As I've mentioned numerous times in my blog, I'm a huge fan of continuous self improvement and being a student of your chosen profession.  One of my favorite ways to constantly improve is to read books.  I find that my favorite topics nowadays aren't necessarily technology or API specific, I tend to be drawn more to principles and practices that can be applied across any programming language (design patterns, agile development practices, etc.).  For API specific type information, that sorta stuff changes so fast I find the information on the web to be much more useful and current.  A good recent example would be my foray into Linq to SQL the past few months, I never bought a book on it and instead used Scott Gu's and other folks' blogs to get up to speed on it.

So this leads me to today's book review.  This isn't a programming specific book or even technology related, but I think most developers would find it a really good read anyway, at least if you've ever worked,  currently working, or will work in a team environment (I think that's 99% of us).  The book is titled The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.  The majority of the book is a fictional tale (although you'd swear you've been in situations and know people exactly like the ones in the book) that illustrates the five dysfunctions in a real world manner.  The book is a very easy read (I finished in a couple of hours one evening) and really puts into words exactly why some of the teams I've been on just didn't feel right.  I now more easily understand why we never achieved our full potential as a team and while there's no easy solutions, at least by now knowing the why, I can start monitoring future teams for these five dysfunctions and nip them in the bud as early as possible.  The book has also changed some of my views regarding conflicts (or lack thereof) and the collaborative process.

So there you have it, the first (of many, hopefully) book review on this (somewhat) technical blog isn't even about a technical book!  But that just goes to show that self improvement doesn't necessarily mean technical skills improvement, it's also about improving processes that you're involved with (in this case, improving the team process).  That may be the reason why I find myself so drawn to agile software development, it not only focuses on improvement with one's technical skills (applying standard OOP principles, TDD, KISS, etc.) but also improving outside processes (iterative development, constant communication with the customer and within the team, etc.) as a whole.

My website host decided not to live up to its name and was down for close to 2 days.  While I'd like to think it's the incredible traffic my blog creates that brought their server to its knees, their poor support and customer service has left a poor taste in my mouth.  Time to look for a new host, anyone want to chime in with their recommendations?

I've decided to break my rule of 1 blog post every 2 months and post 2 blog entries in 1 day.  You get a bonus today, don't spend it all in one place!

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I moved to Keller, TX about a year ago.  It's a fast growing suburb north of Fort Worth and was ranked by Money Magazine as the top 50th place to live in America for 2007.  While I enjoy my new home and the area and I think it's a great place to raise my son, it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  My commute stinks (someone needs to expand 820 between 183 and 35 please!) and typically runs anywhere from 35 minutes on a good day to over an hour on bad days. 

At first I was getting by listening to local sports radio but then I thought of all that wasted time I could be using to improve my skills and expand my knowledge.  I'm a huge fan of continuous improvement and being a student of your chosen craft, so I decided to start listening to relevant podcasts on my commute instead of listening for the nth time why the Pacman Jones signing was the devil's pact or how Avery Johnson gave a thumbs up/thumbs down/thumbs sideways on the Jason Kidd trade.

So I looked at what available podcasts were out there for general programming, .NET development, and agile practices and here's my list below.  If you know of any other that I may have overlooked, by all means leave a comment with your suggested listenings.

1. Hanselminutes - A weekly talk show with Scott Hanselman that goes over not just .NET topics but also other random geeky subjects.  This is probably my favorite podcast right now and even his non programming shows are really interesting.  I loved his "making the impossible possible" show and how the guest stated that you have a short 6 year window to get your kids passionate enough about science to pursue it further before peer pressure and interest in the opposite sex kicks in.  I'm already making plans for what to do with my son during that window ;)
   
2. .NET Rocks! - Another weekly show that focuses on the .NET stack
   
3. Polymorphic Podcast - Focuses on the .NET stack
   
4. Alt.NET Podcast - I'm a huge fan of the Alt.NET movement and actually just listened to the first podcast yesterday during my drive home.  Their first podcast really drove home the need for developers to have a passion for what they do and to continuously improve.
   
5. ASP.NET Podcast - Geared towards the Microsoft .NET Framework and ASP.NET, I haven't listened to this one as much yet.
   
6. Radio TFS - Podcast dedicated to Team System, I haven't listened to any episodes yet so can't really give an opinion.
   
7. Software Engineering Radio - This one isn't .NET specific but still interesting nevertheless
   
8. stackoverflow - This one is pretty interesting. stackoverflow.com is the brainchild of Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame and Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software fame.  They're starting a website for developers by developers that aims to be the definitive resource for technical help.  The podcast kinda chronicles their journey.  I've only listened to the first show so far and it's like listening to a really cohesive and tight knit programming team discussing topics during lunch.   (An interesting side note: If you go to Joel's website and look at that image of the Manhattan skyline, I actually lived in the 2nd tall red building right above the "S" in Software during most of my childhood years.  275 Cherry Street, Apt. 21G baby!  And now back to your regularly scheduled bonus blog...)
   
9. The Thirsty Developer - Another .NET oriented podcast with some interesting topics
   
10. ThoughtWorks - IT Matters Podcast - ThoughtWorks is a highly respected consulting company and their podcast covers a variety of topics and is not .NET specific.  Any company that Martin Fowler deems ok to work for is ok in my book :)
    
11. Agile Toolkit Podcast - Podcast focusing on agile development practices, some good topics
12. Ajaxian Podcast - (Added 6/27/2008) Podcast from my favorite Ajax focused site, I have yet to listen to any episodes, I'll give my review after a few episodes.
13. Herding Code - (Added 7/28/2008) Started listening to this one recently, it's a round table discussion of .NET topics.  There's some awkward parts where people just ramble or there's complete silence, but for the most part it's a good listen.

Wow, that's quite a list.  I didn't even realize I've been following 11 podcasts, no wonder it seems like I can never get caught up on episodes.  Remember to leave a comment on any you recommend!  I'll update my post as I run into new and interesting podcasts.

Tim Farmer has graciously updated my example Ext JS/ASP.NET MVC application I posted a few months ago to work with the new Preview 3 bits.  I've already compiled and played around with it, so it seems to be working fine, but any bugs or issues should be aimed directly toward him :P

On a more serious note, this example application wasn't really meant to be an ASP.NET MVC tutorial, I originally posted it more to show how Ext JS works with the .NET stack.  I remember when I first started playing around with Ext JS what a learning curve it was, so I would consider it to be more of an Ext JS example that happens to use ASP.NET MVC.  There is already plenty of ASP.NET MVC information out there, but not much on using Ext JS with ASP.NET.

If you want to learn more about ASP.NET MVC, I recommend taking a look at Rob Conery's MVC Storefront webcast and blog series.  It's actually a pretty fascinating look at how someone new to Test Driven Development approaches building an MVC application in an agile manner.

Download updated Ext JS example for ASP.NET MVC Preview 3