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Home > News
Details about our events can be found in the programs section.
The World Bank Institute launched an "e-Institute" in July 2011 which is designed to support self-motivated learners to get up to speed on the latest development trends, enhance their skill-sets, and share knowledge through on-line learning communities.
New courses on cross-cutting themes will featured regularly in addition to monthly webinars and other free resources.
The seventh Japan Social Development Fund Dialogue Series was held at the Tokyo Development Learning Center on May 28, 2014. The series initiated in 2012 by the World Bank Global Partnerships and Trust Fund Operations (CFPTO), the World Bank Tokyo Office, and the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC), disseminates the achievements and lessons learned from projects funded by the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) by bringing together project members, beneficiaries, stakeholders, and development practitioners, to provide a platform for communication among stakeholders, development practitioners, policy makers, and the general public.
The session showcased this time was "Jiyo!: Making Globalization Work for the Rural Poor in India", a livelihoods program to strengthen the capacity and improve access to decent sustainable livelihoods that helped the poorest, most vulnerable, and landless communities in India whose main income depends on traditional cultural industries.
Gerin Sigsbert, a Tanzanian national was working as an internal auditor for a microfinance intervention project funded by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) and the Government of Tanzania when he found out about the ninth delivery of the Microfinance Training of Trainers (MFTOT) Course offered by the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center. He was supposed to "know the ABCs of microfinance," and had been searching for some training on microfinance that could provide him complementary knowledge and skills that would allow him to better serve his responsibilities at his organization. When he learned about MFTOT 9, he immediately contacted the Tanzania Global Learning Agency (TaGLA) and signed up for the course.
The first delivery of the Psychological First Aid (PFA): Mutual Support for Resiliency after Crisis, a distance learning seminar was launched on December 13, 2013 at the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center (WB TDLC).
The Disability and Development Seminar Series kicked off with its first session on December 3, 2013.
The session "Mental Well-being, Disability, and Development" organized jointly by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH), and the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center (WB TDLC) featured a panel discussion on mental well-being within the context of disability and development. The discussion took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, in observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Senior Knowledge Management Officer Dr. Takashi Izutsu from WB TDLC moderated the panel from New York and the discussion was webcast live.
"How Can We Learn from Megadisasters", a World Bank knowledge sharing seminar was hosted at the Tokyo Development Learning Center on October 18th, 2013. The seminar was a part of a Japan/World Bank joint research project, "Learning from Megadisasters" which was initiated months after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in October 2011 with the objective of sharing Japan's knowledge and know-how of disaster risk management and post-disaster reconstruction with countries vulnerable to disasters and mainstreaming DRM. The session first showcased how the lessons learned from the GEJE were disseminated to the world and then the seminar participants actively discussed how those activities should be strengthened. The project is coming to a close and the event on October 18th marked its final public seminar. However, the World Bank and the government of Japan are committed to mainstreaming DRM and on maintaining the fruitful and effective working relationship: The government of Japan will fund up to US$100 million over the next 5 years and a "DRM Hub" will be established in Tokyo.
In disaster situations where various levels of health care providers are present, nurses often serve as the first and closest as well as the one of the most accessible and sustainable contacts for patients and people affected by disasters. However, disaster nursing has a tendency to be marginalized in a broader international development agenda. The panel discussion "Disaster Nursing: Lessons Learned from Asian Countries" organized by the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC) and the Asian Conference on Emergency Medicine (ACEM) was held on October 24, 2013 based on the need to address this tendency and to help focus international attention on this important aspect of emergency medicine.
The World Bank's Global Partnerships and Trust Fund Operations Department in cooperation with the Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC) and the World Bank Group Tokyo Office held the fifth Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) Dialogue Series at TDLC on August 2, 2013.
The 9th Microfinance Training of Trainers course kicked off to a lively start on July 11, 2013 with 10 Global Distance Learning Centers in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Uganda hosting the course. Over 150 participants joined the opening session from the GDLN centers, and another 180 participants participated by going online and accessing the live webcasting of the session. Approximately 400 participants from 46 countries enrolled in the course, all enthusiastic to learn and explore the world of microfinance.
"Learning from Tohoku's Recovery," an international technical workshop on disaster risk management and post disaster reconstruction organized by the World Bank, International Recovery Platform (IRP), and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Tohoku took place at the World Bank Tokyo Development Learning Center on June 24, 2013.


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Instruments Played
Recorder, Flute
Current Performance Ensembles
Toronto Consort
The Bird Project
Ensemble Polaris
Personal Summary / Bio
Since playing her first CBC radio gig at 20, Alison Melville's career as a performer on historical flutes and recorders has taken her across Canada and to the USA, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand and Europe.
A member of Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris and Artistic Director of the Bird Project, she plays frequently with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra both as a soloist and orchestral player, and has appeared with the Toronto Symphony, Aradia Ensemble, Soundstreams, New Music Concerts, Chatham Baroque, Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, Boston Early Music Festival, Early Music Vancouver, Opera Atelier, and many, many others. Alongside performances in Tokyo's Bunkamura Hall, Carnegie Hall and other celebrated venues she has also concertized in cinemas, convents, gardens, barns, ferries, school gymnasiums, prisons...
With extensive television, film and radio credits (CBC/Radio-Canada, BBC, RNZ, NPR, Iceland State Broadcast Service and others), Alison has played for the soundtracks of The Tudors, The Borgias and The Vikings, CBC-TV's beloved 'The Friendly Giant', and films by Atom Egoyan, Ang Lee, Amnon Buchbinder and others. She can be heard on over 50 CDs including several critically acclaimed solo recordings.
Her own music has been heard with Polaris, '999 Years of Music (dir. Peter Hannan), Post-Medieval Syndrome, Ensemble Polaris, the Bird Project, and on soundtracks for films by Stephen Dirkes and Malcolm Sutherland.
Alison Melville was on the teaching faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in the USA from 1999-2010, and currently teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Toronto. She studied in Toronto, London (UK) and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel, CH) as the recipient of awards and scholarships from the University of Toronto, Canada Council for the Arts, Women's Art Association of Canada, Royal Conservatory of Music, and others.
'She approaches this treasury of melody with a fine ear and a stunning technique on both instruments, but also with that swaggering x-factor which allows her to bring out the essential character of this idiomatic repertoire.' Early Music Forum of Scotland Newsletter
'Si l'angélisme est une entreprise, alors celle de ces musiciens de Toronto est promise à une belle prospérité… les pièces sur ce disque constituent de beaux exemples de musique profane anglaise du 17e siècle…jouées avec brillance par les musiciens torontois. Alison Melville est une interprète de premier niveau…' Scena Musicale

subset: commoncrawl


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The Mets Go a Very Loony 4-0
The Mets can't be stopped!
Skip to content, or skip to search.
Skip to content, or skip to search.
The Mets can't be stopped!
The Mets will pay $90 million for their awful roster next year. How about the year after that?
"Maybe next spring when we have our media workshop for the players, Fred can come and sit in on it."
Bobby Parnell allows three runs in the eighth, and the Rockies top the Mets 7–6.
The Mets' No. 1 starter is rocked in a 10–7 Phillies victory.
Joining him were Mike Pelfrey, R.A. Dickey, Bobby Parnell, and Dillon Gee.
The Mets lose again.
Mike Pelfrey is collapsing.
The red-hot Reds win the opener at Citi Field.
The Mets head to celebrate Strausmas.
The rookie crushed a walk-off home run to beat the Padres.
Mike Pelfrey goes to 8–1.
The Mets shut out the Phillies three times in three days.
The rain puts the Mets in a happy place.
Mike Pelfrey is rocking for the Mets.
Mike Pelfrey is the Mets' best player.
The Mets have no hitters. But now Jose Reyes is back, almost.
Our daily look at the twenty most important Mets of the 2010 season.


