31 July 2007 in Windows | Comments (4)

Admittedly this is a frustration induced post but seriously, how can the connectivity story in Vista have so many issues? I work on several networks:

• Work, wireless
• Home, wireless
• Home, wired
• Cafe net occassionally
• VPN to work from home

At the moment, no matter what I do I cannot get the VPN connection to realise that there is an active internet connection. I can be connected over wireless or jacked right into the network and still no-go. Even though the icon in the system tray has the little world icon denoting that I have an active internet connection, the actual “connect to network” dialog begs to differ.

This happens somewhat often based on disconnecting from one network and connecting to another. Even disabling my wireless connection and re-enabling it doesn’t seem to be enough to fool that dialog to want to let me connect. I’m effectively being forced to restart my machine to connect to the VPN.

I eventually found a work around on the web here. I’m really looking forward to Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista.

– JD

30 July 2007 in General | Comments (6)

Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about how developers progress and evolve into better developers, partly inspired by recent pod casts from folks like Scott Hanselman about how to become a better developer in six months.

Before I go further, I don’t believe any endeavour has a point of perfection, even the best in a field is striving to do even better. Nobody is immune from needing to increase their skill level and if you think you are or can’t be bothered then change fields – you’re likely just holding others back by being a stick in the mud.

How do I try to become a better developer?

• Work with the best. I have the fortunate situation of working with a couple of the best developers I’ve ever met. Working on solutions with them, nutting out how to tackle a problem and general knowledge sharing has enabled me to learn a considerable amount from them.
• Reading blogs isn’t enough. I used to believe that simply consuming huge volumes of information from blogs and software development related sites would make me a better developer. I’ve since come to realise it only helps in making me aware of the possibilities but doesn’t help me practically. Now when I spot a blog post about something that takes my interest I’ll try and pull down some code or implement what is being shown. Actually doing things is far better than just reading about them.
• Subscribe to mailing lists. Blogs and various sites are good to keep track of but it’s quite a learning experience to track mailing lists for projects that you’re interested in. Even tracking mailing lists in areas that you won’t be using day-to-day are great for providing perspective on what other developers are up to, for example, I watch the Moonlight mailing list about the Silverlight port to run on mono / linux. Mailing lists provide the nitty gritty detail about what is going on behind those blog posts that just trumpet new versions.
• Actually write code. This one seems like a no-brainer and relates closely to point two – if you’re thinking about how something could be done then just write it up. I have a ‘research’ folder in my dev directory so where I spike up silly little bits of code just to see how something might work. Writing, combined with the reading I’m already doing, provides a complete learning experience.
• Participate in discussion. Too many people are happy to be wallflowers and just watch others discuss and debate topics that relate directly to them. Why wouldn’t you share your thoughts if it affects you or is directly related to you? Usually fear of being cast as wrong about something or looking stupid. I try to take the approach of always sharing my thoughts no matter how stupid I may look – either I’ll be corrected and learn from it or I’ll look like I’m super clever. Ideally over time you’ll tend towards the latter. Never be ashamed or afraid of engaging in conversations and debates.

As you can see, much of my view about becoming a better developer is tied to a “use it or lose it” attitude being augmented with giving yourself new ideas seeded from other people. One thing to remember is that the evolution happens gradually over a long period of time, applying rules like this doesn’t mean on Monday I’m going to suddenly be a developer God.

I’m happy to hear if anyone else has habits that have helped them evolve as a developer.

– JD

18 July 2007 in Business, Mindscape, Windows | Comments (4)

I’ve been a bit quiet lately with so much going on with Mindscape and life in general. The good news is that we have recently elected to expand our team to help ensure we continue to deliver (if you are interested check out the position information here).

I’ll be delivering two lunch time sessions at TechEd this year, one regarding unit testing and another about how to get up and running with BackgroundMotion. I’ve been to TechEd for the last two years and it has been fantastic and I think it will be the same this year. Unfortunately the tickets are already sold out but I’d love to catch up with anyone who follows my blog that lives further afield that Wellington

I’ve been up to my elbows in WPF recently and look forward to posting some of the things I’ve discovered on here soon (as a side note, Expression Blend is possibly the best V1 product I’ve ever used, it’s fantastic!).

