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• Speaking at Mix11

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In April Microsoft will hold the next MIX event. MIX was usually targeted at web designers and developers but has grown over the years to be more a general conference focused on the web and devices. In other words: everything the normal consumer might encounter. It’s not your typical developers conference, although you’ll find many developers there as well. But next to the developers you’ll probably run into designers and user experience specialists as well. This year I am proud to say that I will be one of the people presenting there. Together with all the Surface MVP’s in the world (sounds impressive, but there are only 7 of us) we’ll host a panel discussion on all things Surface, NUI and everything else that matches those subjects. Here’s what the abstract says: The Natural User Interface (NUI) is a hot topic that generates a lot of excitement, but there are only a handful of companies doing real innovation with NUIs and most of the practical experience in the NUI style of design and development is limited to a small number of experts. The Microsoft Surface MVPs are a subset of these experts that have extensive real-world experience with Microsoft Surface and other NUI devices. This session is a panel featuring the Microsoft Surface MVPs and an unfiltered discussion with each other and the audience about the state of the art in NUI design and development. We will share our experiences and ideas, discuss what we think NUI will look like in the near future, and back up our statements with cutting-edge demonstrations prepared by the panelists involving combinations of Microsoft Surface 2.0, Kinect, and Windows Phone 7. We, as Surface MVPs think we are more than just Surface oriented. We like to think we are more NUI MVP’s. But since that’s not a technology with Microsoft you can’t actually become a NUI MVP so Surface is the one that comes the closest. We are currently working on the details of our session but believe me: it will blow you away. Several people we talked to have said this could potentially be the best session of Mix. Quite a challenge, but we’re up for it! Of course I won’t be telling you exactly what we’re going to do in Las Vegas but rest assured that when you visit our session you’ll leave with a lot of new ideas and hopefully be inspired to bring into practice what you’ve seen. Even if the technology we’ll show you isn’t readily available yet. So, if you are in Las Vegas between April 12th and 14th, please join Joshua Blake, Neil Roodyn, Rick Barraza, Bart Roozendaal, Josh Santangelo, Nicolas Calvi and myself for some NUI fun! See you in Vegas! Tags van Technorati: mix11,las vegas,surface,nui,kinecct

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• URL rewrite and domain frame

  - by Dennis

  I have registered the domain www.posti.sh at nic.sh. The website is on the server www.myskoob.com/postish. Unfortunately, nic.sh does not support frames, i.e. that the domain stays posti.sh as it forwards to www.myskoob.com/postish - so I thought about a URL rewrite on the server. Unfortunately I have no idea how rewriting works - I am thankful for explanations - but I would also like to ask whether this is generally possible. What I need is: The server needs to recognize that the folder postish is accessed Depending on the file that is opened, it needs to rewrite the url to www.posti.sh/<-according filename here- Also, the server needs to understand that a link to www.posti.sh/about.php links to www.myskoob.com/postish/about.php and likewise for other files - at the moment, when I type in posti.sh/about.php it redirects to http://www.myskoob.com/postishabout.php, which does not exist All this should be possible irrespective of whether the url contains a "www" at the beginning or not A plus but not necessary would be that it does not display the .php extensions Would that generally be possible? If not, what would be the alternatives? If anyone knows how to do it, any code and/or way to do it would be much appreciated!

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• Ubuntu Upgrade breaks firefox

  - by Dennis

  I upgraded ubuntu, but the upgrade broke firefox, adobe flash plugin and corrupted the package database. I ran the suggested catalog repair, no change. I ran apt-get -f install, no change. I ran apt purge packageName, no change. How can I resolve this circular dependency? Here are some details: installArchives() failed: dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of adobe-flashplugin: firefox (12.0+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.1) breaks adobe-flashplugin (<= 11.1.102.63-0precise1) and is installed. Version of adobe-flashplugin to be configured is 10.0.32.18-1intrepid1. dpkg: error processing adobe-flashplugin (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of adobe-flash-properties-gtk: adobe-flash-properties-gtk depends on adobe-flashplugin (= 11.2.202.235-0precise1); however: Version of adobe-flashplugin on system is 10.0.32.18-1intrepid1. dpkg: error processing adobe-flash-properties-gtk (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: adobe-flashplugin adobe-flash-properties-gtk Error in function: dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of adobe-flash-properties-gtk: adobe-flash-properties-gtk depends on adobe-flashplugin (= 11.2.202.235-0precise1); however: Version of adobe-flashplugin on system is 10.0.32.18-1intrepid1. dpkg: error processing adobe-flash-properties-gtk (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

