Alfred B. Thordarson

The Grand Design

2011-11-27T22:33:00.000Z

Just finished "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Have to say, I was not that impressed. I read "A Brief History of Time" and a re-read in "A Briefer History of Time" and felt much of the time the reading of "The Grand Design" was like reading the same material for the third time. Then, in the end I found the conclusions less perfect than I had anticipated from the author. His next book will have to have some really good critics for me to buy it.

Go NASA Go !

2011-09-30T22:46:00.000Z

Last summer, just before the final Space Shuttle mission, Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, held a remarkable talk where he outlined the NASA future of human spaceflight. Firstly, he firmly confirmed NASAs commitment to human space flight.

He then outlined his believe that privately owned american companies should be transporting astronouts to the ISS, instead of foreign governments, and from there NASA will continue its deep space explorations. For this to be possible NASA will be providing the Commercial Orbital Transportation Service to their partners. Sounds smart, why continue to spend money on something we have done many times? Lets go further.

Then for the future, one of NASAs goals is to orbit Mars and eventually land on it. Another one, asked for by the president, is a mission to an asteroid, which, I guess, they are starting to plan. Finally, he mentions the Moon as one of their ambitious human destinations. What a set of goals.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" - thats more or less it! :-)

Exciting news from NASA will contain the Juno mission to Jupiter, Dawn satellite orbiting asteroid (july 2011), The GRAIL probes studying the Moons interior (september 2011) and The Curiosity rover heading for Mars (november 2011).

Looking forward to it.

For the complete transcript of his talk see here.

Windows 8 coming features

2011-06-14T21:39:00.000Z

Just learned about Windows 8 new features at CIO. In his great compilation Howard Wen claims the following features are coming:

1. Windows Phone 7's theme and UI - this is a really big change. Take a look:

2. Ribbon User Interface in Explorer - not really a biggy, always expected the next versions of Microsoft products to have the ribbon user interface.

3. Cloud Integration - using Windows Live Mesh to move files between my computers already, but no SkyDrive yet. Of course it will be cool to get better integration but I always thought the Cloud to be more, much more, than the Mesh and SkyDrive. :-)

4. Windows Live Integration - more? Using my Windows Live account to log into my computer, how will that work in a domain? Intriguing.

5. Built-In PDF Reader - this will be done using Microsoft Modern Reader. Good, but where is XPS?

6. ISO Mounting - been using a third-party solution for this for a long, long time. It will be great to get an integrated solution.

7. File Download Verification - more malware security

8. Aero Auto-Colorizaton - no need.

Then Howard Wen mention the rumored features of Windows Store, ARM Processor Support, Factory Reset, History Vault, Instant-On, IE 10, Multi-Touch and Really Fast Install. You should take a look at these, this is great compilation.

Unable to get Microsoft Dynamics NAV Application Server Manager (NASMSnapIn.msc) to run

2011-05-31T20:10:00.002Z

Every time we ran the NASMSnapIn.msc we got the "MMC could not create the snap-in" error message (see image).

In order to fix this we tried to install the NAS from the Dynamics installation media (remember to run Setup.exe with Administrator Rights). However, doing that, we ran into another error, we got the "Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly component {98CB24AD-52FB-DB5F-A01F-C8B3B9A1E18E}. HRESULT: 0x800736CC." ...and the installer rolled the installation back. Bugger.

After careful searching (and quite a lot of trials) we figured out that we were missing the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package" (these are the runtime libraries installed by other installers from the Dynamics installation media). If you search for it, it should be easily found (look for vcredist_x86.exe).

After that we install it's service pack, that is the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package" (the download we found for SP1 was called the same name vcredist_x86.exe like its predecessor).

Then the NAS installer worked...

...and the NASMSnapIn.msc worked!

WP7 and International Caller IDs

2011-03-07T22:29:00.000Z

Windows Phone 7 is really not very good when it comes to international caller IDs. This is because WP7 has a difficult time identifying the contact from different caller IDs that may be provided by the mobile network operator. Unfortunately the mobile network operator I use has a bit of a problem with caller IDs, which puts my WP7 to a test in this matter – and it miserably fails!

Here is the scenario: my Icelandic mobile network operator, Nova, doesn't provide the same caller ID when a contact calls me as when he texts me. For example, if the contact’s mobile phone number is 855-0505 and he gives me a call, the caller ID is 8550505, contact is found and his name is displayed – all is well. However, when the same contact then sends me a text message, the caller ID is +3548550505 (the country code +354 is added). And this results in WP7 not finding the contact and the SMS conversation is created using the number instead of the contact’s name.

Normally, with other phones I have used, this has been OK because the phones are able to automatically add/remove country-codes as needed in order to find the contact calling (or texting in this case). But WP7 doesn’t realize that the two numbers refer to the same contact. This is obviously one of the more irritating international problems with WP7.

Anyway, trying to work around this problem, I put +3548550505 as the contact's pager-number and the contact is then found when he calls me (from his mobile number 8550505) and when he texts me (from the pager-number +3548550505). Great! Irritating to setup, but still, one step forward.

But then a problem with this “solution” hits me... if I look up the contact, it says 'call mobile' (and the mobile number 855050 is there) and right below that it says 'text mobile' (and the mobile number is there, not the pager-number, of course not, why should it?).

Then, if I use the 'text mobile' function to send a text to the contact, WP7 creates (or adds to an already existing) conversation using this 8550505 number. Then, when my contact gets the text and replies, and the reply is received by my WP7 phone, it will start yet a new conversation using the Caller ID +3548550505.

When this happens I may miss it because I have the 8550505 conversation on my screen waiting for his reply. When I figure this out, I realize I now have two conversations going on. What a bug.

What do I do now? How do I work around this problem? Is it possible?

The answer may be: Wait for the Windows Phone 7 update to reach your phone. Period. Wait. So, I will.

Ellen er aftur á leiðinni til Svíþjóðar

2011-03-04T20:56:00.000Z

1. mars var undankeppnin fyrir Stora Daldansen haldin af félagi íslenskra listdansara í óperunni. Ellen mín tók þátt aftur og í þetta sinn stóð hún uppi í fyrsta sæti og vinkona hennar, hún Gunnhildur, í því þriðja sæti. Kalli var svo í öðru, en hann vann í fyrra þegar Ellen lenti í öðru. Sem sagt, Ellen er aftur á leiðinni til Falun til að taka þátt fyrir íslands hönd. Fyrir þá sem vilja þá er hægt að lesa meira á heimasíðu Listdansskóla Íslands.

Discovery has launched on its final mission - STS-133

2011-02-24T22:10:00.003Z

Spaceshuttle Discovery left earth at about 21:50 GMT this evening on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is travelling at 5 miles / seconds with 6 crew members on board. But the ISS crew will not meet with the Discovery crew of STS-133 until in two days from now. Good luck, Discovery.

Beautiful image from the NASA TV during the lift-off !

"Nokia surrenders and enlists Microsoft in smartphone war"

2011-02-12T16:45:00.002Z

Very good news.

It will be easier to be a developer in the mobile market when the players are Google, Microsoft and Apple. For more information watch the Reuters video about the announcement.

This is especially true for Rue de Net, as our products are developed for the .NET platform, WPF and Silverlight, and this will make it quite easier for us to deploy our software to a larger audience.

Changing my Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Ringtone

2011-02-12T15:57:00.001Z

In the beginning of this year I got my new Windows Phone 7, the HTC Trophy. And just recently started to configure it to my own liking and developing software for it.

Firstly, I wanted to change the ringtone. This turned out to be a challenge :-) Unbelievable. Buy yes, WP7 is delivered with a set of ringtones for you to choose from and there is no way to get your own custom ringtones onto the phone.

The solution I found was to jailbreak the phone using the ChevronWP7 utility and then use the ChevronWP7 Ringtone Installer. After jumping through the necessery hoops this is working quite fine.

For further instructions you can take a look at the TechHackz's How to Jailbreak Your Windows Phone 7 Device and TheTechJournal's ChevronWP7 Ringtone Installer Has Released[How To] blogs.

Don't know how long this solution will work because Chris Walsh et al. have discontinued the ChevronWP7 unlocker. But, it is good as long as it lasts.

Chrome is not displaying XML

2010-10-30T09:11:00.000Z

One of the reasons I don't use Chrome for development is that it renders XML in the browser instead of simply displaying it as raw XML. Originally an XML file will be displayed like this (or maybe rather, not displayed);

But now I just found a solution at StackExchange (developed and run by StackOverflow) and the XML Tree Chrome Extension is available at the Google chrome extensions web site.

Simply click the "Install" button and it gets installed:

After installation my XML renders beautifully:

Many thanks to Josh Moont.

VS2010 registry capture utility keeps crashing!

2010-10-30T08:38:00.004Z

My final problem before my projects would rebuild on my new Windows 7 machine was that I kept getting this message:

The text in this dialog says:

Microsoft (R) Visual Studio registry capture utility has stopped working.

After searching the web for a while I found the solution in StackOverflow, where the answer refers to a workaround at Microsoft Connect.

Anyways, here is the workaround procedure to use to fix this problem (this is actually a Windows 7 problem?!):

Locate regcap.exe here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\Deployment
Right click and select properties.
Select Compatibility tab
Check box to Run this program in compatibility mode.
Select Windows Vista SP2 in the OS drop-down and Run as Administrator.
Click Ok and Recompile.

This solved the problem for me and now my batch of projects build in VS2010 on my new Windows 7 machine.

VS2010 keeps cancelling the importing of my key files

2010-10-30T01:28:00.000Z

When I built some of my VS2010 projects, which were strongly signed, on my new Windows 7 machine, I kept getting this error:

The text goes something like this:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(1970,9): error MSB3325: Cannot import the following key file: MyStrongNameKey.pfx. The key file may be password protected. To correct this, try to import the certificate again or manually install the certificate to the Strong Name CSP with the following key container name: VS_KEY_A17E1D1A20966ADB

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(1970,9): error MSB3321: Importing key file "MyStrongNameKey.pfx" was canceled.

So, to solve this I simply went into the properties of the project, selected the "Signing" tab and browsed for the pfx file:

Once found, I selected it and provided the password to the private key of the file:

Once reloaded, the project would easily rebuild.

VS2010 elevated to load local Web Apps

2010-10-30T00:29:00.000Z

I just thought I would share with you a couple of things I had to go through to get Visual Studio 2010 to build a couple of my projects on a new Windows 7 machine.

1) Firstly there was the problem with getting Visual Studio elevated in order to load my Web Application projects, deployed on the local IIS. I kept getting this error...

...and the error message in the Console dialog was this:

MyWebProject.csproj : error : The Web Application Project MyWebProject is configured to use IIS. To access local IIS Web sites, you must run Visual Studio in the context of an administrator account.

Of course I could simply right-click my "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" short-cut and select "Run as administrator" but that is not something I want to do everytime I open up VS2010 and it will not work on solution files.

My solution is to tell Windows ALWAYS to run devenv.exe in an elevated state. This we do with a right-click on the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" short-cut and go into properties:

In there, we enter the "Compatibility" tab and select "Change settings for all users" (if you need to) and then check "Run this program as administrator" under "Privilege level":

And that is it!

2) When that was done, there was the problem with the endless UAC dialog.

So, we abandon the UAC notifications. This is easily done using the UAC Settings dialog accessible in the Control Panel. We move the lever down to "Never notify"...

...and then we have that one sorted.

My SoapExtension is receiving the AfterSerialize message twice!

2010-07-07T21:25:00.012Z

Today I asked a question about SoapExtension on StackOverflow.

I'm writing about this here because StackOverflow is one of my all-time favorite websites and I want everyone to use it. So my question is here at StackOverflow and of course I got this brilliant answer just a couple of hours later.

Before I asked my question at StackOverflow, I had searched the web using Google, Bing and others but with no luck to start with. But then I found someone else that was having a similar problem and that person had found the solution. The solution was locked away at experts-exchange.com, but those guys want my creditcard before they help. That number is not available.

StackOverflow was the obvious site to place my question and, alas, I have my solution.

Great site!

Ellen mín slær í gegn!

2010-05-15T22:15:00.002Z

Ellen mín sló í dag öll met og náði betri árangri en nokkur íslendingur sem keppt hefur í Stora Daldansen í Mora í Svíþjóð.

Sjáið hér hvað listdansskólinn skrifar um árangurinn. Hér er svo hvað mbl.is sagði í fréttum þegar Ellen komst á pall í Svíþjóð.

Vesturgata 3 til leigu !

2010-02-21T21:50:00.007Z

Jæja, nú er íbúðin að Vesturgötu 3 komin á leigumarkaðinn. Svo ef þú ert á leiðinni til Reykjavíkur í stuttan eða lengri tíma þá skoðaðu endilega vefinn okkar og sjáðu hvort þú hafir ekki áhuga á að gista þar í stað þess að fara á hótel.

Ég skrifaði síðan mína fyrstu Blogger síðu um íbúðina. Þessa Blogger síðu má sjá hér.

Ellen er á leiðinni á Stora Daldansen í Svíþjóð í Maí

2010-02-17T19:02:00.008Z

Ellen Margrét, dóttir mín, tók þátt í undankeppni fyrir "Stora Daldansen", sem er keppni í klassískum balletsólóum og er haldin er í Svíþjóð í Maí á hverju ári. Það er Félag Íslenskra Listdansara (FÍLD) sem heldur undankeppnina á hverju ári. Af þeim 25 keppendum sem tóku þátt þá lenti Ellen mín í öðru sæti á eftir Karli Hjaltasyni sem er með henni í hóp í Listdanskóla Íslands, en einungis 1 stig af 100 var á milli þeirra. Aðrir keppendur sem lentu í 3-5 sæti voru líka allir úr Listdanskóla Íslands og er skólinn greinilega með frábæra kennslu.

Til hamingju með afmælið vina.

David Platt in Iceland again !

2010-02-10T21:44:00.002Z

The .NET professor, David Platt from Harvard University, was back in Iceland in February 2010. This time he was here with his lecture on Programming Microsoft Prism, the Composite Application Library. Mirosoft Prism is a name they have given to the Composite Application Guidance for WPF (or CAG for WPF).

Last time he was here, a year ago, I went to the university to watch him do his talks on Why Software Sucks, WPF for Good and not for Evil and finally Know Thy User: Instrumenting The User Experience. These were good talks and I would have liked to go this time as well. But no luck, busy, busy, busy. Next time I hope.

MCTS Exam 70-432 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Implementation and Maintenance

2010-01-18T21:39:00.000Z

After 3 weeks of studying I finally did the SQL exam and now that is behind me. It was not an exam I wanted to take it was an exam I had to take so that Rue de Net would keep it's status with Microsoft and be able to continue to sell Dynamics NAV.

I started by reading Mike Hoteks Self-Paced Training Kit quite slowly, then I read it again, this time faster and this time I wrote down comments. Both times I did all the exam questions at the end of each chapter. When I was finished I did a few of the practice tests from the companion CD included with the book. All of these exams indicated that I needed 80% to pass, no matter how many I did I never passed - I failed all of them! I started to worry that Mike's book would not be enough for me. Anyways, it was too late so I just went...

I was very stressed when I went to take the exam but when I started the exam it started by telling me I only needed to get 70%, good news. I ended up with a score of 820 - I must have been quite lucky. Anyway I passed and it turned out that Mike's book was enough.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express installs without SQL Authentication

2009-07-01T21:35:00.011Z

First, lets give some unnecessary background information :-)

For a project I'm working on I'm taking a look at a business processes and especially systems that support modeling such processes. The Business Process Modeling Initiative (BPMI) has come up with a nice standard notation for such models, which of course is then called the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), and is being managed by OMG (they also have CORBA and other interesting stuff). My project is about researching development software that supports such modeling (especially using BPMN) and then takes the modelled process directly into further development and finally results in some kind of software artifacts, like for example a website.

How did I get to the problem? During this work, I was installing one such development software (the BizAgi Studio), which requires SQL Server to be installed. However, the installation wizard does not install the SQL server so I had to figure out what to do. Because I just wanted to take a look I decided to install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express on my local machine an get going on that one. The SQL Server 2005 Express comes on my Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition DVD so I got it installed without a problem.

So, what is the problem? The thing is, when BizAgi asked for information on my SQL Instance it just allowed for SQL Authentication and that is where my problem started. I had just installed the SQL Server Express and I was never asked to provide the password of the infamous 'sa' user so I had no idea what it was. After some Google work I found the reason: SQL Authentication is not allowed by default when installing the SQL Server Express.

Now, how do you solve that?

There really are no tools that come with the SQL Server Express so there is no way to configure anything. This is why some solutions found by Google refer to using RegEdit, changing [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer] to '2', restarting the SQL service and then run an SQL script to create the SQL Authentication user. However, in order to run such SQL scripts you might want to download the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express.

However, if you have Management Studio installed then why use the RegEdit, just right-click your server, select Properties, select Security, select SQL Server and Windows Authentication and click OK. Then enable the SQl Authentication User by right-click on it, select Properties, select Status, select Enabled and click OK. You are ready, try it now. It worked for me! No RegEdit!

Thought I would share this with you. Could help someone else.

Mail dropped on the "Mailbox..." folder in Outlook

2009-06-21T13:11:00.004Z

A couple of weeks ago I accidentally dropped a few emails on the "Mailbox - Alfred B. Thordarson" folder at the top of my mail folders list in Outlook:

Now, how do I get them back? Whenever you click on this folder you get the "Outlook Today" page and it doesn't show the items that I dropped.

