The Seattle Surfer

Independence Day

2005-07-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

It's the Fourth of July holiday weekend here in the US and as the big day approaches, the likelihood of our firstborn arriving on this most American of days is ever increasing. It will have American citizenship either way but if it arrives on the fourth I might just have to call it Bud or Chad.

The Tour starts tomorrow and I've spent the last two weeks reading Lance Armstrong's first two books, It's Not About The Bike and Every Second Counts. The guy has done remarkable things on a bike and raised millions of dollars through his charitable foundation yet there seems to be very little affection for him among the general public (I mean personally, rather than supporting the LiveStrong campaign, which has deservedly won tremendous support).

Reading these autobiographies does not qualify me to comment on Lance Armstrong as a person other than to say that there was nothing at all in either of the books which made me feel any affinity or affection for him. I did feel admiration for his achievements and will be supporting him in his bid for a seventh Tour.

b.

Better Photo Blogging

2005-06-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned the difficulties associated with posting photos to a blog.

Well now it's much easier, just an "Add Image" button. So here's one from the McManus Seattle Collection to celebrate.

Have a good weekend,

b.

Happy Solstice

2005-06-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful weekend here in Seattle, perfect weather for the annual Fremont Fair and Solstice Parade.

The parade is very much an "anything goes" type event (Gina thought it would have been much better with a theme and placards announcing the floats - but that's not really the spirit of the thing) however this year the "Human Piercing Suspension Artists" (sounds sore) were barred from the parade.

The traditional and now almost mainstream "Naked Cyclists" were very much out in force.

With the silly season approaching at home, I couldn't help but wonder what the Twelth of July parades would be like with some naked cyclists. I really wish the tolerance, peace and goodwill which exudes from this event could be felt by everyone in Northern Ireland.

b.

On The Wagon Again

2005-06-14T18:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if you're on the wagon when you're on a bender or when you're sober, but which ever one means starting over again after a period of failing to meet commitments and do what you said you would do, well that's the one I'm doing.

I just checked when my last post was and it was almost a month ago; it seems a lot longer because so much has been happening and so much is about to happen.

Anyway here's a brief run down of what I've been up to in the last month:

Went to Oregon to surf
Went to Swedish Hostpital to see birthing suites
Went to Prenatal Partner Yoga to chill out about birthing suites I'd seen
Went to Microsoft to work on .Net 2.0 Compatibility and to help pay for birthing suites
Went to cinema to see Lords Of Dogtown to try and forget about .Net and birthing suites
Went to Westport to surf and forget about everything.

As you can see it's getting close to the birth date so we're getting really excited. I'm surfing again and I can't understand why a little thing like a five hour round-trip drive kept me from it for this long, it just felt so good to be back in the water that I reckon I would walk to Westport if I had to. I'll hopefully be posting some more surf stuff soon.

Going to see David Kitt at the Crocodile tonight. We've seen the Kitster many times back home so it'll be good to support him in a far-away venue.

Aloha,
b.

Dogtown

2005-05-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:48 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:13 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Faster Than The Speed Of Light, Joao Magueijo
Listening: Collateral Soundtrack

With the current appetite for all things extreme and even better, extreme and retro, there will undoubtedly be a lot of hype around the new movie "Lords of Dogtown" which is due for release here next month. This is a dramatisation based around the skaters of the pioneering Zephyr skate team, a bunch of hard-core surfers who essentially changed the skating landscape from the teeny-bopper, gold-lame short-wearing American "craze" it was back in the seventies to the extreme sport - alternative lifestyle it is today. The group were essentially a local surf crew who brought their surf moves to the concrete when the conditions were blown out and it was this fluid, surf-like style which mainly contributed to the huge shift, along with a fair amount of style and a lot of pool-riding which is still around today in the modern half-pipe.

Anyway, I watched the original documentary on these guys "Dogtown & Z-Boys" and it was superb. It was a glimpse of a time when surfing/skating wasn't a "cool" thing to do, when there was no X-Games, no billion dollar clothing industry and no Kelly Slater / Tony Hawk.

The film interviewed all these guys today, some are still skating, like Tony Alva while some have drifted back into normal lives. Stacy Peralta, was hugely successful behind the scenes, becoming a successful director of skate videos and infact this documentary. And of course there was the most naturally gifted, yet most self-destructive of the bunch, Jay Adams, a kind of Southern Californian bleach blond Alex Higgins, who is currently spending time in a Hawaiian Correctional Facility.

b.

I Thought He Was Dead ....

2005-05-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

... No, not the alcoholic comedian, the Microsoft consultant.

I was sitting hacking away (on top secret stuff) when I heard the unmistakable dulcet tones wafting down the hallway.

I figured maybe it was just the truth-serum mixing with the kool-aid and all the subliminal messages being beamed through the building.

But when the sound didn't cease after 60 minutes I knew it could mean only one thing.

Dave Allen was in the hallway.

Pretty small world. There was a big contingent of HBOS Retail over with Dave, doing performance testing with the Visual Studio Team. They must have some sort of centre of excellence or something over in Halifax?

(Listening: It Should Have Been Me - Yvonne Fair )

b.

Top Secret

2005-05-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

Outbound: Undisclosed

Reading: Confidential

Listening: Can't Say

I'm up at Microsoft this week on a Top Secret mission so I can't talk about it.

Maybe I'll get a chance to blog about life rather than tech which someone requested last week (Gerry).

b.

Cinco De Mayo

2005-05-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:48 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:17 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Code
Listening: The Strokes - Is This It?

The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexicans over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It's a big thing here in the US, I'm not sure it's such a big deal in Mexico, but having seen how they celebrate St. Patrick's day much more here than we do in Ireland I suspect it's probably the same with Cinco De Mayo.

Anything for a party I suppose and what's the harm in that.

Happy Cinco De Mayo.

b.

Enterprise Library and Whidbey Beta 2

2005-05-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:10 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: MSDN Magazine June
Listening: Shuffle Setting

Enterprise Library is broken with Whidbey Beta 2 release. Scott Densmore has a How To post to get it up and running again, make sure to read all the comments as well as the original post but it does work.

They're hoping for an early community release of the next version which should have all the fixes in.

b.

Deja Vu

2005-05-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:47 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:13 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: June Edition of MSDN Magazine
Listening: Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antartica

The only thing about having a subscription to MSDN magazine (and this is probably true for any special interest publication) is that the same articles get republished, albeit by a different author or with a slightly different bent. This months MSDN has an article on XML in SQL, which did the rounds two or three time when SQL2000 was launched as well as one on ACT which I'm sure I've also seen before.

I suppose there are many articles which I'm enjoying as a first time reader and someone else has already read and that's exactly why they have to do this kind of thing.

b.

Portland, Oregon

2005-05-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:48 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:13 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Writing
Listening: Athlete - Tourist

We spent a great weekend in Portland, probably the last city break we will have as a two-person family, so we didn't hold back on the eating, drinking and general adult-oriented activities. We stayed in Lucia, a nice hotel right in the heart of the city. It was a good omen when there was a picture of Jerry Seinfield on the wall outside our room. It was part of an exhibition by David Hume Kennerly and there were some brilliant images.

Portland is a pretty laidback city, a lot like Seattle except maybe with the softer edges of a smaller city. I'll not bore you with the details but the gourmet highlights were Bijou for breakfast, Elephants Deli for lunch and Saucebox for dinner.

There is a great Saturday Market in the Old Town District and I invested in a balance board from Eastside Longboards . I really need to work on my balance after my sailing accident in Oz left all the little balancing tendons around my ankke shredded to pieces, also it means I can have a little board time every day, even if the waves are 150 miles away. Check out these balance board tricks!

b.

