Steven Rockarts

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Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:04:20 GMT

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Lest we Forget

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:39:26 GMT

The following is a letter from my Grandfather to me recounting his time aboard the HMCS Sioux. My Grandpa was so poor he originally joined the Navy as a 17 year old kid just so he could get some boots. I have fond memories of my Grandfather telling me stories about the war. My favorite is about the time he transported Winston Churchill to Iceland. He was on the morning watch on the deck and Winston Churchill popped out of a porthole and exclaimed to him "beautiful day isn't it sailor" then flicked one of his famous a cigar butts off the side of the ship.

"Time OnBoard 15 to 18 months

HMCS Sioux was originally built for the Royal Navy probably on the Clyde in Scotland. H.M.S. stands for Her Majesty's Ship. It was a Fleet class destoryer 300ft long. compliment 280? men. Launched probably 1943. Soon after launching was transferred to H.M.C.S. Canadian Navy Sioux No R64. This took place at Greenrock Scotland. (she is used when referring to a ship). It was then known as a tribal class destroyer named after the great Sioux tribe. Originally manned by some drafted from Assiniboine, I was one of those who (after taking further radar courses at Ardrosan (SW of Glasgow)) was to be part of what is known as the ships company.

Very quickly made first convoy to Murmansk. In fact it was so fast we had to leave before being complete in ammunitioning the ship. The result was the trip was made with no 4.7 shells, Armament was 3 turret 4.7 multiple .5" (2), Oerlikon (4), Pom Pom (2), torpedo tubes 3" AA + star shell, depth charges and hedgehogs.

Main part of return was Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands NE coast of Scotland. This harbour is made out of a number of islands for protection in a circle. Something like the circling of wagons in a wild west movie. Islands are joined together by anti submarine nats, one of which is opened or closed to allow movement of fleet in or out. Early in the war German UBoats managed to enter and sink a number of Capitol ships of the Royal Navy.

H.M.C.S. Sioux - R64 made some trips with the British Home Fleet which included a number of aircraft carriers. Main concern was German battleship Tirpitz at anchor in a fjord near Trondhiem. Sioux was assigned the job to pick up downed pilots. Certain parts of the Norwegian coast are known to have a heavy swell (like a surf) and while on one of these Sioux got caught in a very heavy roll and almost capsized.

Made a number of trips to Murmansk - Polyarny encountered German subs and land-based torpedo bombers. Seas were very rough, and very little daylight. "Darken Ship" above the Arctic circle took place about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. On one trip we went with five other British destroyers back to the NW coast of Norway - Alta fjord to rescue 70 or 80 Norwegians in this fjord held hostage by German patrol boats.

June 1944, Sioux came down the east coast of Britain to the Isle of Wight - Portsmouth to take part in Operation Overloard - D Day. Patrolled the coast and harbour of Canadian army and British Force and coastline to mouth of Seine river at La Harvre.

We were there about two weeks then returned to Scapa via Edinburgh and eventually to Hyacinthe. Took further radar and communication courses at St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. Signed as volunteer for Pacific operations and then drafted to Esquimalt and H.M.C.S. Ugnada and eventually to H.M.C.S. Ontario which was classed as a cruiser about 800ft long and 500-600 men, about 10,000 tons. Time spent on Uganda and Ontario about two years. All peace time service after hostilities were over."

Edmonton .NET User Group Geek Dinner Recap

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:56:00 GMT

We had a pretty good turnout last night for the first ever EDMUG geek dinner at Mucho Burrito. A number of attendees commented that it was nice to meet in a less formal setting every now and then. Other people didn't seem to like the format and left early. Next time we will look for a better venue and put up a sign so people know where to meet.

The next major EDMUG event in Edmonton is going to be Edmonton Code Camp 2008.

Some topics that we talked about:

- The difference between ASP.NET development and development with MVC. Ben Scheirman and Kyle Baley write on the topic often.

- Code Obfuscation. We talked about tools people used but most people didn't think that obfuscating your code was worth it. Some people mentioned that they have worked on projects where the code is written so badly that it already looks obfuscated.

- We talked about Reflector for a bit. You can find it at Red Gate's website now.

- We discussed C# vs. VB.NET. Not going to go there.

