July 2007 - Posts
I ordered some stuff through the internet a week ago. The packet was sent through the Dutch postal service. They have a track and trace website, that shows where your parcel is at that moment, and where it has been. And that website made me realise the postal service is much like a service bus. I'll compare it to a single service, to emphasise the differences. Let's have a look, shall we ... ?
Single service: a courier
Just like with a single service, sending a parcel with a courier makes it pretty obvious what route the parcel will travel. You tell the courier where the packet should go in their own terms, by filling in their specific form for sending a packet (comparable to a WSDL). You also know the courier will put the parcel in his car, and drive directly to the destination you entered. There are no stops in between and nothing is translated into internal codes to process the parcel.
Service bus: the postal service
When sending a packet through the postal service, you drop it of at the nearest postal office, or even a mailbox. You put the address where the parcel is supposed to go on the envelope (again with the SOAP), but you don't do that in a way that is specific to the postal service you would like to use. You do use the normal address conventions (which you could compare to the SOAP protocol). You don't know which stops it will make, and where it will go.
I saw my parcel first went to a sorting centre in the far east in our country where it was stamped for internal processing. Those stamps don't mean anything outside their company, because it is only used for internal routing. Next, it was sent to the south-west for another round of sorting and internal handling. From there, it went to the third and final sorting centre, close to where I live in the centre south of The Netherlands. It probably was stored there for the night. The next day, the parcel was put in the truck of the driver who eventually brought it to my house. The sender doesn't know where the parcel went, but they know it was delivered. As will the next...
I used WebServices/SOAP/XML to make comparisons because I know something about them. I could have used other protocols or standards also, but I wanted to stick to one.
I know not all couriers work the way I described them nor does each and every postal services. And yes, traffic can be of influence to the route the parcel travels. But I had to dramatize to get my point across, ok? ;)
As you may know, I started out at blogger. I haven't used that blog over there for the last two years, but now it is up and running again! This time, I'm using it as my photo blog. I recently got my new camera, and I didn't want to mix picture-posts with my software development related posts over here. So if you're interested, go take a look over there. Next to the link earlier in this post, you can find a link @ the news section of this site, in the left sidebar.
Last tuesday evening I ordered them, and just over an hour ago they came in: my new toys. I'm talking about my brandnew Canon EOS 400D!!! I started out with the kit lens (18-55), and I'll get going with that, trying some stuff with this lens. And I just might order another in the future, but you have to start somewhere, right ;)
I immediately made some shots, and I'm glad I bought the camera already. Maybe I'll post some pics I make in the future. And by the way: if anyone has any tips on some good (online) photography courses, let me know, or drop a line in the comments. ;)
Update:
I remembered I had a tripod laying around here somewhere. I asked for it a couple of years ago, to use with my Sony DSC S85. I never used it extensively, but that's gonna change now my new friend is here! For those of you who are interested: I have a Giottos VT-808 tripod. I added a picture on the right.
Happy (photo) snapping!
The TED website actually explains for me why you should watch Stephen Lawler's talk on Virtual Earth:
Why you should listen to him:
Microsoft's Stephen Lawler offers a tour of Virtual Earth that not only reveals the power and potential of the software itself, but also gives a global glimpse of the new virtual frontier of digital globes, the 3D Web and the metaverse.
Lawler also explores the enormous effort it takes to create the fluid blending and shifting between the multiple views and resolutions of Virtual Earth. From the satellites and airplanes that gather photo data for a top-down view to the ground vehicles and headgear-wearing pedestrians who canvas the ground for an eye-level perspective -- all of it represents a monumental effort of logistics and mechanics.
I think one of the things this talk makes clear is that there are lots of neat things coming our way. And the innovations that are being revealed now have probably been in development for the last couple of years. Imagine what great stuff is being thought up right now... Exciting times. ;)
Last week we had a meeting with our contact at the department that will be maintaining the software we're going to be developing in our upcoming project. Normally, these kinds of meetings take place in the end of a project, sometimes even under some (release) stress. At least, that was the case for all the previous projects I was involved in at the customer I'm currently at. Most of the time this is because people want to start developing the software instead of thinking about things that are not necessarily their area of expertise.
For this project we did things a bit differently. This is because the rough outline of our project is pretty clear, but the business analysts are still working on some (pretty important) details. Because of that we had the time to get a pretty good idea of when we will be done, and to for instance make a proposal for the deployment model for our solution. We made a diagram, took this to our contact and asked his opinion. Because of his expertise, he asked us some questions which normally would be forgotten up until the moment the solution was going to be released, or would never be asked at all. He also gave us some pointers, and a few whishes out of a maintenance point of view. Because of this we can help maintenance by taking their hints and making the software easier to maintain.
I already have the idea this is a better way to work. It might be because of the fact that it's easier to "get things done" from maintenance (there's lots of time before it has to be done?). But I'm absolutely sure it is because the software was thought through from different viewpoints. Not only the testers and developers have had something to do with it, but the people who have to keep it running did too.
A while ago I wrote about my laptop not wanting to connect to the internet or an Exchange Server. Two days later, I thought I found the updates which were the cause of all this. It wasn't exactly true, but in the end everything worked... Because of that, I let it go for a few days. But after a while, I couldn't help myself: I had to know the real reason for the problem. So after thinking long and hard about the (configuration) differences between my laptop and my 'normal machine', I could think of only one which could be big enough to have this kind of impact. My laptop has had (the trial version of) Norton Internet Security installed, and my 'normal machine' did not.
I tried some installing, uninstalling and re-installing this weekend, and it seems like Internet Security was indeed the troublemaker. Eventually I uninstalled it, restored all updates for my laptop, installed all of them, and there you had it: my laptop was (still) working like a charm and I was a happy camper.
I had a rough start with Norton years ago, back when I occasionally repaired computers in case the technical service department got too busy. I can't even remember what or why it was, but somehow I ended up with this image of Norton as being software that wanted to do stuff other software was capable of doing, but in a buggier less stable way. I still have that idea, and normally I don't even install their software. So I'm not quite sure why I missed it was installed on my laptop. Maybe I didn't want to see it. Or maybe I thought to myself "It must be better by now". Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case...