The Ramblings of Rob Cooper

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED! robzyc.spaces.live.com > cantgrokwontgrok.blogspot.com

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:07:31 GMT

So, I was thinking last night, following on from me previous post, I am going to migrate to Blogger and cease posting to Live Spaces.

If you are intelligent/crazy enough to be following my blog, then please update your RSS reader to: http://cantgrokwontgrok.blogspot.com.

I like the title better, definitely describes me a lot more accurately :D

Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to get more feedback from [any] followers, as well as “do more” with the blog (polls etc). This will be both interesting for me as well as possibly enhance my learning, as well as others. We are all on a journey here.

Also, as a note to Microsoft and the People on the Live Team:

Just because I am leaving Spaces, it does mean I am leaving Live. I LOVE the other things happening with Live, and I really cannot stop praising Live Writer, Live SkyDrive and especially Live Mesh (as well as the other bits going on)! Keep up the great work, I really hope Spaces comes on enough to perhaps attract people wanting “more” back to it.

See you at “Can’t Grok, Won’t Grok”!

Thinking of Migrating from Live Spaces to Blogger

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:10:04 GMT

So, looks like I am again reviewing some of the services I use against others I could be.

I have actually been contemplating leaving Live Spaces for a while. Sadly, I don’t think Spaces have moved enough in the right direction. I think I have remained is due to the excellent production on the rest of the Live Services teams (Writer, SkyDrive, Mesh etc.). However, none of these require this blog.

Put simply, I dislike the following:

Ad banners.
Anonymous comments are not allowed.
Email notifications of comments etc are not available.
Unable to choose an address I want for the blog.
Lack of support for custom scripts.
Tagging/Categorisation is extremely limited.
Only 1 space/blog per account.

And I do like:

The look, I think its nice and clean.
Works superbly with Live Writer.

So, watch this space, I may be migrating, need to run a few more tests to see what Blogger can do for me, but so far looking positive.

Privacy Online – How Much Would a “I’ll Google You” Get About You?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:47:00 GMT

Even though online privacy has been a subject that everyone has known about for a long time, I still cant help but feel that with the explosion in social networking, a lot of the basic principles seem to have been lost somewhere.

By “principles” I mean:

Make yourself as hard to personally identify as possible.
People on the Internet should not be able to find where you live (unless you want them to).
You need to protect your friends and family as well as yourself, don’t put their information on display without permission.
In short, people should only ever know what you would be happy with someone shouting from a top of the building, with everyone stood around it, and pointing at you.
Not sharing information from one source with another (e.g. automatic “I’ll email your friends for you, just give me your ID and password for [service]”.

Some of the Problems

There have been numerous issues with private information being found on the Internet about people ranging from silly pranks being pulled to people losing their money, jobs, or even their lives. People often only think about the former and never the consequences of the latter. It’s serious stuff.

Some obvious examples:

People are being fired for finding “inappropriate” items on Facebook (or whatever) of their staff members.
Obvious harassment and threatening behaviour towards individuals.
Children and Adults alike (not only children are at risk) being stalked, or worse.
Personally identifiable information being used to access other information (bank details etc.).
There are tons of website’s that regurgitate information on other sites, so you data can be inadvertently copied from one site to another, without you knowing about it.

As said before, a large part of this is due to the fact that social networking has exploded. With MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. There is literally MILLIONS of people posting huge amount of data about themselves on various servers around the world.

I, like a lot of others think social networking is great. I am now back in touch with people from school, I never forget friends birthdays, its nice to see us all growing up and doing our things and being happy.

What people fail to realise is that, left unchecked, ANYONE can see this, and this can be dangerous.

Some Solutions

So? What can we do to help get some sort of control over what the Internet can find out about ourselves? There are several things:

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS check the privacy settings for ANY sites where you put information about yourself in any way, shape or form. If you cannot find them, check the help, if its not in the help, contact them, if they do not help you, then you may well want to consider not trusting them with your data!
If your unsure, don’t. If you ever think “should I put this on here” then you are probably best not to.
As mentioned above, never enter your password and ID for one service into another, unless you trust the application vendor. 9/10 if I see anything like that, I either get out or skip it. Remember, just because they may not use your information directly, they could sell it on.
If you don’t want your employer to see photos of you throwing up in a gutter on Saturday night or doing inappropriate things with the girl next door then don’t give them access to such material. If you want them on your contacts on Facebook (or whatever) then put them on a limited profile, or not add them at all. There are other networking sites designed for work such as LinkedIn.