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Image via Nilesports.com.
Image via Nilesports.com.
It says something about Egypt's political scene, and something else besides, that the most popular authority figure in the nation at present was born in New Jersey. That would be Bob Bradley, the former Princeton star and U.S. Men's National Team manager whose Egyptian national team currently sits atop of its World Cup qualifying group. Under Bradley's leadership, the seven-time African champions appear headed to Brazil in 2014. In a country that's currently not enamored of most people in positions of power, this has made Bradley both popular and the most visible American coach in the international soccer world.
But he is far from the only one. There is a growing group of Americans and foreign-born American citizens who work as coaches and technical directors, for teams in nations as far flung as the Netherlands, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. They represent a new type of soccer manager: Men who were hired in part because of their very American-ness. "I'm not sure I'd be ready to call this a trend, but I think there is this very general sense with coaches and even with players that there's an American mentality," Bradley said during a phone interview. "When it's looked at in this kind of a general way, it's always positive because people think Americans work hard, and compete, and want to be number one."
This is a recent phenomenon. In 2009, John Murphy became the first American to coach in British professional soccer when he took the helm at Livingston FC in the Scottish 1st Division. Afshin Ghotbi immigrated to Los Angeles from Tehran when he was 13, but coached the Iranian the national team from 2009 to 2011; he now manages Shimizu S-Pulse in Japan's Division 1. Omid Namazi and Dan Gaspar are currently assistants with Iran. Petaluma, California native Joe Enochs spent the majority of his playing days with German second division team VfL Osnabrück and started coaching the club in 2011.
This list also includes Dutch-Americans Earnie Stewart (technical director, Alkmaar Zaanstreek), Gregg Berhalter (manager, Hammarby IF), Troy Ready (technical director, Tajikistan) and French-American Pierre Barrieu (fitness coach, United Arab Emirates). Stewart and Barrieu were not born in the United States, but they are American citizens with close ties to the U.S. soccer program.
The number is small but impressive given the dearth of opportunities for American coaches to gain international recognition. Although Major League Soccer now boasts 11 American managers across its 19 clubs, the league holds little cache in the rest of the world. Managing the U.S. Men's National Team is one of the only ways for a coach to earn widespread respect. Bradley's hiring by the Egyptian Federation in September 2011 marked a milestone in terms of how the world perceives American coaches. While the very fact that he got the job says a lot about the perception of U.S. coaches, his success may well have opened the door for future U.S. coaching hopefuls. "I respect what Bob Bradley has done," Murphy said. "That is a tough, tough job."
Sporting directors responsible for hiring soccer coaches from the U.S. say that clubs increasingly value the American focus on winning. Toon Gerbrands, who brought Stewart to AZ, saw this attitude at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. "When Americans go to the Olympic games, they only go to win," the former volleyball player said. "In Holland when we go, we have a goal. We might want to be top three or top five. From the USA's perspective, that's unbelievable. You go for the win all the way. That's a very American way of thinking."
Stewart, who spent the majority of his club career in the Netherlands but played in 101 matches for the U.S. Men's National Team, took the AZ job in June 2010. Notably, AZ's leading scorer during the 2012-2013 campaign is American forward Jozy Altidore. Gerbrands, the club's director of general affairs, appreciated the way in which Stewart's European understanding of soccer tactics meshed with his American drive.
Berhalter landed a coaching job in Sweden for the same reason. The New Jersey-born defender, who retired in 2011 after spending most of his 17-year playing career abroad on teams in England, Germany, and the Netherlands, manages Hammarby. Gustaf Grauers, the club's sporting director, was not initially seeking an American for the vacant coaching position. He found Berhalter after a colleague at AEG—which owns both Hammarby and the Los Angeles Galaxy—suggested the former North Carolina Tar Heels star. "I lived in the US for two years and I know the winning mentality, the competitiveness, and the mindset of American athletes," Grauers said. "[Berhalter's] idea of soccer probably comes more from Europe but his mentality comes from the U.S., and it's very appealing to me."
These managers, like the many American players scattered across international leagues, are helping to dispel the stereotype that Americans don't understand the beautiful game. "I think [sporting directors] stopped seeing lesser coaches. There used to be a bias against Americans, but I think it's starting to shift a little bit," said Barrieu, who spent his first 29 years in France and served as U.S. fitness coach during Bradley's tenure.
The Amsterdam-born Thomas Rongen, who spent his playing days in the U.S. and managed the American Under-20 squad for a decade before jumping to American Samoa in 2011, thinks teams abroad respect more than the desire to win. Sports organizations in the U.S. are more advanced in terms of analysis, sponsorship, technology, and business. "I had a lot of calls from people in the soccer industry like [former Holland star] Ruud Gullit and [former Barcelona manager] Frank Rijkaard," Rongen said. "They wanted to spend three weeks with the New England Patriots."
Bradley agrees with Rongen's assessment. "Coaches in different sports are looking always to see good examples of coaching at a high level. And I do think that some foreign coaches who have an understanding of sports in the U.S. understand that Bill Belichick has a reputation for detail and the way he does things," he said. "Without a doubt, there has been respect and admiration for the way organizations are run, the way the NFL is run."
Hiring an American coach makes sense for a foreign team that wants to mimic a U.S. organization. As John Murphy notes, however, there is more on the line when choosing a coach than a player. "When a coach comes over, people are going to feel like he's taking somebody's job. It's the same for the players, but on a team of 30 pros, there's more opportunity than getting one of three or four coaching positions with that club," he said.
More American players will land at big international clubs than coaches, but players and coaches are in this game together. "People around the world see the direction the game is going in the U.S. and they respect the players and they respect the coaches. With time, we'll see more and more people getting opportunities," Bradley said. Galaxy boss Bruce Arena, Real Salt Lake's Jason Kreis, former U.S. players Tab Ramos and Claudio Reyna, even new Portland Timbers coach Caleb Porter could soon find themselves hot commodities on the international soccer scene. Which means that Bradley—while he's probably likely to remain Egypt's most popular leader for at least a little while—could soon have competition for the distinction of most visible American manager.
Gerbrands, the club's director of general affairs, appreciated the way in which Stewart's European understanding of soccer tactics meshed with his American drive.
Regards Yandy Roman


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Marvel Marathon
Description: Get ready to watch the greatest Marvel movie event ever held at your local AMC Theatre on May 3rd! Experience THE ULTIMATE MARVEL MARATHON with six movies on one epic day. Watch the heroes' stories unfold as they assemble for the midnight premiere of The Avengers 3D! Here's a list of the six movies being shown at THE ULTIMATE MARVEL MARATHON: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor in 3D, Captain America in 3D, The Avengers in 3D.
Movie summaries and listings powered by Cinema-Source
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4 Pines Brewing Company
4 Pines Brewing Company is known for award winning beers along with a seasonal menu featuring beer friendly food.
With beer being brewed most days there is always entertainment to see. Plus w...
4 Pines Brewing Company is known for award winning beers along with a seasonal menu featuring beer friendly food.
With beer being brewed most days there is always entertainment to see. Plus w...
At Ambrosia Olive Farm, all oil is tested in various ways to make sure that the oil you receive is of the highest quality. Ambrosia Olive Farm guarantee their olive oil is so good, you will be impress...www.wollondillyharvestexperience.com.au
Enjoy this beautiful par 70 golf course, relax in the original 1863 homestead of John Macquarie Antill, and enjoy a drink at the bar or lunch in the bistro. Facilities include a pro shop and motorised...www.antillpark.com.au/
The recently renovated Appin Hotel is a must see site to visit whilst discovering Wollondilly. Ideally situated in the village of Appin on Appin's main street this Inn is hard to drive past witho...www.appinhotel.com.au
Aquality Cruises is based in Berowra Waters servicing Pittwater, Cowan Creek, and the Hawkesbury River.
Elsie May can accommodate up to 10 passengers so you can enjoy a more private cruise o...
The Balmoral Bathers Pavilion is owned by chef, Serge Dansereau. The view is towards the Heads and overlooks Middle Harbour. Bathers Pavilion provides for all your beachside needs. Whether it is spect...www.batherspavilion.com.au
Located in a peaceful rural setting in the Wollondilly Shire, The Bargo Sports Club function centre is the perfect choice to host your wedding reception or any other important event from birthdays, co...www.bargosportsclub.com.au/
An exciting new addition to Willoughby Road's popular restaurant precinct and a welcome sibling for the Chatswood venue, Bavarian Bier Cafe Crows Nest features all of your favourite Bavarian-styl...www.bavarianbiercafe.com
Located in the heart of Sydney's famous entertainment precinct, Bavarian Bier Cafe Entertainment Quarter combines the renowned Bavarian hospitality with a family friendly atmosphere, making it a ...www.bavarianbiercafe.com
Belgenny Farm is located in historic Camden Park Estate, famous home of agricultural pioneers Elizabeth and John Macarthur. Located only one hour from Sydney, Belgenny Farm has a unique setting and of...www.belgennyfarm.com.au
Imagine finding a place in Sydney, hidden away, with water views in the middle of the bush with a unique vehicular ferry.
At Berowra Waters Marina you can have a day out fishing on the riv...
Blue Mountains Honey Company in Penrith is a family owned and operated Honey Company, open to all the sweet tooths and honey lovers to visit and enjoy.
In the retail outlet you will find a wi...
Nestled in Sydney's stunning Royal Botanic Gardens, the picturesque Botanic Gardens Restaurant is an enchanting venue offering open-air dining in exquisite garden surroundings.
Wide wiste...
Bundeena RSL Club - The place to see, the place to be.
Enjoy, relax, eat and drink in the views at Bundeena RSL Club, one of Sydney's best kept secrets! Located in the picturesque Royal N...
After the success of Pocket Bar and Stitch, the owners brand new venture has an underground feeling about it with leather booths and dark nooks and crannies shaped a bit like the galley of a pirate sh...www.button-bar.com.au
Calmsley Hill City Farm is a farm based attraction, close to the heart of Sydney - a place where children and adults can enjoy a variety of exciting shows and exhibits. Get up close to a range of nati...calmsleyhill.com.au
'The King of Clubs' is a fantastic facility offering the best in entertainment, food, drink and service, to locals and visitors alike.
With a huge line up of entertainment all year r...
At Canoelands Orchard they produce their own honey and run Hive Honey Tours. They also do farm walks and technical farm tours.
Throughout the season they run 'pick your own fruit' - ...
The origins of Castle Hill RSL can be traced back to 1932, when the Hills District Returned Sailors and Soldiers Club was formed to assist World War One veterans and their families. The aim of Castle ...www.castlehillrsl.com.au
Castle Hill Tavern is situated in the Hills District close to the city of Sydney. Castle Hill Tavern has plenty of great areas to relax such as the beer garden or the public bar booths. Look no furthe...www.castlehilltavern.com.au


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Flight AF007 from JFK is approaching runway 08R. [1600px]
Is there any better way to wake up after a long nightflight? I really enjoyed this magnificent view in the morning out of Air France's newest A380 onboard flight AF007 from New York to Paris.
[1600 pix] Finals into JFK
Brand new Air France A380 on it's way to runway 09R, bound for JFK as flight AF006.
Brand new "Whale" for Air France. Delivery date 17-06-2011
Short final for Runway 22L.


