Steven Wilssens

My laptop and I (part 2)

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:34:00 GMT

Last week I decided that there was no more hope for my laptop, and got managerial approval to order a new one (6458A17 - ThinkPad T61p). Yay! I've been so exited about this for the past couple of days that Yeondo's starting to look at me with a bit of concern when I bring it up again... anyway, thanks John!

Now this morning my desktop's graphical card died. Now I've got a broken desktop and laptop. I'm about to switch back to my old desktop and will remote desktop to the one with the broken graphical card. ugh.,....

My laptop and I

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:12:29 GMT

My laptop and I are not exactly on speaking terms these days. During the last months I had to have the motherboard replaced 3 times (broken wifi, broken sound and graphics card, broken graphics card) and today it started malfunctioning again. I can only successfully connect to a projector when I boot with the projector connected since connecting it with my machine already booted causes the screen to go haywire and the machine to hang. To add to this, I just discovered that it's now required to undock my batteries, boot with the power cable in and then add the batteries again before it turns on again.

I'm really starting to consider it as a person and I want to be angry and hate it... but how can you hate somebody with such health problems? I feel said for my friend and hopefully they can cure it.

Creating a Silverlight Display Block 101

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:30:25 GMT

Timothy wrote a wonderful blog entry on how to create a Popfly Block that displays its content using Silverlight:

Popfly and Silverlight make it easy to show your pictures from many places in slick little gadgets. It's easy, and fun to make these "display blocks". I wanted to do a little walkthrough of creating a display block. The examples herein are actual Popfly mashups. They do use Silverlight, so make sure you get that installed.
This first blog entry will go over a couple of simple examples...

Creating a Popfly Block with Popfly Explorer

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:59:30 GMT

On Friday we released a new version of Popfly Explorer which includes support for Popfly Block creation. You can now create, debug, and publish Popfly blocks directly from Visual Studio. This is a huge advance for our block creators since you can use the powerful Visual Studio JavaScript and XML editor rather than the Popfly block editor. The underlying walkthrough illustrates how to create and debug a block on Popfly Explorer. You can download Popfly Explorer here.

Walkthrough: Creating a Block with Popfly Explorer

This walkthrough illustrates how to use Popfly Explorer to create a Popfly block named Calculator.

Tasks illustrated in this walkthrough include:

· Creating a Popfly Block project using Visual Web Developer

· Writing the block description

· Writing the block code

· Debugging the block

· Sharing the block

· Useful resources

Prerequisites

To complete this walkthrough, you need:

· A Popfly account.

· Popfly Explorer. You can download Popfly Explorer here.

· Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio. You can download Visual Web Developer here.

What is a Popfly Block?

Information from a web site can be accessed through a Popfly block. A block can also be a useful set of operations, like a timer or calculator, or it can display things like photos or videos. A Popfly mashup is a web application that combines the functionality of two or more web sites or sources: when you combine blocks, you create a mashup.

A Popfly block consists of the block description and the block code. The block description is used to define what the block is about: description, keywords, logos, and the definition of what methods can be called, and the parameters for these methods. The block code contains the methods that are invoked when the block is used in a mashup.

Create a Popfly block

1. Launch Visual Web Developer.

2. On the File menu, click New Web Site…

The New Web Site dialog appears.

3. Select the Popfly Block project type and name your project Calculator.

You have now created a local Popfly Block Visual Studio project.

4. On the Popfly menu, click Show Popfly Explorer

The Popfly Explorer window is now visible.

5. Enter your Windows Live ID login information in the Popfly Explorer window and click the Sign In button.

Popfly Explorer will show you a list of your projects and friends on Popfly.

6. On the Popfly menu, click Save Calculator to Popfly.

Popfly Explorer will prompt you that a local copy of your project will be stored under the Popfly Explorer projects directory and will be reloaded from that location.

7. Click on Save to Popfly in the Save Project dialog box.

Your calculator block is now saved to Popfly.

Write the Block Description

1. Open the default.xml file from within the Solution Explorer window.

2. Change the name of the block class to CalculatorClass in the block element.

3. Open the default.xml file from within the Solution Explorer window.

class="CalculatorClass"

This is the class that we will define when we are writing the block code.

4. Remove the hello operation.

5. Add an AddNumbers operation element as a child to the operations element.

<description>Add 2 numbers</description>

<description>First Number</description>

</input>

<description>Second Number</description>

</input>

</inputs>

</outputs>

</operation>

</operations>

The operation has 2 required integer parameters with a default value of 0: number1 and number2.

Note:

More information on modifying the block description can be found in the block building guide.

