Dave Webster's WebLog

Teched South East Asia

davewebster — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Well Teched EMEA was a success after a few close calls. The scores were much the same as last year despite losing a few of our regular 'stars' like Kim Tripp to the Connections event in Las Vegas at the same time. Now I am gearing up for TechEd South...(read more)

WPF and MVC - recognizing Ink with an InkCanvas

davewebster — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:04:00 GMT

I am in the middle of preparing an internal presentation on WPF/Blend and VS and figuring out what developers need to know about the tools. One thing is clear, developers need good business examples showing the benefits of using WPF and blend so they...(read more)

A simple Org chart app

davewebster — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:20:00 GMT

A couple of years ago at Teched South Africa I presented a session originally done by the great Jeff Prosise around the provider model in ASP.Net. I remember suggesting that this was not only a neat way to handle membership, roles and whatever in ASP.Net...(read more)

Announcing the Gadget Competition (Switzerland)

davewebster — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:56:00 GMT

Hi Folks. There are a series of local competitions starting around Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for the best Windows Vista Gadgets. Each subisdiary will judge the entries and award their own prizes so you are not in a global pool with a poor chance...(read more)

Teched Dev Europe Tracks

davewebster — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:39:00 GMT

The TechEd Europe tracks are forming as follows: Security Business Intelligence Mobile Tools and Languages Web Windows (Frameworks and Base Platform, .Net 3.x) Architecture Dynamics SQL Connected Systems (Biztalk etc) Designer Office Infrastructure for...(read more)

Sharing Calendars on Office Live

davewebster — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:50:00 GMT

So I have finally joined an Aeroplane syndicate. Charlie came breezing into my home office today with all the manuals for the Grunman Tiger. We started talking and it soon became apparent that we would need a way to book the Tiger in advance. This would...(read more)

Teched Developer Europe 2007

davewebster — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:20:00 GMT

Would you believe it planning has already started for this years TechEd Europe. As I am running the technical content strategy this year I would like to ask you folks for your opinions. I would like to devise a category scheme to help you navigate your way around the sessions at TechEd. So I really need your feedback on these questions.

Now some of you will plan your whole week using the online tool and get a personal printout. Others (like me) will look through the schedule in the morning or during a session and figure out where to go next. The schedule is a small cramped piece of paper which anyone in the 40's will need to use reading glasses to read. I would like your feedback on how you navigate the conference, and what's good and what stinks.

Firstly the DEV track. I wonder if there is any point in having a DEV track at a developers conference. I looked at last years numbers and found that out of about 200 sessions 130 were DEVxxx in other words 65%. So what do you think about scrapping that designation? Instead DEV would be implied for everything and we would have more track names like this:

BPI
Mobile
Tools and Languages
Web
Windows (Frameworks and Base Platform)
Architecture
Dynamics
SQL
Office

Now of course some sessions cover more than one thing, such as a session on Orcas and WPF. For this I would suggest a primary category and a secondary category.

Traditionally we have used a number scheme based on courses in North American universities, so we have level 200, 300 and 400 sessions that give you various degrees of credit. We are not North Americans so how about we scrap that too? We would use another scheme to show depth or breadth of a session. Perhaps we could use European ski run designations, Blue, Red, Black each with a different shape so you can see it quickly in the black and white printout.

Therefore the session number becomes just like a primary key in a table, of less interest except when filling in your online eval forms.

It would look like this:

Another question is about accessibility. For those of us ageing rockers or those with visual impairments would you like to be able to get a printout of sessions in larger point sizes?

Ok please let me have your input. Don't forget that this is not a discussion about content yet, my team will be working as hard as ever to bring you the Best Developer Conference in the world!
.

Bent pin on an IDE disk drive

davewebster — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:04:00 GMT

It turned out that Santa had brought my son some PC games and as his machine was basically in bits on Christmas Eve I started to put it all back together. Unfortunately I was a little too fortified with Christmas Cheer (Camel Valley Sparkling Wine) and I got the IDE cable of his hard drive back-to-front, thus breaking that one pin that lines up with the blanked hole on the interface. The pin was now 2 mm long and would not reach into its hole in the interface cable.

