Saturday, May 03, 2008
Very recently I received (from work) a new laptop: Lenovo T61p (to replace my aging Toshiba M5). There are quite a few gotchas with setting up this machine (e.g. I wasted an hour trying to get it to see a second internal drive), but I will spare you my setup/installation experience. Instead, you may be interested in Keith's helpful post here. Generally, I am happy with this machine from a performance perspective.
There is however the quite important issue of its keyboard: it's the laptop keyboard from hell. Why the "£$^&* don't we have a universal standard for laptop keyboards yet? The placement of keys on this laptop is weird (e.g. the ESC key is further up than the top row of keys instead of being aligned with the Function keys) and also keys I usually expect to be more easily accessible than other keys (e.g. up, down, left, right arrow keys) are actually... smaller and cramped close to the others!
However the biscuit goes to the Fn key placement in relation to the Ctrl key. I expected the Ctrl key to be firmly placed in the bottom left and for it to be larger than other keys. Instead, the Ctrl key is normal size and it is 2nd from the bottom left, its place taken by the rarely used Fn key! What is worst is that, apparently, there is no keymapping software that can fix this, since Lenovo in their wisdom have made it permanent in the firmware :-(
One of the worst examples of how this trips me up is copy/paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). I have some source window where I do a copy (but in reality I only did an Fn+C without realising it) and then close the window, switch to my target window and do a paste (in reality a Fn+V) and nothing happens. Then I realise my mistake but it's too late to do a Ctrl+V now since the copy was never actioned... Arghh!
If you think that I am overreacting, first try using a keyboard like that before passing judgement. If you own one and think I am overreacting, clearly you haven't tried pressing Ctrl+Shift+B (Build Solution in Visual Studio) or Ctrl+Shift+Esc (bring up Task Manager) with just one hand (impossible!). Anyway, it looks like I am not alone judging by the collections of complaints here, here, here and here amongst other places.
My partial solution: I removed the offending key completely (screenshot).
As an unrelated aside, the Mac Air suffers from the same bewildering choice of placement of the Fn and Ctrl keys. As a more related aside, if you see me struggling to type in my upcoming events, now you know why!
<end of rant/>
There is however the quite important issue of its keyboard: it's the laptop keyboard from hell. Why the "£$^&* don't we have a universal standard for laptop keyboards yet? The placement of keys on this laptop is weird (e.g. the ESC key is further up than the top row of keys instead of being aligned with the Function keys) and also keys I usually expect to be more easily accessible than other keys (e.g. up, down, left, right arrow keys) are actually... smaller and cramped close to the others!
However the biscuit goes to the Fn key placement in relation to the Ctrl key. I expected the Ctrl key to be firmly placed in the bottom left and for it to be larger than other keys. Instead, the Ctrl key is normal size and it is 2nd from the bottom left, its place taken by the rarely used Fn key! What is worst is that, apparently, there is no keymapping software that can fix this, since Lenovo in their wisdom have made it permanent in the firmware :-(
One of the worst examples of how this trips me up is copy/paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). I have some source window where I do a copy (but in reality I only did an Fn+C without realising it) and then close the window, switch to my target window and do a paste (in reality a Fn+V) and nothing happens. Then I realise my mistake but it's too late to do a Ctrl+V now since the copy was never actioned... Arghh!
If you think that I am overreacting, first try using a keyboard like that before passing judgement. If you own one and think I am overreacting, clearly you haven't tried pressing Ctrl+Shift+B (Build Solution in Visual Studio) or Ctrl+Shift+Esc (bring up Task Manager) with just one hand (impossible!). Anyway, it looks like I am not alone judging by the collections of complaints here, here, here and here amongst other places.
My partial solution: I removed the offending key completely (screenshot).
As an unrelated aside, the Mac Air suffers from the same bewildering choice of placement of the Fn and Ctrl keys. As a more related aside, if you see me struggling to type in my upcoming events, now you know why!
<end of rant/>
Labels: Personal
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
On the day of my last 3 posts, I flew to Seattle (10 hours each way) for a quick 3 night trip. Upon my return to UK, it was only a day of catch up before travelling to my hometown in Thessaloniki (Greece). After a day of rest I took the internal flight to Athens for the Greek 2008 Launch. For anyone that attended my session, the videos I mentioned are here. There was also brief mention of Parallel LINQ on the day, and my related video(s) can be found here. After flying back to Thessaloniki for a day of rest, I fly tomorrow to the UK and then a day later I fly for a 5-day trip to Israel for Tech Ed 2008 (which also includes 2 internal flights between Tel Aviv and Eilat)...phew.
There will be more activity here after that – talk to you then.
There will be more activity here after that – talk to you then.
Labels: Personal
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Why is it that 50% of the people watch the screencasts and are asking for more and the other half don't (see links from Q8 and the comments)? In my view, everybody should watch screencasts (to be clear, I mean as a complementary activity to reading articles). If you haven't ever watched one, there are some links here (plus check out the UK MSDN page).
"What is so great about screencasts anyway?"
Many things:
a) Following a document step-by-step to achieve a goal is fine, but what about when you don't have the right stuff installed? It is many times that I have received emails from people saying words to the effect: "Having watched your video I am now downloading XYZ to give it a try!". Those people would not have gotten the same enthusiastic experience from reading a document. E.g. when Vista wasn't so widely available, this Sidebar Gadgets video could not have had the same effect in written form.
b) Even if you have the right stuff installed, what is it that would motivate you to invest time in following some steps to achieve a goal, i.e. how do you know it is going to be worth it? Instead you watch a short video and it is easy to decide if you want to go ahead and explore this technology further or not, e.g. how many desktop developers own a Windows Mobile phone and are aware of the dedicated managed API (not talking about the Compact Framework here)?
c) Let's face it, a picture is worth 1000 words which makes a video worth numberOfFrames*1000 words. I explained the LINQ-to-objects relationship with the language features on this blog and received good feedback. I described it in a video and I received outstanding feedback. How would you capture the effect of my LINQ video in written form?
d) It is not just about the topic being demonstrated, there are side learnings. Whenever I watch someone else do a screencast I pick up productivity/usability tips (e.g. some new ones in VS2008) about the way the presenter uses the tools or talks about certain concepts that is different to my mileage. You just don't get that in a written piece of text. Screencasts bring a demo at your desk, which usually you pay money for to see at a conference!
e) I was going to add a few more reasons here but they are weaker and I don't want to dilute the main points above. Feel free to add your own reasons why you like or hate screencasts in the comments below.
THE REAL PROBLEM
Now, let me tell you why I find videos sometimes lacking: Non-scanability. In the age of information overload, I usually scan pieces of text for the interesting points and probably abandon 80% of the web pages that I randomly visit within seconds. You cannot do that with videos today – once you've started watching it is hard to scan through without missing huge chunks of content. This is the reason that I seldom even attempt to watch videos over 30' unless I know for sure that I am interested in the topic in a big way! Table of contents with timings help slightly but everything I have seen that tried to address the problem is inadequate. My attempt to make it less painful is to keep screencasts at 15' long because then you are investing a reasonable amount of time and you can probably tell if it is worth to continue to watch after 3'. To that extent, I try to have a quick intro telling you what's coming. I also offer the additional download option which means that clicking forward/backwards to scan will be very fast as opposed to the streaming media (craze that is taking over the world) that largely relies on sequential viewing...
The larger question of how do we make long videos scanable remains. I think there is an opportunity here for some clever software: I point this piece of software to a wmv file and it instantly produces a complete transcript from the audio and it highlights every word as the video continues to play. No matter what word I click on in the transcript, the video follows suit by synchronising itself. Now I can watch and listen to the video and concurrently quickly scan for words/phrases of interest so that I can jump directly to that piece with a single click. Anyone building such software or does it even exist already? I can be a beta tester ;-)
"What is so great about screencasts anyway?"
Many things:
a) Following a document step-by-step to achieve a goal is fine, but what about when you don't have the right stuff installed? It is many times that I have received emails from people saying words to the effect: "Having watched your video I am now downloading XYZ to give it a try!". Those people would not have gotten the same enthusiastic experience from reading a document. E.g. when Vista wasn't so widely available, this Sidebar Gadgets video could not have had the same effect in written form.
b) Even if you have the right stuff installed, what is it that would motivate you to invest time in following some steps to achieve a goal, i.e. how do you know it is going to be worth it? Instead you watch a short video and it is easy to decide if you want to go ahead and explore this technology further or not, e.g. how many desktop developers own a Windows Mobile phone and are aware of the dedicated managed API (not talking about the Compact Framework here)?
c) Let's face it, a picture is worth 1000 words which makes a video worth numberOfFrames*1000 words. I explained the LINQ-to-objects relationship with the language features on this blog and received good feedback. I described it in a video and I received outstanding feedback. How would you capture the effect of my LINQ video in written form?
d) It is not just about the topic being demonstrated, there are side learnings. Whenever I watch someone else do a screencast I pick up productivity/usability tips (e.g. some new ones in VS2008) about the way the presenter uses the tools or talks about certain concepts that is different to my mileage. You just don't get that in a written piece of text. Screencasts bring a demo at your desk, which usually you pay money for to see at a conference!
e) I was going to add a few more reasons here but they are weaker and I don't want to dilute the main points above. Feel free to add your own reasons why you like or hate screencasts in the comments below.
THE REAL PROBLEM
Now, let me tell you why I find videos sometimes lacking: Non-scanability. In the age of information overload, I usually scan pieces of text for the interesting points and probably abandon 80% of the web pages that I randomly visit within seconds. You cannot do that with videos today – once you've started watching it is hard to scan through without missing huge chunks of content. This is the reason that I seldom even attempt to watch videos over 30' unless I know for sure that I am interested in the topic in a big way! Table of contents with timings help slightly but everything I have seen that tried to address the problem is inadequate. My attempt to make it less painful is to keep screencasts at 15' long because then you are investing a reasonable amount of time and you can probably tell if it is worth to continue to watch after 3'. To that extent, I try to have a quick intro telling you what's coming. I also offer the additional download option which means that clicking forward/backwards to scan will be very fast as opposed to the streaming media (craze that is taking over the world) that largely relies on sequential viewing...
The larger question of how do we make long videos scanable remains. I think there is an opportunity here for some clever software: I point this piece of software to a wmv file and it instantly produces a complete transcript from the audio and it highlights every word as the video continues to play. No matter what word I click on in the transcript, the video follows suit by synchronising itself. Now I can watch and listen to the video and concurrently quickly scan for words/phrases of interest so that I can jump directly to that piece with a single click. Anyone building such software or does it even exist already? I can be a beta tester ;-)
Labels: Personal
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Last Sunday I posted a survey for my blog (followed by two others, identical but hosted on different sites). A week later I thought you might want to know what the results are from the 300 responses (which as I hinted wasn't straightforward to consolidate, hence the delay). Below are the questions, summary of responses and some interspersed commentary on some of my plans.