More posts to come,

– JD

29 June 2007 in Blogging, Windows | Comments (0)

While at Remix I met up with a fellow Kiwi, Nas, who works at Infinity here in Wellington. Certainly a cool person, she is trying to help move the WPF & Silverlight community in New Zealand forward, about time I say! I’ve been a little underwhelmed with what people have done so far with WPF especially given the power it provides. We use WPF a bit at Mindscape however I don’t often blog about it as I don’t consider myself a designer and would likely just put egg on my face by trying to show what I’ve built!

Nas has setup her first blog (http://naskhan.com/) and she’s going to be posting about what she’s doing and about the community in general. Worth keeping an eye on if you’re interesting in WPF/Silverlight.

Also check out TheWPFBlog by Lee, fantastic resource and really friendly guy that was speaking at ReMix (also Nas’s personal hero – never seen somebody act like they were meeting the Queen before).

Anyway, just thought I would share mention of her site to try and stimulate some interest in some of these cooler yet under-utilised bits of the Microsoft stack.

UPDATE: Looks like she picked a dodgy provider (bluehost) who terminated her account and wants her to fax copies of her credit cards etc to them to un-terminate it. She’s in the process of moving to a new provider so it will be a couple of days until she’s back. Talk about hard luck and shit service from bluehost.

– JD

26 June 2007 in Events, Microsoft, Mindscape | Comments (1)

Today is day two of Remix so lets recap what has happened so far. Yesterday was my first presentation which I felt went pretty well and I got some good questions at the end of the session. There seems to much more interest in developing Web Parts with .NET 2.0 so most of the questions revolved around that. Thanks to everyone that came to that.

The evening brought about WebJam at Galactic circus. This was a fun event more for meeting people and I got the opportunity to meet and talk with Nick Hodge. Nick’s business card reads “Professional Geek” which was quite cool, apparently a lot of work had to be done to get Microsoft to print a card with a title like that.

WebJam was fun and the time at Galactic Circus wasn’t too bad although it didn’t take too long for most people like myself to jet off to the Casino and to explore. Clock up another $10 lost at the Casino last night. Stayed out until about 12ish but sadly decided to be responsible given I had another presentation to deliver today.

The presentation went off without a hitch and I think that people all picked up something new from it. The WatiN content seemed to be the most popular, I’ll have to demonstrate it as a user group session sometime (I did for Christchurch but not in Wellington yet). The audience for this session was also very good, had quite a few questions and people come and ask me things at the end – always a good sign.

So now the event is winding down and I think it’s been great. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with quite a few Microsoft folk that I know only from their blogs which has been great. People overall seemed to enjoy the event and the sessions. The event has certainly be a success and I hope the feedback shows that. Hopefully they’ll let me back for Remix next year

Tonight is one more dinner with some of the speakers and then I’m free to explore until about 6pm tomorrow when I fly back to Wellington

– JD

25 June 2007 in Events, Microsoft, Mindscape | Comments (0)

This morning is the first official day of Remix and we’ve just completed the key note and first round of sessions. The content presented so far has been top notch and certainly things are looking bright for UX in the Microsoft space based on what I’ve seen.

The keynote was enjoyable, good spread of speakers showing what has been done with Silverlight and Brian Goldfarb seems more than comfortable with himself when speaking and did a good job of holding audience attention. I stayed for the following session by Lee Brimelow from Frog Design and while his content wasn’t overly technical (this is a dev & design conference mind you ) his presentation style was relaxed and his candour was much appreciated. He’s the guy behind sites such as www.thewpfblog.com which I’ve always enjoyed.

