Random disconnected diatribes of a documentation engineer http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/default.aspxen-gb Alex Homer http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/about.aspx ahomer@microsoft.com ahomer@microsoft.com Unless you write books or guidance for long-lived technologies, such as assembly code programming or software design patterns, the products of your IT documentational effort tend to have a somewhat limited shelf life. There's always a new version of ASP.NET, Linux, J2EE, or C# just around the corner, ready to be released into the wild a month or so after you finish your latest magnum opus. I know this only too well from eight years of writing books about Active Server Pages and ASP.NET. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2012/01/29/an-enduring-documentational-experience.aspx One of the major advances in politics in recent years has been the evolution of "The Third Way". You know the kind of thing: Given a choice between two approaches to a problem, neither of which are politically palatable, politicians invent a "third way" that relieves them of the requirement to choose either of the two undesirable outcomes. Of course, in reality, there are only two realistic options, and "the third way" usually involves doing nothing that resolves the issue or makes any real difference. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2012/01/22/the-non_2d00_political-third-way.aspx It's been a long time since I studied particle physics in my spare time at university. However, as it looks like the clever people at CERN will soon be publishing photos of their new baby - the delightfully named Higgs Boson - I thought I ought to get caught up with some background theory so that I will be ready to fully appreciate the revelations around their new arrival. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2012/01/15/that-what-was-demonstrated.aspx After several months of diligent dappling with documentation, comprehensive confrontations with code, and seriously systematic study of system architectures, we've managed to toss together most of the content for our upcoming guide to Windows Azure hybrigation techniques. "Integrating with the Cloud on the Windows Azure Platform" covers all kinds of aspects of hybrid application design and implementation, and we've even got some code to prove it all works. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2012/01/08/hands-up-if-you_2700_re-doing-hybrid.aspx After my resounding success predicting that 2011 would finally see the lingering and painful death of JavaScript, and that the interface of Windows 8 will consist solely of one large Flash animation, it's time to apply my unerringly accurate predictional capabilities to this squeaky clean New Year. So if you aren't quite sure what 2012 holds in store, read on... ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2012/01/01/leaping-to-conclusions-2012.aspx I just found out that, fifty years ago, somebody told me a lie - though I suppose I can't really blame him. Let's face it, when you ask your grandfather a question to which he doesn't know the answer, but he feels he really should (and you are of a suitably gullible age), making up something plausible is probably the typical response. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/12/25/observing-boxing-day-twice.aspx How about we start this week with a short quiz: What do you reckon is the most common thing that visitors to the Royal Mail website will be looking for? I'll give you a clue: Christmas is coming and it's likely that you'll be sending out lots of items using the old-fashioned "put it in an envelope and stick a stamp on it" delivery method, rather than the email approach you use the rest of the year. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/12/18/how-much-is-that-stamp-on-the-website.aspx One of the nice things about working for a UK company but being on permanent assignment to a US one is that you get twice as many public holidays. While I'm not sure we want a Black Monday here in Little Olde England, maybe we could come up with some excuse for celebrating Thanksgiving. Perhaps without the turkey. Even though it's a moveable feast (the fourth Thursday of November) it usually coincides with our wedding anniversary, so it's a great opportunity for a few days away. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/12/11/welshest-wales.aspx It's becoming clear that creating guidance on cloud computing is great deal more difficult than for most other development environments. Or, to be more precise, following our usual practice of combining written guidance with a reference implementation (RI) code sample is turning out to be what you might whimsically call "an interesting experience". ahomer@microsoft.com Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/12/01/it-was-missing-when-i-opened-the-box.aspx I discovered this week that I was severely overcharged when I bought a new TV from our local branch of Comet (a national electrical retailer) some months back. According to a back of an envelope calculation, my TV was actually worth somewhere around one five thousandth of a penny. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/11/27/how-much-is-it-worth.aspx According to folklore, in 1943 IBM's chairman Thomas J. Watson said that the world would only ever need five computers. Whether he actually did say this is doubtful, but according to various archives this was the general opinion around that time. And it prompts the question: how many computers actually existed then? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/11/20/happy-60th-birthday-leo.aspx Buried away in a recent issue of my newspaper the other day, squashed into a corner between an advert for luxury cruise holidays and a delightful close-up photo of some newly-discovered bacterium, was a short item about a recall by a major UK-based motor manufacturer. It said that in some circumstances the cruise control of some of its diesel models, if engaged, cannot be disengaged in the "normal manner". ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/11/13/optimistic-euphemisms.aspx You'd think that, with only a couple of different letters, "documentary" and "documentation" were reasonably similar things. But it seems that the makers of TV documentaries have different ideas. It's all a bit like the music of my generation - prog rock. There's plenty of hidden (and often indecipherable) underlying meaning, but it's exposed only though a pompous and often patronizing soundtrack. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/11/06/documentary-evidence.aspx I once went to a security conference presentation where the speaker explained that blocking ports in your firewall was fine, but developers simply get round this limitation by making everything work over HTTP through port 80. And it seems, in most cases, he was correct. However, I sometimes encounter situations where something that should just work doesn't and I end with my head in the server cabinet, swearing profusely as I analyze my ISA Server logs to figure out what I need to do to fix it. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/10/30/fire_2800_wall_2900_fighting-lync-and-service-bus.aspx Don't you hate it when someone says "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" and then, when asked for the good news, replies "There isn't any". I really do try so hard to avoid inflicting this on people I know, but sometimes it's inevitable. And usually it's when they've asked me to look at their computer which is "playing up", "running very slowly", or simply won't start at all. I really should look in the mirror sometime to see what I look like when smiling sweetly at the same time as gritting my teeth. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/10/23/there-is-no-good-news.aspx As I very rarely actually go anywhere, and even more rarely by train, I'm not an expert on the current digital device habits of rail travelers. However, the attraction of a nice comfy seat and table in some wonderful air-conditioned, piped music for free, even has a power socket railway carriage is that you can spend the time being productive. Laptop, tablet, mobile phone, and maybe even a portable printer - you might as well be in the office. The last time I took a long train journey (six years ago) I wrote a complete data access layer for a housing corporation website during the five hour trip. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/10/16/gone-oof-the-radar.aspx For some unaccountable reason, my semi-coherent bluster a couple of weeks ago wandered across the topic of integration when discussing Windows Azure hybrid applications. Since then, I've been delving deeper into the whole area of hybrid application challenges as we fine-tune our thoughts on the third of our series of guides about designing and developing applications for Windows Azure. And it seems that we in the IT developer community are dragging our heels when it comes to inventing exciting new words. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/10/09/additional-integrational-hybridization.aspx There's lots of comment at the moment about the "post-PC age". Seemingly everyone will just use some Internet tablet or device that installs the O/S and applications from the cloud, keeps all of the data in the cloud, and uses only services running in the cloud. No need for a fast processor, hard drive, or tons of memory because it's just a web browser and display for applications running somewhere else. The thin client for the 21st century. ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/10/03/seven-heaven-or-wait-for-eight.aspx Once again I'm at one of those gloriously satisfying stages in my p&p working life when I'm trying to define the structure for a new guide. We know what technologies we want to cover, how we will present the guidance, and the kind of sample that we'll provide to demonstrate the all-encompassing wonderfulness of the technologies on offer. But after two weeks of watching videos, perusing technical documents, consulting experts, and RSI from repeated spells of vicious Visioing, I'm still floundering in a cloud of Azure confusion. ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/09/26/hybrid-triangulation-_2800_with-cat-food-and-bananas_2900_.aspx So it's been an interesting week in the world of amazingly unbelievable new technologies. I can't make up my mind which is the most implausible: test-tube sausages, invisible military vehicles, or Boolean values that are only 70% true. It reminded me of the story about the young boy who asks his Grandfather whether it's true that he still has his old army tin helmet from the war in France, to which the old man replies "Yes, it's in the attic behind the tank". The young lad's eyes widen in amazement as he exclaims "What, you've got a tank up there as well!" ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/09/19/i-don_2700_t-believe-it.aspx It's amazing how, sometimes, things get simpler the more you fiddle with them. Or, to be more precise, something that seems to be evolving into an increasingly complicated problem turns out to be easy to resolve when you step back and look at it from another direction. I guess it's what they call "lateral thinking"; the archetypal example being letting air out of the tyres of a truck that's just a bit too tall to pass under a low bridge. ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/09/12/time-to-stop-typing-and-start-thinking.aspx According to a recent revelation from a colleague, freshly returned from the bi-annual International Sock Summit, you can now buy sock knitting needles made from carbon fibre; the same stuff they used to make the Stealth Bomber. Why? Maybe it's so you can knit socks that can't be detected by enemy radar? Or it's so they won't break from the rapid heat generation and extreme strain during a sock-knitting speed contest (and, yes, there are such things - see this site if you don't believe me). ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/09/05/material-choices.aspx So the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ended last week and, as usual, they announced the winners of the under twenty seconds joke category. The winner, it seems, was Nick Helm's contribution of "I needed a website password containing eight characters, so I used SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarves". Oh dear. And second was Tim Vine with "Crime in multi-storey car parks - that's wrong on so many levels". Yet it made me realize just how much of a waste of time my recent web administration tasks probably were. ahomer@microsoft.com Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/08/29/bey0nd-th3-fr1nge.aspx You may not remember, but when ASP.NET was in the early stages of development it was called ASP+. I wonder if we'll see history repeating itself so that, when it finally clambers out of beta, Google+ will actually be called Google.NET. Probably not. I guess there's too many hard-up lawyers around at the moment looking for work. But it does seem that, in many spheres of life, we never get the hang of the notion that history repeats itself. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/08/21/repeat-history_28002900_-until-true.aspx The editions of my daily newspaper that I most look forward to are those when my favorite columnist, Bryony Gordon, is in attendance. As an example, in her Notebook column a couple of weeks ago she happened to mention that not only has her own cat posted a birthday greeting to her on her Facebook wall, but she is also following the tweets from somebody's bicycle. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/08/14/hello_2c00_-server-27-here.aspx Britain's roads are, they say, becoming a monochrome and sadly boring reflection of the past. It seems that some 90% of cars on the road today are black, grey, silver, or white. Yes there are some very dark blues out there as well, but overall it does seem to be true. My wife's most recent choice of car was based mainly on the fact that there are hardly any bits (including the windows) that aren't black. Though the fact that it also goes very fast was, I suspect, a contributing factor. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 07 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/08/07/in-the-land-of-the-monochrome-car-owner.aspx Did you know that almost everyone in Sweden has more than the average number of legs? According to Professor Hans Rosling of Sweden's Karolinska Institute, this must be the case because a few people have one or no legs, while nobody has more than two. He uses this fact to illustrate just how silly it is trying to apply the law of averages to many common scenarios. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/07/31/making-an-average-decision.aspx I'm probably not the only person who suddenly wondered if my computer had gone funny a few weeks ago when the Windows Live sign-in page looked very different from the one I'm used to. It was only after tracking down the Windows Live team blog and reading the article about it that I realized what was going on. And it seems from the comments on that post that a lot of people are upset by the change. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/07/24/i-don_2700_t-want-to-be-remembered.aspx Those of us who read the documentation for software before installing it (though we are, it seems, members of a pitifully small minority) know that the most illuminating part is the "Known Issues" section. It's here that, hopefully, you discover all the problems you are likely to face - and can make an educated decision as to whether to continue. So I wonder if it's time that blogs were forced to include a Readme document that points to known issues with the content. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/07/17/should-blogs-have-a-readme.aspx Did you know that the internet is fundamentally broken? An excerpt from a recent interview by Emma Barnett with Carl Sjogreen, product manager at Facebook, includes this amazing comment: "The fact that I can go to a site and it doesn't know who I am or what I like shows how fundamentally broken the internet still is". Huh? Is this a new definition of the phrase "fundamentally broken"? Or is it just me exhibiting my usual level of dinosaurian paranoia? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexhomer/archive/2011/07/10/the-internet-is-fundamentally-broken.aspx They say that the first step in achieving a cure is to actually admit you are an addict. So here we go: "My name is Alex and I'm an inveterate Ctrl-clicker". There, I feel better already. Perhaps I'm already half-way to kicking the habit, though I have to report that I'm having trouble finding an appropriate support group. I was looking forward to sitting round in a circle in some draughty church hall and confessing that I often have up to ten browser tabs open on the same website! ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/07/03/are-you-a-ctrl_2d00_clicker-too.aspx Everybody loves a Terry Pratchett quote, so I'll start this week with "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded". It came to mind as I read in the science section of the newspaper about how those amazing people at CERN in Switzerland have managed to create a (rather small) handful of hydrogen anti-matter molecules, and then kept them alive for a little over 16 minutes. Before they, too, exploded. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/06/26/does-it-really-matter.aspx I suppose it isn't easy switching a whole country over from old-fashioned analogue TV to the wondrous delights of multi-channel digital, but here in Britain it's hard to see how they could have made more of a pigs-ear of it. Not only is it taking five years, but they seem to be doing it as an unpredictable series of updates; each of which is just significant enough to be really annoying. It's as though they want people to switch over to cable or BSkyB. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/06/19/they-promised-us-the-world-_2800_in-hd_2900_.aspx After the problems with network location ignorance the other week, and being an inquisitive type, I decided to dig a little deeper and see if I could identify why my sever was unsure about the type of network is was connected to. For some while I've had occassional issues with web browsing where page requests immediately throw up an error that a URL cannot be found, but refreshing the page in the browser works fine. And, of course, the odd Event Log message that "Name resolution for the name [some domain name] timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded." ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/06/12/dns-_3a00_-do-not-search.aspx They've been advertising the book "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Arika Okrent on The Register web site for a while, and I finally caved in and bought a copy. And I have to say it's quite an amazing book. It really makes you think about how languages have evolved, and how we use language today. It even contains a list of the 500 most well-known invented languages; and a whole chapter that explores the origins and syntax of Klingon. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/06/05/living-in-a-land-of-invented-languages.aspx One of the wondrous features of Windows from Vista onwards is Network Location Awareness (NLA). It means that, while the whole family can view your photo collection at home, when you pick up your laptop and wander out for coffee everyone else in Starbucks can't see the holiday pictures of you in embarrassing shorts. Or read the rather sad list of unadventurous things you planned to do before you were thirty (and didn't). ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/05/29/keep-calm-and-eat-cake.aspx What's the best way to document an API? It's a question that came up when we were documenting the Enterprise Library 5.0 project a while ago, and has resurfaced recently with another project I unexpectedly found myself attached to. It's also one of those annoying questions that typically offer three dozen wildly varying answers; none of which really appears to provide the optimum result. Yet good documentation of APIs is vital for developers to get the best from the code. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 22 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/05/22/seeking-an-api-medium.aspx In the days when I used to visit my Uncle Gerald, who was a keen gardener, he would often present me around this time of year with a large bundle of rhubarb and the instruction to "give these to your Mother and wish her a moving Easter from me". I suspect that the comment was somehow related to the laxative properties of rhubarb. We haven't had rhubarb in our house lately, but I still managed to have a moving Easter. I was moving all my VMs from a dead server to the backup one. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/05/15/a-moving-easter.aspx My wife has been asking me why I haven't written about the recent Royal Wedding. Mainly it's because, surprisingly, I didn't receive an invitation; and so was unable to apply my usual highly perceptive and amazingly incisive documentation engineering capabilities to the occasion without first-hand, on-site experience. So I decided to write about the Royal Mail instead. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 08 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/05/08/not-the-royal-wedding.aspx "Welcome back! You join us as Alex is trying to decide whether to act out his Star Wars fantasy with an R2 detour (D2-er, get it? Maybe not). With several hundreds of newly acquired gigs in the servers, will he risk upgrading from the so-last-decade Windows Server 2008 to the shiny new R2 edition? Especially now SP1 is out there." ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/05/01/tales-of-a-paranoid-sysadmin-_2800_part-2_2900_.aspx Oh dear. Here in this desolate and forgotten outpost of the p&p empire it's pretend-to-be-a-sysadmin time all over again. Daily event viewer errors about the servers running out of disk space and shadow copies failing (mainly because I had to disable them due to lack of disk space) are gradually driving me crazy. Will I finally have to abandon my prized collection of Shaun The Sheep videos, or risk my life by deleting my wife's beloved archive of Motown music? And, worse still, can I face losing all those TV recordings of wonderful classic rock and punk concerts? Or maybe (warning: bad pun approaching) I just need to find some extra GIGs to store the gigs. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 24 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/04/24/tales-of-a-paranoid-sysadmin-_2800_part-1_2900_.aspx One of the joys of being a documentation engineer is the variety of projects I tackle. At the moment I'm sharing my time between two projects at diametrically opposite ends of the complexity and target audience spectrums. It even seems as though it requires my brain to work on different wavelengths at the same time. It's almost like a Rainbow Coalition, except that there's only me doing it. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/04/17/a-technological-rainbow-coalition.aspx If I asked you what they manufacture in Seattle, I'd guess you'd say "software and aeroplanes". Obviously I'm biased, so Microsoft is the first name to spring to mind. And I discovered from a recent Boeing factory tour that they build a few 'planes there now and then. You might also, after some additional thought, throw in "coffee shops" (Starbucks) and "book stores" (Amazon). But I bet you didn't include "doorbells" in your list. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/04/10/search-and-you-probably-won_2700_t-find.aspx Have you ever wondered what insurance companies do with all the money you pay them every month? It seems that one UK-based insurance company decided that a good way to use up some of the spare cash was to discover that, every day, people in the UK are carrying around over 2,000 tons of redundant keys. I'm surprised they didn't come up with some conclusion such as this requires the unwarranted consumption of 10,000 gallons of fuel, which emits enough carbon to flood a small Pacific island. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/04/03/a-risky-business_2e00__2e00__2e00_.aspx So when somebody comes to read your gas meter, do you give them a front door key and tell them to pop in any time they like? Or when you hand over your credit card at the supermarket checkout, do you let them know it's OK to take money out whenever they want? No? Then why do we put up with software that thinks being invited into your computer once is equivalent to an offer to run anytime it feels in the mood? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/03/27/whose-computer-is-it-anyway.aspx I don't know if the term "spend a penny" has the same meaning to people outside our little corner of the world as it does here in England - but if you happen to use email it soon might. Mainly because, according to a report in the newspaper today, there are people in and around Government seriously considering charging a penny in tax for every email you send and receive. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/03/20/blatant-profiteering.aspx I suppose most people remember which way to change their clocks for Daylight Saving Time (DST) by recalling the phrase "Spring Forward, Fall Back". Even though, here in England, it would be "...Autumn Back", which doesn't work quite so well. And, just to be awkward, we call it "British Summer Time" instead. But here's the rub: why do we do have to keep fiddling about with it? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/03/13/spring-forward-twice.aspx I've occasionally heard developers talk about a "code smell" - subtle indications that lead to the uneasy feeling all is not well with the source code for some application (as opposed, I guess, to the not unknown opinion that everybody else's code stinks). I wonder if there are similar easy-to-miss signs that some piece of documentation or guidance you've been slaving over for weeks is not quite all it should be? Is there an equivalent "docs smell"? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 06 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/03/06/does-wif-have-a-funny-smell.aspx I've been struggling with the meanings of words again this week. Partly it's because I'm not a native US-English speaker, and partly it's because I tend to make wild assumptions about the way that the major IT hardware companies view their customers. I suppose I could buy a US-English to Queen's English phrase book to solve the first issue; and take more notice of website product reviews to resolve the second... ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/02/27/soccer-it-to-me.aspx Sometimes I stop and wonder if I'm having one of those "more-senile-than-usual" moments. Did I click the wrong button, or have I forgotten to set some weird option before I started the process that looks like it will still be running when I get up tomorrow morning? What on earth am I trying to do that is so complicated a 2.27 GHz Quad Core Xeon E5520 running 64-bit Windows 7 can't achieve while I'm still awake? ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/02/20/another-bad-where-day.aspx Is it really possible to love jQuery? It certainly seems like it is from the numerous blog and forum posts I've read while trying to figure out how to make it do some fairly simple things. Many of the posts end with rather disturbing terms of endearment: "...this is why I just love jQuery" being a typical example. Yet I'm still not sure that our first blind date will result in a lasting relationship. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/02/13/the-latest-love-of-my-_2800_programming_2900_-life.aspx As in many households, several regular and occasional computer users take advantage of my connection to the outside world. I use ISA Server 2006 running as a virtual Hyper-V instance for firewalling and connection management (I'm not brave enough to upgrade to Forefront yet), and all incoming ports are firmly closed. But these days the risk of picking up some nasty infection is just as great from mistaken actions by users inside the network as from the proliferation of malware distributors outside. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/02/06/blocking-malware-domains-in-isa-2006.aspx I suppose I could start with a bad pun by saying that you've had your hols, and now it's time for some HOLs instead! Of course, this assumes you understand that "hols" is English shorthand for "holidays" and that "HOLs" is IT guidance shorthand for "Hands-On-Labs" (I wonder if people in the US have a shorthand word for "vacations", or if - seeing they are typed rather than written by hand these days - that should be a shorttype word, or even just a shortword). ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/01/30/get-your-hands-on-our-labs.aspx If an article I read in the paper this week is correct, you need to immediately uninstall Arial, Verdana, Calibri, and Tahoma fonts from your computer; and instead use Comic Sans, Boldini, Old English, Magneto, Rage Italic, or one of those semi-indecipherable handwriting-style script fonts for all of your documents. According to experts, it will also be advantageous to turn off the spelling checker; and endeavour to include plenty of unfamiliar words and a sprinkling of tortuous grammatical constructs. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/01/23/can-an-arial-attack-produce-high-calibri-guidance.aspx Perhaps I can blame the Christmas spirit (both ethereal and in liquid form) for the fact that I seem to have unwarily drifted out of the warm and fuzzy confines of p&p, and into the stark and unfamiliar world of our EPX parent. A bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I guess. I keep looking round to see what's different from the more familiar world I'm used to, but - rather disconcertingly - it all seems to be much the same. I'm even anticipating somebody telling me what "EPX" actually stands for... ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/01/16/does-web-matrix-have-the-razor_2700_s-edge.aspx A few weeks ago I was trying to justify why software architects and developers, instead of politicians, should govern the world. Coincidently, I watched one of those programs about huge construction projects on TV this week, and it brought home even more the astonishing way that everything these days depends on computers and software. Even huge mechanical machines that seem to defy the realms of possibility. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/01/09/excavator.dig_2800_holesize.huge_2900_.aspx It's customary to imagine that the most unpopular establishments in modern society are solicitors and estate agents (in the US, I guess the equivalent is lawyers and realtors; though I can't testify to their level of popularity from here). However, I reckon that the growing use and capabilities of mobile phones has paved the way for a whole new group of industrial charlatans. Aided, no doubt, by the possibilities offered by computerization and automation - something for which we, as developers, are partly responsible. ahomer@microsoft.com Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://blogs.msdn.com/alexhomer/archive/2011/01/02/the-new-charlatans.aspx Archived posts from 2010. Note that due to the increased security for RSS feeds in IE9 you must either add this site to your trusted sites list to make the link work, or copy the URL http://www.daveandal.net/alexh2010.xml into your browser address bar. Sorry about that... ahomer@microsoft.com Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://www.daveandal.net/alexh2010.xml