After a few searches I finally found the answer at the HowTo-Outlook site, specifically in the What happens to mails dragged to the Outlook Today Folder? page. The answer really is quite simple:

1) right-click the "Mailbox.." folder,
2) select "Properties..",
3) select the "Home Page" tab and
4) de-select the "Show home page..." check.

Then simply click OK and your outlook items will be shown instead of the "Outlook Today" page. Just move the items where you want them and re-select the "Show home page..." and you are done.

Just thought I would share this with you.

Enjoy.

Gogogic's Symbol6 nominated for Nordic Game Awards

2009-04-15T21:23:00.004Z

I was just reading about the Icelandic computer game Symbol6, for the iPhone, by Gogogic, which just got nominated for the Nordic Game Awards 2009. Take a look at the video and see what a great idea this is. I'm very impressed. Congratulation guys!

Unable to create registration information for file named 'filename'?

2009-03-31T19:34:00.038Z

I have a class library that is written in C# and I have been maintaining for a few years, which contains a COM component. The accompaning class library installer, created using a Visual Studio deployment project, is suppose to deploy and register this COM component and tlb file.

The deployment project was first created using VS2003, then upgraded to VS2005 and finally to VS2008 last year. All of this was done on my Windows XP development machine and, like I said, this has been working for years.

A couple of months ago I upgraded my development machine, reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows Server 2008. After that my COM component doesn't get registered anymore and I get a warning when building my solution. The warning goes like this: "Unable to create registration information for file named ''".

I searched the web for a long time and finally found it at Microsoft Connect, the Microsoft bug tracker, filed as Bug 356321. However, they have Closed it as Fixed but there is still no solution to be found and the deployment project will not work unless you follow the manual workaround provided. I don't like manual work :-)

So I decided to go another way. I have implemented a Custom Action for my installer, which accepts a name of an Assembly, expects it to be installed and will run RegAsm on it. I then refer to the installer like this:

But the code of the installer goes something like this:

[RunInstaller(true)]
public partial class RegasmInstaller : Installer
{
public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
{
base.Install(stateSaver);
string assemblyname = Context.Parameters["ASSEMBLY"];
if (assemblyname != null)
{
Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
string asmName = asm.Location;
int bsIndex = asmName.LastIndexOf("\\");
string asmDirName = asmName.Remove(bsIndex, asmName.Length - bsIndex);
bsIndex = asmDirName.LastIndexOf("\\");
asmDirName = asmDirName.Remove(bsIndex, asmDirName.Length - bsIndex);
string dllpath = asmDirName + "\\" + assemblyname;
Regasm("/codebase", dllpath);
}
}

public override void Uninstall(IDictionary savedState) 
{
string assemblyname = Context.Parameters["ASSEMBLY"];
if (assemblyname != null)
{
Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
string asmName = asm.Location;
int bsIndex = asmName.LastIndexOf("\\");
string asmDirName = asmName.Remove(bsIndex, asmName.Length - bsIndex);
bsIndex = asmDirName.LastIndexOf("\\");
asmDirName = asmDirName.Remove(bsIndex, asmDirName.Length - bsIndex);
string dllpath = asmDirName + "\\" + assemblyname;
Regasm("/u", dllpath);
}
base.Uninstall(savedState);
}

private void Regasm(string parameters, string dllPath) 
{
string regasmPath = Path.Combine(RuntimeEnvironment.GetRuntimeDirectory(), "regasm.exe");
if (!File.Exists(regasmPath)) throw new InstallException("Registering assembly (" + dllPath + ") failed");
if (!File.Exists(dllPath)) throw new InstallException("Registering assembly (" + dllPath + ") failed");

Process process = new Process();
process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false; // Hides console window
process.StartInfo.FileName = regasmPath;
process.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format("\"{0}\" {1} /tlb", dllPath, parameters);
process.Start();
process.WaitForExit();
}
}

Anyway, I put this here so that it might help someone else. However, most of such things I put on Stack Overflow under my name.

"A different way to think about creative genius"

2009-03-29T13:55:00.002Z

This weekend we went to a restaurant in Reykjavik with some friends we haven't seen for quite some time. During dinner when we were talking my friend mentioned that he had been reading a book on genius. It was a very interesting discussion, which reminded me of a TED talk by the author Elizabeth Gilbert.

It's a good talk about how a person should not be considered a genius but a genius should be considered an entity of its own that visits perseptive people and enhances their abilities. This is in contrast to the way genius is usually described, for example Wikipedia describes a genius as an individual:

A genius is an individual who successfully applies a previously unknown technique in the production of a work of art, science or calculation, or who masters and personalizes a known technique.

Elizabeth's talk is called A different way to think about creative genius. Take a look at her talk at TED and by the way there are many other great talks there that might interest you.

Are you demoralized?

2009-03-04T21:46:00.012Z

Joel Spolsky did an article in Inc. this month that you should read if you have ever done a start-up or you are thinking of doing a start-up or you would like to do a start-up. Take a look at How Hard Could It Be?: Start-up Static

From the article:

When she asked me what she should speak about, I asked her to consider describing all the different ways a start-up can fail, rather than the usual stuff about lessons learned from people who succeeded.

"That would be boring," she told me. "They all fail for the same reason: People just stop working on their business." Um, yeah, well, sure, and most people die because their heart stops beating. But somehow dying in different ways is still interesting enough to support 40 hours a week of prime-time programming.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized Jessica was onto something. Why do start-ups fail? As she pointed out, it's usually a collapse of motivation -- everyone wanders back to civilian life, and the start-up ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Paul Graham, Jessica's husband and partner in Y Combinator, has tackled this subject on his website. "The biggest reason founders stop working on their start-ups is that they get demoralized," he writes. "Some people seem to have unlimited self-generated morale. These almost always succeed. At the other extreme, there are people who seem to have no ability to do this; they need a boss to motivate them. In the middle there is a large band of people who have some, but not unlimited, ability to motivate themselves. These can succeed through careful morale management (and some luck)".

What cought my attention was the quote from Paul Grahams website.

Now, go read the article!

David Platt in Iceland 2009!

2009-03-04T19:56:00.005Z

In the end of august last year I wrote about David Platt on WCF in Iceland! where I was very enthusiastic about David Platt coming to Iceland in the middle of October. But then he didn't, in the beginning of October I got the news that his course was canceled. In Cancellation, cancellation and cancellation I guessed it was because of the financial crises in Iceland but I had no idea. I still don't have any idea why it was canceled. Then, in the beginning of this year I got an email saying he was going to be in Iceland in the beginning of February and this time there was no cancellation.

The 4th of February I went to the university to watch him do three talks from early morning until late afternoon:

Why Software Sucks - follow-up to his book
WPF for Good and not for Evil - same as in Tech-ed 2008
Know Thy User: Instrumenting The User Experience

BTW: The image at the top is NOT from the Iceland talks.

I knew quite a few in the audience but I sure was missing a lot of my developer friends, the audience was more of the type of designers and testers than developers and geeks. I think developers sure would benefit from watching. But when David Platt mentioned that he had been in Iceland 9-10 times over the last decade or two I thought maybe my developer collegues had already seen the talks.

His style is funny and fresh, and the message is also very informative and important. His view of usability is right on the money and his simple message "Know Thy User, For He Is Not Thee" is easy enough to understand and remember. He talks about software needing to become much simpler to use and makes examples of such software, which is very simple and extremely useful to the user. He says developers need to understand that nobody wants to use software, people want to have used software.

One of the things he talks about that will make software simpler to use is if fewer clicks are needed to get things done. Each click would in the end cost the customer a lot of time and money. Interesting. When he was talking about this I remembered a story I heard close to 20 years ago from Apple. Some developers had been assigned to decreasing the Apple computer startup time. The developers didn't understand what it would help to decrease the startup time by a second or two, nobody would notice. The story goes that Steve Jobs told them to try multiplying the two seconds with the number of Apple computers they had sold, which would be restarted a couple of times per month, and see how much time they would be saving the users every single month. By looking at this time as money, they were actually saving a lot of money by decreasing the startup time by even just a second or two. Interesting. I don't think a lot of people see it like that.

Anyways, the talks are good. If you haven't seen David Platt already then find a way when he is available in your country. You will enjoy it. At least I will be keeping my eyes open for his WCF course I missed last year.

Thank you David Platt.

Ellen tekur þátt í undankeppni "Stora Daldansen"

2009-02-26T21:33:00.007Z

"Stora Daldansen" í Mora er skandinavísk keppni ungra dansara frá norðurlöndunum og baltísku löndunum í klassískum ballet. Dansararnir skulu vera milli 15 og 20 ára og dansaður er sóló úr klassískum ballet. Árlega senda íslendingar þrjá keppendur í keppnina og eru þeir valdir í undankeppni. Í gær fór undankeppnin 2009 fram í Íslensku Óperunni og tóku 23 dansarar milli 15 og 19 ára þátt. Meðal þáttakanda var 16 ára dóttir mín, Ellen Margrét.

Eftir að allir þáttakendurnir höfðu lokið sínum sóló - sem allir voru frábærir - augljóslega mikið af ballet efnum á Íslandi þessi misserin - þá voru kynntir þeir dansarar sem fara fyrir hönd Íslands í keppnina í Svíþjóð í Maí. Valdir voru þrír frábærir dansarar sem allir eiga vel skilið að fá að fara þarna út. Til viðbótar voru valdir þrír dansarar til vara og var Ellen Margrét varadansari tvö. Þetta er frábær árangur hjá 16 ára stelpu úr 23 dansara hópi.

Til hamingju Ellen.

Ofar hópurinn nálgaðist Skeggja

2009-02-26T21:30:00.000Z

Á sunnudaginn var fór gönguhópurinn Ofar í eina af sínum ferðum. Ætlunin var að ganga á Hengil, tindur hans kallast Skeggi, en það gekk ekki alveg upp, sjá http://ofar.blogspot.com/2009/02/hengill-i-hyllingum.html :-(

Hjördís er komin með vinnu

2009-02-26T21:27:00.005Z

Hjördís flutti sig frá Seðlabankanum yfir í Greiningu Glitnis fyrir nokkrum árum en í framhaldi af falli íslensku bankanna í haust þá var hún ein af þeim sem ekki hélt áfram í nýja Glitni. Þannig að hún hefur verið atvinnulaus frá því um miðjan október í fyrra.

Sitjandi heima, veltandi því fyrir sér hvað væri næst, ákvað hún að senda nýjum fjármálaráðherra tölvupóst og heyra hvort hann væri ekki að leita að hagfræðingi til að vinna með sér. Fyrir svona tveimur vikum síðan hringdi Steingrímur svo í hana eitt kvöldið og boðaði hana á fund daginn eftir. Stutta útgáfan: hún var ráðin sem ráðgjafi fjármálaráðherra.

Það létti töluvert yfir heimilinu við þetta enda öll yfir okkur ánægð með að hún væri nú loksins komin með vinnu. Þetta er náttúrulega vinna sem krefst mikils en það er allt í lagi og við mjög sátt við það. Ég hef unnið mikið og Hjördís séð um heimilið á meðan, nú vinnur hún mikið og ég sé um heimilið. Svona á þetta að vera.

Í dag kom Alþjóða gjaldeyrissjóðurinn til Íslands og ég fékk hringingu frá henni: "Ég þarf að vinna fram eftir í dag. Í dag er dagurinn sem ég drukknaði í vinnunni". Ég hef sjálfur drukknað í vinnu, það er mjög gaman þegar verkefnið er skemmtilegt. Ég veit að Hjördísi finnst þetta mjög skemmtileg vinna og við erum því öll sátt.

Með frétt á mbl.is með titlinum Afla upplýsinga um stöðuna fylgdi myndin hér að ofan og situr Hjördís dökkhærð á móti myndavélinni hinu megin við borðið.

Hún tekur sig aldeilis vel út - konan mín!

Gönguhópurinn Ofar gengur á Vífilsfell

2009-02-08T18:56:00.000Z

Í dag gekk gönguhópurinn Ofar á Vífilsfell við Reykjavík.

Það má sjá mun meira af þessu frækna afreki á blogsvæði Gönguhópsins Ofar.

Venus over Reykjavik; today!

2009-01-29T22:28:00.007Z

Venus was beautifully bright over Reykjavik this evening. The following is a snapshot from Microsoft WorldWide Telescope, it shows how the moon looked like a Pac-Man trying to eat the Venus bonus-point. You might not be able to see "anything" in this small snapshot :-) so lets do some zooming.

The moon was very thin, really like an Pac-Man open mouth!

Venus of course didn't look like the big yellow fireball it is. It looked like a bright beautiful star or a Pac-Man bonus-point!

I don't think I have ever seen one of the planets showing as bright as Venus showed today. Truly a great sighting.

The Enterprise in Iceland in 1983!

2009-01-13T23:13:00.004Z

Do you remember when the Boing 747-123(SCA) came to Reykjavik with the NASA Space Shuttle Enterprise on its back? This was in 1983, I was 15, I didn't see it at the airport, I saw it when it flew a show-off flight over Reykjavik. It was spectacular!

This is a picture take by Eggert Norðdahl. Unfortunately, I can't find many pictures of the event. I think I have seen a picture of it flying over Reykjavik, with Hallgrimur's Church (Hallgrimskirkja) in the background. If you know of pictures like that I would really like to take a look. Thank you!

Did you know that the Enterprise was the first space shuttle built for NASA? It was to be named Constitution but a campaign got it renamed after the Starship Enterprise from StarTrek the TV series. Did you know that the Enterprise never had any engines, wasn't capable of space flight and never went outside the atmosphere. It was suppose to, but it was too expensive when NASA got to it. Everything that has to do with the space shuttles is interesting reading at Wikipedia.

Hestarnir komnir í bæinn!

2009-01-13T22:10:00.006Z

Á milli jóla og nýárs fórum við fjölskyldan vestur á Miðjanes og vorum þar fram yfir áramótin. Við komum vestur um kvöld og var þá mjög kalt en algjörlega heiðskírt og mjög stjörnubjart og fallegt. Þegar ljósmengunin frá Reykjavík og öðrum bæjum og borgum er horfin þá er svotil ómögulegt að hafa augun af himninum.

Þetta voru öðruvísi áramót en fjölskyldan er vön, enda árlegur viðburður að eyða gamlárskvöldinu með ömmu og afa í Reykjavík og skjóta svo upp með öllum hinum um miðnættið. En þótt það væri öðruvísi þá var það mjög rólegt og skemmtilegt að eyða gamlárskvöldinu fyrir vestan. Þegar við svo fórum heim tókum við hestana okkar með svo í ár byrjar hestaveturinn snemma. Það gekk bara nokkuð vel og allir mjög ánægðir með að fá Póló og Normu aftur.

Í þessi ár sem við höfum verið í hestunum höfum við leigt aðstöðu víða; við höfum verið í Heimsenda í Kópavogi, í hesthúsahverfi Mosfellsbæjar, í Fjárborg við Rauðavatn og í Víðidal. Póló og Norma eru því ýmsu vön, en í ár munu þau búa aftur í Fjárborg, en nú í öðru hesthúsi en síðast. Þótt stutt sé liðið, þá virðist okkur eigandinn sem leigir okkur aðstöðuna og gefur vera mjög traustur og ábyggilegur kall - kannski við endumst þarna lengur en einn vetur, sjáum til!?

Við komum semsagt í bæinn með hestana um helgina fyrir hálfri annarri viku og höfum verið að venja þá við, gefa lítið og teymingar um hverfið, enda hestarnir ójárnaðir. En núna um helgina voru breytingar þar á og voru þau bæði járnuð og eru nú komin á fulla gjöf og því full tilbúin að hefja útreiðar og frekari tamningu.

Ég held það sé mjög skemmtilegir mánuðir framundan með Póló og Normu!

What software I use for my work!

2009-01-13T21:21:00.015Z

20. January 2009: Renamed this post from "What software do you need on your computer?" to "What software I use for my work!"

I'm getting a new computer at work (or at least a new disk :-) so I will be installing my OS again - probably Windows 2008 Server because Windows 7 is not released and I will not install Vista! In addition I'm going to have to install all the software I need to do my job at Rue de Net!

So, I decided to list out the software I have installed on my current machines (3 different ones), all of which I hope to install on the new computer. I was surprised at how much software I really need and yet I probably haven't found it all!

Here is the list as I currently see it - I will add to the list when I start installing and using the new computer to see what the actual list will be.

Adobe Reader 7.0.7
Altova XMLSpy 2007
Apple iTunes 8
Beyond Compare 3.0.13
Camtasia Studio 6
Cisco VPN Client 5.0
Check Point SSL
CrashPlan 1.6.2009
CvsNT 2.5.04.3236
EasySQL 1.1
Eclipse 3.4.1
Eclipse Visual Editor Plugin 1.2
Fiddler2 - Forgot, added 20. january!
Flashnote 3.1
Garmin Training Center 3.4
Google Chrome 1.0.154
Google Picasa 3
Informix JDBC 3.5
Jalopy 1.9.1
Java JDK 7 b42
JetBrains ReSharper 4.1
Jira 3.13.2 by Atlassian - Forgot, added 16. january!
Microsoft .NET Frameworks
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Forgot, added 20. january!
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft Windows Live Sync 2008
Microsoft Windows Live Messenger 2008
Microsoft WorldWide Telescope
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5
Mozilla Firefox Add-on Firebug 1.3.0
Mozilla Firefox Add-on Fast Dial 2.11
Mozilla Firefox Add-on Foxmarks 2.6.0
Mozilla Firefox Add-on IE Tab 1.5
MyLife Organized 2.0.1
Paint .NET 3.36
PDFCreator 0.96
Python 2.6.1
RapidSVN 0.9.6
SharpReader 0.9.7.0
TimeSnapper
Trend Micro OfficeScan Client
VideoLAN VLC media player 0.8.6c
VisualSVN Server 1.6.3
WinCvs 2.0.2.4
WinZip 11.2
WinRar 3.61
uTorrent 1.8.1

This is obviously a mixture of commercial software, shareware and freeware.