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Eric Gairy
Sir Eric Matthew Gairy PC (February 18, 1922 – August 23, 1997) was the first Prime Minister of Grenada, serving from Grenada`s independence in 1974 until his overthrow in a coup by Maurice Bishop in 1979. Gairy also served as head of government in pre-independence Grenada as Chief Minister 1960-1961, and Premier 1967-1974. Eric Matthew Gairy was the son of Douglas and Theresa Gairy, and born 18 February 1922 in Dunfermline, St. Andrew's Parish on the Eastern side of the island near Grenville, Grenada. He attended the LaFillette School and then the St. Andrews Roman Catholic Senior School. Gairy was also an acolyte at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church, next door to the school. He became a primary 'student-teacher' in the LaFillette School from January 1939 - September 1941. Eric Gairy returned to Grenada from Curacao in December, 1949 to enter trade unionism and politics. In 1950 he founded the Grenada Manual, Maritime & Intellectual Workers' Union (GMMIWU) and was deeply involved in encouraging the 1951 general strike for better working conditions, this sparked great unrest - so many buildings were set ablaze that the disturbances became known as the 'red sky' days - and the  ( Wikipedia article )
Personal facts
- Date of birth
- 1922-02-18
- Spouse(s)
- Cynthina Gairy
- Profession
- Politician
Political career
|Grenada United Labor Party
- Date of death
- 1997-08-23


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Marco Polo Cruise Review by alsy: THE CRUISE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CANCELLED
Member Since 2013
0 Posts
Member Rating
Our cruise to Ghent and Amsterdam should never have left port.All the facilities included in the price were closed except the shows this was claimed because of numerous people touching products ie the card room. The boutiques were open funny that as passengers were handling the products and replacing them on the racks and shelves the same in the shop people were handling bottles of spirits and packets of cigarettes. How this did not constitute a possible health hazard was probably because these were on sale and would have resulted in lost revenue.The shows were excellent again shame the food was not.There was very little choice
As the bistro was closed during the cruise the main restaurant had very little choice and our waiter did not know what had garlic in. We paid £998 for this cruise for 4 nights and that included 3 breakfasts 2 were nearly cold 3 lunches if required 3 dinners each and 3 shows. On requesting a part refund this was dismissed out of hand. My sister More who was on the cruise with us was phoned to explain that the delayed embarkation was due to the ship having one of it's two annual normal deep clean but failed to inform her if passengers were uncomfortable with the situation you could rebook for a different date. We were not informed of this until we had unpacked in our cabins and a letter was in the cabin folder.. The cruise before us suffered a bad norovirus outbreak of at least 50+ cases as was informed to us by a crew member.
With the toilets being closed you had to make a trip back to your cabin if the call arose.
Several crew members claimed the cruise should have been cancelled with the lack of facilities.
The company have now come back to me with a offer of 20% off a future booking for 2014/2015 providing If I book before 31/01/2014.
I think this offer is a joke and I will not be taking up the offer as I will never cruise with this so called cruise company again. Less
Read more Marco Polo cruise reviews >>
Read Cruise Critic's Marco Polo Review >>
Great Food Great Staff but bob...
Nice ship; it may be good to c...
Still Waiting to be WOW'd
We won't be taking another cru...
Fjords NORTHERN LIGHTS AND ADV...
The cruise from Hell!
We won't be taking another cru...
Fjords NORTHERN LIGHTS AND ADV...
The cruise from Hell!
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Oh no! This event happened, check out our full schedule here or click the button below to see if we play near you!Find other locations
Harlem Globetrotters
the RatioPharm Arena
Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 6:00pm
Event Details
The World Famous Harlem Globetrotters bring their ridiculous basketball skills and amazing athletes to Neu-Ulm, Germany. Don't miss this must see family fun event!
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Harlem Globetrotters at the RatioPharm Arena
RatioPharm Arena
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Six years after a peace agreement ended decades of war the Republic of South Sudan has been officially born.
On Saturday, thousands gathered to watch South Sudan take its independence - splitting from the north and dividing what was Africa's largest state.
African leaders and officials from around the world attended the ceremony which marked the creation of the world's newest state.
The independence follows a referendum in January this year when 98 per cent of South Sudanese voted in favour of statehood and separation from the north.
The referendum in turn followed a peace deal that ended a bitter and lengthy civil war between the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army and the Khartoum government, a government that was the first to officially recognise the new state.
But South Sudan remains chronically underdeveloped. And as the excitment of independence dies down, the reality remains that this newly formed nation has been plunged into a new era of uncertainty. Inside Story, with presenter Mike Hanna, discusses the challenges lying ahead for Africa's newest nation. Joining the show are Richard Dowden, the director of the Royal Africa Society; Jackie Wilson, a senior programme officer in the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); and Egbert Wesselink, the director of the European coalition on oil in Sudan.
This episode of Inside Story aired from Saturday, July 9, 2011.
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text: The Abbeville Institute is having their 2005 Summer School in July. My sister Rachel and my good friend Kevin have both gone to this conference and give it rave reviews. No surprise if you look at the list of scholars presenting at it and the fact that the brilliant Don Livingston is organizing it. Students, there are scholarships available, so plan on getting to Louisiana in July!10:28 pm on April 19, 2005 Email Stephen W. Carson


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A Chicago-area legislator is trying to re-start negotiations over a big expansion of gambling.
Gambling was a big issue earlier this year, but negotiations fell apart in May, at the end of the spring legislative session. Since then, attention has moved to other issues, like the state's underfunded pension systems, according to Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, and nothing has happened on gaming expansion.
So he held a hearing in which people with an interest in gambling could say where they stand. He acknowledges that little has changed since the spring.
Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey has outlined his plan for dividing revenues for a proposed casino. Morrissey wants the city to keep 70 percent of revenues, with the remaining 30 percent going to the Rockford Metropolitan Agency for Planning. State lawmakers are debating a gambling expansion plan that includes a Rockford casino. Winnebago County Board Chairman Scott Christiansen calls the proposal "one-sided."
For the third time in two years, the Illinois Senate has approved a measure that would allow five new casinos, including one in Rockford.
The difference this time is that Governor Pat Quinn might finally be willing to support the proposal.
The sponsor,Terry Link, D-Waukegan, says he's tried to meet the governor's demands, such as banning campaign donations by gambling license holders. Link also removed a provision that would have allowed online gambling.
A new gambling expansion plan is moving to the full Illinois Senate, just days after Governor Pat Quinn vetoed a similar plan.
Lawmakers quickly proposed another plan to add a casino in Rockford and four other locations. Governor Pat Quinn this week vetoed a gambling expansion plan would have added several new casinos and placed slot machines at horse race tracks. Quinn called the expansion "excessive."
Legislation to expand gambling the General Assembly approved nearly two years ago is finally dead. Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed a measure that would have given Illinois five new casinos.
When Quinn gives his annual budget address Wednesday, he's expected to highlight Illinois' plethora of financial problems.
That frustrates supporters of gambling expansion, who say more casinos would be like hitting the jackpot.
Governor Pat Quinn refuses to be pinned down on what he'll do with legislation that expands gambling in Illinois -- creating five new casinos in cities like Chicago ... Rockford ... and Danville. Gov. Quinn will once again have the opportunity to approve or veto gambling legislation. But unlike past bills, this time it's take-it-or-leave-it -- the legislature won't have the chance to override a potential veto.
The Illinois House, in a 69 to 47 vote, has passed a gambling expansion bill that would create new casinos -- including one in Rockford -- and allow slot machines at the state's racetracks.
Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, says it will bring Illinois money it needs as the state faces steep budget cuts. Lang says that, as the budget process progresses, it's clear the state isn't doing well enough.
"We haven't created enough jobs. We don't have enough revenue," he said. "Is this a panacea for all of our ills? Of course not. Can it be step to build a better economy? Absolutely it can."


