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• Review: Windows 8 - Initial Experience

  - by Tim Murphy

  I originally started this post when I had the Windows 8 preview setup on VirtualBox image.  I have since put the RTM bits on a Dell E6530 that is my new work laptop.  It isn’t a table so I am not getting the touch experience, but as a developer this makes the most sense for the moment. This is the first Windows OS that I have had to spend much time exploring to even get started.  The first thing I ran into was when I clicked on the desktop icon I was lost.  Where is the Start menu? Where are my programs?  How do I get back to the Metro environment?  I finally tried hitting the Windows button and it popped back out to the Metro screen. Once I got past that I found that the look of the Metro interface is clean and well organized.  It should be familiar to anyone who is already using a Zune or Windows Phone 7.  In the Desktop, aside from the lack of the Start button to bring up programs the desktop is just like the Windows 7 environment we are all used to.  I do have to say though that I don’t like popping out to the Metro screen to find program.  I think installers for programs like ones that developers usually work in for a desktop mode will need to give an option for creating a desktop icon and pinning to the task bar of the desktop. One of the things I do really enjoy is having live tiles in the Metro environment.  It is a nice way of feeding my need for constant information.  The one drawback though is that the task bar at the bottom of my screen used to be where I got this information without leaving what I was working on.  It allowed me to see current temperatures and when there were messages waiting.  I have since found that these still work as expected in the Desktop and Toast message keep you up on what is going on in the Metro apps. Thankfully familiar functionality like Alt-Tab and Windows-Tab still work regardless of if apps are in the Metro or the Desktop environment.  Add to this the ability to find any application on the Metro screen by simply typing and things get very comfortable. I also started exploring some of the apps.  If you want see a ton of stats on your team at a glance check out the Sports app.  What games are coming up? Who are the leaders in a number of stats?  The Weather and Finance apps have good features as well and I am sure they will improve as users supply feedback. I have had to install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with VS2012 because the Windows Phone 7 SDK would only install on VS2010.  This isn’t a Windows 8 issue per se, but something that you need to be aware of if you are a developer moving to the new ecosystem. The overall experience is a joy despite a few hiccups.  For anyone moving to Windows 8 in on a non-touch laptop or desktop I do suggest this list of keyboard shortcuts.  Enjoy. del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Metro,Review

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• Clicking on active apps on unity launcher stopped working

  - by Tim

  I don't know how it suddenly became this but here's what's happening right now: e.g. I have 2 firefox windows open, so I see 2 small arrows on the left side icon of the unity launcher. Before, when I click on the firefox icon, I see 2 small windows of the firefox so I can choose which one. Now it suddenly stopped working. (super+W still works though). The bug on my system applies to all progams with multiple window instances like nautilus, terminal, etc. Please help, I don't know what to do. I also have cairo dock, compiz, myunity installed in my 12.04. I tried searching online to no avail.

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• All hail the Excel Queen

  - by Tim Dexter

  An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

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• BUILD 2013 &ndash; Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/28/build-2013-ndash-summary.aspx BUILD was a wonderful experience.  It was great to see old friends, make new friends, learn about the latest Microsoft technology and party with a bunch of geeks.  It didn't hurt getting some awesome swag. While I Know that some people were disappointed that Microsoft didn't Say more about the XBox One, I was pleased with the information we got for developing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone applications. Add to that the ability to pick the brains of MVPs and product team members was really worth the price of admission. It is going to take a while to digest all of the material and weeks to go through all the videos. In the end there is a lot of information that is going to improve my projects.  I look forward to what Microsoft has coming next seeing every one at the next BUILD. Technorati Tags: BUILD 2013,window's 8.1,Windows Phone,XBox One

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• Are null references really a bad thing?