PS: If you have some time you should take a look at www.DigitalLaughter.com

Leap second caught on film...

2009-01-01T00:35:00.004Z

The last minute of 2008 was one second longer than usual minutes!

Our current measure of time is based on the oscillation of an atom of Caesium-133, called UTC. But the actual solar day (rotation of the earth around itself) and solar year (rotation of the earth around the sun), called UT1, is a little bit different than the oscillation of Caesium-133. In order to a adjust UTC to UT1 the leap second is inserted every now and then, approximately every 18 months. Further information can be gotten on the Leap second page of Wikipedia.

This was done at 23:59:59 December 31st 2008, which resulted in the 59 minute having 61 seconds. The world time is provided on the web at http://www.time.gov by two U.S. time agencies (NIST and USNO). I used Camtasia Studio to record this 61 second and you can see the video here:

Happy New Year 2009 !

2008-12-31T23:26:00.004Z

The following pictures were taken today. This is my daughter Ellen sending happy new year wishes to everyone. The pictures are saying...

2009, yyyiiibbeee, Love, Ellen

Windows 7 Beta 1

2008-12-30T23:53:00.001Z

Microsoft is expected to announce the first Beta of Windows 7 at the 2009 International CES, January 8-11. But probably to the annoyance of Microsoft it has already leaked to the torrent sites (like The Pirate Bay), the legitimate version is the 2.44G files - watch out for bogus downloads.

Bloggers, that have already installed it (which I haven't), are saying there are no new features in the Beta but that it is a fast, solid and a very good first Beta.

Maybe this is just a way for Microsoft to re-package the "old" Vista, get rid of the badly published name and restart the marketing in the new year. But, anyway, we can hope, maybe they will add something to the new Windows 7 before it gets released to manufacturing - hopefully middle of this year or at least before the end of 2009.

I never installed Vista at work and have been waiting for the next Windows that can take over from Windows XP - all colleges that installed Vista have now uninstalled it and are running Windows Server 2008 --- on their laptops ---. According to them WS2008 is a very fast, solid and good operating system, even for a laptop, but I'm still not jumping.

Maybe I will try Windows 7 Beta 1 on my spare, a bit older, laptop at home and see how I like it. But I do think that it is time for the old XP to retire!

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

2008-12-05T23:06:00.013Z

How come there is mass? Why do things weigh? Why isn't just everything weightless? A different way of asking would be, how come there is gravity? What is gravity made from? You see, nobody knows any of this! Don't believe me? Well, this is why we are so excited about LHC, the huge new accelerator at CERN. Gravity is the ultimate question. All we have are theories; maybe gravity is made from Higgs bosons? What's that? Nobody has ever seen any of these Higgs particles. So why should we believe they exist? Hopefully the new 27 km particle accelerator in Switzerland, can answer one question, are there Higgs particles?

Physicists around the world have been waiting 14 years while the accelerator was being built by 10 thousand other physicists. As you can imagine it has cost a fortune and therefore it was a major catastrophe when, in April 2008, an explosion damaged the tunnel considerably. The accident was a huge embarrassment to Fermilab, the American company that made the elementary mathematical mistake that led to the explosion. The tunnel got damaged but it's construction still continued.

In spite of this drawback the accelerator was used on the 10th of September 2008 and the first proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC. This was a low energy beam put the future collision of particles are hoped to be at energy levels of 5-7 TeV - energy levels never reached before. Such collisions are hoped to draw the Higgs particles into the light, so to speak. The project was on track to make the first collisions this autumn.

However, I read today in Nature that there will now be delays as the accelerator failed one of its power tests, which was probably a result of the accident earlier this year. The power test caused damage to magnets in addition to those damaged during the accident in April. A report that came out today, says LHC will not start until July 2009.

News reports claim the damaged magnets will be replaced and security systems will be put in place to prevent future accidents. The delay is a pity; but I agree with safety first. In the end it is always going to be worth waiting for. For my part, I can't wait for the articles for the popular science buffs, like myself, to hit the magazines. It will be Christmas then, no matter if it is July.

"Sooner or later, we're going to have really exciting science." -Seth Zenz, student, Berkley

"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!"

2008-12-03T22:18:00.006Z

Along with more difficult books, like "Learning WCF" by Michele Leroux Bustamante, "SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintenance" by a group at Solid Quality Learning and "The New Positioning" by Jack Trout, I think it is important to relax my mind by also reading more positive uplifting and human books, like "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!", which I just finished.

"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" is a collection of stories from the life of Richard Feynman, probably one of the most interesting physicist of the last century. The stories were informally told to and recorded by Ralph Leighton and then edited by Edward Hutchings.

Ralph and Edward have ordered and grouped the stories into five parts that each have to do with a certain part of Richard's life, like his childhood, time at Princeton, the military, the transition from Cornell to Caltech and different other stories. The book is very well organized and gives a good feeling and flow from one story to the next. And the stories are very honest, heartfelt, exceptionally funny and actually made me laugh out load ones or twice.

Maybe some of my favorite stories include He Fixes Radios by Thinking! about how Feynman was working on technology and was astonishing people from an early age. Who Stole the Door? in which Feynman shows how funny he was and quite mischievous. And I also like Meeeeeeeee! where professor Feynman explores the effect of hypnosis on himself.

Then there is Monster Minds about when professor Feynman realizes that even though you might find yourself to be quite clever then there are always people around you that can astonish with their brilliant, quick and clever minds. And The Dignified Professor about how he spent his first night on a couch at the lobby of the Student Union at Cornell.

Finally I should mention An Offer You Must Refuse about how some offers may actually provide you with what you dream of but you have to decline because they may not be good for you. And Thirteen Times about how professor Feynman challenged the red tape by accepting to do a lecture at a local city college as long as he wouldn't have to sign his name more than thirteen times. It turned out that that was hardly possible.

In addition there are many more about how he trains ants and cracks safes but I also like very much how he gives an insight into what physics is and how it may not always be an "exact" science, especially I got that from his "7%" story. Anyways, for the complete stories as they are told by the Nobel Prize winner himself, go buy the book at Amazon.

If there is a moral in the book maybe it's to always look at the bright side and have a positive view of life. And especially to enjoy life as much as you can no matter what. This is a very good book to read just before you go to sleep because as I said it is a set of small stories that can be read one per evening without loosing the general thread. And it also puts you into a good place before you fall a sleep. What more can you ask for?

When writing this blog I found the official Richard Feynman website Feynman Online and from there I stumbled onto the website on The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which is said to be perhaps the most popular physics book ever written. So, after having read the "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" I guess the natural next step is to read the "Lectures". So I think Richard is still right when he said...

"I ain't dead yet!" -Richard Feynman.

Árásin á Mumbai...

2008-11-27T21:57:00.011Z

Í dag voru gerðar hrikalegar hryðjuverkaárásir í einni stærstu borg Indlands sem heitir Mumbai, en hét áður Bombay og er ein mesta fjármálaborg landsins. Ráðist var á yfir tíu stór skotmörk, allt frá lestum, sjúkrahúsum, veitingahúsum, hótelum til hefðbundinna skrifstofubygginga. Þar af var ráðist á tvö stór hótel, eitt af þeim var Taj Mahal Palace hótelið, þar sem mörgum er enn haldið í gíslingu. Það lítur út fyrir að aðalskotmörkin hafi verið útlendingar, ameríkanar, bretar og gyðingar en flestir af þeim 125 sem nú þegar hafa látið lífið og þeim 275 sem hafa slasast eru heimamenn og almennir ferðalangar.

28/11 uppfærsla: Látnir eru nú komnir í 155 og slasaðir í 327.
2/12 uppfærsla: Látnir eru nú yfir 180 og þar af hátt í 20 útlendingar.

Þetta er því miður ekki í fyrsta sinn sem Mumbai hefur orðið fyrir slíkri hryðjuverkaárás. Til að mynda létust 250 manns og 700 slösuðust þegar Dawood Ibrahim olli 13 sprengingum víðsvegar um borgina árið 1993. Sú árás var gerð sem hefnd eftir að moskvan Mosque of Babur var rifin fyrr um árið.

Árið 2006 voru sjö hrikalegar sprengjur sem sprungu í lestakerfi borgarinnar. Þá létust líka yfir 200 manns og yfir 700 slösuðust. Þessi árás var framkvæmd af hópi sem kallast Army of the Righteous (áður Lashkar-e-Taiba en endurnefnt í Jamaat al-Dawat árið 2002) sem eru stærstu íslömsku hryðjuverksamtökin í Asíu og vinna þau út frá Pakistan hluta Kashmirs. Þeirra hafa oft ráðist á Indland og þeirra aðal markmið er að Indverjar láti af yfirráðum sínum yfir Kashmir héraði.

Í framhaldi af árásinni í dag barst fjölmiðlum tölvupóstur þar sem algjörlega óþekktur indverskur hryðjuverkahópur sem kallar sig Deccan Mujahideen lýsir yfir ábyrgð á árásinni. Yfirvöld í Indlandi hafa hins vegar leitt að því líkum að fleiri hryðjuverkahópar hljóti að hafa verið með í ráðum og er þá líklega átt við hópinn Indian Mujahideen, sem hótaði sprengingum í Mumbai í September á þessu ári. En talið er að Indian Mujahideen sé blanda af Lashkar-e-Taiba og SIMI, sem er hópur íslamskra stúdenta á Indlandi.

Talið er að hryðjuverkamennirnir hafi komið á skipi frá Karachi, borg í Pakistan. En ef það reynist rétt að um hryðjuverkahóp frá Pakistan er að ræða gæti það haft alvarlega afleiðingar í för með sér fyrir öll samskipti á milli þessara ríkja.

2/12 uppfærsla: Árásarmennirnir voru bara 10 ungir pakistanar en allir félagar í Lashkar-e-Taiba og þjálfaðir í Pakistan. Forseti Pakistan sagði í ávarpi að þjóðin yrði öll að standa saman í baráttunni gegn hryðjuverkamönnum. Pakistanar ákváðu að senda ekki æðsta yfirmann pakistönsku leyniþjónustunnar til að hjálpa indverjum með rannsókn málsins. Svo sögðust bandaríkjamenn hafa varað indverja við hugsanlegri árás á Mumbai og í dag er helkuldi milli nágrannana Indlands og Pakistan.

Annars á ég vin sem býr á Indlandi. Hann býr í Chennai sem er hátt í 2500 kílómetra fjarlægð frá Mumbai, hinum megin á Indlandi, alveg úti við austurströndina. Ég hringdi í hann fyrr í kvöld til að heyra hvernig hann hefði það og hvernig þessar hrikalegu árásir hefðu farið í aðra indverja, þótt þeir væru langt í burtu.

Þegar ég náði í hann sat hann á hóteli Taj keðjunnar í Chennai eins og oft eftir vinnu. Það hafði verið erfitt að komast inn á hótelið í dag þar sem leitað var í bílnum og tóku menn með hriðskotariffla á móti honum og leituðu hann upp og niður. Vinur minn hafði ekki þekkt neinn í Mumbai en þegar inn kom hitti hann margt af þjónustufólkinu og öðru starfsfólki sem augljóslega voru í áfalli, enda sumir nýbúnir að missa bæði vini og samstarfsfélaga.

Þetta hefur kannski alltaf verið svona en mér finnst einhvernveginn eins og síðan hryðjuverkastríð þeirra ameríkana (e. War on Terror) hófst í lok ársins 2001 hafi svona árásir bara aukist. Við heyrum af þessum hópum út um allan heim og þeir gera orðið usla út um allt. Kannski er bara meira af mótspyrnu þegar "við" berjumst meira. Er þetta ekki 3. lögmál Newtons??!??!!??! ...ok, úr því ég er kominn út í svona rugl, þá mætti svo sem nefna 1. lögmálið sem vörn þar sem það segir ekkert breytast ef við gerum ekkert, ekki satt!!?!?!? Nei, bíddu nú við, nú er ég hættur.

Project Euler, Level 1

2008-11-06T19:02:00.006Z

I have been playing with Project Euler during late evenings of the last couple of weeks and have now advanced to what they call 'Level 1'. It wasn't difficult at all and it simply means that I have solved the first, easiest, 25 puzzles.

But the puzzles are fun to play with and if you are like me, playing with your computer when you are relaxing and you would like to have some challenge then go do some of these puzzles and relax.

I know you could be working but you can't work ALL the time, can you?

EDIT 8. November 2008

As they are in public domain, I thought I would show you some of the questions:

2. Sum of all even-valued terms in the Fibonacci sequence which do not exceed four million.
3. What is the largest prime factor of the number 600851475143 ?
5. What is the smallest number divisible by each of the numbers 1 to 20?
7. Find the 10001st prime.
10. Calculate the sum of all the primes below two million.
19. How many Sundays fell on the first of the month during the twentieth century?
25. What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits?
48. Find the last ten digits of 1^1 + 2^2 + ... + 1000^1000.

Like I said, easy but still fun! On to the next level...

"My Darling Brown"

2008-10-22T21:00:00.008Z

This morning a customer of Rue de Net in Germany contacted us with a concern. He had gone to his bank and paid an invoice to Rue de Net. However, the bank returned the funds with the comment that it could not be delivered to Iceland because of the current state of the economy.

To act on this problem, we contacted our bank in Iceland for some information on what to do. As a reply we got sent something called "Standard Settlement Instructions" devised at the Icelandic Central Bank. These instructions contained an account per currency, owned by the Icelandic Central Bank, in different banks all over Europe.

Our customer should transfer the invoice payment to the appropriate currency account and remember to place our company name, Rue de Net, as comment for the Icelandic Central Bank then being able to forward the correct amount into our local account. This is old school! This is really old school!

The current economy is now influencing Rue de Net. Normally, I wouldn't do this but I feel obligated to do something. So here goes...

If you haven't read the My Darling Brown article, by Eiríkur Bergmann Einarsson, then I urge you to do so. A quote from it:

[...] the run on Kaupthing, that finally put the Icelandic economy to the grave, perhaps for a decade to come, was caused by Mr. Darling. Now, as this would not be enough, the Prime Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, used newly issued terrorist laws to deepfreeze the rest of Icelandic business in the UK. In the eyes of Brown Icelanders are terrorists!

What kind of losers call their friends terrorists? Another quote from the article:

Anyhow, I sincerely hope that Mr. Brown’s feelings towards the people of Iceland are not shared with all the UK population.

After you have read this article, and done any additional research you need, please head over to the Icelanders are NOT terrorists page and sign their petition. A quote from it:

[...] the Icelandic authorities have always maintained their intention to honour their obligations [to reimburse depositors with Icelandic banks in the United Kingdom], contrary to claims made by Chancellor Alistair Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Of course, by contract, morality and honour we should anyhow, what else is there? However the petition goes on:

We, the people of Iceland, ask you, our British friends, to join us in the common cause of ending diplomatic hostilities between our governments. It is our hope that this will stop the unnecessary economic damage on both sides, so that we can start to rebuild and make amends.

Go there, sign! Thank you.

PS: Take a look at Pickles by Brian Cane on comics.com!

Cancellation, cancellation and cancellation

2008-10-11T10:46:00.011Z

Like the rest of the world, Iceland is now facing financial crises, the worst in decades or even in a hundred years. This is mainly influencing banks and other financial institutions but because of the size of Iceland and our additional currency problems, it has also started to influence the general population. In the end it will probably have some financial impact on Rue de Net but it just hasn't started yet. However, Rue de Net has started to prepare, like many other companies, I guess.

For example, this week we decided NOT to participate in Convergence 2008 Copenhagen. In addition to marketing our current products, the Dynamics NAV web services NETConductor, the Hermes e-commerce platform and our Dynamics NAV and retail knowledge we were going to introduce new products. Also, we had heard (or are anticipating) that Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 will be the star-of-the-show. We were really looking forward to that. So, not participating in this conference is a pity, but we will just have to live with that and find another venue/time to introduce our new products.
Cancellation 1 !

We have also decided NOT to go to TechEd Developers 2008. I have never been to TechEd in Barcelona so I was really looking forward to it. Being introduced to, and seeing all these presentation about, the new 2008 line of Microsoft products would have been a treat. But the price of the ticket, ~2.600 EUR per person, is just a lot for a small company in the middle of the current financial crises. So, I'll just have to go next year.
Cancellation 2 !

Thirdly, I was really looking forward to David Platt's WCF course but yesterday I got an email from the University and his course has been canceled. Pity. The e-mail didn't exactly explain why that was but only that it was because of the financial crises. As David Platt commented on my earlier post on his course I'm guessing he has some ego-search setup that might bring him to this posting as well. So, maybe you (David Platt) can explain what happened? I had my laptop setup and all, as instructed in an email from you a couple of days ago. What a pity! Not really the same as the two cancellations above but a cancellation anyway.
Cancellation 3 !

The world is really making a turn!

What do I like?

