Todo list

As always there is far to much stuff happening in the world.... I need a list!

Languages I want to learn (or at least learn more about):

• Erlang
• Boo
• IronPython/Ruby

Things I want to play with:

• VS 2008
• Cruisecontrol.net (I have never actually implemented it myself.. which is bad)

Stuff I have been playing with recently:
Oracle. Its a big beast and is really quite different to MS/MY/T SQL. But I can see why it is the dominant RDMS...
Things I Don't like about my Oracle experience:

• PL/Sql Developer by Allround Automations. I sucks and doesn't handler cut and paste functions properly (e.g white space characters it doesn't recognise breaks the code... why not just remove them?!?)
• Shit schema's are not just the domain of T-SQL... they are everywhere ;) hehehe

MonoRail. The original MVC web platform for Asp.net. Its pretty cool, i have just built my new site, www.FullStack.co.uk on it and managed to get it together very fast, including the learning curve. Will i continue to use it? personally i have never really had to many issues with Viewstate and PLC. I don't put a lot of logic in my code behind so don't get in to too much troubles there.

PostSharp: I like it. It is a cool little AOP IL weaver that made my logging stupidly easy. Was going to try to add security with it too, probably wont tho...

Every day i would spend at least 2 hours read technical content, but mostly articles blogs and forums. I really don't read enough books...So lately i have been catching up on my essentials list.

Books I have just read:
The Pragmatic Programmer. Its hard to believe this is almost 10 years old. Sure it has been revised and there are some old references to languages like small talk (as opposed to newer languages like c#), but this is as relevant today as it ever was. Thoroughly recommend it.

Head First Design Patterns: I really wish i read this before GoF and Fowler... it makes the whole process a lot easier. I must say i felt like a dick buying the book as it feel like a high school book, but it is well worth it... i did make up for by buying Slash's Bio and the Flight of the Conchords dvd... sweeet.

Books i want to get
Erlang and NUnit from the Pragmatic series. I unit test every day but i would like to see "How Correctly" I am doing it. The xUnit testing book just far to big... its like 900 pages, come on...

On a side note; well done to the ever growing Open Source guys* that are getting snatch up by M$. Its nice for them to finally get some financial reward and its good to see M$ backing the real drivers of the community.

*Specifically Rob from Subsonic and Alex from Base4, but there seems to be many others at the moment too