India (Part I)

Last week I've been in India (Chennai) for a business trip. From Monday to Friday I did only see two places : my hotel and the office ... so I didn't had the opportunity to visit the country as a tourist, but it has certainly been an interesting week and I'm very satisfied about the outcome of my Indian week. Part of the job was a training workshop I had to give about Compuware DevPartner and the other part was a consultancy job to integrate code coverage results on distributed integration tests that were fired with NUnit. Those unit tests called several web services which were the real target for code coverage. The solution I came up with at the end of the week was to combine NUnit results and code coverage results. With LINQ to XML and the Entity Framework in .NET 3.5 (SP1) I was able to quickly store all these metrics in a SQL Server database to make them available for further reporting.

It's quite easy to hook up Compuware DevPartner to track the code coverage of unit tests written into NUnit or to track the code coverage of assemblies that are hosted in a website on IIS. Afterwards, LINQ to XML and the XElement class were my friends to easily query all result files and upload the required information to a datastore using the Entity Framework. Actually, not that much custom code was involved to set it all up.

I'm writing this wrap-up in the Chennai airport, waiting for my 9h30 flight to Brussels. I hope to get some sleep on the plane and to have a nice week-end with my family. Another trip to India is planned next month to give similar workshops on Compuware DevPartner and to further extend the solution I worked out for the integration tests.

I may not have picked up a lot of the Indian culture and atmosphere, but one thing that will remind me is the fact that traffic is insane over there! You just have to see it with your own eyes to believe it. In Europe I don't mind to drive in busy cities, but I don't see me driving a car / motorcycle / bike in the middle of Chennai. Really amazing!

To be continued in a few weeks!

Seven things you didn’t know about me

Katrien's tag hit me ... so here I go :

1. I didn't study informatics and only headed towards information technology the year [1997] I had to choose a side track when I studied Applied Economics in Leuven. Since then it became obvious that I finally found what I was looking for. The person who hired me at Compuware in 2000 (my first job interview) was convinced that my lack of programming experience and technical background wouldn't matter in the long run. Eight years later, I'm still working at Compuware Belgium ...
2. Before I went to university I was heavily involved in sports [Tennis / Soccer]. During high-school I was an internal student at a professional tennis academy in Belgium where I was trained 5 days a week and because I couldn't let go soccer, I kept on playing soccer as well. I had some talent for both sports but in tennis I belonged to the top 12 players in Belgium for my age category. Due to some injuries and a lack of time in the years to come in that period, I had to let it all go. I still miss the competition rhythm and I still hate to lose in whatever game I take part. My idols from that period were John McEnroe and Marco Van Basten.
3. In Leuven during my university period, I was member of a regional student club and our main occupation was slowly getting drunk in our favorite pub. Going home on time wasn't easy in those days and I was always afraid I would miss something when leaving early. I did not have a GSM and wasn't addicted to a computer, so I needed to go out and meet my friends in person with a perfect drafted Stella Artois. It still is my favorite brand of beer, but over the years I became to appreciate a good glass of red wine and since then I'm increasing the number of bottles I stock at my parents cellar.
4. Playing all kind of card games was also very common when I studied, but since I got to know Texas Hold'em Poker, there's only one card game that still gets my full attention. Just before the birth of my first daughter, I sneaked in on a trip to Las Vegas with some friends to gamble a bit.
5. My ex-colleague Steven Wilssens - who now works at Microsoft in Redmond - pulled me into the board of the Visual Studio User Group in Belgium.
6. A while ago I was a huge fan of 24 and Jack Bauer pushed me to see the first three seasons as fast as possible, but I still need to find the perfect time to start with season four.
7. Some people keep telling me that I have two left hands, so don't ask me to help you with practical jobs.

My turn to tag some people :

• Tim Van Wassenhove
• Stijn Guillemyn
• Laila Bougria
• Jelle Druyts
• Yves Goeleven
• Christophe De Baene
• Stefan Cruysberghs

Here are the rules if you are tagged:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

Brussels Marathon

In a previous post in July I set a new goal to run the Brussels Marathon on October 5, 2008 ...

My full marathon (42,19 km) was sadly replaced by the half marathon (21,095 km) because I was ill the last days before the marathon and I didn't feel like being 100% prepared for the race. So, on Saturday when picking up my entry number I switched to the half marathon.

My time on the half marathon was 1:51:46 (approximately 11,9 km/h - 5:02 min/km). I think I took the right decision to skip the full marathon because I would have forced myself to finish the 42,19 km in bad conditions, but that doesn't mean that I'm fully satisfied! I will be looking for another occasion in the coming weeks/months to complete a full marathon!

Again, I was surprised how many people took part in this running event - even when the weather conditions were extremely bad. Men and women of all ages were all anxiously waiting for the start. Some come in group and want to achieve a team result, but I noticed that most people run on their own and they are all very focused on passing the finish line as soon as possible - no sightseeing or whatsoever! Each person also has his personal style of running and it's really funny when you start paying attention to this. Running for me is also an individual sport : I don't have a training partner and I go out to train when it suits me. During a race I also want to run my own pace and control my heartbeat. This wouldn't work quite well when running with other people. Reaching the finish line is always a personal fight with my body and mind and as long as it gives me a kick/rush, I will probably keep doing this time after time! It keeps me fit and brings an extra portion of energy into my busy life. A lot of other people feel the same and it seems that the Start To Run program in Belgium has convinced a bunch of new people as well ...

Calendar Sharing

Calendar sharing is hot nowadays. My wife and I are using Google Calendar to share our agenda. In the past we didn't really manage our common appointments and that resulted in all kinds of misunderstandings. With Google Calendar we've found an easy way to organize our "life" : birthdays, family events, holidays, ... we like it : it looks good, it's fast and we only need a browser to access our agenda from everywhere!

I'm also impressed by Outlook 2007 lately. I'm using Office 2007 on Vista quite some time now and I would certainly recommend it for a bunch of reasons. One of the cool new features of Outlook 2007 is to publish your calendar to Office Online (Internet Calendars) and to share it with the people you want. Another possiblilty is to send a custom snapshot of your calendar by mail to anyone you want.

Hello World!

No, I did not discover a new exotic programming language, but my daughter Ine was born yesterday around midnight and says hello to the world! I will never forget this magical moment in my life. All they say about new life in your life is true! It's really a miracle that happens and it feels so great! My wife is doing fine as well and will hopefully quickly recover. She did all the hard work but we now really have the most beautiful baby in the whole world! I know that every couple says that about their baby, but in fact it's oh so true!

More info and some pictures at ine.gheysens.net.