Category: Software Engineering
Using Lucene.NET for Searching PDFs
Note: This post was co-authored by Emily Douglas. For one of our recent projects, we developed a public-facing website that needed the ability to search through a large number of archived PDFs. This may sound trivial, but we had some unique needs and situations we had to work around (isn’t that always how it is):…
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Bauerwulf: The Unit Test Accelerator
The EliteForm team recently faced a tough problem, and perhaps you’ve experienced something similar. We’re currently amassing loads of athlete workout video for further refinement of our PowerTracker product. PowerTracker, in short, is a hardware/software solution that uses video to analyze an athlete’s form in real time at the rack. This provides never-before-seen athletic analysis….
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The Voodoo We Do
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein In the world of software development, there are always religious arguments being made as to which method is best. Most people agree that Agile-based methods are the most appropriate for software development, but we stop short of saying this is always true. I have…
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How to Think Like a Mathematician
During our work on the hardware-based, motion-tracking side of EliteForm, we started out in a heavy R&D mode. We went through a number of possible solutions and the process was prototype, prototype, prototype. Once our current technology passed our smoke tests, we needed to put it through several rigorous testing and validation cycles to see…
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Developing Reports for SQL Server Reporting Services
A common thread that I’ve noticed in several projects I’ve been on throughout my career is that reports usually come into play at the 11th hour and the engineering team has to draw straws to see who will go “into the unknown” of reporting. I think part of this is just the nature of an…
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Running a Service as an Application
Windows services are really cool, but they can be a little bit of a pain to work with. To debug a windows service, the typical model requires you to attach to the services process. This is incredibly annoying after you do it for the 10th time, but the good news is there’s an easy alternative….
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Load Testing in Visual Studio 2010
Have you ever wondered if your custom data access code is any more efficient than simply loading a DataTable? Not that I’d recommend using DataTables except for certain situations, but Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate makes it easy to load test your data access classes to determine performance. In order to test this out I created…
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Welcome to Don’t Panic Labs
Don’t Panic Labs is not your traditional work environment. You’re given a lot of freedom, but you’re also given a lot of responsibility, and that responsibility pretty much starts your first day in the office. No break-in periods here. Obviously this can sometimes be a bit overwhelming for the new employee. Being one of the…
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Book Review: Code by Charles Petzold
This summer we hosted 23 interns at the Don’t Panic Labs office. These interns were placed into four separate teams, with each team tasked to develop a product based around a specific need. Spencer Farley, who was a member of the Carnac team and is now a member of the Don’t Panic Labs team, shares…
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My Battle with…
This summer we are hosting 23 interns at the Don’t Panic Labs office. These interns are placed into four separate teams, with each team tasked to develop a product based around a specific need. Alec Johnston, a member of the Planhandler team, wrote this internal blog post based on his experiences in developing a product…
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