I made a browser!

Eh.

Well, OK, not really , but I just played around with Visual Studio for a couple of hours, and I ended up making a simple webbrowser. It’s my first try with Windows Forms, so I’m actually pretty satisfied.  But then again, I’ve been working alot with Access in the old days, and Windows Forms reminds me alot about Access, so it wasn’t all new, not at all actually.

My first webbrowser

What to focus on + status

Grasping what .NET is all about, is still, years after it was introduced, one of the biggest challenges with .NET. Microsoft has managed to make it sound almost magical. It took me some time to figure out what to focus on to learn about .NET, and now, as I well into my crash-course, I have grouped my learning activities into the following:

1. A super-quick introduction to C# – finished
2. Windows Forms – designing windows applications with .NET. – starting on monday
3. Database connectivity in .NET.
4. ASP.NET – making applications for the web.

All four of them are thightly connected, I will continue to learn more about C# all the way, and I will need to integrate databases into the applications I make with Windows Forms.

The project has started!

Today my .NET-project started for full. Originally I planned to start yesterday, but because I had to help a friend of mine as she is moving to the Faroese Islands, I postponed the whole project one day. 
So far I am not really learning very much about C# as it resembles Java very much, but I do learn a lot about Visual Studio, and the first impression is that it’s relly a great piece of software!

However, I did learn that there was a load of variable types I’ve never heard about before.

.NET plan taking shape

My .NET- project is already heavily taking shape. I have made some guidelines I will follow during the project:

1. No websurfing on anything un-related during work-hours.
2. Focus strictly on project core goals. Very important, this one. I tend to incorporate a lot of activities in my projects that takes a lot of time and makes virtually no impact on the project other than total time spent. I have banned things like: installing wordpress on my own webserver, re-installing Windows, buying books second hand etc. Instead I cleaned up my existing windows-installation and re-directed my webserver to my existing wordpress.com blog.
3. Document every step of the project in this blog, I will not be able to show what I’ve learned in any other good way.
4. Work when motivated.  If I’m not, I will take a walk outside and start over again when the motivation comes back.
5. Use free and online resources as much as possible, but I can buy books if there is no way around.
6. Have at least one hour each day to apply for jobs.
7. Always eat when hungry, have lots of food avaliable, the brain needs a constant supply of carbo-hydrates to work at it’s best.
8. Aim to work from 8:30 to 14:30. I’m not willing to spend less time with my family.
9. No work after 20:00. I need my brain to rest for some time to be able to fall asleep. I don’t want to dream about .NET at night.
10. Get up one hour earlier in the morning that usual, and one and a half hour earlier into bed. I’m aiming to be in great shape every day, full of energy.  I probably will have to get up earlier anyway, when I get a job, so might as well get started on it right away.

I have come to believe that, for several reasons, learning .NET will be easier if I learn C# first. I have found the necessary resources to start learning C# from tomorrow:

• I have downloaded, installed Visual Studio 2008 Express for free from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/Express/ (I have to admit, Visual Stuio made a wonderful first-impression).
• Found a full tutorial for C# 3.0:
  http://www.functionx.com/csharp/
• Written and compiled a “hello world”, to make sure that I don’t run into stupid technical problems when I start coding tomorrow.

All in all I am highly motivated, and can’t wait to get started.

Learn .NET in two weeks!

Or at least that’s somewhat what I’m planning to do.

I just finished my Masters-degree in “IT for Organisations” at the IT-University in Copenhagen. It’s a damn good education, seen from my perspective, but I have realised that I lack knowledge about one technology in particular, namely Microsoft .NET, including C# and all that naturally comes along. Many of the best jobs require at least some knowledge about .NET, and although I know quite a lot about programming, I have never really looked at .NET. That’s going to change now.

I’m gonna learn .NET, I’m gonna learn it SUPER-FAST, and I’m gonna learn it well! When this project starts very soon, I will suck up more .net per minute than you ever thougth possible.

