LaRud's place

Microsoft eScrum

2008-01-23T09:28:20+01:00

I need to vent some frustrations here:

Microsoft eScrum website "Your session expired. Please refresh your page to reconnect!" is just about driving me nuts here. I like working the 'Scrum' way and using TFS to track workitems, code, unit tests, builds all in a single place is just super, but the eScrum website that Microsoft has made available, is just crap (sorry for the lingo).

Really, it blings out using ajax stuff, but it shows a real lack of usability if something like session state is being used server-side.

People who know me, know I have build many web-applications, starting since 1996, with perl-cgi scripts, and believe me: Session is Evil

I have been bitten by all the problems Session can cause, and there is only 1 allowed use for session state in my world: it is to keep some information between two autogenerated requests, where you know the second request will come in before the session times out. If a user or external system is involved, you do not know this, so you should never use Session in such a case.

But here is the eScrum website, which I typically open up in the morning and use several times during the day. And just about each time I go back to it, and want to update a workitem, I get the -in your face- dialog box, it is a symptom of bad design. Anything that is stored in that session object is most likely caching, or plain useless, as a simple refresh (which is just a request) without sending any information to the website can recreate the session. So why, when there is an Ajax call to fetch data from the site, does it first need to recreate this session object explicitly by doing a refresh?

The Web Bubble 2.0

2007-12-05T18:35:03+01:00

Having lived through the first Bubble and still have stuff to show for it: www.smarterwork.com (kinda), I found this music video 'The Bubble is Back!' made by The Richter Scales hilarious. (Via Scott Hanselman)

Vista beep

2007-10-19T12:51:06+01:00

Aargh, sometimes you wonder: What were they thinking? What kind of drugs were they on? And it can't have been a single dev, it must have been just about all the MS employees dog-fooding Longhorn. Or maybe that's just it, the dog food is getting too toxic and causing these side effects.

Anyway: as a pointer (for myself) for all future Vista installs, after install do this: http://weyland.be/wrdprss/index.php/2007/02/08/disable-system-beep-in-windows-vista/

Or for a scripted install here are the instructions: http://blog.netnerds.net/2007/05/5-ways-to-stop-windows-vista-xp-2003-from-beeping/

From a quick search, it seems to be really inconsistent on when it actually happens. My gut feeling: some debug code that is left in Vista. Not that this is the type of debugging that you'd want to do I assume, but it's something that my father has carried over from his Visual Basic days: call beep to ~~see~~ hear if some part of your code is running. Now he is developping a multithreaded real-time model railway control application, interfacing with hardware and such, so while experimenting, having a beep play instead of the application stopping in a breakpoint (and the trains crashing into each other) actually could be a valid use for beep-debugging. But for Vista... naaaah. What a mistaaaike to maaaike!!

How to improve MSDN/Visual Studio Documentation

2007-10-17T13:48:00+01:00

Given some of my 'feelings' about how we learn about new technology, as written in the previous post, I felt the need to fill in the Visual Studio Content Survey.

MSDN is often the first stop in the quest for more knowledge about a certain API, and these days more often than not, I leave the site with a feeling of disappointment. Now, this is not to say that the MSDN content is bad, perhaps its just that I have become so comfortable with the .NET Framework that, when I do feel I need to explore some unknown part of the it, I end up in a more obscure part of it. Like I had just recently with HttpContext.RewritePath. The docs there are really basic, bare-bones.

So the next reflex is Google (Yes, I tried Live Search a few times, but Google still seems to return the more relevant hits) and there you will find more relevant information in Blogs, articles, forums.

Again there, it is up to ourselves to get a feeling or qualification about how correct the information is. Again, how authoritive (if that's proper english) is the content. Was it written by someone the likes of Scottxxx (Guthrie, Hanselman, Haacked (ok, it's Phil, but same league: up there!)) or some person you have no trust in yet.

I'd love to actually see MSDN become a hub for adding community links to relevant blog posts, articles, webcasts, etc. With an innovative rating system on these links, each rating weighted with a dynamic value relative to the authoritive value of the person..