  - by Tim Goodman

  I've heard it said that the inclusion of null references in programming languages is the "billion dollar mistake". But why? Sure, they can cause NullReferenceExceptions, but so what? Any element of the language can be a source of errors if used improperly. And what's the alternative? I suppose instead of saying this: Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman"); // returns null if not found if (c != null) { Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } You could say this: if (Customer.ExistsWithLastName("Goodman")) { Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman") // throws error if not found Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } But how is that better? Either way, if you forget to check that the customer exists, you get an exception. I suppose that a CustomerNotFoundException is a bit easier to debug than a NullReferenceException by virtue of being more descriptive. Is that all there is to it?

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• TechEd 2012: MVVM In XAML

  - by Tim Murphy

  Paul Sheriff was a real character at the start of his MVVM in XAML session.  There was a lot of sarcasm and self deprecation going on prior to the .  That is never a bad way to get things rolling right after lunch.  Then things got semi-serious. The presentation itself had a number of surprises, but not all of them had to do with XAML.  When he flipped over his company’s code generation tool it took me off guard.  I am used to generator that create code for a whole project, but his tools were able to create different types of constructs on demand.  It also made it easier to follow what he was doing than some of the other demos I have seen this week where people were using code snippets. Getting to the heart of the topic I found myself thinking that I may have found my utopia for application development in MVVM.  Yes, I know there is no such thing, but this comes closer than any other pattern I have learned about.  This pattern allows the application to have better separation of concerns than I have seen before.  This is especially true since you can leverage data binding.  I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to find time for this subject. As Paul demonstrated using this pattern with XAML gives you multi-platform reusable code when you leverage common utility classes and ModelView classes.  The one drawback I see is that you have to go to the lowest common denominator between the platforms you want to support, but you always have to weigh the trade offs. And finally, the Visual Studio nuggets just keep coming.  Even though it has been available for several generations of Visual Studio I have never seen someone use linked files within a solution.  It just goes to show that I should spend more time exploring the deeper features of each dialog. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012,MVVM,Paul Sheriff,Patterns,Visual Studio 2012

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• If Variable = True show this, else show this [on hold]

  - by Tim Marshall

  If my variable of $userLoggedIn is true, the <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'true') : ?> works perfect, however if the variable is false, the <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'false') : ?> does not work at all. How do I resolve this problem? <?php $EditingWagesPage = false; $userLoggedIn = false; ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <!--[if IE 8]> <html lang="en" class="ie8 no-js"> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 9]> <html lang="en" class="ie9 no-js"> <![endif]--> <!--[if !IE]><!--> <html lang="en" class="no-js"> <!--<![endif]--> <!-- BEGIN HEAD --> <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'true') : ?> <head> ** HEADER STUFF ** </head> <body> ** BODY STUFF ** </body> <?php endif;?> <?php if ($userLoggedIn == 'false') : ?> <head> </head> <body> hiya </body> <?php endif;?> </html>

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• How to shrink Windows partition with unmovable files in dual boot installation

  - by Tim

  To install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7, I have to shrink Windows 7 partition C:. But due to some unmovable files, I cannot shrink as much as I plan by using Windows own shrinking tool. I guess many of you who have both OSes on the same hard drive must have similar experience. How to solve this problem? Any reference that can help is also appreciated! Thanks and regards! UPDATE: I have identified what unmovable file currently stop further shrinking: \ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Projects\SystemIndex\Indexer\CiFiles\00010015.wid::$DATA If I understand correctly, the file belongs to Windows Search. Can I set up somewhere in Windows system settings to temperately eliminate the file and similar ones (because there are many similar files under the same directory which I guess will also stand in the way of shrinking and unmovable by defrag)?

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• Advanced Charts Part I

  - by Tim Dexter

  Yeeeep! Another series looms ... this one could stretch out a bit and more options become available. Ever needed to generate something similar to these? Beyond what BIP can provide today but there are a few options; one from Oracle and R, now out in the wild and another out there from JFreeChart, open source and therefore almost free. Of course Google is ever present and they have been extending their chart support. I blogged the How for Google charts a while back here. Different ways to integrate but they can all help to close the charting gap for you.