The Biggest Winner (IMO)

I am all for rolling your sleeves up and having a go. So, check yourself out. The first place most searches start is Google. So, go to Google, type in your name, what comes up? Can you find information about yourself? Are you happy with it being there? If not, change it, go to the website, log in and check the privacy settings!

Vary your searches, name? Phone number? Email address? As soon as you can see where your information is being leaked from, you can fix it.

Remember, Google also offers Google Alerts which is a great way to keep on top of it. I have several Google Alerts trawling the net for me to check for my personal information. As of yet, there is nothing on the Internet about me that I would either be unhappy about you knowing, or wouldn’t tell you myself.

Exactly how it should be.

Great GTD Post on RememberTheMilk (Thanks to Doug Ireton)

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:15:00 GMT

I have recently started trying to invest a little more time in GTD (Getting Things Done). Part of this investment has also meant me signing up to RememberTheMilk (RTM) which is a great, simple-yet-effective “ToDo” list site.

Prior to reading this post from Doug Ireton (which RTM posted on their blog) I hadn’t really customised RTM a great deal. This was perhaps a mixture of me not really knowing what I am doing with GTD and lack of time to “play” (expect it was more the former).

I found the article clear, concise and damn useful! I spent a good chunk of this morning getting all my work, personal and study items nicely organised within RTM. I feel I perhaps have a little way to go before getting the system refined to my taste, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot closer than it was!

It sounds silly but I feel much more confident in the system and can happily “forget” about items and concentrate on actually getting the things done I am supposed to be working on.

I will continue to try and let you know how I get on with GTD and any other bits of productivity-boosting bits of information I come across.

Links:
RememberTheMilk
Doug Ireton’s Post on RememberTheMilk
GettingThingsDone on WikiPedia

Its Been a While… Study, Exams, Thoughts and WoW

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:59:00 GMT

Hi All!

Sorry its been so long since my last post, been crazy busy of late!

Here’s a run down of the things that have been chewing up my time:

New project at work in ASP.NET, which is all new to me! So its been hard on the brain (trying to remain productive yet needed to consume a lot of info to *try* and make sure I do things right.
Study study study. Same old. Was studying extra hard since wanted to sit the 70-316 exam.
General thoughts (both personal and professional) that needed ironing out in my mind.
World of Warcraft is far too addictive, making my allotted “chill time” overrun. However, I think this is probably a good thing as I have been kinda needing it lately.

Good news is, the study and the work seems to be paying off!

I passed the 70-316 exam with a score of 906 (700 was pass mark)! Making me a happy geek! I am now studying towards 70-315 which coincides nicely with my current work project(s). This is one of the main reasons I was pushing hard for 70-316 since I desperately wanted to get into Web.

I believe thought and reflection is always good for the soul, so that always deserves some time :)

World of Warcraft is addictive! But I have started to limit my time somewhat more on there!

Expect more blog posts to follow. Good to be back on top of things :)

The Ultimate Pro-Vista Argument EVER!

Tue, 06 May 2008 11:40:47 GMT

While the usual thoughts were flying around between us geek's on Twitter, Windows Vista came up. Basically the general theme was "we don't know why the haters hate it so much, we have no problems and enjoy working with it".

I replied to a tweet from Jeff Atwood @ CodingHorror with this, which did make me chuckle to myself after sending:

Top that haters! :D

YouTube Upgrade Quality of Videos

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:32:48 GMT

Got a Tweet from Loic Le Meur saying that YouTube have upgraded the quality of their videos/videio player. Great stuff, there is nothing worse than watching an awesome video of big squares flying around.

Here are some screen shots from Loic's HQ video posted, in Low (on the left) and High (on the right) quality for comparison (click to enlarge):

Great improvement! You can switch to High Quality (where available) by clicking "View in High Quality" under the player.

Links:
YouTube
Loic Le Meur's Blog
Loic Le Meur's Coverage of the World Economic Forum

James Buck - Demonstrating the Power of the "Tweet"

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:07:45 GMT

This story came through in the Twitter newsletter:

Bucking The System

Last weekend CNN lead with a big story about James Buck, a graduate student in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley who was arrested last month in Mahalla, Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. Thinking quickly, James was able to send a one-word Twitter update: "Arrested." His followers in Egypt and back in the US reacted by contacting the university and the consulate on his behalf. Before long, James was updating Twitter with another one-word message, "Free."