Q1. Which version(s) of Visual Studio do you mostly use? – Multiple answers allowed.
The vast majority of votes went to VS2005 (67%) and VS2008 (62%). The percentages for the other answers are VS6orOlder (7%), VS.NET2002 (0%, 1 out of 300), VS.NET 2003 (10%) and some people stated: "Eclipse for Linux, MonoDevelop, Rhapsody, Vim, Macromedia". Note that most responses selected VS2005 in addition to anything else which suggests they are using the older IDEs for older projects rather than using them exclusively. FYI I do not plan on focusing on other IDEs other than VS2008 (inc. any service packs) and of course Visual Studio vNext as soon as a public CTP VPC becomes available.
Q2. Which language(s) do you predominantly program in? – Multiple answers allowed.
The most popular language by far was C# (84%). Even people checking other languages would do it in addition to checking C# as their answer! The results for the other languages are: C++ (15%), VB6 (6%), VB.NET (22%) and some people additionally entered: "Powershell, COBOL, Java, Ruby, ColdFusion, Classic ASP, PHP, Perl, Fortran, javascript". FYI my samples are mostly in C#, but I do throw in VB occasionally and in fact have covered many VB-specific features that would not have been of interest to C# devs. I will continue to blog for both managed developer types and in the future may expand on more dynamic and functional languages supported on the .NET platform.
Q3. What type of .NET applications do you primarily focus on? – Multiple answers allowed.
Looking at the results, it is hard to deduce any info because almost everybody checked more than two answers and many areas score well. I think the conclusion is that few people build just one type of .NET solution so there is no point narrowing down the focus – and I don't plan to. FYI, here are the percentages: Client (64%), Web (50%), Server (24%), Mobile (17%), Rich Web (10%), Office (6%), Embedded (6%) and additional entries were: "SharePoint, libraries, prototypes not systems, not .NET, classic ASP, client-side SDK, my own n-tier environment, Extension to Visual Studio, Smart client, Plugins, Microsoft CRM, straight forward Windows cross platform apps, .NET 2 WebServices".
Q4. What OS do you run on your development machine? – Multiple answers allowed.
Unsurprisingly Windows XP (62%) and Windows Vista (53%) came up top followed by Windows Server 2003 (11%) and then Windows Server 2008 (2%). Additionally some of you wrote: "Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 2000 server".
Q5. Do you have an active blog (more than 5 posts per month)?
78% of my readers do not have a blog. From the 22% that do, not everybody left their URL but I have visited the ones that did. It was interesting that I did not know about some of these at all, which means that they never linked to my blog (because I know who links here and always check out a blog that does). Interesting fact (to me)...
Q6. Do you currently live in the UK most of your time?
I did open the 3 separate surveys at different timezones and over multiple days to give everyone a chance and the result is that under half of the respondents live in the UK (39%). I will continue to talk about UK-specific news (e.g. events) and I will continue to make that clear in the title of the blog posts so the other 61% can easily ignore.
Q7. Besides reading my blog, do you also watch my screencasts?
This was a big surprise to me. Only 50% watch the screencasts I produce (I was expecting it to be closer to 100%). I will be producing many more of these and will make sure people reading the blog are aware by pointing to them. Screencasts are a quality medium and I have tons of positive feedback about them in my inbox. I can only deduce (wish I had a specific question on the survey) that people who said "No" do not watch screencasts in general – you guys are MISSING OUT. More on this topic in a future blog post, in the meantime the screencasts link is always on the left.
Q8. What would you like my blog to focus on?
This was the question where you could enter whatever you wanted in 4 optional textboxes: Continue to do (137 suggestions), Stop doing (30 suggestions), Start doing (54 suggestions) and Other feedback (30 suggestions). The previous hyperlinks take you to a text file for each that includes ALL the verbatim (stripping out anything that could identify individuals). There are definitely some action items I have taken from your feedback (e.g. this) and others that I will, but the grand theme here (explicitly and implicitly) is "keep doing what you are doing" – I love it, thank you, stay tuned!
Q1. Which version(s) of Visual Studio do you mostly use? – Multiple answers allowed.
The vast majority of votes went to VS2005 (67%) and VS2008 (62%). The percentages for the other answers are VS6orOlder (7%), VS.NET2002 (0%, 1 out of 300), VS.NET 2003 (10%) and some people stated: "Eclipse for Linux, MonoDevelop, Rhapsody, Vim, Macromedia". Note that most responses selected VS2005 in addition to anything else which suggests they are using the older IDEs for older projects rather than using them exclusively. FYI I do not plan on focusing on other IDEs other than VS2008 (inc. any service packs) and of course Visual Studio vNext as soon as a public CTP VPC becomes available.
Q2. Which language(s) do you predominantly program in? – Multiple answers allowed.
The most popular language by far was C# (84%). Even people checking other languages would do it in addition to checking C# as their answer! The results for the other languages are: C++ (15%), VB6 (6%), VB.NET (22%) and some people additionally entered: "Powershell, COBOL, Java, Ruby, ColdFusion, Classic ASP, PHP, Perl, Fortran, javascript". FYI my samples are mostly in C#, but I do throw in VB occasionally and in fact have covered many VB-specific features that would not have been of interest to C# devs. I will continue to blog for both managed developer types and in the future may expand on more dynamic and functional languages supported on the .NET platform.
Q3. What type of .NET applications do you primarily focus on? – Multiple answers allowed.
Looking at the results, it is hard to deduce any info because almost everybody checked more than two answers and many areas score well. I think the conclusion is that few people build just one type of .NET solution so there is no point narrowing down the focus – and I don't plan to. FYI, here are the percentages: Client (64%), Web (50%), Server (24%), Mobile (17%), Rich Web (10%), Office (6%), Embedded (6%) and additional entries were: "SharePoint, libraries, prototypes not systems, not .NET, classic ASP, client-side SDK, my own n-tier environment, Extension to Visual Studio, Smart client, Plugins, Microsoft CRM, straight forward Windows cross platform apps, .NET 2 WebServices".
Q4. What OS do you run on your development machine? – Multiple answers allowed.
Unsurprisingly Windows XP (62%) and Windows Vista (53%) came up top followed by Windows Server 2003 (11%) and then Windows Server 2008 (2%). Additionally some of you wrote: "Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 2000 server".
Q5. Do you have an active blog (more than 5 posts per month)?
78% of my readers do not have a blog. From the 22% that do, not everybody left their URL but I have visited the ones that did. It was interesting that I did not know about some of these at all, which means that they never linked to my blog (because I know who links here and always check out a blog that does). Interesting fact (to me)...
Q6. Do you currently live in the UK most of your time?
I did open the 3 separate surveys at different timezones and over multiple days to give everyone a chance and the result is that under half of the respondents live in the UK (39%). I will continue to talk about UK-specific news (e.g. events) and I will continue to make that clear in the title of the blog posts so the other 61% can easily ignore.
Q7. Besides reading my blog, do you also watch my screencasts?
This was a big surprise to me. Only 50% watch the screencasts I produce (I was expecting it to be closer to 100%). I will be producing many more of these and will make sure people reading the blog are aware by pointing to them. Screencasts are a quality medium and I have tons of positive feedback about them in my inbox. I can only deduce (wish I had a specific question on the survey) that people who said "No" do not watch screencasts in general – you guys are MISSING OUT. More on this topic in a future blog post, in the meantime the screencasts link is always on the left.
Q8. What would you like my blog to focus on?
This was the question where you could enter whatever you wanted in 4 optional textboxes: Continue to do (137 suggestions), Stop doing (30 suggestions), Start doing (54 suggestions) and Other feedback (30 suggestions). The previous hyperlinks take you to a text file for each that includes ALL the verbatim (stripping out anything that could identify individuals). There are definitely some action items I have taken from your feedback (e.g. this) and others that I will, but the grand theme here (explicitly and implicitly) is "keep doing what you are doing" – I love it, thank you, stay tuned!
Labels: Personal
Saturday, January 26, 2008
I have tried this twice before and had to give up due to comment spam. If I get too much again, I'll close it again. Also, like I've said before, I am not too thrilled with this blog engine's comment form and interaction flow, but I'll let you be the judge of that. Does it work for you?
Labels: Personal
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Over the years I have focused on a range of Microsoft technologies on this blog and will continue to do so moving forward. I was curious as to what stuff you guys and girls focus in your professional lives. At the same time, I was also curious to see how the various free online surveys work. So, putting the two "curiosities" together, may I kindly ask 100 of you that subscribe to this blog to fill out this short anonymous survey (6-10 clicks and you are done) please?
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gNITQVWc7K3Y7BKIUsnRpw_3d_3d
http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227CPQLXKYX
http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=873100
UPDATE: the 3 free survey sites that I used reached their respective 100 capacity limits so they have been deactivated/closed. Thank you to the 300 that responded!
END UPDATE
Cheers
Daniel
UPDATE: the 3 free survey sites that I used reached their respective 100 capacity limits so they have been deactivated/closed. Thank you to the 300 that responded!
END UPDATE
Cheers
Daniel
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 17:02 
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Keeping with the tradition I started in 2004 and continued in 2005 and 2006, I just reviewed my blog posts of 2007. This year I had 275 blog entries to choose from and 4 themes emerged:
01. Last year I focused on Windows Vista and that dominated my blog culminating in the very popular blog post: Windows Vista for managed developers. Please revisit that, because I updated it by adding 5 more links to my new Vista blog posts this year. In addition, you can download all my C# Vista demos at this post.
02. The mobility content on this blog has thinned down (but luckily not gone away). That is mainly because I put a lot of the effort and knowledge in our book which we released this year. I have to say I am ecstatic with the Amazon reviews.
03. This has definitely been the year of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5 for me. I announced last January that Orcas would be my focus and indeed it dominated my blog. Twice in the year I gathered several of my Orcas blog posts together and both times the response I received was great:
Also, with Fx 3.5, Microsoft shipped Fx v2.0 SP1 and you can read my collection of posts about SP1 here.
04. Concurrency and Parallelism. In the last quarter of 2007 I rediscovered my interest in concurrency and parallelism (as evidenced by what I was linking to here, here, here and there). In July I had hinted my interest in PLINQ so it should not have come as a surprise when I made this post on Parallel Fx followed by one more video on TaskManager. More in this area in the upcoming months...
Thanks to all who read my blog in 2007, roll on 2008 and if you are not reading me in your feedreader yet, there are options for you to subscribe on the left ;-)
01. Last year I focused on Windows Vista and that dominated my blog culminating in the very popular blog post: Windows Vista for managed developers. Please revisit that, because I updated it by adding 5 more links to my new Vista blog posts this year. In addition, you can download all my C# Vista demos at this post.