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• Windows Phone 8 Launch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was the official coming out party for Windows Phone 8.  Below is a summary of the launch event.  There is a lot here to stay with me. They started with a commercial staring Joe Belfiore show how his Windows Phone 8 was personal too him which highlights something I think Microsoft has done well over the last couple of event: spotlight how Windows Phone is a different experience from other smartphones.  Joe actually called iPhone and Android “tired old metaphors" and explained that the idea around Windows Phone was to “reinvent the smartphone around you” as “the most personal smartphone operating system”.  The is the message that they need to drive home in their adds. The only real technical aspect we found out was that they have optimized the operating system around the dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set.  It seems like all of the other hardware goodies had already been announced.  The remainder of the event was centered around new features of the OS and app announcements. So what are we getting?  The integrated features included lock screen live tile, Data Sense, Rooms and Kids corner.  There wasn’t a lot of information about it, but Joe also talked about apps not just having live tiles, but being live apps that could integrate with wallet and the hub. The lock screen will now be able to be personalized with live tile data or even a photo slide show.  This gives the lock screen an even better ability to give you the information you want to know before you even unlock the phone. The Kids Corner allows you as a parent to setup an area on your phone that you kids can go into an use it without disturbing your apps.  They can play games or use apps that you have designated and will only see those apps.  It even has a special lock screen gesture just for the kids corner. Rooms allow you to organize your phone around the groups of people in your life.  You get a shared calendar, a room wall as well as shared notes beyond just being able to send messages to a group.  You can also invite people not on the Windows Phone platform to access an online version of the room. Data Sense is a new feature that gives you better control and understanding of your data plan usage.  You can see which applications are using data and it can automatically adjust they way your phone behaves as you get close to your data limit. Add to these features the fact that the entire Windows ecosystem is integrated with SkyDrive and you have an available anywhere experience that is unequaled by any other platform.  Your document, photos and music are available on your Windows Phone, Window 8 device and Xbox.  SkyDrive also doesn’t limit how long you can keep files like the competing cloud platforms and give more free storage. It was interesting the way they made the launch event more personal.  First Joe brought out his own kids to demo the Kids Corner.  They followed this up by bringing out Jessica Alba to discuss her experience on the Windows Phone 8.  They need to keep putting a face on the product instead of just showing features as a cold list. Then we get to apps.  We knew that the new Skype was coming, but we found out that it was created in such a way that it can receive calls without running consistently in the background which would eat up battery.  This announcement was follow by the coming Facebook app that is optimized for Windows Phone 8.  As a matter of fact they indicated that just after launch the marketplace would have 46 out of the top 50 apps used by all smartphone platforms.  In a rational world this tide with over 120,000 apps currently in the marketplace there should be no more argument about the Windows Phone ecosystem. For those of us who develop for Windows Phone and weren’t on the early adoption program will finally get access to the SDK tomorrow after an announcement at Build (more waiting).  Perhaps we will get a few new features then. In the end I wouldn’t say there were any huge surprises, but I am really excited about getting my hands on the devices next month and starting to develop.  Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Winodws Phone 8 Launch,Joe Belfiore,Jessica Alba