The CNN coverage can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/4b4hsg

I know a lot of people still think Twitter is lame, and I guess there is a part of me that is yet to be convinced, but I think this is an awesome display of the power of short, sharp updates.

I think the main part of my problem is that I don't have enough UK/EU contacts on my friends list. Most of my contacts are in the US, and due to obvious time zone differences, we often miss a lot of what each other have to say.

So, if you're a UK/EU geek and you fancy another geek to bounce ideas etc. off, feel free to tweet me at http://twitter.com/robzyc.

Links:
CNN Coverage on James Buck "Freedom Tweet" Story
My Twitter Address

MSDN RampUp - Helping Developers on Older/Other Technologies to.. well "Ramp Up" to .NET

Thu, 01 May 2008 07:22:29 GMT

This came through on the MSDN Flash newsletter. Microsoft have launched a section on MSDN called "RampUp". Offering materials to help assist developers/aspiring developers that are used to working with VS 2003/2005 or VB6 to get up to speed on .NET 2.0. It also has a track/route for Java developers for those that are interested.

Each route offers insights into fundamental areas of .NET 2.0, geared towards your previous knowledge, there is also access to free Microsoft E-Learning Courses, which is pretty cool. I will definitely look this over since I am studying for the (now outdated) MCAD certification, so there may be a few things I can learn in here to help with work.

If there are any Java developers reading this that want to get all pissy and suggest that ".NET from Java would be ramping down lol ha :P" then don't, its a free offering from Microsoft, if you want it, take it, if not, shut up and keep developing your Java applications (as you may have noticed, I am a geek who gets real tired of geek fanaticism).

I hope you find some of the content useful!

Links:
RampUp Website
MSDN Flash

Great Not-So-WTF-y Post on TDWTF

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:48:17 GMT

I read "The Daily WTF" religiously. I love it, it provides both laughs and plenty of examples of how not to code. For a newbie like me, I find these sorts of real-world examples of crappy coding, it may not necessarily show me what to do, but if you are shown enough of what not to do, then you will tend to end up somewhere on or near the right trail. We have this as children all the time, we soon learn after being sent to our room enough times that colouring in the wall with crayons is not acceptable. I can now proudly say at age 23, I have shaken this habit as I know it is wrong, and you don't need to send me to my room. :)

This morning however, it wasn't really a WTF post, but a good serious post on turnover in the IT industry, and I strongly recommend reading it. I have mentioned this to a couple of friends in the past, one thing I noticed while reading some of my favourite blog posters employment history (where available) I noticed a lot of them changed jobs frequently. Initially, I didn't know how to view this, but I came to the conclusion that its very easy for aspiring developers to become restless. 99.99% of the time, us geeks are consuming huge amounts of information, learning lots, and forever wanting to learn more, there just does not seem to be enough hours in the day. The problem with this, is that the rate of business change is far slower than that. Which simply means that with these energetic developers that are keen to "keep the pace up" they can quickly find themselves wanting more from "9-5". Is this a bad thing?

I do not run a software house or manage a software team, but my thoughts would say that even staff turnover would be bad (sorry to lose a good member of the team, pain in the ass of recruiting) I would much rather have a highly motivated team, than a team that feels they are stagnating. This is not necessarily through fault of the business, but simply, the individual outgrowing the business.

We always here it, but so few truly believe it. Embrace change!

Links:
"Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis" Post on TDWTF

This Geek Becomes a "Real" Geek and Gets on "World of Warcraft" (WoW)

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:20:33 GMT

I have finally done it. Some of the people who's blog I watch play World of Warcraft (Rob Conery springs to mind). I decided to give the study a bit of a break this weekend, and had nothing much else on. I got bored and watched a South Park episode, and it happened to be the one all about World of Warcraft ("Make Love, Not Warcraft"). And I thought "that game does look pretty cool" (being the geek I am, I do remember the good old days playing RPG's for ridiculous amounts of time). So I thought I would check it out :)

Blizzard offer a 10-day free trial (with restrictions) after a night of sitting there for hours playing drinking beer I managed to max those out, so my account is currently being upgraded from Trial to Full :)

<geek>My little n00b Hunter kicks ass :) He's like level 21 now, I have a pet cat thing in my "stable" called Leo and currently training a pet wolf called Fido. I was training in tailoring and enchanting, but that was kinda pissing me off because it was taking so long to skill up on the enchanting. So I dropped both those (with tailoring at 150!) and re-skilled in leatherworking and skinning. They compliment each other quite well, levelling up much more quickly (too quickly TBH - I am starting to need to skin animals above my level) and making more money from selling my awesome leather goods :)