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• C Programming Language and UNIX Pioneer Passes Away

  According to a statement given to the New York Times by Ritchie's brother Bill, Dennis Ritchie was living alone at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, prior to his death. Richie's health had reportedly deteriorated, and his last years were made difficult by the after effects of treatments for prostate cancer and heart disease. In addition to his brother Bill, Ritchie is survived by his sister Lynn and his other brother John. Dennis Ritchie was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1941. His father was an engineer with Bell Labs and his mother was a homemaker. His family eventually moved...

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• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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• Multithreading: Communication from Parent thread to child thread

  - by Dennis Nowland

  I have a List of threads normally 3 threads each of the threads reference a webbrowser control that communicates with the parent control to populate a datagridview. What I need to do is when the user clicks the button in a datagridviewButtonCell corresponding data will be sent back to the webbrowser control within the child thread that originally communicated with the main thread. but when I try to do this I receive the following error message 'COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used.' my problem is that I can not figure out how to reference the relevant webbrowser control. I would appreciate any help that anyone can give me. The language used is c# winforms .Net 4.0 targeted Code sample: The following code is executed when user click on the Start button in the main thread private void StartSubmit(object idx) { /* method used by the new thread to initialise a 'myBrowser' inherited from the webbrowser control each submitters object is an a custom Control called 'myBrowser' which holds detail about the function of the object eg: */ //index: is an integer value which represents the threads id int index = (int)idx; //submitters[index] is an instance of the 'myBrowser' control submitters[index] = new myBrowser(); //threads integer id submitters[index]._ThreadNum = index; // naming convention used 'browser' +the thread index submitters[index].Name = "browser" + index; //set list in 'myBrowser' class to hold a copy of the list found in the main thread submitters[index]._dirs = dirLists[index]; // suppress and javascript errors the may occur in the 'myBrowser' control submitters[index].ScriptErrorsSuppressed = true; //execute eventHandler submitters[index].DocumentCompleted += new WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventHandler(DocumentCompleted); //advance to the next un-opened address in datagridview the navigate the that address //in the 'myBrowser' control. SetNextDir(submitters[index]); } private void btnStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { // used to fill list<string> for use in each thread. fillDirs(); //connections is the list<Thread> holding the thread that have been opened //1 to 10 maximum for (int n = 0; n < (connections.Length); n++) { //initialise new thread to the StartSubmit method passing parameters connections[n] = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(StartSubmit)); // naming convention used conn + the threadIndex ie: 'conn1' to 'conn10' connections[n].Name = "conn" + n.ToString(); // due to the webbrowser control needing to be ran in the single //apartment state connections[n].SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); //start thread passing the threadIndex connections[n].Start(n); } } Once the 'myBrowser' control is fully loaded I am inserting form data into webforms found in webpages loaded via data enter into rows found in the datagridview. Once a user has entered the relevant details into the different areas in the row the can then clicking a DataGridViewButtonCell that has tha collects the data entered and then has to be send back to the corresponding 'myBrowser' object that is found on a child thread. Thank you

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• Blogging from Office RT

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  During the last Build conference all attendees were given a brand new sparkling exciting Surface RT device (I love that machine despite its name but that's beside the point). On it came a version of Office 2013 RT, or better: the preview version. Now, I translated that term "Preview" to "Beta". Which is OK, since I've been using a lot of beta products from Microsoft and they all were great. And then I wanted to post a blogposting from Word. I knew I could, I have been doing this for a long time (I prefer Live Writer but that isn't available on Windows 8 RT). So I wrote the entry and hit "Publish". Instead of my blogsite I got a nice non-descriptive error telling me I couldn't post. So I fired up my other (Intel based) Win8 tablet, opened Word RT Preview, it loaded my blogpost (you've got to love the automatic synchronization through Skydrive) and tried from that machine. Same error. So, I installed Live Writer (remember, the other machine is Intel based) and posted from there. That worked like a charm. Apparently, there was something wrong with Word. I gave up and didn't think about it anymore. Yet… what you're reading now is written in Word 2013 RT on my Surface RT. So what did do? Simple: I updated from the Preview version to the final version. That's all there was to it. So…. If you're still on the preview I urge you to upgrade. You need to go to the "classic desktop update" window instead of going through the Windows Store App style update since Office is a desktop system, but once you do that you'll have the full version as well. Happy blogging!

