Brian H. Madsen - .Net Powered by Caffeine : Blog Fun

www.itspecialist.com – excellent mashup source for IT news and info

Brian Madsen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:07:01 GMT

It’s sometimes hard to find your way around the blogosphere, with literally thousands of blogs appearing each month.

I was referred to a site today which has done a pretty good job at gathering sources for you so you can get it all in one go!

www.itspecialist.com is a Technical Media Mash-up for IT Professionals.

One of the good things is that you can submit blogs yourself to their ever-growing blog repository.

There’s plenty of content there already in all topics!!

A good job by the guys at AcadianMedia – www.acadianmedia.com

What goes through your mind when somebody says “Lets go for a drink”?

Brian Madsen — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:29:54 GMT

I had this sent to me today from a colleague (female one of course) and i simply just had to share it!!

Now, i wonder what gender that ad was directed at?

New feed being burnt – changed from feedburner

Brian Madsen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:10:04 GMT

I’m moving my RSS into another feedburner (rather than the former FeedBurner.com) so please, re-subscribe to my RSS:

http://feedproxy.google.com/brianmadsen

Reason for the change is pretty simple – FeedBurner was bought by Google and since then most of the services i used to have available to me has been closed or doesn’t work any longer (such as keeping count of my subscribers, frequently see it saying 0 these days).

In essence it’s the same “system” that’s being used – but i’m suspecting that there’s some bias :)

Visual Studio SharePoint Tools Blog Launched…phenomenal!!

Brian Madsen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:03:58 GMT

Yeps – as the title indicates a new blog has been launched over at MSDN!

It’s good to hear that the Visual Studio Business Applications SharePoint Tools QA team has joined us in the blogosphere (phew, long name for that team!!).

They are promising a range of topics, some of them VERY relevant, especially with the lack of support Visual Studio 2008 has had prior to the extensions was released earlier last month.

So, if you are like me, and work with SharePoint AND Visual Studio this will most certainly be one of those blogs that gets a daily visit (if not more often).

Great work guys!

I think I’ll just put a little point out that’s constantly a dissapointment…

Authoring workflos…..uhmm..can only be done on a local server and we all know how smart it isn’t to run Visual Studio on a production environment. So how are you meant to test and debug a workflow, that for some obscure reason, doesn’t run on your remote test environment or production environment? Well you can’t..it’s almost as if authoring a sharepoint sequential workflow is a fire and forget scenario. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, by why on earth hasn’t this been looked into further?

you simply can’t debug a failing workflow on a remote server without having visual studio running.

and the error reporting is extremely bad by default..so, back to drawing board to see what could possibly have gone wrong.

Anyways, hopefully the team will eventually start thinking a bit further and get us some hooks into SharePoint that will allow us to debug remotely.

that being said, if somebody has magically managed to get this working, please let me know!

The blog was launched on the 1st of July, 2008 with a post that goes into a bit more detail.

Find the post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vssharepointtoolsblog/archive/2008/07/01/welcome-to-the-visual-studio-sharepoint-tools-blog.aspx

Again, welcome guys, even though you’ve been blogging individually for a long time it’s good to see the team collaborate to help us poor simple MOSS developers out.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2007,Blogs,Jung Lou,Brent Williams,Peter Jausovec,Visual Studio SharePoint Tools

New blogger added to CSharpZealot – Paul Rosser

Brian Madsen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:50:11 GMT

Yeps, blogging is still growing and another of my colleagues has joined the CSharpZealot community.

Paul Rosser, one of the best infrastructure consultants i’ve ever worked with finally got around to spill the first couple of posts on his new blog.

Here’s an excerpt from his very first post:

Who am I? Well I am an Infrastructure Consulting working in Perth, West Australia. I have almost 20 years experience in the IT industry and broke my teeth in on working with DOS 3 and everything in between. Those were the days having to manually configure IRQ's and DMA ports just to get your sound card working and 3D games involved 2D with perspective.

My skill set now falls in-between anything and everything and currently seems to have a focus on SharePoint. My contribution to the IT industry is as a problem solver. Most of the articles you will find here are based upon questions that have been raised in my role and Dr Google has been unable to resolve.

Anyway, enough about me and onto why you are here.

Answers to the universe or there abouts.

Paul’s also rolled off a set of posts around kerberos delegation and even posted up a test application which was originally written by Steven Evers (www.csharpzealot.com/blogs/stevene). Steven still hasn’t posted his first entry as we’re waiting to get Community Server upgraded on the site. The guys at Telligent are still offering MVPs a free license and i’m just waiting to hear back from them on that.

Good to have you on board Paul!