02. The mobility content on this blog has thinned down (but luckily not gone away). That is mainly because I put a lot of the effort and knowledge in our book which we released this year. I have to say I am ecstatic with the Amazon reviews.
03. This has definitely been the year of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5 for me. I announced last January that Orcas would be my focus and indeed it dominated my blog. Twice in the year I gathered several of my Orcas blog posts together and both times the response I received was great:
- .NET Framework v3.5From the second post you'll find links to the many screencast videos I recorded on the topic. Even if you do not watch videos, follow those links because they include additional links to further written information.
- Top 10 of Visual Studio 2008
Also, with Fx 3.5, Microsoft shipped Fx v2.0 SP1 and you can read my collection of posts about SP1 here.
04. Concurrency and Parallelism. In the last quarter of 2007 I rediscovered my interest in concurrency and parallelism (as evidenced by what I was linking to here, here, here and there). In July I had hinted my interest in PLINQ so it should not have come as a surprise when I made this post on Parallel Fx followed by one more video on TaskManager. More in this area in the upcoming months...
Thanks to all who read my blog in 2007, roll on 2008 and if you are not reading me in your feedreader yet, there are options for you to subscribe on the left ;-)
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 22:30
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The wife and I are going to the States on a little tour of the East Coast (Washington, Boston, New York, Niagara Falls and Philadelphia - with a return flight via Chicago), so things will be quiet on this blog 'till January some time. Upon return, photos will be posted to the usual place.
Allow me to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a very enjoyable break from "the routine" :-)
Allow me to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a very enjoyable break from "the routine" :-)
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 19:53
Friday, December 21, 2007
I registered with hotmail in September 2001. Have you had a hotmail account longer than that? To play the "mine is longer than yours" game, go over to Ian's blog (where he has the link on how to find out).
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 09:38
Sunday, November 11, 2007
1. SESSIONS
This year I was presenting 4 breakout sessions on my own and was also part of a panel session with four other speakers. A huge thank you to all of you that attended my sessions and in particular to those of you that filled in the feedback forms. I read every single comment and below are the results of your voting, in the order I presented throughout the week:
Three numbers per session representing speaker's Knowledge, Presentation Skills and Quality (range is 1-9 where 9 is high).
TLA201 VisualStudio – 8.41, 8.31, 7.87 (resources here).
MED202 WindowsMobile – 8.46, 8.32, 7.85 (resources here).
MED304 CompactFramework – 8.49, 8.33, 8.09 (resources here).
WIN312 WindowsVista – 8.66, 8.54, 8.31 (resources here).
These numbers are not that different to my session results from last year so it sounds like I am not improving much. I hope next year I will do better i.e. eliminate those two pesky 7.8x numbers and replace them with 8.something!
2. SOCIALISING
In addition to having a session every single day and almost every day some kind of "lunch meeting", I also kept my evenings busy by managing to attend: the welcome drinks reception, the MVP party, the MSP party, the UK country drinks, a night out with MS UK DPE colleagues and the speaker's dinner/party. I also participated in two book signing events at one of which Andy "helpfully" brought a celebratory bottle of champagne. So, in hindsight, maybe I should do all my presentations from now on whilst being hangover since it apparently makes no difference ;).
3. MEDIA
It wasn't all alcohol and presentations though; there were some "media" activities too. At some point expect to see on channel8 an interview I gave to two MSPs. I also turned the table round with Dave by interviewing him on his outstanding performance at Tech Ed – expect to see that on the NxtGenUG podcast series. There is 30 seconds on us signing the book on the Day 3 Wrap (start at 01:09) on the virtual side (or save as the wmv). Also on the virtual side there is a 4-minute chat between me and Mike on Visual Studio & .NET Framework 3.5 – Top Features (or save as the wmv). Finally, since they had both me and Mike in front of a camera, they decided to record a longer (10') chat we had on the same topic, this time for VisrtualTechEd (stream it or save as the wmv).
4. TECHNICAL NEWS FOR THOSE OF YOU NOT THERE
Phew! Now I think I'll get some rest and sleep for the next 24 hours and then compile for the Flash all the announcements and product downloads from Tech Ed. I hope you are all looking forward to this week's issue...
This year I was presenting 4 breakout sessions on my own and was also part of a panel session with four other speakers. A huge thank you to all of you that attended my sessions and in particular to those of you that filled in the feedback forms. I read every single comment and below are the results of your voting, in the order I presented throughout the week:
Three numbers per session representing speaker's Knowledge, Presentation Skills and Quality (range is 1-9 where 9 is high).
TLA201 VisualStudio – 8.41, 8.31, 7.87 (resources here).
MED202 WindowsMobile – 8.46, 8.32, 7.85 (resources here).
MED304 CompactFramework – 8.49, 8.33, 8.09 (resources here).
WIN312 WindowsVista – 8.66, 8.54, 8.31 (resources here).
These numbers are not that different to my session results from last year so it sounds like I am not improving much. I hope next year I will do better i.e. eliminate those two pesky 7.8x numbers and replace them with 8.something!
2. SOCIALISING
In addition to having a session every single day and almost every day some kind of "lunch meeting", I also kept my evenings busy by managing to attend: the welcome drinks reception, the MVP party, the MSP party, the UK country drinks, a night out with MS UK DPE colleagues and the speaker's dinner/party. I also participated in two book signing events at one of which Andy "helpfully" brought a celebratory bottle of champagne. So, in hindsight, maybe I should do all my presentations from now on whilst being hangover since it apparently makes no difference ;).
3. MEDIA
It wasn't all alcohol and presentations though; there were some "media" activities too. At some point expect to see on channel8 an interview I gave to two MSPs. I also turned the table round with Dave by interviewing him on his outstanding performance at Tech Ed – expect to see that on the NxtGenUG podcast series. There is 30 seconds on us signing the book on the Day 3 Wrap (start at 01:09) on the virtual side (or save as the wmv). Also on the virtual side there is a 4-minute chat between me and Mike on Visual Studio & .NET Framework 3.5 – Top Features (or save as the wmv). Finally, since they had both me and Mike in front of a camera, they decided to record a longer (10') chat we had on the same topic, this time for VisrtualTechEd (stream it or save as the wmv).
4. TECHNICAL NEWS FOR THOSE OF YOU NOT THERE
Phew! Now I think I'll get some rest and sleep for the next 24 hours and then compile for the Flash all the announcements and product downloads from Tech Ed. I hope you are all looking forward to this week's issue...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 12:55
Thursday, November 01, 2007
I've been running Live search on this blog for a year (well, December 2006 according to item 5 here). I've always had just the two search tabs ("The Moth" and "Web") and I just added two additional tabs (i.e. the option to search additional places with one hit) for "MSDN" and "MSDN Forums". Check it out on the left! To see how to do the same for your blog/site, see Scott's post.
BTW, I took the opportunity to change the order of the sidebar and the main column. This won't have a visual effect on the desktop, but will eliminate all that scrolling on mobile browsers ;-). Please let me know if I broke anything...
BTW, I took the opportunity to change the order of the sidebar and the main column. This won't have a visual effect on the desktop, but will eliminate all that scrolling on mobile browsers ;-). Please let me know if I broke anything...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 11:32
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
ScottHa asks for your opinion on the usage of Picture-In-Picture (PIP) for screencasts. If you haven't seen that before, it is where not only you see the presenter's screen but you also see the presenter's "talking head" in the corner of the video. As someone who believes very strongly in the power of screencasts, I'd also be interested in what you think about PIP so head over and scroll down to the Screencast survey and then drop a comment.
Personally I don't like PIP, but if you do then I may consider including a PIP in my screencasts. I find the head distracting plus it makes the file grow larger and I try to keep the wmv as small as possible. The last reason I don't like the PIP, is because when I record these I am at home in a far from presentable appearance ;-).
Personally I don't like PIP, but if you do then I may consider including a PIP in my screencasts. I find the head distracting plus it makes the file grow larger and I try to keep the wmv as small as possible. The last reason I don't like the PIP, is because when I record these I am at home in a far from presentable appearance ;-).
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 12:30
Friday, October 12, 2007
Mike, I find it very British of you to question the Microsoft speak!
SO, my ASK to you is to GO AHEAD and get SUPER excited about how much more PERFORMANT your developer STORY becomes with these UM.. UM... enhancements that we are BAKING into the language. See it as your CALL TO ACTION. :-)
SO, my ASK to you is to GO AHEAD and get SUPER excited about how much more PERFORMANT your developer STORY becomes with these UM.. UM... enhancements that we are BAKING into the language. See it as your CALL TO ACTION. :-)
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 15:00
Friday, September 14, 2007
UPDATE 4: Looks like I am bottom of the league on this one with others hitting 51.9 wpm, 62.8 wpm, 72 wpm, 73.7 wpm, 80.1 wpm, 81.6 wpm, 90 wpm, 90.3 wpm, 96.8 wpm, 97.4 wpm, 99.2 wpm, 118.8 wpm and 125.6 wpm! What are your results?
Tim talks here about Vista speech recognition, and as an aside he links to a site that tests your typing speed. I had 3 minutes to spare so I gave it a go and the results were 50 words per minute. That pales in comparison to Tim's 70 but I knew already that I am not a fast typist (which is why I rely on intellisense, snippets and "clipboard inheritance" in my VS demos). Give it a go and see how you fare...
Tim talks here about Vista speech recognition, and as an aside he links to a site that tests your typing speed. I had 3 minutes to spare so I gave it a go and the results were 50 words per minute. That pales in comparison to Tim's 70 but I knew already that I am not a fast typist (which is why I rely on intellisense, snippets and "clipboard inheritance" in my VS demos). Give it a go and see how you fare...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 21:04
Monday, August 27, 2007
Since last Friday I have been out of office, specifically back home in Greece, and the week culminated in our wedding yesterday (Greek Orthodox version of the civil one from exactly a year ago). In a few hours the real holiday starts with our honeymoon in the Maldives. Can't wait!
In the mean time, if you are addicted to my content (delusional? Moi??) I invite you to browse some of my older posts that you may not be intimately familiar with:
Normal blogging service will resume when I come back with photos posted at the usual place…
In the mean time, if you are addicted to my content (delusional? Moi??) I invite you to browse some of my older posts that you may not be intimately familiar with:
Start with the best of 2004 and then best of 2005 and finally - you guessed it – best of 2006. Another way to pass your time here is to browse by category e.g. Vista, Mobile & Embedded, Events, Links etc. If you are sick of all my Orcas posts, why not read my older Whidbey or general .NET posts? If you prefer narrower topics, why not learn about SideShow and UAC. If you just stumbled on this blog, why not subscribe and keep up to date? Look at the multiple, rich and flexible "Subscribe" options on the left.