Poetry In Motion

2005-04-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:01 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Windows Internals, Fourth Edition
Listening: Shuffle

I spotted this poem on the bus home last night, it's part of a "poetry in motion" thing which KC Metro do and it really stood out. Gina makes a big deal of putting together life-story scrap books for kids when she places them for adoption and I've even helped out with some so I copied this down because I figured she might even be able to use it in her work.

Pretty strong words from a twelve year old:

Where Am I From by Katrina Carlsen, 8th Grade

I am from faint images, photos
Where waves and sandy shores crash
In salty air

I am from two families
One gave me life
The other supports me now

I am from worlds
Put together to form one
These giant waves I must ride
Before they wash up onto shore

btw April is National Poetry Month

b.

The one where I forgot my bus pass

2005-04-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 256: 7:58 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Sharepoint 2003 Unleashed
Listening: Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antartica

see title.

b.

SQLDependency Update

2005-04-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:45 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:01 Montlake to Overlake

Listening: Feeder Pushing the Senses

I've updated my last post because it looks like my msdb was missing the SqlQueryNotificationService (I upgraded a SQL2000 installation - must have been that) and that's why I had to use the [http://etc] names.
Well this seems to work right up until SQL server tries to notify the caller of the change, at which point it generates an error saying that it could not find the service contract.
I presumed it needed the default (SqlQueryNotificationService) contract so I switched over to a fresh install of SQL2005 (making sure the SqlQueryNotificationService was there) and retraced my steps using SqlQueryNotificationService (e.g. GRANT SEND rights again) and it worked.

I have a feeling that the list of query restrictions will make SQLDependency almost unusable in the real world.

b.

SQLDependency in the April CTP

2005-04-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

****** UPDATED 04/26/2005 *********

The problem here was that the SqlQueryNotificationService did not appear to get created when
I upgraded an installation from SQL2000. I fixed the problem by creating the service and then all the advice in the posts mentioned works fine. Here's how to create the service if you have the same problem:

USE [msdb]
GO
CREATE QUEUE [dbo].[SqlQueryNotificationService_DefaultQueue] WITH STATUS = ON , RETENTION = OFF , ACTIVATION ( STATUS = ON , PROCEDURE_NAME = [sys].[sp_DispatcherProc] , MAX_QUEUE_READERS = 5 , EXECUTE AS N'dbo' ) ON [PRIMARY]

USE [msdb]
GO
CREATE SERVICE [SqlQueryNotificationService] AUTHORIZATION [dbo] ON QUEUE [dbo].[SqlQueryNotificationService_DefaultQueue] ([http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostQueryNotification])

USE [msdb]
GO
GRANT SEND on service::SqlQueryNotificationService to guest

****** END OF UPDATE ***************

As an update to some very useful posts on getting SQL Notification to work in Beta 1 from Nils, Julie and Bob Beauchemin, as well as a great original article from Bob, here's what you need to do in SQL2005 April CTP with Beta 2 VS.

Use service name of http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/QueryNotificationService
rather than SqlQueryNotificationService

So to grant the send rights in SQLServer use

GRANT SEND ON SERVICE::[http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/QueryNotificationService] to GUEST

To create an instance of the SQLDependency object you will also have to use the overloaded method which explicitly takes a service name (I presume the default is SqlQueryNotificationService), so you will have

SqlDependency depend = new SqlDependency(cmd, "http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/QueryNotificationService",SqlNotificationAuthType.None,SqlNotificationTransports.Any,10000);

By the way, this will make no sense unless you have read the above article/posts first.

b.

Vertigo

2005-04-25T07:56:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:50 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:14 Montlake to Overlake

Listening: U2 Vertigo

U2 were in town last night for the first of two, sold-out Seattle gigs. I like a few U2 albums but I'm not too fussed on their latest offering and I'm definitely not much of a stadium rocker. Last night though, I realized I had never actually been to a mega-gig in the United States and that, in fact, the shows we see presented in football grounds or large fields in Ireland are designed to be hosted in high-capacity indoor venues of the type only found in the major US cities.
I was massively impressed at the production of this show and particularly how it succeeded in transforming a 17,000 seat, souless, sports stadium into an intimate, lounge-like music venue. No amount of musical talent can do this. We saw the Kings of Leon play a great warm-up set, they gave it their all but just couldn't avoid sounding very small (btw I saw them back in January in a club in Seattle and they blew it away). Caleb Followill, lead singer of KoL came back out to watch the show from the mixing desk so maybe he was picking up some tips for when they headline the Key themselves.

The gig was fantastic; you don't mind paying a high ticket price when it's obvious that a big portion of that money is going into the show. Being indoors means that the crew have complete control over lights, sound, stage setup and this means that the whole thing is more like a theatre production rather than a festival gig, which is unfortunately what these things become when staged outside.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone in Ireland know that you've definitely got something to look forward to in June.

b.

My First VS2005 Beta 2 App

2005-04-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

Not very exciting, just a windows app calling a web service calling the db but it's 100% new stuff Beta2 bits and it's something to build on.

Maybe I'll blog about this Bookstore app or maybe I'll come up with something more original!

b.

End of an Era

2005-04-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:02 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: The C++ Programming Language, Bjarne Stroustrup
Listening: Kaiser Chiefs Employment (fits the post heh?)

Well, the good times are finally over. After 2 separate periods of living in the US, over two years altogether, at over seven months pregnant, Gina has got a job!

She starts work on Monday as a social worker at a specialist facility for babies who are born to drug-addicted mothers. Gina knows the center well, having volunteered there last time we were here and is really looking forward to the work.

Congratulations Gina.

Beta2 download stalled last night at some point, using File Transfer Manager so nothing lost. 6 hours 17 minutes left, maybe I'll get it today.

Also, I could only find the Express edition of the SQL Server 2005 April CTP yesterday but the Developer editions have appeared today.

b.

Cougar Mountain

2005-04-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:45 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:11 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: All the Beta 2 buzz on blogs
Listening: Amy Correia - Lakeville

Since everyone will be doing a Beta 2 post today and I've already done mine, it's great to be able to blog about something different.

Yesterday Gina & I hiked some nice trails around Cougar Mountain Regional Park. The park is only 15 minutes from downtown Seattle yet it feels like you've travelled back in time as well as space, to a time when the Pacific Northwest was pretty much completely covered in forest. Not much elevation to the trails but a good chance to break in hiking boots for the summer season.

Anyway back to Beta 2, Scott Guthrie has an interesting post on the final hours of the release and I've started to download it (10 hours 36 minutes left).

b.

Beta 2

2005-04-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Whidbey Beta 2 is available for download now.

It's build 50215.45, it was signed off on Thursday night and went up on MSDN sometime over the weekend.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to get it on a VPC some time tomorrow.

b.

40 Minutes

2005-04-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:45 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 256: 6:58 Montlake to Overlake

(XC translation - "that's the ultimate connection - 40 minutes door to door").

Reading: Surfer Magazine
Listening: Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

b.

SQL Compare

2005-04-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Inbound:
Route 256: 5:35 NE 20St to Montlake Freeway Station
(XC Notes - g picking me up at Montlake so anything could happen after that! e x t r e m e ).

Reading: May edition of Surfer Magazine
Listening: Beck Guero

SQL Compare is a great tool. Marty & Co introduced me to it and I thought it would be great for db schema upgrade scripts which are always a pain to maintain. I was warned that it does have some caveats and you couldn't always trust the SQL it spat out but it just saved me a whole lot of hassle after I ran a pre-release db upgrade which resulted in a couple of different application failures.
I basically installed a clean version of the app/db, made sure that worked and then compared the db on the working machine to the db on the upgraded failing machine.
SQL Compare quickly told me how the schemas differed and generated the SQL for me to fix the problem.
SQL Data Compare then told me where metadata changes had gone wrong and again offered sql.
Problem solved.
And you're left with a bunch of scripts that you can ship back to whoever wrote the flawed upgrade script.

