1125 (according to iPhoto) pictures and they were definitely needed to remember everything that happened in such a short timespan. We went during the low-season and even then, New York is definitely worthy of visiting. The only thing you'll regret is that you either didnt' stay long enough, or that you didn't buy enough clothes (thank you oh horrible Dollar).

Once i got back to my country (Belgium for those that don't know), i was astonished to see how badly it was handling the less than one inch of snow after what i had just seen in Manhattan. The difference really is huge. I usually avoid politics on this blog as much as possible, but the way our government is handling things compared to how they're dealt with in New York in much worse weather conditions is truly saddening. Less than an inch of snow and the whole country seems to be at a stand still. And people wonder why i dont go out to vote (that's right... we are required to show up at elections but i refuse to show up because there really isn't even a single person who's worthy of a vote right now).

Anyways, i'm back and i'm working through the backlog of unread posts in Google Reader... there have been a couple of posts so far that might inspire a few posts but other than that, i'm lacking any kind of inspiration to write a real post at the moment so if you have any requests, now is the time to make them

To wrap up this post: it was great to be gone for a while, but it's great to be back as well

I'm not leaving until Saturday morning, so if you have some 'must-see' or 'must-do' tips about New York, bring em on!

(note: these numbers are obviously only from visits to this blog and are thus not representative of the entire internet (yet) etc…)

I started at the month before the first Chrome users were reported to give you an idea of Firefox’s score at that time.  Naturally, the people that come to this blog are into technology so it’s no wonder that Firefox is the dominant browser instead of IE.  Before Chrome entered the picture, nearly 70% of all visits to this blog in August 2008 were from Firefox users.  In its first month, Chrome immediately got about 8%, which i thought was pretty impressive.  Firefox’s numbers dropped below 50% for the first time less than a year later.  That’s a pretty big impact in a relatively short time.   And as you can see, Chrome usage has been growing a lot in the past 6 months ago, at the expense of both Firefox and IE.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Chrome catches up to Firefox in another 6 months.

I’m not fanatic about any browser (as long as i don’t have to use IE, right?)… i use Firefox for OS X at home, but i use Chrome at work.  I’m not really into the whole plugin/extension thing (except for Adblock obviously) so i’m not really ‘tied’ to a specific browser.  Now, some people are pretty fanatic about their browser so what i’m wondering is: what would it take for you to switch to another browser (no matter which one you use now)?  Are you hooked on extensions that you can’t go without in another browser?  What was the reason you picked your current browser and why are you sticking with it? Or is it all pretty much the same for you?  Do you frequently use multiple browsers?

In some weird way, i find that kinda stuff interesting so please do share

Occasionally i take a look at that virtual desktop and if i don’t seen any movement, off to their support area i go.

So i figured it was better to just add a CAPTCHA plugin (using WP reCAPTCHA) so commenters are required to fill in the CAPTCHA when they post a comment. If you're a frequent commenter and you don't like to fill in the CAPTCHA every time, then you can also register yourself on this site and then you'll never have to fill in the CAPTCHA (except for one during the registration process obviously).

If anyone notices any problems with this CAPTCHA plugin, please let me know

Keep improving Agatha. 

It hasn’t been long since i open-sourced it but i already consider it one of the best decisions i’ve made so far.  Most of it was written about 18 months ago, and it had been almost a year since any modifications were made to it before open-sourcing it.  Some new features have already been added to it, and there are some more cool new features coming up in the next 2 releases.  Hopefully, we (the people who work on it and the people who use it) can keep coming up with improvements.

I’d obviously like to see more people using it and increased acceptance in general, but that’s something that will take time and more effort, if it will ever happen that is.  If it doesn’t happen, then the people who did take a chance on it will at least get to benefit from the effort that will be put into it.

Get more involved with NHibernate again

My last commit for NHibernate dates back to August 19th.  Definitely not proud of that, but i certainly intend to get back to contributing actively.  While it’s not a very pleasant code-base to work with, i did find fixing issues for NH to be rather satisfying because you know you’re either helping a few people, or a hell of a lot of them depending on the impact of the bug.  I’d also love to clean up a lot of the query batching code because it is quite messy and repetitive.   If any of you tracks NHibernate’s development and you don’t see a commit from me for a while, feel free to bitch at me because of it

Increase acceptance of QuickNet

I’m starting to love QuickNet more and more.  In the first post i wrote about it i mentioned that i thought it was a revolutionary step in automated testing (at least for the .NET world) and i still stand by that statement.  I’d go as far as saying that if you don’t see the potential and the value of it, that i can’t help but question your willingness to improve the quality of your work in general.  I was actually very disappointed with the lack of feedback that i got on my last post about it, even though i specifically asked you to comment on it.  Obviously, i can’t expect everyone to leave comments, but there are quite a few of you who claim to be interested in automated testing and writing not only clean but also correct code so i was certainly surprised that a lot of those people didn’t respond to the questions i asked at the end of that post.  I’m pretty sure that once a big name blogger jumps on it, most of you will jump on the bandwagon as well.  Until that time comes, i’m going to continue writing about it and trying to get people interested in using it.  If you don’t look forward to those posts, you might want to unsubscribe from my feed right now

Keep blogging

It’s been a pretty successful year for this blog.  I plan to keep up the amount of effort i put into it, and i also want to continue building on some core principles that are pretty much the foundation of not only this blog, but also what i do and how i do it.  I want to keep learning.  I want to keep sharing knowledge and experience.  I want to keep offering my honest and open opinions, no matter how frank or blunt they may be at times or who they might rub the wrong way. I want to remain true to myself.  I will keep treating people the same, no matter how little or big their name is.  A good idea is a good idea and a bad idea is a bad idea and i will continue on treating them as such, no matter who or where it came from.  

My wish for you

I wish everyone the best for the following year, and i particularly wish for you to understand and be inspired by the following quote:

go farther, go further, go harder
is that not why we came?
and if not, then why bother?

Bonus points to whoever can name the author of that without googling it

Now, what i’m wondering is: do you, as the reader, prefer it that i sort of try to spread my posts a bit more? I know i sometimes find it annoying when a blogger posts too much in just a few days, and i already try to schedule my posts so that there are typically a couple of posts per week, and never more than one each day.  Then again, sometimes i really just want to publish as soon as its written, so that sometimes leads to a lot of posts in a short time span or even multiple posts per day.

So anyways, would love some feedback on this from you

Instead, i'd like to ask you for some feedback on what you'd like me to focus on in the next 100 posts. Are there any specific things you'd like me to cover? Is there any topic you'd like me to cover more? Is there any topic you'd like me to cover less? Basically, i want to hear from you what i can do to make you enjoy this blog more. Are there certain things that you'd like me to change when it comes to diversity of content, writing style, layout, whatever...?

I obviously can't make any promises, but i will try to consider your suggestions as much as possible