Before I start the project the following things needs to be in place:

1. One or two good books about .net, preferably free from a library.
2. A realistic time-schedule, when to learn what
3. A blog telling about progress that I can show my future employer.
4. Motivation.

As the time schedule is not finished yet, I can actually end up with more or less than two weeks, but that is not important. The important thing is that I learn dot net fast and good to maximise my job-opportunities.

I will blog much more about this in the weeks to come, you will now every nasty detail of the project.

A balanced view on farming

Farming has become a very interesting political subject through the last decade. Here in the northern countries, and I guess also the rest of the western world, organic food has become mainstream, even the most profiled low-price stores here i Denmark is now selling a good deal of organic food. But there are some people who are arguing against organic food, saying that it’s not sustainable mainly because of its’ ineffective use of crop land compared to industrial farming using synthetic fertilizers.

But who’s right, the organics or the industrialists? I’ve tried to read a bit about the subject lately, and I’ve reached the conclusion that none of them are. They are really discussing the wrong problem, neither of them are right, and they should start to exchange experiences rather then anything else. The real problem we have is that we are to many people, and either way we know, we cannot see how we will be able to produce enough food for all people in the future without destroying our planet completely… which by the way does not solve the problem at all. So if we where to melt the best from industrial farming and organic farming, how would it look?

As the industrialists say; organic farming would triple the land use. Already is 40% or more of the planet is covered with farm land (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1206-01.htm ), if we triple that, we’re up to 120% land use. Unless we find a way to make potatoes grow on in space, it will probably not be possible to go 100% organic. But there are problems with industrial farming as well, although using land much more effectively, and leaving more land for rainforests and cities, they will eventually run out of some important substances used in synthetic fertilizers. And the use of pesticides is nothing but bad as I can see, although they give some short term advantages because less insects attack crops, they also has a tendency to be bad for humans and getting into water supplies. Less insects also mean less food for birds and other animals eating insects. Pesticides are poisoning the soil, water supplies, and destroying bird life, not exactly what I call sustainable. And there’s where the organics stand strong – taking care of animals, both on the farm, and those around it. A better life for animals means in reality fewer animals on the farm. I heard about a Danish farmer who could not take care of his pigs anymore because he started to study part time… hundreds of pigs died, and in total he owned two thousand pigs! No wonder industrial farmers are unable to treat their animals properly, nobody can take care of 2000 animals alone!

The closest we can get to sustainable farming is as follows:

• Combination of organic and careful use of synthetic fertilizers to ensure that the soil stays healthy and that we do not run out of synthetic fertilizers before we find a new way to produce it. Keep the soil healthy and use it every season as we cannot afford to use much more land for farming.
• No more pesticides unless absolutely needed in third world countries during extremely rough times. (If we quit the use of pesticides totally, it will only lead to famine, but the use must be reduced to an absolute minimum, and only where there is danger of famine).
• Animal welfare is important, we do not want people who abuse animals to produce our food! And as better animal welfare means less animals, it also means less Co2 emissions from the animals themselves, and it means more food to people as less animals eat less. But they do not have to eat completely organic food, only from sustainable farming that is good for their health.
• Meat prices will rise, but that’s OK! We eat too much meat anyway, so it’s really just a good thing, eating animals should be a luxury.

I was also planning to write something about gene modification (GM) as well, but honestly, I do not understand it well enough to have an opinion. At this point GM seems to me as messing with something we don’t understand, and that it is very dangerous, but then again, we may be forced to use GM as it looks capable of solving some well known problems, but I’m really not sure what to mean about GM. Another subject I’m thinking about, is organic cosmetics, is it really smart to use valuable farm land to produce shampoo and moisturisers? Probably not, but I will have to study that one a bit closer before I make up my mind.

I may be wrong about some of the things I bring up, mabye pesticides are really good, and mabye we should all become vegetarians, but the main point is to stop arguing who is right and wrong, and start finding a sustainable way to run all farms!