2008-10-10T16:36:00.007Z

I have decided to remove the blog roll from the bottom of the homepage. The reason is that it takes too long time to display it every time the page is hit. So, instead, I will be editing this blog as time goes by and it will list some of my favorite stuff:

Stack Overflow & guys
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow blog
Joel on Software
Coding Horror /Jeff Atwood

Puzzles
Project Euler

Named blogs
Steve Yegge's Blog
Seth Godin's Blog
Wil Shipley's Blog
Tom Fishburne
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog
Scott Stanfield @ Vertigo
Paul Buchheit
Marc Andreessen
Kim Cameron @ Identity Blog

Others
Call Me Fishmeal.
Little me, big you
Many-to-Many
All Things Digital
MIX Online, The Next Web Now
Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)

Microsoft & guys
ScottGu's Blog
Somasegar's WebLog
Jon Galloway @ Microsoft
Joe Stegman @ Microsoft
Mike Harsh @ Microsoft WPF/E
Channel 9

Am I being hit?

2008-10-10T16:28:00.007Z

I have decided to remove the page hits script from the side-bar. The reason is that it takes too long time to display it every time a page is hit. So, instead, here it is:

http://abthordarson.blogspot.com has been hit times.

For further information: view my stats.

Running Within

2008-10-02T22:46:00.010Z

WARNING: LONG POST (MAYBE TOO LONG :-)

For some reason, maybe my work and children are a part of the cause, I don't seem to be able to keep to any specific running hours and therefore I always run alone. As I steal the time to train, and I'm doing this on my own, there are times when I wonder if I'm doing this correctly, especially when injuries seem to be haunting me. Because of my endlessly hurting legs my spirit also seems to be failing every now and then. I guess maybe part of the reasons for these problems I'm having, physical and mental, is that I have increased my running from nothing to close to a 30 kilometers per week, over only a period of 5 months - maybe I'm doing this too fast, how do I know?

My latest injury is a hurting left hip, started the day after a long 18 kilometers run 16 days ago. During the week after this run I managed to run two ~10 kilometer runs but then I gave up and skipped a whole week. Yesterday, my first run after the off-week, was short and slow - but boy does my hip hurt today, I have been limping and all - Maybe it's time to go to the MD again. :-( Could be ITB problems, jjjuuuccck.

Anyways, a few weeks ago I got my self this book, Running Within by Jerry Lynch, a psychologist and runner, and Warren Scott, specialist in injury prevention. I thought maybe it could help me with my spirit and maybe there were some pointers on injury prevention I could use to help with my bad luck streak, if I can call it that. The book contains some "mussy stuff" I wish they had left out but it also contains some good points that I would like to repeat here.

The book starts by telling us that 80 to 90 percent of our performances come from our mental fitness, which underlines the importance of reading the book. :-) As it continues it can be deducted that so much of our performance comes from the mind that the reason we don't perform better than we do is probably because of barriers within our own minds. As individuals we should therefore try to lift these limits, which we have put on ourselves and, if we can, we will be able to do so much more than we think. "What you can concieve you can achieve". ("thinking limits", pages xiii and 164)

One of the obvious ways to become better at running is by not thinking so much and running more relaxed. The authors point out that winners of long distance running more often than not seem like very relaxed runners. To the rest of us being able to better relax during a run is something to be learnt and practiced. The book therefore provides a few methods that we could try in order to relax during our runs, such as breathwatching, facewatching, bodywatching and wordwatching. ("relaxing", page 23)

I guess when you get a hang of the relaxing part you will be able to glide - "oblivious to the crowd" - with a fluid natural movement. According to Jerry and Warren, gliding like this comes from a trancelike concentration that will allow far better performances. This concentration is a learnt skill of being alert to the task while excluding the negative environmental factors. Practice makes perfect, I guess. ("focusing and gliding", pages 110 to 112)

The book gives you two main methods for getting your intentions into actions. Firstly there is visualization. Visualization is the method of visualizing your goal in your mind's eye. Sit down, close your eyes, relax, don't think about anything - then - slowly start visualize yourself at the beginning of your run, see yourself starting the perfect run, explore the details of yourself running your perfect run and finally visualized yourself finishing in perfect form. You can use this method to visualize anything you want and the method will help to get your mind on the right track, or in the right gear. ("visualization", pages 12, 30, 60 and all over)

The second method is about affirming your intentions. Affermations are short sentences that you repeat again and again in your mind, which in the end will create the clarity and confidence you will need to focus on your goal. It is said to be important to make these sentences into sort of rimes - it will help you remember them - but it will also make it easier to repeat them, like a mantra. ("affirmations", pages 13, 39, 60 and all over)

The authors also spend part of the book telling the reader to remember why we all started running. Nobody starts out running because of anything else than the joy of running. "It's The Journey, Not The Destination". 50% of runners would take a pill that would make them Olympic champion and then kill them within a year. What a crock of horse shit, I wouldn't! ("winning is a journey", page 77 to 83)

When training towards a competition (it is good to compete, don't misunderstand me or the book) it is important to have a goal. If you put down a goal that you think is realistic but safe then it is not a good goal. Don't be afraid of setbacks. Setbacks are something to learn from, not something to be scared of. Be sure to set down two or three goals within a realistic but challenging range. Then don't forget to visualize and affirm your goal, do your best and enjoy the run. ("multiple goals", pages 8 to 13 and 94)

Ok, this is all good and dandy, but what about my lousy hip?

The authors of Running Within claim that injury is part of a natural cycle of health and injury - well, my cycle is just too short! Anyways, the book has a few comments on how to lower the incidence of injury. 1) Plan your training, but adjust the plan fast if you feel any kind of hurt or injury coming on. 2) Never overtrain (the symptoms are described) and rest as soon as you feel anything of the sort. 3) If you have an injury, configure your training plan in such a way that you don't have pain. 4) Stretch. But if you end up injured anyway, then please, do as the doctor says but don't neglect the power of positive thinking. Injury is actually an opportunity to rest and do other things. I did notice that I was well rested in my first run after my off-week, even though I obviously started too early, I guess. :-( Respect the injury, you can´t really fight it when it's already there. ("injury", pages 146 to 155)

But during my healthy weeks, how should I motivate myself when it feels difficult to get going?

One idea is to trick one's self. Tell yourself you will only run 1 kilometer and then go home; unless you feel fine and ready to continue. Of course the fatigue, or loss of motivation, will be gone once you are out running. Ok, but how often will I be fooled by myself? Anyways, more helpful suggestions of the book are those of not placeing unrealistic demands on yourself, lighten up, enjoy yourself, crosstrain when you don't feel like running and if everything fails take a break. Following your natural rhythms, relax and keep your runs simple will help you feel better and you will be more motivated to run. ("motivation", page 138)

This is not not an in-depth description, neither is this a complete descripton of the very good content of the book, and I may have misread or misunderstood something in there. So I guess what I'm saying is this; if you like or need to read about these things, for Pete's sake go and buy the book: Running Within by Jerry Lynch and Warren Scott.

How long does your running shoe last?

2008-09-28T23:37:00.009Z

I started running on a regular basis late April this year. I had been a typical stationary person for years so I started slowly, by running something like 10-12 kilometers per week. This has then increased during the summer and is now 30-35 kilometers per week. Last week I felt my right shoe/foot plummeting all the way to the asphalt and giving some weird sound on every step. So, I decided the shoe was finished - and I have just run over 450 kilometers on those shoes. Not too much I thought!

Especially because according to The Runners Guide the average runner will require a new pair every 500-800 kilometers. Then the (unnamed) author tells us to log all runs on every shoe so that we will know when the time of a new pair is approaching. I had done that - a good solid advice. However, he continues, if you start feeling something, maybe like a pain, earlier you might be one of those runners that require new shoes sooner than the average. Also your weight and how hard you strike the ground may be a factor. So, from this, maybe my 450 kilometers is not that far off - I will be getting my new pair tomorrow.

I have had an Asics Gel Nimbus 9 (see review at Runner's World Shoe Finder), which is a Neutral-Cushioned shoe. When I purchased these shoes I was starting to run and it didn't even cross my mind that I would be needing any kind of cushion as I have been running all my life and never have I had any kind of comments on my style or had any mishaps, injuries or pain that could have triggered such concerns.

This time I'm getting a pair of New Balance 1224 (see the review at Runner's World Shoe Finder), which is a Stability shoe. My new shoe provider, owner of the only store in Reykjavik that specializes in running equipment and one of Iceland's best marathon runners ever, did a measurement of my feet during a run and then recommended I get a pair of shoes with stabilizers to assist me during my runs. I'm looking forward to seeing if I will notice it in feeling better during the run or being able to run faster?!

We'll see.

PS: I just have to add that my friend, Gudmundur Gudnason and the Reykjavik Road Runners, just finished the real,- BERLIN-MARATHON today and another Icelander, Gunnlaugur Júlíusson, finished the 246 kilometer SPARTATHLON yesterday. Good weekend for icelandic runners.

StackOverflow is in public beta !

2008-09-25T21:11:00.003Z

As I have been following Joel on Software since forever, listening to the StackOverflow Podcast since Podcast #1 and been beta testing the StackOverflow site for weeks now, I just thought I would put a note here to tell you that StackOverflow is now in public beta. You should try it out!

No secret password or anything needed, just go to stackoverflow.com (no wobbly wobbly wobbly!?) and start posting questions for answers to your programming questions. But just remember that Jeff Atwood is very enthusiastic about the questions being about programming, so be nice, leave your questions regarding OS, Admin and stuff at home.

One more thing, you need an OpenID to login and start earning reputation, voting, commenting and eventually edit other peoples questions and answers. Those are actually the coolest parts of the site, so get yourself an OpenID and start earning reputation.

Google Chrome is my default browser !

2008-09-07T17:33:00.020Z

Google Chrome is probably the biggest thing happening in the technology world right now! The uptake of this new browser is phenomenal, just take a look at this graph from PannonRex:

This is a graph of PannonRex blog visitors.

I highly recommend that you read the PannonRex blog on Google Chrome: the Google OS, their Shining Chrome: Browser Speed Tests and finally the blog on the unbelievable uptake, the Google Chrome usage stats.

Unfortunatelly I can't use my new Google Chrome for everything, but it is still in Beta and only 4 days old - what did you expect!!!

For one thing, Google Chrome doesn't work well enough with Java. Take a look at this thread over on chromespot.com and this one at the Sun Developers Forum. I would guess they will be fixing this quite soon - if not, then Sun will probably find a solution.

Also, Firefox has a lot of Add-ons that it will be very difficult to live without, for example these here:

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.1.0.12
Firebug 1.2.0
Brief 1.2
IE View 1.3.7
Adblock 0.5.3.043
Web Developer 1.1.6
TinyUrl Creator 1.0.5
W3C Page validator 3.0.0
W3C CSS validator 3.0.0

However, according to Sundar Pichai at Google an extension API is very important and will be addressed next!

When the API becomes available I would guess that the developers of the above Add-ons will jump on it to get their Add-ons working with this fastest browser in the World!

PS: Take a look at The Inspiration Behind The Logo Design of Google Chrome.

10 km in 47:50 PB !!!

2008-09-06T21:27:00.021Z

My second public run, the Brúarhlaup Selfoss 2008.

With Alma and her son Marteinn, who did a 5K run.

The Glitnir Reykjavik marathon, last August, was my first public run, at 51:00. During that run I was a bit too relaxed, I was looking around a lot, experiencing my first public run I guess! But this time, in Selfoss, it was a much smaller run with only hundreds of participants - while the Glitnir Reykjavik marathon had thousands. Also, it was located in Selfoss, not as scenic a route as next to the sea and downtown Reykjavik. The weather was also better for running in Selfoss, not as hot. All in all, the Brúarhlaup Selfoss 2008 was an all around better run for me!

From the bridge, into the country, a turn and back and then the goal is next to the elementary school and pool.

Zoom in to the Selfoss part of the run.

Another reason I did better now than in August is that I competed to keep up with my friend Alma for the second half of the run. Alma Maria Rognvaldsdottir told me before the race that her aim was a 4:50 /km, just like my pace aim! In the start of the race I was ahead of her but then 5K into the race she floated past me. But it gave me a lot trying to keep up with her. However, in the end I wasn't able to - the goal reached her 29secs before me. I believe her time is also a personal best. Congratulations and thank you Alma.

The 47:50 landed me in the 58th place of 191 participants that completed the race. It also puts me in 15th place of 35 in my age group. BTW: why put me in the age group of 40-49; my 40th birthday is not until next Saturday :-)

David Platt on WCF in Iceland!

2008-08-30T22:07:00.011Z

David Platt is going to be teaching a 3-day course on WCF at the University of Iceland in the middle of October. This is a great lecturer from Harvard, and the author of Introducing Microsoft .NET, latest edition is the 3rd one since 2003. He knows a thing or two about .NET and WCF!

In 2006 he then wrote the Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It, which has resulted in a lot of publicity and David has therefore been in numerous interviews, like these two at ARCast.net and ARCast.TV.

There are also some good videos at YouTube, like these:

To me the best one is this one here:

Why Software Sucks: Geeks Drive Stick Shift Cars

"...they want to have used your software."

I will surely try to get to his course at the University of Iceland!

10 km in 51 minutes !!!

2008-08-23T19:29:00.010Z

This morning I did my first public run, in the Glitnir Reykjavik marathon 2008. Since April this year I have been training for this run and my goal has been to run the 10K in under an hour. This morning I completed the 10K run in 51 minutes, jibbi dibbi duuu!

Yours truly running the 10K

So, what's next? Faster or longer?

I got the Garmin Forerunner 405!

2008-08-14T22:09:00.010Z

In the beginning of this month I took a trip to England with my wife, to follow our daughter back to Iceland as she had been spending a couple of weeks in the York Ballet Seminar.

Like I had said in my Garmin, Nike+, iPod Nano and Instructables post, since May 4th, I really wanted the Garmin Forerunner 405. During this trip to England I decided upon purchasing one. I got it at the airport without tax - a pretty sweet deal.

You can have the Garmin Forerunner 405 with, or without, a heart rate monitor. I got myself a monitor because I didn't think my Polar monitor would work with it.

Running with this watch is great; at any given time it will tell me 1) how far I've run so far, 2) how long it has taken me, 3) what my current pace is, 4) what my current heart rate is and it also 5) records my current GPS location.

Then, when I'm back from my run it is a snap to get all this data onto my laptop, using the USB plug that comes with the watch. Finally, the Garmin Training Center software is able to display this information like the following snapshots shows:

What a great watch!

Sóttum Ellen til York

2008-08-05T21:07:00.001Z

Jæja, þá er þessu ballet námskeiði í York lokið.

Við Hjördís tókum kvöldflug út til Manchester fimmtudaginn 31. júlí.

Byrjuðum á að eyða föstudeginum með stelpunum á námskeiðinu og fylgdumst með, fórum út að borða um kvöldið.

Sóttum þær á laugardagsmorguninn og fórum á Kínversku ballet/fimleikasýninguna Swan Lake í leikhúsinu The Lowry í Manchester um kvöldið. Sýningin var frábær!

Daginn eftir var sunnudagur og við fórum á Body Worlds sýninguna á Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), líka í Manchester.

Mánudagurinn fór allur í búðaráp, enda var ég í "stelpuferð" til Englands :-) og svo var loksins flogið heim aftur.

Svona á að skrifa ferðasögur!

Ellen í Yorkshire Ballet Seminars

2008-07-23T22:05:00.020Z

Ellen fór í balletskóla í Englandi fyrir síðustu helgi og verður fram yfir verslunarmannahelgi. Þá förum við Hjördís um langa helgi, heimsækjum hana og fylgjum henni og vinkonu hennar heim. Hún er í Yorkshire Ballet Seminars í borginni York, norðarlega í Englandi (ekki langt frá Manchester).

Í dag komumst við yfir nokkrar myndir sem ljósmyndari að nafni Andrew McMillan hefur verið að taka inni á námskeiðinu. Þar sem við erum vel heilbrigt montin af dóttur okkar datt okkur í hug að setja nokkrar af þessum myndum hér á vefinn.

Mynd 1: Við vitum ekki alveg hvaða hópur þetta er en giskum að þetta sé einn af hópunum sem Ellen er í. Hún er allaveganna þriðja frá hægri í fremstu röðinni sem stendur með ljóshærðu vinkonu sinni sér við hægri hlið.

Mynd 2: Þetta eru misstórir hópar sýnist okkur því á öðrum myndum leit út fyrir að vera miklu fleiri nemendur í einu. Ellen og vinkona hennar eru fremst fyrir miðri mynd, hún snýr í okkur baki en lyftir fætinum í áttina að myndavélinni.

Mynd 3: Hugmyndin hlýtur að vera að herma eftir kennaranum og Ellen er náttúrulega lang flottust þarna vinstra megin á myndinni enda gerum við ekki ráð fyrir öðru eins montin og við erum.

Mynd 4: Hér er Ellen hægra megin við kennarann alvarleg á svip, einbeitt enda hæð frá gólfi og staða fóta óaðfinnanleg.

Mynd 5: Æðislegt stökk hjá henni, sjáiði þetta bara.

Við Hjördís erum bara nokkuð góð í að monta okkur af henni. Njótið þið sem viljið.

The Tar Pit, second blog from MM-M

2008-07-23T15:45:00.017Z

As I drove to the office this morning I was in a surprisingly good mood. Even though I was going to the office during my summer holiday, leaving the family at home without a car on a not-such-a-good-weather day. But it was only going to be for a few hours. The reason for my drop-in was a meeting with two of Rue de Net's developers that form a research-and-development-group to build a general Navision-integrated-table-control.

The control is to be used in many of our web projects, to be sold as a separate entity and integrated into Microsoft SharePoint and other technologies. So this is quite an interesting project to me, being the product manager of the NETConductor, the underlying technology used by the control to interact with Navision. Worth a short trip to the office in the morning of a not-such-a-good-weather day.

