Saturday, December 31, 2011

My highlights of 2011 in pictures



We got married
Roundtrip Java, Indonesia, Ricefield

Roundtrip Java, Indonesia, Borobodur

Roundtrip Java, Indonesia, Prambanan

Bali, Indonesia, Our hotel Melia Benoa

Bali, Indonesia, Our hotel Melia Benoa

Bali, Indonesia, A big Manta Ray
 
Bali, Indonesia, A big Sunfish
 
Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Hotel Sandos Playacar

Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Hotel Sandos Playacar

Playa del Carmen, Mexico, A turtle

Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Some Lionfish

Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Diving in the Cenotes

Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Diving in the Cenotes

Mexico, The Coba temple

Mexico, The Tulum temple

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas everyone !!!

I hereby wish each and everyone a merry christmas !
 Some history regarding christmas can be found here ... 

For some laughs I found this comic:


 And to end with a nice movie check this one out !

Thursday, December 22, 2011

[Dev] Defining an event on the .Net Micro Framework

I was just defining an event while working on an application on my Netduino Plus. But the default EventHandler delegate was unknown ...

Searching the internet did not directly help me on the subject and so I decided to add a short post on my blog to help the next people running into the same problem.

The delegate is defined in the Microsoft.SPOT.TinyCore assembly, so just add that assembly and you're good to go.

UPDATE:
I just ran into a problem when deploying my solution to the Netduino Plus. The program had a total size of 66336 bytes which is too big ! After removing the reference to the TinyCore assembly and added the delegate (public delegate void EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)) to my program it ended up to a total of 2560 bytes. So no adding of additional assemblies !

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

[Tech] Netbook HP DM1-4000SD

I used  my Asus 1000HE netbook the last 2 years and I took it with me on holidays for entertainment, for mail, skype and as a glorified imagetank. I also used it to be able to do some internetting on the couch, it was small, light and had a 7+ hours battery length.

However last holidays it became to slow since I could not use my regular movies since the netbook was too slow for those. Instead I had to rely on DVDs or 480p MKVs. Since I am also filming in 1080p with my videocamera/DSLR I was not able to watch these on my netbook and so I had to look for a decent replacement.

Some requirements I had:
  • Better resolution, 1024x600 was not decent enough for everything I did on the netbook.
  • Max screen size of 11" since the netbook was then still easy to put into a backpack. 
  • Weight is still very important since I take it with me on a holiday in my handluggage. The Asus netbook weighed 1 kg.
  • Possible to handle 1080p content.
  • HDMI output.
  • Still a decent battery length, 5+ hours.
  • A decent price which depended on the possibilities.
I looked at some of the Asus models but then I had to either reside on the Atom platform or had to accept the 12" screen. I also look at some ultrabooks but then I had to pay 800+ euros and had an even larger screen of 14".

Due to my requirement of the decent battery length the AMD Fusion chipset came along. It promised good battery length and good performance (also graphically). So based on this and my previous requirement the HP DM1-4000SD netbook came on top of my list. I read a few reviews and finally ordered it. It's a sturdy netbook with a good screen and a good keyboard. Battery length is about 4.5 hours with WIFI on while doing some internetting and installating some new software. The screen resolution of 1366x768 is quite nice and pretty workable ! The weigth was a bit more then expected, but 1.5 kgs is still doable.




The netbook is setup with Windows 7 Home Premium, the 32 bits version. Which is a bit strange to me since the AMD Fusion platform is 64 bits. I decided to reinstall the laptop with a x64 version of Home Premium while using the same installation key. This also provided me with a way to get rid of all the HP software which was installed. So in the end I was quite happy with my new netbook.

Some utilities I ran into:
BatteryBar - A tool which provides a toolbar in which either the remaining time is shown or the percentage of available battery capacity.
AMD System Monitor - A tool specific for the AMD Fusion platform which indicates processor load, graphic processor load, memory usage, etc.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have some specific questions about this netbook !

Sunday, December 18, 2011

[Photo] DIY Photo Crane

I just ran into this DIY camera crane and the result looks awesome ! I have to build one myself.



Wednesday, December 14, 2011

[Fun] Amazing free climb in a radio tower to around 600 meters

I don't have a fear of heights but I get some strange feeling in my stomach when watching this movie.

Friday, December 9, 2011

[Game] Ultimate 3d #game #simulator

I just ran into this video and I was amazed by this real life simulator. I want one at home !

Saturday, December 3, 2011

[WP7] MissingMethodException when deserializing an object


I am currently developing an application for Windows Phone 7 and I like it. The framework classes are easily to find and to understand. Some constructions are still not really acceptable but workarounds are sometimes possible.

However I just ran into the "System.MissingMethodException" when deserializing an object from the IsolatedStorage. First I thought it was caused because I had a property with only a getter, but changing this did not solve the problem. Looking at the stacktrace also did not bring any solution. So I went on the internet to see if other people ran into the same problem but I was unable to find anything related.

In the end I looked in more detail to the implementation of my class which was serialized and which I wanted to deserialize. It seemed that I forgot the parameterless constructor ... Thanks Microsoft for that cryptic exception !

So I end this message in the hope that it helps people who also run into this exception.