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 2: Platforms and Features

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 2 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. In the previous post I discussed what reasons a company might have for creating a smartphone application.  In this installment I will cover some of history and state of the different platforms as well as features that can be leveraged for building enterprise smartphone applications. Platforms Before you start choosing a platform to develop your solutions on it is good to understand how we got here and what features you can leverage. History To my memory we owe all of this to a product called the Apple Newton that came out in 1987. It was the first PDA and back then I was much more of an Apple fan.  I was very impressed with this device even though it never really went anywhere.  The Palm Pilot by US Robotics was the next major advancement in PDA. It had a simple short hand window that allowed for quick stylus entry.. Later, Windows CE came out and started the broadening of the PDA market. After that it was the Palm and CE operating systems that started showing up on cell phones and for some time these were the two dominant operating systems that were distributed with devices from multiple hardware vendors. Current The iPhone was the first smartphone to take away the stylus and give us a multi-touch interface.  It was a revolution in usability and really changed the attractiveness of smartphones for the general public.  This brought us to the beginning of the current state of the market with the concept of an online store that makes it easy for customers to get new features and functionality on demand. With Android, Google made this more than a one horse race.  Not only did they come to compete, their low cost actually made them the leading OS.  Of course what made Android so attractive also is its major fault.  It is so open that it has been a target for malware which leaves consumers exposed.  Fortunately for Google though, most consumers aren’t aware of the threat that they are under. Although Microsoft had put out one of the first smart phone operating systems with CE it had to play catch up and finally came out with the Windows Phone.  They have gone for a market approach between those of iOS and Android.  They support multiple hardware vendors like Google, but they kept a certification process for applications that is similar to Apple.  They also created a user interface that was different enough to give it a clear separation from the other two platforms. The result of all this is hundreds of millions of smartphones being sold monthly across all three platforms giving us a wide range of choices and challenges when it comes to developing solutions. Features So what are the features that make these devices flexible enough be considered for use in the enterprise? The biggest advantage of today's devices is network connectivity.  The ability to access information from multiple sources at a moment’s notice is critical for businesses.  Add to that the ability to communicate over a variety of text, voice and video modes and we have a powerful starting point. Every smartphone has a cameras and they are not just useful for posting to Instagram. We are seeing more applications such as Bing vision that allow us to scan just about any printed code or text to find information.  These capabilities have been made available to developers in the form of standard libraries for reading barcodes of just about an flavor and optical character recognition (OCR) interpretation. Bluetooth give us the ability to communicate with multiple devices. Whether these are headsets, keyboard or printers the wireless communication capabilities are just starting to evolve.  The more these wireless communication protocols grow, the more opportunities we will see to transfer data between users and a variety of devices. Local storage of information that can be called up even when the device cannot reach the network is the other big capability.  This give users the ability to work offline as well and transmit information when connections are restored. These are the tools that we have to work with to build applications that can be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage for companies that implement them. Coming Up In the third installment I will cover key concerns that you face when building enterprise smartphone apps. del.icio.us Tags: smartphones,enterprise smartphone Apps,architecture,iOS,Android,Windows Phone

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• BUILD 2013 Session&ndash;Alive With Activity

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionndashalive-with-activity.aspx Live tiles are what really add a ton of value to both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  As a developer it is important that you leverage this capability in order to make your apps more informative and give your users a reason to keep opening the app to find out details hinted at by tile updates. In this session Kraig Brockschmidt cover a wide array of dos and don’ts for implementing live tiles.  I was actually worried whether I would get much out of this session when Kraig started it off with the fact that his background is in HTML5 based apps which I have little interest in, but the subject almost didn’t come up during his talk.  It focused on things like making sure you have all the right size graphics and implementing all of the tile event handlers.  The session went on to discuss the message format for push notification and implementing lock screen notification and badges. As with the other day 1 sessions it was like drinking from a fire hose, but it was good stuff.  Check it out when they post it on Channel 9. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Live Tiles,Windows 8.1

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• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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• Who makes laptops for Ubuntu?

  - by Tim Lytle

  I'm looking for a laptop and would like to avoid the whole 'is this [specific configuration of hardware] compatible with Ubuntu?' process by finding a laptop manufactured with Ubuntu in mind. I know of system76, but are there any other manufacturers making laptops built to run a standard build of Ubuntu? I'm not counting Dell, as - from my experience - their 'Ubuntu' laptops/netbooks require their build, and because of that have their own set of compatibility issues. UPDATE: And as mentioned in the comments, Dell is no longer selling systems with Ubuntu to consumers.

