Madd0's Tech Blog

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madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:42:51 GMT

Is this Windows 7’s way of telling me that I should just pack and go home?

We’re going Egypt, baby!

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:37:54 GMT

It was about three weeks ago that I was at the Eiffel Tower with the rest of the WikiChildProtect team, we were a bit disappointed because after all our hard work, we had “only” achieved third place in the French finals of Imagine Cup’s software design category.

Not everything was lost though. I didn’t write about it because I left for Asia the day after and have been quite busy these three weeks, but we submitted our project for H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt, Special Award.

Today we got the results: we are among the five finalists that are going to Egypt!

So I’ll be in Egypt from July 3 to 7 :)

Unfortunately, this also means that I will have to abandon my mother for a few days and that I will miss the wedding of two of my closest friends… But I know that they all know what this means to me and they wish me plenty of luck.

I’ll try to keep you posted as often as possible about how this goes, but first I have to get back home to France so that we can prepare with the team and bring back a gold medal ;)

Where am I? Where am I going?

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:32:53 GMT

Questions that I ask myself more often than I should, but don’t worry, I’m not here to talk about my memory problems. I was recently asked: where are you “virtually”? I barely tweet any more and I’m not blogging either here or there …

The explanation is simple; or double or triple. On the one hand, if I don’t say anything, it’s probably because I don’t have anything to say, yet, you know that even when I have nothing to say, I usually figure out something, so what’s going on?

I’m busy! Busy with problems that have no place here, but busy with events that are way more interesting and worthy of being shared.

Let’s start with Imagine Cup, the contest organized by Microsoft upon which I stumbled 2 years ago when I got to the world finals in Seoul. Since then, I’ve had trouble staying away and this year, since it’s my last as a student, I’m participating in the Software Design category for the first and last time. I’m part of team Dotnet-France (fr) with Julien Dollon (fr), Olivier Courtois (fr), Bertrand Vergnault (fr) and, our dear mentor, Yann Lautrédou (fr).

In one quick paragraph, thanks to our WikiChildProtect project, we want to make the Internet a safer place for children with a solution that should be more efficient, more secure and, especially, that integrates a citizen and community approach that does not currently exist. If you would like more information, do not hesitate to out our press release (in French).

The French final in this category will take place on May 14th, on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Only the first place of the national finals will earn the privilege of participating in the world finals in Egypt. Competition is tough this year since veterans that I know well are participating and/or coaching their own teams. I will let you know this Thursday evening whether I’ll be spending the first week of July in Cairo or not.

Finally, the other “projet” that has been nagging me is the three weeks following the finals on Thursday. I’m going to have to go to China to teach for SUPINFO at 山东科技大学, Shandong University of Science and Technology. Yes, I’ll admit that I did have a certain power to align the stars so that this would be my destiny, but that doesn’t change the fact that the following three weeks will not be easy.

There is a silver lining though: 10 days of vacation in the middle of these three weeks! The program for these 10 days: I have no idea!

I’m a little bit scared. I have a few clues of what I am going to do. I know that I’m not staying in China, I’ll rather explore Singapore and Malaysia. Aside from that, if you have any tips, suggestions, or friends in these countries that could show me around or even have a spare room for me in Malaysia, I won’t say no! There’s a thousand ways to contact me, so don’t hesitate ;)

Interview avec Eric Mittelette aux TechDays 09

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:46:23 GMT

En février, lors de Microsoft TechDays à Paris, je n’ai pas assisté à une seule conférence (ce n’est pas grave, il y a toujours les webcasts) mais j’ai quand même pu arpenter le salon pendant trois jours pour rencontrer du monde entre autres pour la WebTV de SUPINFO.

J’ai fait, avec d’autres, plein d’interviews pour aborder à peu près tous les sujets : les communications unifiées, les femmes dans l’IT, les communautés, etc. L’épisode TechDays 2009 avait été mis en ligne il y a un moment, mais ma préférée reste quand même celle que j’ai fait d’Eric Mittelette (a.k.a. ericmitt), responsable du groupe pour les les relations techniques avec les développeurs chez Microsoft France. C’est normal, puisqu’on parle développement. C’est pour ça que j’ai récupéré les rushes et je l’ai reprise en entier pour la partager ici.

Je déteste ma voix sur la vidéo, mais j’adore la discussion avec Eric, que je remercie une fois de plus pour les minutes qu’il m’a accordées, même si je sais qu’il était extrêmement occupé pendant la conférence. Je vous laisse regarder :

Interview avec Eric Mittelette from Mauricio Diaz on Vimeo.