The two developers have now been working on the control for about 6-8 weeks and it was time for the first demo showing that it would be beneficial in solving real problems. To show the control's benefits, we had decided that the two developers would build a traditional timesheet, or job journal, to allow employees to punch in their consultancy hours per customer, per job, per task, etc. This would be an authenticated MVC (at ScottGu's blog) based web application build with Microsoft Visual Studio and their control would be the essential part. The complete job journal functionality would be reused from within Navision so it shouldn't take them long nor should it be difficult at all.

During our meeting today we were talking about this timesheet demo project and they were telling me how it had surprised them how difficult it had been to take the control they had built and debugged and getting it to work in another Microsoft Studio project than the one they had been using when developing it. There had been the issue of how to shrink-wrap a user-control, how to deploy it, how to solve namespace issues, some problem with the MVC and the ScriptManager etc. I noticed that they were actually quite worried that I would have expected no such problems - because they surly had not. But I was not surprised at all, and started telling them about Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr.'s (FPB) The Mythical Man-Month (MM-M) and especially the part about his tar pit.

One of the things FPB talks about in his tar pit is the huge effort necessary to evolve an original Program (being merely lines of source code that compile, run and produce a correct set of outputs on the developers machine) into a Programming Product (a fully tested, documented, generalized and reusable component that is easily used by others on their own machines). And, to me, this is exactly the journey being started by these two developers.

FPB estimated the effort to be 3 fold that of building the original Program. Even though the MM-M was published in 1975, discussing the author's experiences since 1965, he later, in the anniversary edition since 1995, quotes DeMarco (author of Peopleware) saying "that there is a big expense in making things reusable" and Yourdon estimating the big expense as being "twice the effort" and FPB himself re-instating his believe that the effort being threefold (MM-M pp. 224).

After I came home from the meeting I thought it would be a good idea to write this experience down; hence this weblog. Below are four snapshots from Chapter 1 The Tar Pit. Hey guys, you should definitely read the snapshots thoroughly and then buy the book, if you don't have it already.

If you can't read this - buy the book!

If you can't read this - buy the book!

If you can't read this - buy the book!

If you can't read this - buy the book!

When I was in the meeting I said that the effort of evolving the control into a product would be nine fold the effort already spent. This is obviously not what FPB is saying, I had obviously been misremembering. He simply claims that evolving an original Program into something reusable to be threefold. The extra 3x effort I had accidentally involved into the experience was the effort of integrating the original Program into a Programming System. This effort is not part of making your control into a product. Sorry guys - anyways now you know. Again, buy the book.

The Mythical Man-Month, the book

2008-07-15T20:34:00.020Z

I started re-re-reading the Mythical Man-Month, by Fredrick P. Brooks Jr., as I was waiting for my new books to arrive from Amazon. Of course this book is one of the classics on software/hardware project management. It's a joyful read so I thought I would give you a couple of snapshots from the signature chapter of the book, The Mythical Man-Month, the chapter. So here we go:

Page 16

What a truth this is! Men and months are not interchangeable commodities. Even though I strongly believe in this, I still always make estimates of tasks in the units of man-days, man-weeks, etc. However, when assigning tasks to people I have to remind myself that adding 2 developers may (or may not) half the almanac time the task takes. Assigning 4 developers to the task definitely does not fourth the time.

Page 25

Now this is the key:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

The way I would say this goes something like "Assigning multiple developers to a single task does not necessarily make it finish that much earlier". Pretty much the same thing but it allows me to utilize Brooks's Law before the task is late, even before work on the task has commenced.

The book contains many other gems, like No Silver Bullet, that I might just drop in here as time goes by. Like everyone else says: if you haven't read this book don't you dare read other project management books or try to manage a software or hardware building team! If you have read it, then go read Peopleware, another of the best books written on managing development teams. Enjoy!

Father Forgets

2008-07-14T23:21:00.006Z

I have known about this book for a long time but never found the right time for it. Then, a couple of weeks ago when I was purchasing How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, I didn't realize that I was accidentally purchasing the 7hour Audio CD! Not all bad though, because when I run I like listening to talking, not music.

So running today, I started listened to it and only first 40 minutes into it, it touched me. Carnegie used the following story to make a point. The point was important but the story really touched me and is probably one of the best stories I have ever read. It has been reprinted multiple times and referenced and mentioned many, many times on the web. But being a father of two girls and one boy, I just have to put the story here:

FATHER FORGETS
W. Livingston Larned
condensed as in "Readers Digest"

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little
paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily
wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone.
Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the
library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily
I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross
to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because
you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to
task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when
you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You
gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You
spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off
to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand
and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in
reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came
up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles.
There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before
your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house.
Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would
be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge,
and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your
small arms tightended with an affection that God had set
blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.
And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped
from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What
has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of
reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It
was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too
much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own
years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your
character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn
itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous
impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters
tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and
I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these
things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But
tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer
when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my
tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it
were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you
now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are
still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your
head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

Heart Rate Training Zones

2008-07-09T19:27:00.028Z

When doing Heart Rate Training, like I'm doing for my Glitnir Marathon in Reykjavik the 23. August, it is essential to calculate your zones and know what training within the heart rate range of each zone means for your body.

So, to start with you need to calculate the range of each zone. The parameters into the following formula is the MHR (your maximum heart rate) and the RHR (your resting heart rate).

There are two ways to figure out the MHR, firstly you can calculate it from your age using the formula 220-age for males and 226-age for women. Secondly you can simply do a fitness test with your Heart Rate Monitor (HRM). Just try to get your beats per minute as high as you can. My MHR is 182 today.

Image at top-right shows a ring being sold by Neway Lifetech Corp. It is very cool-looking but not very popular at Amazon, see here and here.

In addition to your MHR you also need to know your RHR and most instructions and websites on the matter say that you can measure it, using your HRM, when you have just woken up in the morning - before you start putting any strain on your body or stress on your mind. My RHR is 42 today.

When you have your MHR and RHR then you can calculate your pulse range for each of the training zones using the following formula:

LowZoneBPM = (MHR - RHR) x LowPercentage + RHR

HighZoneBPM = (MHR - RHR) x HighPercentage + RHR

So, let's take a look at the four most common training zones mentioned by most instructions and websites.

Zone 60% - 70% - Energy Efficient, Weight Control, or Recovery Zone

Use this zone to increase your basic endurance and aerobic capacity. You should never run beyond 70% if you are recovering from a more difficult run. In this zone you are burning more fat per calorie than in the other zones. However, you are not using as many calories. For more information I like Linda Stradley's Low Intensity Workout vs. High Intensity Workouts over at What's Cooking America.
Zone 70% - 80% - Aerobic Zone

Aerobic means "with oxygen" and in general means that when training in this zone your muscles will be working with all the oxygen they need. You should use this zone to develop your cardiovascular system, you will be training your body to better absorb oxygen, building muscles and burning some fat at the same time - brilliant isn't it. This zone will make you fitter and stronger so in general it is a very good zone to do most of your training in. I like the lowfat Lifestyle's take on the Aerobic Exercise.
Zone 80% - 90% - Anaerobic Zone

Anaerobic means "without oxygen" and in general means that when training in this zone you muscles will not be working with enough oxygen and will require the energy source stored in your muscles (your lactic acid system). That source is not big so your body will resist and require you to slow down and allow the muscles to get oxygen and rebuild their internal storage of energy (this point is called your anaerobic threshold). Working in the Anaerobic Zone will increase you performance but it is important to workout in this zone in bursts. You should be working out in this zone every now and then in order to build your body, which can increase your performance during your next aerobic exercise. Brian Mac Sports Coach has a nice description in his Heart Rate Training Zones article, about the Anaerobic Zone.
Zone 90% - 100% - Maximal or Red line Zone

This zone is very difficult and you should only train in this zone to increase your speed (and I don't mean your long distance running speed), your ability to be fast for a very short amount of time, good for interval running. But, even if you are speed training you should not workout in this zone very often and then only for a very short period of time. Along with all the other zones, including the Healthy Heart Zone (50% - 60%) that I haven't mentioned, in her Train for Change article over at HowToBeFit.com, Sally Edwards warns about training in this zone.

Over at MarathonGuide.com there is a calculator to assist you in calculating your beats per minute for each of these zones.

For the last 2.5 months I have been training in the Aerobic Zone (70% - 80%) in order to train my cardiovascular system so that I would be able to complete a 10K run without stopping. A few days ago I ran 9.5K and then yesterday I broke the 10K mark and managed to run the 10K in a straight relaxed run. However, before my deadline of 23. August I will need to increase my pace. In order to do so I will now start doing more workouts in the Anaerobic Zone (80% - 90%).

I'm also going to get myself a training program that can help me with organizing my tempo runs. I'm currently looking at the FIRST 10K training program by the Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Training.

But we will see. Just get on with it, will you!

Breaking the 10K mark!

2008-07-08T21:10:00.012Z

Yahoo! I managed a straight clean 10K run today.

I'm training for the 10K run at the Glitnir Marathon in Reykjavik the 23. August. I have been training for it since April. Before that I had been a no-training kind of guy for years. So I started slow but today I managed to break the 10K mark without my heart rate going north on me, we are talking about 156, which is quite good for a 39 year old. So, I'm happy today. See running graph below - I know, I'm crazy. But using hlaup.com just makes it all so easy - one click into Excel, one click and I got the graph.

Anyway, I still haven't reached my goal for the 10K run at the Glitnir Marathon. The 23. August I will be running the 10K with a pace equal to or less than 6 minutes per kilometer. Today my run was at 6:40, so I'm not far off, but it is still going to be difficult.

So on with it! I got 6 weeks to get up the pace.

Who am I?

2008-07-01T22:54:00.016Z

About me: Alfred B. Thordarson is still a software developer in Reykjavik, Iceland! And he is me. Since around 1980 I've been developing software; started with the Sinclair ZX81, grew through the ZX Spectrum era into PC development and eventually virtual machines like the JVM and the CLR. During this time and until today, of course I have used numerous technologies ranging from early assembly languages to BASIC to C to C++ to Java to C# and .NET to SQL to web services to ASP.NET and so on and so on. My academical studies include a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Iceland and an MS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. Yes, when it comes to things like electronics, physics, math and astronomy I am a bit of a popular science fanboi. However, today my day job is running Rue de Net, the providers of the NETConductor and Otto products in conjunction with Microsoft ERP systems. In addition to being involved in general managing the company I'm also the product manager of the NETConductor. This means that most of my day is spent in front of one LCD screen or the other. So, of course, relaxing at home means sitting down with my laptop :-) and browsing the web, news, blogs and different technology write ups. So, this blog is becoming a pad for me to write down and concentrate my thoughts about software, technology and computer related issues in general. In between I also write stuff about my personal life, my wife, my two daughters, my son, my horses, my parrot, my running and other hobbies - but then usually in Icelandic - Sorry - but you know the mom test?

Changing nicknames of MSN contacts

2008-06-29T12:00:00.009Z

When you add a new contact to your list of MSN contacts, this new contact has decided an arty-kind-of "display name" for himself. So when the contact has been added he gets sorted among your other contacts, based on his "display name". As the contact decides his "display name" then he can, to some extent, decide where in your list he appears. For this reason, I think, some of my MSN contacts decide to put an hyphen (or something similar that gets sorted before alphabetical characters) before their name so that they get sorted at the top of your list.

This has irritated me for a while and it wasn't until lately that I found the OBVIOUS way to fix this. I had tried to change everything on the MSN contact card but that hasn't helped at all. But just recently I noticed in the right-click-drop-down menu of the contact that you can change the "nickname" of the contact. Hurrah!!! Hence the "In Your Face" portrait by Figuro Blog (a great unique site I urge you to take a look at).

It turns out that this is your own "display name" of the contact. I thought I would share this with your. Take a look at how this is done:

Another benefit is that if two of your contacts decide to use similar "display names" then it can be hard for you to figure out which one is which, when you want to chat with one of them. Now, with the change of the "nickname" (hot key F2), you can give a more descriptive "nicknames" to your contacts.

Hope this helps you too.

Ég er 2 ára

2008-06-22T20:44:00.006Z

Jóhann Jökull Bæhrenz
er nú orðinn 2 ára.

hlaup.com

2008-06-01T18:03:00.011Z

Ég er nú farinn að skrá hlaupin mín í Hlaupadagbókinni hlaup.com. Ég er ekki búinn að vera lengi að hlaupa en stefni á að hlaupa 10 kílómetra í Reykjavíkurmaraþoni Glitnis þann 23. ágúst. Ef þú ert að hlaupa þá sting ég uppá þessari hlaupadagbók. Þar að auki er Glitnir með undirbúningshóp fyrir 10 kílómetra hlaupið fyrir þá sem hafa áhuga.

The Navision client and server don't have the same version

2008-06-01T17:35:00.000Z

Rue de Net has a customer running several versions of the classic Navision server. What we experienced, when moving servers between machines, was that clients (or Navision Application Servers - NAS) wouldn't start normally every time - most of the time we had the "The client and server do not have the same version number" error when connecting to a 3.60 version server.

After multiple trials we have found that there is a bug in Navision 3.60 resulting in this error message if you are running some other version of the classic Navision server on the same machine. The error will occur when a client tries to connect using Windows Authentication.

This blog is for others working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV...

Svala kastaði folaldi í gær

2008-05-31T18:51:00.007Z

Svala er ein af hestunum hennar Lóu fyrir vestan á Miðjanesi á Reykjanesinu við Reykhóla. Hestarnir sem eru allt árið á Miðjanesi núna eru Svala, Hrugnir og Júpíter. En veturinn 2006-2007 var Svala hjá okkur í bænum og fékk hún þá einhverja þjálfun en ekki þó næga til að við gætum riðið henni út í hverri viku. Okkur fór hins vegar að þykja mjög vænt um þessa fallegu og góðu, en líka styggu, hryssu. Hún kom þó ekki bæinn núna í vetur heldur var hún sett undir hest síðasta sumar og kastaði nú þessu líka fallega folaldi, eða litlu hryssu.

Til viðbótar við ofangreinda hesta þá á Írena Ísafold en hún tekur hana í Mosfellsbæinn yfir veturinn og er hún nú komin aftur vestur. Við eigum Póló og Normu frá Njarðvík og tökum við þau í Víðidalinn yfir veturinn. Þau eru bæði enn í bænum og ætlum við að reyna að hafa þau hjá okkur eins lengi og við getum en þurfum líklega að fara með þau í kringum miðjan Júní. Sjáum til.

Við getum nú varla beðið eftir að fara vestur.

Spolsky: "Twittering"

2008-05-29T10:31:00.016Z

I heard Jeff Atwood (Jeff: "don't mean to be a fan-boy") raving about Twitter in the Stackoverflow #4, #5 and #6 pod casts with Joel Spolsky but he just joked about this saying he likes "Twittering!". Then there was something about this on the BBC, so I decided to give this a try, at least try to figure out what the hype is about. But even after reading the "What?", "Why?" and "How?" on the Twitter homepage and then watching the video I still didn't understand why Jeff was so enthusiastic about this service. So I signed up to take a better look (http://www.twitter.com/abthordarson).

So the idea is that you sign-up and start answering the "What are you doing?" question on the top of your page. And you should be answering this question often but not thoroughly (hence the 140 character limit). Others can then start following in on your answers by becoming your "Followers". You also become their "Follower", you then reply to each others tweets and a conversation is created.

You can listen in or engage in a conversation an interesting person A is having with another person B, simply by "Finding" that interesting person A and start "Following" his tweets. However, you actually need to "Follow" that person B as well otherwise it's going to feel like you are listening to a person on the telephone (only hearing what the interesting person answers but not the question itself). This means that if ten people are talking about something you need to be "Following" everyone of those in order not to loose the thread of the conversation (hence the hundreds or thousands of followers everyone has in Twitter).

However, you can specifically request to see the tweet the interesting person is replying to clicking the relevant "in reply to ***" URL. But this becomes impossible very soon unless you want to spend the rest of you days pressing "in reply to ***" URLs and browsing around the Twitter pages.

So the way I feel is that the magnitude of the people I need to be "Following" is a drawback of Twitter and I can just imagine that I literally have to "Follow" everyone and also everyone everyone is following, otherwise I might be missing the joke everyone is laughing at :-)

Anyways, because people don't really answer the question "What are you doing?" literally but instead put some interesting information in there, that they think the rest of us would like to know, I will probably use Twitter to "Follow" some people I expect to have interesting information that I would like to hear about. But we will see if I continue to listen or if I loose interest and give up.

The snapshots I have included come from the Witty 0.1.8 Beta 1 Twitter client (and there are others as well) that allow you, to some extent, to avoid the down-all-the-time Twitter homepage. I guess that is why they created all those pages that do nothing but follow the status of Twitter, see for example the to-the-point page Is Twitter Down? (more info at Is Twitter Down? Yes or No at downloadsquad).

TimeSnapper

2008-05-05T20:50:00.003Z

I don't know about you but, in addition to being a NET·Conductor product developer, part of my job for Rue de Net are billable hours so I have to write them down. But I keep forgetting to write them down so every now and then you see me scratching my head looking out the window and wondering what the heck I was doing a couple of days ago. Often I look into our Jira issue system, my emails and/or the VisualSVN Versioning Control System trying to figure it out. Can be quite difficult.

And now I can introduce you to one more system that can help me when it is this time of the month. TimeSnapper by Leon Bambrick is a very nice system that you start on your computer and it follows what you are doing and records it. It makes snapshots of your screen and records the applications that you use. This allows you to playback your day and see what you have done. I now have this running on my desktop and making snapshots every 30 seconds.