Normal blogging service will resume when I come back with photos posted at the usual place…
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 13:26
Friday, July 13, 2007
After not doing memes for over 2 years, I broke my rule last December and yesterday; today I notice another one where I got tagged (thanks Raymond). So, this is the last meme I am doing for the rest of the year. Now I must tell you what I plan to do over the next 6 months to become a better developer (the format seems to be random so I'll take a wordy lengthy approach).
Well, I've never been involved in a large team project (>20 people), but I have delivered multiple projects (through multiple versions) where the team ranged from 1 to 12 people so I have drawn some conclusions for small projects (at most 100K loc) including the following 3 facts:
1. You do not need formal education or certifications to be a good developer; you just need a logical mind and a genuine interest in the field (and to be lucky enough to work on a handful of projects with talented people that are interested in mentoring you).
2. No matter what process/methodology/best practises/etc you use, the bottom line is that good talented people with a clear vision will deliver good results; the rest simply will struggle.
Another variation of striving for those things is when a talented good developer thinks he can improve others by sharing his knowledge via a methodology, when actually if his team has talent they'll get it right and if they don't then the rules won't help them either. Funny how the people touting a methodology are the ones that can make things work even without it..
3. If you don't understand the technical platform you are working with then you are probably going to be doing things in a suboptimal way and trying to fit old patterns to new paradigms.
Your mileage will vary of course, depending on how long you've been in the industry and the kind of projects you have worked on. I am certainly not projecting the above assertions on you, simply stating that for me personally, they hold true as facts. Moving on (hopefully without pissing too many people off ;)...
Considering points 1 and 2 above, I made the decision a little while back that I am as good/bad a developer as I was at that point and that I was not going to drastically improve/deteriorate from an algorithmic/design/management/performance point of view as years go by. Combining this decision with point 3 above, I decided that the only thing I need to do to stay at the level that I am today, is to keep abreast of all the new technologies that get thrown out from the various vendors. A long time ago (when funnily enough I was a Java developer) I decided to choose and commit to one vendor only: Microsoft.
To bring this blog post back to the meme and in conclusion, my personal choice as a developer is: Stay current with everything new on the Microsoft platform. That is what I've been doing for the last 6 months and this is what I am going to do for the next 6 months.
As to which bits of the Microsoft offerings I specifically focus on, well that varies and this blog is my documentation/sharing vehicle for some of the bits I play with... There is a pattern as to the things that interest me and you can infer that from the Categories on the left of this page. Hope this helps and stay tuned via one of the subscribe options also on the left :-)
In the spirit of the meme, I wonder what these guys' professional plans look like over their next 6 months:
[ Ian, Kenny, Mitch, Phil ] you are IT!
Well, I've never been involved in a large team project (>20 people), but I have delivered multiple projects (through multiple versions) where the team ranged from 1 to 12 people so I have drawn some conclusions for small projects (at most 100K loc) including the following 3 facts:
1. You do not need formal education or certifications to be a good developer; you just need a logical mind and a genuine interest in the field (and to be lucky enough to work on a handful of projects with talented people that are interested in mentoring you).
2. No matter what process/methodology/best practises/etc you use, the bottom line is that good talented people with a clear vision will deliver good results; the rest simply will struggle.
Another variation of striving for those things is when a talented good developer thinks he can improve others by sharing his knowledge via a methodology, when actually if his team has talent they'll get it right and if they don't then the rules won't help them either. Funny how the people touting a methodology are the ones that can make things work even without it..
3. If you don't understand the technical platform you are working with then you are probably going to be doing things in a suboptimal way and trying to fit old patterns to new paradigms.
Your mileage will vary of course, depending on how long you've been in the industry and the kind of projects you have worked on. I am certainly not projecting the above assertions on you, simply stating that for me personally, they hold true as facts. Moving on (hopefully without pissing too many people off ;)...
Considering points 1 and 2 above, I made the decision a little while back that I am as good/bad a developer as I was at that point and that I was not going to drastically improve/deteriorate from an algorithmic/design/management/performance point of view as years go by. Combining this decision with point 3 above, I decided that the only thing I need to do to stay at the level that I am today, is to keep abreast of all the new technologies that get thrown out from the various vendors. A long time ago (when funnily enough I was a Java developer) I decided to choose and commit to one vendor only: Microsoft.
To bring this blog post back to the meme and in conclusion, my personal choice as a developer is: Stay current with everything new on the Microsoft platform. That is what I've been doing for the last 6 months and this is what I am going to do for the next 6 months.
As to which bits of the Microsoft offerings I specifically focus on, well that varies and this blog is my documentation/sharing vehicle for some of the bits I play with... There is a pattern as to the things that interest me and you can infer that from the Categories on the left of this page. Hope this helps and stay tuned via one of the subscribe options also on the left :-)
In the spirit of the meme, I wonder what these guys' professional plans look like over their next 6 months:
[ Ian, Kenny, Mitch, Phil ] you are IT!
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 12:29
Thursday, July 12, 2007
This meme is very similar to the one from last year, but what the heck... Eileen tagged me so here goes:
1. Born in Germany (Rinteln), grew up in Greece (Thessaloniki), live in UK (Hove).
2. Football team I support: Manchester United. Team I supported in Greece: PAOK.
3. Lost my father when I was a baby.
4. As a child I was (very briefly) a boy scout.
5. As a kid I was a massive Bruce Lee fan. When I visited Seattle for the first time, my must see place was Bruce Lee's grave (with Brandon beside him).
6. I trained in Tae Kwon Do (combined with Okinawa) up to red belt. My teacher was the teacher and father of the recent Greek Olympic medallist (Nikolaidis).
7. As a teenager I was a huge The Doors fan. When I went to Paris for the first time, my must see place was Jim Morrison's grave.
8. Last Sunday I saw old head-bangers Metallica at Wembley (ears still buzzing, neck still hurts)... This was in Microsoft's executive box ;-)
I was very tempted to kill this meme here, but instead I'll tag 8 people as mandated (not the same ones as last time) so they can list their own 8 random things about them:
Craig, Eric, Loke Uei, Martin, Mike, Neil, Nick, Steve.
1. Born in Germany (Rinteln), grew up in Greece (Thessaloniki), live in UK (Hove).
2. Football team I support: Manchester United. Team I supported in Greece: PAOK.
3. Lost my father when I was a baby.
4. As a child I was (very briefly) a boy scout.
5. As a kid I was a massive Bruce Lee fan. When I visited Seattle for the first time, my must see place was Bruce Lee's grave (with Brandon beside him).
6. I trained in Tae Kwon Do (combined with Okinawa) up to red belt. My teacher was the teacher and father of the recent Greek Olympic medallist (Nikolaidis).
7. As a teenager I was a huge The Doors fan. When I went to Paris for the first time, my must see place was Jim Morrison's grave.
8. Last Sunday I saw old head-bangers Metallica at Wembley (ears still buzzing, neck still hurts)... This was in Microsoft's executive box ;-)
I was very tempted to kill this meme here, but instead I'll tag 8 people as mandated (not the same ones as last time) so they can list their own 8 random things about them:
Craig, Eric, Loke Uei, Martin, Mike, Neil, Nick, Steve.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 13:51
Monday, July 02, 2007
Rather than a deceitful title like last year, this time it tells the truth. I am 33 today (and noticed a few grey hairs on the sides above my ears... wisdom at last :)).
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 14:14
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Just came back from MEDC Europe in Berlin after the flight from hell (5 hour delay spent in airports, gates, planes and runways) due to the Heathrow gas leakage. I've only had 4 hours sleep in the last 24... And that was following a previous night of little sleep due to a debaucherous celebration in Berlin with the MEDC organisers. Tomorrow I have to be at TVP all day including evening entertainment with our UK "community leaders", followed by DDD5 on Saturday... In the dictionary next to "sleep deprivation" there must be a picture of me... No surprise then that I've decided to take some time off Sunday thru to Wednesday and be totaly unreachable... Anyway...
On a more pleasant note, our book was selling like a hotcake over there, so MS Press should be very happy... To the people that took photos of me and Andy signing copies for the delegates (what a bizarre feeling that was!), please send me some.
On a more pleasant note, our book was selling like a hotcake over there, so MS Press should be very happy... To the people that took photos of me and Andy signing copies for the delegates (what a bizarre feeling that was!), please send me some.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 20:22
Friday, June 15, 2007
Just came back from a few busy days in Amsterdam. I have been to Amsterdam a few times before and given the busy schedule I didn't venture anywhere beyond the hotel and the RAI (the venue) other than one night for dinner in an Italian restaurant with funny man Rob Miles. In fact, I ordered a lemon tart and got a cake with a bit of lemon on the side! Rob has a photo of it here.
Anyway, I have to say, I was very impressed with this event. The sound system/microphone was the best I have ever used. The food was fresh and healthy (no cans of coke, or packet of crisps or chocolate bars and other junk food like that). There was a geeky buzz about the place and the Dutch were a wonderful audience – very interactive and kind enough to laugh at my bad jokes. Some of them even let me to devalue their fresh purchase by asking me to sign it.
The screen in the auditorium (capacity 2K people) was one of the largest I have ever seen. The screen had a feature that must be every presenter's dream, but is very hard to describe: it was split in two where on one side they showed the presenter's face and on the other the slides.
No, that isn't the killer feature yet. When the presenter switches to a demo, the face bit becomes smaller and goes to the corner, and a 3rd viewport appears on the screen in the middle.
So now you have 3 squares (1 small showing the presenter, 1 large showing the demo machine plus 1 more that is also large). The new one that appears in the middle is a magnifier for the demo machine, controlled by people backstage! So while you, as the presenter, are doing your demo as usual, someone else makes sure that the important bits are magnified for the audience on a separate screen. Pure genius.
Overall, I'd be more than happy to go back to DevDays in coming years. The organiser picked only speakers that he had seen present at other events previously and hence was confident they would be good for his event. He covered expenses for speakers which was refreshing for a large international conference. Congrats on a good show and thanks for inviting me Arie!
Anyway, I have to say, I was very impressed with this event. The sound system/microphone was the best I have ever used. The food was fresh and healthy (no cans of coke, or packet of crisps or chocolate bars and other junk food like that). There was a geeky buzz about the place and the Dutch were a wonderful audience – very interactive and kind enough to laugh at my bad jokes. Some of them even let me to devalue their fresh purchase by asking me to sign it.
The screen in the auditorium (capacity 2K people) was one of the largest I have ever seen. The screen had a feature that must be every presenter's dream, but is very hard to describe: it was split in two where on one side they showed the presenter's face and on the other the slides.
No, that isn't the killer feature yet. When the presenter switches to a demo, the face bit becomes smaller and goes to the corner, and a 3rd viewport appears on the screen in the middle.
