Sebastian Brand

Back from the dead

Sebastian Brand — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Unfortunally my ex- hosting provider did not pay the bills for my domain so it suddenly went down. After about 5 domain grabbers tried to use it for advertising, I finally got it back. I lost to pics from the old site, but new posts will be coming shortly...

Really Achieving your Childhood Dreams

Sebastian Brand — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:55:00 +0000

Randy Pausch, a Computer Sciences professor at Carnegie Mellon University has received very high media coverage for his "Last Lecture" at university, because he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - having a couple of months left.

Without being sensational about his illness, if you are into personal development or have ever thought about what happened to your childhood dreams, this is a must-see.

The full 90 min video can be found here. And his website is here.

Trouble with the ListView SelectedIndexChanged event

Sebastian Brand — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:01:00 +0000

I've been messing with a System.Windows.Forms.ListView control lately. I have a list of items in a standard ListView control. If the user selects an item, I have some other controls to be shown. If the user deselects the item in the ListView I want these other controls to be hidden.

Now, whenever a user changes the selected item in the ListView control, the SelectedIndexChanged event is called twice: once for deselecting the item (SelectedItems.Count == 0) and once for selecting the new item. This causes the "other controls" to flicker: they first get hidden, then show up again.

Despite some existing solutions using a Timer (here) I analyzed the available events of a ListView. Click and MouseClick are useless since they only occur when the user clicks an item, not when deselecting. MouseUp looks promising since it also fires when the user clicked somewhere outside the items. I have not found a key stroke to deselect an item in a ListView, so MouseUp should be sufficient to check for deselection.

Using that I create a new ListViewEx derived from ListView with two need events: ItemsDeselected and ItemSelected. The originally SelectedIndexChanged event is left untouched.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace Instyler.Controls
{
  class ListViewEx : ListView
  {                                        
      private bool _enableDeselectionEvent = false;
            
      protected override void OnSelectedIndexChanged( EventArgs e )
      {
          _enableDeselectionEvent = ( SelectedItems.Count == 0 );

          if ( SelectedItems.Count != 0 )
              OnItemSelected( this, new EventArgs() );
        
          base.OnSelectedIndexChanged( e );
      }


      protected override void OnMouseUp( MouseEventArgs e )
      {
          if(_enableDeselectionEvent)
              OnItemsDeselected( this, new EventArgs() );          
        
          base.OnMouseUp( e );
      }


      #region Our new events
    
      public delegate void ItemsDeselectedHandler( object sender, EventArgs e );
    
      [Description("Event raised when items got deselected"), Category("Behavior")]
      public event ItemsDeselectedHandler ItemsDeselected = null;
      protected virtual void OnItemsDeselected( object sender, EventArgs e )
      { 
          if ( ItemsDeselected != null )
              ItemsDeselected( sender, e );
      }


      public delegate void ItemSelectedHandler( object sender, EventArgs e );
      [Description("Event raised when a new item got selected."), Category("Behavior")]
      public event ItemSelectedHandler ItemSelected = null;  
      protected virtual void OnItemSelected( object sender, EventArgs e )
      { 
          if ( ItemSelected != null )
              ItemSelected( sender, e );
      }

      #endregion
  }
}

Feel free to use that code.

My new car! Nissan Qashqai

Sebastian Brand — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Here's my latest investment: A Nissan Qashqai 2.0 Tekna incl. Executive Package. Color "Hazy Gold" - well, it's more like "Mustard" or "Sand". :-)

First 50km: I love it.

More pics from the office

Sebastian Brand — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:31:00 +0000

My workplace:
Chriss workplace:

The servers:

The canteen:

The library:

Automatic shutdown if no client is available

Sebastian Brand — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:24:00 +0000

I have a home file server that shall not run 24/7. So I enabled Wake-On-Lan which was working great. What I missed was some kind of Shutdown-On-Idle. After a little thought I came up with the idea that the server may shutdown when all possible clients are no longer available. So I wrote a little DOS batch script that pings all clients and shuts down the server when there is no one available.

Here's the script:

@echo off

CALL :ping client1
CALL :ping client2

ECHO SHUTTING DOWN IN 30 SECONDS
psshutdown -s -f -t 30
GOTO :EOF

:ping
ECHO Pinging %1 ...
PING -n 1 -w 3000 %1 |find "Reply"
IF errorlevel 1 GOTO :EOF
ECHO %1 is online. Not shutting down...
EXIT

Just save it as a .bat file and schedule it to run every hour or so. I used psshutdown.exe instead of the standard windows shutdown.exe because that one cause an error on my server.