Some interesting links on the topics:

Food Crisis Feared as Fertile Land Runs Out
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1206-01.htm

Voting with your trolley
Can you really change the world just by buying certain foods?

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8380592

And search for “organic farming”, “Norman Borlaug” and “fertilizers” at wikipedia for even more information.

Free software and capitalism

I came to think about a very important thing that all the free software projects around proves about capitalism, how it should be regulated, and why.

First of all, capitalism; the possibility to create a commercial company that tries to sell a service or a product on the free market, is a tool, not a goal. The overall goal for everything we do, is that we all can live a happy life in a sustainable way. If capitalism and the free market makes us unhappy, then it has no purpose or meaning, it has no value in itself, it’s just a mean in our pursue of the good life. So we really have to think about it; is a totally free market, with no regulations over the companies (I’m not saying that anyone want’s this, it’s just here to prove a point) really a good thing? Probably not. Companies are made up by people, and people made by nature, and nature’s primary goal is to survive, without any system that’s meant to motivate us, without any regulations, we’re no more than complex animals merely trying to survive.

So, what’s my point?

If you take a look at free software projects, like the Linux kernel development, you will see that companies operating on the market while at the same time participating in development of a common operating system that everybody can make money on. And the single most important reason why a company can participate in this common good, is that their investment is protected by the GPL-licence. GPL creates a regulated marketplace that ensures that companies (and individuals) taking part in a free software project is guaranteed that the code they contribute, will not be stolen (it’s still copyrighted, not public domain) , rather, their efforts will be rewarded by other companies that also contribute code.

Again, what’s the point?!

It’s actually really simple, commercial companies has the strength that they find the optimal solution on a problem within the given rules and regulations there is. As long as the rules are not to strict, companies will flourish and grow. GPL ensures that being part of a community and contribute code for common good, is the optimal solution for a company operating in the free, but regulated marked. In other words, capitalism used to create jobs and find solution to problems through the startup and running of companies, while having a framework, licensce like GPL or whatever to motivate and direct the companies to do what you want them to do!

This does not only apply to software development, but also every other development and knowledge production: make some rules that protect companies investments and effort in common goods and just let them do their thing! It’s simply the best way to ensure that companies work towards the goal of happiness for all human kind!

Humanity needs Free Software, but why?

Ever wondered why humanity needs Free Software? Kin Calvin’s Weblog sums it up pretty nicely in his article Why does Humanity needs Free Software ?

And, just for the record; we’re talking about free as in freedom, not as in beer.

The Slow Movement

Check out a homepage of the slow movement: http://www.slowmovement.com/

In my opinion the growth of the slow movement is the single most important thing that’s happening in the world today. Slow living is a way of life that promotes quality before quantity, that you should take your time to experience the things you do to the full. Slow living, which implicates simple living, also happens to be our best weapon against pollution and global warming.

I’ve been trying to live as slow as I can for about six months or so now, and I have to say that it really makes a difference, life feels much better. Aiming to slow down has made me better at concentration and more patient with my kids. My shopping habits are quickly changing, I no longer get a kick from just buying, but I get great satisfaction out buying things I really need and to find sustainabale products friendly to the environment. Sex has also improved!

Slow living has the tendency to be frightening to busy people who are ambitious about their career etc. I can promise you though that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of, slow living will probably not kill your career, but it has the power to make you love your job!

So once again, please check out http://www.slowmovement.com/ and begin the first day of a new life today!

Kahvi.org and somafm

For a couple of years now, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing about kahvi.org and somafm.com. Kahvi is a place where several musicians are giving away a lot of music. The music is typically ambient style or other types of calming electronica. Most of the music can be downloaded in both mp3 and ogg-format! SomaFM on the other hand is an online radio, delivering amongst other channels the Groove Salad, which is a mix of chill-out, ambient and other high quality electronica.

Check it out today and enjoy!