Example: If Scottxxx adds a link to the above HttpContext.RewritePath page, it should already get a top rating. If I were to add a link to the page, it would only get a normal rating, say with a rating weight of 100. If Scottxxx would rate the link, the rating of Scottxxx would be weighted eg. 10000. Because these guys know a lot more about this stuff, so they are likely to be better qualified (or authoritive) to rate the link.

Such a system would negate the effect of John Doe (or a 100 John Does) giving the link an incorrect rating. The fact that todays rating systems are 'democratic' is probably my biggest gripe. Not everybody has the same experience to be able to rate something.

The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks.

2007-10-05T12:03:18+01:00

When one of the principal authors of this blogs' engine^* writes a book about ASP.NET, I just feel the need to plug it. I haven't read a line in it and yet I have confidence that this is a usefull book.

The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks.

However, Jeff Atwood aka Coding Horror and co-author of this book, questions if books like these, highly specialized technical books, are usefull at all? Not to him, and I'm sure I understand that, if you can write a book like this, and manage all the other 'stuff' that he writes about on his blog, the information/usefullness in a book like this is good for a year, two at the most, if your stuck on a 'legacy' project. But to many 'mere-mortal' developers like, well maybe me, a book like this can help to boost up the knowledge of this specialized technology. Sure the internet is faster to find things, but it can also be harder. Where would you find all the information that these people have gathered? Well, if you are even aware of the information, just google a day. But what if you are not aware of it. What it there is a HtmlTextWriterStyle enumeration that has all these amazing usefull members that you could have used sooo many times already, but never did (until today) because you simply were not aware of it. So yes, today I found this one, how long I will remember it exists? As long as I actively use or need it while doing web development. But the next project will be Windows Forms, and I'm sure I won't remember this enumeration if I ever do another ASP.NET project again.

So I do believe these books have their merit: they condense a lot of information in one consistent place.

Another aspect is the authority that comes from certain books. If you know (well 'virtually') the author, read his/her blog, have seen a presentation, read some articles, you'll know the code in the book works, and is correct for the date the book was published.

One of the issues with todays plethora of CTP's, beta's and alpha previews is that many articles are written against these non-released versions. And these articles are also forever searchable, instantly available to anyone, anywhere in the world. Which have caused me some frustration, in that when looking for a solution to a problem, google will throw at you a number of solutions, but then you are left sifting through the range of outdated articles to try and find a solution that still fits. Ok, so you still get a lot of help, but if every author would just state which version or build was used for a certain solution, it would already help a lot. And then it is still up to you to verify the solution conforms to certain standards. I have read many articles that actually give wrong information. Be it because of security, performance, architecture or plainly not knowing the solution exists inside the core .Net framework.

So the best thing would be to publish the book online, forever searchable, instantly available to anyone, anywhere in the world, but I guess since it takes a lot of time, and thus money, to publish a book, this is not a viable option.

(^* yet this instance being a bit an outdated version of it, I really need to get time to upgrade it ... when?)

Under Construction

2007-07-12T05:02:13+01:00

I'm starting a new chapter in my life, building my own home. And after a long wait, we finally got started (subtitles are in dutch):

A notorious low in Internet history

2007-06-26T11:00:32+01:00

The Internet (web, mail, etc.) is a fabulous great thing. Without it I wouldn't be able to find such cool things as the beginning of a wooden marble powered computer, find solutions to problems, connect with old friends, connect with distant friends, communicate with my girlfriend, etc.

But there are these other things on the Internet, such as spam, spyware, virusses, hoaxes and chain letters. Well, today I just received a chain letter which is the ultimate low of how ignorant some people are and how devious others must be, and to what cause?

A chain letter typically attempts to have people send the letter to a number of other people, with the sole purpose of just sending it along to yet more other people. In some cases these sort of chain letters have been the carrier for all sorts of malware. Obviously the goal there is to distribute the malware. There are soo many of them already: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/.

Now the one I got today is just sick. It contains a word document. The word document contains an image of a baby, obviously heaviliy scarred from an accident with fire. Underneath it the text states that this baby is in the renowned hospital in Pellenberg, with the message that for each e-mail the parents will receive 0,03 euro to pay for the numerous operations the baby will need.