text:
Scott Guthrie moves on to lead the Azure Application Platform team
What could be important enough to interrupt the flow of posts on practical project experience? It is the reorganization that will throw every .NET developerŌĆÖs favorite ├╝bergeek to a new position.
Yes, Scott Guthrie is leaving his post as the head honcho for many things such as IIS, ASP.NET, Silverlight and a slew of other products. His new task? Make sure the developers love Azure and get a solid development story on MicrosoftŌĆÖs cloud platform.
What does this mean?
- ScottGuŌĆÖs blog will probably focus more on things related to cloud development (including private cloud). The division heŌĆÖll be working in delivers database services, BizTalk, AppFabric, WCF and workflows.
- There will have to be new champions for his previous products. Perhaps not directly in the terms of organizational position, but in the terms of being the public face for said products. Scott Hanselman and others will probably come to the rescue web-wise.
- Somebody else will probably keynote MIX12. Then again, PDC11 will probably see even a more empowered ScottGu preaching the Azure religion.
One thing IŌĆÖm a bit worried about is the openness development that has been set well into pace in GuthrieŌĆÖs previous organization. Co-operation with the jQuery team, integration of new open source technologies into the Visual Studio / .NET mix, growing support for releasing previously closed source, very open and straightforward relation to the developer sceneŌĆ" All this has been highly valuable.
IŌĆÖm sure the Gu will take much of the goodness to his new org, but IŌĆÖm less certain if the goodness will remain in the old one. At the same time, all this makes sense: ASP.NET and Silverlight are very, very mature compared to the development story on Azure. ItŌĆÖll be interesting to see his impact over the coming months. Also, given the somewhat inherently closed nature of the cloud, the next steps of the openness story are worth looking forward to.
May 3, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę No Comments
Tags: ASP.NET, Azure, Silverlight ┬Ę Posted in: .NET, Cloud
Valio.fi deep dive #2: Code review policy
In this second episode of my postings on valio.fi, IŌĆÖll look deeper into the concept of code reviews in the project.
Pre-post note: No, IŌĆÖm not following a logical order with these. Rather, IŌĆÖll try to answer the asked questions as soon as I can while still maintaining a readable approach to the project details. Front-end posts will be interleaved with back-end magic, and there will be a dose of project management sauce inbetween. If you want to hear about something, ask for it in the comments.
In a project with numerous developers ŌĆō in our case a scrum team of nine ŌĆō the question of spreading code knowledge and ensuring certain quality bar tends to arise. There are numerous ways to tackle this, but we picked two principal approaches: Shared physical working space and code reviews.
Peer reviews vs. architect reviews
There are basically two alternative approaches to picking the reviewer. Either you have a reviewer/architect role (which may be rotating, but often tends to stick), or you can have a system of free peer reviews, i.e. anyone can review anything as long as they feel sufficiently competent about it.
Wanting to emphasize the equality of team members, we naturally chose the peer review model. However, few teams have a totally balanced review graph. Usually some people end up reviewing more code than others. This is partially a function of seniority, but also dependent on character, preferences and random factors (such as knowledge of a particular tricky subject).
Ours wasnŌĆÖt balanced either. A couple of persons ended up being a part of most of the reviews. Still, we found the system to be fairly optimal: it did distribute a lot of knowledge, everyone had their code reviewed by several others and everyone reviewed somebodyŌĆÖs code.
Review guidelines
As with any project with more than a few people and a duration of months or more, writing down the intended methodology felt wise. Thus, we did have written review guidelines, although they were just that – common sense was allowed to rule over these idealistic methodology statements. Here is a summary of our guidelines with some examples and clarifications in parentheses:
Changes that must be reviewed
- Changes to commonly used base classes
- Changes to tool libraries (defined as a group of Visual Studio projects)
- Changes which alter the architecture (add new layers of abstraction, create new dependencies) or institute new technical vocabulary (e.g. introducing the concept of ŌĆ£distributed cache eviction handlersŌĆØ)
Changes that are recommended to be reviewed
- Changes which touch critical, bug-sensitive code paths (O/R mapping internals, request routing, complex logic)
- Changes which seem incorrect or illogical by the first reading of the code
- Changes whose unit test coverage is insufficient but hard to improve (IŌĆÖll get back to this in a later post)
Rules of play
- The author of the code makes the first call on whether to request review. Anyone else in the team may also request a piece of code to be reviewed if he feels it necessary.
- The author may request the review from one or more people.
- Anyone may review, but authors should usually pick the one most experienced in the domain of the change.
- Reviewers can ask for additional reviewers if they so feel.
- Reviews should be handled in a speedy manner. A typical review request should be completed in a working day.
- The author must answer any comments or questions raised during the review in a speedy and prudent manner, but it is ultimately the authorŌĆÖs choice to either honor or ignore them. Should significant disagreement rise, the team will solve it together.
Some notes on the guidelines
These rules, as written above, were applied at the start of the project. During the final few sprints, we relaxed the guidelines and focused on shipping.
No, wait, maybe that was what you expected to hear. Actually, we tightened the rules a bit for the final three sprints (six weeks) or so. Mainly, we merged the two first headings; essentially, we started to require reviews on all non-trivial changes to the code base. We also pushed this to our project management system; a sprint backlog item was not marked complete until it had passed review (for whatever definition of ŌĆ£passedŌĆØ; we still allowed the author to decide whether review comments warranted code changes or not).
As you can see, we relied a lot on code authors. We allowed everybody to request review from anyone, meaning that we didnŌĆÖt ŌĆō nor did the project management ŌĆō get involved in how much time was spent in reviews. And quite some time was spent, although we didnŌĆÖt log any specific numbers. Personally, I spent almost half of my time reviewing code towards the end of the project, although admittedly I was one of the most active reviewers.
Forced vs. recommended: Before or after checkin?
There are basically two stages when you can do a review. Many open source projects take a fairly strict path: Only a select few people can commit or authorize commits to the source control, thus essentially creating a tight net for reviews. Often, in the largest projects, nobody commits anything without somebody else looking at it first. This makes sense when nobody can know the code authors. The other alternative is to allow free commits, but review before releases or other milestones.
We were totally in the post-checkin camp. Everyone could commit anything, and we had no system in place to track if people actually did request reviews (until late in the game when we made it part of the completion criteria).
If you have the right culture, reviews are free
So yeah, we had a very author-controlled approach to reviews. But we also had a very open code quality culture, and it was not uncommon to question the validity of somebodyŌĆÖs approach over lunch. The debates could get quite heated, and we often spent a lot of time on issues that didnŌĆÖt, in the end, have enough weight to warrant such use of time.
However, it all served a purpose. Our somewhat excessive quality discussions created a culture where writing bad code ŌĆō or skipping reviews ŌĆō wasnŌĆÖt particularly lucrative. You never got publicly lambasted for a stupid bug in unreviewed code, but everybody felt better collectively owning code that had passed a review: a bug in well-reviewed code was a team mistake.
The reviews definitely had a time cost. Their positive impact is very hard to measure, given that we couldnŌĆÖt know what the amount of bugs would have been without the review net. We caught some in the reviews, but probably prevented ten times more by conveying knowledge and setting examples during the review process.
A couple of weeks after shipping the site, many people kept wondering about the low amount of bugs discovered right after the launch. This sentiment, no matter how unmeasurable, is one of the key indicators of our success in terms of quality.
A perfect success?
Far from it. First of all, our front-end code wasnŌĆÖt nearly as meticulously reviewed, for a variety of reasons (although the same attention to quality did apply, it wasnŌĆÖt as collective). There were definitely scenarios where reviews could have saved us from some front-end issues.
Then, there was the question of review culture. While we were mostly quite successful with it, we couldŌĆÖve been a bit more stringent with the adoption at the early stages. Given that the team was formed from three organizations (with three different review backgrounds), we should have made everything clear from the get go. It would have been a step away from self-organization, but we would have set a meaningful default, then allowing the team to find its own path. At the very least, review completion should have been a part of the ŌĆ£doneŌĆØ criteria from a much earlier point of time in the project.
All in all, reviews made a big difference in the project. One more thing we couldŌĆÖve done better is follow-up: We should have gone through common review comments more often and intentionally disseminate information about the issues on a weekly basis. We didnŌĆÖt have a process for that. In a bigger team and a more intense schedule, this would have been even more important.
Up next: Tools
ThatŌĆÖs it for the review methodology. The next post will be about the ŌĆ£howŌĆØ of reviews, including the tools (Crucible). At a later stage, I will return to the topic of reviews by explaining a few of the common issues we found and giving some ideas on how to tackle those issues.
April 28, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę 2 Comments
Tags: code review, valio.fi ┬Ę Posted in: Misc. programming
Valio.fi deep dive #1: Understanding our JavaScript philosophy
In this first part of my series of postings on the Valio.fi project, IŌĆÖll discuss some design aspects of our use of JavaScript. We outlined these principles in the TechDays presentation, but the guidelines are worth repeating in print as well.
What drove us to this?
First, let us reiterate the project background and goals.
When the concept of the site was born, high-fidelity user interface and visual appeal were high on the priority list. As you can see by browsing the site, particularly recipe search and articles, a hefty amount of work has been done to make the content look good. This includes contributions from artists, copywriters and photographers.
Once we had all this good-looking content, the challenge moved on to the viewing experience: How can we make it as enjoyable as possible for the user to browse the content? There had to be that certain feeling of abundance, and some of that comes from speed: new content has to be available so fast you think you can never consume it all.
But it wasnŌĆÖt just viewing the content, it was also about entering it. For example, the recipe editor. Few home cooks have written down exact instructions on how to prepare the dishes they have invented. Sure, many write down the ingredients, but itŌĆÖs a real effort to produce a concise set of instructions, in followable order, on how to reproduce the dish.
What kind of user interface would provide a reasonable approach to this? A set of text boxes would work, but be very clumsy in terms of reordering entered content. A textarea might be acceptable, but then dividing the instructions into clearly printable steps would involve splitting on line feeds or other semi-technical tricks, likely to mislead the user or produce unwanted results.
Client-side scripting shouldnŌĆÖt be your first option
Both examples above added up to this: We wanted faster search-based browsing, which called for a client-side implementation. And we wanted drag-and-drop rearrangeability for recipe entry, as other options would simply have been too unusable.
After all the debate, there was a valid case for a JS-driven user interface. It wasnŌĆÖt our first idea, nor was it an obvious choice to make. But in the end we did make that choice, and again a few more times along the way. Here are some of the aspects that affected our decisions:
- Why do we want this? (see above)
- Would it be possible to implement a reasonably usable non-JavaScript version?
- If yes, would it involve a reasonable amount of work compared to the user benefit?
- What proportion of users would suffer from the lack of JavaScript support?
Different cases, different reasons
IŌĆÖll present a few use cases for JavaScript on the site and try to give an idea on the arguments behind the decisions.
1) Features where JavaScript support is completely optional, just providing a better UI
This kind of use of JavaScript is trivial to defend: it harms nobody, so the only real effect is the effort of writing and maintaining it (and testing the non-JS version, which tends to be forgotten). The vast majority of the siteŌĆÖs JavaScript usage falls under this category; little tricks to make the site look better and work smoother.
2) Features where a reasonable JavaScriptless implementation is not doable
While there definitely are quite a few users without JavaScript support, what percentage of them would be likely to use JavaScriptless user agents to add recipes? We deemed this portion of users small enough to ignore. Sounds harsh, but it is, ultimately, a business decision.
Many projects fear these decisions, and thus paralyze themselves with JS improvements: ŌĆ£if we cannot build a complete, perfect graceful degradation story, we canŌĆÖt use JavaScript at allŌĆØ.
3) Features where the JavaScriptless implementation is vastly simpler in terms of features
Such restrictions were not always technically necessary. We could have created the search interface with lots of multi-select controls or massive checkbox groups, and thus replicate the user experience. However, we often found the simpler option more usable. For example, without JavaScript, we could not show real-time numbers of matches for each filter. Thus, the user would essentially be searching blindly, perhaps ending with zero results more often than desired.
4) Features where we just didnŌĆÖt want to bother with the scriptless implementation
Finally, there are the features which could have been implemented without scripting but were not ŌĆō usually simply because we didnŌĆÖt have the time or considered something else more important. Perhaps the most visible example of this was the recipe scaling feature, allowing you to change the number of portions for any recipe.
Superficially, itŌĆÖs just two buttons that scale the recipe up or down. Behind the scenes, a whole lot of things happen when scaling. We use a JSON request to get the scaled recipe ingredients from the backend and then render it on the page using jQuery templating.
We could relatively easily add an HTTP GET based approach to scaling, providing links for +/- and then using querystring arguments for conveying the portion count. That might be something weŌĆÖre looking at later on.
All the sweetness from JavaScript doesnŌĆÖt come without it problems, though. In exchange for bypassing some of the HTML basic form controls, we hit the following issues:
- Accessibility degradation; impactwise ranging from mild (drag and drop without a mouse?) to severe (you just cannot scale a recipe without JavaScript support)
- More code means more bugs; to provide a JavaScript-based UI with pure HTML fallback often means coding some things almost twice.
- Increased complexity in terms of testing; itŌĆÖs very difficult to get all the happy and unhappy paths tested, both for JS and HTML.
