The Coding Cuckoo

Wired: Hands-On: Can Kin Phones Make Microsoft Cool Again?

William — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:32:00 GMT

Wired.com has an article asking if the the new Windows Phone 7 - Kin Phones can make Microsoft cool again ? Just looking at the features, there's no doubt the cool factor is there. While a lot of people have jumped ship, gadget geeks are into the...(read more)

Ideas for a Tech Interview - Part I

William — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:55:00 GMT

I firmly believe in having potential employees write code during an interview. I want to see how they interact with the computer and IDE (are they comfortable, do they seem to know their way around, do they know shortcuts, are they quick or slow in navigating...(read more)

Singles.org - Operation Jesus | F0r t3h 1u1z

William — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:23:00 GMT

I just got this email and would have asked his permission to post it, but I can't do that. Clearly this is the work of Ebaumsworld and no one else. Since I've been following this thing, pretty much everything he says is true and confirmable and...(read more)

Singles.org fesses up - sort of

William — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:45:00 GMT

This place is beyond low. countless email accounts have been breached, several facebook pages, several paypal accounts and much more. As of last night, if was in full free for all mode as more vulnerabilities were found (although vulnerability is a bit...(read more)

Singles.org - db.singles.org - The Saga Continues

William — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:52:00 GMT

At this point, seeing how pathetic Singles.org is resonding to this, they deserve everything they get. This is all kinda epic except real people are getting hurt. They aren't the ones paying for it, well, at least until now. I'll post screen caps...(read more)

The hacking of db.singles.org continued

William — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:38:00 GMT

Well, I've recieved a few comments and emails about this and things are just getting worse. As of 7:38 AM 02.23.2009 they still haven't put anything on their site indicating anything even happened. Email is clearly not a valid option b/c of the...(read more)

The Hacking of http://db.singles.org

William — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:03:00 GMT

I was hesitant to write about this b/c I've been threatened pretty seriously about my role in it. But it's important for people to understand a few things about the state of security today. What occurred was so pathetic, the result of such rampant...(read more)

A cool new blog to follow

William — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:07:00 GMT

I've been using Twitter for about a year now, ever since Ryan Olshan turned me on to it. Shortly after I started Tweeting (or whatever the correctly conjugated verb for it is), I came across a fellow Tweeter in Atlanta @Streetlightlilly . She's...(read more)

My post on Plugin Development for Dynamics CRM made MSDN

William — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:29:00 GMT

Today it's even on the front page . If you're interested here it is...(read more)

My Personal Blog is now online

William — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:41:00 GMT

I've been idle on this blog for quite a while. I've been up to quite a bit and am planning on getting started again. Shortly after I got married, I was lucky enough to get a job working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM here in Greenville. After surviving the worst 4 months I've had in my life, I was lucky enough to start working back in Greenville at a really awesome company. Although much of my job entails programming Dynamics CRM (which is so powerful and so cool I wish I'd have learned it a long time ago), I am also doing a lot of Sharepoint and Workflow Foundation work too. I've also lucked out and been able to work on a good bit of Windows Mobile coding too. I've got a boat load of articles and posts I need to finish editing and post and I'll have them up shortly.

When I started working with CRM, I realized that it had been right under my nose all these years and I knew relatively little about it. More than just an application, Dynamics CRM is a platform and a very powerful one at that. Sharepoint too is a very viable development platform but it's next to impossible to not have worked with Sharepoint over the past few years, CRM is a little different. It really got me thinking about breadth of my skillset.

For years, I've focused, almost exclusively, on learning the newest stuff coming out of Microsoft. To some extent, I think it's largely a function of my personality. I get bored easily and always want to learn something new. But from a value perspective, it can be disappointing. Being an early adopter means API's are going to change so you'll frequently learn the same thing a few different times as it changes. Many technologies don't get the adoption you expect (WCF, WF, Cardspace anyone?) Many times customers don't want to trust their fate to something that will have just been released for a short time before it goes live. And this doesn't even take into account the hassles related to constantly installing and updating new bits.

