My managers came to me and told me that I must take a vacation for the end of the year. So I found myself yesterday on the night of the new year at the kitchen start cooking a special dinner to my girlfriend (vacation means no work at home too).
I already cooked before but this time I tried Sushi, all you out there it is damn easy (and delicious), try this at home.

Here are some pictures from my first Sushi (pictures taken using my Logitech Quickcam) -

Here are some good links (Sushi-Casts) for all of you PC-boys out there (without kitchen experience):

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-make-sushi-rice-1498
http://www.5min.com/Video/Making-Tuna-Maki-1435
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Make-California-Roll-Sushi-1283

Sushi & Software development:

Making Sushi (or food) is like coding, first you need to know the language (ingredients), afterward you need a little debugging while cooking or doing your stuff (integrating the ingredients together) and at the end you need to listen to the users, So: I am waiting to you, my friends, to come and taste it.

You also need a prototype for starting, after the first prototype you will probably need to make some changes, this things you can't learn from watching videos or reading books alone, you need to roll up your sleeves and start working.

Special thanks to Nati (the Sushi master).

The new version of AGX is out, you can found more details in here.

Here are some things I found out:

• My old tasks works
• Tab index (inside the tasks) is finally working properly
• The streaming looks slow - even very slow I'm not sure if this is because of my networks problems or because of ESRI's servers but it was better with the previous version
• Better handling the outer links (having a bug while opening a site it also opens: "about:blank" empty window near it)
• More cool icons for instead of the simple pushpins

Still (really) missing

• Scale bar (on the bottom of the page, or even in task)
• Simple "Add connection" to Google Maps (servers) & Virtual Earth (servers)
• SDK for 2008 (The given one fits to 2005 only)

Here is a simple result I make using the new popup window:

Enjoy.

After one year of implementing Scrum at my place, I was asked to give a lecture to a new Team-Leaders, This Wednesday I will have my first Scrum Session, I spent a lot of time for the last few weeks to create a cool Presentation, I've also spent some time reading lots of data (some of them even more than once) about the Agile manifesto and its different methodologies.

I will update later on about the first session (next week). But to my readers I will give one great tip, two books bonus for a better start for your agile development:

This two books are "better together" - While reading them both you will understand:

1. Why to choose Agile (Or: The Values of the Agile manifesto)
2. Better Understanding for the problems within methodologies (Not only the non-Scrum ones)
3. What is agile at all - I've found many people not understanding the meaning of being Agile.
4. What is the difference between the methodologies (Scrum, XP, Crystal etc.)
5. Implementation (especially Scrum at Ken Schwaber's book)
6. and many samples from the experienced writers.

And here are some bonus links to my learning phase for the last year (stories from the last year as a Scrum-Master):

1. Scrum methodology - the scrum master
2. Trying to manage the team-pace better (or- Entering to Scrum For TeamSystem Template)
3. Improve your scrum Environment
4. Scrum for Team system feature requests

And here is one article I've found while start writing (back in the past while I didn't even know about being Agile)

1. Acceptance Tests

I hope you will enjoy those books (and links).

While trying to run a Windows-application with a private DB (SQL Server 2005 Express Edition) on a client machine (Window Vista), I have regard with a problem entering the master DB.

After a few seconds I've found this one: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/sqlonvista.mspx
Download and Install SQL Server 2005 SP1, that should solve the problems.

Update 1:

• Pay attention that the sp1\sp2 don't need an SQL Server to be installed - it hold the whole package within.

Update 2:

• Windows Vista have strict privileges within its program files directory, so while deploying the DB There it holds it as a read-only DB.
  Put your DB in the SQL Server Directory to solve this problem.

Try this out, I might admit I waste half an hour before Google-it-up: http://www.supuzzle.com/supuzzle.html

I hope you will succeed it.

Here at Doron's post about Object Initializers he raised a question about the IL generated from the compiler while generating Object Initializer.

            //Object Initializer
           GeoPoint point1 = new GeoPoint() { 
                             X=22.555,
                             Y=36.444,
                             CoordinateSystem=GeographicCoordinateSystem.Wgs84 };
            //Associative Init
            GeoPoint point3 = new GeoPoint();
            point3.X = 22.555;
            point3.Y = 36.444;
            point3.CoordinateSystem= GeographicCoordinateSystem.Wgs84;

That two samples are not the same, this is because of not having an atomic assignment possibility at the second piece of code.
you can have further reading at Bart's blog post.

Enjoy.

Esri published the last service pack for 9.2 versions. as far as I know the next publish will be the 9.3, at the beginning of 2008.
I've found out that most of the people are either afraid of the service packs or just installing them without reading.
So, take a break, drink your coffee and start here: The full story behind the Service Packs
But for those of you that are too lazy to read, maybe this short interesting_features_for_my_team can also help you.

At my team we use the ArcGis Server, with two types of clients: ArcGis Explorer and Web Application(WebADF.net) and we are also have a little use of the Editor products. So if your team is like mine you can use this partially-feature-list, anyway my team-mates can probably found this post useful.

SP4 changes:

SP 3 changes:

SP 2 changes:

Two more errors I am expiriencing and not sure about their state:

Have a great coding, Till the next release...

Great post by Nati Dobkin on Extending the Caching of the Service Operations.
I didn't test it yet, but I like the simplicity in the usage...

Good job, Enjoy the code.

I found out that while using the VS2008 I can't access the Page method ProcessRequest.

Watch This image...

Isn't it strange? {while building -> it will succeed}.
I might admit that it took me some time (at home) to figure it out, after all at work I remember that it has the auto complete (I think that it work there because of the ReSharper).

So I made my "Go To Definition" operation and found this out:
// Summary:
// Sets the intrinsics of the System.Web.UI.Page, such as the System.Web.UI.Page.Context,
// System.Web.UI.Page.Request, System.Web.UI.Page.Response, and System.Web.UI.Page.Application
// properties.
//
// Parameters:
// context:
// An System.Web.HttpContext object that provides references to the intrinsic
// server objects (for example, System.Web.HttpContext.Request, System.Web.HttpContext.Response,
// and System.Web.HttpContext.Session) used to service HTTP requests.
[EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
public virtual void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context);

Enjoy.

I am not sure what this thing is all about, but I am proud to be member in such talented group with such great people.

So after I've read Pasha's post about the Scrum Clan, I've even more confused than I was at the first place. But I am pretty sure I'll understand it on the go.

here are some of my last posts about Scrum\Agile\TDD:

Improve your scrum Environment
Scrum methodology - the scrum master
Trying to manage the team-pace better (or- Entering to Scrum For TeamSystem Template)
TDD- from beginner to pro (#2)

And now I think that I have the honor to choose a new Scrum Clan (Oren\Pasha: If not you cancel my vote).
... I would choose ... Avi Wortzel, which was the one to start the Scrum at my office, and left us after doing a great job, He also wrote some great posts about it, and doing even more Scrum in his new home.

Avi, Welcome to the clan.