That's the good news, the bad news involves a MAPI Provider, multi-threading Outlook and a plate of spaghetti in between, but that's for tomorrow.

b.

Photo Blogging

2005-04-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:44 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 6:59 Montlake to Overlake

(XC translation - "good first bus, again I saw the ultimate connection pulling away, but I caught the early 242").

Reading: Michael Howard's Blog
Listening: The Perishers - Let There Be Morning

I've made a few half-hearted attempt to add some photos to my blog and finally succeeded. I had to make a special effort because this was just too good not to share.
I used Picasa, Hello & Blogger. Picasa is a great little package for managing photos and it integrates with Hello which can best be described as photo IM. I had already used Hello to share photos with friends who want the original full-size photo rather than the reduced, compressed version they get in my email. To be honest I don't really like the link between Hello & Blogger (a "BloggerBot" process sits on the other end of the IM Client, configured with your blog and you essentially send pictures to that process, which posts them straight to the blog) because of the fact that it actually publishes before you can edit the post. Of course you can go back, edit the post and republish.

I started this blog as a means to practice writing so I'm not going to go mad with the photos but it is very tempting because I've been taking so many pictures since we arrived here in Seattle. Maybe that's another blog!

Check out the Perishers album it's pretty good but there is one standout track for me. It's worth spending the 99c (or pence) to buy individually even if you don't want the album, it's called "Pills" and it's pretty haunting.

b.

Literary Community

2005-04-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

I just passed this on my way home from the bus stop. What a great neighbourhood to live in, and people wonder why I don't live closer to work on the Eastside! This is why.

Anyone know what bosky means?

Having an abundance of bushes, shrubs, or trees.

b.

Ultimate Connection

2005-04-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Outbound:

Route 44: 6:45 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:01 Montlake to Overlake

(XC translation - "good first bus, just missed the ultimate connection ( a 6:57 256 which drops me right outside my office) but still caught the early 242").

Reading: Last few titbits from May MSDN Magazine
Listening: Beck Guero.

b.

The Pinnacle

2005-04-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:15 Montlake to Overlake

(XC translation - "first bus came early and was going well until it became disconnected from the wire that drives it, lost time while the driver reconnected which meant I missed the early connection").

Reading: Customizing GINA, Keith Brown, MSDN - Especially relevant to me with nuggets like Debugging GINA, GINA Under the Hood and Turning GINA Off.

Listening: Ruby Vileos This is the Day.

I'm going to a climbing class this evening at the REI indoor climbing wall, "The Pinnacle". Climbing seems to be a pretty intense activity which is very popular here in the NorthWest. It looks like there may also be a cultural tie-in, I suppose a bit like surfing, but I'm not interested in getting that heavily involved, it's more to try something I've always fancied doing. Besides, I think you can do many sports but you can only have one way of life.

Hottest local news this week (well actually last week) is that the map wars are heating up.

Currently I use Google to blog, to share photos and of course to search. I'll probably start using them for maps. If they continue to innovate and invest I suppose they could become to online applications what Microsoft are to desktop apps? Wouldn't that be nice.

b.

The Devlins

2005-04-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:46 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:01 Montlake to Overlake

(In case anyone isn't keeping up with extreme commuting, the above information translates to "My first bus came slightly early which meant I caught an earlier connection with less waiting about").

Reading: .NET Framework Internals, MSDN Magazine.
Listening: Hot Fuss The Killers.

My cousins are in town tonight with their band, The Devlins. I think they've driven pretty much all of this tour, right across the US, finishing up in Vancouver tomorrow night. They're playing The Crocodile Cafe here in Seattle tonight. I've done my bit to promote the gig; Kris & Angela are going along with Kris' brother & sister-in-law who are visiting.

b.

Beard & Glasses Goes Native

2005-04-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:47 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:16 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: Contract First Service Development, Aaron Skonnard, MSDN Magazine.
Listening: Harvest Neil Young.

Last night I read an article from Dr. Richard Grimes. Anyone who developed ATL COM components in the UK when they were all the rage (don't know if the Wrox book was as popular in the US) will be intimately familiar with Richard. His pretty face shone out among other beards & glasses from the classic tome Beginning ATL COM and then took centre stage alone for Professional ATL COM, the hard-core follow up.

I've got to say I had a soft spot for ATL and was eagerly awaiting the ATL Server Side Support which was due to ship with VS 7.0 before that release became VS .NET. Anyway enough about the good old days, Richard is a classic beard & glasses man, Beginning ATL COM actually had an entry "Beard & Glasses" in the index under B! The page reference was "Front Cover".

Dr. Grimes has been writing a .NET article for DDJ for a few years but last month he went native and quit his column, launching a severe attack on Microsoft & .NET. To be honest I haven't been reading Richard for a while now, maybe he's slowly losing the plot, but you've got to have some respect for a man who's willing to speak out honestly and openly against the very technology that's been supporting him financially for the last few years.

Here's the article, do you agree or disagree?

b.

Surf Gallery

2005-04-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

This looks bad for a bus blogger but I had to take the car again today because we are having a scan and I need to pick Gina up before the hospital.

I really would prefer to be on the bus.

Anyway, if anyone wondered if there really was surf in Northern Ireland, check out Andy Hills photo gallery. He's took thousands of pictures during this incredible year for surfing on the North Coast (which I missed most of) and even had enough action to create a barrel category.

I've got some photo opportunites of my own over here, this is what I get to look at as the bus crosses the floating bridge over Lake Washington every morning.

b.

No Bus Today

2005-04-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

Took the car today because I'm meeting up with Cera (HBOS Architect and the only woman who can save the world from the evil Dr. Bell and his plan for world domination of the global financial services IT landscape). Cera's in town for a couple of days to drink from the Redmond cup, which is always overflowing with love for large financial institutions.

No reading list this morning but I do have one word for anyone who thinks radio in the US is crap: KEXP. It's a great station, this morning I heard The Sugar Cubes, Tim Booth and the Delays. Joy Zipper were playing live in the studio.

b.

Need a new Source Control System?

2005-04-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Just some local knowledge I picked up here in Redmond.

Ever wondered what source control system Microsoft use?

They use a variation of a system called Perforce. Looks like they acquired the source code rights years ago, so their version (excuse the the pun) is not branded Perforce but insiders tell me it is practically the same system (down to the help files) albeit maybe a few releases back from the commercially available product.

Anyway, we've been using the system for a few weeks and it's pretty nifty, features like ChangeSets and a decent graphical interface have already sold me after a couple of years struggling with PVCS. The big plus for me though was that Perforce, unlike PVCS, has a single command that can merge file changes between branches.

So if anyone out there works for a great big company with plenty of money to switch their SCM tool I'd say ...... what are you waiting for!

b

Extreme Commuting

2005-04-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

Outbound:
Route 44: 6:48 Wallingford to Montlake Freeway Station
Route 242: 7:14 Montlake to Overlake

Reading: New May edition of MSDN magazine, Brad Abrams blog.
Listening: Shuffle setting on iPod.

Clock went forward (i.e. Daylight Saving Time began) yesterday so little bit darker this morning, should be worth it to ride home in daylight.
Mariners Baseball opening day, obsessive Mariners fan conspicuously missing from Route 44, good luck M's.

b.