- A lot of discussion was around what type of presentation people like to see when they attend a conference. The consensus was that people wanted to see more deep dives around how things were used in the real world and less fluffy demos. People seem to get burnt after choosing a technology and implementing it only to find out it can't do everything it promises in the real world.

- One developer was looking for some resources for creating a gadget that integrates with Flickr. MSDN seems to be a good starting point for gadget development. This site was mentioned for a good tutorial on Flickr integration. If you know of any other really good gadget resources please leave a comment.

If I missed anything please let me know in the comments.

Years of Experience Doesn't Necessarily Translate to Proficiency

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:14:58 GMT

Today while talking with a co-worker today we were talking about how more years of experience doesn't necessarily translate into proficiency in the software industry. We came up with the analogy that software development is a lot like sports when it comes to the experience factor. I have been playing hockey since I was 4 years old, which by my math makes me have 23 years experience playing hockey. What that doesn't translate into is a job in the NHL, if you put me on the ice against Alex Ovechkin he would embarrass me.

So why is Alex Ovechkin better than me? Besides natural skill, I would bet that he worked a lot harder and practiced harder than me. His passion for the game is a lot higher than my own. You often hear older hockey players being interviewed and stating the fact that "the game has changed since I last played". It is the same thing in software development, new technologies have come out that have changed the game but you can still be great by practicing the fundamentals.

Quick Reference

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:25:07 GMT

Over the years I have been getting increasingly frustrated with the time that the project reference dialog box takes to show up when all I want to do is add a reference to a DLL. I haven't touched COM references in years so I have no need for that tab and I very rarely use the .NET tab. Most of the time I just want to browse for a DLL and I hate waiting for the Add Reference dialog to come up.

My lack of patience prompted me to create an add-in for Visual Studio that I called Quick Reference. It has the same functionality as adding a reference to a DLL without the wait time of the built in add reference dialog box. Hopefully sometime in the future this will be added to Visual Studio or ReSharper. I created add-ins for VS 2005 and VS 2008 but you must have version 3.5 of the .NET Framework installed. If you have any problems please let me know at stevenrockarts at gmail dot com

Download here:

Edmonton Computer Book Club

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:43:28 GMT

A couple years ago a was in a computer book club located in Philadelphia and participated remotely. The experience was great by unfortunately the group lost funding from Microsoft and disbanded.

After gauging a little bit of interest around town I have decided to try and start one here in Edmonton with the possibility of people being able to participate remotely.

If you are interested in participating, please join the discussion at the Google group mailing list.

Happily Married

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:18:22 GMT

This blog has been really quiet as of late, as you probably noticed by the lack of updates in your favorite RSS reader. The reason is because I got married this past weekend and have not had time to update over the past month. I will make up for it next month but for now I am going to go and enjoy my honeymoon.

3 Geeks in an Elevator

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 05:16:39 GMT

I've been in a bit of a blogging slump. I blame taxes, NHL playoffs and an upcoming wedding for the slump. Bil recently posted a meme about being trapped in an elevator with 2 other geeks. The jist of it is if you were trapped in an elevator with 2 other geeks, who would you be trapped with and why.*

I would choose to be trapped with:

Reginald Braithwaite because I like reading his essays and I believe I could have a meaningful conversation about various software development topics with him.
John McCarthy I would like to talk programming languages and AI with him.

* I've actually been trapped in an elevator before for 2 hours with a friend and it sucks big time. I try and take the stairs now.

A Reason To Switch to Rails

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:11:50 GMT

Via Marc-Andre Cournoyer on Twitter, a reason for ASP.NET developers to switch to Rails: http://www.railsjedi.com/posts/15-Acts-as-ASP-NET-a-Ruby-on-Rails-Plugin-

Sadly, I bet I could sell Ruby and Rails to local businesses easier by showing them this page.

P.S. I am the altnet purse fight blog author. No one ever suspects the quiet guy.

Problems Installing Visual Studio 2008?

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:25:21 GMT

Last night I tried installing Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework. I kept getting the error: "Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0a. MSI returned error code 1603".

Not very informative. I eventually ended up getting it installed by temporarily uninstalling IIS. Hope this helps someone else out who is having the same problem.