Daan's Blog

Robomow

2008-11-07T10:05:00Z

And another great robot. Not only great in use but it is actually almost 80cm long and weighs quite a lot. Robomow can't be used yet as we don't have grass in the new house but that ofcourse doesn't stop me from wanting and buying it. If you have a big lawn than have a look at: http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/

Really small PC

2008-11-07T09:46:00Z

And again I was looking around for a low wattage server and I came across this really small pc. It runs xp and you can even run it in your car. http://www.fit-pc.com/new/. It has 512mb, 60gb harddisk and amd 500mhz cpu.

Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner

2008-11-07T09:42:00Z

And another great addition to my wonderfull home live. The robotic vacuum cleaner. One of the most practical and best gadgets I ever bought. Have a look at www.irobot.com.

X10 Home Automation

2008-11-04T16:31:00Z

My girlfriend and I just bought a new house. And it's quite old so we completely stripped it and have to put in almost everything new. Now this is a great opportunity to add a new layer of automation to the house.

My friend Paul from www.mydomitica.com showed me a couple of things that he can do. But alas the price was a bit steep for a simple developer. So for that reason I had a look around and noticed that X10 is still alive and kicking.

So today I bought a startup set for X10 that includes the USB x10 controller, a light fixture, a wall module and finally a movement sensor. With all that I'll try to make my house come alive.

I'll post about it when it works.

Reading emails while driving

2008-06-01T10:00:00Z

Working for Avanade means that you will be on the road quite a lot. And as trafficjams are a fact of live I try to get us much done while standing still. I phone a lot of people and have meetings that way. And Audible player can read books to me for which I can't find the time in the evening.

But reading my emails or even an sms can be dangerous. I was reading one mail last week and only because the people at Renault put such great brakes in to my Megane I didn't total it and myself. So that taught me a lesson.

Don't read and drive.

But I still would like to be able to read mails. While I was surfing a bit on the internet I found a number of text to speech applications for my windows mobile. None really had the user interface I wanted. So I contacted www.sayvoice.com and asked if they wanted to hear some of my ideas.

To cut a long story short Richky Hsu one of their developers contacted me and said they were very interested. So now I am co-developing the product. Mainly because I needed a serieus hobby project. And speech technology and mobiles have always interested me.

If you are interested in field testing the prototypes than drop me a line.

Outlook Business Contact Manager

2008-03-17T13:43:00Z

At Avanade we get a msdn subscription on all the software from microsoft that we want. And I try to use it all. Today was a good day to start using the business contact manager. It allows me to group contacts and accounts together. And register projects where automatically the emails that I send and receive are connected to.

It even has an mobile part which runs on my pocket pc. Maybe i can be a little bit more structured this way.

Even if you are part of a large corporate organisation this really helps me to stay in control of my own work.

Installing Windows 2003

2008-03-15T15:23:00Z

As almost always installing a second windows installation next to your primary seldom goes without a hitch. If you ever want to install a Windows 2003 next to your already installed vista than have the install disk of Vista in hand.

I had to use the command prompt to start Bootrec.exe and rewrite the boot sector. After that I had to download Vista Boot Pro and add Windows server as an install entry. Finally after three hours of hard work and searching the install could finalize.

And now for the rest of the server installations.

Gary Gygax

2008-03-13T21:31:00Z

It's not a good week for us nerds. Gary Gygax the inventor of dungeons and dragons has died. Read his obituary here at the economist. May he rest in peace.

Drawing in HTML

2008-03-13T19:56:00Z

2d javascript graphics

Did you ever wish that you could draw lines or circles in html? Without using images. Now you can by using the javascript graphics classes. They were written by Walter Zorn and can be downloaded here.

Workflow Javascript API

But if you think that is cool than you need to have a look at the Draw2D website that actually contains an api for making workflow programs. It handles dragging and dropping, arrows boxes. Every thing you need to make a workflow program. The api is actually very well written and I have used it in previous projects. It's completely object oriented javascript and quite cool.

3D rendering in Javascript

The last really cool website contains an explanation on how to render 3D images using javascript and html. Just read the explanation and have fun using it.

Mouse Signs Example Code

2008-03-12T13:23:00Z

The attachment here contains a solution and two Visual basic projects that show how the mouse signs can be used.

Mouse signs and WPF

2008-03-11T15:52:00Z

I wrote my first article today. It's about how a mouse gesture (sign) such as a circle or left to right move can be recognized and how events or commands can be fired.

Article

Touchscreens

2008-03-10T09:38:00Z

Finally touchscreen prices have come down to my level. Iyama creates a nice series starting at 450 for the 15 inch and going up to 540 for the 19 inch. So ofcourse I bought the 19 inch. Getting the device drivers was a bit touch as Iyama support references the wrong url. Luckily Microsoft Update knows where to get the correct drivers. “eGalax_Empia Technology Drivers” if you plan to buy it also.

It’s pretty nice and works really well. The touchscreen simply pretends to be a mouse and there the problems start. My fingers are a lot bigger than a mouse pointer. So pressing buttons is quite difficult and using the scrollbar is nearly impossible.

It seems that if you want to use touchscreens as user interface device than I will need to write my own software. And that’s precisely what I was planning anyway. For MyDomotica I will need to program touch screens anyway and I never really liked the media player interface so all in all it will be a great opportunity to learn some new skills.

Stay posted for an article on touchscreens, gesture recognition and using media player sdk.

Hello from Avanade

2008-03-09T15:31:00Z

My name is Daan Jonkers and since Monday 3rd of March 2008 I am a proud member of Anavade. This blog will be about my adventures at Avanade. It will also be about www.MyDomotica.com which is a company owned by a friend of mine. They are making really cool house control systems and I will be helping them with advice and support.

MyDomotica is also a great opportunity for me to try out all the Avanade methodologies and Microsoft software. Together we plan to use only Microsoft software and the .Net offerings in particular. And I will blog or publish articles here about all the steps that we will need to take.

The first part will be about the Avanade Connected Methods and how they can be applied to MyDomotica. But I am also going to write about WPF/Xaml, WCF/Web services, Sharepoint, System Center, Embedded XP, the .Net Framework and anything else that is part of my technology focus.