Write the Block Code

1. Open the default.js file from within the Solution Explorer window.

2. Change the name of the HelloWorld class definition to CalculatorClass

Remove the hello method.

3. Add the AddNumbers method.

The AddNumbers method first defines the result variable and calculates its value. Second, it writes the parameters and result to the console window in the Popfly mashup editor.

CalculatorClass.prototype.AddNumbers = function(number1, number2) {

var result;

console.write(String.format ("Calling Add ({0}, {1})", number1, number2));

result = number1 + number2;

console.write(String.format ("Result: ({0})", number1));

return result;

};

Note:

More information on writing block code can be found in the block building guide.

Debug the Block

1. Right click on the result = number1 + number2 line. On the pop-up menu, click on BreakPoint and then Insert Breakpoint.

A breakpoint was added to the result = number1 + number2 line. When the AddNumbers method executes, Visual Studio will now stop the block execution at this line.

2. On the Debug menu, click on Start Debugging.

Your block is saved to Popfly and the mashup editor will load with your block.

3. Click on the wrench to zoom in and start editing the parameters of the Calculator block.

4. Type in the following values for the parameters:

Choose 4 for the Number1 parameter and 5 for Number2 parameter.

5. Click on the wrench to zoom out again.

The mashup editor will show your block again.

6. Click on Preview in the mashup editor to see the result of the AddNumbers method.

By clicking on preview you execute the AddNumbers method you just wrote. Visual Web Developer got the focus and stopped at the breakpoint that you added in step 1.

7. Right click on the result variable in the default.js file and click on Add Watch.

The result variable is now added to the watch window. Notice that the value for the result variable is still undefined.

8. On the Debug menu, click Step Over..

Notice that the value of the result variable has now changed to 9 in the watch window.

9. On the Debug menu, click Continue.

Internet Explorer has received the focus again and you can see the value of the result variable on the preview page.

Share the Block
>
1.       Select the Calculator project in the Popfly Explorer window.>
2.       On the View menu, click Properties Window.>
The properties for the Calculator project in Popfly are shown in the Properties Window.

3.       Change the value for Sharing Level from Not Shared to All Popfly Users.

Your project is now shared with all other Popfly users.
>>
Useful Resources

·        More detailed information on writing block code can be found in the block building guide.>
·         Information on how to build mashups in Popfly can be found in the mashup building guide.>

Coming to Belgium in March

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:02:17 GMT
I've been talking to the wonderfull people in charge of organizing TechDays and I'll be delivering 1 or 2 sessions this year. I'm planning on sticking around for about a week and look forward to seeing a bunch of friends for the first time in 1,5 years. TechDays (DevDays) is for me related to David Boschmans and I have a hard time accepting that he's not with us anymore.

Aaron Brethorst is leaving the Popfly Team

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:40:35 GMT

I have been very lucky to work with amazing people in my short career and some of those have somehow changed my view on one or more aspects of life. Aaron Brethorst is one of them. He was the latest addition to the group of Program Managers on the Popfly Team and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to work with him. I'm trying to remember some of the funny things that happened in those short months... here are 2:

Number 1 (This one is a bit vague, but still very funny at least in my world):

John: Aaron, has work item # xxxx been completed?

Aaron: Well, (about 2 minutes of very advanced English, can't remember the exact words, maybe I was doing e-mail or I just saw a shiny thing somewhere in the shiproom meeting room, I was daydreaming, or I just forgot...)

Andy/Adam (I think it was Adam): Is the lawyer speak for no?

Steven: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (This totally cracked me up)

Number 2 (Aaron hijacked my desktop-machine on my birthday and sent out a mail to the team, You'll have to read it from the bottom to the top):

From: John Montgomery
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 10:06 AM
To: Steven Wilssens; Popfly Status
Subject: RE: I'M A BIG BOY NOW!!!
OK, you’re scaring me.
-- John
From: Steven Wilssens
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 10:06 AM
To: John Montgomery; Popfly Status
Subject: RE: I'M A BIG BOY NOW!!!
NO WAY I AM A BIG BOY NOW!!!
From: John Montgomery
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 10:05 AM
To: Steven Wilssens; Popfly Status
Subject: RE: I'M A BIG BOY NOW!!!
Left your computer unlocked, did you?
-- John
From: Steven Wilssens
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 10:05 AM
To: Popfly Status
Subject: I'M A BIG BOY NOW!!!
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, AND I AM A BIG BOY NOW!!

