Now Playing: Readify

So things have been a little crazy the last couple of months, lets do a quick recap;

8 weeks ago I resigned from my position at the Fujitsu Web Solutions Centre and accepted a job with Readify
5 weeks ago I finished at Fujitsu and took a 1 week holiday to go to a friends wedding and do an East Coast tour (Brisbane –> Sydney –> Melbourne) to meet my new colleagues
4 weeks ago I started at Readify just doing internal work in the Dev/Innovation Centre
Today is my fourth week with them and I had my first client engagement this week
In about a week I’m leaving for a 3 month assignment in the Brisbane office

It’s been a very interesting experience thus far and I absolutely love it.  I’m getting back more in to the technology side of things which is great and I really needed a change from what I was doing.  I’ve also got to play with a few different technologies (VS 2010, ASP.Net MVC, SQL Server 2008, Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft CRM).  The caliber of staff is amazing and it’s a fantastic opportunity to further develop my skills as a dev.

Cool Particle Generator

This site is way more fun then it should be!

http://labs.nerdplusart.com/particles/fullscreen.php

Found via http://www.shazaml.com/archives/hidden-object-episode-4

Windows 7 is nothing but pure awesome.

Okay so whilst I don’t work for Microsoft I just can’t describe how good Windows 7 is.

I always thought Windows Vista got a bit of a harsh rap (worked fine for me) except the performance was pretty bad.  Apart from that I actually really liked Windows Vista.

Windows 7 is just Windows Vista except faster and even better – Super Taskbar is pretty cool (took a little adjusting) as is IE8.

What I do dislike about it though is Live Messenger when you click the “X” closes instead of minimising though there’s a work around for that and the show desktop button is in a strange place.  I have a bad habbit of “throwing” my mouse cursor to the bottom right of the screen when I’m not using it like if I was to say watch a movie it’ll just end up down there and then my movie dissapears.  I can turn it off (right click, untick preview) so the button still works it just loses it’s “on hover” effect but I figure over time I’ll adjust and unlearn this behaviour.

All in all though I’ve been using it since the beta was released and have upgraded my home machine and work laptop to Windows 7 RC and am thorougly happy with the experience – I’m actually making a laptop image now so I can reimage some of the machines at work.

Back from Vegas + Expression Installation issues

Well MIX (Vegas) was an awesome ride – met so many of the big names in the industry and it’s really renewed my passion for development.

I’ve been mucking about with Expression Encoder so I can do some Adaptive Streaming stuff (saw it at MIX) and I’ve had nothing but troubles installing it.  I originally had Expression Web SuperPreview Beta installed on my work Windows 7 laptop.

The problem arose when I installed Expression Studio then had to apply Service Pack 1 to Expression Encoder so I could get adaptive streaming.  The service pack installed successfully but the Adaptive Streaming option still didn’t appear in Encoder for me and all my Google searches were returning “check you’re not running a trial/beta” of Expression Encoder and I knew I wasn’t so it seemed I was on my own.

I tried many things including uninstalling and reinstalling from scratch (even removing SuperPreview Beta) and I but then I couldn’t reinstall Expression Blend or Expression Design (other Expression products were fine).

The error I got was (had to look through the setup log file)

9:11:06 AM Wednesday, 20 May 2009: Info: Config_Products_InstallNew: Begin installation of new product: Microsoft Expression Blend 2
9:11:06 AM Wednesday, 20 May 2009: Info: Config_Products_InstallNew: Product: Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Params: E:\Setup\Blend_en.msi ADDLOCAL=ALL ARPNOMODIFY=”1″ PRC_DEPENDENTPRODUCTIDS=”ExpressionStudio_2.0.133.0″ PRC_DEPENDENTPRODUCTNAMES=”Microsoft Expression Studio 2″ INSTALLLOCATION=”C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Expression” REBOOT=ReallySuppress SETUPSOURCEDIR=”E:\Setup” SOURCEDIR=”E:\Setup”
9:11:12 AM Wednesday, 20 May 2009: An error occurred installing the Blend_en.msi package. Error: Could not open key: UNKNOWN\Components\B415C33F1AE542B409CF6C47789B0269\9C1E1983E9E82E340B90D600B8DC6796.   Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel. .