A quick search on the internet reveals that this hoax already exists from before 25/11/2007: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?articleID=g0p150esc (dutch).

Why people send these things is beyond my comprehension!

Gim'me some power

2007-06-25T10:01:22+01:00

Something I have been looking for already a long time, and apparently it's 'just' basic physics:

Wireless electricity

This really is something that is missing from daily life. Just start to count how many chargers and powercords you need to plug in and out every so often.

I do hope that if (when) this reaches mainstream consumers like me, the voltage and amperes can be set to one single standard value. And that devices and electronics will adapt to this single standard. Not having a standard around this will cause us (consumers) to have several incompatible wireless chargers in each place again. Aiding only in having to plug in the charger into the power-network, and not having to plug the device into the charger.

Having a standard (and the device internally adapting to the standard Volts and Amps) will enable us users just to walk in with the device into a WiTricity enabled room, and the device will be powered or start to charge its batteries.

Talking about charging, no doubt some people (power-providers) will want to have a system where you get charged (as in: need to pay money) to power/charge your battery-powered devices.

MSDN Evening: Introducing Microsoft XNA Express

2007-04-22T10:09:24+01:00

MSDN Evening: Introducing Microsoft XNA Express

Last week, I went to this event, and I must say it is quite a different type of event I would normally go to. But being the standard geek that I am (or maybe I'm not so standard), I had heard about this vaguely and it did not really hit me what this XNA thing was all about until I saw the two channel 9 videos last monday. I had just read the Got Game? article from the May 2007 MSDN Magazine last weekend in the garden, which sparked my interest.

XNA Express allows me, simple C# developer, to get started writing games for Windows, but, no really, BUT also for the XBox 360.

And that should just say it all. I know nothing, nada, njet, noppes of game development, but after playing around with the standard tutorials and some more tutorials and samples from the cummunity websites, I can actually get 3d models on the screen, have them moving, play sounds, change camera positions, and there are plenty more samples to try and gain even more knowledge.

Ok, so as your typical C# Developer / Team Lead / Technical Architect, what is there to gain?
Is it interesting - Yes
Is it technology - Yes
Is it cool - Oh Yes, baby, YES!

Is it useful at the end of the day - well, uhm, for the day-job, uhm ... except for maybe gaining more knowledge on how to be able to render LOB data into a 3D world as a new sort of reporting application, uhm yes, otherwise... no, but its just sooooo cool.

Going through the basic tutorial and then the Going Beyond tutorials in the Help, I did bump into a problem:
Drawing a 2D texture made the 3D model all go semi-transparent and all ugly. But the solution is really simple. And yes the solution was given by the presenter of the session, Brecht Kets. He also showed the exact same problem in the presentation. His presentation was good, built up basically following the same concepts as in the tutorials, he did not go into the Math stuff too much, no real game development knowledge was needed to understand his presentation, while at the end of it all, I did learn a lot of new concepts. Especially: most tutorials are written as spaghetti code, all code goes into the default Game class. As he pointed out, XNA is build as a component framework, enabling you to nicely encapsulate all the logic in seperate classes. Making the code 1^st class, clean, refactorable, reusable and maybe testable? I have not found much on doing the game development TDD with XNA GSE. As surely when changing the behaviour of your model you do not want to be starting the app and manually/visually start testing the whole thing again, ... or now do you, I mean you'll be playing your game!

He did fall out of luck though, as his Xbox kept crashing before the presentation, so he was unable to show off some really cool stuff on how easy it is to get it all working and going on the Xbox 360.

Some resources:

I'm currently going through the Code4Fun - Beginning Game Development tutorials, as these explain some basic concepts. They are not written for XNA, but for Managed DirectX, but the concepts are still interesting.

Have fun!

Embedded development

2007-03-30T11:03:15+01:00

This is more a post for my own reference, since I hope to be able to play with this stuff one day: EmbeddedFusion Tahoe looks like a cool platform for playing with the .NET Micro Framework