It then comes with exactly the kind of reporting and filtering that you need to be able to extract by time and application exactly what you were doing a couple of days ago. Brilliant!

TimeSnapper is one of those great ideas that have been made into a very cool little program, which I hope will continue to stay little - take a look!

Stackoverflow

2008-05-05T20:37:00.004Z

Joel Spolsky from Fog Creek and Jeff Atwood who writes Coding Horror are setting up a new website they are calling Stackoverflow. It is to become the some kind of wiki with software solutions. I have been reading Joel for years and I still like it. I'll therefore be following Stackoverflow and hopefully contributing when it starts growing. You should take a look at http://www.stackoverflow.com and maybe listen to their podcasts.

Garmin, Nike+, iPod Nano and Instructables

2008-05-04T10:27:00.017Z

I am a runner these days and currently in the market for a way of accurately measuring my running distance. Today, the timing of my run and heart rate is precisely measured with the Polar CS200 Cycling Computer that I've had for just over a year now. However, the CS200 is missing the running distance as it is obviously not intended for runners but for cyclists. So, I collect my running distance afterwards from an interactive map of Reykjavik. This is a tedious, imprecise and boring way of calculating the distance.

However, the distance I run hasn't been as important as the time I run until recently. This is changing because I'm beginning to run further and further. For a couple of weeks now I have been browsing around looking for a better way of measuring the running distance. There are two ways that I can do this, using a footpod that measures the running speed with up to 99% accuracy or a GPS based system, which I prefer for its additional capabilities, like graphing etc. The GPS system I hope to get is the up and coming Garmin Forerunner 405 ($349 on Amazon) but until it arrives in shops I will wait, and I wait...

But then I ran into the Nike + iPod Sport Kit, a footpod based system, that is really cheap ($29 on Amazon) so I thought I would get one of those as I already own an iPod. However, instead of purchasing it directly from Amazon, I went to a local sport shop to see it in action before buying. Turns out my iPod Mini is not good enough, an iPod Nano is required for the sport kit. Then there was the thing about the footpod sensor, no straps or any other kind of holdings to fit it to my shoe. They expect us to purchase a new pair of Nike shoes that has the appropriate hole to hold the sensor. So I wont get one of those, I will continue waiting for the 405...

However, one good thing came out of this, during my exploration of the web trying to find a way of fitting the sensor on my shoe I stumbled upon a social network site called Instructables that allows people to upload instructions about anything they believe they have more knowledge about than the rest of us. There are many silly instructions in there, like How to Start A Flash Mob, How to Kiss, Solar Powered Light-Graffiti Projector and Anatomy of a Chocolate Truffle. Ha, ha. Enjoy.

Anyways, we continue waiting for the Garmin Forerunner 405...

Microsoft's ISB

2008-04-16T18:40:00.010Z

Microsoft is providing a CTP of their Internet Service Bus (ISB), which will allow developers to easily build publish/subscribe technology based applications. The Microsoft ISB is currently being called BizTalk Services and you can take a better look at http://www.biztalk.net. According to John Shewchuck, in a very informative video at Channel 9, the name comes from the classic BizTalk server being an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and it made sense to brand this new Internet Service Bus under the same brand, that is BizTalk.

Publicly well-known publish/subscribe based applications are chat rooms, MSN and Skype. A more business-oriented application might for example be a business document sharing application that would allow one company to access their business documents from another company.

The BizTalk Services comes with an SDK that allows developers to create a conventional WCF service that can be published on the ISB and then build a client that connects to this service through the ISB. But for further information I would suggest that you first take a look at the video and then try it using the SDK.

Anyway, I think this technology is really cool and will open up a new way of publishing services based on the NET·Conductor technology from Rue de Net that I'm involved in developing. The NET·Conductor allows web service based access to data and logic within Microsoft Dynamics NAV business applications.

Session timeout, a tough but important issue for AJAX

2008-01-17T21:13:00.002Z

I have been working on an ASP.NET web application, in .NET 2.0 using VS2005, that utilizes AJAX Control Toolkit controls to extend the usability of the application. In addition, the application is a serious business application that requires security, including encryption, authentication and authorization. And the HTTP session is an InProc mode session that expires in the default time of 20 minutes.

This of course means that if the user leaves a page on his browser for over 20 minutes the session has expired and any post back to the server will redirect the browser to the sign in page. However, if the page, for example, contains the AutoCompleteExtender control from the AJAX Control Toolkit, the user might get back to his browser and start using the extender's functionality, requiring behind the scene callbacks, but will realize that the control simply doesn't work - no error not redirection to the sign in page!?

How can I fix this? I'm researching... currently looking at this blog by Herr Ziffer about the SessionExpiredMonitor.

Soma introduces VS2008 Release at TechEd

2007-11-07T20:20:00.001Z

Microsoft has committed themselves to delivering a release of their Visual Studio 2008 product family in November 2007. Read the press release here! Jibbeee!

Suddenly my VS2008 Beta2 VPC problems don't feel as grave as they felt yesterday!

The .NET Framework 3.5, this is the .NET Framework 2.0SP1, adding the new C# 3.0 features, support and assemblies and the .NET Framework 3.0 assemblies, will be released with the VS2008 but will also be available to end-users through Windows Update (it's an optional download to start with?!).

My VS2008 Beta 2 expired!

2007-11-06T22:43:00.000Z

I was in the middle of developing a little sample using my Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 VPC, which I got from Microsoft this summer as a Beta tester, when suddenly a dialog opened up and said something like This version of Windows 2003 Server that you are using will expire in 24 hours and will stop working (or something like that, this is from memory).

Frustrated, but I still went into the Microsoft Beta program again and started downloading the ISO image of the Visual Studio 2008
Professional Beta 2 (note, I'm not downloading the VPC again).

Anyways, the file has an extension of .img and now I just have to get it opened somehow so that I can install it (project of tomorrow). Anyways, I also noticed that ScottGu wrote about this a couple of days before the end of last month, in his Important Notice: VS 2008 Beta2 VPC Images Expiring on Nov 1st weblog.

C# program formatter for weblog

2007-11-04T21:53:00.001Z

I was looking for a way of formatting my C# code and I finally found it. This is a webpage that allows me to copy my source code into a textarea and get back a nicely formatted HTML to paste directly into my weblog. It's pointed out by Scott Cate where he refers to an online c# code format site. So I'm trying it out. What do you think?

public class MyClass
{
  public string this[int index]
  {
    get
    {
      return m_Names[index];
    }
    protected set
    {
      m_Names[index] = value;
    }
  }
  string[] m_Names; 
  //Rest of the class
}

06/11/2007 author added: I have now converted the last couple of weblogs and reformatted the code snippets using the above mentioned formatter. It works ok, but a few times I had to manually change the resulting HTML for it to work correctly. Especially if a line ends with a // comment that contains a couple of quote-marks. I also noticed that the formatter doesn't recognize 'var', 'for', 'select' and other C# 3.0 keywords - otherwise, it works fine and will probably support the new keywords as time goes by.

Things you might not know about C# 2.0

2007-11-03T12:04:00.001Z

When writing my Yet another C# 3.0 new feature listing... and browsing the web I ran into the following interesting things I had not realized about C# 2.0. Thought I might share them with you.

a) Delegate inference

Did you know that the C# compiler can infer the delegate type? This means that you can write code like this:

SomeDelegate del = SomeMethod;

and the 'SomeMethod' is inferred to be of type SomeDelegate.

So you don't have to write it the old-style:

SomeDelegate del = new SomeDelegate(SomeMethod);

...saves a few keystrokes.

b) Property/Indexer get/set visibility

You can easily make indexers in C# and even make a getter more visible than a setter, like this sample shows:

public class MyClass
{
  public string this[int index]
  {
    get
    {
      return m_Names[index];
    }
    protected set
    {
      m_Names[index] = value;
    }
  }
  string[] m_Names; 
  //Rest of the class
}

Just remember that the get/set visibility can only narrow the visibility of the actual Property/Indexer.

c) yield return in IEnumerable

When writing IEnumerables you can use the 'yield return' statment to simplify your coding, as shown in this sample:

public class CityCollection : IEnumerable<string>
{
  string[] m_Cities = { "New York", "Paris", "London" };

  public IEnumerator<string> GetEnumerator()
  {
    for (int i = 0; i < m_Cities.Length; i++)
    {
      yield return m_Cities[i];
    }
  }
  //Rest of the class
}

The code will continue running from the 'yield return' point when the return value has been used and the next item of the IEnumerable is required.

We use the IEnumerable like this:

CityCollection cityCollection = new CityCollection();
foreach (string city in cityCollection)
{
  Console.WriteLine("City: " + city);
}

Could be helpful to know!

d) suppress compiler warnings inline

If the compilation of your code always returns a warning and you would like to suppress it, but not all such warnings, then you can use 'pragmas', like this:

// Disable 'field never used' warning
#pragma warning disable 169
public class MyClass 
{
   int m_Number;
}
#pragma warning restore 169

However, after the 'warning restore' statement you may still get the warning. Could be convenient.

more stuff...

See more cool stuff at Create Elegant Code With Anonymous Methods, Iterators, And Partial Classes

Yet another C# 3.0 new feature listing...

2007-11-03T11:19:00.002Z

I blogged about .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, VS2008 "Orcas", C# 3.0 and more in my .NET Framework 3.0, Implicitly typed local variables and the Extension Methods weblogs.

There are many sites that have collected information and written about the new features of C# 3.0, like developer.com, Wikipedia and most notibly Scott Guthrie in his New C# "Orcas" Language Features weblogs: part-1, part-2 and part-3. If you haven't read Guthries, you should!

Anyways, from all of these weblogs and sites (and even more than those mentioned above) I have compiled the following descriptions of each feature. I have created my own samples but also copied some from the sites above, so if you require more information on any of the samples or features, please read the references above.

a) Automatic Properties

...which allows you to create simple properties without
declaring the storage variables and the simple (and futile) getters and setters.

Sample:

// Automatic Properties
public class Person
{
  public string ID { get; set; }
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public Address Address { get; set; }
  public int Age { get; set; }
}
public class Address
{
  public string Street { get; set; }
  public int Number { get; set; }
  public string City { get; set; }
  public string Country { get; set; }
}

The compiler will automatically generate a private instance variable and the appropriate getter and setter.

b) Object initializers

...allowing the construction of objects and members using
the default constructor and appropriate member setters in one easy go.

Sample:

// Object initialization
Person p1 = new Person
{
  ID = "P0001",
  Name = "Davíð",
  Age = 39,
  Address = new Address
  {
    Street = "Bakkagerði",
    Number = 2,
    City = "Reykjavík",
    Country = "Iceland"
  }
};

This syntax is a lot simpler to write than using the default constructor and then all the necessery setter method calls.

c) Collection initializers

...now made as simple as array
initialization, without any additional programming.

Sample:

// Collection initialization
List<Person> persons = new List<Person>
{
  new Person { ID="P0002", Name="Alfred", Age=39,
               Address=new Address { Street="Seilugrandi" } },

  new Person { ID="P0003", Name="Aðalsteinn", Age=38 },
  new Person { ID="P0004", Name="Sveinn", Age=38 },
  new Person { ID="P0005", Name="Eymundur", Age=43 },
  new Person { ID="P0006", Name="Markús", Age=39 },
  new Person { ID="P0007", Name="Guðmundur", Age=38 },
  new Person { ID="P0008", Name="Bjarni", Age=38 },
  new Person { ID="P0008", Name="Richard", Age=20 }
};

You can use this syntax for all classes that implement the IEnumerable interface and has an Add method. For example, instead of MyList list = new MyList(); list.Add(1); list.Add(2); you can now write MyList list = new MyList { 1, 2 };. Simple and convenient.

d) Implicitly typed local variables

...which permits the type of local variables
to be inferred from the expressions used to initialize them.

Sample:

// Inferred variable types
var txt1 = "Implicitly txt becomes a 'string'";
string txt2 = "Same as above";
var i = 7; // Implicit declaration of an integer
int j = 7; // Same as above

This does not make C# anything but a stronly type language because you can only use this feature for local variables and each variable is always of the same type. This feature was necessery for it is required for the declaration of anonymously typed variables (coming below).

e) Implicitly typed local arrays

...are a form of array creation and initialization
that infers the element type of the array from an array initializer.

Sample:

// Inferred array types
// Same as int[] intArray = new int[]...
var intArray = new[] { 10, 9, 4, 7 };
var txtArray = new[] { "a","sldkj","oowu","9837","ls" };

Nice new feature, also necessery as mentioned for implicitly typed local variables above.

f) Anonymous types

...allowing classes to be automatically created, behind the scenes,
when you require a storage for a set of data instead of a single element of data.

Sample:

// Anonymous types
var h = new { hair="black", skin="green", teethCount=64 }
var u = new { Name = "James" }

The instantiation new { ... } will be construct a new class that is created behind the scenes. This class is unknown to the programmer so its name obviously can't be written out in the declaration of the variable, hence the var keyword as mentioned for implicitly typed local variables above.

g) Extension methods

...which allows developers to add new methods
to existing class without having to extend it or compile it. This is done by including the this keyword in the first parameter of a method on another static class.

Sample:

// Simple Extension Method
public static bool IsValidEmailAddress(this string s)
{
  Regex regex = new Regex(@"^[\w-\.]+@([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]{2,4}$");
  return regex.IsMatch(s);
}

This method extends all strings because the 'this keyword parameter' is of type string. The implementation of the method simply checks if the content of the 'this' string is in the format of an email address.

The usage:

// Simple Extension Method Usage
string email = "alfred@ruedenet.is";
// Prints "True"
Console.WriteLine(email + " is an email? " + 
                  email.IsValidEmailAddress());
// Prints "False"
Console.WriteLine("alfred@ruedenet is an email? " +
                  "alfred@ruedenet".IsValidEmailAddress());

It's as simple as that.

Sample:

// Another Extension Method
public static bool In(this object o, List<Person> c)
{
  foreach (object i in c)
  {
    if (i.Equals(o))
    {
      return true;
    }
  }
  return false;
}

This method extends all objects because the 'this keyword parameter' is of type string. In addition, the extension method requires a single parameter of type List. The implementation checks if the 'this' object is contained within the list provided as parameter.

The usage:

// Another Extension Method Usage
Console.WriteLine("Davíð is in persons? " +
                  "Davíð".In(persons)); // Prints "False"
Console.WriteLine("Guðmundur is in persons? " + 
                  "Guðmundur".In(persons)); // Prints "True"

Now, for your information the string "Davíð" is not in the list of persons, however "Guðmundur" is. So, the two lines above will print out 'False' and 'True' in that order.

When you have Extension methods some may think that C# is stretching a bit too far into Duck typing land. This is understandable because with Extension methods the use of a type becomes a little more about what methods an object exposes and little less about what type the object is.

Don't get too defensive, C# is still strongly typed and Extension methods are just another shortcut programming. What I mean is that the 'IsValidEmailAddress' method above could also have been written as an old-style 'public static' method like this:

// Simple Static Method
public static bool IsValidEmailAddress(string s)
{
  Regex regex = new Regex(@"^[\w-\.]+@([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]{2,4}$");
  return regex.IsMatch(s);
}

Note that all I did wat take the 'this' keyword out and we have a regular old-style 'public static' method as we have all done them through the years.

Now, instead of doing "alfred@ruedenet.is".IsValidEmailAddress() - as I did above using the Extension method - I would simple do IsValidEmailAddress("alfred@ruedenet.is"). IMHO, this old-style simply doesn't have the elegance introduced into C# with the Extension methods! Also, the old-style doesn't show the 'IsValidEmailAddress' method in the IntelliSense autocompletion drop-down, but Extension methods do! ...and that is cool!

h) Partial methods

...allow us to create partial classes that contain methods that may
or may not become part of the public interface of the class - this depends
on whether some other partial class will actually override it.

There are a few comments on using partial methods: 1) they are only allowed in partial types; either classes or structs, 2) they always return void and 3) forget it, there are no other kinds of partial members (no partial variables, no partial properties, etc. :-)

File1.cs:

// MyPartialClass
public partial class MyPartialClass
{
  public void DoA()
  {
    LogA("A-Begin");
    // Do something
    LogA("A-End");
  }
  public void DoB()
  {
    LogB("B-Begin");
    // Do something
    LogB("B-End");
  }
  partial void LogA(string txt);
  partial void LogB(string txt);
}

Note the two partial methods at the bottom. Without anything else, if we simple instantiate this 'MyPartialClass' and call the 'DoA' and 'DoB' methods, nothing will happen because 'LogA' and 'LogB' have not been implemented. The compiler will simply remove the declarations of the methods and all usages of them. The compiler can actually allow it self to do that because partial methods never return values.

However, if we add the following second file:File2.cs:

// MyPartialClass
public partial class MyPartialClass
{
  partial void LogA(string txt)
  {
    Console.WriteLine(txt);
  }
}

All we have don't is add the 'LogA' method to the class. Now the compiler wont remove the calls to this method. Now, if we instantiate the 'MyPartialClass' and call the 'DoA' and 'DoB' methods, 'DoB' will continue to do nothing, but 'DoA' will call the 'LogA' method twice and therefore print a couple of text lines.

It took me a little while to get used to the idea of partial types (introduced in C# 2.0) being necessery to simplify the development tools generation of the GUI designer classes. I'm still not completely at ease with this approach and I still think it can be, and should have been, solved using good old inheritence. So I guess it will take me a while to get use to the idea of partial methods :-)

i) Lambda expressions

...are an evolution of anonymous methods that provides improved
type inference and conversions to both delegate types and expression trees.