While I still think being an early adopter is cool, I've decided to step out a little and specifically learn things that are popular but not in areas I typically deal with. The last non-Microsoft technology I put a lot of effort into was Ruby on Rails and I really liked it (Not enough to give up ASP.NET but I still like it a lot). So I decided to always keep on alternate technology on the plate at any given time. There's a lot of Microsoft Products that fit this bill as well as many non-MS products. Right now, I've been working on refining my game with .php and mySql. This came about b/c I wanted to learn Wordpress, something I've had many friends and a few family members ask for help with. So basically, I'm going to make sure I look into things I normally wouldn't have based on a good bit of adoption. Wordpress clearly fit that bill. CRM fit that bill (although being employed working with CRM helped quite a bit). I want to dig into Live a lot more and some of the other Dynamics offerings.

At the same time, I know I often include off-topic material here on my blog and I'd like to keep it purely technical. As such, I stuck a blog up at My Personal Site to host my non-technical stuff and anything not MS related. I'm going to focus on personal interests like preparing for a marathon, Amazon Kindle, Phil Hendrie Show stuff, Hacking my Ride, Home Automation, Dogs and whatever else personal in nature which doens't fit here. I've got a ton of stuff to post here, mainly on CRM and Workflow Foundation and I've already posting over there, this time I plan on posting pretty regularly.

WF Persistence - Where [DataContract] != [Serializable]

William — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:27:07 GMT

Let's say you were using Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Assume you wanted to use WF's Persistence mechanism (which requires types to be Serializable). And assume that all the objects you were using in the workflow were decorated with the [DataContract] attribute. Would you expect any problems related to Serialization? (I can but to the chase really quickly here if you don't want my belabored background information and explanation. If you're creating a type to use w/ Workflow Foundation that will be saved via the Workflow Foundation Persistence Service which makes use of the SqlWorkflowPersistenceService class, marking the class as a [DataContract] alone will not work for WF's persistence mechanism. It does make the class serializable in a literal sense and will suffice [provided you meet the other requirements of a [DataContract] for WCF's serialization needs, but it is insufficient for WF (see the References section at the end of this post for more details on WF Serialization) - so make sure you use the Serializable attribute on any type that'll be consumed by the Persistence Service).

MSDN describes the DataContract class the following way:

Specifies that the type defines or implements a data contract and is serializable by a serializer, such as the DataContractSerializer. To make their type serializable, type authors must define a data contract for their type.

If you spend a lot of time in WCF, you'd likely assume that b/c types decorated with the DataContract attribute would satisfy any requirement for the type to be Serializable. But you'd likely be wrong. Yes, a type that is a [DataContract] is serializable in the literal sense, but it's serialized by the DataContractSerializer (see the References section at the end of this post for more details on WF Serialization)

So why is this an issue and what do you do about it? Often, non-trivial workflows span an amount of time that exceeds any given user's session. In fact, it's not uncommon for a non-trivial workflow to span as much as 30 days. Using a simple example, let's say that you are writing a Workflow to manage new employees. Further assume that there are several document requirements and that any deficiencies would result in severe penalties or liability risks. Just to make it clear, assume that each of the following must be procured before a new employee can start working. Further, assume that b/c of fees associated with each, if any previous one fails, that the whole process terminates (if someone's reference checks don't pass, there's no need to spend the money for a full background investigation as you know you're not going to hire them). [Also, this isn't a post on workplace hiring guidelines and is solely used for illustration - no need to point out why 'its bad business to drug test or whatever else].