- Increased attack surface from a security standpoint; while JavaScript itself rarely presents a security hazard, the additional APIs must also be checked for security issues, DoS opportunities and whatnot.
All in all, there are quite a few hurdles that need to be considered. Accessibility is a very relevant and real question, but itŌĆÖs a business one. We wouldnŌĆÖt have that problem in an ideal world, but since few projects have the resources to actually deliver fully usable pure-HTML experiences, most will practically have to find a compromise.
Unacceptable reasons for dissing JavaScript
While at it, I want to mention a couple of common reasons I hear for not using client-based technology.
- ŌĆ£We canŌĆÖt make it work the same for everybodyŌĆØ ŌĆō probably true, but itŌĆÖs also a cop out. Check with your business owner if thatŌĆÖs really what you need to do.
- ŌĆ£We canŌĆÖt make it work the same across all the browsersŌĆØ ŌĆō partially true, but if your understanding comes from times before jQuery et al., do refresh yourself. Getting CSS layout to work across browsers is much harder.
- ŌĆ£JavaScript is not a proper programming languageŌĆØ ŌĆō this is a colored statement coming from somebody with a limited definition of ŌĆ£properŌĆØ, typically involving static typing and class-based inheritance. Rest assured, the expressiveness of JavaScript will not be the limiting factor in your project.
I want to end the story with a concluding note: There is a lot of power in JavaScript. As usual, not everything works ŌĆō or is easy to do. But if you are building a web solution where the user experience matters, you will be doing yourself a disservice if you didnŌĆÖt even think about the possibilities provided by client-side programming on the web.
For a larger project, you would do well to devise a consistent, premeditated decision making framework for evaluating your JavaScript scenarios. Each instance of JavaScript use should provide reasonable benefit to offset the technical cost and possible accessibility issues. With that design-time check in place, client-side scripting can improve your site drastically.
April 18, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę 2 Comments
Tags: JavaScript, valio.fi ┬Ę Posted in: Web
MIX'11 keynote summary, day 1
ItŌĆÖs time for MIX again! MicrosoftŌĆÖs number one conference for web and phone enthusiasts kicked off in Las Vegas. The first keynote day covered web development, the second one will zero in on phone thingies. Here are the highlights from the first dayŌĆÖs keynotes.
Internet Explorer
Dean Hachamovitch kicks off the keynote ŌĆō and heŌĆÖs wearing a ŌĆ£TENŌĆØ T-shirt hinting at IE 10.
- Examples of real world HTML 5 applications: Foursquare Playground, SVG animation, DirectorŌĆÖs Cut (a tool you can use to create custom Bon Jovi music videos), WorldŌĆÖs Biggest Pacman, ŌĆ"
- Lots of boasting on IE 9ŌĆÖs performance, but little else. Still, itŌĆÖs been a while since a new high-end HTML site recommended a Firefox user to pick up IE 9 (as Foursquare Playground does).
- IE 9 patterns: A segment of keynote that focused on celebrating IE9ŌĆÖs developer readiness
- http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ŌĆō MicrosoftŌĆÖs web site on emerging
- In the future, platform previews will appear between 8-12 weeks instead of 8 right now; Microsoft feels this will provide more efficient changes and ability to hear the community feedback.
- Looking forward: IE10 has been developed for three weeks now
- Improved CSS3 support (visual effects, columns, grid layouts, ŌĆ"). High speed is still a priority, and heavily demoed.
- Platform Preview 1 is now available for download
- IE10 demos were run on an ARM machine with 1 GB of memory, demoing the capacity to run (fast) on an ARM machine.
- PDC 2011 will be held on 13th-16th September in Anaheim, California (the PDC site isnŌĆÖt up to date yet though).
Developer tooling and server end
Scott Guthrie on the stage, turning the focus back into the server end.
- Now shipping ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update
- New project templates, including a ŌĆ£use HTML5ŌĆØ switch, NuGet packages pre-installed
- Entity Framework 4.1 (including code-first capabilities)
- New jQuery version 1.5 shipping
- Modernizr ŌĆō another open source library shipping with Visual Studio through NuGet. This one makes it easier to use HTML5 and still have a working down-level experience.
- New scaffolding support: Creating a code-first model also creates controllers, views and whatnot.
- Demo: Creating a simply administrative interface to a podcast. The highlight of the demo was definitely building a code-first model, which then resulted in a generated database, controllers and views, including database constraints and values. Not useful everywhere, but certainly helps in quite a few scenarios.
- WebMatrix demo: Building a front-end. Demo included buying a web site template from TemplateMonster and using it to whip up a quick web site with WebMatrix, including lots of easy helpers for social features, packge-based helper installation and other stuff.
- Orchard (an open-source CMS to which Microsoft is contributing code):
- Again, returning to WebMatrix, and building a site using Orchard downloaded from the Web Gallery.
- Version 1.1 now available; the new version is definitely much cleaner than the previous ones.
- Also heavy demoing of Orchard modules, downloadable and installable pretty much like WordPress plugins. Potential new business opportunity, once all the Microsoft-savvy developers get into WordPress-style development?
- Windows Azure: Releasing new versions of Access Control Service, Caching and Content Delivery Network, and a feature called Traffic Manager. Not much detail in the keynote though, but look forward to the coming days.
- Umbraco project founder on stage to discuss the CMS:
- 10 000 active developers around the world ŌĆō not bad for an ASP.NET open source project
- Touting Windows Azure support: Umbraco supports automatic scaling, allowing the admin to specify tolerances. Umbraco will then adjust the number of Azure nodes needed to serve the site properly. Now downloadable: Windows Azure Accelerator for Umbraco
April 12, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę One Comment
Tags: ASP.NET MVC, Azure, IE, MIX, Orchard, PDC11, WebMatrix ┬Ę Posted in: .NET, Web
Out of the dark
ItŌĆÖs been a silent couple of months. Offbeat Solutions has been heads down programming, debugging, optimizing ŌĆō and then, finally shipping. Now itŌĆÖs time to look back.
In TechDays Finland 2011 we finally talked about our latest customer project, the www.valio.fi web site (slides available, in Finnish). In case youŌĆÖre not from around here, Valio is the FinlandŌĆÖs leading company in dairy products and a consumer brand of legendary caliber.
Since the presentation on 31st March, we then finally made the site live on Saturday 2nd April. If you can read Finnish and like food, go check the site out at www.valio.fi!
WhatŌĆÖs inside the box?
Essentially we ŌĆō including our partners in crime, Valve Branding and Appelsiini Finland – delivered an ASP.NET MVC 3 application with quite a few business system integrations and a SQL Server database. Woohoo ŌĆō thatŌĆÖs not really the exciting part. But we truly did deliver something thatŌĆÖs not the usual user (or developer) experience, so whatŌĆÖs different?
In my opinion, there are six aspects that differentiate the Valio site and the implementation project from most cases developers get sucked into.
- User experience. We use modern browser capabilities to make the user experience smoother, faster and visually more appealing. And we do mean so much more than slapping an UpdatePanel here and there.
- Platformness. Our task was to implement not just a web site, but also a platform for many future digital marketing endeavors. For this purpose, we expose a whole lot of APIs ŌĆō and use them ourself.
- Automated testing. Although we are nowhere near full test coverage, our test suite compares favorably with most web projects.
- Manageabilility. We provide decent tooling to manage the site, reducing the need to type custom SQL queries. Yeah, we have PowerShell commandlets.
- Scale. Valio.fi isnŌĆÖt huge, but itŌĆÖs running on a cluster of web nodes. It has all the challenges of being on a cluster, most of which never occur on a single-node web site.
- Project methodology. We had imperfect Scrum and all, but we had successful teamwork with almost 20 people involved daily – and with relatively few communication issues.
Coming up: More info
Thanks to the openness of Valio and other involved parties, we enjoy pretty broad liberty to discuss the technical specifics of the project. Offbeat Solutions wishes to use this opportunity to disseminate information and best practices on building modern web sites with ASP.net.
During the coming months, we intend to blog on many of the subjects mentioned above. If you have feedback or want to know something about the project, please do leave a comment!
April 8, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę 6 Comments
Tags: ASP.NET MVC, valio.fi ┬Ę Posted in: .NET, Web
Finnish municipalities list published in OData!
In an attempt to contribute something back to the community, Offbeat Solutions has published a list of Finnish municipalities, regions, electoral districts and whatnot. And of course, in the modern spirit, using the OData protocol.
Check out the actual material at http://www.offbeat.fi/kunnat.aspx. The description of the data is only available in Finnish, but the data structures themselves are in English ŌĆō you can also browse yourself just into the OData endpoint.
In case you can read Finnish and are in need of an OData tutorial, there are three new ones available on the ITpro.fi site:
January 14, 2011
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę One Comment
Tags: OData ┬Ę Posted in: .NET
NullReferenceException from NHibernate in a WCF Service
DonŌĆÖt you hate it when you get an NullReferenceException? NHibernate 2.1.2 throws one if you have an WCF Service that accesses the NHibernate context. If you get one from NHibernate.Context.WebSessionContext.GetMap(), read onŌĆ"
ItŌĆÖs really simple but easy to forget ŌĆō NHibernateŌĆÖs web session models requires you to have HttpContext available. That particular mentioned method calls HttpContext.Current.Items[ŌĆ"], causing a NullReferenceException when the HttpContext.Current returns null. Quite logical, but since you rarely call WebSessionContext directly, itŌĆÖs also easy to miss.
The fix is a very straightforward one: Make your service run in ASP.NET Compatibility mode. As described in MSDN article on WCF and ASP.NET coexistence, WCF services have their own processing pipeline, and also have a null HttpContext. However, you can coerce your WCF requests into the ASP.NET Model by enabling compatibility mode. You do this by tagging your service class with an attribute:
[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Required)] public class MyService : DataService<MyDataSource>
Once done, your service should execute fine. However, you might also get an InvalidOperationException with the following message:
The service cannot be activated because it requires ASP.NET compatibility. ASP.NET compatibility is not enabled for this application. Either enable ASP.NET compatibility in web.config or set the AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsAttribute.AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode property to a value other than Required.
This would indicate a need to add the following to your web.config:
<system.serviceModel> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="false" /> </system.serviceModel>
Hopefully this will then finally get you back on the track.
December 21, 2010
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę No Comments
Tags: ASP.NET, NHibernate, WCF ┬Ę Posted in: .NET
Razor + Visual Studio bug: don't paste whitespace in code
Just a quick note of a bug my wife discovered when working with some Razor code.
If you have ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate installed, you can trigger this. Take a spot where your view file has a C# expression (such as @View.Title), and paste some code after that expression. An example of the code might be ŌĆ£.Trim(' ')ŌĆØ.
Pasting that would have you expect a result of
@View.Title.Trim(' '), but instead you end up with
@View.Title '').Trim('.
The problem is that pasting a C# segment with whitespace in it causes Visual Studio to mutilate the code strangely. This is particularly apparent when pasting heavy method calls with spaces between arguments. Well, yet another reason to avoid code in your Razor files!
The Razor team confirmed via email that this is a bug in the Release Candidate and will be fixed in RTM.
November 30, 2010
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę No Comments
Tags: Razor ┬Ę Posted in: .NET, Web
SANKO meeting on ORM tools, 2010-11-24
Finnish .NET Users Group SANKO will be meeting on 24th November in Lepp├żvaara, Espoo, Finland in order to discuss the concept and details of object-relation mapping. In case you live in the Greater Helsinki Area, check this out!
The agenda is as follows (all sessions in Finnish):
13:00 – 13:15
Welcome & WhatŌĆÖs this SANKO? / Jouni Heikniemi
13:15 – 14:00
Introduction to OR mapping: What and why? / Sami Poimala
14:00 – 15:00
Entity Framework 4 / Pasi Taive
15:00 – 15:15
15:15 – 16:00
ORM under the covers ŌĆō a deep dive on NHibernate / Lauri Kotilainen
16:00 – 17:00
Panel Discussion: Most common problems & the best practices for solving them
If youŌĆÖre interested, register before Monday via the Microsoft site. On behalf of the SANKO team, welcome!
November 19, 2010
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę No Comments
Tags: SANKO ┬Ę Posted in: .NET
Outputting partial elements with ASP.NET Razor
The new ASP.NET MVC 3 also ships with a totally new option for a view engine, Razor. IŌĆÖve now been using Razor in a project for couple of months, and yeah, itŌĆÖs good ŌĆō but not entirely without problems. Here IŌĆÖll cover one of them.
Imagine a scenario where youŌĆÖre outputting something that may or may not be a link, depending on the conditions. YouŌĆÖd be tempted to write something like this:
@if(linkUri != null) { <a href='@linkUri'> } Some text @if(linkUri != null) { </a> }
ŌĆ" only to find out that it doesnŌĆÖt work. The error message youŌĆÖll be getting is probably ŌĆ£The if block is missing a closing "}" character. Make sure you have a matching "}" character for all the "{" characters within this block, and that none of the "}" characters are being interpreted as markup.ŌĆØ Alternatively, you could get ŌĆ£The foreach block is missing a closing ŌĆ£}ŌĆØŌĆ"ŌĆØ or something similar, depending on your enclosing elements.
ThatŌĆÖs not really enlightening, and it turns out Razor is smarter than youŌĆÖd think ŌĆō and as usual, smart software has a flip side.
You could just balance yourselfŌĆ"
Razor is intended to be written with elements fully enclosed within the C# blocks. Therefore, you might rewrite this as:
@if(linkUri != null) { <a href='@linkUri'>Some text</a> } else { <text>Some text</text> }
However, such an approach repeats ŌĆ£Some textŌĆØ, which may be a lengthy expression or even an entire block of HTML, making this rather clumsy. Note that you need the <text>ŌĆ"</text> element to ensure that the else block content gets parsed as HTML instead of C# ŌĆō the text element will not be present in the resulting HTML, and would be unnecessary if you had any actual tags in there.
Another workaround would be to use the WriteLiteral method and enclose the tags in C# strings, disabling RazorŌĆÖs parsing logic:
@if(linkUri != null) { WriteLiteral("<a href='" + linkUri + "'>"); } Some text @if(linkUri != null) { WriteLiteral("</a>"); }
ŌĆ" but what you really want is @:
Of course, this is a common enough scenario to warrant a syntactic helper. ItŌĆÖs called @:, and it means that the following line is markup, no matter what tags occur. This allows the logic to be written as follows:
@if(linkUri != null) { @:<a href='@linkUri'> } Some text @if(linkUri != null) { @:</a> }
Unfortunately, as you can see, the @: has a line scope and thus necessitates a few additional line feeds. Despite that, this is rather readable and scales well to complex instances of ŌĆ£Some textŌĆØ.
Thanks to Andrew Nurse at the Razor team for helping me out with this!
November 17, 2010
┬Ę Jouni Heikniemi ┬Ę No Comments
Tags: ASP.NET MVC, Razor ┬Ę Posted in: .NET, Web