Here is how to fix a broken pin on an IDE disk drive:

· Get a pin or needle used for sewing.

· Insert the pin into the correct hole in the interface card.

· Remove pin and cut to length

· Get a bar of chocolate

· Eat the chocolate

· Take aluminium foil from the chocolate bar and tear a tiny piece from it.

· Pack the tiny piece of foil into the appropriate hole in the interface cable

· Insert the pin into the hole in the interface cable - thick end first.

· Attach cable to disk.

· Never remove cable

· Never tell anyone.

I hope that helps.

Happy New Year.

Christmas PC Shenanigans

davewebster — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:40:00 GMT

Well the weather here in Cornwall over Christmas was pretty horrible - no flying during the holiday. Still I was able to build a new machine for my sister (even more demanding than J9) ,check out Laurie’s new box up at the airfield, and wreck my son’s machine.

Here are the specs for Sue’s machine:

Sempron 3300 CPU
Motherboard K8M800-M2 AMD 754 Micro ATX
1.25 Gb PC133 DDR RAM
SAPPHIRE - RADEON X1300 PRO 256MB AGP GRAPHICS CARD
2*SATA 80GB RAID 0 disks
AKASA AK-920 EVO120 - CPU cooler fan

I kept the old hard disk and made it the E: drive as before and kept the DVD Rewriter.

The power supply was a little too weak at 180 watts so I replaced that with a new 300W unit from PC World. Then we looked at the case and decided to junk that and replace it with a nice unit with front access to the USB and sound card but that was purely for aesthetics.

I assembled the whole thing with my sister crooning to my kids how ‘clever’ their daddy was. Then it was time to switch on...

... Nothing!

So I have my sister looking over my shoulder as I am trying to figure out what had happened. I took everything off the motherboard, removed the motherboard and checked for damage and reinstalled everything. Still no BIOS.

Sue began to look agitated. Well there are really on two things that can be wrong at this stage, either the motherboard is defective or I have zapped the CPU. I guessed on the motherboard and went into town to replace it. This was Christmas Eve and I had one shot to get this working. I installed everything including the space age CPU cooler and... it worked! I had a bios and memory. It took about 5 minutes to set up the RAID 0 on the SATA drives, then about 45 minutes to install Windows Vista Ultimate and we got a whopping 4.0 performance score with the disks coming in at 5.9!

Clever Daddy indeed.

Sue also has a Lexmark p4350 printer and Virgin broadband using a SpeedTouch modem. Both these devices installed OK despite the fact that Lexmark have not published a Vista specific driver. In fact the only thing missing from the Lexmark install is the All-In-One-Center suite, and with the fax and scanning wizard there is really not much need for it anyway.

I put on Office 2007 Ultimate and Sue is one happy camper.

Total performance scores:

· processor 4.0

· Memory 4.0

· desktop performance 4.8

· Gaming graphics 4.2

· primary hard disk 5,9

Phew! If you knew my sister you would know how nerve wracking it was.

Lauries machine goes VISTA!

davewebster — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 22:10:00 GMT

I mentioned in my last post that I was rebuilding Laurie’s machine – a good friend and a flight trainer in Perranporth flying club. Laurie frequently does Radio Telephony exams as part of the private pilot’s license. This entails linking two machines in separate rooms and having the student use headphones and a mic to simulate the radio calls. The current setup was running Windows ME and Windows 98 and the RT exam program was not working. It was definitely time for an upgrade. I was also desperate to redeem myself for flying the Cessna 172 all the way to the Scilly Isles and back with the seatbelt hanging out the door. This had seriously banged up the side of the plane just behind the door and cracked the window. So yes, I would be delighted to help.