I've completely stopped blogging since moving to Seattle, either reading or writing. I think there are many factors contributing to this; lack of surf, lack of snow, over-abundance of tech but mostly I've lost the daily post hook, i.e. the one thing that you can post about every day without much effort. For me this was the surf report, anything from a one line update to a full blown session de-brief, but something to post either way. I had hoped I would replace the surf report from Portrush with a snow report from Seattle but unfortunately there was no snow to report on with this years freakish weather and the surf was so depressingly good in Portrush that I couldn't even bear to think about it.

Well I've decided to get a new hook to keep me focused. It's the all-new extreme sport of Seattle bus-riding. Yep, I ride the bus every day, most days I read, some days I sleep, some days I even work but whatever you do on the bus, just being on there makes you part of a counter-culture which can't/won't embrace the all-american ideal of One God, One Man, One Automobile.

Anyway more about that to come I'm sure, main thing for now is that I've decided to try and blog the bus ride, hopefully reading some blogs in the evening on the way home and writing some posts on the way to work in the morning.

b.

If You Lived Here You'd Be Home Now

2005-02-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

That's what those tacky road signs say in a futile bid to convince highway travellers that this particular hell hole of a town would be a great place to live for no other reason than its geographical location at that particular moment in time. In its defence the sign does usually cheer up a weary motorist with the heartening thought that they do not live here and that however many miles they have to go, it's more than worth it to get that many miles away from such a god forsaken place.

I've just thought of another interpretation of this phrase, one which kind of describes how I'm feeling, almost four weeks after moving from Belfast to Seattle. While we are only just getting settled in Seattle, the reason we moved back here was because it felt so much like home when we were last here and it's starting to feel that way again. I have been in Boston this week with work and I spent the week extolling the virtues of Seattle to anyone who would listen. I have never done this about either the town I grew up in, or the city I lived in for the past four years. I fear I've been experiencing this thing called home sickness that I have often heard people describing but could never really understand. I know part of this malady was undoubtedly down to separation from Gina but that is a familiar twinge I feel constantly when we are apart and is quite different. Yep, there is no doubt, if we lived (permanently) in Seattle, I know I'd be home.

That's the heavy stuff out of the way.

Surf is nada in Portrush, not much better in Westport, but StormSurf have a very comprehensive surf report for WA & OR so I'll try and start some predictions from their data and I can track their success in this blog.

Snow is still melting in Seattle, but Whistler is looking good, I can't wait for next weekend.

Started work this week with a tiny (me + 1) R&D department of an EDRM software company. Should be lots of challenging integration issues with Microsoft emerging technologies to be prototyped, evaluated, measured, etc.

We saw Kings of Leon last week at Neumos, brilliant gig given Aha Shake Heartbreak hasn't even been released here yet. Got tickets for Modest Mouse in March at the Showbox and U2 at KeyArena in April. My cousins band, The Devlins are playing the Crocodile on 8 April.

I have to go to bed now, it's almost 3am.

b.

b.

Wi Fi

2005-01-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

To be honest I wasn't sure how many wi-fi hotspots there were in Northern Ireland, but I found an Irish hotspot directory on the blog site of a US journalist living in Dublin. It didn't make good reading, nine in total, if you don't count the one in Waterford which definitely wasn't part of Northern Ireland when I left but I haven't been keeping a close eye on the peace talks (apparently the DUP have improved their negotiation skills so who knows)!

To contrast this I did a quick search for hotspots in Seattle and found 203 which I think is a pretty conservative list to be honest, it seems like everywhere in this city has internet access.
I'm blogging this from a Starbucks in Kirkland while I'm waiting for my car to be fixed (I know I just bought it, don't ask).

Anyway, I realize the security implications of 802.11 but it's just so convenient!

Are there enough places in Belfast where people "hang out" to make hotspots viable? I suppose the obvious place for them in NI would be in the pubs but I can't see anyone pulling out a laptop in Laverys unless they wanted it wrapped round their head!

I've now been in Starbucks for over 4 hours, I expect I would have been thrown out, or at least glared out, if I'd sat in any place in Belfast for that length of time; here it's actively encouraged.

I suppose pubs are Irelands "third place" but I can't help thinking that the coffee shop (Seattle) or cafe (mainland Europe) is just a much better third place.

Too much time on my hands I suppose.

b.

Back on Track

2005-01-23T01:14:00.000-08:00

We're starting to feel a little more settled here in Seattle, we've now got a house and a vehicle and hopefully there's not too much to do next week but hang out and check out a few more of the old haunts.

We're going to see Kings of Leon on Tuesday night at Neumos, a new venue since we were here last and next Monday I'm starting work!

Snow has deteriorated substantially this week with high temperatures (18 C on Thursday) and rain. Stevens & Snowqualmie are both closed, Crystal is just about operational and even the legendary Banked Slalom at Mt Baker has had to be postponed to April.

Still, we've got a weekend in Whistler booked for mid-February so that's something to look forward to.

Hopefully this post sees me back on the blogging track although I think I'm maybe a bit disheartened to find that everyone in Seattle wants to be a writer, and quite a few already are!

Saw Million Dollar Baby tonight, didn't think it would be my cup of tea but have to say it was a great movie, oscar material for sure.

b.

PS I tried to post some of my own pictures using Hello but it seems to still have a few rough edges, hope I don't have to switch to MSN Spaces!

Withdrawal Symptoms

2005-01-16T22:33:00.000-08:00

Getting things set up here in Seattle is helping to take my mind off it, but there's no avoiding the fact that I'm missing the best waves the North Coast of Ireland has seen for a decade. Match that with one of the worst snow seasons in recent years, here in the Pacific NorthWest and you've got a recipe for one depressed Seattle Surfer.

However I can't really complain, the transatlantic move has been going pretty well so far, Gina is moving from the nauseous/irritable phase of pregnancy into the hungry/randy phase and I've just bought a brand new digital camera.

That third blessing has nothing to do with the second by the way!

So, this week we got a house, bank account and social security numbers. Next week we need to get a vehicle, some furniture and a job for Gina.

As soon as that's done we're heading for the mountains!

One more thing, I bought an interesting little book at the Crossroads news stand this evening, it's called Microsoft in the Mirror and it's published by a small local (Redmond) publisher. Basically it's 18 first person accounts of life inside the Empire and I think the minimal editing/production is the books great strength.

b.

Code Complete

2005-01-14T23:06:00.000-08:00

We spent all afternoon in Borders book store in Bellevue. I had forgotten just how huge & comfortable US bookstores can be. While Irish booksellers actively discourage people from sitting around reading books, in the US this is encouraged with comfy chairs, large tables and in-store coffee shops. I think the logic at home must be: "well if they sit around reading the books for free, they'll never buy anything" but this is so short-sighted and couldn't be further from the truth. While I did spend half an hour reading "Buying a Second Hand Car" books which I had no intention of buying and perusing all the latest surf magazines I also purchased "Caught Inside" by Daniel Duane, MSDN February edition and Code Complete, the second edition, by Steve McConnell. Gina also had to persuade me to leave at least two other books back!

Anyway this isn't about US retailing, it's about a great book which was overdue an updated second edition. The original "Code Complete" was published over 10 years ago and a personal copy was given to every new hire in the company I worked for as a placement student (and subsequently joined as a graduate). The book is on many peoples list of software engineering "classic" titles along with the likes of Knuths Art of Programming and Design Patterns by the gang of four. Unfortunately, as good as the book was, it really was in need of an overhaul in the light of many new (it's been 10 years remember) software development trends such as web development, agile methods and collaborative construction. It looks like it has got all this and more while retaining the very practical tone of the original.

Haven't read much of the book yet but from looking at the reviews on Amazon I reckon it will be just as good as the first edition.

Note to anyone reading from my old workplace back in Belfast: What about buying a personal copy of this book for new starts as part of their induction?

