People give Windows a hard time. It has a lot going for it, although “polished UI” has never been a particularly fitting bullet point for the operating system’s apps. I’m not sure why Windows developers have had such a hard time with UI… I thought WPF might change the landscape a bit, but it hasn’t done much. Hopefully the new UI changes in Windows 8 (Metro), in addition to the inclusion of a Windows 8 App Store (finally!), might get some Windows developers to design prettier applications… Time will tell.

I have BreakTime on my Mac, but I’m working on my Windows PC for my day job quite a bit, and I wanted something similar for Windows. I was appalled by the selections.

First, let me show you 3 break timer apps from the Mac App Store:

Breaktime

Break Timer

Breaktify

Now for the Windows contenders…

Scirocco …

I just finished reading The Noticer by Andy Andrews. It’s all about changing your perspective. Things aren’t as bad as you think — stuff like that. It’s a great book, and the character Jones (a wise old man) dispenses excellent advice to the various townsfolk that helps them through some difficult situations. The day I finished it, my friend Sergei “Jonesed” me — on a small level, but I still think it’s worth mentioning.

I switched from Sencha Touch to Corona SDK for the latest app/game I’m working on. The Corona SDK is $349/year to build for the iOS app store and Android Market. The art has cost ~$200 so far.  I was complaining to Sergei about how I hate having to pay over $500 when I don’t even know if my little app will make any money.

He said, “$500 — …

While supplies last, I’m going to give away paperback copies of my book How to Find and Land a Microsoft .NET Development Job to computer science teachers for free.

If you teach software development at a high school, college, university, or whatever, just contact me and send me your name and mailing address (preferably your school/university mailing address), and I’ll send you a book!  (U.S. addresses only.)

Hurry because I only have limited quantities available!

The following post originally appeared on http://developerjobresource.com.

I’ve been reading a book lately called The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz, and I totally recommend it. It’s very motivational. While there are newer editions, I suggest searching amazon zShops or ebay to get one of the old versions from 1959.  It’s like stepping into a time machine. 

Dr. Schwartz uses a lot of terminology that was probably hip with the youngsters of that time, and it makes for a very amusing read.  He talks about the top salesman at the company making a whopping $25,000/year, while the other salesmen are only making $5,000. There is a lot of stuff like that in there.

The title of this post is referring to a quote from the book:

“Being licked is valuable if we learn from it.”

I know you probably came here thinking this …