Building an office

Sebastian Brand — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:00:00 +0000

I promised to document the progress of building our new Instyler Software's office in Augsburg, Germany. It's a fairly small room but it fits two people easily -- if they watch the walls *g*.

A lot of stuff is temporary, we are far from finished. Anyway, next week I am going to move in and work there 4 days a week.

Kent Beck talking about "ease at work"

Sebastian Brand — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 15:34:00 +0000

Here is a chance to view Kent Beck in a video. It's a talk he gave at a special event in San Francisco on May 26, 2006.

Kent Beck, the inventor of Extreme Programming, is talking about the "ease at work". I think he means the "Flow" state, a kind of positive stress where you just work on the thing you want without arguing about the world around you. There is a good book about the Flow state (Amazon) that describes the whole thing from a philosophical view.

The video is about an hour long. Watch it here.

Beyond Java

Sebastian Brand — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 01:03:00 +0000

A friend of mine (Norbert) has recommended to me to read the book "Beyond Java" (Amazon).

The book is about why Java - better: J2EE is not a good web-development platform anymore. And why Ruby On Rails is so much better. Now I must say the author (Bruce Tate) makes some good points about how bad using J2EE with Spring, JSF and whatsoever has become. But as one of the Amazon reviewers calls it the book is "narrowly-focussed". The is really just about web-development and nothing else. And for that, RoR is the authors uber-solution. I'm not so sure...

But... I will give RoR a try and so I already got my next book to concentrate on: "Ruby On Rails: Up and Running" (Amazon), also from Bruce Tate.

Mac OS X from a Software Architect's view

Sebastian Brand — Sun, 28 May 2006 13:40:00 +0000

I'm now a Mac user. And I really like it.

As a Software Architect I would like to shout out to everyone who hasn't done it yet: If you design software and especially user interfaces, get familiar with the Mac OS for at least a day. You will throw away all the old concepts you had.

Here's what I learned so far:

Windows users tend to need to customize everything. Well, only Linux-users really can. And Mac users don't want to. They like it the way it is. Somewhere I read "why do you want to change everything if it is just working fine?" So what do Preferences dialogs look like on a Mac: as empty as possible and just the settings you really need to take care of.

Dialogs on a Mac do not have OK, Cancel or Apply buttons. Instead the settings are applied real time. Undo capability is not available, so your application should take care of via a menu entry or something. A Live Preview feature like in Office 2007 is becoming very popular and reduces unnecessary clicks enormously. Message Boxes should not have Yes/No. buttons. Nobody likes reading message box texts, so make the buttons say something like "Don't save" or "Replace destination file". Vista will do a much better job here.

Add 3D, fading, glossy, reflection effects where you can. This is the big thing about the Mac. You have seen Front Row. You know the magnify effects of the Dock. You have seen Steve Jobs presentations created with Keynote. That all just looks amazing. Copy it!

Conclusion: I have been testing Vista Beta 2 and Mac OS X in the last two weeks. The Wooow effect on the Mac was much higher.

I got a mac!

Sebastian Brand — Thu, 25 May 2006 07:54:00 +0000

I got my MacBook. Isn't it just so sweeeet?!?

Delivery of that little baby took nine mo^H^Hweekdays. Here's the full delivery progress until I could hold it in my hands.

TNT Tracking:
26 May 2006 15:06 Augsburg Delivered
26 May 2006 11:49 Augsburg Out For Delivery
26 May 2006 08:57 Augsburg Import Received
26 May 2006 04:25 Nuernberg Hub Consignment Received At Transit Point
(25 May 2006 was a holiday here)
24 May 2006 22:46 Eindhoven Shipped From Originating Depot
24 May 2006 21:17 Arnhem Hub Consignment Received At Transit Point
24 May 2006 21:16 Arnhem Hub Consignment Passed Through Transit Point

Kuehne+Nagel Tracking: (the dates at the end of the line indicates an estimated time of arrival)
24 May 2006 90 75 truck arrived at final destination CNSHA50 31 May 2006
23 May 2006 86 14 booking slot obtained NLAMS07 24 May 2006
23 May 2006 30 10 departed direct NLAMS07 26 May 2006
23 May 2006 40 69 accept scanned at EDC NLAMS07 30 May 2006
23 May 2006 40 60 Arrived at EDC NLAMS07 31 May 2006
21 May 2006 32 55 flight departed Kuehne & Nagel Shanghai 30 May 2006
21 May 2006 32 05 Flight Booked Kuehne & Nagel Shanghai
(20/21 May 2006 was the weekend)
19 May 2006 30 63 handover at supplier CNSHA50 30 May 2006
19 May 2006 00 04 Picking confirmed, EDI received CNSHA50
19 May 2006 30 61 Consignment Booking received from supplier CNSHA50 30 May 2006

