I’m just here to post a note on awareness and familiarization of GV site. I’m sure some of you have already heard about this great news source site – Global Voices Online. In case if you haven’t, here is abit of info.

Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

More info check out the FAQs section.

You may or may not notice that authors and editors from GV has been aggregating your sites and occasionally featuring/linking to your interesting posts. Those who have wordpress blogs will notice it quicker than those of blogger as there is a link tracking feature WP provides to detect the back links frequently. Ofcos’ you can always check Technorati for back-linking and tracking conversations.

GV is very search engines friendly site. The post published there will be on google search hit within an hour or so. That means, your link will get a bit of search branches and link bites. GV is also an internationally well known center for collecting news hence whatever featured on the site will reach to a vast medium of global readers.
At the moment, my regions of interest are:

East Asia (rather South East Asia) – Myanmar
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Oceania – Fiji
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Global Voices Online provides “RSS feeds” of all its content as it is posted to Country, Region and Topic sections.

Here is a list of feeds they roll for each region. [ GV feeds on Bloglines ]

I guess they haven’t updated the list for quite sometime now cos’ it is an old, incomplete compilation. They got only a few Myanmar feeds that time and no feed from Fiji in there. But ofcos each regional author has his own feed list. I have my own compilation for Myanmar blogs and also quite a few Fiji feeds. Due to last year coup in Fiji, many political blogs bloom up along with a few personal blogs. There is a good possibility of more Fiji blogs to come as awareness of blogging has been spreading through media – newspaper, forums, social networking and among youth groups.

The main difference between Myanmar and Fiji blogosphere is that, Fiji blogs are excelled in English; almost all of them post in English language with a few exceptions of Fijian language blogs. Where else for Myanmar blogosphere, a lot of new blogs emerge in Myanmar language and also some of the formerly English blogs are now transformed into native language blogs. Each has its own pros and cons; I won’t go farther into that.

Anyways, GV is starting to get interested in Fiji and South Pacific blogosphere as well as Myanmar Blogs. So if you find any interesting blogs/news from these regions especially from Myanmar, just give me a shout. The world is listening, so speak up your voices.

Alrite it’s very sleepy, sneaky, slimy, stupid kind of gloomy weather here at Suva today, plus it’s Friday evening so I’m getting bored typing this up. That’s all folks!

Oh Lunchers, your Lunch in Suva blog has already been noticed; how about that huh?

I’m wondering…

• I’m wondering, asp.net 2.0 website project does not create project file and .dll file and where all those code-behinds compiled into?
• I’m wondering, if we are to deploy it, do we only deploy .aspx and .ascx (front-end) files or have to include code-behind files as well?
• I’m wondering, why .pdb files are also included when you add project references to the website project.
• I’m wondering, why some referenced .dll creates .xml files as well.
• I’m wondering, do we need to add those .pdb and .xml along with referenced .dll in the deployment.
• I’m wondering, the main difference between asp.net 2.0 web application project and web site project.

And I’m still wondering…

Crazy Egg is yet another web statistic tracking service. It displays in 3 formats:

• Overlay – % clicks, referal links
• List – view a full summary of raw clicks
• Heat Map – shows the most click areas on the page.

There are 3 paid plans and a free plan. A free account is ideal for a small personal site such as blog to track the visitor stats. Ofcos, there is a limit of 5,000 visit/month, 4 pages and 4 screenshots archive for the free plan. Very neat interfaces so you can consider using it for your blog stats tracking.

Whenever people ask for my job title, I have to stop and think for a while. I am not sure what exactly my job title is. I got a few documents saying different job titles for me. One as Analyst Programmer, another as Web developer and yet another as Software Engineer. Since I prefer working with webforms than winforms, I answer myself as a webdeveloper. What exactly am I? I’m still figuring out. May be I’m just a “Developer” among millions of “Developers”. Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers

Comparison between LLBLGen Pro and CodeSmith tools. I’m very new to both so the following points might be completely wrong. So correct me please and do fill in more.

# References:

# Debate: O/R Mapping or Code Generation : Lots of discussion going on there in the reply threads.
# Your Favorite O/R Mapper? : A discussion on O/R Mappers
# CodeSmith Rocks! | When code generation goes bad…
# LLBLGenPro vs CodeSmith w/ .netTiers

What is O/R Mapper?

O/R Mapper (Object-Relational Mappers) is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems in databases and Object Oriented Programming languages. (# Ref)

What does it do?

The generated code from the O/R Mapper handles all of the steps that you would normally have to code yourself, saving you from having to:

• Find the database server.
• Log in and open a connection to the database server.
• Select the particular database containing the information you want.
• Find the correct table.
• Find the correct row.
• Read all the values for that row.
• Convert every type of value from its SQL data type into the .NET data type while checking and handling the possibility of a null value.
• Present those values in a strongly-typed format, so the consumer knows exactly what kind of object to expect (string, integer, array, etc.) and there are no surprises at run-time.
• Create a container to temporarily hold the values while they are being modified.
• Retrieve data from another row in a related table.
• Manage which values have changed and make appropriate INSERT’s, UPDATE’s, and DELETE’s in the appropriate tables in the database to reflect those changes.
• Close the connection.