In any case, as a flying instructor in Cornwall there are many days with nothing much to do because of low cloud, wind, or other bad weather so a nice fast machine to browse the web or write documents is a good idea.

I had planned on using the same case and power supply that he had in the old machine but when I opened it up the power supply was woefully inadequate and the good folks at http://www.puterz.co.uk had recommended a slight upsell to the original motherboard that did not fit in the case – and anyway a new case is only twenty quid.

After a trip or two to PC World in Truro I had a new case, 350 Watt power supply, Geforce 6200 graphics card, new motherboard, AMD Sempron Processor 160Gb EIDE disk, I used my son Andrews DVD-RW drive (I’ll tell him when he notices) and also 1Gb of RAM I had after upgrading J9s machine. I kept Laurie’s old sound card and wireless card. I also kept the old disk to preserve the files and favourites.

I installed Windows Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, MSN IM, and the Radio Telephony app. The performance score was pretty good, about 3.5 and incredibly better than he had before. Then it was time to take the box to Laurie.

I explained how to start the machine using the power button, how to login, search for files, and a bit about how to run Office 2007. I created links to his old files and IE tab groups for the met office aviation weather, NOTAMs (Notices To Airmen) and his hotmail. Then I changed the default file format in Office to the old format so he could share files with the rest of the instructors. I was very pleased with myself.

Laurie was terrified.

One of the problems we have as Geeks is that we don’t tell people when to pay attention and when to stop. So as I am customizing his environment poor Laurie is trying to remember what I am doing even though it is only a one time operation. Now Laurie is 78 years old and has a wealth of experience flying DC10s in the Middle East. He can teach a new pilot to land a single engine Cessna in cloud and at night and he does not break a sweat but now he is completely freaked out by what I have done to his computer – I have even change the case.

So I went through things again slowly put links to his favourites on the desktop and then left… for Switzerland.

That was last weekend. Tomorrow lunchtime I will call in with the other machine for the Radio Telephony exam app, set it up and see how he is doing.

I’ll keep ya posted.

My Wife's machine goes VISTA

davewebster — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:35:00 GMT

I have just inadvertently installed Windows Vista on my wife, J9’s, machine. Now this is the machine that I have solemnly promised not to install any Beta version of anything or otherwise mess around with her ‘stuff’. She uses this box for all her Ebay auctions and makes extensive use of the Lexmark 6300 scanner/printer combo. When I ran the Upgrade Advisor it told me that everything would be OK but that I needed to check Lexmark’s site to get the latest Vista drivers.

I had been checking the site for a while with no sign of any new Vista bits, so I was very reluctant to live a month with no ‘desert’ (ahem), as punishment for ruining her machine. So I had decided to bide my time and wait for the good folks at Lexmark to finally come up with driver.

Then I started rebuilding my friend Laurie’s machine. J9 had a spare EIDE hard disk that was not being used for much on her box, so I decided to remove that and add it to Laurie’s. While poking around the motherboard on my beloved’s machine I noticed two SATA connectors. Hmmm…. So after a quick trip to PC World in Truro I come back with two SATA disks and cabling. The plan was to install a RAID 0 disk and put the pagefile on it to improve performance. This is also my flight simulator machine after all.

The BIOS did not recognize the SATA disks – RATS!

So I made the ‘mistake’ of changing two variables at once, first I upgraded the BIOS to see if that worked. At the same time I also found a scrap of paper that had fallen out of one of the SATA disk boxes that said I may in rare circumstances need to set some jumpers for the BIOS to see disks greater than 3Gb. So I set the jumpers and the new BIOS could see the disks! I set up the configuration to be RAID 0 and booted off the EIDE disk to Windows XP. Great!

Windows XP could not see the keyboard, no logon, no mouse no nothing – RATS!

Now J9 was out in Truro spending my salary on something or another – perhaps Christmas presents. So I had a little time to get this sorted out. I decided that as I had in effect an additional hard drive on the box and it was very fast, I would install Windows Vista on that disk array. I could always return to the XP boot and try to figure out the keyboard problem, and still had time to head into Perranporth to buy flowers if that did not work.