The snowboards have finally turned up, they were delivered by British Airways courier tonight. Maybe some riding next week if we get the forecast dump of snow which is badly needed.

b.

Arriving's Tough

2005-01-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

Well, the Seattle Surfer is now actually blogging from Seattle.

Gina and I arrived here on Monday evening after a (luckily) pretty uneventful flight. We lost a couple of bags along the way but that was a fairly insignificant hiccup given the worries we had about Gina flying long-haul while pregnant. British Airways doled out the compensation cash straight away which also helped.

We're holed up right in the middle of the Microsoft campus, staying in a friends apartment in Redmond, while they are back in Ireland. While this area is very convenient to the major tech employers it has absolutely no soul and neither Gina or myself could imagine spending a minute of our free time here. We've spent the last couple of days hanging out around our old neighbourhood of Fremont and looking for an apartment/house in that general vicinity.

The weather has been cold but dry, clear and sunny, perfect NorthWest Winter days. The Cascades have had some trouble with snow lately, a warm December melted away alot of the base pack, but all resorts are open and Mt. Baker has been an anomaly with a 62 inch base. No snowboarding yet, our snowboard bag was one of the bags lost, but to be honest we need to get the basics sorted first.

In that regard we have procurred social security numbers, a bank account and a mobile phone. Our next priority is accomodation, then transport. We have looked at a very nice apartment in Fremont (big money) and we are looking at a beautiful house in Wallingford tomorrow. We're driving around in a rented Chrysler PT Cruiser (yuk!) and haven't seen anything for sale privately yet. Hope we don't have to go to the dealers, not even sure what we want yet.

OK, that's everyone up to date with what we're up to in Seattle, please leave some comments as to what you're up to in Belfast/Anywhere.

b.

Leaving's Tough

2005-01-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

Today was my last day working for the HBOS E-Commerce Development Centre in Belfast.

It was difficult to say goodbye to such a great bunch of people but I very much hope that if we return to Belfast maybe I will get the opportunity to work with them all again.

Leaving's tough but I've got to put the Seattle into the "Seattle Surfer" so thanks to everyone (especially the Sainsburys team) and good luck for 2005.

b.

Photo Torture

2005-01-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to surf since New Years Day for personal reasons (not much blogging either) but the North Coast continues to serve up epic conditions and what's worse, Andy Hill of Troggs is photographing every bit of it.

He said he took 620 pictures yesterday! Some of them are here.

b.

Hello '05

2005-01-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

2005 has picked up exactly where 2004 left off with heaving barrels on East Strand.

My New Years Resolution is to post more tech in 2005. Being in Seattle should certainly mean a reduction in surf posts!

Will they be replaced by snow posts? Maybe.

b.

Goodbye '04

2004-12-31T08:14:00.000-08:00

Surfed out 2004 in style this morning at East Strand.

4ft & clean, there weren't too many out at around 9.30 and I caught some lovely rides.

Happy New Year.

b

Moving Madness

2004-12-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

Due to the combined facts that (a) we have no storage space in our house and (b) my wife allows no clutter whatsoever, I assumed that packing up for the move would be easy.

It's not.

Anyway, we're moving to Seattle on Jan 10 and at the moment I'm doing one day surfing and one day packing so today was my packing day and tomorrow I'm surfing again. I just hope the conditions hold up.

b.

East Strand Perfection

2004-12-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

Surfed East Strand today.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I felt a bit zonked from G&Ms party last night which wasn't ideal given the great waves but at least I was there.

b.

Sombre Surfing

2004-12-27T15:26:00.000-08:00

We had a great surf today, even though the swell was pretty small, 2-3ft or so, nice for longboarding and definitely surfable.

I surfed with Marty and his cousin Karen today. Karen's a star striker with a ladies football team in London and pretty game, to face December conditions on the North coast.

Pat and Brendan (Sean Burns brother) paddled out after about half an hour and for a while there was more talking than surfing but there were long periods between decent sets so that wasn't such a bad thing.

It was great to get back in the water after the excesses of Christmas but I found it difficult not to think of the thousands who had lost their lives in Asia, lives taken by the very force we were harnessing for fun.

Anyone who has surfed in big waves (i.e. any waves they feel are big, that can be 5ft to 15ft) will appreciate the power of the ocean and know all too well that death (or one of its close neighbors) can feel very close when faced with that kind of power.

It's a humbling time to be a surfer.

b.

Destructive Power of the Ocean

2004-12-26T06:45:00.000-08:00

The awesome power of nature was horrifically displayed in South East Asia with an 8.9 earthquake in the Indian Ocean, sending tsunami tidal waves out towards India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Words can't really describe a disaster of this scale.

b.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T01:38:00.000-08:00

My wife Gina & I are going to have our first baby next year. What a Christmas present!

Good will to all men.

b.

Does a "Smart Guy" culture stifle innovation?

2004-12-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

In the interest of brevity this post makes no reference to the great software Microsoft consistently produces. That's a given with "smart guys", this is about the x factor that makes a company cool.

Robert Scoble recently came in for a lot of stick for the post in which he implored Microsoft (his employer) to drop everything and produce a worthy competitor to the iPod. While Scobles supporters and detractors battled it out in the "blogosphere" the post made me think firstly that this was a very public "let's blow them out of the water"-type rant and secondly that Microsoft, for all their smart guys, never really seem to innovate, yet they appear to have so much potential to do so.

A company with the brainpower, cash and ubiquity of Microsoft should be leading the way and not following (albeit following, overtaking & extinguishing).

Does the "smart guy" culture lead to a company of followers?

I can't pretend to be an authority on MS culture but from books, blogs and indeed visits to Redmond I feel I certainly have a taste for the public perception of that culture.

Bill Gates has been famously quoted as shouting "That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard" upon hearing a point he didn't agree on. This attitude is bound to create a reluctance to throw out new ideas before they are fully formed. Creative types would say these can often be the best ideas.

The book "How would you move Mount Fuji" talks about interviewers who are terrified of being responsible for a "bad hire". This is entirely understandable when you consider that the hiring of a "not so smart guy" would immediately affect your own "smart guy" rating. Why risk that for the chance to hire someone different, they wouldn't fit in here right?

If you need to see some tangible evidence of a follower culture just check out the Microsoft blogs. Obviously the inherent nature of blogging means that trends are spotted early and strenghened quickly, however the eagerness of Microsofties to rush out and buy the latest set-top-box, smart phone or video game, simply because "everyone else has one" is often astounding. I often imagine a deafening bleating sound reverderating round the Redmond campus.

Lastly in the way of evidence, a couple of real-life experiences I have had up in the mother ship. I suppose one of the most surprising things I found the first time I met with a Microsoft development group was the talk of money around the table. While I wanted to talk tech, and I'm not suggesting for one minute that those guys couldn't talk me right out of tech land, the softies always seemed to always drop in a "that wouldn't make money" or "that sounds like a money spinner". Certainly you want every person in the company to be concerned about the bottom line but everyone knows that this is not a ideal bed-fellow for innovation. My second visit was a "tell us what you're doing" call up so that one pretty much speaks for itself in the context of this discussion.

To sum up, this is in no way an anti-Microsoft argument but rather a call to Redmond to start hiring a few people "Bill wouldn't approve of"!

b.

It's legal, but it ain't moral.

2004-12-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

Just found a great C++ FAQ site which answered the one interview question I couldn't. And the best thing is that the technique described is not recommended so I don't mind not being aware of it:

You know you can override member functions in C++ without them being declared virtual; and you know when and why you should declare them virtual.