So now you have 3 squares (1 small showing the presenter, 1 large showing the demo machine plus 1 more that is also large). The new one that appears in the middle is a magnifier for the demo machine, controlled by people backstage! So while you, as the presenter, are doing your demo as usual, someone else makes sure that the important bits are magnified for the audience on a separate screen. Pure genius.
Overall, I'd be more than happy to go back to DevDays in coming years. The organiser picked only speakers that he had seen present at other events previously and hence was confident they would be good for his event. He covered expenses for speakers which was refreshing for a large international conference. Congrats on a good show and thanks for inviting me Arie!
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 19:30
Monday, June 11, 2007
Mobile Development Handbook
My book is now in my hands, and here is the proof... and another wobbly photo of the back :-D
At some point in 2006 I started writing a book and at some point in April 2007 we completed the project. I say "we", because I had two excellent co-authors, both long standing Device Application MVPs: Peter Foot and Andy Wigley. I would have liked to be able to say that I also am a .NET Compact Framework MVP, but unfortunately I lost that title when joining Microsoft last year as per the rules.
We explicitly targeted two audiences with our book and implicitly excluded one audience segment:
1. Existing C# and VB device developers - YES
If you are already targeting Windows Mobile devices you will know that all existing books talk about version 1.0 of the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio.NET 2003. Since those times there have been three service packs for v1.0, version 2.0 with two service packs and, of course, Visual Studio 2005. Furthermore, v3.5 is in Beta 1 right now as is Visual Studio "Orcas". Our book covers what is new in the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio 2005 compared to their predecessors. It also covers throughout the chapters, but also in a dedicated chapter, version 3.5 of the NETCF and VS "Orcas" for Devices.
2. Existing .NET developers who are complete newbies to device development - YES
There are millions of proficient .NET desktop developers that would like to know how to write code for their mobile device or generally want to find out how to transfer their skills or business logic to the mobile platform. The book's tone is certainly aimed directly to those developers by continually contrasting and comparing with desktop development as applicable, highlighting what is different or missing when doing device development.
3. Existing native device developers - NO
This book is all about managed code, but we never introduce any basic .NET concepts from scratch. We expect readers to know about those either through experience with previous versions of NETCF or through .NET desktop development. So if you are a native device developer, you should pick up another book to learn the basics of .NET. We also have made no assumptions of knowledge about the Windows CE and Windows Mobile platform. The reason is so desktop developers can get an introduction to the whole stack/environment and not just the dev platform and tools. So, as a native device developer, you will encounter concepts explained that you probably already are intimately familiar with.
Whether you are looking for a book to read cover-to-cover or for a reference that you go back to, this book will fulfil your needs. It isn't just a book on the raw technology, but more importantly it captures lessons from developers that have practised mobile and embedded development in the real world.
Mobile Development Handbook
My book is now in my hands, and here is the proof... and another wobbly photo of the back :-D
At some point in 2006 I started writing a book and at some point in April 2007 we completed the project. I say "we", because I had two excellent co-authors, both long standing Device Application MVPs: Peter Foot and Andy Wigley. I would have liked to be able to say that I also am a .NET Compact Framework MVP, but unfortunately I lost that title when joining Microsoft last year as per the rules.
We explicitly targeted two audiences with our book and implicitly excluded one audience segment:
1. Existing C# and VB device developers - YES
If you are already targeting Windows Mobile devices you will know that all existing books talk about version 1.0 of the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio.NET 2003. Since those times there have been three service packs for v1.0, version 2.0 with two service packs and, of course, Visual Studio 2005. Furthermore, v3.5 is in Beta 1 right now as is Visual Studio "Orcas". Our book covers what is new in the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio 2005 compared to their predecessors. It also covers throughout the chapters, but also in a dedicated chapter, version 3.5 of the NETCF and VS "Orcas" for Devices.
2. Existing .NET developers who are complete newbies to device development - YES
There are millions of proficient .NET desktop developers that would like to know how to write code for their mobile device or generally want to find out how to transfer their skills or business logic to the mobile platform. The book's tone is certainly aimed directly to those developers by continually contrasting and comparing with desktop development as applicable, highlighting what is different or missing when doing device development.
3. Existing native device developers - NO
This book is all about managed code, but we never introduce any basic .NET concepts from scratch. We expect readers to know about those either through experience with previous versions of NETCF or through .NET desktop development. So if you are a native device developer, you should pick up another book to learn the basics of .NET. We also have made no assumptions of knowledge about the Windows CE and Windows Mobile platform. The reason is so desktop developers can get an introduction to the whole stack/environment and not just the dev platform and tools. So, as a native device developer, you will encounter concepts explained that you probably already are intimately familiar with.
Whether you are looking for a book to read cover-to-cover or for a reference that you go back to, this book will fulfil your needs. It isn't just a book on the raw technology, but more importantly it captures lessons from developers that have practised mobile and embedded development in the real world.
Mobile Development Handbook
Labels: Links, Mobile and Embedded, Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 14:13
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Finally, the world gets an up to date book on Mobile Development! You can browse it at amazon or look for it at your favourite book shop online or offline.
Its 600+ pages are spread over the following 18 chapters:
Its 600+ pages are spread over the following 18 chapters:
1. .NET Compact Framework—a Platform on the MoveI highly recommended you check it out, for example, on the publisher's official book page.
2. Building a Microsoft Windows Forms GUI
3. Using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Other Data Stores
4. Catching Errors, Testing, and Debugging
5. Understanding and Optimizing .NET Compact Framework Performance
6. Completing the Application: Packaging and Deployment
7. Exchanging Data with Backend Servers
8. Networking
9. Getting Connected
10. Security Programming for Mobile Applications
11. Threading
12. Graphics Programming
13. Direct3D Mobile
14. Interoperating with the Platform
15. Building Custom Controls
16. Internationalization
17. Developing with Windows Mobile
18. Introducing .NET Compact Framework Version 3.5 and Visual Studio "Orcas"
Labels: Mobile and Embedded, Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 22:08
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Have you noticed on various Microsoft web sites and newsletters the use of go.microsoft.com URLs that redirect to the real URL where the content lives? They have always bugged me. Let's look at an example by examining the following two snippets:
So I asked around about the usage of these URLs and the reply confirmed my presumption on why we use these: statistics. That is how we measure what links people follow. There are backend tools that measure the total traffic to a URL, but how can you know where those clicks are coming from, especially when they will originate from someone's email client (in the case of newsletters such as the flash)? I am not a web guy so I cannot see an immediate alternative. Unless/until someone comes up with a better solution, we'll just have to live with this necessary evil I guess...
"If you are a developer interested in Vista, Orcas and mobile development you'll find that this blog rocks!"
" If you are a developer interested in Vista, Orcas and mobile development you'll find that this blog rocks!"The two extracts above look identical, and following the links takes you to the same place. However, the 1st shows the real URL, while the 2nd takes you somewhere else and then redirects you. Most people I know (inc. me) hover over a URL before clicking on it. That is because when you mouseover a link, the destination usually appears in the statusbar or a tooltip so you can preview the URL you are about to visit. So, in the case above, maybe I would not click on it because I have already been to that destination and I don't want to waste my time (or maybe I already subscribe etc). Using a go.microsoft.com/?linkid=abcdefg hides that from me. Also if I am offline, I can still get the real URL and potentially add it to a list of places to visit, but I am unlikely to do that with a go URL. While that is my view, recently I heard someone also complain about the go URLs. They were taking it a bit far by saying they were finding these URLs "suspicious". Without commenting here on the comment per se, the net effect is they also don't like them.
So I asked around about the usage of these URLs and the reply confirmed my presumption on why we use these: statistics. That is how we measure what links people follow. There are backend tools that measure the total traffic to a URL, but how can you know where those clicks are coming from, especially when they will originate from someone's email client (in the case of newsletters such as the flash)? I am not a web guy so I cannot see an immediate alternative. Unless/until someone comes up with a better solution, we'll just have to live with this necessary evil I guess...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 14:24
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Just came back from a very different MEDC for me this year.
I've been to Vegas a few times before and this is the only time that I didn't venture beyond the Venetian! I pretty much spent all my time at the conference or in my room, with the occasional trip to restaurants (in the Venetian) for breakfast/lunch/dinner. I only had drinks (extremely generous portions of Stoli on the rocks) on Wednesday night at the Venetian's TAO where the conference party was held. Some of us went to some other place in the Venetian after that but I don't recall the name. This resulted in a bad hangover on Thursday morning which soon converted itself to a nasty cold that I brought back with me today. I bet half the attendees came back with a cold because the temperatures in that hotel are sub zero. The other bad news was that since Monday my laptop monitor malfunctioned. It did this last September and it only took the Toshiba technician 10 minutes to reconnect the cable internally but I wasn't going to risk that myself with all the sessions I was doing! I ended up delivering my breakouts by looking at the monitor on the stand rather than my own laptop monitor (external projection still worked, thank God!).
On a more positive note, my breakouts were well received and I enjoyed watching them feature in the Top 10 list monitor in the speaker room :-). This was a special achievement for anyone at MEDC this year since Doug Boling decided to have 4 of his talks dominate the top 5... someone suggested, and I agree, that next year we should only pay him if he gets scores above 8.5 (which is what he did this year!). Thank you to everyone who attended my sessions, thank you to all of you for voting and special thanks to those of you that put up with my bad jokes :-)
On a further positive note, I came back with more cool swag than from any other conference ever: hardware. Some bits I got because I was a speaker, others as a (former) MVP, and others by prior arrangement with Microsoft colleagues in Redmond whom I met in Vegas. Below is the top 5 swag items I have just unpacked:
- Sweet Presenter Mouse
- NETMF Freescale i.MXS Development Kit
- JawBone noise cancelling Bluetooth headset
- Cool laptop web camera
- Windows CE eBox-2300SX Development Kit
Now I'll go find some creative way to keep my eyes open while my body adjusts itself to normal time again...
I've been to Vegas a few times before and this is the only time that I didn't venture beyond the Venetian! I pretty much spent all my time at the conference or in my room, with the occasional trip to restaurants (in the Venetian) for breakfast/lunch/dinner. I only had drinks (extremely generous portions of Stoli on the rocks) on Wednesday night at the Venetian's TAO where the conference party was held. Some of us went to some other place in the Venetian after that but I don't recall the name. This resulted in a bad hangover on Thursday morning which soon converted itself to a nasty cold that I brought back with me today. I bet half the attendees came back with a cold because the temperatures in that hotel are sub zero. The other bad news was that since Monday my laptop monitor malfunctioned. It did this last September and it only took the Toshiba technician 10 minutes to reconnect the cable internally but I wasn't going to risk that myself with all the sessions I was doing! I ended up delivering my breakouts by looking at the monitor on the stand rather than my own laptop monitor (external projection still worked, thank God!).