The install went flawlessly and took 40 minutes. I also installed Office 2007, J9 would be hours yet after all. Then I started to worry about the Lexmark 6300 printer/scanner.

Windows Vista did not recognize the Lexmark 6300 – RATS!

As I knew that there were no bits on the Lexmark site all I could do was to run the old XP install disk for the Lexmark 6300. I inserted the CD and the autorun started the install.

I had a partially rendered dialog box – RATS!

Just then I heard the front door. J9 was back. All I could do was try again while I prepared my excuses. A miracle! This time the dialog box was intact and went through the entire install. And it all worked. I could print from Office 2007 and scan using Windows Fax and Scan.

‘What are you up to?' She said. I smiled back, I had just saved five quid on flowers after all.

There were a couple of issues – ‘Where are my files’, and ‘Where are my favourites?’. I gave her a link on her desktop to her old ‘My Documents’ folder on the now E: drive and also pointed the indexer at that drive. Then I copied the links from her old favourites folder. Your favourites are just files after all.

Now it’s two weeks after the install and J9 has just burst in gleefully. ‘I have just installed a new Gadget!’ she says.

All part of the plan.

Linux on a stick

davewebster — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 20:05:00 GMT

After a brief chat with Hans Verbeeck I decided (well Hans suggested) that I mess around with some 'competitive' technology. We chose a small Linux distro (SLAX popcorn). Now the idea is to boot from a memory stick and get the exact same environment on any machine. I mean think about it.. you travel to a meeting place or conference with just yourr OS on a memory stick on your keychain. Plug in the stick and boot and any machine looks like your own.

Well after some setup I have it installed and running.

First build your image. You can download the ISO file, mount it or burn a CD and run the Make_disk.bat file to build your image.
Next adjust your bios to boot from the USB device. This varies from one bios to another but usually you insert your USB stick, reboot, hit F2 to go to your bios setup. Select the hard disk option and promote the USB stick to be ahead of the Hard Drive. On other bios's you can specifiy to always check for the USB device first.

Now the goal is to be able to boot from any machine with any hardware configuration. It is really close but there are still some issues with the wireless cards which vary considerably between machines and networks and general hardware detection has problems on my distro; I still need to tweak the settings after startup. Also I noticed that some machines will hang when loading SLAX. On my Ferrari I need to run 'slax nohotplug', on my daughter's machine I need to run 'slax nopcmcia'.

Now why would a Microsoft employee do this let alone blog about it? Well for a couple of reasons;

1. Its cool.

2. Microsoft is not really in that business. No really! This is not a substitute for a managed corporate desktop or an easy to use home OS. But it has its place - I think.

3. I wanted to scare and then reassure my colleagues (see 2).

We can imagine a time when all you take into a meeting room is your smart card or stick with your OS on it. But then nothing is lighter than carrying your userid and password in your head and storing your documents in the 'cloud'.

What do you think?

Make me a designer!

davewebster — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:59:00 GMT

At TechEd Europe and TechEd South Africa I talked a little about WPF and the Expression Suite of tools. I mentioned that in future we would be working more closely with Designers.

I remember my first Windows app back in well 1989. It was an email application written for a Telecom Company in Philadelphia. The purpose of the app was to demonstrate the power of these new machines called PCs and to get sponsorship from the company CEOs to build more PC based applications. For a small app it was therefore pretty important. It is interesting in hindsight that a techie geek like me with an astrophysics background would be designing the UI for this proof of concept. I had worked with some UI experts in Plessey in the UK - they called themselves Cognitive Ergononmists. So I had some how to make a UI functional and given the very limited pallet available for the early Windows developers I was able to make a reasonable stab at the UI.

Now however the world is very different. The Web has raised expectations of the graphical content of an application. The new GPU cards have given us a much richer pallet of colours and controls to work with and now with WPF we can build more powerful, stylish and appealing apps.