So after much mucking about and even trying Windows Install Cleaner I still couldn’t get it to go and finally stopped and thought about the error message;

An error occurred installing the Blend_en.msi package. Error: Could not open key: UNKNOWN\Components\B415C33F1AE542B409CF6C47789B0269\9C1E1983E9E82E340B90D600B8DC6796.   Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel. .

I knew it shouldn’t be a permissions error which is why I kind of ignored it in the first place (the account I was using was actually a Domain Administrator account) but out of options I out ProcessMon from SysInternals and filtered it to the Expression installation process, specifically access denied messages to the registry.

When I found the offending key it would seem as though the ACL was stuffed – There was no owner or permissions on it so I had to take ownership of the key then give myself permissions.

I attempted to reinstall but again still no joy – same error but on a different key in the registry so I repeated the above about 10 mores times then it finally started working!

Vegas Baby Yeah!

So I just spoke with Catherine at Microsoft (organiser of Devsta) and it’s kind of official so we can talk about it – Our application has managed to take out overall prize and best mobile device prize!

It’s been such a whirlwind ride and just goes to show that you really can build some interesting applications inside of a week!

I also need to thank a few people without whom this wouldn’t have been possible.  First of all is Michael Minutillo my partner in crime and development – the man really is an indiscriminate information sponge and working with him keeps me at the top of my game!  If you don’t read his blog I suggest you do, he will be an MVP in the near future once he’s “discovered” by the community a bit more.  I should also thank Michael’s wife Barbie as he has 3 young kids at home and she had to pick up his share of the domestic duties whilst we were working on this app.

I also need to thank my boss (Wayne Murphy) from Fujitsu Web Solutions – he supported Michael and I throughout the competition and ensured that when we were too tired to do “real work” someone else would pick up our client commitments!  (This thanks is about all you’re getting though Murph, the TV is mine!)

The Yeah Pants group (My friends) -  I know I missed a few social events (a bucks night), a few card games and one or two other things but it was worth it and remember what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!   Thanks for the encouragement guys!

Of course I need to thank the other entrants – Some of the applications were truly amazing for 8 days duration and I wish you the best of luck in Devsta next year!

Catherine and the team at Microsoft and the Judges – I work with Microsoft products every day, in fact Microsoft are responsible for me being gainfully employed otherwise I’d probably be flipping burgers at McDonalds so I was already a big fan of their products but now even more so!  I’m a bit of an organiser of events myself and I know these things are usually a very thankless job that require a lot of effort so a big THANK YOU to everyone who organised the competition (especially the prizes!) and to the judges for taking time out of their schedules to rate the applications.

Here’s a photo of the judges as they were calling us to let us know we’d won

From Left to Right

Unknown
Catherine Grima (I assume)
Unknown
Unknown
Andrew Coates (Love that guy!)
Unknown

Edit: I feel bad – I should mention Michael Kordahi who is taking the photo!

I only wish we had a photo of our side of the conversation – I got a call from Andrew Coates (he has a very distinctive voice so I knew it wasn’t my boss Wayne playing a prank on me!) so I grabbed Michael and we went in to one of the conference rooms at work.  Andrew announced that we managed to take the overall prize to which Michael and I replied with a stunned mullet look, I’m fairly sure it didn’t translate that well over the phone!

I asked Andrew to repeat what he’d just said to which he replied you’ve won the best mobile prize category and the overall prize it was about that point that Michael and I started screaming, cheering and high fiving to the judges laughter over the phone!

Anyway I have to run, got to get ready for a video interview with Andrew Parsons about our application!

If anyone knows any of the unknowns in the photo please let me know!

ADO.Net Entity Framework

I’m currently doing some R&D whilst I’m waiting for my next project to kick off.

I’ve decided to invest my time looking at the ADO.Net Entity Framework, it seems like a fairly good use of my time considering the amount of database related work I do.