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• apache domain redirect to subfolder

  - by Dennis

  I have a hosting account with godaddy. Its a linux system running apache. The way they do their setup is your primary domain is the root folder. When you add a subdomain its in a subfolder of the root which sucks. I want to setup a subfolder structure to organize my domains.. I called godday support and they said to use redirects.. but did not know how to do that.. How its setup now: primary domain: www.domain.com / sub.domain.com /sub I want to create a directory structure and then redirect to each but only show www.domain.com in the url www.domain.com /domain/www sub.domain.com /domain/sub I tried using: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?domain.com$ RewriteRule ^(/)?$ domain/www [L] but it just changes the url to www.domain.com/domain/www Can this be done in htaccess?

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• Where&rsquo;s my start button?

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I have to be honest here for a moment. The one thing people most complain about when they talk about Windows 8 is that they miss the Start Button. You know, that dreaded thing that everybody hated when it was introduced… I usually don’t go into these kinds of discussions unless I am personally involved but this one I cannot let go. Why are people doing this? Windows 8 is a great OS. They have changed, updated and perfected so many things so there is enough to talk or write about. Yet, all articles or discussions come down to “Where’s my start button?” In order to save myself from having to explain this every single time I wrote this post and from now on I will simply refer to this blog when I get asked that question. Here it is. Your start menu is there. It’s right in front of your nose. It’s two dimensional, it’s got huge buttons (although they are more than just buttons, they’re alive and therefore called Live Tiles). Just go through those tiles and click what ever you want to start up. Don’t want to look for an item? Just start typing. Really it is that simple. When you are on the start screen just start typing (part of) the name of the program you want and you’ll find it.  As you see in the attached example I started typing “word” and it found Word, Wordfeud, Wordament etc. If you want to find something else besides a program (say you want to change the region you’re in) just click on Settings (it will already show you how many hits there are in that section). People, my request is: dive into something before you complain about it. Look around. This feature is so much easier to use than the old stuff. But you have to know about it. So. I won’t get into this discussion anymore.

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• Is /home encryption useful on a server?

  - by Dennis

  I've got a question about the use of encryption: I set up a Ubuntu 12.04 server to use it as a router, file server for backups and webserver. Of course, it is probably not the best idea to put backups on the same system as a web server, but it is only for private usage and I don't want to spend too much money. So I thought it is not a bad idea to set up /home-encryption for the backup-user-account with which I do my backups. But in the same moment, another quesiton arises: Does it still makes sense? Via SSH, root login is disabled. And access to the /home-folder of that user is reduced to the user itself. So the only scenario to access the /home-folder is to connect keyboard/display to the server, login as root and change to /home. Or have I overseen a scenario? In case I am right, you can only access the /home-folder from "outside" as the backup-user. But than, encryption also doesn't make sense anymore. Am I right about that thoughts? Or do you still see a way to access the /home-folder of the backup user so that encryption still makes sense? Thanks for your help in advance!

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• Clicks counting and crawler bots

  - by Dennis

  I am currently running a small affiliate-program for Facebook users. We use an auto-poster to publish links to fan pages. Every hit is stored in our database and we have included a 24 hour reload block for the IP-addresses. My problem right now is that the PHP script also stores every hit from all the bots that crawls my website. Now I was thinking to block those bots with the robots.txt of my website but I am afraid that this will have a negative effect on my AdSense ads. Does anybody have an idea for me how to work this out?

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• Is Grub installed when Ubuntu is the only OS installed?

  - by Dennis

  I have a simple question concerning Grub. When Ubuntu it's the only system installed on a machine, Grub doesn't appear when the computer it's turned on, my question is: When Ubuntu is the only system, Grub it's not installed on MBR? I has this doubt when I tried the ASPM command in Grub, to see if it could save some battery on my notebook, and the difference was only 0.4W. I don't even know if it made some effect or it's just a normal oscilation. Thanks.

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• All video players display black screen.

  - by Dennis

  I'm working in 10.04 Lucid. All my video players (Movie Player and VLC) and the preview windows in editors (OpenShot and Pitivi) will only display a black screen when playing a video. The sound is fine and the videos work fine on other computers. I have tried multiple formats from varying sources .MOV taken from old ffmpeg projects, .AVI straight from a camera, .MP4 using h.264 from OpenShot on another system, .OGV from a gtk-recordmydesktop session on this very computer. I even get a pure black screen in the viewer when starting a remote session in VNC. This box has a GeForce 8400 GS using the Nvidia drivers in case it may be a card problem or setting.

