Snowball - The Blog

With this campaign, they want to put the people that are in the IT-trenches every day on a stand. I registered myself as well, so if you think that the community work I do (Visug, Community Day, my blog, sessions…) is worth a vote, click on me on this page: http://www.heldenvanit.be/nl/profiel/gill-cleeren

Thanks!

Yesterday, I was walking in Antwerp and several shops such as Fnac and MediaMarkt had big displays that the iPad had arrived. I had already “played” with a device a few months back, so no need to take another look at it now.

What I did do, was watching from a distance to the people looking at device: mostly kids were playing some game on the machine. I wonder if that’s were Apple is going with the device: a gaming-device at an incredible (high) price. It’s a consumer device, and I see little potential for it in the enterprise world. I can be wrong, but that’s how I see it at this moment.

Yes, I know they have sold quite a lot of them (Steve B. mentioned it also just last week), but do keep in mind that Apple is doing *everything* to make people think: “I need one of those to be part of it again”.

I’m convinced that a Windows device in the same form factor has a lot more potential. It has the usual things you’d expect from a PC: it runs Flash/Silverlight, you can run your applications on it, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 8 some day… I got a reaction from someone on Twitter, saying that Windows 7 is not touch-friendly and that it’s focused on mouse/keyboard. While that is true, keep in mind that Windows 7 has touch built-in to the platform.

What really will make these machines capable, is a UI shell. Everyone knows HTC Sense probably: it’s a graphical layer HTC puts on top of Windows Mobile to give it a more capable touch experience, easy access to applications and the like. When Windows 7 tablets will be coming out and they will have some shell running on it, they can offer an experience similar to iOS. On top of that, you can actually use the device for doing useful things as well, because all your software, mouse-enabled or touch-enabled will work on it. Or, of course, develop your own software for it!

One of these shells was shown today (via Engadget): UICentric, and it will appear on a Windows tablet coming out this year. You can see it running here.

(Btw, before someone asks/says: Yes, I have an iPhone since my Sony XPeria WinMobile 6.1 is broken. While I find it rather good, it crashes a few times a week and gets quite hot after long calls. It'll be out of the door when I have a Windows Phone 7 though :) )

Microsoft just announced that all of us can help deciding which sessions will be delivered at Tech-Ed 2010 Berlin. That's a great way of making sure that the contents is what the public wants!

I've ran through the list and 4 of my proposals made the shortlist (which is good news :)).

• Treasures for the C# developer in Visual Studio 2010
• AJAX Tips and tricks: things you never knew that could be done in ASP.NET Ajax
• Silverlight data access and services not for the faint of heart
• The good, the bad and… well, that’s it: Comparing good and bad practices in Silverlight application development

If you would like me to deliver one of these sessions on the upcoming Tech-Ed, please vote for them at http://europe.msteched.com/sessionpreference . Of course, there are many really other interesting sessions there as well: I'm sure this will be a great conference!

Thanks for voting!

I’m a big fan of OneNote, ever since it was released. However, since I’m working on several PCs every day, I need my stuff synchronized between my machines all the time. OneNote lacks in this area, since it does not support any web sync out-of-the-box.

This resulted in me checking out EverNote, a free tool, comparable to OneNote. While it looks good, I still loved OneNote more (possible because I’m used to it), but EverNote has one big advantage: it stores my notes online, and so I have my notes with me on every machine.

Still willing to use OneNote, I tried a different approach, using the power of the cloud. I thought, why not store my notebooks in Live Mesh, the free synchronization tool from Microsoft that on top offers another 5GB of free storage “in the cloud”. So I tried it and it works great. Simply create a notebook in OneNote, store it in a Mesh folder (or upgrade it’s current folder to a Live Mesh folder), do this on all your PCs and you have the best of two worlds: the goodness of OneNote and the sync features of EverNote.

My favorite and world's best (yes that is a personal opinion) coffee house is coming to Antwerp: the first store will be opened this year in the Antwerp Central Station!

Do I now have to move to Antwerp?

I've been a Microsoft enthusiast for many years now, as many of you probably know. Honestly, I haven't worked on a Linux-based computer ever, and apart from an IPod, I haven't worked with any Apple products either. Why? I like Microsoft products, I really do. They have served me well and I have never had any feeling that I could be better off using something else. Thanks to their products, I have a great career going on. I have had countless sleepless nights because I want to try that one special thing. I even got to know my girlfriend better through the use of Microsoft's IM solution before we were together.

And still, there's a lot to look forward too. In fact, I think we are at a turning point at this moment. Many great products and technologies are on the verge of being released or are already on the market that will give Microsoft a new and improved image.