Now, I know you can only find me on my server, but I forgot what that is, and apparantly I have no way of finding out from my account page (which is kinda silly) so I will update this post once I home to say where you can find me :) What ever server I am on, I am currently tearing it up in "Ashenvale Forest" with "Astranarr" being my current home.</geek>

On a side note, WoW is where the famous "Leeroy" came about from (if you have never seen it, WATCH IT!). Leading to things such as this Lolcat :)

Links:
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft Europe
Trial Account Restrictions
Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Lolcat
Rob Conery's Blog

Vista Speech Recognition Macros CTP Released

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:50:44 GMT

This has been sat in my Inbox for a while as I have yet to play with it, but I thought I should at least do my bit to spread the word, this could be an exciting bit of technology depending on how well it works!

Microsoft released the Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Windows Speech Recognition Macros Tool (WSR Macros) on 23/04 (or 04/23 for across the pond!). You can download the CTP from here.

I really like the Speech Recognition feature of Vista, contrary to popular belief, it does seem to work well, and I have a cheap crappy headset. I know Scott Hanselman uses speech recognition (mentioned here in his post on his new home) and he reports fantastic detection rates.

With macros to perform multiple functions on key words/phrases, the possibilities are endless! Awesome!

Note: This is obviously only for Windows Vista!

Links:
WSR Macros Download
Scott Hanselman's Blog
Vista Speech Recognition Overview

Windows Live FolderShare 14.0.1331.0415 Released - Changes!? Hell if I Know!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:24:58 GMT

So, when signing on to my machine at home over the weekend, and of course my work machine this morning. FolderShare automatically loads and I get a little box pop up telling me that it is unable to sign in because I am running an old version, which needs to be updated.

So I figure "cool" I will update, I know normally these sorts of releases are security-critical, to stem people logging in when a known issue is located. I thought we'll soon find out once its installed.

I go ahead and install the new version (14.0.1331.0415) and wait for the release notes to pop up.. Nothing happens.. "Hmm that's odd" so I begin clicking around to see if I can find a document, web site, anything. And nothing. Zip. Nada.

So I Google "foldershare 14.0.1331.0415 "release notes"" and I have a single hit. One single hit, which takes me to a blog of some dude called Blake Handler, his blog looks interesting so I also added it to Google Reader, great. The post Google found had a link to the FolderShare team's blog, which, incidentally I never had on Google Reader, because I had never been told about it. And the development teams very own blog was almost as useful as a Google search with no real results. Not Much From the Horses Mouth...

Do you think releasing a new version with no actual release notes is acceptable?

Links:
Blake Handler's Blog
A "I'm Feeling Lucky Search" That Returns 'The One and Only' Actual Result
FolderShare Site
FolderShare Team Blog

PS: On a side note, "Nada" wasn't picked up by the spell checking in Live Writer (which I love BTW), so I Google'd that.. Interesting results! And by "nada" I do mean "nothing" :)

Finally The Truth About "using" and Dispose()

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:51:26 GMT

The Problem

During the good chat with some fellow students last night, the top of whether or not "using" should be used over an explicit Dispose() method call when using objects like Graphics came up.

Now, this one has been bugging me for some time, and I have never actually sat down to investigate it, so I thought I should. I have been told on several occasions that I should use "using", but when questioning why, I get no real answer that makes any sense. Seems like a classic "every knows the best practice but doesn't understand the practice or why its best" scenario!

So, I made some very small code samples, one using "using" the other using Dispose(). Here are the samples FYI:

"using" Code

   1: private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)   2: {   3:     using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(this.Handle))   4:     {   5:         MessageBox.Show("this is between the graphics instantiation and disposal");   6:     }   7: }

Dispose() Code

   1: private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)   2: {   3:     Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(this.Handle);   4:     MessageBox.Show("this is between the graphics instantiation and disposal");   5:     g.Dispose();   6: }

As you can see, nothing fancy! And here are the results (intermediate language - "IL") courtesy of ILDASM:

"using" IL

   1: .method private hidebysig instance void  Form1_Load(object sender,   2:                                                     class [mscorlib]System.EventArgs e) cil managed   3: {   4:   // Code size       36 (0x24)   5:   .maxstack  1   6:   .locals init ([0] class [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics g)   7:   IL_0000:  ldarg.0   8:   IL_0001:  call       instance native int [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.Control::get_Handle()   9:   IL_0006:  call       class [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics::FromHwnd(native int)  10:   IL_000b:  stloc.0  11:   .try  12:   {  13:     IL_000c:  ldstr      "this is between the graphics instantiation and dis"  14:     + "posal"  15:     IL_0011:  call       valuetype [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox::Show(string)  16:     IL_0016:  pop  17:     IL_0017:  leave.s    IL_0023  18:   }  // end .try  19:   finally  20:   {  21:     IL_0019:  ldloc.0  22:     IL_001a:  brfalse.s  IL_0022  23:     IL_001c:  ldloc.0  24:     IL_001d:  callvirt   instance void [mscorlib]System.IDisposable::Dispose()  25:     IL_0022:  endfinally  26:   }  // end handler  27:   IL_0023:  ret  28: } // end of method Form1::Form1_Load

Dispose() IL

   1: .method private hidebysig instance void  Form1_Load(object sender,   2:                                                     class [mscorlib]System.EventArgs e) cil managed   3: {   4:   // Code size       30 (0x1e)   5:   .maxstack  1   6:   .locals init ([0] class [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics g)   7:   IL_0000:  ldarg.0   8:   IL_0001:  call       instance native int [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.Control::get_Handle()   9:   IL_0006:  call       class [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics::FromHwnd(native int)  10:   IL_000b:  stloc.0  11:   IL_000c:  ldstr      "this is between the graphics instantiation and dis"  12:   + "posal"  13:   IL_0011:  call       valuetype [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult [System.Windows.Forms]System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox::Show(string)  14:   IL_0016:  pop  15:   IL_0017:  ldloc.0  16:   IL_0018:  callvirt   instance void [System.Drawing]System.Drawing.Graphics::Dispose()  17:   IL_001d:  ret  18: } // end of method Form1::Form1_Load

Conclusion

So, as you can see, the "using" method wraps the code inside the scope of the statement within a "try" block of a "try/finally", placing the Dispose() call in the finally, meaning it will always get executed even if an Exception is thrown. However, using the explicit Dispose() method, if an Exception is thrown, then it will not get disposed of, meaning it could be sat on the heap for a few milliseconds or even a few minutes, not good!

I guess this is why MSDN refers to the "using" statement as the "convenient syntax for correct use of IDisposable objects".

~~I believe the VB developers out there do not have an equivalent available, so make sure you are wrapping all of your disposable objects calls in try/finally blocks!~~

Update: I have been told that VB.NET 2.0 does actually have a "using" statement as well, which looks surprisingly like the C# syntax! http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/htd05whh.aspx

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Vista Problem - Debugging "[Application] has stopped working"

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:00:54 GMT

Well, it was bound to happen, and it finally has! I have found something I genuinely do not like in Vista.

While working on some code while studying Code Access Security (CAS). CAS basically allows you/your admin to control what resources .NET code has access to when running. This can be Dialog boxes, the Registry, Printing, Windows Services, Data Access, whatever, it seems pretty complete.

The idea behind the exercise that I was doing was to demo "Imperative" and "Declarative" CAS. "Imperative" checks the permissions before loading the assembly/code, "Declarative" checks the permissions at run-time. So, I create a simple application that will present a FileDialog box to the user prompting to select a file. Nothing flashy. The idea is that initially the application runs OK, I then configure the CLR to restrict access to FileDialog's for the application, then the application should throw an Exception saying "I can't do that".

In XP, the code works exactly as expected, you get a nice dialog box with a big fat red "X" telling you there is a problem. However, in Vista, you do not. You get the ever-so-helpful "[Application] has stopped working" error message (shown to the right):

This is not good, because this means that if an exception occurs outside of my development machine, the user has no information to report back to me! Now, if I click the "Debug" button, it takes me to Visual Studio and gives me the full exception details that I need to know in order to fix it.

I am unsure as to what happens if there is no debugger available on the machine, so I thought I would dig around in the "Problem Reports and Solutions" centre. So I located the crash reports and checked the details:

As you can see from the screen shot, not a lot of information is provided!

So I thought I would check out the settings for "Problem Reports and Solutions", and looking around, all I can see is how to disable the automatic submission, nothing suggesting a way of getting back to the old error dialog in XP. Is was ugly, but informative!

Even disabling the feature all together just creates a simple dialog asking to close or debug!

Does anyone know if this is only occurring because I have Visual Studio installed? I cannot test what will happen without because I only have one Vista machine!