100th post. I want to thanks everyone who came visiting me regularly. Over the last year, the amount of visits grew each weeks. I remember when I got the 100 visits mark. Now I am at an average of 120 visits per day with a day of 199 visits. As you can see below, it’s pretty clear where the weekend is.

Here is a gift for you all !!! (I think he had a lot of spare time …) Enjoy!

Here is the bests screencasts I have watched this week :

Monorail Quickly: A screencast made by Joey Beninghove (joeyDotNet). I have quite enjoyed this one. He has done a template project for quickly starting up a solution for Monorail.

A series of screencasts from colinramsay.co.uk :

• Getting Started With Monorail - Part 1
• Getting Started With Monorail - Part 2
• Getting Started With Monorail - Part 3
• Getting Started With Monorail - Part 4
• Getting Started With Monorail - Part 5
• HotSwap for Monorail in action
• ExtJS (a grid)

A ton of new screencasts about ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions.

And I wish you a merry Christmas!

Things are finally getting smoothly. I have been really busy with the construction of the new house and haven’t been able to get up to speed with my goals. I am a the second book of 12, and the challenge end in two months. There is some good news at least, I am now able to concentrate fully on my objectives. But I have reduced the number of books to 4…

This is the new list :

• Head First Design Patterns (Head First) (Review)
• Object Thinking (DV-Microsoft Professional)
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices

I am also on the way of regaining my health back. At least 15 minutes a day of workout.

And finally, for the small project, I am working really hard on this. I am planning something real soon.

This is the second time I post the bookmarks that helped me the most. Enjoy!

• Jay’s TDD QuickStart, and the underlying problems he stumbled into
• Just some little fundamental things to help you CodeBetter
• Some mouseless computing tips/tools
• Testing Events Using Anonymous Methods
• Let’s Play Planning Poker!

I’m almost through my first 3 books, Head First Design Patterns, Windows Forms 2.0 and CLR via C#. I am not reading as much as I would want because of the construction of my new house, but starting Monday in 2 weeks I should be back on track with a more normal life (I really hope so).

I have a huge list of feeds and sometime there is some really long post and some excellent links. And I don’t always have the time to go through this. So I hit Ctrl-D to place it in my bookmarks. So today I had some time left to clean this all up. So, here is all the bookmark that will stay bookmark.

This one is the most visited by me in the last month. Lot of useful tips.

• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog

147 Tips to be better (which happens to be the theme of my blog).

• The Frugality Cheat Sheet: 147 Tiny Tips to Live Healthier, Happier, Greener and Better

When you don’t know what to listen.

• Top 500 Best Songs Ever

Tim Ferriss offers you this OCD.

• 5 Pen Tricks from Japan — Uh oh…

I have ordered the book today.

• Double your reading rate

Finally someone answers them!

• Malfunctioning Vote-Counting Machines Are ALWAYS A Sign Of Corruption

And at last, a developer link.

• CodeKata

Let me know if you enjoy this kind of posts. Good day!

I will soon move to my new house and I got a 13×13 room for my office. There is no windows, but I have a really big patio door. I will almost never receive any client and I want it to be a productive and fun place. Do you have any advice for me?

I stopped completely drinking energy drink. Too much harmful effect. I also stopped drinking carbonated beverage a long time ago. For the rest I must admit it’s a lot more difficult than I thought but I’m optimist. Not a single pound lost, but I want to start slowly by modifying my bad habits one by one.

As for my reading, I have 200 pages of Windows Forms 2.0 and 150 pages of CLR via C#. I’m enjoying this last one. I have learn a lot on the content of a DLL. As for the Windows Forms 2.0 book, I must admit that the interest is not there. I am not learning anything new and I feel that I’m studying for an exam. But there is some interesting chapter coming on next.

Some time ago, I listened a podcast from Scott Hanselman which discussed about how to be a better developer in 6 months. Since I’m a huge fan of motivation blog and personal improvement, this subject tickled me almost everyday. And now, I am ready to announce my plan which is ending at the end of february.

I’m will read a book every 2 weeks and do a review for each of them, for a total of 12 books. Here is the list I thoroughly choosed :

1. Windows Forms 2.0 Programming (Since this is what I am doing, maybe I can learn a few tips and tricks)
2. CLR via C#, Second Edition
3. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
4. CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition
5. Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET
6. Object Thinking (Reading it again…)
7. Code Complete (Already read, but very informative)
8. Head First : Design Pattern (So much images)
9. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition
10. Beyond Code
11. The Algorithm Design Manual
12. Rapid Development

Then, I will regain my health back by doing exercise every day and try my best to eat healthy food. I want at least to loose 10 pounds.

I want to finalize and distribute a little home project I made to track weight lost, track food consumption and can be used as a journal tool.

And I need to give credit where it’s due. First of all, the guy who started it all : Justice Gray. I have also based my list of books on his because he seems to know a lot and he probably choose some really good books. I also want to thank Scott Hanselman (very very great blog) for making a podcast on this subject.

If you have been following my blog since the beginning, you probably know about Tower Defense Games. This is a real time killer. I have lost a lot of my free time just to see if I can get a level higher. Then I have turned to simple solution like the LifeHacker’s Invisibility Cloak which is really great. It blocks web site that you have added to this GreaseMonkey script. But another alternative that is simpler to use is the LeechBlock Firefox Add-On. With this one, you can’t deactivate it, if you have decided to use it. So it will really help I think .

Day 3 completed and I think I’m seeing progress. Right now, I’m completing 3 series of 10 push-ups on my knees. After day 10, I’m going to give a try without my knees.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see this previous post : 30 Day Trial : Push-Up!

Feel free to post any comment with some sort of 30 day trial to get a new habit.

Do you remember Sam & Max, Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle (Dott!)? ScummVM allow you to replay these kind of point and click adventure games. You only need to have the data file for them and you are ready to go. There are also different port: Nintendo DS, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, etc… I think I’m gonna give it a try on the DS as soon as I have all the component. I would really like to play Monkey Island on the bus.

ScummVM is the winner of the Best Project for Gamers award on the SourceForge 2007 Community Choice Awards.

Good news, I will see progress! Since I was not able to do a full one. I will probably do them on my knees for the next couple of days. I forgot to mention how much I will do each time. It’s simple, 3 series of the maximum I can do. I hope to be able to do at least 20 at the end of the trial.

Following the idea of a 30 day trial from Steve Pavlina’s blog to start a new habit, I have decided to give it a try with something I wanted to do for a long time, improving my health. The trial I want to do is doing push up everyday for 30 day without any days off. It does not seem too hard and will be a good candidate to this test.

So tomorrow will the first day and I have put a widget in the side bar to keep you informed of my progress.

But if you want to know why I do this commitment on my blog, you need to check this Web Worker Daily post which is all about being more productive with a blog.

How will I do my push-up ?

As shown on eHow : How to do a proper push-up.

The Cirque Du Soleil has just launched a new show : Kooza. If you’ve never seen them before, this is the one who will make you purchase another ticket.

It was fantastic!! Unbelievable! You can’t just imagine how it was. You can’t imagine just in seeing the video. You need to be there. And if you happen to have seen it, yes it’s arranged (you know what I mean).