Random writings, thoughts, tools, and ideas....

Not being on a social network is like having a company which doesn’t appear in your favourite search engine - it is just a requirement of being online in our era and for a long time I have tried to get to the utopian world of an integrated social experience where everyone was everywhere and my updates, posts, pictures etc… trickled across all social networks, so no matter what you did you could hear what I had to say or was doing etc…

This was a stupid idea and I thought I would share my learning’s about that process.

Problem 1 – He with the most friends wins

With Facebook I feel into the trap of accepting every friend request, loading my address book into it and basically any other “tricks” I could to increase my friend count. This meant that logging on to Facebook was a stream of conscience from people I really didn’t care about and so overtime I moved away from Facebook as the value I took out of it was low.

The solution to this was to create a set of guides for people to be my friends on Facebook. I am not going to cover all of them, I’ll just focus on two of them but I had about 5 or 6 which I use to decide who to keep or accept requests from:

1. Time span rule – if I have seen you or had more than a Christmas email for 5 years or more, you are out.
2. Override – I can keep anyone for any reason breaking any other rule  

Using my rule set I trimmed from over 300 friends to less than 90 and Facebook is now a daily visit site because I do care about the thoughts of those 90 people.

Summary: Be very selective of who you follow on your social networks.

Problem 2 – The right tool for the the right job

One of the problems with Facebook friends, is that many of the those people were “frendors” or people who I just saw in the passages at work. Facebook isn’t meant for great communication around work however there is better choices for them:

• LinkedIn – This is great for business partners, frendors, business contacts and key direct co-workers. This ensures that the value of the conversation is higher because it is more business focused and people do care deeply about their careers on there.
• Yammer – This is for people I work with, regardless of anything else. This is also great because it is a walled garden so we can have those private conversations that are company/team specific.
• Twitter – We met at an event, you want to hear from me or want me to hear from you but we don’t care about much else Twitter makes a great place to put people while I evaluate their value and should I try and add them to other networks. Many people start off here and move to the others.

Sure there are a few people who are on more than one network, but those are exceptions to the rule. Most people end up in one place.

Summary: Facebook for friends & family, LinkedIn for your professional career, Yammer for co-workers & Twitter for all else.

Problem 3 – Auto post is not your friend

I personally spend more time in Twitter than any other network, and I eventually had it setup that every tweet went to Facebook & LinkedIn too. The problem is Twitter is really unfiltered and I do post a lot of jokes or half baked ideas which detract from my professional value on LinkedIn or are so technical that my friends & family on Facebook scratched their heads with confusion.

Thankfully this can be fixed: Don’t auto post. LinkedIn supports this with a setting you must enable, Yammer does this by default and for Facebook don’t use the standard Twitter app rather use the Selective Tweets app. All these require you tag a tweet with a special tag, for it to auto post, i.e. Facebook it is #fb, Yammer is #yam & LinkedIn is #li

So if I post something on Twitter and want it on Yammer & LinkedIn I append the tags and it is on all three networks but not on Facebook!

Summary: Post selectively to the right social networks.

Any day I open my email and see an email from Peter Searle (the BIG boss at BBD, where I work) in there, I wonder if a trip to HR is in my near future , today though is something far more awesome and rather that tell you myself I thought I would share Peter’s words because it is just fantastic:

More than 25 years ago Barone, Budge and Dominick, also known as BB&D, was begun by a group of people dedicated to delivering software solutions to clients. Initially, the work was done in an attic, and those people were Sandra Barone, Tom Budge and Ralf Dominick. 

The current corporate identity was created in the eighties with the founding of the company.

BB&D now employs more than 400 software professionals. We are South Africa’s largest independent custom software development company, and we serve customers in both South Africa and internationally.

In moving forward, we will never forget where we’ve come from. On the contrary, we will even further imprint the attitudes and values that have made BB&D what it is today.

We are taking the core values, achievements and expectations that have become so entrenched into the company’s make-up and are transitioning them into a fresh new identity that resonates with the next generation of the new BBD.

We are now BBD. And our brand line is – combined intelligence.

BBD work together with our clients, sharing knowledge and ensuring we can deliver solutions that improve their business.  This meeting of minds, connecting and building on each other’s brilliance enables us to design solutions for them that mark the way forward.

In essence, we are more than the simple sum of our parts. Our combined intelligence is the greater whole.

Very proud to be a BBDer

If you try and install the tailspin travel demo on Windows 7 with service pack 1 , it will fail saying the operating system is not supported

Thankfully this is easy to fix, in the C:\TailspinTravel\assets folder is a Dependencies.dep  file. Open that in notepad (or text editor of your choice) and navigate to the <os> element. Note the buildNumber attribute is set to: 7000;7100;7600

All you need to so is change it to: 7000;7100;7600;7601

As in the screenshot above, now save and rerun setup and you will succeed!