Have a look at Paul’s blog: www.csharpzealot.com/blogs/kiwiland

Technorati Tags: Paul Rosser,CSharpZealot

8 Little Known Things About Me...Tag and Tell

Brian Madsen — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:11:22 GMT

Tag, tag, tag...Here's how busy i've actually been of late. very few posts (but it's picking up again) and i've had a hard time catching up with an ever-growing list of RSS feeds (i need to cull this methinks).

Anyways, David Lemphers (the wild man of the australian DPE team at Microsoft - he has a tat!!!!) tagged me and i completely missed it - mostly because DAVID IS BLOGGING IN TWO PLACES NOW - arggff..tricked me!

Here's the rules for this round of "Tag n' Tell":

Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves
People who are tagged nee to write a post on their own blog and post these rules
At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names (and links)
Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog (yes David..remember this rule )

So, i guess i should spill 8 things about myself that's not common knowledge;

I have absolutely ZERO skills when it comes to graphics design. I don't think i could even draw a perfect circle if i had a template. One of the big issues I have is that i simply just don't have that flair.
I also have a tattoo - albeit not nearly as large as the one that handsome gentleman, David Lemphers, has..
I also have a claim to fame - as i was an extra in a TV movie made in the 90's about the history of Tuborg and Calsberg (yes, the two breweries) and had to march down a cobblestone street in line with 5 other soldiers. This was done during my stint in the army when i was a private conscript.
I huge financial failure - i simply cannot handle finances. You give me $20 and i'll somehow manage to spend $30.Thanks to my wife we have a roof over our heads and get to eat daily (she's a wiz at finances...and handles everything at home..thanks sweetie).
When i say huge, then it's because i'm also slightly overweight (around 20kgs i think) and i need to get rid of this extra garbage.
I used to smoke - but i've quit. Went cold turkey and it was actually easier than I was led to believe.
I have a very,very limited amount of patience when people are being rude - everybody can have a bad day or fling out a witty comment and i don't mind smacktalk and friendly/humorous bantering but absolute cannot stand malicious or facetious comments.
I have a younger brother - about 2 years my junior, that i haven't spoken to in about 8 years now (and probably wont for the next 8 either). He still lives back in DK and apparently has a son.

Since this is the second set of "Tag n' Tell" i've been part of there may be a dublication in those "secrets".

I have to pick 8 people to tag...lemme see!

Andrew Bartucciotto (even italians eat chocolate) - www.csharpzealot.com/blogs/andrewb
David Lyong - http://david-sharepoint.blogspot.com
Andrew Coates (the guy in australia) - http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat
Sahil Malik (yes Sahil, you get to spill the beans!!!) - http://blah.winsmarts.com
Scott Hanselman (never tagged him before so why not) - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
Ryan Olshan (your turn buddy) - http://community.strongcoders.com/blogs/ryan/default.aspx
Meg Tsiamis (the only girl on my list) - http://www.blogpond.com.au
Long Zheng (keeping me up to speed) - www.istartedsomething.com

Technorati Tags: Andrew Bartucciotto,David Lyong,Andrew Coates,Sahil Malik,Scot Hanselman,Ryan Olshan,Met Tsiamis,Long Zheng

An Adobe employee gives numbers a whole new meaning...

Brian Madsen — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:44:27 GMT

Sometimes it can be fun to take things out of context and totally twist the data to meet your own needs.

Sometimes you just look like a fool when you try it.

John Dowell at Adobe did just that by running a test with 4500 consumers. Seriously John, i hope this was a joke? no?

John decided to make statistics work in a favourable way and decided that 4500 subjects to test could be extrapolated to represent the entire world...4500?? honestly John. Had you said 45000 or even 450.000 then you would have been closer..close, but no cigar.

Realworld HD H.264 support: In March, 4500 consumers were tested for viewing different types of media files. 2780 of them had already installed Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115. That's 62% of today's computers, supporting no-hassle high definition playback of H.264 video. Considering this browser plugin was released in December, and the audit was conducted in March, then it's an easy choice for realworld use today. (Same goes for the persistent framework caching in Flex 3, too.) [via Justin Everett-Church]

Of course, he didn't do this study all by himself but (imho) trusted the statistics that was generated by a third party.

What amazes me is that this wasn't a joke...no, John is 100% convinced that 4500 represents all consumers and that it's an accurate enough percentage to cover everything.

Here's a link to John's "report": JD on EP: Realworld HD H.264 support

next?

Technorati Tags: Adobe,misinformed

Pretty picture..