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Windows Phone 7 event

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  This might not be of interest to anyone living outside of the Netherlands, but I still wanted to share this. On march 10th the dutch .net usergroup dotNed (of which I am chairman) organizes a LAN party together with the company Sevensteps. Sevensteps is a big player in the Surface area: they are one of the few companies whose applications are part of the standard tools you get when you buy a Surface unit. They were also present at the CES in Las Vegas earlier this year to introduce the SUR40, as mentioned in my previous post. But they do not only develop software for the Surface, they also do a lot of interesting things on other platforms. One of these is Windows Phone 7, or WP7 in short. Sevensteps and dotNed have joined forces to organize a free full day event where we will develop a WP7 application. The people attending will be developers (experienced and not so experienced on WP7), designers and all other sorts of people you’d expect in a project team. The day will start around 9.00 am and will end when the app is finished. We will form teams of both experienced and not experienced developers so that we can learn from each other. Each team will have their own task to perform, and in the end all parts will be assembled to form a killer WP7 app. As with everything that dotNed does this event is free for everyone. Microsoft will pay for dinner, Sevensteps will provide the room, lunch and ideas (and their expertise of course) and the rest is up to us! So if you are in The Netherlands that date, and you feel like hanging out with other WP7 or wannabe WP7 developers, join us! For more information (in Dutch) see http://www.dotned.nl Tags van Technorati: wp7,dotned

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• How can I make an unmounted / unmountable NTFS disk not show up in the nautilus devices area?

  - by Dennis

  I have an idea that my /etc/fstab is a real mish-mash and I don't remember how it got that way, first of all it looks like this UUID=9EB80807B807DD21 /media/Storage ntfs-3g users 0 0 UUID=a60397fd-964a-45b1-ad35-53c8a4bee010 / ext4 defaults 0 1 UUID=1764825d-b8ba-4620-b3b0-e979b6f4f5c4 swap swap sw 0 0 UUID=255DA1E406E29DBC /media/sda2 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0 UUID=2CCCF161CCF1262C /mnt/sda1 ntfs-3g umask=000 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 vfat noauto 0 0 I started with an old XP install on disk /dev/sda that I don't use anymore but didn't want to delete, so I shrunk the XP partition, added a NTFS partition that would be common to both systems (Labeled it "Common" in XP), then installed Lucid on an extended ext4 partition. On this disk of course the ext4 system partition comes up as /, the go between partition auto-mounts on /media/sda1 but shows up in Nautilus as COMMOM, while the XP system disk does not show up in Nautilus, but I can get to it by navigating to /mnt/sda1. A second hard drive (/dev/sdb) that I stuck in was already formatted NTFS with a bunch of stuff and labeled "Storage". It auto-mounts to /media/Storage but another un-mounted disk also shows up in the Nautilus device area called Storage but it can't be mounted (Here and in the "Places" are the only times it appears) I would primarily like this non-existant (or already mounted depending on how you look at it) disk to not show up, but I wouldn't mind an explanation of why one labeled partition auto-mounts to a /media mount point but shows up by label, one does not show up as mounted at all but mounts to a /mnt mount point and is there for navigation, and one is mounted to a directory of the same name as the label. I would love to have some consistancy / direction on what is proper in this circumstance. No doubt I caused this with the fstab but I really don't remember what my rational was if I edited it manually

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• WUBI install not completing on Dell Latitude D600 using 10.04 and 10.10

  - by Dennis

  While trying to install a dual boot from LiveCD, WUBI seems to go through all the steps correctly. It unpacks everything, reboots, starts to finalize the install, brings up the install slide show and seems to do everything necessary. The slide show disappears and what is left is what would normally be the background, however there is no login, no panels, no response to any input or keystrokes. Using 10.04 I had a mouse cursor (working) with 10.10, not even that. In 10.04 The only way to reboot is to shutdown using the power switch. When it reboots it goes through the "finalizing install" phase again. In 10.10 if I hit the power switch it brings up a shutdown menu that doesn't respond to the keyboard, but does shutdown when the 60 seconds expire.

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• Why bother writing an Windows 8 app?