There are many places that can give you good descriptions of the Lambda functionality in C# 3.0. A very good introduction would be the Lambda Expressions and Expression Trees: An Introduction feature on The Code Project website. But you can also continue reading below before jumping to the references :-) Lets start with a delegate example:

Sample using delegates:

// Declare the AFilter delegate type
public delegate bool AFilter(string str);

// Define a user of the AFilter delegate type
public string findFirstMatch(List<string> list,AFilter filter) {
  foreach(string str in list) {
    if (filter(str)) return str;
  }
  return null;
}

// Define an anonymous delegate of the AFilter type
AFilter myFilter=delegate(string str) { 
  return str.StartsWith("A"); 
};

// Define a list of values
var strings = new List<string> { 
  "John", "Kane", "Krugman", "Andrea", "Hornby"
};

// Prints "Andrea"
Console.WriteLine(findFirstMatch(strings,myFilter));

This is the old-style, without lambda expressions.

Sample using Lambda-style:

// Defining an anonymous delegate of the AFilter type
AFilter myFilter = str => str.StartsWith("H");

And now I can use the 'myFilter' anywhere that the AFilter delegate is required.

In addition the C# 3.0 compiler can infer the translation of Lambda expressions to either strongly-typed function delegates (as above) or strongly-typed expression trees.

Expression sample:

// Defining the same filter as an expression
Expression<AFilter> filtExpr = str => str.StartsWith("J");

// Prints "str"
foreach(ParameterExpression param in filtExpr.Parameters) {
  Console.WriteLine(param.Name);
}

// Prints "str.StartsWith("J")"
Console.WriteLine(filtExpr.Body);
Console.WriteLine(findFirstMatch(strings,
                  filtExpr.Compile())); // Prints "John"

This constructs the 'aFilterExpression' into an Expression object that can't be sent directly into the 'findFirstMatch' function above but can be used to, for example, make SQL syntax. How this works is that the C# 3.0 compiler actually knows about the Expression class (part of System.Linq.Expressions) and can handle it specifically to compile our source code into a data structure as well as a function. The last line of code above calls the 'Compile' method of the expression to get the function pointer and sents it into the 'findFirstMatch' method, which uses the compiled expression to print out "John".

This new feature of the C# 3.0 compiler, to compile into a data structure is not that new and has been available in LISP for a long time. To learn more about that see Ian Griffiths take on C# 3.0 and LINQ - Expression Trees. Ian also talks about how to use these Lambda expressions to make code on the run, see his Generating Code with LINQ weblog.

j) Language Integrated Query (LINQ) expressions

...provideS a language integrated syntax for
queries that is similar to relational and hierarchical query languages such as SQL and XQuery.

I think Linq is propably the reason for most of the new features mentioned above. Linq is an extensive add-on the language with it's SQL-like syntax and features. Below I will be making three samples to explain the overall concept but the whole thing would be way to long for this weblog so I will start by referring you to the LINQ Introduction features at The Code Project website: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Linq is a collection of extensions methods that can be used to make queries on specific classes. We will start by looking at queries on normal classes stored in lists, then we will look at making Linq queries on XML documents and end by looking at making queries on traditional database structures.

Sample 1, Object queries:

// Linq queries on the persons list initialized earlier
IEnumerable<Person> young = persons.Where(p => p.Age<39);
Console.WriteLine("How many persons are younger than 39? " +
                  young.Count()); // Prints "5"
Console.WriteLine("The oldest person is how old? " + 
                  persons.Max(p => p.Age)); // Prints "43"
Console.WriteLine("What is the average age of all persons? " + 
                  persons.Average(p => p.Age)); // Prints "36,625"
var allAlfredHomes = persons.Where(p => 
                     p.Name.Equals("Alfred")).Select(p => 
                     new { p.Name, p.Address.Street });
foreach (object h in allAlfredHomes)
{
  Console.WriteLine(h); // Prints "Seilugrandi"
}

Allows queries directly into the object structure of your program.

Sample 2, XML queries:

// Linq queries on the following XML document
XDocument people = XDocument.Parse(""+
"<people>"+
  "<person age='32'>"+
    "<firstname>Scott</firstname>"+
    "<lastname>Guthrie</lastname>"+
  "</person>"+
  "<person age='32'>"+
    "<firstname>Susanne</firstname>"+
    "<lastname>Guthrie</lastname>"+
  "</person>"+
  "<person age='50'>"+
    "<firstname>Bill</firstname>"+
    "<lastname>Gates</lastname>"+
  "</person>"+
"</people>");

// All persons whos names start with "S"
IEnumerable<XElement> sElements =
   people.Descendants("person").Where(p => 
   p.Element("firstname").Value.StartsWith("S"));

// Prints "Scott" and "Susan"
foreach (XElement p in sElements)
{
  Console.WriteLine(p.Element("firstname").Value);
}

// All persons whos names starts with "S", more info returned
IEnumerable<Person> sPersons = people.Descendants("person").Where(p => 
   p.Element("firstname").Value.StartsWith("S")).Select(p => 
   new Person { Name = p.Element("firstname").Value + " " + 
   p.Element("lastname").Value,
   Age=Convert.ToInt32(p.Attribute("age").Value) } );

// Prints "Scott Guthrie (32)" and "Susan Guthrie (32)"
foreach (Person p in sPersons)
{
  Console.WriteLine(p.ToString()); 
}

The interesting thing here is that the Linq XML feature requires you to use the System.Xml.Linq.XDocument but not the System.Xml.XmlDocument.

Sample 3, SQL queries:

// Linq queries into a database
BankAccountsDataContext bankAccountsDB = new BankAccountsDataContext();
IEnumerable<BankAccount> bankAccounts =
   bankAccountsDB.BankAccounts.Where(p => 
   p.Name.StartsWith("B"));

foreach (BankAccount b in bankAccounts.AsEnumerable())
{
  Console.WriteLine(b.Name+" "+b.Balance);
}

// Prints "900,0000"
Console.WriteLine("Min:" +
   bankAccountsDB.BankAccounts.Min(p => p.Balance)); 

// Prints "1000,0000"
Console.WriteLine("Avg:" +
   bankAccountsDB.BankAccounts.Average(p => p.Balance));
 
// Prints "1100,0000"
Console.WriteLine("Max:" +
   bankAccountsDB.BankAccounts.Max(p => p.Balance));

The simplest way of getting the 'BankAccountsDataContext' created is to use the new VS2008 feature of adding a "LINQ to SQL Classes" (DBML) project item to your project.

k) The new LINQ syntax

...allows us to write our queries without using the 'Where' and 'Select' extension methods used above.

Extension-style:

IEnumerable<Person> sPersons =
   people.Descendants("person").Where(p => 
      p.Element("firstname").Value.StartsWith("S")).Select(p => 
         new Person {
           Name = p.Element("firstname").Value + " " + 
             p.Element("lastname").Value,
           Age=Convert.ToInt32(p.Attribute("age").Value)
         }
      );

Can be converted to the following.

Query-style:

var sPersons2 = from p in people.Descendants("person")
   where p.Element("firstname").Value.StartsWith("B") 
   select new Person {
      Name = p.Element("firstname").Value + " " + 
                 p.Element("lastname").Value,
      Age = Convert.ToInt32(p.Attribute("age").Value)
   };

Isn't that cool!?

My Wireless Network Connection was not visible in my VPC on my Windows XP host

2007-10-28T21:32:00.000Z

I have been using Microsoft Virtual PC (MSVPC) for a long time now and have a lot of virtual machines (VPCs) configured for different purposes and reasons. Lately I have been moving my VPCs between hosts and ran into the following problem on one of those.

I had installed MSVPC on this new computer, but everytime I opened one of my VPCs I got the message "The emulated ethernet adapter not available..." or something of that sort. On the Network Settings of my VPC I couldn't see my Wireless Network Connection so I really had no way of telling the VPC to use that for networking. So...

...after searching the web for a while I found this discussion on my issue and the fix is "Not even that complicated". So I thought I would share it with you...

...simple right-click on your "Wireless Network Connection" under "Control Panel" > "Network Connections" and select "Properties" (see snapshot on the right). Just make sure the "Virtual Machine Network Services" is selected. If it isn't, select it and try changing your VPCs Network Settings again. My guess is, now your Wireless Network Adapter will be in the drop-down.

Hope this helps someone else...

Lok sumarleyfis

2007-08-02T22:34:00.000Z

Jæja, þá er sumarfríinu lokið. Fjölskyldan lauk því með að keyra hringinn á tæpri viku, púúhh.

Við byrjuðum á því að taka á leigu fellihýsi á miðvikudaginn fyrir viku, fylla það af dóti og þrusa okkur af stað snemma á fimmtudeginum. Fyrsta málið með fellihýsið kom strax á leiðinni þegar við áttuðum okkur á því að það var búið að opna sig um allt að hálfan meter. Við þurftum því að stoppa á þjóðvegi eitt og loka því.

Ætlunin var að ná í giftinguna hjá Unnari og Hannah, vinum okkar frá Jersey, í Akureyrarkirkju kl. 16. Það rétt slapp að koma börnunum til systur Hjördísar og manninum hennar, og skoppuðum við inn í kirkjuna rétt fyrir klukkan fjögur. Þar sátum við svo í hátt í hálftíma og biðum, ásamt brúðgumanum, eftir brúðinni fram til tuttugu mínútur yfir, gott hjá henni. Svo var bara þessi frábæra veisla á eftir, langt fram á nótt.

Á föstudeginum var keyrt í Ásbyrgi og eyddum við þar tveimur nóttum í fellihýsinu og systir Hjördísar, maðurinn hennar og yngsti sonur í þeirra fellihýsi. Skemmtilegur tími og okkur tókst að lenda í önnur vandræðin með fellihýsið. Þegar verið var að pakka saman hélst þakið uppi öðru megin (vitlaust uppsettar öryggisstangir) og það tók nokkuð langan tíma og nokkrar hringingar til Reykjavíkur áður en það var komið rétt saman.

Sunnudagurinn fór svo í að keyra frá Ásbyrgi til Atlavíkur í Hallormsstaðaskógi og komum við þar nokkuð seint að kveldi og börnin orðin nokkuð þreytt. Fellihýsið upp. Börnin í bólið. Við í bólið. Það voru allir þreyttir þetta kvöld en morguninn eftir voru allir í góðum gír og morguninn var frábær. Gott mál enda löng ferð fyrir höndum þennan dag. Allir fóru í sund og svo var keyrt af stað og ekki stoppað fyrr en í Skaftafelli.

Við komum á kvöldmat á mánudeginum og ákváðum að vera þar í tvær nætur. Þegar við mættum í Skaftafell komumst við að því að við vorum búin að vera svo lengi á leiðinni og ísskápurinn að halda köldu með því að eyða rafmagninu af 12V geyminum á fellihýsinu (af hverju ekki að draga rafmagnið frá bílnum á meðan hann er tengdur?). Við vorum semsagt rafmagnslaus, þriðja vesenið með fellihýsið, sem þýddi ekkert ljós og engan hitablástur um nóttina (föttuðum ekki að kaupa 220V tengingu fyrr en daginn eftir). Við undirbjuggum okkur því undir kalda aðfararnótt þriðjudags, en svo reyndist hún ekki vera svo köld.

Skaftafell er með gott tjaldstæði, góða þjónustu og auðvitað með margar skemmtilegar gönguleiðir en við fórum bara í eina stutta upp að Skaftafellsjökli. Þessi þriðjudagur sem við eyddum í Skaftafelli var eini dagurinn í allri ferðinni sem rigndi. Dagurinn var samt mjög góður og endaði með að við fengum tvo vini í kvöldmat, partý og næturgistingu.

Á miðvikudeginum, þegar vikan var liðin, þurftum við að bruna í bæinn og skila fellihýsinu fyrir klukkan 16. Það tókst vel en þegar við vorum að skila því af okkur tókum við eftir að auka-gaskúturinn sem ekki var tengdur hafði fokið af á leiðinni ásamt grindinni sem átti að halda honum. Ekki tókum við eftir því. Hann var svo til tómur og hefur líklega skoppað beint út í móa, ég held að við hefðum orðið var við hann ef hann hefði farið undir fellihýsið. Allaveganna. Fjórða og síðasta vesenið með fellihýsið.

Við áttum semsagt góða ferð þrátt fyrir vesen með fellihýsið en lærðum líka mikið, um fellihýsi, á þessu. En nú er komið að því að snúa sér aftur að alvarlegri málefnum. Við stefnum nú samt að því að stunda hestaferðir fyrir vestan næstu vikur og enda hestaárið með því að taka þátt í leitum í lok september. Ég mun líklega blogga eitthvað um það á íslensku. En almennt séð þá er líklega samt komið að því að bloggið frá mér verði aftur eitthvað tengt tölvumálum og þá á ensku.

Sumarfrí í Danmörku

2007-07-08T01:41:00.000Z

Ég er ekki búinn að skrifa neitt í nokkrar vikur nú og er ástæðan fyrir því sú að við Hjördís fórum með fjölskylduna til Danmerkur í miðjum júní og vorum á norður Jótlandi í um tvær vikur. Á sama tíma voru bæði mamma og pabbi, og bróðir minn með fjölskylduna sína, á sama stað. Öll vorum við þar í sumarleyfi og til að hitta dönsku fjölskylduna okkar og heimsækja heimabæ mömmu, Hals. Þetta var frábær ferð og náðum við að heimsækja Danmörk í þokkalega góðu veðri rétt áður en rigningarnar hófust, sem náðu hámarki á sama tíma og tónlistarhátíðin í Roskilde stóð yfir og allir hafa auðvitað fylgst með í fréttum.

Við komum heim þann 29. júní og í framhaldinu tók við vika af vinnu en elsta dóttirin var heima með hinar tvær dúllurnar. Vinnan var blanda af bæði að slökkva tæknilega elda og þessi venjulegu mánaðarlegu störf í rekstri hvers fyrirtækis. En að þeirri viku lokinni var ég kominn í frí og ætla mér að reyna að halda því til streitu út mánuðinn.

Introduction to new links

2007-07-07T15:09:00.001Z

I have added a few new links that may need introduction.

First there is Joel on Software, the blog by Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software, expert on software development and other stuff too. I read absolutely everything he writes and more often than not I like it. If you are not reading Joel you should.

Then there are a few Microsoft gurus:

First there is S. "Soma" Somasegar, head of Microsoft's Developer Division who has been at Microsoft since the eighties and is now the most important blogger on MSDN. An interesting read is an interview with Somasegar in RedmondDeveloper since November last year.

Then there is Scott Guthrie, or ScottGu, who runs the teams at Microsoft that build IIS, ASP.NET, Atlas, CLR, Compact Framework, Windows Forms, Commerce Server, Visual Web Developer and the Visual Studio Tools for WPF.

And Joe Stegman, lead PM (Program Manager) on Windows Forms team (now known as Silverlight) and finally Mike Harsh, Microsoft WPF/E PM.

As I quite frequently read articles in the RedmondDeveloper and on Channel 9 I decided to add those to the list as well.

Surface and StarTrek

2007-07-07T14:57:00.000Z

In the end of May this year Microsoft introduced a new way of computing, namely surface computing. Their new product, Microsoft Surface, supports this way of computing but is essentially just a table with a 30 inch computer display mounted into it. You turn it on and this monitor is your computer.

When using it you don't use a mouse and keyboard, you mainly use it like any other touch-screen but with a little twist. It can recognize multiple contacts at once, so many people can be using it at the same time or you can use both hands, for example resize a picture in two directions at once.

Also, it actually recognizes objects that you place on the table, for example if you place your (wireless) digital camera on the surface the computer will interact with it seamlessly, fetch all your pictures from it and display them on the screen for you to interact with them. It can also recognize things like mobile devices, phones, cup of coffee, credit cards and more.

This is pretty cool but currently Microsoft is only making a handful and only for hotels and such. So for the average Joe, this is nothing more than a fancy demo, but still a nice introduction to a cool future of computing.

When I was looking at the introductions on the Microsoft Surface web site and then the Microsoft Surface Parody joke on YouTube I came to think of StarTrek because we have seen them using surface computing for many seasons, maybe this is where the idea came from.

This is not the first time I get the feeling that by making movies and television shows, like StarTrek, the entertainment business and Hollywood is actually forming the future, telling us what our future should look and feel like. So, what is coming next? Ask Hollywood.

For more techy StarTrek stuff just key "StarTrek" into Google and you can continue to read for decades, quite a lot of stuff about this actually. The best way to get to know what is coming is see the episodes :-)

Silverlight and popfly

2007-07-04T22:02:00.000Z

I have been reading about new development things at Microsoft. Things have surely be happening, especially with the Silverlight project.

Silverlight is the new name for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. Not only can you develop applications, based on Silverlight, that run on the Windows client but also deploy them using a browser plug-in. This allows you to develop media experiences and interactive applications for the browser (like Flash apps!?)

For more information take a look at the official Microsoft Silverlight site. Silverlight is still in Beta but you can use it and even develop for it using the Visual Studio "Orcas" version. This is cool stuff :-)

Also, there is a the very cool Silverlight implementation called Popfly where users can share their Silverlight remixes. The Popfly Explorer is currently in alpha version shows great potential as a new way of developing and sharing Silverlight experiences. You can also read Somasegar's blog on this issue.

