On meta.stackoverflow.com Joel announced a need for countdown application for the coming DevDays, as I am planing to attend one, I have decided to make one. Maybe I will watch my counter at the conference. ;)

It looks like:

Source code: PeterStegnarDevDaysCountdown.zip (198.51 KB)

I have used WPF, .NET 3.5. The speciality of this solution is custom Stackoverflow digits. :)

Short manual:
-you can find exe in "PeterStegnarDevDaysCountdown\WPF_StackoverflowCountDown\bin\Debug"
-start the app with the following parameters, for example: 0900 "DevDays begins in %s"
-just hit an "Esc" key to exit

Core functionalitiy is, of course, countdown:

            if (second != 0)
            {
                second--;
            }
            else
            {
                second = 59;
                if (minute != 0)
                {
                    minute--;
                }
                else
                {
                    minute = 59;
                    if (hour != 0)
                    {
                        hour--;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        throw new ArgumentNullException("No valid time entry!");
                    }
                }
            }

What do you think?

Roy Osherove is giving an hands-on TDD Masterclass in the UK, September 21-25. Roy is author of "The Art of Unit Testing" (http://www.artofunittesting.com/), a leading tdd & unit testing book; he maintains a blog at http://iserializable.com (which amoung other things has critiqued tests written by Microsoft for asp.net MVC - check out the testreviews category) and has recently been on the Scott Hanselman podcast (http://bit.ly/psgYO) where he educated Scott on best practices in Unit Testing techniques. For a further insight into Roy's style, be sure to also check out Roy's talk at the recent Norwegian Developer's Conference (http://bit.ly/NuJVa). 

Full Details here: http://bbits.co.uk/tddmasterclass

bbits are holding a raffle for a free ticket for the event. To be eligible to win the ticket (worth £2395!) you MUST paste this text, including all links, into your blog and email Ian@bbits.co.uk with the url to the blog entry.  The draw will be made on September 1st and the winner informed by email and on bbits.co.uk/blog

It just come out - Stack Overflow DevDays conference will be held in couple of cities:

October 19 San Francisco
October 21 Seattle
October 23 Toronto
October 26 Washington, DC
October 28 London

We Europeans have only one choice- London. I have already make a reservation and so should you! I believe this will be great conference.

Right now about 2h after Joel's announcement are 231 and 14 tickets available of 300. In less then one day there will be none, when it seeds out (what I am actually doing right now).