Brian Madsen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:24:57 GMT

A colleague of mine, JP, just sent me an email with a photo he took in Bali on his last holiday (couple of weeks ago) and i wanted to share it..

the detail is fantastic and i really like this photo - i know less about photo aesthetics than i do about AFL, but this is very, very pretty.

Nice work...

Things you cannot do on April Fools day...

Brian Madsen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:29:23 GMT

Apparently, you cannot sing "Oh happy day!" a lot on April Fools day.

Apparently, you cannot ask the same question over and over and over and over again on April Fools day.

I wonder what other things you cannot do on April Fools day?

Andrew Bartucciotto - Long time coming...first post, yay!

Brian Madsen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:21:40 GMT

Finally, Andrew got his finger out and posted his virgin post over at CSharpZealot.com..

Andrew Bartucciotto << for those who wants to customise MOSS, Andrew's the man...

I'm sure we'll see a ton of great posts from him in the near future (nudge, nudge, wink wink Mr. A).

Ironic - driveacar.com.au

Brian Madsen — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:32:07 GMT

I simply love it when i see this particular type of irony (hypocrisy?) and i feel i should blog this story.

This afternoon i went to Bunnings to get a new BBQ and as the store is only 5-10mins drive away i rarely get to see anything of this caliber.

For those that isn't familiar with my neighbourhood, i'll try to keep the story as straight as possible.

Now, on my way home, car loaded up with 40kg+ of BBQ to assemble i took Warton Road home - in Perth, the suburbian speed limit is 50kph but in some zones it's set to 60kph. Anyways, i 99.9999% of the time keep strictly to the speed limit, can nick over 1-3kph if i get distracted, (wasted money IMHO to get a speeding ticket) and since on this trip i was feeling particularly good about myself, i crept up to 60kph (as the limit on Warton Road is) and hit cruise control.

Naturally i get this senseless driver behind me that obviously feel i should be breaking the law on their account, which he/she thought should be demonstrated by tail-gating me (eg. driving very, very close to me). Warton Road spreads out to two lanes at one stage (just around or after TAFE) and the ignorant driver behind me decided to overtake, pushing their speed to well past 70kph. I shake my head, thinking the fool will get pulled over soon enough and get smacked with the double demerit point that's on over the Christmas holidays.

Here's the ironic part though - the person (in a gray/silver korean model car) had a big purple sticker at the top of their rear window which read : LEARN TO DRIVE - WWW.DRIVEACAR.COM.AU...

The moron had just broken two laws - the tail-gating and the speeding - and are advertising a site which apparently will teach you to drive. I was gob-smacked to say the least..it's the equivalent of me getting an Apple logo tattoo...

I snuck over to take a look at "driveAcar" and what'd you know..the opening line on the home page is "Do you want to learn to drive a car, do you want to pass your Driving Test at the first attempt, do you want to save time and money on driving lessons, and do you want to manage your car more proficiently; if so then we've designed a training manual for YOU!"

There's two scenarios here - which is:

1) the person with the sticker is a friend/family member of the company owner; or the person is a success story from the pool of customers they've had;

2) the person with the sticker works/owns the company and is doing what he/she feels is the best way to advertise the company's services;

Regardless, seeing the stupidity (or capability) of this vehicle's driver i'm more or less never going to set foot there nor use their services...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Brian Madsen — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:23:28 GMT

Just wanted to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year.

Enjoy the holidays and don't do anything i wouldn't do!!!

Joke of the Day - Female vocabulary and terminology

Brian Madsen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:20:35 GMT

Again, my friendly colleague Peter has provided me with some laughs this morning..thanks Peter.

Nine words women use...

1.) Fine : This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2.) Five Minutes : If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3.) Nothing : This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4.) Go Ahead : This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

5.) Loud Sigh : This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal

statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)

6.) That's Okay : This is one of the most dangerous statements a woman can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7.) Thanks : A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint.

Just say you're welcome.

8.) Whatever : Is a woman's way of saying @#**?! YOU!

9.) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to #3.

Is a smart developer an efficient developer?

Brian Madsen — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:37:54 GMT

note: this is a poke at Nick Randolph..Nick, watch this space :)

VB.Net:

Dim x As Integer

C#:

int x;

what else is there..let me think..

VB.Net:

While i < 100
i += 1
End While

C#:

while (i < 100)
n++;

i must admit, ensuring that you indicate this is the "End" does mean that even "slow" people can read the code :)

dig dig dig dig..

btw, fyi, i'm bored today and Nick isn't responding..yet :)

Why some C# developers are Zealots! - Nick's .NET Travels

Brian Madsen — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:12:14 GMT

As Nick mentions on his site, i do love poking him about on his love for VB.Net...I can't really fault him personally for working with VB.Net as a preference, but it doesn't really matter. Only thing that matters is that i can continue to tease him about it and get a response :)

he's just as much a zealot as i am, albeit he's joined the dark side in that he's a VB.Net'er which is evident in the fact that he's always rising to the bait (he says he doesn't, but looksee at this blog entry Link to Why some C# developers are Zealots! - Nick's .NET Travels).

