One of the things I always have enjoyed over Christmas holidays is finding a few hours here and there for myself to explore new technolgies or tinker with side-projects. With all the events and distractions, finding time for yourself can be a pretty challenging task. This year, I'm thankful to have a lot of time off, so I've decided the best way to tackle this is to find projects that are interesting but don't require a huge investment of thought. So I'm not going to bother with cracking open the XAML specifications and trying a SilverLight project. Too much time. Too much thought. So I've come up with the "Twelve Days of Code". Catchy, but not corny. Here's the rules: Tackle a small project each day Use technologies I haven't used before or wouldn't naturally use in the course of a work project No project should take more than an hour. If you get snagged, the hour is about the snag. All the projects have to share a common theme The projects need to provide value to me beyond the scope of the holidays. Keep 'em blog worthy I've decided my common theme should be "Software Automation" which is anything that saves time for repeated tasks. If I can save other developers on my team time, also great. I've started a small list of to-do's, and I'm using http://www.rememberthemilk.com to help me with the scheduling, etc. The list of thing I want to play with are: Visual Studio Templates Custom Installers / Wizards Click Once deployment I'll keep ya posted.
"The Twelve Days of Code"
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