Apple Ordering:
19 May 5:07p Package sent notice
17 May 11:28a Order confirmation notice
17 May 11:07a Online order and order reception notice

My most enjoyable activity

Sebastian Brand — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 19:46:00 +0000

All weeks in three folders

Sebastian Brand — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 07:35:00 +0000

I'm a user of the very popular David Allen Getting Things Done approach to organize my work life. I've been into it for about a year now. My Outlook implementation is working great but I'm still struggeling with the paper stuff. At the beginning I had a big @action box where I put any supportive material for the my tasks (any non-virtual stuff).

After a few weeks I noticed I can't find anything there and it had become an inbox and reference replacement of some kind. So I needed to do something. I didn't like the 31-days plus 12 months folder idea because I don't have that much paper stuff for have one shelf for each day. So I came up with these 3 folders with 9 splitted shelfs. See the picture! This system has 3*9=27 shelfs. I use a shelf for a week and then the week half a year later because my tasks should not be planned half a year in advance.
So if there's a shelf for week 52 that will also be used for week 26 in the next year then. The unused 27th shelf I have labeled "Someday" - until now it was always empty.

In the shelfs I put any paper stuff I will need in the next weeks: Invoices that I must pay in two weeks, "Waiting for"s of sent letters etc. I then review the next week's shelf during my weekly review (which is on Wednesdays by the way) and create reminders due in the next week. In opposite to my earlier @action box it is now very easy to track future paper work and find currently required papers.

Sebastian in winter

Sebastian Brand — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:38:00 +0000

Here are some pictures of me in winter time.

On a skiing journey to France we had to use my never failing, extremely reliable car ...NOT!

Somehow we made it over the alps, so finally, let's go skiing...

It was a great time with great friends. I especially like this one, don't know why *g*

All these girls make me tired:

I need a bed, so I had to bloat my own bed:

Winter is great time to ... drink.

So, if you want more, let me know...

Just do it.

Sebastian Brand — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 06:25:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Steve Pavlina wrote in his blog about How to become an early riser. One of my major productivity deficit always was that I really liked sleeping long and had no will to get up early. Especially in winter months it happened often that I slept for a lot more than 8 hours and felt tired the whole day anyway. And although I tried to commit myself to stand up early the next morning it didn't work when I woke up. I then always started arguing about why I wanted to get up so early and that it would be so much better to... *snore*

From my rare highs these days I know my best work time is in the morning - if I get out of bed early enough. So I went to follow Steve's advices and got up at 5 AM every day - and go to the bed when I become tired, which is not before 10 PM, mostly.

This really works. The weekend was superb, it's so silent outside on Sunday mornings your mind just flows while working. Best of all, at 10 AM I always had done more I'd ever dreamed of being able to do the whole day. I have now also started to do my physical exercises in the morning instead of doing them in the evening after coming from work. This allows me to replace the first dozy hour of the day with some kind of a kick start.
To get over this morning arguing with myself about why I wanted to get up so early I needed to replace this arguing habit with a new habit that would finally end in a reflex-like behaviour without questioning it. Without questioning was the key for me here. Or in other words, just do it.

The unschedule

Sebastian Brand — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 18:15:00 +0000

Check out the Dilbert Comic Strip from June 8th. Mega-consultant Dogbert is telling the pointy haired boss to keep a journal of everything he does during the day.
This reminded me of an idea in the book The NOW Habit from Neil Fiore called "the unschedule".

It tells you to write down only previously committed time into your calendar, including meals and sleep as well as leisure time. In other words schedule as many non-work activities as possible but do not plan work on projects in the calendar.
Afterwards, fill your calendar with the work on projects after you have at least worked on the project for half an hour - uninterrupted. The goal is that you can keep track of so called quality work during the week. Summarize these hours at the end of each week and you can see how your quality work hours increase.

I found this idea great to see how my productivity would increase using the metholody described in David Allen's "Getting Things Done". The book "The NOW Habit" is actually from 1989 but it think it's more current than most of the newer time management books telling you about the ABC priority and daily to-do list crap again.