I have recently been reading up on SEO, a dynamic and fascinating component of marketing on the Internet. SEO, for the uninitiated, stands for Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, its all about keeping up with the latest developments in search technologies and search engines with the intent to optimize your site to show up high in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). There are a number of techniques, constantly evolving, and they break down into “white hat” and “black hat” where the former represents reasonable efforts that will both help your visitors and the search engines locate the right content, and...

Just a small reminder: if you are creating a customized page for a specific HTTP error, be sure to include code in the page to set the response error code appropriately. For reference, see this and this. For example, if you are using ASP.Net and are creating a custom 404 page, add this line to your Page_Load method: Response.StatusCode = 404;

Jason Diamond comments on Brad Wilson's post about unit tests' SetUp and TearDown methods. In the process, he lists some excellent general guidelines on how to structure your unit tests and fixtures. Definitely worth a read. Jason concludes: These days, I write a lot more fixtures. Each fixture has a unique SetUp method and the test cases usually contain nothing more than a single method call and one or two assertions. To figure out what the entire test case does, all I have to do is look at the SetUp method which, itself, is usually just a few lines of code....

I sold my car today. Oddly, this is the first time that I feel a sentimental attachment. It wasn't my first car, but it was by far the best. It might also be that I've replaced a (very!) fun sports sedan with a minivan. Darn kids! So, in the honor of its passing (of ownership), here's a short review of my 2002 Audi A4 1.8T: First and foremost, the car was a great value for the money. At only a few thousand more than a Subaru Legacy GT, and at the same price level as a Jeep Grand Cherokee (my two prior...