Fórum með Hestana vestur

2007-06-11T01:29:00.000Z

Við fórum með hestana vestur um helgina. Ég hef víst ekki nefnt hestana okkar áður en þeir eru Póló frá Miðjanesi og Nóra frá Njarðvík. Það verður að bíða betri tíma en einhvern tímann verð ég að setja niður á blað eitthvað um þessa frábæru hesta okkar.

Extension Methods

2007-06-02T23:27:00.001Z

C# 3.0 introduces a new feature called extension methods, which allow us to extend the functionality of an existing type without extending it's class. At times, extending a type's class can be difficult or even impossible, especially if a class is abstract, virtual or even sealed. Even in these cases extension methods will allow you to add a method to the type.

public static string Add(this string me, string stringToAdd)
{
return me+stringToAdd;
}

then a call...

Console.WriterLine("This is it".Add(", isn't it?"));

results in...

This is it, isn't it?

Caution required?

Because extension methods can be declared anywhere in the project, I can imagine maintaining another programmer's code, seeing a method that I find curious and wanting to know more about it. Now if the method is not declared in the type's class, then where is it? Who knows, could be anywhere in the project or even in any of the referenced assemblies. Could be difficult. But still a nice new feature.

Want more information?

Microsoft C# Future Versions

Implicitly typed local variables

2007-06-02T20:56:00.001Z

C# 3.0 introduces a new construct called var that results in the compiler inferring the type of the variable from it's initializer, which is therefore obviously required.

Sample usage:

int a=3;
var b=7; // int is inferred from the '7' literal

string c="Stuff";
var d="Something"; // string is inferred from literal

C# is still strongly typed

Don't confuse implicit variable declarations with variables of scripting languages where a variable can hold different types of values throughout the execution of the program. A C# variable declared with the var construct is still a strongly typed variable that can only hold the same type of values as the initializer.

Complex and anonymous types

The var construct obviously simplifies instantiation of complex types (especially in the case of anonymous classes) and is therefore extremely important when it comes to LINQ (a feature to be discussed later).

// co1 and co2 of same type but co2 more readable?
Map<customer,arraylist<orders>> co1 = new
Map<customer,arraylist<orders>>();
var co2 = Map<customer,arraylist<orders>>();

// anonymous class - discussed in later posting
var co3 = new {
Id="0032",
Name="Alfred",
Home="Reykjavik"
};

However, I wonder if in some cases the var construct will make the program more difficult to read, in contrast to the sample above where the program is obviously easier to read as a result of using var. Can you think of such a situation?

Want more information?

Microsoft C# Future Versions

.NET Framework 3.0

2007-06-02T19:00:00.000Z

As you may have noticed .NET Framework 3.0 has been installed on your machine!

What is this .NET Framework 3.0?

First of all, version 3.0 is not an upgrade from version 2.0 like version 2.0 was an upgrade from version 1.1, which was an upgrade from version 1.0. Actually, when version 3.0 is installed the installer starts by checking if .NET Framework 2.0 is installed, if not then version 2.0 gets downloaded and installed and then version 3.0 is installed. The reason is that the .NET Framework 3.0 is not really a framework!? :-)

What is it then?

In reality, .NET Framework 3.0 is a new set of APIs to be distributed with future versions of the .NET Framework. This collection used to be called WinFX but last year it was renamed to .NET Framework 3.0. That renaming didn't happen quietly as can be read at the WinFX MSDN blog site.

The new APIs coming with .NET Framework 3.0 are these:

Windows Communcation Foundation (WCF)
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
Windows Workflow Foundation (WF or WinWF)
Windows CardSpace, a.k.a. InfoCard

These APIs are nice and it's good to have them installed but there are currently no applications that use them and I can't develop anything using them. Why install them?

How to develop for .NET Framework 3.0?

So, being a developer and all, I'm waiting for .NET Framework 3.5 (currently out in Beta 1 and expected to be released in the end of 2007). Why am I waiting for .NET Framework 3.5? It will contain the necessary tools to support the above new APIs. These tools are included in the up and coming Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas".

What about the new C# 3.0, is that in "Orcas"?

This new version of Visual Studio also comes with C# 3.0, or C# Orcas, which also comes with a set of new features that are just as interesting as the .NET Framework 3.0 APIs mentioned above. From the C# 3.0 Specification, these new language extensions include:

Implicitly typed local variables, which permit the type of local variables to be inferred from the expressions used to initialize them.
Extension methods, which make it possible to extend existing types and constructed types with additional methods.
Lambda expressions, an evolution of anonymous methods that provides improved type inference and conversions to both delegate types and expression trees.
Object initializers, which ease construction and initialization of objects.
Anonymous types, which are tuple types automatically inferred and created from object initializers.
Implicitly typed arrays, a form of array creation and initialization that infers the element type of the array from an array initializer.
Query expressions, which provide a language integrated syntax for queries that is similar to relational and hierarchical query languages such as SQL and XQuery.
Expression trees, which permit lambda expressions to be represented as data (expression trees) instead of as code (delegates).

Confused about all this?

Anyway, if you are still confused about .NET Framework 3.0 and all the new stuff coming from Microsoft right afer Vista why not read about Julia Lerman trying to explain it all!

Líka á íslensku

2007-05-26T21:13:00.000Z

Ég hef ákveðið að skrifa bæði á íslensku og ensku eftir því hvort tungumálið mér þykir betur henta hverju viðfangsefni. Enska hentar mér augljóslega betur þegar kemur að því að blogga um tækni en íslenska betur þegar kemur að því að blogga um samfélagið sem ég bý í, Reykjavík á Íslandi 2007. Ég vona að þið takið þessu vel og að ég fari nú að blogga meira fyrir vikið.

Publishing-large-post-problem fixed!?

2007-05-26T20:46:00.000Z

Something has happended. Now the long-post problem mentioned earlier seems to be gone. I can now use the Blogger again. Thank you, whoever at Google that fixed this.

Publishing-large-post-problem

2007-04-01T21:38:00.000Z

I'm having the same problem with the Blogger as many others - it is not easy to blog large posts. In short, often when posting blogs using the new Blogger (and others have reported similar problems with the old one as well). I get a page saying that the connection has been closed. This is very annoying when I have just written a large post and all is gone!

When searching the 'net for a solution I ran into several suggestions, even one that suggested I should decrease the MTU on my router. Isn't that just going a bit too far? Some will suggest anything but Google having a problem with their Blogger.

I continued my search and I finally found the usenet-post Connection reset when publishing 'large' post...? by skilef that describes the problem very well. It also has a simple work-around in a skilef reply to him-/herself.

There are others posts that describe this as well, like the thread Publishing/viewing cookie problem? by Case and ScooterTex. Admit it, there is a problem with Blogger!

I use the work-around but it is really not good.

OWA on Vista

2007-04-01T21:15:00.000Z

I used to have access to Outlook Web Access (OWA) before we realized it was too open and making our network highly vulnerable. Now we have set this up again, with the appropriate certificates, and all is working fine, or is it!? Well for most users it is working fine, but for my access of OWA, using my Internet Explorer 7.0 (IE7) on my new Vista machine at home, it is not working fine. I can access it but I can't do the simplest things, imagine, I can't compose e-mails. What you say? Yeah, believe it. Why is it that since I got my new Vista machine it seems like all my Microsoft products are failing me? Like the new Messenger and now OWA. What is this? What kind of an "improved" version of Windows is this? This is ridiculous!

Anyways, let's fix it. I found someone else that had this problem, see "Cannot Compose or Reply to Messages and Other Errors in Outlook Web Access in Windows Vista" by My Digital Life. Well, it wasn't the suggestion of installing an update2for the Exchange server that first intrigued me but the first comment by angler, who suggested that there were a simple install on my IE7 that would solve the problem. To make a long story short, the suggested updating of S/MIME didn't help at all.

So, I ended up downloading and (trying to) install the Exchange server update from KB 911829. However, that didn't work either, when trying, the installer replies that my Exchange was too old, must be SP2. I then use Windows update and it wants to update my Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server to SP2, intereseting!? After that, upgrading Exchange to SP2 solves the problem. How long do you think that took?

Can you imagine all that, just to access OWA using Vista!

That Vista thing is one h... of an upgrade.

Microsoft OneNote

2007-02-18T23:04:00.000Z

I was introduced to OneNote a few months ago, if not a year ago. The guy who showed it to me had one of those Tablet PC machines and I thought it was cool but I didn't think I would be using it on my PC as I didn't have the cool drawing and writing capacity of the Tablet PC. I thought if I was to be using it with only keyboard typing that would be making OneNote into just a different Microsoft Word. I was wrong...

Now, months later, I have installed it on my home machine to give it a chance. I have been trying out OneNote now for a few days and I think it is very helpful. Especially as I do a lot of researching on the web on my home machine during evenings and OneNote will surely help me organize my thoughts and results. I'm even doing brainstorming on designs in there now and I can imagine a lot of other stuff I will be using OneNote for...

Maybe you should give it a try too!?

Flogið heim

2005-08-10T18:15:00.003Z

Þetta var nokkuð erfiður dagur því hann hófst klukkan 4:15 um morguninn. Þá sóttum við picnic boxið niður í móttöku á hótelinu, kláruðum að gera okkur til og vorum komin út í leigubíl á leið út á flugvöll klukkan 5.15. Klukkan 6:30 vorum við komin út á flugvöll og í mjög langa röð til að tjékka inn, komin í vélina um klukkan 7:30 en vegna tafa fór vélin klukkutíma of seint af stað og tók ekki á loft fyrr en um klukkan 9. Við lentum svo klukkan 13 og vorum komin út í Bora bílinn okkar um klukkan 14 og svo heim um 15 (þ.e. klukkan eitt að íslenskum tíma). Við flugum auðvitað heim aftur með Futura og vorum ekki par ánægð með flugfélagið því þessi klukkutíma seinkun kom til vegna þess að einn af farþegunum hafði gleymt einhverju við öryggishliðið. Þetta tók klukkustund og allir 150-200 farþegarnir voru látnir bíða. Var ekki hægt að senda þenna "pakka" til farþegans? Svo lentum við í því þegar við sóttum Bora bílinn okkar sem hafði staðið í tvær vikur úti á flugvelli að bremsurnar voru orðnar fastar. Þegar við keyrðum af stað losnuðu þær en bíllinn hristist mikið og vissum við fyrst ekki hvað var í gangi. Eftir að hafa keyrt inn til Keflavíkur og rætt þarf við bifreiðavirka var óttinn horfinn (og hristingurinn búinn að minnka mikið) og við héldum áfram til Reykjavíkur.

Veikindi og pökkun

2005-08-09T00:00:00.001Z

Þegar við vöknuðum vorum við öll slöpp á mismunandi máta, sumir með í maganum og aðrir með kvef og beinverkir. Svo ákveðið var að reyna að koma sér í gang með því að fara út í morgunverð á sama stað og tveimur dögum fyrr. Þetta var mjög gott og við vorum mun betri, þó ekki alveg. Dagurinn fór því eiginlega allur í afslappelsi á hótelherberginu enda veðrið ekki með mikilli sól (sem betur fer). Þó var gengið um í bænum sem endaði með að öll fjölskyldan dembdi sér í gervi-húðflúr sem gerði deginum gott. Um kvöldið var svo farið aftur á Ítalska staðinn þar sem við höfðum fengið pasta áður og var það aftur vel heppnað. Svo var gengið beint heim, slappað frekar af, pakkað, baðað og farið að sofa. Góður undirbúningur fyrir heimferðina á morgun.

Snorkað á ströndinni

2005-08-08T00:00:00.000Z

Það er skemmtigarður fyrir sunnan Barcelona sem Ellen langaði mikið að prófa. Við ætluðum fyrst að taka rútu öll saman en fannst svo það vera of löng ferð fyrir Uglu litlu. Við erum að tala um 3,5 klukkustundir hvora leið. Þá ætluðu bara Alfred og Ellen að fara tvö, en það væri svo leiðinlegt að eyða heilum degi í sundur rétt áður en við förum heim. Ákveðið var því að taka bíl á leigu, höfðum pantað hann daginn áður, og fara öll af stað strax klukkan 9 um morguninn. Þetta klikkaði því bílinn var ekki til staðar eins og lofað hafði verið og það besta sem hægt var að gera var að fá bíl seinnipartinn og það var hreinlega of seint. Við hættum því við allt eftir að hafa reynt allt til að komast. Í staðinn var ákveðið að kaupa köfunargleraugu og öndunarrör, sem við köllum "snorkbúnað", og fara niður á ströndina. Við eyddum því deginum aftur á ströndinni og snorkuðum um allt, Ellen sá fullt af fiskum og við áttum góðan dag eftir vandamál morgunsins. Um kvöldið löbbuðum við um bæinn og enduðum inn á einum ítölskum stað enn. Þessi staður var mun verri en sá ítalski sem við höfðum farið á áður. Á þessum stað notuðum við nýtt glas fyrir Uglu því hitt hafði gleymst á hótelinu og snögglega var keypt eitt til vara. Almennt var þessi veitingastaður ekki mjög góður og flýttum við okkur heim. Strax þarna vorum við þegar orðin nokkuð slöpp en vorum mun slappari á morgun. Við drifum okkur því heim á hótel og í bólið.

Hópmynd

2005-08-07T00:00:00.000Z

Við borðuðum morgunmat á hótelinu eins og alltaf.

Tókum hópmynd niðri við ströndina!

Hjólabátur

2005-08-06T00:00:00.000Z

Eftir ferðina til Tossa var ákveðið að fínt væri að taka afslappelsisdag enn og aftur. Við sváfum því út og fórum í fyrsta sinn í morgunmat úti í bæ um klukkan ellefu. Við gengum niður í bæ og fórum á góðan morgunmat-stað sem Hjördís og Ellen höfðu fundið þegar þær fóru niður í bæ kvöldið áður til að kaupa í kvöldkaffið. Þegar Ugla svo svaf yfir hádegisbilið var spiluðu mamma og Ellen þythokkí og billiard á hótelinu. Eftir langan morgunmat var svo farið á ströndina. Nú var hins vegar búið að prófa allt sem ströndin biði uppá (án hjálpartækja) og komið var að því að leigja hjólabát og prófa það. Pabbi og Ellen gerðu það og hjóluðu um alla ströndina. Við stungum okkur mikið, syntum um, köfuðum og fífluðumst eins og við gátum, þótt Ellen væri kannski helst til stutt í sjónum í hvert sinn (sagðist hrædd við marglyttur eftir að hafa lestið grein í Lifandi Vísindi).

Um kvöldið var komið að því að prófa enn eitt steikhúsið (Argentískt í þetta sinn). Hér fengum við enn og aftur mjög góðar steikur þótt við teldum að tvö steikhús í þessu sumarfríi væri nóg.

Tossa de Mar

2005-08-05T17:59:00.000Z

Örlítið upp eftir strandlengjunni frá Lloret de Mar liggur önnur strönd sem kölluð er "Tossa". Við tókum bát þar upp eftir um morguninn. Þegar þangað var komið þá sáum við að þetta var nær eins og Lloret, þó kannski örlítið minna, rólegra og meira fyrir fjölskyldufólk. Við höldum að Lloret de Mar sé dálítill partý-staður þótt herbergið okkar snúi þannig að við verðum ekki vör við neitt.

Á Tossa hittum við á góða búð þar sem fullorðna fólkið gat keypt sér föt. Við keyptum því slatta, en þurftum að bíða því einhver kallinn var frekar breiðari en lengri þegar að meðaltalinu kemur. Það þurfti semsagt að stytta buxur pabbans. Við borðuðum því kvöldmatinn mjög snemma, á Tossa, sóttum buxurnar og tókum bátinn aftur heim um klukkan hálf sex. Vegna þessa þurfum við því að hlaupa út og kaupa brauðmeti í kvöldkaffið rétt áður en við fórum að sofa. Mjög góður dagur.

Strandlega

2005-08-04T00:00:00.002Z

Eftir Water World var ákveðið að taka léttan dag og jafna sig í bakinu. Eftir morgunverðinn var því löng lega á ströndinni en farið á röltið þegar leið á daginn. Í bænum voru keypt föt og derhúfur eins og þurfa þótti. Um kvöldið var farið á ítalskan veitingastað þar sem við fengum pasta og borðaði Ugla það með okkur. Það lítur út fyrir að hún sé nú farin að minnka sinn eigin mat til að undirbúa sig fyrir að fá hjá okkur. Þetta þarf greinilega að passa þótt gaman sé að sjá að hún sé farin að borða nánast hvað sem er í litlum skömmtum.

Water World

2005-08-03T00:00:00.000Z

Eftir rigningu gærdagsins þá stytti upp og sólin fór að láta sjá sig. Veðurspáin var líka góð og því ákveðið að fara í vatnsrennigarðinn Water World sem er í Lloret de Mar. Þegar farið er í Water World þá er gengið upp á rútustöðina og rútan tekur um 15 mínútur að komast á staðinn. Þannig að við þutum niður í morgunmat á hótelinu, skófluðum honum í okkur, renndum okkur í rútuna og og vorum komin í Water World um hálf ellefu.

Í Water World er nóg að gera en þó ekkert fyrir hálfs árs. Þess vegna var einn fullorðinn með þeirri litlu og einn með þeirri stóru í rennibrautunum. Farið var í allskonar brautir en tókst misvel til. Sumir fengu tak í bakið og aðrir runnu hreinlega ekki allaleið niður sumar brautirnar. Þetta var samt gaman og mikið hlegið. Um kvöldmatarleitið var farið aftur heim með sömu rútu. Svo var haldið á góðan kjötstað þar sem mikið var borðað og Sangria með. Þetta var allt í allt einn besti dagur ferðarinnar.