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Memphis, Tenn. (February 13, 2008) – Since its creation more than 100 years ago, the ceiling fan has wobbled. This annoying and disconcerting side effect of one of the most commonly used home comfort products has made it difficult to fully enjoy. Despite efforts to stop the wobble – Internet blogs abound with tips such as using weighted tape to balance blades or cleaning the dust from the blades often to help maintain balance – nothing has been able to guarantee peace from it. That is until now.
"Perfect Balance™ is by far the most innovative breakthrough in technology the ceiling fan industry has ever seen," says Chuck Smith, president of Hunter Fan Company. "In fact, we feel so strongly about this technology that we plan to incorporate it into all our fan models by 2012."
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Double HPA setup?
Posted 20 November 2010 - 03:12 PM
Posted 20 November 2010 - 03:15 PM
Rddeano, on 20 November 2010 - 03:12 PM, said:
I don't remember what the piece is called to do it, but it can be done to connect one HPA source to two markers, also (I think)...
Palmers Pursuit has some double barreled markers that some people like to use dual tanks for.
Double CO2 seems like overkill considering how many shots you get at a warm temperature though...
Posted 20 November 2010 - 05:25 PM
Posted 20 November 2010 - 07:07 PM
oldhunter, on 20 November 2010 - 05:25 PM, said:
The trouble with CO2 is it isn't so great at high ROF...
Posted 21 November 2010 - 04:24 AM
When life gives you lemons, make orange juice and leave the world wondering how the hell you did it.
I wonder if I could turn one of those "Rascal" scooter thingies into an old-guy paintball tank? -Violator
Posted 21 November 2010 - 12:29 PM
Posted 21 November 2010 - 07:27 PM
I saw in an older APG magazine, this guy was using 2 24oz c0z tanks, somewhat of a home made valve system, to have one and one off, and when one emptied, he opened both.
so that the one with energy in it used the empty tank as some sort of expansion chamber?.
hopefully that was a little more descriptive. and if it can be done with hpa tanks
Posted 22 November 2010 - 01:05 PM
In fact Shrek has a system very similar to your description and it works just fine.
I would suggest he be the man to talk with!
Send Private Message for details and questions.
Posted 23 November 2010 - 06:48 PM
The calculation for the number of shots you'll get is about 10 per cubic inch for 3000 psi and 15 for 4500. So for a 68/3000 tank, you'll get 680 rounds. A standard 68/4500 will rate you 1020 rounds. If you're using 140 round pods, you'll be carrying seven pods with some left in the hopper. If you're not carrying and using WAY more than that in a game, your time and money will be better spent on other efforts.
If you are regularly shooting that much paint, please tell me where you work and if they're hiring. Or give my sympathies to your credit card company.
Flying straight above the steady stream of stars.
Posted 24 November 2010 - 09:35 AM
My old Cyborg would pull 2100 rnds off a 68/4500.
Also had a Drone shoot 1500 on the same 68/4500.
Currently my Clone is pulling around 1200 off a 45/45....I have yet to try the 68 tank on it for a more understandable number.
My point being each gun is going to consume differently...and the owner needs to figure out his best balance based on his set up.
Personally...I carry four pods and a hopper so my 45/4500 is perfect!
Send Private Message for details and questions.
Posted 24 November 2010 - 01:44 PM
Flying straight above the steady stream of stars.