I’ve played around a little with LINQ (predominantly LINQ to Entities and dabbled in LINQ to SQL) and it’s got to be one of the greatest features I’ve ever used so needless to say I’m very excited about the prospect of using it more in my day to day work!

Will post an update of my experiences using it soon.

ugh, Telstra

So having worked in the ISP Industry for a couple of years previous to the Consulting game, I have an intense dislike of Telstra.

I hate the way they do business but what’s got me going on about them today is as a retail consumer they treat me like dirt – About two months ago I swapped over to online statements (email) and automatic payment.  Since then I haven’t received a single statement/invoice and they havent taken any money from my account.

Normally I’d call this a win but they have cut off my home phone service – Not bothered so much about the phone service I only have it for DSL but thats where my problem is – If they’ve deactivated my phone it’s only a matter of time before they cut off my DSL even though I have that with another company.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with them for 3 days now, I’ve been on hold for at least 2-3 hours over those 3 days and it’s driving me insane!  It seems as though no one can help me, when I do manage to get a hold of someone they can’t reactivate my account and check my payment details instead I speak to someone whose job seems to be to direct me to the “right” department who can then help me with one aspect of my query and claims they’ve reactivated my account but still nada then they “transfer me” to the other department which usually results in me being disconnected and having to call up again.

I don’t really hate anyone and these days it takes bit to get me worked up but I really do hope Telstra die in a fire.  I hope that National Broadband Network goes to the Terria Consortium and Telstra go out of business.

Devsta: The Debrief

Well It’s been almost 24 hours since the competition closed and I’m still a little tightly wound / sleep deprived but I’m still excited about our submission. 

Unfortunately it would seem as though no one else is excited by it…well no one on the Internet but people I tell in person seem to think it’s a good idea which makes me wonder have we done a poor job of explaining it or do I just do a good job of selling it.  People seem to be more excited about our Hoff Sidebar Gadget then our main app…damn you Hoff.  There’s a third possibility that people are just too kind but I don’t think it’s that – I was just reading an article that did a pretty good job of trashing the contest and the developers who entered.

The article (http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21016/53/ with a lot of corrections published in a second article here http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21044/53/) seem to think Console Connect is the winning entry.

Personally I thought the article was very negative and well, factually incorrect for the most part (at least until the second article) but quite a few other places (such as Slashdot) have republished the story citing ITWire as it’s source.  It was fairly obvious from the outset that the website hadn’t been hacked and someone had just entered spurious data in to the form but I guess it’s the headline that counts.

Also, I could just be a little bitter that we didn’t even get a mention   I think this comes down to the “Generation Y” thing, I want answers today, right here, right now mentality.  I want some kind of vindication that I didn’t waste 9 days (4 of which were weekends!) working on an application for nothing!

I just want to say thanks to the other developers who entered – it’s not easy working “for free” for a week in the hope of winning something.  I’m sure they all had to make social/work sacrafices to be able to compete and then after that to have someone trash your work (or ignore it) is very frustrating.

For people who want to know more about our app I suggest reading Michael’s blog, he’s no where near as bitter/jaded as I am and has posted a nice little write up

Devsta – GPS Tag Game Submitted!

So its 4:20 AM and I’ve finally just hit the submit button on the Devsta website, thank god!

Still talking to Mike on Skype, we’ve been fixing bugs like crazy all night and morning and we both have morning meetings today so no sleep in.

Anyway will post more of a debrief later but for now read up about our entry at http://devsta.microsoft.com.au/submissionDetails.aspx?submissionId=30

Good Night (or Morning)

PS: Vegas Baby Yeah!

Fire ze missles!

But I am le tired!

Sorry, I just had to do that…Mike and I have been spurring each other on by placing random pieces of the Internet like Magical Trevor and End of Ze World.

Things are really starting to come together now – Michael and I are working on bridging what he’s written and what I’ve written (he did services I did UI) I just hope we don’t end up looking like this;

Anyway I’m having some trouble testing at the moment as it seems as though the Virtual Earth API (at least in Staging) is experiencing some kind of technical difficulties

Hopefully it’s back soon, it’s eating in to my development time!

Cheers,
J