Google Analytics

I have been using Google Analytics to monitor web traffic to my blog and website. Google Analytics anomalously tracks the number of visitors to your site along with where they are from and how many pages are viewed. It tracks what words on your site draws interest to the world outside, what browsers users use to access your site along with how they entered your site (from Google, direct or other means.

As you can see from the image above, the main page gives a very quick overview of your sites visitors. My favorite is the world map. As one would expect most of the traffic is from the greater Milwaukee area, since that is where I am from. But what is neat is to see that I have had visitors from South America, Australia, and Europe.

There are other tools, that are for web developers or marketers, but I haven't really used those tools. I am more interested in watching the growth of visits.

Google Analytics is a free offering from Google, and all it takes a a little JavaScript added to your main web page.

Patterns and Practice Software Factories

The consulting company I work for only does projects and we do all the work in our office. sometimes, people need to work on multiple projects at one time. A problem that arises is that from one project to the next, the solution infrastructure varies, sometime a lot and there is a cost to get the developer comfortable with the project. The cost is mainly in productivity hours. We have been talking about coming up with standard ways to do projects and from a very top level we have a good process, things like unit testing, coding standards, peer reviews, continuous builds, and what not. What we don't have is a good solution template or anything to enforce certain patterns we like to use as a project grows.

So in my spare time I have been trying to find a solution to this problem, at least from the DotNet side of our practice. I came across a four software factories offered at Patterns & Practice website. The software factories are Smart Client, Web Service, Mobile, and Web Client. These factories use the composite patten for UI loading. It also forces a MVC Pattern or what they call a MVP pattern for creating and developing forms and web pages. The factories are also very extensible and supports many different frameworks like for example NUnit, and the VSTS tests. You can use all the other application blocks with the solutions.

I will be posting more about the factories as I start using them more in my spare time. I do know that in the few little test apps I did the wiring of UI and passing of events between forms, controls and other objects is simple.

Can It Get Any Colder?

So let me start and say that it is cold outside. As I write this post it is -8 F and -26 F with wind chill. Even though I live in Wisconsin and we do get cold weather, this is beyond cold. Let me try and give you a feel for this.

First, if outside for a few minutes, coats freeze. By freeze I mean coats get stiff and while trying to move around there is fear you might crack your coat. If you have ever seen the experiment when you dip something in liquid nitrogen and the item freezes solid, and it makes it so brittle that the smallest shock would cause it to shatter. That is what I am talking about.

Second, car batteries become weaker. On Saturday I could not get my car to start. I got a neat gadget for Christmas that has a jumper cable system. So I tried to use it but it did not provide enough juice. I had to actually have someone come over and jump my car for real.

Finally, my furnace runs non stop. this is the one that bothers me most. I try to keep my gas and electric bill small, but this weather keeps my furnace running. I try to keep my house heated at 63 F, not to high, but my furnace runs non stop. all I think about is how much money I am wasting.

The solution would be for me to move somewhere warmer, but then I would just complain about how hot the sumer would be.

Liam Dawson

Yesterday around 11:00 am my second nephew Liam Dawson was born. He was 8lbs 2 ounces. Twenty-one inches long.

I went to see him yesterday and he has curly blond hair. Bright blue eyes. I will add some pictures once I get some.