There is many ways to do debugging in Visual Studio, normally you just hit F5, compile & run the code with debugging. However sometimes you need to debug an executable you have already built or debug on another machine. I have mentioned this previously you can use the Attach to Process option to do debug MSCRM assemblies that exist on other machines and/or run by a executable you do not control.

This works great but recently I had an issue where the application would start and (silently) die within seconds, but only in test (never in dev). It just happened so quickly that I could not attach the debugger in time. So how can you debug that scenario?

Thankfully this is very easy, just go to your Visual Studio project settings and switch the Start Action to Start External Program, set the path to the executable and then hit F5!

What this will do is start the executable, attach the debugger and work with your code all for you – so no more racing against the attach to debugger options

If you have Visual Studio 2010 you may be annoyed when you want to run code analysis and it is just not there! You can configure it, but cannot run it?!

The reason is that code analysis is only available for the selected project, and you likely have the solution selected in the Solution Explorer (or Solution Navigator). You will need to select the project first and it will appear.

No solution wide code analysis yet either. However I believe these annoyances will be corrected in the next version of Visual Studio

Update: This has changed with version 3.8, read the awesome news at A follow up to my NDepend pro tip...

I am a a big NDepend fan – I can’t imagine doing analysis or taking over new projects without it! If you have not heard of NDepend, then have a look at: NDepend - The field report

I feel stupid for not finding this power tip before, but recently I had about 20 projects to analyse - a situation that appeared to be painful because it meant creating NDepend projects for each one.

Thankfully I stumbled on the terribly named Select .NET assemblies to Analyze option in the file menu. This is option is actually a way to create a quick temp NDepend project!

Once you have clicked that, you should click the choose VS solutions option and you get another great dialog showing you a list of your Visual Studio recent solutions! This is great because I would load the code in VS, build it (to make sure it can build) and run code metrics against it and having this quick selector linked to VS meant that I do not need to browse for the solution NDepend again!

Possible bug in it though, where it doesn’t show web projects; WinForms, console apps etc… all fine just not web projects?!

Select the one you want, hit OK twice and analysis starts!

Happy analysis!

Pepper is a new free extension for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 that I have created to solve a major pain which I am calling SLM (setting lifecycle management ). The problem is that settings inside Visual Studio are vast & complex, and configuring your IDE is a labour of love, taking years of fine grain tweaks. I can personally trace back my settings to sometime in 2005 and have been tweaking and fiddling ever since.

Once when I moved jobs I forgot to copy my settings and VS felt broken until an ex-co worker was able to get a backup of my old laptop restored and sent me the file. Wouldn’t it be great to have a backup system in the cloud? Say on Azure?

This brings about another interesting scenario, what if I have multiple machines? Can I backup on one machine and restore on another? Giving me a synchronisation system for Visual Studio settings?

Pepper does exactly that, it automates the export/import of settings and allows you to place them in a SQL Azure database!

This is the first release, and while it has had some beta testing it is not perfect so please, if you give it a go and it fails, let us know in the discussions.

Pepper is available in the Visual Studio Gallery, which means you can install it and keep it up to date inside Visual Studio too!

When you use the import settings option inside Visual Studio, you may notice a long list of settings Recent Files with no way to clear them out.

If you do want to clear this out, you can do this by going to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Profile\BrowseFiles

Note this is completely unsupported, but I have done it without any issues.

Little off the usual but as a fan of the Lions Rugby team I thought I would share this great news. One of the biggest complaints people have with Lions Rugby is going to Ellis Park for the game, once there it is great but driving through some of the worst parts of Johannesburg is a major put off and then there is the serious lack of parking.

Well it seems they have taken that to heart and have not only four dedicated parking areas they have also arranged a park & ride facility! This should hopefully bring in the fans.

Official Press Release:

15 March 2011: The Lions will be playing Western Force this Saturday, 19 March 2011 at Coca-Cola Park.

Lions Professional Rugby invites Lions supporters to get to Coca-Cola Park early and to make a day out of it.In addition to the match, this weekend will see the launch and introduction of the Lions pre and post game stadium parking and braai activities.

Gates will open at 1pm and Supporters Club Members and Season Ticket Holders will be welcomed into the exclusive MTN Supporters Arena where they can enjoy live entertainment by Jaco Dennis, big screens and the Coca-Cola Gig-Rig. Refreshments aplenty will be available for purchase in the arena which will open from 1pm.