Employment Application
Proof of Citizenship or ability to work in the U.S.
State withholding form
Federal withholding form
Reference check
License check
Completed Drug Screen
Full Background check

Implementation policies will vary from company to company but assume that all of these tasks wouldn't be completed within the user session that first created the entity. If you couldn't persist the workflow somehow and come back to it later, it would be of very little use. Workflow foundation provides an out-of-the-box solution named not surprisingly - Windows Workflow Persistence Service to help with long running workflows

Since Workflow Foundation is still in its infancy in terms of user adoption, many shops don't have well established design rules in place specifically for Workflow items. This can have some profound (although easily addressed in most cases) effects on Workflow development. It's common for a workflow to start out small in terms of steps and happen relatively quickly. When this is the case, there's little need for a persistence mechanism for the workflow. But as people get comfortable with WF and are willing to try more involved solutions, steps get added that often increase the time span the workflow could run to a point that's longer than the user session. For people new to WF, adding that first activity that'll possibly span a large amount of time is the first time they actually think seriously about the persistence service. And that's the point at which they often go back and try to retrofit things. In many cases, the number of "things" will be fairly substantial so it's quite easy to overlook something. Once you implement the persistence service, you'll typically go through the testing phase and make sure everything persist and can be retrieved correctly. And this is the time serialization problems with show themselves - often in a manner that's hard to isolate b/c the number of items involved.

In some cases, if there's a serialization problem, a fault will result. Unhandled faults in WF cause behavior that deviates from what you'd typically expect. So depending on your logging and tracing, you may or may not find the issue quickly. in many cases, you'll find the fault is related to serialization and you'll address it on the specific type, then go back and try to find every other type and make it serializable as well. This is likely to be overkill though - b/c you're likely to have some types that aren't involved in anything that's persisted and consequently don't require persistence. So you try to only make the items that will be persisted serializable. Until you get to the point where you're addressing everything in the planning and design stages, you're likely to run into situations like this and the only way out typically involves a lot of trial-and-error. That's why this post is relevant. If you go back and define each type that will be persisted as a [DataContract] , it'll take you some time to do, may necessitate you adding new references to some projects and ultimately, after all that's done, won't fix the problem. The following type may work all day long when just dealing with WCF's serialization requirements...

namespace Ger911.HCStandard.Core.Shared
{
    [DataContract]
    public class MatrixItem
    {
        [DataMember]
        public String EntityName { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public String ContactName { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public Int32 BedCount { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public String HospitalStatus { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public DateTime ModifiedDateTime { get; set; }
    }
}

But unless you modify it like this, you'll be in for some unpleasant surprises in WF:

namespace Ger911.HCStandard.Core.Shared
{

    [Serializable]
    [DataContract]
    public class MatrixItem
    {
        [DataMember]
        public String EntityName { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public String ContactName { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public Int32 BedCount { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public String HospitalStatus { get; set; }
        [DataMember]
        public DateTime ModifiedDateTime { get; set; }
    }
}

References:

Using Red Gate's Reflector, here's what you'll see under the hood of the WorkflowPesistenceService class's RestoreFromDefaultSerializedForm and GetDefaultSerializedForm. For further insight into this, use Reflector and examine the SqlWorkflowPersistenceService:

RestoreFromDefaultSerializedForm

protected static Activity RestoreFromDefaultSerializedForm(byte[] activityBytes, Activity outerActivity)
{
            Activity activity;
            DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
            MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(activityBytes);
            stream.Position = 0L;
            using (GZipStream stream2 = new GZipStream(stream, CompressionMode.Decompress, true))
            {
                activity = Activity.Load(stream2, outerActivity);
            }
            TimeSpan span = (TimeSpan)(DateTime.Now - now);
            WorkflowTrace.Host.TraceEvent(TraceEventType.Information, 0, "Deserialized a {0} to length {1}. Took {2}.",
                new object[] { activity, stream.Length, span }); return activity;
}