I'll miss having our random talks, working on texts and popup messages, sending mails in German to the team, shouting in German to each other (we are the only 2 people on the team that have a vague knowledge of the language) or hugging you in front of non meterosexual people (at work at least ;-)).
The good news is that the title for the best dressed Program Manager on the team is up for grabs again ;-) Have fun during your new endeavor!

Dan Fernandez on how to build and publish Web Sites with Popfly Explorer Beta

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:26:29 GMT

Dan Fernandez wrote an excellent blog post on how to Build and Publish Web Sites with Popfly Explorer Beta. Check it out.

Popfly Explorer Beta announcement pictures

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:51:28 GMT

Pieter Gheysens was kind enough to take some pictures during the announcement of Popfly Explorer Beta:

There’s also a short video of the presentation available:

Click here for more information on Popfly Explorer.

Popfly Explorer Beta announced at TechEd EMEA 2007

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:11:01 GMT

Popfly Explorer Beta

Dan Fernandez and Soma Somasegar announced the release of the Popfly Explorer Beta during the TechEd 2007 Keynote. You can have a look at the interview that was made with Dan at the videocasts that were made during the first day of TechEd. With Popfly Explorer you can unleash the power of Visual Studio upon your Popfly creations with Popfly Explorer. Popfly Explorer is a plug-in for Visual Studio that lets you:

Effortlessly create and host a Popfly web site
Access your Visual Studio solutions from anywhere
Share Visual Studio solutions with friends
Add mash-ups to your web pages

Download Popfly Explorer

Getting Started

To get started, download and install Popfly Explorer. After installation, Popfly Explorer will appear in Visual Studio. Sign in to your Popfly account, and you're ready to go. Don't have a Popfly account yet? Create one here.

Create a Web Site

Making web sites with Popfly Explorer is incredibly easy. Create your web site with Visual Web Developer, then share it on Popfly with Popfly Explorer. Take a look at the possibilities that open up to you with Popfly Explorer and Visual Web Developer.

Access Visual Studio Solutions on Popfly

Popfly Explorer enables you to quickly and easily store copies of your Visual Studio solutions on Popfly. You can access your creations from any computer with Visual Studio and Popfly Explorer. You can even share your creations with other Popfly users, and find solutions that have been shared by others.

Comment on your friends' projects

Interact with your friends: check out their latest projects, rate them and leave comments through Popfly.

Potential Future Enhancements

We are working on enabling Popfly Explorer users to publish completed projects with support for hosting Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation applications directly from Visual Studio. If you want to give us feedback on this, have questions, or other ideas about how we can improve Popfly Explorer, please let us know on the Popfly Explorer discussion forum.

Question #1

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:16:46 GMT

Question:
We want to create a project type that resembles the Empty Website template with the following requirement: We will add a default.htm page which is the only file that can ever exist in the project. Is it possible to create a restriction like that?

News on the calf injury

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:10:08 GMT
Alright, I got a phone call from my doctor today and he brought me some good and bad news: "My tendents are not damaged in a way that I need surgery" (just as a FYI, this is the good news), the bad news was that I have a massive hematoma in my calf which if not treated appropriately could bother be me for the next 6 months. So when I asked the doc what would be appropriate treatment, he told me that would be physical therapy for about twice a week. Nice, if you combine that with the 3 times a week I should go for my shoulder, I can fill my calendar with dates with a therapist on weekdays.

Anyway, in the line of what seems to be my character I went out cycling today. Although I still have a pretty severe limp, cycling was kinda painless, I can defintely not walk on my pedals or anything like that but at least I completed my light course that I'll normally do when I feel like going out for a ride during an evening.

I've seriously decided to run a marathon this year, and Theresa (Olivier's girlfriend, before I need to answer a bunch of emails ;-)) has convinced me to run a half marathon with her in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to it, I just need to stay fit long enough to get some decend training.

I haven't written anything about David's death (I will soon) has learned me a couple of things, one of them is that it is OK to be harder on myself and push myself more to the limit. One other thing is that I really shouldn't complain about my life and when I do, I should be increadibly ashamed for complaining and thankfull that I get to live another day when my friend doesn't have that opportunity...

Soccer Injury

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 04:59:47 GMT
I can't believe it! My shoulder was getting better, I've been cycling a lot and today I played my first soccer game in a long time, got invited to a coed game by Oliver's girlfriend (she passed the first 3 rules ;-)) and what happens... My calf explodes after 5 minutes... I thought that somebody had shot me in the calf or threw a rock at me or something... increadibly painful. So I turned around and I swear for the first time in my life a thought that I would hit somebody. There was nobody there??? At that point the pain took over and I was done. I called Olivier and he was kind enough to drive me home.

