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What week, I’ve managed about 4 hours of actual development. The problem? McAfee’s on demand scanner.

It all started Monday, whilst I was writing a templated ASP.Net control similar to the inbuilt Logon panel. The difference was that this control respects the privileges of the logged on user, using the Oracle security model that we’re deep into.

Anyway, on using the panel I started getting unrecognised tag errors, and then Devstudio wouldn’t compile the project. At all. So, after a bit of cleaning and the usual go to the dos prompt, i really cleaned the project and tried again. Success.

All the errors went away. Hmm, i thought to myself. must be some cruft from left from the other day when one of the other office staff mistakenly unplugged my PC instead of the electric heater at her feet. Twice.

Any I’d scan-disked the PC and found nothing wrong so off I went merrily coding away. Then odd little errors started creeping in. Tags not recognised, xml schema errors from files I’d not touched for days. It never occurred to me that the On Demand scanner from McAfee could be the culprit. So after blaming myself first for a day, then DevStudio for a day, I started looking at all the other corporate software that was running on the PC. Keep in mind that it takes a day for this because these aren’t the worlds fastest PC’s (the fast ones are on order ).

So finally I examine the McAfee On Demand logs. Holy smoke. over 4000 blocked actions in the last hour. Yes I work fast. Either that or there’s a lot of files making up our project

Not only that, but the file it seemed to be scanning was the .ASPX file i just so happened to be working on. I’ll take that as the smoking gun.

So I think I’ve found the culprit, but trying to sort out what to do about it is a whole different story!

Remember that we’re dealing with a corporate IT department. Can I get rid of McAfee? No. I tried that already. Not enough rights. So I ring the IT department. Waivers for developers? modifications to the policies, different virus killer? No, No and NO. So, I’m kind of stuck here. It’s out of my hands now, but given that I’m on a daily rate, this could be getting expensive, and its only when the costs start mounting up that people notice. Nothing I try seems to stop the interference with VS2008, and meanwhile the project is kind of stood still. I haven’t been idle (of course!) I’ve installed a full automated build system whilst I’m waiting for this to get solved, but that’s in a VM where I can guarantee that its running exactly what I want, not what someone else thinks I need

I’ll keep y’all posted.

In the mean time, might I suggest :

1) Don’t use on demand scanners with development environments. Its not worth the hassle. This is the second time McAfee’s bitten me.

2) if you have to use on demand scanners, don’t use McAfee!.

If only real life development was that simple.

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After speaking to one of my friends about this, I must point out that my current client *IS* actually switched on enough to correct the situation by providing the best equipment they possibly could. It’s as pleasant change to have people in the chain who do value your time, and are more than willing to help remove any obstacles to you being productive. Although I did mention this in the previous post, it does read rather like they’re not paying attention, which they absolutely are.

My post was really about the real cost of loss of productivity and effectiveness in order to save pennies on equipment, where someone outside your project holds the budget, and thinks you’ll be spending 7.5 hours a day editing word documents and emailing.

Perhaps they should try creating a DocProject with half a dozen assemblies, and see how long it takes before they can use their PC again

I’ve turned this type of semi-rant into a small essay, with references to various sources citing just the kind of point’s I’ve brought up here. I’m in the middle of reformatting it, and removing the names to protect the guilty. When that’s done I’ll post the whole article here for your viewing displeasure!

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I’ve just tried to order my son a new LG Cookie for Christmas from the Carphone Warehouse. Tried being the operative word here. I’m absolutely amazed at how we’re still struggling to get the whole on line ordering experience right. I’d filled in the form, and the list of errors were almost as long as the form itself.

I’d like to think that I’m not really that big of an idiot that I can’t get an on line order form right…but Carphone warehouse succeeded in spectacular fashion. So when the website even gives me 3 errors regarding my home phone number I’m left wanting to click the close icon.

Error #1 – the phone number is too long. Why ? See error #2.

Error #2 – the phone number has spaces in it.

Error #3 – the phone number is invalid.

Forgive me for thinking that it’s really at the bleeding edge of technology to determine whether a phone number is valid or not. With or without spaces. Id entered 3 phone numbers. So there was a total of 9 errors, just for the phone numbers, when the code could easily have stripped out the spaces, or even god forbid, used something as technologically advanced as a regular expression to make sure it was valid.

After fixing the errors I’m left with the final error. It appears my credit car information is  invalid. Why? Oh, we won’t actually tell you that. We’ll just say that there’s *something* wrong. Did anyone do *any* usability testing on this? I can’t believe it. Absolutely atrocious for a single page form.

Thank you Carphone Warehouse. And, Goodbye.

Oh, if anyone from the Carphone Warehouse by chance happens to read this, I’m available to help you out. Trust me, you need all the help you can get.

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When I was heavily involved in the games industry, you could spot a designer a mile away. Strangely enough I didn’t see any at Team17 (everyone there was far too cool , it was usually attending a show, or when we had visitors that the turtlenecks were out in force!

Black turtlenecks should be raised to the same status of socks and sandals.

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On an alternate note I’ve solved the iPod software problem. I’ve settled on winamp! Although it has native support for the iPod, it’s pretty poor, but there’s a much better plugin available called ml_ipod. Support and features are excellent, and because i’ve been using winamp since it first came out, getting used to the feature set was a doddle.

Anyway, anything to get rid of iTunes! Winamp+ml_ipod all the way!

I’ve had the slow download problem for over 2 years now, and finally managed to fix it tonight. Fair enough, the upgrade to the latest firmware may have helped, but i was still getting less than 2Kbytes a second with the defaults.