Look at Bing, the new search engine launched last week. It is a new way of searching, not a direct competition aimed at what is already out there. But it is innovative, it is fresh, it is cool. Try it, you'll be amazed with what it has to offer!

Also last week, Project Natal was shown at E3. Again a very innovative product. Not that long ago, Microsoft released the Surface, which was perhaps the start of this innovative period.

The advertising campaigns Microsoft is currently doing, sadly not here in Europe, using Seinfeld and Bill Gates were hilarious. "I'm a PC" is now a real brand. It makes people proud of the PC they are using. The more recent campaign, aimed at the lower cost for using a computer against Apple, was the second hit in a row.

Looking a bit more at the professional market, we see many great improvements being done on tools and technologies. The next version of Silverlight that will be released somewhere this year, includes some great improvements, making it a truly business-ready platform. Yes, you can build enterprise applications on Silverlight today.

The next release of Visual Studio promises another great step forward in developer productivity. Using the same tools for all technologies and projects, from BI to enterprise applications to games, it can all be done in VS2010. There are many new features in the new version that will make you do more in less time. In this time of a worldwide recession, that can't be but good news.

Finally, the biggest release that Microsoft is doing this year, is of course Windows 7. With a development cycle not plagued by any issues like Windows Vista's, the product is almost ready. Many customers already tested the new OS in what is probably one of the biggest beta tests ever. And perhaps also one of the most positive ones. Almost all feedback and reviews so far have been nothing but positive about the new OS. A lot of customers are already using it today in RC format for their production needs, which means they fully trust the project.
Although I've been using Windows Vista from day 1, I've never understood the criticism about the product. I think it was "cool to say that Vista wasn't any good". Now, the new cool will be using Windows 7!

As mentioned in the beginning, for a guy like me, the future of Microsoft has never been brighter.

After a period of less activity on my blog, I hope to be posting more again here.

I do however own you an explanation, don't I? I've been in the USA for about 10 days for the MVP Summit in Seattle and Redmond (also including a few days New York and San Francisco, just for relaxation).

The weeks before, I've been busy getting a lot of talks and sessions ready for some upcoming events. While writing this article, I'm still @Techdays Belgium, where I delivered 4 sessions.

So, while a lot of work is coming my way, I hope to get posting more now!

After being in version 2.x for exactly 10 years, I just got upgraded to version 3.0. I must say, the update hasn't had any impact so far, everything is running smoothless and so far no bugs in this new version.

If you don't know what I'm talking about (which is quite understandable), I just became 30 years old today :)

Today, I got the confirmation that I am now a member of the Ineta Speaker Bureau Europe. (http://europe.ineta.org/).
The INETA Europe Speaker Bureau provides usergroup leaders top notch speakers for their key events. The speakers are provided at no cost to the usergroup.

That means that if you run a usergroup, you can now request me at no cost to come speak at your events!

A nice little touch is that together with myself, my collegue and friend Kurt Claeys was also added to the bureau! Congrats!

A merry merry christmas to all my readers!

I was shocked this afternoon when I got the news that yet another very prominent figure in the Belgian Microsoft-world had passed away: Patrick Tisseghem. He was known worlwide for his knowledge and expertise in the Sharepoint area.
Here's what the U2U website had to say this morning...

It is with deepest regret that we have to announce the death of Patrick Tisseghem, co-founder of U2U. Patrick suddenly passed away on Wednesday 3 September 2008 around 18 hours in Gothenburg Sweden due to a heart failure. Our sympathy and thoughts go out to his wife Linda, their daughters Anahi and Laura, and to his family. We are all deeply saddened by this tragic loss. We remember him as caring father as well as a driven and warm hearted colleague and friend. We miss you Patrick.

I'm a movie fan. No seriously, I like movies. And I like movie merchandise (my girlfriend even thinks I like it too much because it takes up way too much space, but that's a different story).

Last week, I was in London and I visited the DisneyStore, because they had some Wall-e stuff in that's very hard to find here in Belgium. I bought 2 Wall-e's, a small one and a somewhat bigger one (I think it's about 15 centimeters).

When coming back to Belgium using the Eurostar, I put my bags on the belt for security. The scanner didn't say anything about the toys, but the woman sitting behind the machine called another person to 'take a look at that thing'. Was it some bomb or another security threat...?

I had to unpack the large Wall-e... They hadn't seen something like that ever... Quite hard to believe however, since the whole of Londen (even in the train station itself) was filled with Wall-e posters and stuff.

In the end, Wall-e was allowed to travel by train to Belgium. I guess the life of a little robot is as hard in the year 2008 than in 2700 (you must see the film to understand this ).