"Experienced C++ programmers will sometimes redefine a non-virtual function for efficiency (e.g., if the derived class implementation can make better use of the derived class's resources)"

b.

Interview Questions

2004-12-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Greg Reinacker (founder of NewsGator) recently posted this list of requirements for developers he wants to hire.

Since I could be interviewing in the US sometime soon I tried to see how many boxes I could tick!

You know the difference between _beginthreadex and CreateThread:
I would have been able to explain this succintly a few years ago (when I developed Win32 desktop applications) but I probably would have had to go into waffle mode. _beginthreadex is the C runtime method to create a thread. You should use this call if you want the new thread to call into the CRT (talk of CreateThread leaking memory in this case) so most guidelines recommend using this instead of the Win32 API call CreateThread. If you're using MFC of course you should always use AFXBeginThread().

You know all of the ways to share memory between Win32 processes:
Memory Mapped Files

You know what an AppDomain is, and you can think of a reason you might want to create one yourself:
I hope I know what an AppDomain is since I have been building DotNet applications for the last two years! Jeffrey Richters Applied Microsoft .Net Framework Programming is just a great book on the nuts & bolts of the framework. For my applications IIS usually hosts the CLR and the AppDomains that come with that (e.g. one per site) but you may want to host your own instance of the CLR and some AppDomains if you were planning to run some managed code on an application server (i.e. CLR hosted in an NT service).

You know what a HttpModule is, and you can think of at least two examples of why you might use one:
Again, building ASP.NET application for the last 2 years has meant getting to know pipeline modules pretty well. Plenty of good articles out there on when these would be useful but of course you need to understand ASP.NET Request processing and the HTTP pipeline first. Most people use these without even realising (e.g. Forms Authentication).

You know what Mutexes and Semaphores are used for:
To be honest I haven't used low level synchronisation techniques nearly as much as we talked about them at university! Today .NET provides high level constructs with the Lock statement and ReaderWriterLock class but I suppose it all comes back to the initial Critical Section Problem outlined by Dijkstra in the sixties. Just type "Critical Section" & Dijkstra into Google and you'll find plenty of academic content on this. Watch out for Dining Philosophers!

You know you can override member functions in C++ without them being declared virtual; and you know when and why you should declare them virtual:
Hands up, don't know what he's getting at here, really need to refresh my C++. I'll find out and post the answer.

You can explain the difference between:
A::A() {m_x = 5;}
and
A::A() : m_x(5) { }
Second constructor is using an initializer list to achieve the same thing as first, so no difference?

When someone asks you to write code on a whiteboard to reverse a string in place, you're disappointed that they didn't ask a more interesting question:
That's just nerdy, as far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as too easy a question in any interview.

You know that IL isn't interpreted:
Again, I'm deferring to Jeffrey Richters great book for a superb section on IL & JIT compilation. pp 11-21

You can explain transaction isolation levels as they relate to SQL Server:
The isolation level at which your transaction runs determines your applications sensitivity to changes made by others. The four isolation levels are Read Uncommitted (Dirty Read - most concurrent, least consistent), Read-Committed (this is the default), Repeatable Read and Serializable (least concurrent, most consistent). Book Recommendation Inside SQL Server 2000

You know what the Running Object Table is, and can think of situations when you might want to use it:
This was a COM technique of InterProcess Communication (kind of) where you could register your application in the ROT and then clients could get at that instance (e.g. automation clients, like VBScript using GetObject). I don't think I've ever registered anything in the ROT but I have accessed Word application objects from it to get at a running instance of Word and maybe pull data from there?

Just one passed, are there any wrong?

b.

Beautiful Day

2004-12-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

Too busy to blog yesterday but not too busy to surf! Surfed West Strand at around 10am with only about half a dozen surfers in the water.

Bright sunshine, clear blue sky, probably just above freezing temperatures, almost no wind and big clean waves. Beautiful.

There were some big sets and even though I wasn't right down at Black Rocks the waves seemed to be sucking the beach almost dry and I got bashed against the sand bar a couple of times.

Not many North Coast surfs left before the big move (will post more later on this). Have to go and complete a tech post.

b.

The Cribber

2004-12-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

The legendary wave in Cornwall has been making the news this week.

Chris Bertish from South Africa was the only surfer to ride the wave although his session was interrupted by someone who wasn't quite ready for double-decker faces.

North Coast looks set to have some big waves of its own this weekend. Today was 6-8ft plus and Troggs were not renting equipment. If the gale force onshore turns around and softens it could be nice.

See you there,

b.

Managed Memory Leaks

2004-12-15T05:28:00.000-08:00

Rico Mariani has posted a useful step-by-step guide to tracking down managed memory leaks.

I don't really like posting an entry that is essentially just a link (see Rory Blyths interesting solution for this) but sometimes just getting a post up is the main thing.

b.

King Monkey

2004-12-12T16:26:00.000-08:00

Just back from Ian Brown at the Ulster Hall. Brought me right back to student days at the height of the Madchester scene. He played loads of Roses classics and we danced the night away. My wife said there were people who got as much fun out of my dancing as they did from the music but I couldn't have cared less.

Highlight of the set for me had to be "I Wanna Be Adored".

I also passed my Bronze Medallion assessment and am now a qualified life saver!

The King is dead, long live the King.

b.

Bronze Medallion

2004-12-12T06:25:00.000-08:00

I'm doing the Assessment for Bronze Medallion Life Saving Award this evening.

Myself and another guy are being assessed 4 weeks ahead of schedule (I'll be in Seattle when the scheduled exam is held) and we're also doing Life Support 3, rather than Life Support 1 which we originally trained for, so it's been a very rushed preparation.

After 10 weeks of 8.30 Saturday morning starts it's good to be near the finish so I just hope we get a result.

I've been training 3 days a week for the last fortnight and studying first aid in my spare time so it will also be good to free up some time to prepare for the move.

Off to rescue a baby from a horrific case of drowning, bleeding & shock with some choking thrown in for good measure.

b.

Camper Van To The Coast

2004-12-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

I was back in my van today, except this time I was a passenger, not the driver.
Marty (who I sold the camper to) took the van up the coast and we had a late, but great, session at Whiterocks (btw you need to be registered to see this pic).

It was beautiful glassy sea surface conditions, 2-3ft waves and a nice enough wait between sets so that you could have a chat.

When I got out the back I realised I knew everyone out there, if not by name then at least to say hello to and that always makes for a really mellow surf.

Pat was out there, who Marty & I know from years ago and we hadn't seen him since Seans wedding in October. I learnt to surf on Pats T&C board which he still rides today.

Anyway, Marty rode a great wave, he was super-stoked and I stayed in until it was so dark I was basically surfing blind, which just capped of a great little session.

The van seemed to have a good day too!

b.

Out but not Down

2004-12-10T01:57:00.000-08:00

All Irish competitors now eliminated from World Juniors in Tahiti.

Easky Britton & Fergal Smith both came last in their Repercharge Heat 1.

Oh well, it's still 3ft & offshore on the North Coast, hopefully it will stay this way for the weekend.

b.

Surf's Back

2004-12-09T01:53:00.000-08:00

Thursday 9 Dec 2004 8:40am

It's 3ft and offshore at West Strand right now.

b.

World Juniors

2004-12-08T16:35:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Easky Britton & Fergal Smith who are still in the Championships in Tahiti.

Disappointed for Cain Kilcullen since I saw him surf brilliantly to win the Co.Sligo Open earlier in the year.

I suppose it shows that it's still a big struggle for young Irish surfers but it's great to see them competing on the world stage.

Swell has dropped on North Coast today.

b.

Ship Party

2004-12-07T01:54:00.000-08:00

Team Celebration today, organised by yours truly.