The Bulls vs. Stormers match will be shown on the big screens after the Lions match in the MTN Supporters Arena which will close at 10pm.

Expanded bar facilities for the general public will be situated next to the MTN Supporters Arena.

Plenty of family orientated activities are planned ranging from Park & Braai through to extensive children’s activities.

The NEW Lions Kiddies Entertainment Corner (west of the turnstiles) will be open from 2pm and will have face painters, jumping castles and tattoo artists applying rub off tattoos to the youngsters. In addition balloon makers and stilt walkers will be aplenty. Mufasa will be making an appearance to hand out some goodies.

Children are encouraged to visit the MTN World of Rugby area(the grassed area on the north of the stadium) to test their rugby skills, make some new friends and enjoy a unique rugby experience.

Prior to kick-off, supporters are in for a treat with some dynamic in-stadium entertainment. Chinese Lion dancers will dazzle supporters with their skills and some other exciting well known entertainers are in the pipeline. 

Parking tickets for the following areas are available from Computicket:

• Beeld (South)
• Johannesburg Stadium B Field

Parking is also available in the following areas and tickets can be purchased from the Coca-Cola Park Ticket Office:

• Ellis Park Stadium Arena (formerly Standard Bank Arena)
• Cricket Oval grounds

These parking tickets cost just R50 each. Parking tickets will also be sold match day by vendors wearing orange bibs for the Beeld, Ellis Park Stadium Arena and the Cricket Oval grounds at R50 each.

The two new parking areas specifically orientated toward allowing spectators to Park & Braai (Gas only) have been made available for this match.

Platinum parking will be available for season ticket holders only and is situated on North Park Lane just 40 meters outside the stadium.

Silver parking tickets for the JHB Stadium Athletics track(150 meters from the stadium entrance) are available to all Lions supporters.Parking tickets in both areas cost R100 each and are only available from the Coca-Cola Park Ticket Office on a first come first serve basis.

The Park & Ride from Mugg & Bean Cresta and will also be running and for just R60.00 per person you will get a return bus trip,safe parking and a complimentary bottomless coffee or lemonade from Mugg &Bean. Busses depart from Cresta from Entrance 3 (Cnr of Judges and Republic Roads) from 2pm and will leave Coca-Cola Park 30 minutes after the final whistle. Remember to take your Park & Ride ticket to Mugg & Bean after the match for your complimentary drink.

"The Lions Den will never again be the same as the Lions will now be catering for families young and old. The entertainment before and after will be top drawer. The Lions sportainment is here for all. Come and support our young team against the Western Force this Saturday", Lions Shareholder Robert Gumede said

Supporters are encouraged to come early to the match and enjoy the MTN Supporters Arena and Kiddies Corner and to support the Golden Lions as they face the Sharks at 2:40pm. TAU rugby – where enthusiastic eight year olds will take to the field – will be played from 1pm to1:40pm.

For the perfect family outing, get to Coca-Cola Park on Saturday where there will be activities and entertainment catering for all ages.

For more information visit www.lionsrugby.co.za

MVP Summit is over for 2011 for me, in less than a few hours I board a plane and start the ~23 hour trip home. This was an awesome trip filled with learning both about Microsoft but also personally and the experiences had here rate among some of the best in my life:

• Being able to attend a special dinner with various Microsoft technical fellows and vice presidents was amazing. My hero, Anders Hejlsberg was there and so were many other geek rock stars (Hanselman, The Gu and so on). What inspired me is the humility they all have. The whole dinner was amazing.
  
• Shooting real guns for the first time was ridiculously fun and I thank Martin, Mike & Chris for offering me that unique experience.
  
• Then heading to the snow (the real stuff this time, not the ice version Canada gave me) and snow boarding. I even threw snow balls!
  
• In South Africa we drink a piss we call beer and don’t think much about it – but here in America they do care. They have hundreds of micro breweries and so many technical terms for the beer. It is just staggering! It is also a lot of fun to go and sit in a brewery and drink the freshest of the fresh beer
  
• Then the Museum of Flight was just geek paradise for someone like me who loves the idea of flying (I do not think of 23 hours in economy class as flying) and space. Even the 4d simulator where you can go inverted and upside down was awesome. I even found time to be President of America for a few seconds.
  
• But most amazing was the new friends I made and the old friends I met up with. It was just awesome in every aspect, but especial mention must go to Rudi Grobler, who left SA with me, shared rooms, and did all the awesome things above (except the special dinner, next year he will be there) and Rein Hillman who put me & Rudi up at his house, opened his family and shuttled us ALL round Seattle.
  
  
  

Oh, and if you wanted to know how many Dr Pepper I consumed – 17, excluding how many I can get on the planes