That being said, Nick's a brilliant developer and he knows his stuff - still, it's fun to tease him..

Oh and Nick..no fair cutting off comments on that post!!! tsk tsk tsk..

to be honest, it's all IL..period..as long as you use .Net i'm happy as a virgin on his wedding night!

The quote he refers to comes from the same background as my "zealotness"..eg. it doesn't have a fundamental logical point..

Anyways Nick, turn your comments back on you bad boy!

Code Reuse is Not the Villain, by Scott Reynolds

Brian Madsen — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:10:24 GMT

I was doing some "house cleaning" today of my, by now, massive "Blogs" favorites folder and saw a few blogs i simply couldn't put a "face" to.

Being curious by nature i ventured over to satisfy myself and see whatever it was that made me bookmark this blog.

The target of my curiosity was Scott Reynold's blog and after having a brief look i saw why it'd been bookmarked...

I came across a very interesting post by the man himself - Code Reuse is Not the Villain - which factored some of the things i value very highly in development...code reuse.

i'm not just talking about cutting some code into your toolbar to drag in, or adding a snippet to your snippet library in VS.

No, i'm talking about taking that extra moment to consider not just the use, but also the place in the project where the class is going to live..

Many developers apply MVP or MVC patterns, sometimes even without knowing about it, which means there's intuition involved (or experience?) when making that decision.

Others adhere strictly to a company wide architecture which is set in concrete and out-of-bounds for the regular developer as the architect is the owner of it.

Scott mentions a few tips which i think should be "advertised" a bit more in general.

Aim for zero development for reusable code - you don't want to have to re-write half of your class just to suit it to another project.
refactoring is NOT necessarily the key to reusable libraries.

And here's a few from me...

Consider heavily the "reusability" of your class before you start spending time on attempting to make it reusable.
Plan your code BEFORE you throw yourself into the first "private partial class".

As Scott says, a lot of code just isn't meant to be reusable...

Scott went out on a limb with that one, or so he claims ;) but i seriously think it's one of the more important points...We all know that buzzwords like OOD and OOA are thrown around the floor constantly, but can you truly say that ALL your code is completely OO? I'd venture as far as to say that less than what you think is actually true to that fact.

Best way to get Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Microsoft Secure Content Downloader 2007 CTP

Brian Madsen — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:51:27 GMT

I thought i'd bring this to peoples attention after having had some seriously slow speeds when downloading Betas from MSFT. Even via the MSDN subscriptions it can sometimes be extremely slow..and then if it fails you have to locate the download again...and possibly again.

so what more convenient could it be if you just opened up an application and select the download you wanted from a dropdownlist?

Microsoft Secure Content Downloader 2007 CTP has been released, and luckily the applications on the list at the moment is the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 releases.

Overview

The Microsoft Secure Content Downloader (MSCD) is a peer-assisted download manager capable of securely downloading specific files. MSCD is intended for consumers who are downloading from a home PC, or business users whose computers are not behind a corporate firewall. If you use MSCD from behind a corporate firewall, you may be unable to download content, and may adversely affect other clients' ability to download content.
Main features of the MSCD are:

Secure content description
- Each file available for download has a secure description, ensuring the content you download is exactly what the publisher published.
Scalable performance
- MCSD is a peer-assisted technology. Each client downloads content by exchanging parts of the file they’re interested in with other clients, in addition to downloading parts from the server.
  - No matter how great the internet’s demand for the file, you will always be able to make progress downloading.
  - MSCD lets you download content quicker than is possible without peer assistance.

Some MSCD clients may be connected to each other via peer connections, forming a ‘cloud’ of clients. Pieces of the file you are downloading are sent through these peer connections between clients, as well as through connections with the file server. As a member of the cloud, your computer both serves as a client and server to other members of the cloud. Data destined for the cloud may be routed through your computer and sent to other cloud members. The other cloud members connected to you will be able to access only pieces of the file you are downloading via MSCD – they have no access to any other data on your computer.
You are only connected to other clients while you are downloading a file via MSCD. When the file has finished downloading – or when you pause or cancel the download, or exit the application – you disconnect from the cloud. Once you disconnect from the cloud, you will no longer have any connections to any other members in the cloud and no data will be routed through your computer.