With the surf report giving 4ft with light offshore winds I really wish I'd organised a trip to Portrush.

Not sure everyone else would have been too keen on getting changed in West Strand car park mid-December, or on me sneaking off to enjoy the waves!

No "i" in team they say, but there is a "me".

b.

The City Ain't No Place for a Surfer

2004-12-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

At this rate the current swell will probably go down as the best of the year and today I was stuck in Belfast with no transport to the coast!

I don't think I can spend many more years living this far from the ocean, life's just too short to let waves like this go by.

Good luck to the Irish team at the ISA World Junior Surfing Championships in Tahiti.

b.

Size Matters

2004-12-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

Haven't really been able to take advantage of this recent swell through being fairly busy in work, even weekends are hectic with my life-saving exam coming up next week and the start of the Christmas party season.

Made it up to Portrush yesterday afternoon, there were a lot of surfers in at East Strand but the size was dropping with the falling tide and it seemed that Whiterocks still had decent size and it was also super-clean.

Not too many surfers out at Whiterocks but the huge numbers of kayakers had probably put people off. By the time I got there the paddlers had moved down the beach and the main breaks were clear.

The big right at the East end of the beach looked to be holding sets of 7-8 ft and just looked too gnarly for me, or anyone else but the smaller breaks were very fast and hollow and probably measured 4-5 ft on the regular sets.

The combination of the size, steep faces and a very heavy wave made for some hairy drops and very fast rides where it was difficult to control the board. I could have opted for an easier time at East Strand but I thought I should tackle the bigger stuff, even if it meant more wipeouts.

Steadily more surfers arrived, mostly short-boarders. The body-boarders were out in force, the North Coast has a fairly big crew of very talented spongers but sometimes I think they have a worse attitude than the short-boarders. I had to pull off a wave to avoid taking the head off one yesterday and all I got for my trouble was a mouthful of abuse. I heard another bodyboarder call a young surfer off a wave with a very aggressive "Don't you even f&$kin' think about it!" while he was mid-take-off.

I suppose it's something to do with the increased danger levels out there when it gets big but there always seems to be an increase in tensions.

b.

First Lapse

2004-12-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted for a couple of days, not through lack of material but simply because I haven't had a chance to get online and post.

I had hoped to post at the very least a brief surf report every day even when I was busy so I will be trying to get back into that habit. Blogging must really be going mainstream, I read an article in the Observer Magazine today about a high-profile NYC blogger.

There has been a good swell on the North Coast all week and it looks like it will continue into next week. Surfed yesterday at Whiterocks, report to follow.

b.

New Blogger

2004-12-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

This blogging is definitely contagious.

My boss now has a blog. He's got a strong database background and lately has taken to whispering conspiratorily about code generation. We think that was something he picked up down under and we're hoping it will wear off with the jet-lag.

If Marty's admirable straight-talking is reflected in his blog we should be in for a treat.

b.

Dawn Patrol

2004-11-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

Dawn patrolling this morning. Up at 6:30 and on the road for 6:45.

Hit the 'Port just before 8 (still dark) and both beaches had clean, offshore waves.

East Strand would have been perfect for my 9'2 but I had packed a 7'6 mini-mal for convenience so I reckoned it would be better suited to West.

Black Rocks had heavy 4-5 ft sets as I got changed but I decided the 2-3 ft Castle Erin break looked a better bet given there was no one else about and I was still half sleeping.

The strong offshore was holding the waves up a little too much, they were almost making it to the beach before breaking, then they had nowhere to go. I got hammered on the first couple of sets, partly because I've been riding a longboard for the last couple of weeks and partly due to the steeply jacking faces.

Since the waves were closing out on the beach there was no ride to speak of, the thrill was about making the steep drop and then trying to get back over the wave before it charged you into the sand.

After a while a longboarder joined me and said he had left his car about 10 to 9 so I had another 15 minutes or so. I probably only caught one wave between that and my final ride in.

Trying to explain to anyone why you would get up at six thirty am to drive one hour for one hours surfing followed by a one hour drive home and then go to work is fairly pointless unless that person surfs. If that person is a surfer, well you don't need to explain, because they know that nothing beats the feeling of the dawn patrol.

b.

Generics

2004-11-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

The other day someone asked me about the new CLR feature of Generics and I felt that my answer wasn’t exactly crystal clear. I believe this was because I was so accustomed to using templates in C++ whereas the enquirer had no background in C++ at all.

Perhaps if I blog on the subject I will be better prepared the next time I am asked.

Most of the information I have seen so far on Generics talks about writing generic types and generic methods when in fact the vast majority of people will use generic classes rather than actually author them. For example, with C++ templates, I used them all the time in STL and more abstractly in ATL yet I don’t think I have ever written a template class in production code.

Therefore I am going to focus only on the new generic BCL classes which ship with 2.0 and use these to illustrate the features & benefits of generics. I am deliberately not touching on the subject of performance since this is a post in itself (which I will hopefully do) and requires a much deeper understanding of generics and the CLR.

At a most basic level, generic classes will provide developers with the option of using strongly-typed collection classes without having to rewrite the standard collection functionality (Add(), Remove(), GetValue(), etc) each time.

On my current project we tend to use the existing BCL collection classes like Hashtable, ArrayList, etc and therefore we live with the runtime type checking that is necessary because these classes treat everything as the base type Object. A benefit of these "any type" collections is that there was no need to reimplement the common collection methods (Add, Remove, etc) for specialised types (e.g. our Account class). One of the drawbacks of this approach was that less experienced developers were often unsure about which type should go in which collection and this inevitably resulted in runtime Invalid Cast exceptions.

private HashTable custHT = new Hashtable(30);
...

custHT.Add(idxCustName, "CustomerName"); // would compile
custHT.Add(idxCustName, 32); // would also compile

A sub-system which had a different design team (still in-house) decided to go with strongly typed collection classes derived from BCL collection base classes (i.e. System.Collections.CollectionBase) . The benefit of this was that types (e.g. the Role class) were all known at compile time and any mismatch would not be tolerated by the compiler. A drawback was the amount of repeated code along with a fair number of essentially “incomplete” collections where methods were not implemented if they were not immediately required.

private IRoleCollection roleCollection = new RoleCollection();
...

// Use IRoleCollection method AddRole(Int32 roleId, IRole roleToAdd)

roleCollection.AddRole(1, aRole); // would compile
roleCollection.AddRole(1, 32); // would not compile

Generics will bridge the gap between these two approaches by providing classes such as Dictionary which can be strongly typed at compile time yet still provide all the functionality of the "any type" class Hashtable.

using System.Collections.Generic;
...

private Dictionary genDic = new Dictionary(30);
...

genDic.Add(idxCustName, “CustomerName”); // would compile
genDic.Add(idxCustName, 32); // would not compile

To summarise, CLR generics, at their most basic level, provide type safety and encourage code reuse.

In later posts I will attempt to cover design & development of generic types and methods, dig into the internals of generics and look at how generics could improve performance.

b.

Mad Dog McClure

2004-11-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

Headed up the coast today with "Mad Dog" McClure.

Weather was pretty bleak and just as we got down to the Whiterocks car park surfers were starting to leave the water. All had the same story; that the wind had suddenly done a u-turn and transformed a clean small wave to mushy ankle-snappers. It was pretty much confirmed as unsurfable when even John McCurry didn't seem to be able to catch anything.

We checked out Portballintrae but it was very full and totally exposed to the onshore wind, which seemed to be stronger than at Whiterocks.

Surfers were still bailing as we suited up at Whiterocks but the size did seem to be picking up even if the wind was too.

Despite all of the above I had a great session, the water felt colder than last week but that only made it more refreshing. It was especially invigorating for Mad Dog since his gloves were back in Belfast, in the boot of my car!

