Events

Here is the list of topics I wrote about for the 2019 Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the topic of music theory: A is for A (April 1) B is for Bass (April 2) C is for Clef (April 3) D is for Deceptive Cadence (April 4) E is for "Ethnic" Sixth Chord (April 5) F is for Fugue (April 6) G is for Gregorian Chant (April 8) H is for Harmony (April 9) I is for Interval (April 10) J is for Jazz (April 11) K is for Key (April 12) L is for Legato (April 13) M is for Modes (April 15) N is for Notation (April 16) O is...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2019 3 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 29th 07:19 16:32 9:13 27 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:00 9:51 5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:11 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:50 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:39 11:09 9 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 14th Earliest sunset until Oct 29th 06:13 17:51 11:37 10 Mar Daylight saving time...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2018 3 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:21 20:30 15:09 16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:54 9 Aug 8pm sunset 05:53 20:00 14:06 16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:50 13:49 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:30 13:16 14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:02 12:32 16 Sep 7pm sunset 06:32 18:59 12:26 22 Sep Equinox, 21:54 CDT 06:39 18:48 12:09 25 Sep 12-hour...

Here's the complete list of topics in the Daily Parker's 2018 Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the theme "Programming in C#": A is for Assembly (April 1) B is for BASIC (April 2) C is for Common Language Runtime (April 3) D is for Database (April 4) E is for Encapsulation (April 5) F is for F# (April 6) G is for Generics (April 7) H is for Human Factors (April 9) I is for Interface (April 10) J is for JetBrains (April 11) K is for Key-Value Pairs (April 12) L is for LINQ (April 13) M is for Method (April...

Here's the complete list of topics in the Daily Parker's 2018 Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the theme "Programming in C#": A is for Assembly (April 1) B is for BASIC (April 2) C is for Common Language Runtime (April 3) D is for Database (April 4) E is for Encapsulation (April 5) F is for F# (April 6) G is for Generics (April 7) H is for Human Factors (April 9) I is for Interface (April 10) J is for JetBrains (April 11) K is for Key-Value Pairs (April 12) L is for LINQ (April 13) M is for Method (April...

Today is the last day of the 2018 Blogging A-to-Z challenge. Today's topic: Nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Null. The concept of "zero" only made it into Western mathematics just a few centuries ago, and still has yet to make it into many developers' brains. The problem arises in particular when dealing with arrays, and unexpected nulls. In C#, arrays are zero-based. An array's first element appears at position 0: var things = new[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; Console.WriteLine(things[1]); // -> 2 This causes no end...

I should have posted day 25 of the Blogging A-to-Z challenge. yesterday, but life happened, as it has a lot this month. I'm looking forward to June when I might not have the over-scheduling I've experienced since mid-March. We'll see. So it's appropriate that today's topic involves one of the things most programmers get wrong: dates and times. And we can start 20 years ago when the world was young... A serious problem loomed in the software world in the late 1990s: programmers, starting as far back as...

Welcome to the antepenultimate day (i.e., the 24th) of the Blogging A-to-Z challenge. Today we'll look at how communicating between foreign systems has evolved over time, leaving us with two principal formats for information interchange: eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Back in the day, even before I started writing software, computer systems talked to each other using specific protocols. Memory, tape (!) and other storage, and communications had significant costs...

Earlier this week, the Post reported on data that one of the scariest predictions of anthropogenic climate change theory seems to be coming true: The new research, based on ocean measurements off the coast of East Antarctica, shows that melting Antarctic glaciers are indeed freshening the ocean around them. And this, in turn, is blocking a process in which cold and salty ocean water sinks below the sea surface in winter, forming “the densest water on the Earth,” in the words of study lead author...

We're in the home stretch. It's day 23 of the Blogging A-to-Z challenge and it's time to loop-the-loop. C# has a number of ways to iterate over a collection of things, and a base interface that lets you know you can use an iterator. The simplest ways to iterate over code is to use while, which just keeps looping until a condition is met: var n = 1; while (n < 6) { Console.WriteLine($"n = {n}"); n++; } Console.WriteLine("Done"); while is similar to do: var n = 1; do { Console.WriteLine($"n = {n}"); n++...