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No Means No - Wrong - Splatter Vinyl
Format: 2xLP
Label: Wrong Notify Me ( ? )
REISSUED!!! Issued in the fall of 1989, Wrong drew together all the elements of NO MEANS NO that had been developing over the previous 10 years. Featuring the original guitarist ANDY KERR, it was a pared down, punk rock headbanger but with the nuance & subtlety that has always set NMN apart from the genre. Features the additional bonus tracks "State of Grace" and "End of the World"-rare tracks taken from a single released by Mr Wrong in 1992. Limited edition pressing of 1,000 copies on red and white splatter vinyl. No Export.
Format: 2xLP
Label: Wrong Notify Me ( ? )
Price: $22.50
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The Lauren's Hope Blog keeps you updated on new medical ID products, exclusive promotions including giveaways and sales along with current Lauren's Hope news. Read More About Lauren's Hope...
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Maybe you wear your Lauren's Hope bracelet every day, everywhere you go. You may be a devoted customer with a serious medical condition who understands the importance of always wearing your medical ID bracelet. But you may have never thought about your perfectly healthy parents, children, or significant other as needing emergency identification in the event of a crisis...what would happen to them? Would medical personnel know who they are? Who to contact? Answer these questions and calm your fears with an in case of emergency identification bracelet.
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An ICE bracelet, on the other hand, is an identification bracelet that can be worn by anyone – whether or not they have a serious medical condition. ICE stands for "in case of emergency," and emergencies can happen to anyone, anytime, regardless of their health history! ICE bracelets list any information you would like readily available in the event of an emergency. Your name, emergency contact information, and any special instructions you might want to convey should be engraved.
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Be sure to check back in with the Lauren's Hope blog all week to learn more about ICE IDs and the people who should wear them, and check our selection of stylish and functional ICE IDs to find one that's right for you!
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text:
Travelogue: A Beach Trip to the Gulf Coast
A few weeks ago we took an extended weekend trip to the beach. Although we live in Texas and could have visited the beach along the Texas coast, we decided to head further east where the beaches tend to be nicer and better suited to swimming.
There are a lot of great destinations along the coast, but we decided on Orange Beach, which is in Alabama about 30 miles west of Pensacola, Florida. The beaches have beautiful white sand and the water is perfect for swimming.
We spent most of our time relaxing on the beach and didn't seek out a lot of activities beyond lounging and playing in the sand. But we did explore the nearby area a bit, so I thought I would share some ideas for taking a beach trip to this part of the country with children.
Where to Stay
The beaches along the Gulf Shore, Orange Beach and Pensacola region are filled with affordable, family-friendly hotels and rental properties. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Orange Beach. It's located right on the beach so you can easily transition back and forth between beach and swimming pool. I highly recommend getting a room with a beach view. The photo on the left above is the view from our room. Sitting and watching the activity below was lots of fun for our children, who had only visited the beach once before this trip. You can also rent chairs on the beach, which is a nice option when you know you're going to be coming and going and you don't want to lose your spot (or leave your personal belongings to 'reserve' it) while you're gone.
Where to Eat
When it came to meal time, we mostly looked to the area immediately near our hotel. Wintzell's Oyster House definitely turned into our favorite dinner spot, and we ate there twice over the course of our trip. We also stopped at The Gulf on our way into town. I love this location. It's right on the beach so the kids could play in the sand while we sat on sleek lounge furniture under umbrellas enjoying lunch. The kids' favorite meal destination was Lulus. They have a large play area in the center of the 3-restaurant complex that includes a sandbox, an elevated rope course and many other just-for-kids activities. Plan on spending awhile here. I wasn't sure whether to include this location under 'Where to Eat' or 'Things to Do.' It's a bit of both and the wait for a table seems intended to build in plenty of time for play. During our visit, we chose to eat at the upscale Lucy B. Goode (and the food was wonderful), but in retrospect I think the original restaurant, Lulus, would have been a more child-friendly option.
Things to Do
The beautiful beaches are reason enough to visit this part of the country with children, but the Gulf Coast area also has many bays that are perfect for taking boat rides. There are many options for renting boats and/or going on tours. We read about several dolphin tours and even saw a pirate-themed cruise pass by one afternoon. If we were staying longer, I definitely would have looked into the pirate cruise for the kids. Since our trip location was partly driven by visiting friends and family, we were able to spend an afternoon taking a ride on a friend's boat. This was a highlight for Jason and Jenna, who loved sitting at the front while we raced along the water.
This was our first trip to the Gulf Coast, but I'm pretty sure it won't be our last.