It was almost dark by the time we came in and I think the only people left in the water were a couple of spongers.

Anyway, apart from the surf, what made the trip worthwhile was listening to the yarns from McClure. Some great memories from his "Mad Dog" days. That moniker gets conferred all too easily around these parts but this man is truly deserving of the handle.We talked a bit about blogging so I said he should blog those memoirs, they'd be worth reading!

Looks like it's going to stay onshore for tomorrow but the chart looks intense for early next week. More on that tomorrow.

b.

The Devlins

2004-11-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Surf still lousy.

Maybe a sacrifice is in order.

My cousins' band The Devlins are playing tonight at The Kings Head, Lisburn Road.

b.

Surf Report

2004-11-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

Portrush: Pond-like.

ok so I haven't got the prediction skills honed just yet!

b.

Still no waves

2004-11-24T15:32:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update:

Still perfect weather & wind conditions on the North Coast but no waves!

I'll stick my neck out and predict a small swell to hit tomorrow but not last very long.

b.

Evolution

2004-11-24T04:24:00.000-08:00

Despite the title this is a techie post not a "meaning of life" post.

Brad Abrams has produced an excellent draft paper on the use of the Obsolete attribute in V2.0 of the .NET Framework.

It’s great to see that Microsoft are not allowing the constraint of backwards compatibility to stifle innovation in the CLR.

I believe the Obsolete attribute provides an opportunity for all .NET developers to improve and evolve their codebase without incurring the wrath of project managers who do not always see the benefit of design change “wish lists”. There is a strong band of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” advocates out there who generally don’t like to build development resource into a project plan unless it directly satisfies a customer requirement. This approach can be frustrating for architects who end up with a growing list of design changes which become increasingly difficult to introduce as incumbent APIs continue to be used in successive releases.

I had flirted with the Obsolete attribute earlier this year but since it generated a compiler error we ended up with a “big bang” exactly like the case we were trying to avoid, where the deprecated method was actually removed from the codebase.

By suppressing the warning, as Brad describes, and moving the onus of alerting to FXCop, the implementation of design improvements can be decoupled from their introduction to the main code base.

Of course there is still the possibility for developers/managers to live with the FXCop warnings or even suppress them but I have found that a change which is tested and ready to be used is much more likely to be adopted than one which is floundering on a “wouldn’t it be great if” list.

[Note: the FXCop rule, ConsiderNotUsingObsoleteFunctionality, mentioned in Brads whitepaper is not yet available in any public release of FXCop]

b.

P.S. If I was asked to recommend just one blog to any .NET developer it would be Brad Abrams

Dolphins Got Soul

2004-11-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

This piece from Australia prompted some discussion on the intelligence of dolphins and I took some stick in work for suggesting that dolphins were not only smart, but more importantly, they had soul.

A quick search of the web revealed that this notion of soul is very much connected to dolphins and in particular the "shark vs dolphin" metaphor is used to describe two distinct personality types.

Not only is this metaphor common but it has often been applied to corporations (Sharks to Dolphins : The Search for the Corporate Soul) and indeed corporate politics. In their book, Swim With The Dolphins, Connie Glaser & Barbara Steinberg Smalley talk about sharks as:

[They] are stern taskmasters who relish power. Their approach is strictly top-down, leaving no doubt whatsoever about who’s in charge. They bark orders to their subordinates, expecting obedience and loyalty in return.... In fact, because sharks think with their heads, and not with their hearts, they are oblivious to employees’ needs and desires.

Whereas they characterise Dolphins as:

Supremely gifted motivators. Excellent communicators. Acutely intelligent. Warm-blooded and friendly.... In contrast to sharks, dolphins prefer operating in webs rather than in hierarchies. They seek respect (rather than obedience) from subordinates and recognize that loyalty cannot be commanded; it must be earned.... Dolphins are extremely intuitive and constantly tuned in to employees’ needs and desires.

I reckon I see sharks and dolphins every day in my line of work and I know which ones I'd rather go swimming with!

BTW Dolphins Surf.

b.

[Update] There are no waves on the North Coast today, hence this "meaning of life" post.

WestBay Surf Cam

2004-11-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

Richard, the North Coast's premier shaper (WestBay Surfboards) has updated his web site so maybe that's why there was no picture this morning.

Waves looked small on Troggs East Strand Cam.

Hopefully some techie posts coming around new ideas about C++ development (e.g. prefast static analysis tool, etc). I haven't written any serious C++ code since VS 6.0 and I'd like to get back into it (even though C# is definitely my language of choice now).

b.

Chart Reading

2004-11-21T05:04:00.000-08:00

Doesn't look like the anticipated swell will hit us after all. You can see from the BBC Pressure Chart that the high pressure (that's what's making it a lot warmer today) has pushed up between the two lows (that were previously looking good for hitting us today) and forced them off to the side of us.

Basically a low pressure system to the north of Ireland means bad weather out in the North Atlantic which will generate ocean storms and the effects of those storms are big waves which ripple towards us just like when a stone hits the surface of a pond. Swell comes off at similar angles to the orientation of the isobar lines on a pressure map and can travel 300 - 400 km in a day.

So no swell up on the North Coast today even though wind conditions are perfect; moderate SW means offshore on the north coast beaches.

b.

Microsoft Don't Surf!

2004-11-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

If they did, they wouldn't have slyly removed the ability for XP Pro users to add more than one web site to their IIS 5.1 configurations! This Microsoft tactic reeks of greed and mean-spiritedness, two qualities which I hope would never be attributed to any fellow surfer.

I definitely did not intend my first techie post to be an anti-Microsoft diatribe so I will keep this one short and as sweet as possible.

While I realise Microsoft is not a charity it seems this un-feature goes very much against their doctrine of being developer-focused. I want to "develop" my sites on XP Pro but I want to "run" them on W2xx Server and am happy to pay for that production environment.

Anyway this post was going to be about how an ISAPI filter like multisite could get round the problem and maybe even give some background on ISAPI filters but since I couldn't actually get this thing to work with our ASP.NET web sites I'll leave it a pure rant for now. BTW multisite works great if you have simple html pages and a simple site structure. It won't work for ASP.NET but if you're really desperate Steven Cohn has another workaround using admin scripts but that one also has limitations which mean it doesn't suit my needs.

I'm getting used to this blogging, I could write all night but I have to go.

b.

PS If you don't recognise the film quote I've borrowed for the title of this post check out Apocalypse Now, the famous surf scene is one of my favourite movie moments.

Surf Report 20 Nov 2004

2004-11-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

Portrush: 2-3ft, light offshore

Surfed at Blackrocks (West Strand) today, the waves were small but super clean and it was a beautiful clear cold day. Water temperature felt like around 9-C but air temperature was more like 3-C. There was snow on the mountains driving up!

Lots of surfers in the water but still got my fair share of waves, thanks to packing the long board.

Still waiting for this long distance swell to reach us, let's hope it arrives overnight.

b.

Surf Report

2004-11-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

Portrush: 2-3ft Strong Onshore.

Forecast: Looking good for the weekend, wind to turn off-shore and swell out there.

Hopefully I will post something a bit more thought-provoking than a surf report but for now that's something to keep me posting daily.

b.

Hello Ocean

2004-11-18T13:47:00.000-08:00

Gotta do the classic "Hello World" opening post with just a slight twist in view of the blog name.

I've been reading blogs for about a year now so I reckoned it was time to get one of my own.

I'm hoping to blog about surfing, snowboarding, tech stuff and maybe some 'meaning of life' stuff if I'm feeling particularly stoked.

Anyway, that's quite enough for a test post.

b.