I think I was really lucky this weekend. I was in Antwerp (Belgium) this weekend, and it so happens that the local Sony store is dumping all their stock because of some redecoration they're about to do...

Very interesting, you might say... Well yes, for me it was... I got a Sony DSLRa camera for less than half the price. Now that was a deal I couldn't say no too.

I'll be posting some images I took with it to test a bit later :).

Yes, it's that time of the year again... Just 2 weeks after the holidays, I'm again ready to start celebrating. Why you say?

Today, I turn 29... So indeed, close to "the BIG 30", but hey, that's still a year away!

I had a great time in my 28th year I must admit. Some great things happened, and I can only hope that in one year from now, I can say the same about my 29th!

2008 just started, and I already got some great news from Microsoft: I was given the 2008 Microsoft MVP award! I must admit I made a little jump when I saw the mail in my Outlook Web Access this evening.

If you've never heard of the MVP award yet, here's a little aid: it is an honor given to you by Microsoft based on community activity. Writing articles, being active in user groups, blogging, giving presentations... that sort of things.

Here's a little piece of the mail I can show you:

Dear Gill Cleeren, 

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award!  The MVP Award is our way of saying thank you for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success every day.  Your extraordinary efforts in Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated.

I do want to thank the people that made this possible. 2007 was a great year, that brought me in contact with so many new things (as you can read in my 2007 year review). As 2008 is only 1 day of age, I must say it started pretty darn good already!

Of course, I intend to do whatever is necessary to honor my new title. I'll try to be even more helpful for the community in 2008. I'll give my very best, even try 200%!

Thanks Microsoft!

I wish you all the best for the new year, a lot of fun, friendship and love and of course, a lot of .net ;)

Have a great 2008!

BABD. This abbreviation of Become A Better Developer represents my intentions for the upcoming year 2008. Why you say? In the past months, there have been coming out so many new things, think of Ajax, Silverlight, MVC, WPF 3.5, WCF 3.5... that it's my opinion you need to structure how to keep up with all this.

After some thinking, I thought it would be a good thing to create a list of things I really want to achieve in 2008. Of course, new things will come along, but this list (I did check it twice) are the bare neccesities to become an even better developer that has a global knowledge of everything that is available, and a deep knowledge on selected topics, like in my case Silverlight for example. It's my opinion that this is what you need to do to keep up with the pace of releases.
Also on this list are some intentions that I want to achieve for the community, like blogging on a more regular base.

So, here's my list of intentions for my BABD initiative. Why don't you create your own and put it on your blog too?

• Learn WCF and WF: I'm busy creating a software factory for my job, and I really need deep(er) knowledge on WCF and WF. If I'm successful, I hope by the end of this Christmas holiday, I will already have covered this topic partly, since I recently got me the "Learning WCF" book from O'Reilly, which after reading reviews on Amazon seemed the best buy.
• Become MCPD/MCTS: I promised Ordina (and some other people too...) that in the course of the following year, I'd take all the exams to become MCPD, if possibly by June 30th.
• Blog at least 3 times a week: I think I do this already, however, I do want to write on Snowball at least 3 times a week on news from the .net world.
• 2 (I hope) articles on CodeFlakes.net every month: I started CodeFlakes back in September, but I must confess, I didn't have the time to do what I actually wanted to achieve with it this year. However, by the end of next year, I want it to have 25 articles of my own, so that's 2 a month. Topics will be Silverlight (duh), AJAX, ASP.net, LINQ... Webcasts might also be an option here.
• 6-8 ChopSticks webcasts: MSDN Belux recently launched ChopSticks and my first webcast will be appearing shortly. I want to create at least 6 in the coming year, if possible even more...
• Read more blogs and create a blogpost about it: I follow a lot of blogs, but it's sometimes hard to keep up. I therefore intend to clean up my list, and start using Tags to keep up. I would love to create a blogpost with the most interesting topics (which counts as a post for Snowball!!)
• Create 1 .NET Magazine article: after my first publication this year on AJAX, I intend to write another one in 2008. That shouldn't be that hard...
• Visug: I've doing a good job for the Belgian .net community. I intend to keep doing the same here, however I should find the time to create a new website.
• Create a succesful Ordina blog. We're currently creating something new there (more on this later)
• Patters and Practices: Also for my job, I need to pick up on the Web Client Software Factory and others. This is quite high in priority too...
• Start something I can't really say a lot about yet... something completely new, stay tuned...
• Buy a Full HD Plasma TV!
• More will come, I'm sure...

Phew, that's quite a list. I hope that in one year from now, I can say that I really achieved all this.