GetDefaultSerializedForm

protected static byte[] GetDefaultSerializedForm(Activity activity)
{
          DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
          using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(0x2800))
          {
              stream.Position = 0L;
              activity.Save(stream);
              using (MemoryStream stream2 = new MemoryStream((int)stream.Length))
              {
                  using (GZipStream stream3 = new GZipStream(stream2, CompressionMode.Compress, true))
                  {
                      stream3.Write(stream.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)stream.Length);
                  }
                  ActivityExecutionContextInfo info = (ActivityExecutionContextInfo)activity.GetValue(Activity.ActivityExecutionContextInfoProperty);
                  TimeSpan span = (TimeSpan)(DateTime.Now - now);
                  WorkflowTrace.Host.TraceEvent(TraceEventType.Information, 0, "Serialized a {0} with id {1} to length {2}. Took {3}.", new object[] { info, info.ContextGuid, stream2.Length, span });
                  byte[] array = stream2.GetBuffer();
                  Array.Resize<byte>(ref array, Convert.ToInt32(stream2.Length));
                  return array;
              }
          }
}

DataContractSerializer

public sealed class DataContractSerializer : XmlObjectSerializer
{
    // Fields
    private IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate;
    private bool ignoreExtensionDataObject;
    internal Dictionary<XmlQualifiedName, DataContract> knownDataContracts;
    private ReadOnlyCollection<Type> knownTypeCollection;
    internal IList<Type> knownTypeList;
    private int maxItemsInObjectGraph;
    private bool needsContractNsAtRoot;
    private bool preserveObjectReferences;
    private DataContract rootContract;
    private XmlDictionaryString rootName;
    private XmlDictionaryString rootNamespace;
    private Type rootType;

    // Methods
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, string rootName, string rootNamespace);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, XmlDictionaryString rootName, XmlDictionaryString rootNamespace);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, string rootName, string rootNamespace, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, XmlDictionaryString rootName, XmlDictionaryString rootNamespace, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes, int maxItemsInObjectGraph, bool ignoreExtensionDataObject, bool preserveObjectReferences, IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, string rootName, string rootNamespace, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes, int maxItemsInObjectGraph, bool ignoreExtensionDataObject, bool preserveObjectReferences, IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate);
    public DataContractSerializer(Type type, XmlDictionaryString rootName, XmlDictionaryString rootNamespace, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes, int maxItemsInObjectGraph, bool ignoreExtensionDataObject, bool preserveObjectReferences, IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate);
    internal static DataContract GetDataContract(DataContract declaredTypeContract, Type declaredType, Type objectType);
    internal override Type GetDeserializeType();
    internal override Type GetSerializeType(object graph);
    internal static Type GetSurrogatedType(IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate, Type type);
    private void Initialize(Type type, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes, int maxItemsInObjectGraph, bool ignoreExtensionDataObject, bool preserveObjectReferences, IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate);
    private void Initialize(Type type, XmlDictionaryString rootName, XmlDictionaryString rootNamespace, IEnumerable<Type> knownTypes, int maxItemsInObjectGraph, bool ignoreExtensionDataObject, bool preserveObjectReferences, IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate);
    internal override bool InternalIsStartObject(XmlReaderDelegator reader);
    internal override object InternalReadObject(XmlReaderDelegator xmlReader, bool verifyObjectName);
    internal override void InternalWriteEndObject(XmlWriterDelegator writer);
    internal override void InternalWriteObject(XmlWriterDelegator writer, object graph);
    internal override void InternalWriteObjectContent(XmlWriterDelegator writer, object graph);
    internal override void InternalWriteStartObject(XmlWriterDelegator writer, object graph);
    public override bool IsStartObject(XmlDictionaryReader reader);
    public override bool IsStartObject(XmlReader reader);
    public override object ReadObject(XmlReader reader);
    public override object ReadObject(XmlDictionaryReader reader, bool verifyObjectName);
    public override object ReadObject(XmlReader reader, bool verifyObjectName);
    internal static object SurrogateToDataContractType(IDataContractSurrogate dataContractSurrogate, object oldObj, Type surrogatedDeclaredType, ref Type objType);
    public override void WriteEndObject(XmlDictionaryWriter writer);
    public override void WriteEndObject(XmlWriter writer);
    public override void WriteObject(XmlWriter writer, object graph);
    public override void WriteObjectContent(XmlDictionaryWriter writer, object graph);
    public override void WriteObjectContent(XmlWriter writer, object graph);
    public override void WriteStartObject(XmlDictionaryWriter writer, object graph);
    public override void WriteStartObject(XmlWriter writer, object graph);