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  So you want to know more about development for Window 8. Great! There are lots of reasons you should be excited about this. Since I don’t know why YOU are interested in this, I’ll make a list of reasons people can choose from. (as a side note: whenever I talk about Win8 development I am referring to the Metro Style / WinRt side of things. Apps for the ‘classic’ desktop side of Win8 on Intel are business as usual…) So… Why would you care about making an app for Windows 8? 1. It’s cool. Let’s not beat around the bush: if you like development for a hobby then you’ll love to work on this new platform. You can create apps in a relative short time (short time as in compared to writing a new CRM system) and that makes it great for a hobby product. 2. You’ll stand out. Hey, we all need an ego boost every now and then. We all need to feel special. So if you can manage to be one of the first to have you app in the Store then you’ll likely to be noticed. Just close your eyes for a moment and image you standing in a bar. It’s crowded, and then you casually say “Oh yeah, I just had my app certified and it’s in the Win8 store now”. People will stop talking, will offer you drinks and beautiful women / gorgeous man / furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (whatever your preferences are) will propose. Or maybe not. Anyway…. 3. Make some cash! IDC predicts there will be about 350,000,000 Windows 8 licenses sold in the next year. Think about that number. 350,000,000. And they all have access to the Store. Where you’re app will be. With one little click they can select it, download and somehow magically $1.00 or $2.00 from their bank account is transferred to yours. Now, I am not saying that all of those people will download and buy your app but what if only 1% of them did? Remember: there aren’t that many apps available yet….. 4. Learn. Creating new small apps is a great way to learn new stuff. Yes, you could read about it (on this blog for instance) but the only way to learn something is to do it. So be prepared for the future and learn something new by doing it.Write an app! Now! 5. The biggie (for me at least): it’s fun. Even if you remove the points above it’s still fun to write for these devices and this platform. Now some of you will say : “But why not write a great app for IOS or Android?” I think this is a valid question. Of course the novelty of the platform wears out and points 2 and 3 from above list will not be as relevant as it is today. But still 1 4 and 5 remain. And don’t forget: if you already work on the Microsoft platform it’s not that hard to learn this new Win8 stuff. If you have done some XAML development (be it WPF or Silverlight) you are almost there in becoming a good Win8 developer. So you’ll be more productive much sooner than when you have to learn Objective C or Java. Even if you’re a HTML / Javascript developer (I say developer here, not designer) you’ll be up to speed on Win8 development pretty soon. Yes, you, that funky Web Developer who lives and breathes HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript / Node.Js / JQuery: you too can be a Win8 developer. A first class Win8 developer! So.. Download the stuff you need from http://dev.windows.com install Windows 8 and Visual Studio 12 and by the time you’re ready I’ll be working on the next article: how to do all this? Happy coding!

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• Navigation in Win8 Metro Style applications