What about you? Have your intentions ready yet? Post them here!

2007 is only 15 days anymore, so 95% of the year is finished.
Time for me to an overview of the year that has brought me to America, that brought me Visual Studio 2008 and a lot of other joyous and sometimes less less joyous moments.

The first months...
Traditionally, January and February are the slowest months of the year. However, I can remember working several nights on the MSDN Belux gadget, a project given to me by the late David Boschmans. The gadget is live in the meantime, you can download it on the MSDN.be site.

This year, I was hit with a serious flu. After visiting the Beauty and the Beast musical in Antwerp, I first got a serious cold, followed by the flu... In total, I had to stay at home for little over 4 weeks, which almost drove me nuts. Luckily, when I got well again, I was very well taken care of by my colleagues at the indi project over at Porthus. On a sidenote, later this year, this project was cancelled due to the fact that Telenet bought indi. I was also working on the CVWarehouse.com project at Ordina Lummen. This project was launched recently and can now be seen at www.cvwarehouse.com.

What happens in Vegas, stays...

Somewhere at the end of April, I got a phone call from my team manager, Gerry Appeltants, with a "small" surprise. I got the chance to visit Mix'07 in Las Vegas. Oh my...! What a nice surprise that was. I had even never taken a plane before and all of a sudden, I was going to the other side of the world. Now, when I look back at that week, I must say, it was one of the best weeks I ever had in my life so far. More info on my trip can be found here.

Who would have known then that I would be flying even more in this great year... Thanks to some people's effort (and I will not name them...) , I was selected for the Ask The Experts booth at TechEd 2007 in Barcelona in November. Again, a great week: I got to know a lot of interesting people and came home with a lot of extra knowledge. On top of that, after landing, I immediately drove (with Sven Cipido) to Euro Disney, where Ordina was having their annual weekend-off. A very "christmassy" experience, as it was cold and snowing gently. What a week that was...

Work? Yes sir.

Everybody who knows me, will tell you that I take work quite seriously . So I should of course devote some lines on the most pleasant (and less pleasant) things that happened in my career this year.

I got to work on some great projects: CVWarehouse.com, digital TV with indi... Since Sharepoint became more popular than ever before, I took a course on it at U2U. Sadly, Sharepoint still isn't my cup of tea, so I'll leave it to those more dedicated to it!

Since the half of October, I'm a "v-" at Microsoft Belgium. I'm doing all kinds of interesting things over at the offices in Diegem, which is a great experience! Last week, I got to go to JavaPolis with the Microsoft team to give an example.

(Community) work

I've had a very active community year. I gave a lot of presentations, mostly on Silverlight. In the past months, I did 2 technical sessions on Silverlight and one MSDN evening in Mechelen for over 160 people. My first article appeared in the .net magazine and soon my first webcast will be online at MSDN Chopsticks. More will follow in the very near future.

In June, together with Visug, we organised Community Day, the first Belgian day for developers, completely organized by user groups. As it was a big success, a second installment will happen for user!

I also opened my second blog, www.codeflakes.net which will be more active next year, I promise! Meanwhile, Snowball.be received more users and is now steady at around 800 visitors a day.

The person behind this blog

Personally, I had a great year too. I've been together for over 2 years now with my Lindsey. In 2008, she'll be finishing her studies, which we will be celebrating next year of course!
My health? Well, I've had some troubles, but nothing really bad... Let's hope that will remain the same in the upcoming year!

Remembering a friend

Not everything can be good in 2007... In Vegas, I really got to know David Boschmans. I still remember having drinks late one night at the bar at Caesar's Palace. David was back at work since the end of January, and everything appeared to be going very well with his health.
However, at the end of June, at the Microsoft VIP weekend, he wasn't there all of a sudden.

When I was taking the course mentioned before, Serge Luca told me he had heard David passed away that morning... A sad day for all the people he had known came upon us...

In conclusion

Well, it's almost Christmas, the tree is twinkling nicely here beside me... The (almost) passed year can of course only be what it was because of the help of some great people that I can easily call friends. A sincere thank you is in order.
I can only hope you had a good year too, and will have some great Christmas experiences in the upcoming days. Let's all hope next year brings more great surprises! Hope to see you all here again!

Gill Cleeren
www.snowball.be

Well, why not, a personal blogpost for a change ( I promise I won't do it a lot, but hey... I'm happy ).
This weekend, after a lot of thinkering, I got me a HTC Tytn 2. Below is a pciture of it, in case you don't know it yet.