    // Properties
    public IDataContractSurrogate DataContractSurrogate { get; }
    public bool IgnoreExtensionDataObject { get; }
    internal Dictionary<XmlQualifiedName, DataContract> KnownDataContracts { get; }
    public ReadOnlyCollection<Type> KnownTypes { get; }
    public int MaxItemsInObjectGraph { get; }
    public bool PreserveObjectReferences { get; }
    private DataContract RootContract { get; }
}

Windows Mobile 7.0 Delayed

William — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:39:00 GMT

At first glance, the announcement that Windows Mobile 7.0 will be delayed is pretty frustrating. MS has been in the mobile phone game for a while now and it's really hard to argue that Apple didn't get it right with the iPhone. So why can't someone with Microsoft's power get it right a little quicker? One of the main things I would guess is hardware - Windows Mobile is rolled out onto a lot of different devices and that complicates things greatly. With that said though, it's not as disappointing as it may seem. Perhaps the biggest frustration with Windows Mobile has been the browser and as the article states, there's going to be a better one released well in advance of 7.0. The flashy screen that's responsive and easy to navigate is the other big issue and there are already several providers coming out with UI's that rival the iPhone. 6.1 was far from perfect but did a decent job bridging the gap and well, if both of those issues are addressed in a timely manner, it'll go really far into mitigating any frustration related to the postponement of 7.0. Truth is, when 7.0 comes out, it needs to make a Huge splash. It doesn't need to just be good, it needs to be great. And it needs to be visibly better than anything iPhone. Being that MS can't afford to get that wrong, it's understandable (yet no less disappointing) that they are taking the 'better safe than sorry' strategy.

Over 200 Apress Titles Now Available on Kindle; All by End of 2008

William — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:02:31 GMT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Stephanie Parker
stephanie.parker@apress.com
Over 200 Apress Titles Now Available on Kindle; All by End of 2008

Berkeley, CA—Tuesday 16th September 2008—Technology publisher Apress today announced that over 200 Apress books are now available direct from the Kindle Store as Kindle Editions and that it is committed to making its entire catalog available on Kindle by the end of 2008.

Apress has long supported the needs of its professional IT developer audience, by making its entire list of published books available as eBooks since 2005 via the Apress eBookshop: http://eBookshop.apress.com. The decision to make all Apress books available as Kindle Editions stems from the continued commitment of the technology publisher to providing information to its readers in the way they need and want. Apress books will be available in the Kindle Store immediately on publication by parallel release with its own PDF eBooks.

According to the President of Apress, Paul Manning, “Kindle combines the readability of paper and the ease of the internet. It appears to be an ideal match for the technically savvy professional who is the core of the Apress customer base. We have very high hopes for customer demand for our technical products in this versatile format.”

“Kindle is reigniting a love of reading—after purchasing a Kindle, customers purchase, on average, just as many physical books, and their total book purchases on Amazon increase by more than double,” said Jay Marine, Director of Product Management for Amazon Kindle. “This commitment from Apress moves us closer to our vision for Kindle, which is to make any book, ever printed, in any language available wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

Currently, over 200 Apress titles are available on Amazon as Kindle Editions. The list includes bestselling books such as
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston;
Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 by Joseph C. Rattz;
The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners by Jacob Habgood and Mark Overmars;
Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition by W. Jason Gilmore;
Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Matthew MacDonald;
SharePoint 2007 User’s Guide: Learning Microsoft’s Collaboration and Productivity Platform by Seth Bates and Tony Smith.