My first presentation isn’t until later today (around 3:15 Melbourne time) so I’m just waiting for that to roll up. I’ve been talking with a few people here and it seems many people are quite positive about how things are going. Everyone attending is getting a free copy of Expression Web that is valued at considerably more than the admission price so there is no surprise that I’ve spoken to a couple of people who are only attending a couple of sessions but otherwise are collecting the giveaway only. That’s a bit of a shame because it seems quite short sighted given the quality of the content and the speakers taking part. I wonder if perhaps rather than announcing the giveaway beforehand if it might be better to just mention it in the keynote? That would ensure people come from content and then get a nice surprise.

Overall there is approximately 300 people attending Remix and it seems to be a good size as the audiences aren’t too intimidated to speak up and ask questions. Always nice to interact and feel a good vibe rather than you’re just talking at people for an hour. The mix based on a straw poll at the keynote showed about an 80/20 mix for developers to designers. Microsoft and trying to get into that designer market and my feel is that those sort of numbers aren’t too bad for the first event of this type that they have put on.

Last night there was a speaker’s dinner at The Brasserie in the Crown Casino which was enjoyable – I far prefer chatting over a meal with people than feeling like you’re hijacking them after an event. The food was nice although I’ve decided I don’t like chicken heart all that much which was part of my entree The location was nice however I never did work out where the huge fireballs that kept exploding outside the window were coming from!

In terms of Casino losses, clock up another $4… not sure why I keep having that figure so low, clearly I’m not going to find myself in the high rollers room on this trip

– JD

24 June 2007 in Events, Microsoft, Mindscape | Comments (2)

Today we kicked off the rehearsals for Remix that’s happening here in Melbourne on Monday and Tuesday. The event so far is shaping up really well, I’ve had a chance to meet with some of the other speakers and the content so far looks to be right up there.

Yesterday I had to depart from Wellington at 6am as it was the only direct flight and arrived in Melbourne at about 8:30am local time. This is my first time visiting Melbourne but I’d heard more than a few stories about it from Lena as she grew up here. It was nice being able to see the places she has spoken about and see exactly why she loves the place. I met up with a friend who guided me around for most of the day which was great – I got to see far more places than I would have stumbled onto myself. I can really see why so many people rave about this city and it makes sense, given the strong culture here, that Microsoft selected the city to hold a conference about bringing design and code together to create beautiful systems (yeah, I bet you were wondering how I could pull my rave about Melbourne back to Remix )

Managed to make my way to the Casino yesterday but only for about 30 minutes (so no attempt at poker) and walked out about 4 dollars worse off, not too bad. Tonight is a speaker’s dinner so perhaps I’ll be able to convince some folks to lose some money with me at the tables.

Today the rehearsals have gone well and all the technology seems to work. Touch wood it works again tomorrow and Tuesday though! I really can’t wait to get on with the conference and meet the attendees – I always enjoy that the most. Especially after they’ve seen me speak and want to ask some questions. So if you’re reading this and attending then mention this post and I’ll shout you a drink ) hopefully this offer will result in some great nights out drinking.

Anyway, I’d better get back to it,

– JD

21 June 2007 in Code, Tools | Comments (2)

Earlier this year I was tooling around with PowerShell and generally having a fun time with it and, based on a comment from Andrew, decided to see how difficult it would be to write a PowerShell Drive Provider. A drive provider is a mechanism of allowing you to navigate any store with the same commands as navigating the file system. PowerShell ships with several providers already, a registry and certificate store. This means you are able to “cd” into your registry and write commands like “dir” or “ls” on a node and get a list of all the children for example.

The attached download includes working commented code and a detailed tutorial PDF on how to write a drive provider that will enable you to mount a zip file as a drive and then navigate through it. This is powerful for removing the need to extract and then navigate files quickly and easily. I’ve implemented it in a simplistic manner and there is plenty of room for additional features but I wanted to keep it simple for educational purposes. Note that you will need PowerShell installed to even compile as it relies on several assemblies that ship with PowerShell.

So if you find yourself lying awake at night wishing you could mount zip files as drives within PowerShell (don’t we all?) or just want to learn more about writing drive providers or managed plug-ins for PowerShell then check this out.

Download the PowerShell Zip Drive Provider and Tutorial

Hope this helps people have more of a poke at PowerShell,

– JD