After fiddling with port forwarding on my router, I ended up putting upload and download limits into the boxes that state that 0 means unlimited.

since I’m still on Virgin Media’s extortionate £25 a month for 4Mbit connections, i entered 4096 in the download box, and 128 in the upload box.

I’m aware that the boxes state KB/s , note the upper case KB , so it should mean Kilo Bytes per second, but if i put 512 in there, the download rates didn’t increase.

I put 4096 in there, and suddenly I’m getting over 100KB/s on the download. Go figure.

Anyway, I think the best thing to do is port forward the standard ports from your router to the Synology Box using TCP only. Then start entering ever increasing numbers into those connection speed boxes, until you hit a number that lets your torrents take off.

here’s the evidence :

that’s over 100KB a second, and it peaked at almost 200KB/s too. uTorrent manages about 10KB/s more, but I can live with that now I can turn off my PC

Happy torrent-ing!

Just thought I’d let anyone having the same problems as me know how I ended up solving them!

Basically it appears that there are a couple of updates available on Windows update that are marked as optional, but which turn out to be not-so-optional…

the cuplrits are :

Just in case you can’t read that – the numbers are :

KB943729 – Group Policy preference Client Side Extension for windows Vista x64 , and

KB937286 – Update for windows Vista for x64 based systems.

I dont know whether the KB937286 had anything to do with the problem, but since it was a general update I installed it anyway.

The exception I was getting referenced Group Policy, so i suspect the KB943729 was the clincher.

anyway! I’m happy again, My system appears to be back in one piece, and I’m just about to start on those pixel shaders!

see y’all in a jiffy!

But still……..

 I’VE WON AN iPod!

Yup. Really. An iPod!! I submitted an idea into a program we have here @ EDS, and the best ideas are chosen and then awarded a prize! How cool, a FREE iPod!

My idea didn’t  really start out as an idea at all. More of a complaint really, but I guess what made it a special complaint was I placed a price on how much cash we were wasting because of the problem. Whilst I can’t go into details, I think it may have been attaching a real monetary figure to the whole thing that clinched it. Anyway, it appears that not only did I win an iPod (did I mention that I’ve won an iPod already?) but that they’d like me to do a white-paper on changing things too! Awesome, free iPod’s and I get a good shot at changing  our internal processes too. Double bonus!

I guess it’s nice to feel like your thoughts are worth something after all!

Anyway, because, well, I’ve won an iPod, here’s a picture.

Not only do I get a congratulations card in an Apple envelope…

But the back is engraved with my award and name! Cool!

I’ve never had an Apple product, after working for a year on a Quadra 840av (doing a conversion onto a 3DO console ) , I swore I’d never ever touch an apple product again. Back in those days, as a users machine it may have warranted the almost maniacal cult following, as a developer machine nothing short of vacuous.

Anyway, I’ve been resisting the temptation to fiddle with the latest & greatest jobs spawn, and seriously resisting purchasing an iPhone (after using that touch screen – all other phones are obsolete..), I have to admit, the old nano is pretty good. The only downside is having to use suffer iTunes to load the music. I’m sure there must be other tools available, that’s tonight’s task

If anyone’s got any good suggestions , please, comment!

(PS. did I mention I’ve won an iPod?)

Some of the show was obvious trickery like the levitating spirit table), but in my opinion that didn’t detract at all, in fact, I think that it adds to the overall entertainment value.

At work the next day, many discussions were had about the techniques DB may have used to achieve some of the effects. Take the £10 serial number trick, a punter is chosen at random by DB throwing a frisbee into the audience. This person is then asked if they can ring a friend, and if so DB wagers £10 that he can get the person on the phone to give him a series of numbers that he’s written on a large whiteboard. DB asks the person to repeat some seemingly random questions about mundane objects to their friend. Then on Derrens prompt, the person asks their friend for a series of numbers, which then don’t appear to match the ones Derren had written down on the whiteboard. When the trick doesn’t seem to have worked Derren owns up to the friend on the phone that he’s on the speaker phone on stage, and tells him the trick was a resounding success!

The rest of the audience is still under the impression that the trick failed miserably as the assistant is dismissed back to their seat. However, just as they’re approaching the edge of the stage DB fetches them back and asks them to take out the £10 they won in the bet. When they open up the £10 , the serial numbers on the £10 match the numbers the person on the phone gave! What a reveal!.

After a good discussion and a few emails, we started getting mails through with pointers to forums giving spoilers. I don’t really see the point in reading the spoilers, since if you really, really want to figure it out, the fun would be in the chase not the end result! Plus, I’d much rather leave the mystery intact! If there were no mystery left, life would be a truly dull, empty, experience! (maybe this why JJ Abrams Mystery box is so appealing..)

The fun isn’t in finding out how he did it, the fun is in the communication and shared experience of discovery that it takes to achieve understanding. Plus, we get to sit around drinking coffee whilst we look all intellectual

This brings me onto the agile manifesto 1st principle of

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Its the quality of the vibrant discussions we have about software that makes the software something more than the sum of its parts. If there are no interactions, no discussions, no passionate arm waving arguments (especially with the users) then the end result is the same dull,empty, left lack experience we’d have without mystery. Sure, process and tools help, but the resulting software becomes great inspite of process and tools, not thanks to them. More often they add very little and detract much.

I’m a huge proponent of the arm waving over the process or tools, and I firmly believe that our users will have a much richer experience because of this. Maybe we should try to embody a more passionate approach to our software, rather than the usual rigid-by-the-book approach which rarely succeeds in bringing great applications into the hands most important people in the industry. The users.

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