Enfin, si le “développement vert” ou la “Green Dev Attitude” vous intéresse, voici la conférence Développement d’applications vertes dont parle Eric.

Et comme je sais que la plupart ne voudront pas aller chercher trop loin, voici aussi l’épisode complet de la Web TV:

TechDays 2009 — SUPINFO WebTV from SUPINFO on Vimeo.

Fighting Fruit with Fruit

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:07:53 GMT

What happens when a Blackberry takes on an Apple?

This:

But of course, unrealistic ideals are easy to refute, and that’s exactly what Apple’s creative types did:

As funny as all these “ad wars” can be, RIM kind of shot itself in the foot (pun intended) with that one ;)

Azure Labs commandlets on Windows x64

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:37:08 GMT

I was doing the Hands on Labs from the Azure SDK the other day and one of them involves a task list that a very handy PowerShell commandlet is supposed to fill.

The problem?

Registering commandlets... Add-PSSnapin : No Windows PowerShell Snap-ins are available for version 1. At C:\Users\Madd0\Documents\AzureServicesKit-Feb\Labs\AdvancedSQLDataServices\Assets\SDSSetup.ps1:17 char:13 + Add-pssnapin <<<< AzureServicesManagement

Now, why wouldn’t there be any snap-ins available for version 1? I can see the dll sitting there and I can only assume that Microsoft released code that works.

Easy!

As many other problems developers face these 32-to-64-bit-transition days, the missing snap-in just needed to be executed in a x86 environment, but I happen to work on Vista x64 (yep, a little masochistic, I know…).

The solution then is simply to open the console called Windows PowerShell (X86) and execute the SDSCreateStorage.cmd command there—don’t forget to run as Administrator.

What do you know about IT?

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:55:55 GMT

Pierre sent me a DM to let me know that I appear for a second or so in this Microsoft video:

I’m guessing that many of you won’t watch it until the end, so I’m just going to copy the part that caught my attention the most:

I bet you didn’t know this

42% of global IT employment…

relies on Microsoft technologies.

Wow!

Finally, as a side note to myself: do not accept interviews late at night, especially if you hadn’t slept much the nights before ;)

Targeted Advertising by Goolge

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:08:57 GMT

Google’s adding Google Chrome advertising on Internet Explorer 8 posts. Playing like this is just too easy…

Just remember: do no evil ;)

Internet Explorer 8 coming out today

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:10:19 GMT

The final version of Internet Explorer 8 should be coming out today around noon Eastern time (1600 GMT) after several public—or more or less public—betas and RCs.

I’ll let you visit their website to get an idea of what’s new (quick: better support for standards, lighter, faster, Web Slices, Accelerators, …).

IE8 will be available for:

Windows XP (32 and 64-bits)
Windows Vista (32 and 64-bits)
Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64-bits)
Windows Server 2008 (32 and 64-bits)
Windows 7 (natively)

I will be changing those into links to the downloads once I’m sure of what they’ll be.

I’m a “Chrome person” these days, but I think I might give IE8 a chance for a few days. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: Links updated and localized!

Invitation : Conférence Symfony avec Fabien Potencier

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:10:45 GMT

Le laboratoire Web & Dev a le plaisir de vous inviter à une présentation du framework PHP Symfony qui aura lieu au siège du Training Center de SUPINFO à Paris :

28-30 bis rue de la Victoire
75009 Paris

Cette présentation aura lieu le mercredi 18 mars de 18h30 à 20h00.

Fabien Potencier est co-fondateur de Sensio et directeur général Sensio Labs. Il présentera son framework Symfony—il est lead dev du projet—qui fait partie des plus reconnus dans le monde professionnel PHP.

La présentation sera suivie d’une session de questions / réponses avec Monsieur Potencier.

Inscrivez-vous ! C’est gratuit ;)

Apple offre les iPod shuffle 2ème génération ?

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:15:52 GMT

Voilà, un nouvel iPod shuffle est sorti—très sympa d’ailleurs, même si je n’accroche pas au fait qu’il faut absolument utiliser les écouteurs Apple pour le contrôler (pour l’instant en tout cas)—mais comme la tradition dicte chez Apple, avec tout nouveau lancement il faut sortir un “bug” sur Apple Store.