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• 12.04 Install on a HP dv9000 screen problem

  - by Tim Kounadis

  Installed 12.04 on a HP dv9000 laptop. First tried to install with a Windows partition; then tried to install and move files from windows but not have a dual boot; then tried to install and have 12.04 have the system all to itself. The install was done off a burned CD... All went well. On reboot - it takes a while to come up the user ID and password challenge. After providing input screen renders and then turns black... First time Ubuntu user/installer - not technical :-)... Thanks for any help... I'll keepon digging in parallel.

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• Ubuntu 12.04 and Realtek Wireless Card Incompatible

  - by Tim

  Quick background: I installed Linux Ubuntu 12.04 on a Dell Inspiron 3520 after uninstalling Windows 8. A friend suggested to do this as opposed to buying a laptop with Linux pre-installed. Everything except the wireless card works. When I load up the laptop, I see a wireless animation as if it's trying to locate the wireless connection (for a while, then it goes blank), but no connections appear under the wireless option (under "Edit Connections" then "Wireless"). What I've tried: - Doing ndiswrapper. Failed. - Installing a few kernels for realtek. Failed.

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• BUILD 2013 Sessions&ndash;Building Great Windows Phone UI in XAML

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionsndashbuilding-great-windows-phone-ui-in-xaml.aspx Even the simplest of smart phone apps can be a challenge to give a compelling UI regardless of the platform.  Windows Phone and XAML are no exception.  That is what got my interest in this session by Shawn Oster.  He took a checklist type approach to the subject is good considering that is about the only way that many us get things done. Shawn started out giving us a set of bad design/good design examples.  They very effectively showed how good design gives a sense of professionalism to your app that could determine if your wonderful idea actually makes money is DOA. I won’t go over all his points since you will be able to get the session online, but a few of his checklist points included design from the beginning instead of as an afterthought, not being afraid to leave white space and making sure your application elegantly supports both landscape and portrait modes.  The many gems make this a must watch for any developers who struggle with visual design. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows Phone,XAML,Design

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• Spring Cleaning

  - by Tim Dexter

  I recently got a shiny new laptop; moving my shiz from old to new, was not the nightmare it used to be. I have gotten into the habit of using a second hard drive in the media bay where the CDROM normally sits. That drive contains my life's work with BIP. I can pull it out and plug it into another machine very easily. I have been sorting through some old directories and files, archiving some, sharing others with colleagues. For instance, a little dated but if you were looking for a list of Publisher reports available in EBS R12.1, here it is. Im trying to track down a more recent R12 instance and will re-post the document. I also found another gem; its a little out there in terms of usefulness but Im sharing it none the less. You can embed, locally or remotely reference SVG graphics (in XML format) and bring the images into the BIP outputs. Template and sample data here. A nice set of templates showing page number control and page suppression - they will need some explanation, so I'll save them for another post. The list goes on but I'll save them for later. Back to the clean up!

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• Preparing For TechEd

  - by Tim Murphy

  This being my first time going to TechEd and I want to make sure that I get the most out of it.  The first goal is to make sure that I get to the sessions that cover as many topics as possible.  This is important for me as a Solution Architect consultant specializing in Microsoft technologies.  To this end I have spent some time going through the sessions on the myTechEd site. The other reason for the trip is to connect with the Microsoft development community.  This includes both members of my local Midwest community and the global communities that I have only had online connections with.  Sharing the experience and getting a chance to exchange ideas with new and old friends is a great part of any convention. In any case, the time is getting close and I am looking forward to the trip. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd 2012,TechEd,community

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• Relation between " lines of the longest working program " in a language and familiarity with it?

  - by Tim

  In some computer master program online application, it says: Please list the programming languages in which you have written programs. For each language, indicate the length in lines of the longest working program you have written in that language. You may approximate, but only count those parts of the program that you wrote yourself. I don't quite remember that, and I have never counted the lines of each program. Do programmers always know approximately how many lines in each of his programs, and keep record of them? What is the relation between " lines of the longest working program " in a language and familiarity with it? Typically, how many lines will indicate the programmer being excellent, good, fair, or unfamiliar with the language? Is knowing "lines of the longest working program" really helpful?