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In Windows 8, Touch is, as they say, a first class citizen. Now, to be honest: they also said that in Windows 7. However in Win8 this is actually true. Applications are meant to be used by touch. Yes, you can still use mouse, keyboard and pen and your apps should take that into account but touch is where you should focus on initially. Will all users have touch enabled devices? No, not in the first place. I don’t think touchscreens will be on every device sold next year. But in 5 years? Who knows? Don’t forget: if your app is successful it will be around for a long time and by that time touchscreens will be everywhere. Another reason to embrace touch is that it’s easier to develop a touch-oriented app and then to make sure that keyboard, nouse and pen work as doing it the other way around. Porting a mouse-based application to a touch based application almost never works. The reverse gives you much more chances for success. That being said, there are some things that you need to think about. Most people have more than one finger, while most users only use one mouse at the time. Still, most touch-developers translate their mouse-knowledge to the touch and think they did a good job. Martin Tirion from Microsoft said that since Touch is a new language people face the same challenges they do when learning a new real spoken language. The first thing people try when learning a new language is simply replace the words in their native language to the newly learned words. At first they don’t care about grammar. To a native speaker of that other language this sounds all wrong but they still will be able to understand what the intention was. If you don’t believe me: try Google translate to translate something for you from your language to another and then back and see what happens. The same thing happens with Touch. Most developers translate a mouse-click into a tap-event and think they’re done. Well matey, you’re not done. Not by far. There are things you can do with a mouse that you cannot do with touch. Think hover. A mouse has the ability to ‘slide’ over UI elements. Touch doesn’t (I know: with Pen you can do this but I’m talking about actual fingers here). A touch is either there or it isn’t. And right-click? Forget about it. A click is a click.  Yes, you have more than one finger but the machine doesn’t know which finger you use… The other way around is also true. Like I said: most users only have one mouse but they are likely to have more than one finger. So how do we take that into account? Thinking about this is really worth the time: you might come up with some surprisingly good ideas! Still: don’t forget that not every user has touch-enabled hardware so make sure your app is useable for both groups. Keep this in mind: we’re going to need it later on! Now. Apps should be easy to use. You don’t want your user to read through pages and pages of documentation before they can use the app. Imagine that spotter next to an airfield suddenly seeing a prototype of a Concorde 2 landing on the nearby runway. He probably wants to enter that information in our app NOW and not after he’s taken a 3 day course. Even if he still has to download the app, install it for the first time and then run it he should be on his way immediately. At least, fast enough to note down the details of that unique, rare and possibly exciting sighting he just did. So.. How do we do this? Well, I am not talking about games here. Games are in a league of their own. They fall outside the scope of the apps I am describing. But all the others can roughly be characterized as being one of two flavors: the navigation is either flat or hierarchical. That’s it. And if it’s hierarchical it’s no more than three levels deep. Not more. Your users will get lost otherwise and we don’t want that. Flat is simple. Just imagine we have one screen that is as high as our physical screen is and as wide as you need it to be. Don’t worry if it doesn’t fit on the screen: people can scroll to the right and left. Don’t combine up/down and left/right scrolling: it’s confusing. Next to that, since most users will hold their device in landscape mode it’s very natural to scroll horizontal. So let’s use that when we have a flat model. The same applies to the hierarchical model. Try to have at most three levels. If you need more space, find a way to group the items in such a way that you can fit it in three, very wide lanes. At the highest level we have the so called hub level. This is the entry point of the app and as such it should give the user an immediate feeling of what the app is all about. If your app has categories if items then you might show these categories here. And while you’re at it: also show 2 or 3 of the items itself here to give the user a taste of what lies beneath. If the user selects a category you go to the section part. Here you show several sections (again, go as wide as you need) with again some detail examples. After that: the details layer shows each item. By giving some samples of the underlaying layer you achieve several things: you make the layer attractive by showing several different things, you show some highlights so the user sees actual content and you provide a shortcut to the layers underneath. The image below is borrowed from the http://design.windows.com website which has tons and tons of examples: For our app we’ll use this layout. So what will we show? Well, let’s see what sorts of features our app has to offer. I’ll repeat them here: Note planes Add pictures of that plane Notify friends of new spots Share new spots on social media Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down the runway they take I am sure you can think of some more items but for now we'll use these. In the hub we’ll show something that represents “Spots”, “Friends”, “Social”. Apparently we have an inner list of spotter-friends that are in the app, while we also have to whole world in social. In the layer below we show something else, depending on what the user choose. When they choose “Spots” we’ll display the last spots, last spots by our friends (so we can actually jump from this category to the one next to it) and so on. When they choose a “spot” (or press the + icon in the App bar, which I’ll talk about next time) they go to the lowest and final level that shows details about that spot, including a picture, date and time and the notes belonging to that entry. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to organize your app this way. If you don’t have enough room in these three layers you probably could easily get away with grouping items. Take a look at our hub: we have three completely different things in one place. If you still can’t fit it all in in a logical and consistent way, chances are you are trying to do too much in this app. Go back to your mission statement, determine if it is specific enough and if your feature list helps that statement or makes it unclear. Go ahead. Give it a go! Next time we’ll talk about the look and feel, the charms and the app-bar….

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• language problem ubuntu 13.10

  - by Dennis Rasmussen

  I just installed Ubuntu 13.10, and really enjoy it. I am from Denmark, and use the supported Danish keyboard-layout (and chose it as default in the install), but whenever i reboot Ubuntu switches back to English keyboard-layout, though the little icon in the panel says it's in Danish. I have to click on the icon every time to change it back to Danish. I tried removing the English keyboard-layout, but it didn't help. Any suggestions?

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• How do I get the Touchpad Settings working on a Dell XPS 13" Ultrabook?