OK, j’exagère un peu sûrement, mais il a quelques mois nous avons eu le droit à un Parfaitement con, cette fois-ci, si vous voulez acheter un iPod nano, vous verrez qu’apparemment Apple a décidé d’offrir son surplus de shuffles 2ème génération :

Ah, apparemment ce n’est qu’un problème de traduction… “Toujours disponible” est devenu “Toujours offert”. Je suis déçu, mais bon, c’était trop beau pour être vrai, surtout venant de—enfin, je ne vais rien dire :P Je me demande quand même combien est payée la boîte qui fait la localisation de l’Apple Store…

If my kids turn out like this…

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:48:44 GMT

As funny and cute as this little girl talking about Visual Studio 2008 might be, I’d be really, really scared if my kids turned out like this :P (that is, assuming anyone would actually dare have kids with me in the first place).

Oh, and did she actually test the WPF designer and XAML Intellisense? All the rest, I pretty much agree, but I’m really looking forward to better WPF and XAML support in VS 2010 ;)

La historia de Internet en español

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:16:14 GMT

Subtitulada en español en todo caso.

Hace varias semanas hablé de un video llamado “History of the Internet”, la Historia de Internet. Se trata de un trabajo de Melih Bilgil para su diploma, pero mis colegas y yo lo hemos encontrado tan interesante que hasta lo hemos integrado a ciertos cursos en la universidad.

Claro, el video está en inglés, así que tuvimos que hacer un trabajo de traducción para poder distribuirlo a nuestros alumnos franceses y puesto que estábamos en esas me dije que por qué no escribir los subtítulos en español también.

Así que, gracias a la opción que permite subtitular los videos en YouTube, ahora pueden ver la Historia de Internet narrada en inglés con texto en español:

(Hay que hacer clic en la flecha abajo a la derecha, después en CC y buscar “español”, aunque pareciera que sólo funciona directemente en la página de YouTube)

Espero que sirva ;)

Send and Archive

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:01:12 GMT

Gmail Labs released yet another extremely useful feature for your (or at least my) favorite e-mail service!

Send & Archive adds a button that does exactly what I do pretty much every time I’ve sent a reply to an e-mail: it archives the conversation.

I’m one click away from a clean inbox now, instead of two :P

Mac vs. PC

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:48:14 GMT

Don’t worry, I’m not getting into a useless debate; I’m just sharing a little humor and the great technical skills of Nick Greenlee.

So, sit back, ignore the first couple of seconds of really bad acting, and enjoy seeing how one of the two platforms has to cheat (as usual?) to win in this epic battle :P

History of the Internet

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:09:07 GMT

Very nice video created by Melih Bilgil as part of his diploma project PICOL illustrating the history of the Internet from 1957 to 1990.

He uses the icons of his design to represent every element of the story. That and a well written voice over, make for a very interesting, easy to understand video. I’m actually considering asking my teachers to play this as an introduction to our web development classes.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Noticed the music by Matthias Grübel? I liked it a lot. Click on his name to visit his very weird web site, filled with photos and poetry, or go visit his myspace profile for more music.

Mail 2 Docs

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:14:06 GMT

I didn’t use to be a power user of Google Apps, and I still don’t think I can be called that, but it would seem that every week there’s a new feature (often in Gmail and often part of the Labs) that makes me like the suite more and more.

Today’s is the Create a Document feature that became available under the Labs tab. It allows you to create a Google Docs document from an e-mail simply by using the keyboard shortcut g followed by w. Sure, there’s also a link, as you can see on the screenshot, but we’re power users, aren’t we?

What does this mean for you? Well, if you use Google Docs and often create documents by copying text from an e-mail, that’s over; all you need is two keystrokes now. If you use Google Docs and want to create a blank document quickly from Gmail, you’re also two keystrokes away. If you don’t use Google Docs, well, you can either discover it, or forget you ever read this ;)

No Gmail in Germany

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:17:38 GMT

I already knew that Google couldn’t use the Gmail brand in Germany:

The only problem is that I’m at our Paris school right now, nowhere near Germany.

From a user experience point of view, though, the message is even more disturbing in another way. It says that I have to visit http://mail.google.com, but that’s what my address bar is showing!

I know what’s going on, but most people won’t. I guess that’s why regular users have a little trouble adopting Gmail (in my experience anyway), the service is still very tech-savvy oriented.