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• TechEd 2012: Fast SQL Server

  - by Tim Murphy

  While I spend a certain amount of my time creating databases (coding around SQL Server and setup a server when I have to) it isn’t my bread and butter.  Since I have run into a number of time that SQL Server needed to be tuned I figured I would step out of my comfort zone and see what I can learn. Brent Ozar packed a mountain of information into his session on making SQL Server faster.  I’m not sure how he found time to hit all of his points since he was allowing the audience abuse him on Twitter instead of asking questions, but he managed it.  I also questioned his sanity since he appeared to be using a fruit laptop. He had my attention though when he stated that he had given up on telling people to not use “select *”. He posited that it could be fixed with hardware by caching the data in memory.  He continued by cautioning that having too many indexes could defeat this approach.  His logic was sound if not always practical, but it was a good place to start when determining the trade-offs you need to balance.  He was moving pretty fast, but I believe he was prescribing this solution predominately for OLTP database prior to moving on to data warehouse solutions. Much of the advice he gave for data warehouses is contained in the Microsoft Fast Track guidance so I won’t rehash it here.  To summarize the solution seems to be the proper balance memory, disk access speed and the speed of the pipes that get the data from storage to the CPU.  It appears to be sound guidance and the session gave enough information that going forward we should be able to find the details needed easily.  Just what the doctor ordered. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Database,Performance Tuning

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• Windows 8/Surface Lunch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was a big day for Microsoft with two separate launch event.  The first for Windows 8 and all of it’s hardware partners.  The second was specifically to introduce the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet.  Below are some of the take-aways I got from the webcasts. Windows 8 Launch The three general area that Microsoft focused on were the release of the OS itself, the public unveiling of the Windows Store and the new devices available from its hardware partners. The release of the OS focused on the fact that it will be available at mid-night tonight for both new PCs and for upgrades.  I can’t say that this interested me that much since it was already known to most people.  I think what they did show well was how easy the OS really is to use. The Windows Store is also not a new feature to those of us who have been running the pre-release versions of Windows 8 or have owned Windows Phone 7 for the past 2 years.  What was interesting is that the Windows Store launches with more apps available than any other platforms store at their respective launch.  I think this says a lot about how Microsoft focuses on the ability of developers to create software and make it available.  The of course were sure to emphasize that the Windows Store has better monetary terms for developers than its competitors. The also showed off the fact that XBox Music streaming is available for to all Windows 8 user for free.  Couple this with the Bing suite of apps that give you news, weather, sports and finance right out of the box and I think most people will find the environment a joy to use. I think the hardware demo, while quick and furious, really show where Windows shine: CHOICE!  They made a statement that over 1000 devices have been certified for Windows 8.  They showed tablets, laptops, desktops, all-in-ones and convertibles.  Since these devices have industry standard connectors they give a much wider variety of accessories and devices that you can use with them. Steve Balmer then came on stage and tried to see how many times he could use the “magical”.  He focused on how the Windows 8 OS is designed to integrate with SkyDrive, Skype and Outlook.com.  He also enforced that they think Windows 8 is the best choice for the Enterprise when it comes to protecting data and integrating across devices including Windows Phone 8. With that we were left to wait for the second event of the day. Surface Launch The second event of the day started with kids with magnets.  Ok, they were adults, but who doesn’t like playing with magnets.  Steven Sinofsky detached and reattached the Surface keyboard repeatedly, clearly enjoying himself.  It turns out that there are 4 magnets in the cover, 2 for alignment and 2 as connectors. They then went to giving us the details on the display.  The 10.6” display is optically bonded to the case and is optimized to reduce glare.  I think this came through very well in the demonstrations. The properties of the case were also a great selling point.  The VaporMg allowed them to drop the device on stage, on purpose, and continue working.  Of course they had to bring out the skate boards made from Surface devices. “It just has to feel right” was the reason they gave for many of their design decisions from the weight and size of the device to the way the kickstand and camera work together.  While this gave you the feeling that the whole process was trial and error you could tell that a lot of science went into the specs.  This included making sure that the magnets were strong enough to hold the cover on and still have a 3 year old remove the cover without effort. I am glad that they also decided the a USB port would be part of the spec since it give so many options.  They made the point that this allows Surface to leverage over 420 million existing devices.  That works for me. The last feature that I really thought was important was the microSD port.  Begin stuck with the onboard memory has been an aggravation of mine with many of the devices in the market today. I think they did job of really getting the audience to understand why you want this platform and this particular device.  Using personal examples like creating a video of a birthday party and being in it or the fact that the device was being used to live blog the event and control the lights and presentation.  They showed very well that it was not only fun but very capable of getting real work done.  Handing out tablets to the crowd didn’t hurt either.  In the end I really wanted a Surface even though I really have no need for one on a daily basis.  Great job Microsoft! del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Windows 8 Luanch