This version of MSCD is a Community Technology Preview, and will only allow you to obtain current Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. Since it is a Community Technology Preview, additional information related to MSCD’s performance and network transactions -- including your machine name and IP addresses -- may be logged to help evaluate and improve MSCD performance.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT VISUAL STUDIO 2008 BETA 2

If you download and install Beta 2, run this script to ensure that the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 will not affect the development of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications.

Click here to download the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader 2007 CTP

I've been Tagged - stuff i wouldn't want to live without

Brian Madsen — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:42:02 GMT

Here's is what happens, when you suddenly find yourself too busy with life, the world, family etc..

i missed being tagged by my friend Bill - I've been Tagged - Bill's House O Insomnia

Bill, sorry mate...i'm back on track again and catching up slowly!

Anyways, Bill was tagged by Sahil in a meme about stuff i wouldn't want to live without

After reading through Bill's list, i suddenly found it hard to stop thinking and weighing up what "i simply couldn't live without"...now, as my wife would agree to, i'm VERY materialistic...almost to a fault. Seeing as we're talking "stuff", i take the meaning to be items, not my wife and kids.

So here's my list:

1) my laptop - DELL XPS M1710 - I bought it this year in April i think and i've really grown to rely on it heavily. Not only does it perform brilliantly, but after my tweaking of the pre-installed Dell bloatware (eg. i blew the OS away and installed freshly) it's been running like a dream. The nice crisp screen, the awesome performance of the 7950GTX graphics card..what can i say, i'm a whore for these things.

2) my car - '03 Commedore Equipe 3.8L V6. This is the first "large" car i've owned and it drives brilliantly. it's smooth, responsive and extremely comfortable to drive. Even knowing that it's hardly the most economical, or environmentally friendly car (fairly large engine) it's my pride. It gets a wash every week and a wax every second week. I keep it tidy, clean and serviced. When some smuck broke into my car i was furious.

3) as Bill, i also have a watch which i love. My wife gave it to me the same month as my second daugther was born. It's a Seiko Sportura Bar Honda limited edition. For some reason i've always loved Seiko watches. They have a feel of quality about them which doesn't have to mean you spend $15.000. Besides the emotional attachment to this watch, it's just plain great looking.

I'm not as attached to mobile phones/smart phones/PDAs as i used to be - gone through too many of them (i has dog, i has cat, i has drooling teething baby) lately to get attached to them.

I kept the list short, as I tend to grow attached to most of my things (except my mobile phones) and i could have gone on and on and on about every single little item in my possession.

Naturally the most precious to me is my wife and kids - yet they are not my possessions and can't really be categorised as "stuff"..

So, simple as it was after a bit of a brainstorm I'll nominate a few other people (5, wasn't it?).

Scott Barnes - an awesome guy.

Nick Randolph - fellow MVP and one of the people in Perth that's supported me the most.

Mike Minutillo - always good for a story.

Mitch Wheat - tireless worker in the Perth .Net community.

Sandi Hardmeier - who battles more malware than any other.

These are all people i respect, both for the commitment to technology and the community. Spill the beans boys n' girls!

Come to a Silverlight Lab in Redmond - why not Perth, eh Scott?

Brian Madsen — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:49:29 GMT

I'm nudging and winking at Scott Barnes to follow Tim's example.

Since i've come across his blog i've seen what can be done. I realise that their team is most likely 600 times larger than ours here in Australia buuuuuut...well lets see what we can do.

Wouldn't it be cool to have Scott Barnes come over to Perth to hold some hands-on lab sessions for Silverlight?

The DPE team is trying to organise having a member visit Perth every other month - one of the last initiatives from Frank before he leaves for the US.

Since Scott is a brilliant presenter and definitely knows his stuff, lets see if we can't pull him over again for a lil' bit of Silverlight fun :)

Base4.net blogger, Alex awarded MVP Visual Developer - Solutions Architect

Brian Madsen — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:08:48 GMT

I've been secretly reading Alex's blog for a while, mostly because he seriously cracks me up at times..possibly i pick up sarcasm where there isn't any - but hey, it's my only fun atm.

Anyways, July '07 hits and Alex is awarded. Sometimes i wish my Award month could be moved (1st of April is when i get the notification??) to something cooler.

For those of you that doesn't read many blogs - eg. goes for quality vs quantity, you should drop on by Alex's blog.

Best part of Alex's award is that he is one more C# supporter (oh and he's very verbal about the uhmmm...relative usefulness of vb.net..and has even drawn my good friend Nick into a debate about C# vs VB which is pretty cool...(btw, because Nick supports VB i'm categorically on with Alex on this).

Base4.net