On a more positive note, my breakouts were well received and I enjoyed watching them feature in the Top 10 list monitor in the speaker room :-). This was a special achievement for anyone at MEDC this year since Doug Boling decided to have 4 of his talks dominate the top 5... someone suggested, and I agree, that next year we should only pay him if he gets scores above 8.5 (which is what he did this year!). Thank you to everyone who attended my sessions, thank you to all of you for voting and special thanks to those of you that put up with my bad jokes :-)
On a further positive note, I came back with more cool swag than from any other conference ever: hardware. Some bits I got because I was a speaker, others as a (former) MVP, and others by prior arrangement with Microsoft colleagues in Redmond whom I met in Vegas. Below is the top 5 swag items I have just unpacked:
- Sweet Presenter Mouse
- NETMF Freescale i.MXS Development Kit
- JawBone noise cancelling Bluetooth headset
- Cool laptop web camera
- Windows CE eBox-2300SX Development Kit
Now I'll go find some creative way to keep my eyes open while my body adjusts itself to normal time again...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 20:33
Saturday, April 28, 2007
It is going to be busy for me at MEDC again this year (sessions one, two, three and four), but if you are attending MEDC or even MIX (which is also held at the Venetian in Vegas next week), contact me to catch up. I am flying there in a few hours and will stay until next Friday.
When I am back I'll share some good news even though somebody has already spilled the beans. Have fun!
When I am back I'll share some good news even though somebody has already spilled the beans. Have fun!
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 06:02
Thursday, April 19, 2007
After a long period offline on holiday, I returned to all my inboxes overflowing with email - none more than my work email account. It has taken me about 3 days to address everything emailed to me, but that is another story. There are many factors to receiving tons of email and I could easily rant about people CC'ing me for no reason whatsoever (or rant about those asking for read receipts, wot's up with that?).
However, the one that really ticks me off is people that BCC me: I call those people BCCards (pronounced slightly differently than what it is spelled). BCCing also happens when someone decides to add a bunch of distribution lists (DLs) to the BCC field thus avoiding my carefully constructed Outlook rules for categorising posts to DLs into their own folders. It also happens when someone sends an email to a DL that I have not subscribed to but that is a member of some larger DL that I have no interest in. So how can I deal with this issue and avoid the useless message from landing in my inbox directly? Annoyingly, I cannot find a rule that I can create in Outlook to cope with this situation, so I had to take a number of steps. If you know of a better way please let me know and if you don't, then I hope you appreciate my approach (works with Outlook 2007).
1. Go through all the existing rules and make sure that in the Actions (step 2) you have checked the "stop processing more rules" action.
2. Create a new rule and move it to be the last rule of them all (FYI rules get processed in order). Do not create a condition for this rule, and go straight to step 2 on the actions. Check the "Permanently Delete it" box. AND then move to the next page on Exceptions and check the "except if my name is in the To or Cc" box.
I won't tell you how close I came to also doing the above for messages marked with "High Importance". Have you ever received a message that had this set and was truly important? Have a look in your inbox now and check to see which messages are marked as such. Looking at mine, it seems that the messages are not important but the people that send them think they themselves are...
However, the one that really ticks me off is people that BCC me: I call those people BCCards (pronounced slightly differently than what it is spelled). BCCing also happens when someone decides to add a bunch of distribution lists (DLs) to the BCC field thus avoiding my carefully constructed Outlook rules for categorising posts to DLs into their own folders. It also happens when someone sends an email to a DL that I have not subscribed to but that is a member of some larger DL that I have no interest in. So how can I deal with this issue and avoid the useless message from landing in my inbox directly? Annoyingly, I cannot find a rule that I can create in Outlook to cope with this situation, so I had to take a number of steps. If you know of a better way please let me know and if you don't, then I hope you appreciate my approach (works with Outlook 2007).
1. Go through all the existing rules and make sure that in the Actions (step 2) you have checked the "stop processing more rules" action.
2. Create a new rule and move it to be the last rule of them all (FYI rules get processed in order). Do not create a condition for this rule, and go straight to step 2 on the actions. Check the "Permanently Delete it" box. AND then move to the next page on Exceptions and check the "except if my name is in the To or Cc" box.
I won't tell you how close I came to also doing the above for messages marked with "High Importance". Have you ever received a message that had this set and was truly important? Have a look in your inbox now and check to see which messages are marked as such. Looking at mine, it seems that the messages are not important but the people that send them think they themselves are...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 19:53
Sunday, April 01, 2007
I am off to Greece for a couple of weeks on holiday. Well, I say holiday but actually it is to sort out some stuff for our Greek wedding (the religious version)... for those that haven't done it yet, planning a wedding is time consuming in its own right, but planning one remotely is very stressful indeed - my advice is simply don't!
Anyway, normal business will resume on April 17th or thereabouts...
Anyway, normal business will resume on April 17th or thereabouts...
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 15:57
Sunday, March 11, 2007
One of the perks of being an MVP (and the perk I miss the most!) is attending the global MVP summit in Seattle (and I did that in 2005). Having been to plenty of public conferences and also to internal Microsoft conferences (MGX, TechReady), let me share with you that the MVP summit tops them all. It is simply the one to be at! To everyone out there this coming week, have one on me :-)
I was going to try and make it there this year, in a different capacity of course, but my speaking schedule got in the way :(
I was going to try and make it there this year, in a different capacity of course, but my speaking schedule got in the way :(
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 22:09
Monday, March 05, 2007
With all this talk of lambda expressions, I should point out that whoever decided to spell the Greek letter using characters from the latin alphabet has done it incorrectly. Spelling LAMBDA with a 'b' is simply wrong. The correct way to spell it is LAMDA. The Greek spelling of lamda uses 5 characters that each map exactly to the latin counterparts: ΛΑΜΔΑ. In case that doesn't render as it should for you, look at the following image:
Each letter in one alphabet is equivalent to the other (they sound the same, the keyboard maps them the same, they just *are* the same!). Whose bright idea was it to introduce a 'B' where it didn't belong?! When you read the word out loud, how do you change your pronunciation between the incorrect way LAMBDA and the correct way LAMDA? If you pronounce the 'B' I can tell you that that is not the way Greeks pronounce it.
To be quite honest, if you wanted to get as close to the real pronunciation as possible, then it should be written as lamtha where the 'th' is read in the same way as 'th' in the words 'there', 'the', 'though' etc.
Rant over.
Each letter in one alphabet is equivalent to the other (they sound the same, the keyboard maps them the same, they just *are* the same!). Whose bright idea was it to introduce a 'B' where it didn't belong?! When you read the word out loud, how do you change your pronunciation between the incorrect way LAMBDA and the correct way LAMDA? If you pronounce the 'B' I can tell you that that is not the way Greeks pronounce it.
To be quite honest, if you wanted to get as close to the real pronunciation as possible, then it should be written as lamtha where the 'th' is read in the same way as 'th' in the words 'there', 'the', 'though' etc.
Rant over.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 12:01
Sunday, February 04, 2007
As suggested two days ago, yesterday I was at WebDD to listen to some talks and do a 10’ stint myself.
I had a good time. It was basically a DDD with focused web content, and with a few additional twists including:
1. There was active presence by Microsoft (e.g. speakers, pods)
2. It was slightly smaller (3 rooms instead of 4)
3. No public voting of sessions
4. ScottGu dominated the event (His room was always full, with people standing and queuing)
As a complete aside, having attended (and presented) a few 1-day events at our UK TVP offices I think I prefer events where the two rooms (Chicago 1 & 2) are joined i.e. single track events.
I was one of the people standing in Scott’s sessions and I can see why people were so attracted to his talks (heck, I am not even into web development and I sat through 3 of them!):
a. Gravitas
When the General Manager of the developer platform is telling you how it is, you know that you are not only getting the facts, but also what decisions were made before reaching the current spec and what is waiting in the pipeline. You also know that you can give feedback straight to the horse’s... ears.
b. Geekness
I have always maintained that developers enjoy watching/listening to fellow geeks. Scott is a geek.
c. Passion
Usually, but not always, follows on from the previous point. In this case, it was evident that Scott was passionate about what he was showing.
Notice how I did not include in the list above “presentation skills”. That is because I have never heard so many times the word “um” in a session. If it wasn’t for the compelling content I would have walked out at one point in the “WPF/e” talk :-)
Speaking of presentation mistakes, on to my grok talk...
I managed to start talking and then realised that I had forgotten to connect my laptop to the projector... doh! I also hadn’t realised that the only microphone available was one that you must hold... a bit difficult when your entire talk is demo-based! Thanks to Richard, Dave and John for filling in for me while I battled to get Vista to talk to the screen and thanks for later holding the microphone to my face while I used the keyboard/mouse. Live and learn. As for the topic of my grok talk, I settled on Sidebar (apologies if you were hoping for SideShow, but I feel that it is hard to talk about it without having real hardware to show to people).
I had a good time. It was basically a DDD with focused web content, and with a few additional twists including:
1. There was active presence by Microsoft (e.g. speakers, pods)
2. It was slightly smaller (3 rooms instead of 4)
3. No public voting of sessions
4. ScottGu dominated the event (His room was always full, with people standing and queuing)
As a complete aside, having attended (and presented) a few 1-day events at our UK TVP offices I think I prefer events where the two rooms (Chicago 1 & 2) are joined i.e. single track events.
I was one of the people standing in Scott’s sessions and I can see why people were so attracted to his talks (heck, I am not even into web development and I sat through 3 of them!):
a. Gravitas
When the General Manager of the developer platform is telling you how it is, you know that you are not only getting the facts, but also what decisions were made before reaching the current spec and what is waiting in the pipeline. You also know that you can give feedback straight to the horse’s... ears.
b. Geekness
I have always maintained that developers enjoy watching/listening to fellow geeks. Scott is a geek.
c. Passion
Usually, but not always, follows on from the previous point. In this case, it was evident that Scott was passionate about what he was showing.
Notice how I did not include in the list above “presentation skills”. That is because I have never heard so many times the word “um” in a session. If it wasn’t for the compelling content I would have walked out at one point in the “WPF/e” talk :-)
Speaking of presentation mistakes, on to my grok talk...
I managed to start talking and then realised that I had forgotten to connect my laptop to the projector... doh! I also hadn’t realised that the only microphone available was one that you must hold... a bit difficult when your entire talk is demo-based! Thanks to Richard, Dave and John for filling in for me while I battled to get Vista to talk to the screen and thanks for later holding the microphone to my face while I used the keyboard/mouse. Live and learn. As for the topic of my grok talk, I settled on Sidebar (apologies if you were hoping for SideShow, but I feel that it is hard to talk about it without having real hardware to show to people).