About Apress: Apress Inc., based in Berkeley, California, is the fastest-growing publisher of technical books in the world today. It is dedicated to meeting the needs of IT professionals, from novice to expert. Apress is devoted to publishing titles of the highest quality and has compiled a team of authors that is a “Who’s Who” of the high-tech industry.
Amazon Kindle is Amazon’s revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight. More than 170,000 books are now available in the Kindle Store, including New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Kindle is available today for $359 at http://amazon.com/kindle.

Using Facebook to launch a Botnet army

William — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:07:41 GMT

Wired has a piece talking about how easy this would be to do. It's not entirely speculative since researchers built such a beast. I think the hype is a bit much though. The argument they make could be made for any mechanism that can get people to install software on their own computers. But unlike most other means, such an attack seems really easy to countermeasures. It wouldn't take long to figure it out and Facebook could easily send out a notice telling you to uninstall it. Much like human viruses, computer viruses and botnets are only really effective if they are allowed to exist in the infected host for a period of time, at least long enough to spread in the case of viruses, or long enough to be used in the case of botnets. I'm not so naive to think that some Facebook users aren't all that computer savvy, but overall I think it's a demographic that's fairly sophisticated. And they talk to each other a lot. Even if every facebook users downloaded the app (something really hard to fathom), it seems it would be pretty easy to eradicate. The more popular and more pernicious the bots, the more buzz there would be. That's not to say they don't raise some good points and that Facebook shouldn't try to prevent such things from happening, but it seems like it's only worrisome in the theoretical sense.

Rescuing the Hubble

William — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:54:15 GMT

Kudos to the Boston Globe for providing such high quality and just kick a55 pics of the mission to repair the Hubble telescope.

Chrome's EULA

William — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:32:30 GMT

Yah, I'm probably like the 10 trillionth person to post about it, but until now I hadn't really had a chance to look at it. This morning Gizmodo had a piece on it which definitely makes you shake your head thinking WTF. However like most things, I'm guessing that there's a huge gulf between 'reserving the right' to something and actually using that right. Additionally, I'm guessing a lot of this is just legal CYA. For instance, they could want access to information you post on a blog for efficiency purposes (being privy to it directly instead of having to crawl for it later) and just use language like this to avoid battles over the content. Then again, i'm just speculating as I'm not a lawyer and have no clue.

I decided to search around and see how much was written about this and as of the time of this post, the terms "Chrome EULA Controversy" returned over 7,430 hits if taken together and well over 15k if you leave out the quotes. And if you've been following this then you no doubt are aware that Google capitulated and is taking all the yucky stuff out. If you're trying to roll out a new product and have a big impact, then you definitely wouldn't want the type of press Google was getting over this.

Their quick capitulation is some food for thought though. the most likely answer is that they didn't really think they were doing anything bad b/c they weren't intending to use it, it's boilerplate etc etc. So it's no sweat off of their backs to just get rid of it. If you wanted to be conspiracy minded about it (I can only imagine for instance the Cow Alex Jones is going to have over it), it wouldn't be hard to imagine that they threw it out there, willing to take it back but more than willing to use and abuse it if public outcry wasn't too bad. I'm guessing there's a small shred to that theory but little more.

All in all though, I think Chrome's introduction is a good thing. Firefox kicked off a ferocious battle that led to IE becoming a much better browser. With another major player entering the market (and one that certainly has gotten under MS' skin when it comes to search), I'm guessing MS will pull some rabbits out of hats with IE 8 and when the dust settles, we'll see some awesome functionality. In the meantime, I like Chrome ok, but still sticking with IE for the foreseeable future.

And I thought model rockets were cool...

William — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:11:13 GMT

I came across this piece on a home made drone and found it way cool. Well, except the part about it carrying hundreds of pounds of explosives. Assuming this is just some random engineer with resources just like the rest of us, wouldn't this be an awesome project to do on the weekends?