So let’s build a WPF application! Perhaps the experience will turn me into a Designer. But just in case I need some advice I will talk to a graphics artist mate of mine Tony.

The application.

Back in 1998 while working with Microsoft Consulting Services in Boston I did a multi month gig with a company building a Hotel management application. I don’t think they every shipped the app (they certainly never paid my consulting bill), but I will use this idea as a proof of concept.

We need to manage the reservations, check-in, check-out processes, room cleaning and billing. We need a graphical representation of the hotel and its rooms so we can have a different graphic per hotel but the body of the application will stay the same. It would also be nice to make this a modular design so we can use it for anything that associates a person with a resource so we can extend it to airplane reservations, hospitals or even prisons. So our proof of concept looks like this.

Reservations – customers reserve rooms with a credit card.

Checkin – customers are assigned to a room, credit cards are validated.

Every Morning – rooms are cleaned.

Afternoon – rooms have a turn down service.

Checkout – customer is billed.

The UI needs to show which rooms are occupied, and for any given date which rooms are reserved. We also need to see when rooms are cleaned and ready for occupation.

That’s it for now but we will keep in the great tradition of ‘scope creep’ and add things that we think are cool or challenging. My purpose here is to understand and learn about the new interface between our designer friends and us developers and to learn about the new Expression Designer tools.

So my next step is to open the shrink wrap on the Expression Suite.

More later....

EMEA Vista and IE7 Tour

davewebster — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 11:12:00 GMT

Hi Folks.

Thanks to everyone who has attended the conference tour on IE7.0 and Vista in EMEA. I promised to include all the code and powerpoints from the session and I will post the zip file here as soon as I can. There is a problem with either my bandwidth (hotel room in Prague) or the server at the moment. It should not be long though.

Test Driven Development

davewebster — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:20:00 GMT

I have just returned from Antalya in Turkey for the Most Valued Professional conference for MEA (Middle East and Africa). You folks were great, especially when the power went off and I had to restart my VPC.

I used VSTS to show how to do Test Driven Development (TDD). The reaction amongst some of the attendees was the same as mine initially. It just seems a bit mad. The process is pretty simple:

Create a test
run it, watch it fail
do the minimum in code to make the test pass
refine the test by making using more data or adding to the test algorithm and go to 2

The endpoint is reached when all the test code is complete, and all the tests either pass.

In normal development of course the creative initiative is from the developer, who codes up a function and then declares that it is ready for testing. In TDD the initiative comes from the tester and the coder must adhere to step 3 and do the bare minimum to pass the test.

So why not just complete the function in step 3 and wait for the tester to catch up? Well because we want to end up with a fully tested state that contains no redundant or intronic code. I draw an analogy here to how DNA works in coding life. DNA contains codes that do absolutely nothing to define the species. In fact there are not replicated by messanger RNA. These sequences are called introns. Well when you code a function you may introduce reduncancies like introns into your code. For example creating a variable and manipulating it but not using it to calculate the final result, things that a perfect optimizer would be able to find, if we could write such an optimizer. These introns in your function can slow it down or hide potential bugs that we may not find.

So write the minimum necessary to pass the test and do not jump ahead and do the whole function. A hard discipline for a programming professional.

When folks challenge me on this approach, I answer with the following:

Do you think that all code should be tested? Yes!
So at the end of a project you will have a body of code, a full set of tests and a comprehensive set of test data? Yes!
In traditional development how often is that end point reached? Not always!
In TDD (if done rigourously) how often would that end point be reached? Always!
QED

The main problem with implementing TDD is from developers themselves. They now take a backseat to the creative initiative of the test engineer. (Of course they may be the same person but for large projects they will be different). To an experienced developer this stinks! I suggest that you think of taking your best programming talent and having them either architect the system down to the class and function level or have them write the automatic test code (in C# or VB.Net).

We need to rethink the role of developer and tester in software engineering.