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 15:05
Monday, January 15, 2007
For the UK launch of Vista and Office, I am doing a Vista session as expected, but I am also filling a "SharePoint Workflow and collaboration" slot. To prepare for the talk I am running a Virtual PC image of Windows Server 2003 with MOSS on my Vista machine. When I received this image, immediately the challenge was obvious: the VPC image requires 2GB of RAM and my laptop has a total of 2GB of RAM. I lowered the RAM requirement of the image but it would still not start due to lack of memory. I was convinced that I could lower the memory requirements a little and also kill everything unnecessary on my Vista laptop so the host OS used as little memory as possible.
Question: Is there something I can do to a host OS to run the bare minimum since all I am going to be doing is running the VPC and nothing else? No connectivity, sound or anything else required; all I want the machine for is to run full screen the VPC image. Please let me know.
So my steps to minimising RAM use by the host OS was what most people would think:
1. Exit all applications via the X in the top right corner of their window.
2. Right click on all systray icons and select “Exit” (if they offer that option)
3. Run Task Manager. The Applications tab is empty (like the taskbar). Go to the "Processes" tab.
4. Select each unnecessary process and then click the "End Process" button in the bottom right.
At the previous stage you can cause damage so I explicitly do not advise that you kill processes that are not yours. The next stage is even more dangerous so please do not do that.
5. Click on the "Show processes from all users" button. Now you have a whole bunch of more processes to kill. Go to town.
6. After killing more processes than you've ever killed in your life, next let's stop some services. Go to the "Services" tab of Task Manager.
7. For any running service that you think is unnecessary, right click and choose "Stop service".
At the previous step you really are taking your life in your own hands. Only an idiot would stop services they know nothing about so please let me be the only one.
I have gone through this exercise a few times and once I managed to blue screen the machine and another time it just decided to restart with no warning other than slowly dimming the screen to black. I cannot stress enough that the above actions can cause loss of data or permanent failure.
8. My penultimate tip (the last one is at the end in the post script): before doing all of the above make sure you turn off network connectivity since some of the things we are killing result in a less secure machine and also many of the services we are stopping are network related.
Now you know why I asked the question earlier. I know there is a better way to eliminate all unnecessary running processes, but I don't know exactly what it is. This painful process is something I repeat every day since Christmas but at least now I know what to kill and what is either unkillable or comes back to life or if it dies it takes the system with it. It is still irritating having to do all that so please put me out of my misery and tell me how to run a VPC image that uses almost all the RAM of the host machine.
In any case, here is what the "Performance" tab of my "Task Manager" shows after I am done killing:
That's right folks, a Vista machine running with only 395MB and 24 processes. Beat that if you can!! See your task manager right now for how many processes you are running.
I then launch my Virtual PC with the gigantic image, and 12 minutes later the image is loaded and the picture has changed to this:
Yup, 1.72GB used up immediately! Not that life is good from here on cause I have lowered the VPC image's RAM to the extent where it is very slooow regardless... with the occasional failure to render the navigation bar of the SharePoint site.
I can even manage to get the RAM usage down to 378MB as this screenshot proves, which is about half of what I'd normally use when VPC images are not in the picture.
So what do you think: the next time I am asked to do a session that requires a VPC image this big, should I ask for a new laptop to go with it? ;-)
PS The biggest RAM savings I got were by stopping the services “SuperFetch” (trade memory for perf) and “Windows Search” (trade memory for productivity). Getting down to 24 processes included killing “explorer” itself (and launching the VPC image from Task Manager). These 3 actions, plus turning off aero (i.e. no glass) saved me ~150MB.
Question: Is there something I can do to a host OS to run the bare minimum since all I am going to be doing is running the VPC and nothing else? No connectivity, sound or anything else required; all I want the machine for is to run full screen the VPC image. Please let me know.
So my steps to minimising RAM use by the host OS was what most people would think:
1. Exit all applications via the X in the top right corner of their window.
2. Right click on all systray icons and select “Exit” (if they offer that option)
3. Run Task Manager. The Applications tab is empty (like the taskbar). Go to the "Processes" tab.
4. Select each unnecessary process and then click the "End Process" button in the bottom right.
At the previous stage you can cause damage so I explicitly do not advise that you kill processes that are not yours. The next stage is even more dangerous so please do not do that.
5. Click on the "Show processes from all users" button. Now you have a whole bunch of more processes to kill. Go to town.
6. After killing more processes than you've ever killed in your life, next let's stop some services. Go to the "Services" tab of Task Manager.
7. For any running service that you think is unnecessary, right click and choose "Stop service".
At the previous step you really are taking your life in your own hands. Only an idiot would stop services they know nothing about so please let me be the only one.
I have gone through this exercise a few times and once I managed to blue screen the machine and another time it just decided to restart with no warning other than slowly dimming the screen to black. I cannot stress enough that the above actions can cause loss of data or permanent failure.
8. My penultimate tip (the last one is at the end in the post script): before doing all of the above make sure you turn off network connectivity since some of the things we are killing result in a less secure machine and also many of the services we are stopping are network related.
Now you know why I asked the question earlier. I know there is a better way to eliminate all unnecessary running processes, but I don't know exactly what it is. This painful process is something I repeat every day since Christmas but at least now I know what to kill and what is either unkillable or comes back to life or if it dies it takes the system with it. It is still irritating having to do all that so please put me out of my misery and tell me how to run a VPC image that uses almost all the RAM of the host machine.
In any case, here is what the "Performance" tab of my "Task Manager" shows after I am done killing:
That's right folks, a Vista machine running with only 395MB and 24 processes. Beat that if you can!! See your task manager right now for how many processes you are running.
I then launch my Virtual PC with the gigantic image, and 12 minutes later the image is loaded and the picture has changed to this:
Yup, 1.72GB used up immediately! Not that life is good from here on cause I have lowered the VPC image's RAM to the extent where it is very slooow regardless... with the occasional failure to render the navigation bar of the SharePoint site.
I can even manage to get the RAM usage down to 378MB as this screenshot proves, which is about half of what I'd normally use when VPC images are not in the picture.
So what do you think: the next time I am asked to do a session that requires a VPC image this big, should I ask for a new laptop to go with it? ;-)
PS The biggest RAM savings I got were by stopping the services “SuperFetch” (trade memory for perf) and “Windows Search” (trade memory for productivity). Getting down to 24 processes included killing “explorer” itself (and launching the VPC image from Task Manager). These 3 actions, plus turning off aero (i.e. no glass) saved me ~150MB.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 01:29
Sunday, January 14, 2007
My pathetic WEI (aka WinSAT) is available here where you can also share yours.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 05:21
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Just followed some links from Loke's blog
It is one cool mother but...
1. Work out how much it will set you back after taking the farcical price tag and adding the rates for data and voice! Who will afford that?
2. No high speed internet access (probably so it doesn’t hurt its already bad battery life)
3. No sync with exchange! That rules out most business users.
4. No physical buttons at all?! I like feedback at my fingertips when answering the phone or sending a txt msg.
5. V1 product to be available in Europe in 11 months.
...but it is sexy... very nice toy indeed!
PS If you are reading this far it means that you didn't work out the cost, did you? ;-)
It is one cool mother but...
1. Work out how much it will set you back after taking the farcical price tag and adding the rates for data and voice! Who will afford that?
2. No high speed internet access (probably so it doesn’t hurt its already bad battery life)
3. No sync with exchange! That rules out most business users.
4. No physical buttons at all?! I like feedback at my fingertips when answering the phone or sending a txt msg.
5. V1 product to be available in Europe in 11 months.
...but it is sexy... very nice toy indeed!
PS If you are reading this far it means that you didn't work out the cost, did you? ;-)
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 02:16
Thursday, December 28, 2006
MarkJo (whose accent is definitely funnier than mine despite what he claims) has tagged me in this meme... and as my regular readers will know I don’t do memes but, hey, there is always the first time I guess... :-)
1. Before deciding to study computer science in the UK (also known as “before my mum insisted I study”) I was a magician in Greece and actually appeared live on national Greek television. I still have the business cards!
2. When I am behind the wheel I just can’t help speeding. I have 6 points on my license (gained with my Punto GT Turbo); with my brand new Golf GTI 2.0 (200bhp) I am bound to increase them. Problem is that the more points you get the more chances of losing the license and that would most definitely mean losing my job. Not joking, this is a dead serious concern of mine and probably what will force me into working for myself full time from home.
3. I love travelling and have been almost everywhere. If I could live anywhere in the world it would be Australia where I’ve spent 3 unforgettable weeks. Only issue is convincing the wife who prefers Europe as our residence...
4. While competitive at most things I do, the one I always brag about is chess. If you think you have what it takes, challenge me!
5. The last thing you probably don’t know about me is that I have switched the search engine of this blog to LIVE. Check out the cool interface on the left... type “NETMF” in the box and hit enter, you know you want to :-)
Doh... I almost hit “submit”, but this is a meme so I have to tag 5 other bloggers. Let’s see if these guys are listening and want to play:
Angelos , Eileen , Mike , Peter , Scott.
1. Before deciding to study computer science in the UK (also known as “before my mum insisted I study”) I was a magician in Greece and actually appeared live on national Greek television. I still have the business cards!
2. When I am behind the wheel I just can’t help speeding. I have 6 points on my license (gained with my Punto GT Turbo); with my brand new Golf GTI 2.0 (200bhp) I am bound to increase them. Problem is that the more points you get the more chances of losing the license and that would most definitely mean losing my job. Not joking, this is a dead serious concern of mine and probably what will force me into working for myself full time from home.
3. I love travelling and have been almost everywhere. If I could live anywhere in the world it would be Australia where I’ve spent 3 unforgettable weeks. Only issue is convincing the wife who prefers Europe as our residence...
4. While competitive at most things I do, the one I always brag about is chess. If you think you have what it takes, challenge me!
5. The last thing you probably don’t know about me is that I have switched the search engine of this blog to LIVE. Check out the cool interface on the left... type “NETMF” in the box and hit enter, you know you want to :-)
Doh... I almost hit “submit”, but this is a meme so I have to tag 5 other bloggers. Let’s see if these guys are listening and want to play:
Angelos , Eileen , Mike , Peter , Scott.
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 23:10
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
OT post, no technical content on this one...
[sigh] I woke up this morning to the sound of my phone’s alarm. Unlike other times though, there is no notification. Without a notification, I cannot dismiss the alarm! None of the hardware buttons has any effect. I ended up muting the volume. Soft resets, playing with settings etc but still no joy. I am supposed to know this stuff and I can’t get this annoying alarm to stop sounding... Given that I had a conference meeting in 5’ I just left it muted and turned my attention to dialling the conference centre number. However, the person in charge of the call hadn’t activated it. So while waiting I thought I’d boot the laptop up and check email. Can’t connect to server; it could however download the 3 security updates fine and browse other internet sites. Checked another separate web email service and it was down as well! While trying VPNing in and finding that it is a no starter too, there is a loud bang on the door. I opened the door to find the postman informing me that the door bell seems to have broken. He handed me a letter I had to sign for.