And you thought I just some moron

William — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:37:36 GMT

Many folks north of Miami-Dade county have never heard of El Chupacabra. And if you try tipping them off to it, they laugh at you like your some kind of moron. At least that's what they did when I told them. I've been warning people of the dangers posed by the old Chupa and I typically got responses like "Yah Bill, well, next time I get a pet goat, I'll make really sure that I don't accidentally let it outside at night." Because of how I was often treated, I can truly sympathize with our former vice president who was horribly mistreated for trying to warn the world about ManBearPig . Well, for those of you that laughed at me, thought I was a moron, all of the above, Who is the moron now?

Create a Mobile office with Windows Mobile

William — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:23:20 GMT

With such a compelling title, I figured the article would be quite intriguing.

I've had a lot of phone drama recently, dropping my WM 6.1 Dash and breaking it, leaving the replacement on the roof of my car and driving off, buying another imate but dropping it into a diet coke. So I reverted back to my old beloved Voq. A coworker of mine got in iPhone and hacked it up so it would play relatively nice with T-Mobile. He wanted to get rid of it though so I ended up buying it off of him (I can almost hear Sahil gloating now). Shortly afterward, I received a Samsung i780 as a gift so I've mainly been switching between the two (I still can't get the iPhone to work with my T-Mobile data service which gets frustrating). I mention this b/c while the Dash was a pretty nice phone, it really didn't perform all that well. In fact, it was often frustrating. The 6.1 Flash made it a lot nicer but it still was rather slow compared to an iPhone. I had gotten rid of my original iPhone before I really got a chance to use it b/c at first, i didn't like it. After using it regularly for a while though, I'll admit that its usability is very impressive. Its frozen up on my twice in about a month and a half (with heavy usage) compared to the daily freezes I experienced with the Dash. The comparison isn't completely fair b/c hardware wise, the dash is a lot cheaper. And so I guess I'll just come out and concede that Sahil was right, with respect to consumer features, the iPhone provides a much better experience even when you factor in hardware differences. 6.1 mitigates some of that, but there's still a way to go.

Although the iPhone's screen is quite responsive, I think I still prefer an actual keyboard. Unless I'm extremely careful, I almost always spend more time correcting stuff then I do typing when what I'm working on is more than a sentence. Away from that though, there's the Push with Exchange and Sharepoint integration (which surprisingly, I find myself using quite a bit). B/c I don't have wireless Internet on the iPhone, it might be a bigger deal than it should be but AFAIK, Push/Exchange isn't available on iPhone yet. Another really annoying thing w/ iPhone that makes Windows Mobile more 'business friendly' is copy and paste. I never realized how much I used it until I lost it. And I guess I end up using copy/paste much more when I'm mobile then at work b/c typing is still not much fun but being able to quickly edit Excel sheets and paste stuff from word to Outlook and vice versa is huge. And I don't know if it's a true iPhone limitation again b/c I don't have my gprs, but I don't see any way to do internet sharing - from what I can tell, it's not doable with standard USB or Bluetooth.

As far as development goes, well, I'll give Apple some props for the iPhone SDK and I can't say I've spent more than a grand total of 15 hours trying to build stuff with it, but all else being equal, I still think that if I had to build any sort of critical business application, the compact framework not only makes it an easier trip, but it opens up a lot more doors. I don't want to run my big mouth too loudly b/c some of what appear to be limitations may just be limitations with my familiarity of the SDK, but I'm pretty sure that WCF integration is off the table with the iPhone, as is MapPoint / LiveEarth. Same seems to be the case for connecting w/ Sql Server or Oracle although the local db solution offered by Apple does the job pretty well.