  - by Dennis Wisnia

  Today I got an brand new Dell XPS 13 and I really like it. Wifi/Bluetooth/Brightness works very well. But only the Touchpad makes me insane. Okay, Multitouch is really nice and i love it on my Macbook but... i must click to click. How can I set up that is an "touch" to click? Its makes me insane. click, click, click.. Can I configure it? Update: I checked the proc/devices and got: I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0005 Version=0000 N: Name="ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse" P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0 S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input11 U: Uniq= H: Handlers=mouse0 event11 B: PROP=0 B: EV=7 B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 B: REL=103 Its really bad - and anyone have an Idea that Ubuntu thinks that is an Touchpad??

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• Language problem in Ubuntu 13.10

  - by Dennis Rasmussen

  I just installed Ubuntu 13.10, and really enjoy it. I am from Denmark, and use the supported Danish keyboard-layout (and chose it as default in the install), but whenever I reboot Ubuntu switches back to English keyboard-layout, though the little icon in the panel says it's in Danish. I have to click on the icon every time to change it back to Danish. I tried removing the English keyboard-layout, but it didn't help. Any suggestions?

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• Approach for packing 2D shapes while minimizing total enclosing area

  - by Dennis

  Not sure on my tags for this question, but in short .... I need to solve a problem of packing industrial parts into crates while minimizing total containing area. These parts are motors, or pumps, or custom-made components, and they have quite unusual shapes. For some, it may be possible to assume that a part === rectangular cuboid, but some are not so simple, i.e. they assume a shape more of that of a hammer or letter T. With those, (assuming 2D shape), by alternating direction of top & bottom, one can pack more objects into the same space, than if all tops were in the same direction. Crude example below with letter "T"-shaped parts: ***** xxxxx ***** x ***** *** ooo * x vs * x vs * x vs * x o * x * xxxxx * x * x o xxxxx xxx Right now we are solving the problem by something like this: using CAD software, make actual models of how things fit in crate boxes make estimates of actual crate dimensions & write them into Excel file (1) is crazy amount of work and as the result we have just a limited amount of possible entries in (2), the Excel file. The good things is that programming this is relatively easy. Given a combination of products to go into crates, we do a lookup, and if entry exists in the Excel (or Database), we bring it out. If it doesn't, we say "sorry, no data!". I don't necessarily want to go full force on making up some crazy algorithm that given geometrical part description can align, rotate, and figure out best part packing into a crate, given its shape, but maybe I do.. Question Well, here is my question: assuming that I can represent my parts as 2D (to be determined how), and that some parts look like letter T, and some parts look like rectangles, which algorithm can I use to give me a good estimate on the dimensions of the encompassing area, while ensuring that the parts are packed in a minimal possible area, to minimize crating/shipping costs? Are there approximation algorithms? Seeing how this can get complex, is there an existing library I could use? My thought / Approach My naive approach would be to define a way to describe position of parts, and place the first part, compute total enclosing area & dimensions. Then place 2nd part in 0 degree orientation, repeat, place it at 180 degree orientation, repeat (for my case I don't think 90 degree rotations will be meaningful due to long lengths of parts). Proceed using brute force "tacking on" other parts to the enclosing area until all parts are processed. I may have to shift some parts a tad (see 3rd pictorial example above with letters T). This adds a layer of 2D complexity rather than 1D. I am not sure how to approach this. One idea I have is genetic algorithms, but I think those will take up too much processing power and time. I will need to look out for shape collisions, as well as adding extra padding space, since we are talking about real parts with irregularities rather than perfect imaginary blocks. I'm afraid this can get geometrically messy fairly fast, and I'd rather keep things simple, if I can. But what if the best (practical) solution is to pack things into different crate boxes rather than just one? This can get a bit more tricky. There is human element involved as well, i.e. like parts can go into same box and are thus a constraint to be considered. Some parts that are not the same are sometimes grouped together for shipping and can be considered as a common grouped item. Sometimes customers want things shipped their way, which adds human element to constraints. so there will have to be some customization.

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• google earth 7, 32bit in 12.10 runs without error but there is no image (globe)

  - by Dennis

  Everything seemed to install fine. I can start google earth and all layers are available, I can even zoom in and look at 3-D buildings. But there is absolutely no image data displayed at all. If you look at the whole globe the outlines are there on an invisible globe. As you zoom in the base looks dark grey almost black but there is no image. I have tried. Tools Options Graphics Safe Mode Tools Options Texture colors all combinations Tools Options Cache (tried several changes to the numbers) lspci shows Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) Running on a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop (1.5Gb memory)

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