Hello (Windows Mobile) World!

October 28th, 2006

Finally – a chance to play with my new Windows Mobile developer kit. I had my first go with it tonight, and so far, I’m pretty impressed.

The Windows Mobile 5 API exposes a lot of nice stuff to the developer – just looking through the overview page on MSDN.com showed me lots of stuff I want to have a go with. Like interacting with the phone, incoming calls, SMS messages – sent or received, using the phone’s internal camera, getting all sorts of system info like battery data, and loads more. So much to play with! The overview page also shows how easy it is to access the Pocket Outlook database, so I thought that this would be a good place to start.

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What is Charity?

October 27th, 2006

I’ve been reading some of Wednesday’s debate in the House of Commons about the Charities Bill. This has been kicking around for a few years now – in fact, I thought it might end up becoming law last year, but it got put on hold when Labour started gearing up for last year’s General Election.

The Charities Bill will be the biggest shake-up in UK charity laws for hundreds of years, so I’ve been trying to get my head around what will be changing – in particular what the implications for SYA might be.

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Grace is going to bankrupt me

October 26th, 2006

Grace (my two-year old daughter) started in the “transition room” at nursery today – a room for slightly older toddlers.

One of the more interesting differences from the babies room is that each of the kids has a little credit-card-style card with their name and photo on. It’s used in a variety of ways – like doing the attendance register in the morning by getting the kids to hand in their card. Or at morning break, when the kids use the cards to “buy” their snack.

Grace loved her new card – she looked really proud of her little card with her face on. And she really got into the “shopping!” idea of needing it to get her snack. I can see how it’s a nice easy way to keep track of which kids have had theirs, and make sure that noone gets left out… but I cant help wondering if I should worry about how quickly my daughter is taking to the idea of credit cards? 🙂

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My Windows Mobile developer kit has arrived!

October 25th, 2006

Microsoft give away free developer resource kits for Windows Mobile. A two-disc DVD set, it comes with everything needed to write apps for Windows Mobile 5 – an IDE, SDK, the .NET Compact Framework, emulators for development and testing, API and documentation, and a bunch of educational resources like samples, walkthroughs and videos. I ordered it a little while ago, and it’s finally come.

I’m out tonight, so will have to wait before I can have a play. I’m looking forward to it, though – will have to try writing a small app for my phone tomorrow night.

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Microsoft change things too much

October 24th, 2006

My ThinkPad gave up the ghost – I had to format the hard-drive and reinstall Windows. 🙁 As a result, a large chunk of this evening has been spent downloading and reinstalling apps, and generally trying to get Windows set up the way I like it.

The most annoying problem I’ve hit so far is with Microsoft Money. I use MS Money 2001 to manage all our household finances. I’ve been using it (and before it Money 97) since starting University, so my Money file (I never get round to setting up archiving!) has got a record of pretty much everything I’ve bought since 1998! It syncs with my phone so I can record money that I spend when I’m out and about, and it’s how I make sure that we pay all our bills on time.

So it’s fair to say that my Money data file is kinda important. And that I want it to be secure.

Unfortunately, it’s so darn ‘secure’ that I can’t get into it anymore! 🙁 It’s all because of a change to the way that Microsoft handle authentication.

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Innovative workplaces make for innovative people

October 19th, 2006

Went in one of the new break-out rooms at work today. These have been popping up across the site over the last week or two, but I’d not got round to going to have a look before.

They’ve got comfy chairs and sofas, coffee tables with newspapers and computing magazines, plasma screen TVs, and a small kitchen with fridge, microwave, hot water, and posh coffee machines. I like the idea of these rooms – more than just a useful alternative to the cafeteria as a space to make our own food. They’re a place to get away from our desk and take time out to bounce ideas off each other. More importantly, they reinforce that our job is about more than sitting at our desk, keeping our heads down and quietly churning out code.

Lifehacker had a link a couple of weeks ago to an interesting webpage about “cool workplaces”, which talks about some more innovative approaches to making your work place an exciting place. One of these was (as they admit, a little predictably!) the very cool Google offices.

Okay, so our new rooms aren’t quite in the same league as the Googleplex (how cool would that be?!), but add them to the stuff we’ve already got on site like foosball, tennis courts, sports hall, gym, and so on, and we’re pretty lucky.

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Census polls are taken at the roadside

October 18th, 2006

Drove past a roadside census on the drive home this evening. They had a taxi-rank-style lane set up to the side of the road, and were pulling over (presumably a random sample of) cars into it, so people in natty flourescent-yellow jackets could ask questions.

Despite my best Jedi-mind-trick efforts to will them to me, I wasn’t chosen, and so didn’t get to find out what they were asking about. (Actually, I was even sadder than that – got to the roundabout at the end of the road and went back past them for another try… And still they ignored me! :-))

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Is fear of litigation and red tape hurting volunteering?

October 16th, 2006

I’ve been reading a report published by Volunteering England last week. Entitled On the Safe Side, it is the outcome of VE’s research into risk, risk management and volunteering.

They highlight several areas of concern – including ever increasing amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy, burdensome time and resources needed to complete risk assessment and health and safety activities for small organisations, the effort to keep up with new legislation and regulations, increasing cost of insurance, and external pressures towards excessive risk aversion.

It’s this last one which most struck a chord with me – small organisations feeling pressured towards excessive risk aversion. The report refers to “…several examples of smaller organisations having to restrict or cancel activities…” because of risk management concerns.

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