What is LLBLGen Pro

LLBLGen Pro is a complete O/R mapper and data-access tier generator for .NET. It generates a data-access tier and business façade/support tier (in C# or VB.NET), using an existing database schema set. The generated .NET code is provided as a Visual Studio.NET project that can be added to a solution or compiled separately. (# Ref + More Info)

LLBLGen Pro Features

A key feature in LLBLGen Pro is dynamically-generated SQL. When retrieving or manipulating data in a database, the SQL script — the code understood by the database — is generated at run-time based off the requested information and dirty flags in each entity’s fields. This enables a generic save entity function on the Data Access Tier to produce different and optimized SQL code each time it is called, optimizing bandwidth usage and database load. (# Ref)

• LLBLGen Pro will completely auto-generate the data access layer. You do not need to do any hand-coding in this layer
• LLBLGen Pro will optionally generate a business logic layer shell for you to get started with your business layer. You do not have to understand the intricacies of inheritance and making custom classes to take advantage of business logic classes; in LLBLGen Pro these classes are intuitively organized, powerful, and infinitely extendable.
• LLBLGen Pro collections and entity objects are bindable, making them extremely easy to add to .NET controls. This can reduce the size of your UI layer.
• Changing the database application and the data access layer without affecting the business logiv and UI layers is actually possible with LLBLGen Pro. If you migrated your database schema and stored procedures to a new database application, refraned from using any database-specific features and your schema matched exactly, you could actually re-generate your LLBLGen Pro data access layer and not make any other changes to your application.

# Ref: Rapic CSharp Windows Development. pp. 17

LLBLGen Pro Objects

• Entities: Every “Row” becomes an “Entity”
• Collections: Every “Table” becomes an “EntityCollection”. Collection classes eliminate the need for DataTable objects and are both strongly typed and bindable.
• Entity relationships: Build into each entity are all relationships in the DB involving that table. You can either get a single entity or an entity collection depending on the type of relationship.
• Typed views: Views in the DB can be wrapped as strongly-typed DataTable. Typed views are read-only; new LLBLGen Pro allows you to add a view from the database as an entity as well as a typed view.
• Typed Lists: Typed lists are the only objects created by LLBLGen Pro that do not correspond one-to-one with DB objects. It’s handy when you need very specific information that does not necessarily correspond to a single table or entity or you only want to grab a subset of information for a given set of table.
• Storedprocedures caller classes: Storedproc that you select will be wrapped in a layer of code. While the parameters of the stored procedures are strongly-typed, the result set is still an untyped DataSet.

Project Types: SelfServicing Vs. Adapter

There are two types of LLBLGen Pro Projects namely – SelfServicing and Adapter.
# In SelfServicing template group, entity objects are responsible for their own persistence (saving their own changes to DB).
# The entity class itself contains logic to know which fields were updated and where to find the database.
# Lazy Loading is useful cos’ it abstracts the specific DB call from the upper layers of code.
# Adapter template group: uses an object called a DataAccessAdapter to interact with DB
# SelfServicing: bundles persistence inside entity objects
# Allows data to load itself automoatically as it is needed without explicit commands.

I got this through my contact form last night. It’s called Blog to America, a site where you send a letter to America. It’s an interesting concept they are starting. They gather letters from all over the world about America. You can read and discuss about other people letters as well. The site is pretty new and there is no letter from Fiji or Myanmar yet. If you have anything to say about America, just submit a letter there and it will be known to the world. So, be the first to send a letter yarr.

Blog to America is a site where individuals from around the world post their opinions on the United States in the form of letters and comments.

Here is the email I got from them. It explains abit about their site. To know more about Blog to America, visit the site here.

Dear May,
My name is Yosei and I discovered your blog while browsing through international sites on the Bloglines website. I am one of the founders of a new site called Blog to America. I had a chance to read through your blog and I think your unique Burmese/Fiji perspective would be a great addition to our site. Our goal is to find individuals like yourself to help increase global awareness and create a greater understanding of the way the United States is viewed across the world. Our site allows people to write a letter addressed to the United States telling the world how they feel about any and all topics relating to the U.S.

If you are interested in writing a letter to the United States or simply interested in reading letters written by others please visit our site at www.blogtoamerica.org

Also, if you are interested in exchanging links, please send us an email with the URL you would like us to post. We would love to feature your site on our blog.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to reading your letter.

Sincerely,

Yosei

Alrite I’m just spreading the word. Now…what do I have to say to America…