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Mexican Made Easy
Hosted by Marcela Valladolid
Fridays 1:30|12:30c
Cuddle Cuisine
With Valentine's Day approaching, Marcela designs a cozy, romantic, winter meal that is sure to warm up hearts and bellies. Marcela prepares a Butternut Squash Soup that has a kiss of chipotle flavor, followed by a tender Ancho-Crusted Rack of Lamb served with a mint jelly sauce. For dessert, Marcela puts a fresh Mexican spin on a classic strawberry pie with her Sweet Strawberry Tartlets. (Episode: VM0103)
Recipes from this episodeAll Mexican Made Easy Recipes
Butternut Squash Soup with Chipotle CreamRecipe courtesy of Marcela Valladolid
- Cook Time:
- 1 hr 30 min
Chile Crusted Rack of LambRecipe courtesy of Marcela Valladolid
- Cook Time:
- 25 min
Sweet Strawberry TartletsRecipe courtesy of Marcela Valladolid
- Cook Time:
- 10 min


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text:
Top 5 Juiciest Romance Scandals Of 2012
By Jenina Nunez
It looks like there were some intense romantic dramas in Hollywood this year! And we just couldn't get enough. Here, we hash out some of the most noteworthy ones...
As luck would have it, this year proved to be another one filled with all sorts of crazy relationship scandals, which we're positive you may have read about all over the place – including right here on this blog!
That said, we did a little digging to pick out which romance scandals were super-hot and! They were just so good we couldn't resist hashing them out one last time before saying good-bye to this year – while also eagerly awaiting the stories that'll make us gasp in 2013.
So, now it's time to take a peek into the scandals that kept us glued to the headlines. See if you remember how it all went down! (How could you forget? We didn't!) And then tell us in the comments: Which ones were you most intrigued by this year?
View the gallery: Top 5 Juiciest Romance Scandals Of 2012
More juicy relationship content from YourTango:
- Hard Work Ahead: Are Relationships Really Worthwhile?
- How To Make Long-Distance Love Work
- Why Your Relationships Only Last 3 Months
Photo Credit: Getty


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Shawn Ashmore, Iceman, X-MEN, Coming to Chicago Comic Con!
Shawn Ashmore,
, X-MEN, Coming to Chicago Comic Con!
Thats Professor... Logan. Mom, Dad... theres something I need to tell you.
Canadian-born actor Shawn Ashmore first came to the attention of American audiences with a fan-favorite supporting role in a popular comic book franchise before going on to leading roles in a series of smaller genre films. After earning acclaim in the Canadian musical biopic Guitarman (1994), the teen actor made the jump to the States with appearances on several television series. Ashmores big break came when director Bryan Singer cast him as Bobby Drake, the cold-controlling mutant known as Iceman and the romantic interest of young Rogue (Anna Paquin) in the superhero adventure X-Men (2000). The young actor cashed in on his youth appeal with more roles in several teen-themed TV movies, as well as with increased screen time in the sequels X2 (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Post X-Men work frequently found the young star fighting for his life in smaller-budgeted genre efforts like the Mayan temple horror movie The Ruins (2008) and the mountaintop survival thriller Frozen (2010). Exuding a boyish charm and genuine sincerity, Ashmore consistently proved to be an easily relatable addition to any young cast.
Born Oct. 7, 1979, Ashmore and his twin brother Aaron (older by one minute) were raised in Richmond, British Colombia. Both brothers enjoyed performing from an early age, already appearing on camera by the time they were seven years old. By age 10, Ashmore appeared in a 1998 episode of the Canadian television show, Katts and Dog (1988-1991), and as a pageant contestant in the Canadian film, Married to It (1991). He also appeared in an episode entitled Colonel Stonesteel and the Desperate Empties of the Canadian-produced fantastic anthology series, Ray Bradbury Theater (1985-1992) during its final year. But it was in his leading role as musician Waylon Tibbins in the 1994 Canadian TV movie, Guitarman that he first drew critical notices. Coming seemingly out of nowhere, Ashmore was nominated for a Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy, that same year. Ashmore followed with small roles in several Canadian television series and movies, including an appearance on episodes of the cult genre favorites, The Animorphs (Nickelodeon, 1998-99) in 1998 and Earth: The Final Conflict (syndicated, 1997-2002) in 2000.
Around this time, the young actor was tapped by director Bryan Singer for the feature adventure X-Men (2000). Although his part was relatively small in the first film, the role of Bobby Drake was instantly recognized by comic book fans as that of superhero, Iceman. All he had to do was make a snowball to impress fellow young mutant, Rogue (Anna Paquin) and with that, Ashmore made an immediate impact. Following the enormous success of the X-Men, Ashmore starred as part of an ensemble on the Disney Channel series, In a Heartbeat (2000) about teen-age paramedics. He followed this run with appearances in a handful of TV movies, such as The Big House (ABC) and Blackout (CBS), both in 2001, as well as the Disney Channels Cadet Kelly, opposite Hilary Duff, in 2002. At the same time Ashmore was making inroads professionally, his twin, Aaron, continued to act as well, with regularly recurring roles on television shows such as Veronica Mars, (UPN) and The West Wing (NBC).
In 2003, Ashmore again played Drake in Singers X2: X-Men United. For the sequel, his character was far more integral to the movie, in effect, competing with Hugh Jackmans Wolverine for the affections of Rogue. His larger role in the sequel, which ended up being a bigger hit than its predecessor, raised Ashmores Hollywood profile. More parts started coming his way, including a recurring role on the superhero series, Smallville (The WB, 2001-2011), where he played Eric Summers in the 2002 episode Leech and in the 2004 episode, Asylum. After the initial X-Men rush passed yet again, Ashmore appeared in a few more made-for-television movies, including, Earthsea in 2004 and Terry, in 2005, as well as the theatrical release, 3 Needles that same year.
Following a run of lower-profile gigs, Ashmore returned yet again to the X-Men fold, as Bobby Drake. Although Bryan Singer left the project to pursue Superman Returns (2006), Brett Ratner stepped in to finish up the original X-Men trilogy. Thankfully for Ashmore, the planned expansion of his character did not undergo any last minute changes. In X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), an additional love interest, as well as more special effects showcasing his superhuman abilities, were added to showcase Iceman, as well as other young mutants - a move, some thought, to steer the X-Men franchise toward a younger audience for its next offering. Ashmore next appeared in The Quiet (2006), a psychological thriller about a family whose dark secrets are exposed after they adopt a recently orphaned deaf girl (Camilla Belle) harboring her own disturbing past.
Ashmore was later seen alongside emerging star Amanda Seyfried in the supernatural thriller Solstice (2008), in addition to the horror movie The Ruins (2008), in which he and a group of vacationers find themselves prey to an ancient evil atop a Mayan temple. He revisited Iceman for a pair of episodes of the animated kids adventure The Super Hero Squad Show (Cartoon Network, 2009- ) prior to being seen in the survival thriller Frozen (2010) as one of three unlucky skiers stranded on a chairlift overnight. Ashmore was in survival mode once again for The Day (2012), a gritty, post-apocalyptic action-drama covering a 24-hour period in the lives of five people hopelessly surrounded and fighting to see another day.
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Friday, April 25, 2008
There are lots to learn about physical simulations before the coding itself starts. There is a great collection of links on reddit on the topic. Currently I'm attracted with MIT video lectures on Classical Mechanics (to refresh the knowledge got in school) and with these lecture notes which contains quite good list of links to apropriate papers.
at 00:57
Labels: physics, simulations, theory
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On July 25th, 2010 the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act was signed into law by President Obama. The bill included a provision that requires companies which report to the Securities and Exchanges Commission and manufacture products that contain the 3Ts and gold to trace and disclose whether these minerals originated in Congo or a neighboring country. If a company finds that minerals used in their products originated in Congo or one of it neighboring countries they then must report on the measures they have taken to exercise due diligence in ensuring their supply chain does not either directly or indirectly fund armed groups controlling mines in eastern Congo.
Until now, companies have relied upon assurances from their suppliers that they do not purchase conflict minerals, without independent verification. With the Dodd-Frank law, the burden of proof shifts: now companies must find out where their suppliers actually source from. Most importantly, companies need to provide independent verification of these steps through an independent private sector audit of their reporting.
These provisions specifically only require companies to trace and audit their supply chains, but do not establish either a certification requirement or penalties for companies that source from conflict areas.
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text: Quick View The Bro Code by Barney Stinson October 14, 2008 | Trade Paperback In stock online from $11.54 From the hit TV show How I Met Your Mother comes Barney Stinson's words of wit, wisdom, and awesomeness, The Bro Code— the New York Times bestseller (really!) with more than a million copies in print all around the world. Everyone's life is governed by an internal code of… See Details $12.15 / $11.54 lowest price*, or used from $7.21was $15.99


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AFC West: Denver Broncos' success have rest of division scrambling
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 6,214
Peyton Manning
Originally Posted by
You're just reverse engineering your QB ratings from team success.
The Jets have been to two AFC Ch games with Sanchez at QB. Yeah, we all know that the league has tailored its game to favor the passing game through several iterations of rule changes that makes the game barely recognizable to what it was 15 years ago. And it definitely helps to have a good QB. But perhaps the more glaring reality is that you can't have poor QB play. If you have everything else plus competent (not elite) QB play, you can still win. Houston continued winning last year with a rookie 3rd stringer...and even won a playoff game with Yates. Yates isn't elite. Actually, neither is Schaub.
I'm not reverse engineering SHOOOT. I believe those 10 guys are the guys who are true franchise QB's....the botton 3 have the talent and the ability...and for now should be included. The guys I've listed on the fringe...either have shown that they have issues, or just aren't that caliber of QB.
If Schaub were QB'ing the Chiefs....what would be their record
Would they be a playoff team?? If I were the GM of the Chiefs...I'd take everyone of those top 10 guys before the guys I've listed on the fringe...for various reasons.
The moral of this story is: Franchise QB's are the #1 needed ingredient to winning championships and competing for one year in and year out. If you don't understand that...then, you don't understand the NFL. That's why even Jim Harbaugh is making a QB change with Alex Smith having a top 5 QB rating. Harbaugh knows that Smith is good but not elite...and winning a championship with him will be very difficult.
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