I had a Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone before ( a Samsung SGH I600), but this really is a world of difference (mind you that the Samsung had not touch screen). Now, this device has Windows Mobile 6 Professional installed, along with Office 2007 mobile. The integration with Windows Mobile Device Center on Windows Vista is a plus, a big plus even.
This device has a built-in GPS (not a Sirfstar though), but the reception is great. Finding the correct position only took about 5 seconds, even the first time!

If you have suggestions on great mobile software that works on Windows Mobile 6, please add it in a comment. Thanks!

My article on ASP.net Ajax is published in the Dutch version of the .net magazine this month (and my head is on page 3... Page 3 head )

In case you do not know the .net magazine, it's a free magazine that is published every 3 months in Belgium and the Netherlands. It's a real shame if you do not subscribe: every 3 months, you get articles on what's new, but also in depth coverage of already existing technologies.
Convinced? You can subscribe here.

In a few days, the articles will be published online too, and you can read them here.

I got one hell of a great email this afternoon! I'm selected for the "Ask The Expert" program at TechEd 2007 at Barcelona! That means, yes, that I will be there!

From November 5th 'till November 9th, I'll be talking the Español . No, just kidding. I'll be at the Ask The Experts booth, answering questions from people who come up to the booth.

2 of my collegues from Ordina will be at TechEd too by the way, Sven Cipido and Kurt Claeys.

So, see you in Barcelona! Que?

As of today, the Visug Silverlight sessions are on www.msdn.be. Please remember there's a second session on September 26th in Leuven (Haasrode) for those that are not able to come to the first session.

Hope to see you then!

In my vacation, I've been building my second blog, which can be found at www.codeflakes.net . There is not that much content yet, but that will soon change, when my Silverlight articles will be appearing there!

So, add the RSS feed to your reader, and you'll receive all the updates.

Hope to meet you there!

This morning, while following a course @ U2U, I got the shocking news that David Boschmans had passed away last night.

I got to know David in 2006 and worked with him for a project last year. I also got to travel with him to MIX 07 at Las Vegas where we enjoyed some very fine evenings having some drinks and some laughs. I'll never forget the evening in the bellagio hotel.

David, you'll be missed. My thoughts go to his family. He was a great man.
Rest in peace my friend.

Update: Tom Mertens has created a small place where you can write a little something for remembering David: http://david.vsdotnet.be/

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/groups/davidboschmans/pool/

The past two weeks, I've been very busy giving the Microsoft Summerschool 2007 in Antwerp, Belgium.
Today was the last day, and it was a success. 19 students followed the course, and will soon try to pass the exam 70-536 (Foundations).

Let's hope Microsoft decides to organise another one next year!

PS: this was also the reason it was a little more quiet here

Since today, www.snowball.be moved to a new server, namely www.nitroserve.nl. So far, everything seems to be working great and as fast as with the old hosting.

Should you encounter a problem, please contact me.

My previous article, which I wrote almost 3 weeks ago, was, sadly enough, not true... While I thought I was up and running again, I wasn't. Shortly after typing it, I fell sick again, and had to stay in bed for an additional 2 weeks.

Since last Monday (it's Sunday now, so almost 1 week later), I'm back at work, almost cured though. Last week was very busy (imagine getting almost no info on what's going on in the .net world for all that time), so I had to catch up ;).

I hope I'm back to stay now!

After almost 2 weeks, I'm finally back...
Where was I? On holiday? No... I was hit hard by the flu... Sadly enough, it almost took me 2 weeks to recover (it's now Friday, Ive been in bed since Tuesday last week...)
First, it appeared to be a normal flu... some coughing, feeling a little sick... I planned to go back to work on Monday. But the flu had other plans... The pills I took had then started to become somehow unfriendly for my stomach... I could'nt eat for 5 days, my blood pressure was very low, so I had to remain in bed/sofa for all these days.

Now, it's Friday, 11 days after I got sick, and it's the first time I'm back on my PC, and the first day that I can say that I'm feeling better... Finally...

One thing: I will get that flu shot by the end of this year! I never want to have to go through this again!

if(DateTime.Now == "16th January")
{
   Gill.age++;
}

Or for the none-programmers, I'm again 1 year older today, 28 already!!

Finally, I did it! I bought a new desktop PC! My "old" machine was almost 5 years old, I did almost all my development on my laptop.
But now, I bought a monster of a PC ... I pulled out all the stops

The new config:
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
-2 Gig of Ram
-GeForce GT 7600
-1 TB of storage (that's a LOT of code)
-Soundblaster X-FI
-Antec power and tower.
-Samsung 205BW TFT
-Logitech Z5500

I think this machine will perform excellent under Vista, with all settings at maximum in Aero... At least, I hope .