Tasks and Text Messaging Come to Gmail

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:09:18 GMT

Anina from 360°Fashion seemed to go a bit off-topic this week at Le Web when she asked one of the Google executives when we could expect to see task or “to do” lists in Gmail. Well, by what I can only hope is coincidence, it would seem that she wasn’t that off-topic after all. Today Gmail Labs is launching task lists and text messaging within Gmail.

With a keyboard shortcut to create tasks from mail (Ctrl+T) this is exactly what I needed. Text messaging is a little less useful in my case because they’re unlimited in my plan and you can only send SMS to US numbers, but I guess there’s plenty of people excited about this too ;)

Go to the Labs tab to activate these if you want to take full advantage of your Gmail account.

Thanks a lot @gapingvoid !

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:22:51 GMT

I met Hugh MacLeod at LeWeb ‘08 this week and he was kind enough (yeah, I know he was there for that, but thanks anyway) to draw something on my business card:

As Hugh predicted, I am twittering this, too ;)

I chose to remove my contact info to avoid spam, but it’s not like it’s hard to actually contact me. Follow me on Twitter or hit one of the links on the right.

The Simpsons visit the Mapple Store

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:19:22 GMT

In the latest Simpsons episode, the family visits the new Mapple Store at the mall.

I don’t know how long the video will stay online, but it’s just great!

I had never visited an Apple Store before my trip to London at the beginning of the month, but I found it was really fun; it felt like visiting the HQ of the Church of Scientology for some reason :P

Anyway, enjoy the fist few minutes of perfect Simpsons sarcasm.

Virtual Studio Pro : FAIL

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:26:42 GMT

Et moi qui pensais connaître plus ou moins bien la gamme de produits de développement Microsoft quand même…

Je ne dirai pas où est-ce que j’ai trouvé la faute par contre ;)

“The Art & Science Of CSS” FREE Download through Twitter

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:13:50 GMT

Sitepoint is giving away its book The Art & Science of CSS during a two-week “Twitaway” (5 days left as of the writing of this post).

The book looks pretty interesting from what I browsed when I got it a few minutes ago, so I actually recommend it at least as a quick reference for some pretty useful CSS techniques.

What do you have to do to get it? This is where it gets interesting:

Follow @sitepointdotcom on Twitter*! You’ll get a DM with instructions on how to get it.

I’m quite a fan of Twitter (you can follow me if you want), so I really like the idea. If you’re worried about your “stats”, don’t: @sitepointdotcom will follow you back :P And if you’re worried about spam, you can always stop following the account with a single click ;)

* If you don’t have a Twitter account (although I really encourage you to create one, you might like it) you can also get the instructions by e-mail.

Your Avatars on the New Xbox Experience

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:30:44 GMT

I was really looking forward to it because I wasn’t fan of the “blades” at all, so I obviously logged on to Xbox LIVE last Wednesday to download the New Xbox Experience (NXE).

One of the new features of the NXE is the creation of avatars, which I was kind of forced to test even though I really, really needed to sleep. Avatars are not something new; we already had Miis on the Wii for example.

On the Wii they can be used as characters for certain games, but they’re still just a few elementary shapes with a face that more or less might look like you. On the Xbox, even though I haven’t tested any games that use the avatar as a character, the 3D model itself is of excellent quality! I don’t claim to have created a clone of myself, but I think that it’s recognizable enough.

Even better, Micrsoft is all about connecting devices, software, services, your car, … so it’s just natural that your avatars can also come out of the Xbox:

Just replace (gamertag) by your own—in my case it’s xboxMadd0 because someone had already taken madd0 :(

Download the NXE if you haven’t already and have fun sharing your avatars ;)

Illustrating the use of the top ten most irritating phrases

madd0@madd0.com (Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:14:52 GMT

Oxford compiled a list of the top ten most irritating phrases used in English texts: books, magazines, the Internet, etc. Before I stop using them, I thought that they deserved to be put together in what is probably, by extension, one of the most irritating paragraphs ever written:

With all due respect, I personally think that it's a nightmare that at the end of the day most people will continue using these irritating phrases 24/7. At this moment in time it is absolutely necessary to control this fairly unique phenomenon which shouldn't of taken off in the first place; after all, learning proper English is not rocket science, is it?

I think that the list is funny, but irritating language is something very subjective that I don't really core about. So, at the end of the day ;) I'll probably continue to use some of these.

As a side note, though, English altogether can be rather irritating to us non-native speakers. Try to read a little bit of poetry out loud, you’ll see what I mean.