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• How to start to gain experience of managing a project

  - by Tim

  There are some job requirements of project management experience for a programmer, such as: the candidate has to have some experience managing a project, not necessarily with subordinates, but rather having worked on a project all the way from design down to test. I was wondering what "subordinates" mean here? if there are some books, webpages or elsewhere with both general guideline and simple practical sample projects to help one get some basics about the whole process of a project. I am particularly interested in projects for both Linux and Windows, in C, C++, Python, Java. I am considering to start by playing on my own, not eager to find a company yet. My major was not CS, so I might lack the basics.

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• Add Matlab to main menu

  - by Tim

  I was trying to add the installed matlab to the menu of Applications under Ubuntu 10.10. I clicked System-Preference-Main Menu - Programming - New Item, where I input the Matlab file .../MatlabR2010b/bin/matlab as the command, and selected the type to be "Application". Then I finished. But when i click the item in the menu of Applications, the Matlab icon shows up a few seconds and then nothing else happens. If I select the type to be "Application in Terminal" in the last step of adding Matlab to the menu of Applications, then when I click the item in the menu of Applications, there will be firstly a terminal window and then the Matlab command window. So I was wondering how to solve the problem of Matlab not starting when the type has been selected to be "Application"? Also is there a way to eliminate the terminal appearing when the type has been selected to be "Application in Terminal"? Thanks!

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• Algorithm for grouping friends at the cinema [closed]

  - by Tim Skauge

  I got a brain teaser for you - it's not as simple as it sounds so please read and try to solve the issue. Before you ask if it's homework - it's not! I just wish to see if there's an elegant way of solving this. Here's the issue: X-number of friends want's to go to the cinema and wish to be seated in the best available groups. Best case is that everyone sits together and worst case is that everyone sits alone. Fewer groups are preferred over more groups. Sitting alone is least preferred. Input is the number of people going to the cinema and output should be an array of integer arrays that contains: Ordered combinations (most preferred are first) Number of people in each group Below are some examples of number of people going to the cinema and a list of preferred combinations these people can be seated: 1 person: 1 2 persons: 2, 1+1 3 persons: 3, 2+1, 1+1+1 4 persons: 4, 2+2, 3+1, 2+1+1, 1+1+1+1 5 persons: 5, 3+2, 4+1, 2+2+1, 3+1+1, 2+1+1+1, 1+1+1+1+1 6 persons: 6, 3+3, 4+2, 2+2+2, 5+1, 3+2+1, 2+2+1+1, 2+1+1+1+1, 1+1+1+1+1+1 Example with more than 7 persons explodes in combinations but I think you get the point by now. Question is: What does an algorithm look like that solves this problem? My language by choice is C# so if you could give an answer in C# it would be fantastic!

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