At the end of the day, i can say I've really grown to like the iPhone and well, I already like Windows Mobile, even with some of the performance issues that would drive me nuts at times. But I find myself using them for totally different purposes other than of course, to talk. In the same way that I use my UMPC totally differently from my laptop, I find myself switching between these phones the same way. It'll be interesting to see how things develop b/c there's no doubt Microsoft is going to use Silverlight to greatly enhance user experience w/ Windows Mobile 7 and it's a similarly safe bet that Apple is going to try to make the iPhone better at business applications. For now, I'm just really glad I can swap out a SIM card and use whichever I want b/c having to make a firm choice between one or the other would be a real bummer.

Helping a Worthy Cause

William — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:01:41 GMT

Lou Vega, a good friend, fellow MVP and all around great guy just posted this on his blog today ... Lou is a 'give you the shirt off of his back' type of guy (as you can see from his post, his very kindness is why he's in need right now) and can use any help you can give. Even if it's just posting this on your blog or website, anything you can do would be greatly appreciated.

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As some of you may already know this has been a roller-coaster year for me starting with the hospitalization and near death of my son in February. Between the subsequent hospitalizations, (July marked the first calendar month he didn't get admitted to the hospital at all!), a pretty bad car wreck that left me with a concussion and associated post-concussion problems, and then additional extended family issues (one sister-in-law nearly died of a mix-up with prescriptions she was given at the ER, another sister-in-law lost all 4 of her children to foster care but that's an extended story below) it's just gotten to the point where my wife and I are just trying to catch up and breathe to get everything sorted out and we're rapidly running out of money ourselves.

The sister-in-law who's children we took in, has at this point essentially abandoned them and us. We bought her a bus ticket to come down here from Scranton, PA after she took care of some things she needed to and were ready to welcome her into our house to get a new start down here. Her ex-husband had never been good at paying child support and she wasn't getting any help up there so we stepped in to try and help her. That backfired on us the other night when she walked out of the house saying she was "going back to Scranton" and eventually she made her way to the bus station and caught a bus. Not sure how she paid because she left her purse, wallet, ID, everything in our house. None of us have heard from here since despite repeated attempts to reach her.

We were very fortunate that our local church donated bunk-beds for the 4 kids we took in. They also donated a lot of food. So now that their mom walked out we're left asking South Carolina Children's Services for any kind of help and their answer is simply "Send them back to PA". Not exactly the answer we were thinking we'd get from a place that is supposed to have children's interest at heart.The PA Children's services folks have been as helpful as they can be but they're not technically responsible for those children anymore.

Because of this I'm turning to the geek/dev community at large knowing that there are a ton of really great people out there who might just be able to get this family through this after all. All the money that's donated is going to go towards paying down medical bills from my son's hospital stays, paying down unpaid bills that were missed and run up with late charges during the hospital stays, more food since our family doubled in size from 4 to 8, new clothes for the kids (the 4 came down with basically a suitcase and not much else), and also to help pay for other costs associated with providing for such a large family on such short notice. Most of our prior emergency savings were wiped out during previous hospital stays due to increased fuel costs (driving back and forth between hospital, school when it was in session, and home) and food costs (eating out a lot since we weren't home) and direct medical costs.

As for our part, we've contacted our bank to ask that they suspend our car payment for 6 months, and I've contacted my student loan company to ask them to do the same. We also took our 7 year old out of the private school she was in and put her in public school. Even with those changes we're still running short of cash. If it so happens that all our needs are met and more we're going to donate the excess to both the church which has so graciously helped us out and the children's hospital playroom where my son has spent a good amount of time when he wasn't on contact precautions at the hospital. In the event that my sister-in-law returns to us we'll gladly give her the excess also towards her new start at life.

I couldn't figure out how to get the PayPal donate button to integrate into the blog entry so I've posted it on my skeleton of a web site at http://www.brainthump.com

There's basically just the "Donate" button there and it's all handled through SSL on PayPal. I didn't set a minimum amount because truthfully I'm grateful for any amount anyone can give.

Thanks in advance to all who are able to help in any way.