As I was opening the letter (still waiting on the phone for the conf-call to be activated while observing that I still can’t connect to any email account and dreading to put the volume up on my phone in case the alarm started sounding again), I couldn’t help but think: “Will there be a message in the letter informing me that the ‘the world is broken today’...”. I was getting scared, in fact, I checked out of the window to see if there was anything unusual!
For the record: I eventually got into email via Redmond (rather than Reading), found a cancellation for the conf call, the other web email sprung to life, the letter wasn’t pleasant but not the end of the world. Door bell still broken, phone still on mute :-/
[sigh] I woke up this morning to the sound of my phone’s alarm. Unlike other times though, there is no notification. Without a notification, I cannot dismiss the alarm! None of the hardware buttons has any effect. I ended up muting the volume. Soft resets, playing with settings etc but still no joy. I am supposed to know this stuff and I can’t get this annoying alarm to stop sounding... Given that I had a conference meeting in 5’ I just left it muted and turned my attention to dialling the conference centre number. However, the person in charge of the call hadn’t activated it. So while waiting I thought I’d boot the laptop up and check email. Can’t connect to server; it could however download the 3 security updates fine and browse other internet sites. Checked another separate web email service and it was down as well! While trying VPNing in and finding that it is a no starter too, there is a loud bang on the door. I opened the door to find the postman informing me that the door bell seems to have broken. He handed me a letter I had to sign for.
As I was opening the letter (still waiting on the phone for the conf-call to be activated while observing that I still can’t connect to any email account and dreading to put the volume up on my phone in case the alarm started sounding again), I couldn’t help but think: “Will there be a message in the letter informing me that the ‘the world is broken today’...”. I was getting scared, in fact, I checked out of the window to see if there was anything unusual!
For the record: I eventually got into email via Redmond (rather than Reading), found a cancellation for the conf call, the other web email sprung to life, the letter wasn’t pleasant but not the end of the world. Door bell still broken, phone still on mute :-/
Labels: Personal
# posted by The Moth @ 11:16
Friday, November 10, 2006
Finally, gave my last talk this morning so I can't wait for the speaker party tonight. I may update this post with some Tech Ed links when I catch up with blogs...
We have a speaker-leader board in the speakers lounge, and some people are taking it very seriously. It shows the top 10 speakers at any given time (it updates after every round of sessions), based on attendee feedback.
On Tuesday I was impressed when Mike Hall bragged that he was in the top 10 list but then realised that there were only 9 sessions delivered at that point (since his session was in the first timeslot on the first day)... I tried to find where exactly his session ranked today and I ended up breaking my PgDn key ;-)
I am here in Barcelona until Sunday so normal business will resume next week.
We have a speaker-leader board in the speakers lounge, and some people are taking it very seriously. It shows the top 10 speakers at any given time (it updates after every round of sessions), based on attendee feedback.
On Tuesday I was impressed when Mike Hall bragged that he was in the top 10 list but then realised that there were only 9 sessions delivered at that point (since his session was in the first timeslot on the first day)... I tried to find where exactly his session ranked today and I ended up breaking my PgDn key ;-)
I am here in Barcelona until Sunday so normal business will resume next week.
Labels: Personal
Monday, November 06, 2006
As you may have guessed from my previous 4 posts, I am in Barcelona at Tech Ed Europe this week. If you are not here, stay tuned on The Virtual Side... and while you are there, check out my short video interview talking about nothing specific and everything at the same time :-)
Labels: Personal
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Well, the time has come for another vacation (and our 2nd honeymoon in fact, since it is still within the period that the travel agents accept it as such!). We are taking our first ever trip to Egypt to visit the pyramids in Cairo, cruise down the Nile (Luxor, Aswan etc), visit Abu Simbel and dive the Red Sea...
I’ve been looking forward to this break, given the workload of September/October (you can work out from my blog how many events I have done!). Plus, when I return I am off to Tech Ed Europe and, boy, will that be tiring (more on my Tech Ed sessions soon)...
I will be back from our holiday on 1st November so until that Wednesday... other than my nuggets... let there be silence on this domain :-D
PS For any work related queries, try one of my colleagues.
I’ve been looking forward to this break, given the workload of September/October (you can work out from my blog how many events I have done!). Plus, when I return I am off to Tech Ed Europe and, boy, will that be tiring (more on my Tech Ed sessions soon)...
I will be back from our holiday on 1st November so until that Wednesday... other than my nuggets... let there be silence on this domain :-D
PS For any work related queries, try one of my colleagues.
Labels: Personal
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Off topic post, not even a pinch of technical content
Anyone that knows me can tell you that I am not into fitness/gym or any of that stuff at all (I've been to the gym twice in my entire life). When younger I was good with sports (e.g. football, basketball) and was in the school team and also played with colleagues at previous employment. However, in the last 13 months I have not played any sports (SCUBA doesn't count I guess) and today Jenny finally convinced me to do some exercise and she dragged me away from the laptop.
She signed us up for a trial at this thing here in the UK called British Military Fitness[1] where they tell you what to do, for 1 hour, outdoors in the park. Shocking! I thought I was going to die!! My ears where buzzing and you could fry an egg on my head. I am sure my heart stopped at one point. In fact, I've seen in films where people push themselves so far that they throw up... I never understood that, but today I came close... very close!! Needless to say I am not going back there again!
Having said that, if you think you are fit, give it a shot (they are all over the UK and also partner with a US company). Alternatively, play a prank on someone you don't like and buy them a voucher. If anybody is expecting a Xmas gift from me, now you know what it will be ;-)
[1] BMF
Anyone that knows me can tell you that I am not into fitness/gym or any of that stuff at all (I've been to the gym twice in my entire life). When younger I was good with sports (e.g. football, basketball) and was in the school team and also played with colleagues at previous employment. However, in the last 13 months I have not played any sports (SCUBA doesn't count I guess) and today Jenny finally convinced me to do some exercise and she dragged me away from the laptop.
She signed us up for a trial at this thing here in the UK called British Military Fitness[1] where they tell you what to do, for 1 hour, outdoors in the park. Shocking! I thought I was going to die!! My ears where buzzing and you could fry an egg on my head. I am sure my heart stopped at one point. In fact, I've seen in films where people push themselves so far that they throw up... I never understood that, but today I came close... very close!! Needless to say I am not going back there again!
Having said that, if you think you are fit, give it a shot (they are all over the UK and also partner with a US company). Alternatively, play a prank on someone you don't like and buy them a voucher. If anybody is expecting a Xmas gift from me, now you know what it will be ;-)
[1] BMF
Labels: Personal
Saturday, September 23, 2006
This is old news (12 days to be precise), but I just came across it. This guy writes a farewell letter to the Microsoft world on his blog. The poor fella describes how he has had the misfortune of working with developers that are not passionate about their job (what I call the 9-to5ers, what he calls DayCoders). He then concludes that it must be all Microsoft developers that do not love their jobs (!) and hence he has now switched to open source, mac etc so he can work with talented developers.
In the dictionary, under "unjustified giant logical leap" there should be a link to his blog post. (or maybe it is a great marketing move on his behalf to attract sympathy from the non-Microsoft friendly crowd... who knows...)
Here are some choice quotes from his post:
In the dictionary, under "unjustified giant logical leap" there should be a link to his blog post. (or maybe it is a great marketing move on his behalf to attract sympathy from the non-Microsoft friendly crowd... who knows...)
Here are some choice quotes from his post:
"...the word Consultant sounded so wonderfully romantic to me and I wondered if ever I'd make it there as one of the elite band..."His blog entry attracted almost 300 comments! Read it for yourselves and, as an aside, get someone else's opinion on Avanade (but wear your laughing hat :-D).
"...I found myself surrounded by power hungry muppets, the odd idiot, a few downright liars (the practice director in particular being one of them), and only a smattering of the elite coders I dreamed I'd find there..."
"...over and over I'd be lambasted for being too passionate (a condition muppets refer to as arrogance)..."
Labels: Personal
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Last weekend we went to Amsterdam with my mates for stag do and yesterday I married Jenny at Brighton Town Tall (there will be a proper religious wedding in Greece next year).
So in a couple of hours we are flying to Malta for our first honeymoon (and some diving of course :-))
Normal service will resume on Monday 4th September – don’t call me, I’ll call you!
So in a couple of hours we are flying to Malta for our first honeymoon (and some diving of course :-))
Normal service will resume on Monday 4th September – don’t call me, I’ll call you!
Labels: Personal
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Those crazy guys from the NxtGenUG are cornering anyone they can find, shoving a microphone in their face and recording short interviews!
Dave caught me at the Office event 2 months ago (little after I joined MS) and the results are up on their site (read or listen).
Dave caught me at the Office event 2 months ago (little after I joined MS) and the results are up on their site (read or listen).
Labels: Personal
Friday, July 07, 2006
How much pre-release software are you using? Loads right? Whether you love it or hate it, that is the result of increased transparency. Companies are not afraid to share very early what they are working on and have put systems in place to gather feedback from customers (while having an open dialog with users about features and quality). I have no problem with that and I think the breed of user that shies away from software that has the "Beta" label on it will become extinct very soon.
Looking back in the past, it used to be that I would have a separate (older) machine for testing anything Beta, then I moved to Virtual PCs, then I started installing stuff on my main laptop only if I knew it would uninstall cleanly. Now (and maybe this is part of my job, I don't know) I just stick anything that is coming down the pipeline on my laptop and couldn't care less about its stability or removability - I just want to play with it. I want it to always be there without having to switch to another (virtual or not) slower box. My current attitude culminates with the expectation that I will repave the box every couple of months (that is only 6 times a year!).
Since it was released, I've been running Office 12 Beta 2 and using Outlook/Word/PowerPoint 2007 every single day with no serious problems (outlook crashed once and was polite enough to offer me the option of starting in safe mode). IE has become my main browser again with IE 7 (now at Beta 3) after Firefox stole me away from it last y
Looking back in the past, it used to be that I would have a separate (older) machine for testing anything Beta, then I moved to Virtual PCs, then I started installing stuff on my main laptop only if I knew it would uninstall cleanly. Now (and maybe this is part of my job, I don't know) I just stick anything that is coming down the pipeline on my laptop and couldn't care less about its stability or removability - I just want to play with it. I want it to always be there without having to switch to another (virtual or not) slower box. My current attitude culminates with the expectation that I will repave the box every couple of months (that is only 6 times a year!).
Since it was released, I've been running Office 12 Beta 2 and using Outlook/Word/PowerPoint 2007 every single day with no serious problems (outlook crashed once and was polite enough to offer me the option of starting in safe mode). IE has become my main browser again with IE 7 (now at Beta 3) after Firefox stole me away from it last y