So what do you do when you come home and you think you seriously injured yourself? You do some research on the internet!

(just told Olivier that I'm blogging about my injury... yeah it's crazy but I think it is just the pain)

shit this hurts bad!

The Boys are into town (PART I)

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:59:14 GMT

On Saturday afternoon, I picked up Jelle and Peter from the airport. It was really good to see them again. I made a small mistake driving to their hotel and got ridiculed for that:

Peter: You've been living here for a year and you still don't know where your way around town?

Steven: I got lost in Belgium all the time too!

Peter and Jelle: That's true...

When we arrived at the hotel Jelle came up with the goods:

1 kilo of Lionidas chocolates. I took them to work on Monday and went around my team. It's a national pride things I guess...
A real Brabantia fries cutter: Picture. Impossible to find in the US.

Thanks a lot for the chocolates and the fries cutter buddy!

In the meantime some members of the other Belgain delegation had arrived. They had already assembled in the bar, I guess it's a national pride thing. Saturday afternoon I dragged the jetlagged Belgian boys to the bite of seattle. It's a bit of a food festival where you've got a bunch of food stands. It was OK, not great and was a bit too crowded for Jelle and Peter, they just got off the plane ;-). Afterwards we ended up having drinks and food with Olivier, Theresa, Thomas, John, Cecille, Anna and Andy. I dropped them of at the hotel and that was the end of their night.

I'm going to stop giving out detailed descriptions of how we ended up sending the reset of the week. Paramesh's remarks, which are totally great by the way, have made me concerned about my falling reputation ;-) or is this how far I got when I started this post on Tuesday and am I just too laizy to write down what happened the rest of the week?

Anyways here's an interesting hall way conversation:

Paramesh: So are you going out again tonight?

Steven: Euh yes, I'm meeting up with my friends tonight. I have to, they are only in town for a week.

Paramesh: Yeah right, it's not that you are ever at home when they are not here.

Steven: hahaha... I have to admit that the last weeks have been really busy...

The boys are coming to town!

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:08:07 GMT

Jelle Druyts and Peter Demeyere and a bunch of other Belgians are coming to Seattle for TechReady. Jelle is giving a presentation on the Guidance Automation Toolkit the following week and he’s sticking around for my birthday. This makes me incredibly happy. When I first started working at Microsoft Jelle and I were the rookies and Peter Himschoot and Peter Demeyere were the experienced scary people. After about 2 years a couple of things went pretty wrong at Info Support and in a not to long time span we all left the company but remained friends ever since. I always considered Peter Himschoot to be my mentor, Peter Demeyere an incredible smart guy and Jelle… Well Jelle and I have got a very interesting history. Even when switching jobs in the years after InfoSupport we always ended up at the same company and ever since InfoSupport people always created some kind of competition between us and I’m glad it never got the upper hand. By the way Jelle is also the guy that would lend me his couch when I broke up with a girlfriend (The stories he could tell ;-)). Anyway one of the biggest tests of our friendship probably was when we did our Devdays presentations together. I had just moved out of the house me and Wendy had been living in for the last years, Wendy still lives there so you kinda know what went wrong and I really wasn’t up to giving or preparing any kind of presentation. We ended up in a sprint and finalized the presentation a couple of hours before we went on stage. I don’t think it’s that much different from a lot of presentations but anyways… It was still early days for Visual Studio Team System back then and the prerelease version blew up a couple of time in never before seen ways but … at least Jelle and I had a lot of fun!

I’m incredibly glad to have them over and I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple of months now.

Mentos in Carlsberg

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:23:28 GMT

http://tastelikepizza.com/index.php?itemid=5181

No words needed!

Harry Potter Book

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:27:21 GMT

Just another random office conversation:

Steven: I know how the new harry potter book ends
Suzanne: Don't you tell, me! I will beat you up and I'm very serious about that!

Something Zune could have done better

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:20:46 GMT

Besides the fact that I absolutely love my Zune, there's one thing that could be better ;-). When you reinstall your machine to which your Zune is bound, you can either reconnect as a guest after the installation or just erase everything that is one your Zune and start all over. It's dissapointing...

Big Brothers Big Sisters of King & Pierce Counties

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:17:16 GMT

After talking to Michael Leonard one of our SDET's on our team. (Well, Michael is not just one of the SDET'S on our team, I call him Michael Bauer. He's the Jack Bauer of bugs. Michael is the guy I turn to when I want an answer on how the quality of popfly is doing.) I applied to volunteer at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of King & Pierce Counties. I'll definitely report on how this works out.