Get Cortana in Windows 10 Desktop Outside the US

One of the features I wanted to test the most on the new release of Windows 10 was Cortana but living outside the US it was disabled :(

Fear not, it will take seconds to have the system configured.

Look for Region and Language Settings in the search bar where Cortana should be and open it.

There change your location to United States and then click on Add a language. Of course the language you need to add is English (United States) then make English (United States) your primary language (you don't need to remove your other languages or keyboards).

Once your screen look like this:

Reset the machine and you'll have Cortana waiting for you there.

If you are anything like me you would be yelling "Hey Cortana" to the computer closer and closer to the mic. Don't. Before it works you need to configure it. Click on the search bar, look for the hamburguer icon and click on Settings:

And finally enable everything :)

And now say: "Hey Cortana, How are you doing?"

She's so polite...

I just need to ask her why the accent colour of my Windows is suddenly brown U_U

The Ultimate Blog Challenge Has Finished

Finally!

It has been really hard to find the time to write one post a day. I suppose it would also depend on the month and this one for me has been hectic. All of them are...

I thought it was going to be harder to find topics to write about, the length and the amount of code in the posts have also decreased a lot during this month to be true.

The idea of the challenge was that if you post often your blog will get more visits. I can tell you that's not true.

I suppose, if you have a blog where people use to come and your posts are interesting you'll get them back more often if you post more, but in my case I only get a couple of visits from searches in Google Bing refuses to index the blog for some obscure reason and posting more doesn't really make a difference.

Writing about topics that are very actual helps. But if you are busy working in your projects a 125% of your time you don't get to do that many interesting things... I would really like to change that.

In the end the results of the Ultimate Blog Challenge in the visits of the blog look like this:

The first two weeks I had a lot of visits, I suppose from my fellow bloggers in the challenge, after that the amount of attention the blog draws has decreased to the usual levels. You see that peak? Yes, that one was me changing the template.

I have now a couple more of followers in twitter and not a single more subscription than I had last month.

Anyway I am happy to have been able to write the same amount I usually write in two years in just one month.

I used to think a lot about what I was going to write in the blog and what wasn't interesting enough and now it has become more natural. I don't think I am going to write one post a day anymore or not until I get paid for it somehow but I will definitely write more often.

I'm sorry for the twits and the messages in LinkedIn etc. In the other hand you don't hear from me that much in the social networks usually.

Back to normal now.

SharePoint Makes you Humble

I have learn this well enough during the last seven years. SharePoint is a hard beast to tame, so hard I have never met anyone working in this platform who claims to know everything about it actually if anyone had I would regard it as a proof of complete ignorance.

In a world where trying beyond extenuation is common and the deadlines are pressing you find individuals whose levels of tolerance to frustration are sky high.

You definitely need a sense of humor to be a SharePoint developer. I would even say a taste for black humor.

I remember smiling back in the 2007 after selling a SharePoint based solution when the client asked my for the instructions manual of SharePoint.

There are so many things working together in so many different places that it's really easy for some small and hidden piece to make the whole farm lose balance. Do you remember the books of the D'nis? something like that.

I am writing this because I am four posts short for completing the Ultimate Blog Challenge and it has been impossible for me to write on the last four days... but I won't give up. Not when I am so close.

As a SharePoint Developer I can overcome any issue or workaround it

Go Electronic at More Levels

We live connected to the phone, the computer, the tablet, the TV...

We work creating bits of information, but not bits as in pieces, I mean bits like the ones when you put eight of them together make a byte.

Maybe we should change the direction and start doing more things analogically but it's also cool to go with the flow and find yourself doing more things electronically... like smoking.

I know this is completely out of topic in my blog, but I am three posts late in the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I can't think of anything else light enough to be posted on a Sunday.

I have tried the SkyCigs and they are... interesting. It's not the same as smoking a real one but only because of the taste. The smoke is nice, the cigarettes are nice, they have a kick.

If you are bored enough give them a go. In my office two of the guys are already smoking just e-cigs that's a 100% of the people who tried... Not counting me, I went back to the analogical ones because I need to do anything else than eating analogically until today.

Today I have decided I am quitting. Analogicals, Electronicals and everything.

I am one step closer to becoming a monk, in fact I consider my self closer to the monk ideal than most of the real monks except for the praying... well if I can't make something work and we are close to the deadline I am a monk with the praying and everything.

University courses for free? Coursera

Education for free. It doesn't get much better that this.

I heard about this courses just a month ago and I have joined two. The fist one starts next Monday so I can't say yet how good they are or if they are worth it, but they really look as if they are.

I have joined a course about artificial intelligence and another one about programming.

Artificial intelligence is a very interesting field in which I have no experience at all. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to add a bit of intelligence to whatever solution you are working with at the moment? I think it could add a lot of value to some things I do and if it doesn't I still get my curiosity satisfied.

And the course about programming is also interesting, if things have changed in the last 10 years I want to know and if they haven't I want to remember how it was like :)

Before I join any more courses I'll try to finish these two, but I already have my eye set on a pattern oriented architectures for concurrent software course...

Why don't you join me at https://www.coursera.org?

We need a Developer's Pride Day

Every time I am looking for a senior developer is the same.

Is as if you have been a developer for four years you can't be a developer any more. Now you have to be a team manager, a lead developer, or a presales consultant and anything less than that is a shame for you and your career. Why a developer is less than a team manager? Can anyone explain that to me?

How come anyone with four years of experience can claim they are so experienced that they don't want to code any more?

I remember once I was hiring for a developer role in Madrid and a guy looking for his first job after the university told me he wouldn't code because he was an engineer. I was puzzled... I went to the university to learn how to code properly...

To me is as if a footballers didn't care about playing football because he just wanted to be a coach.

How do you think you are going to be able to tell people what to do and how to do it if you don't know yourself because you never cared?

Managers are necessary but it looks to me like people think a developer is the byproduct of a manager.

Let me tell you something, a developer is not a guy who wasn't good at anything else and he had to settle for being ignored in a corner of an remote office. Being a developer takes more than most people think.

In my case I have been a developer for seven years, that's professionally only. I have been developing for the sheer pleasure of doing it since I was 9 and I got my MSX HB-20P and after all this time I feel like I have just scratched the surface of what development is.

I have seen good developers working and they really make a difference. The amount of knowledge they amass is impressive as well as clarity on their thoughts and the elegance of the code they deliver.

They are artists, and a very impressive kind of artists. They can deliver every day, they manage the pressure they overcome an infinite number of issues learning from them and improving their code and their environments to make sure they won't have those issues again (nor any of their team mates)

Great developers are generous with their knowledge, ask them about what they do and you'll be probably overwhelmed about the amount of details and insights they'll provide. They don't hide what they know from anyone, they love sharing. There's so much to learn and so little time.

You don't get that kind of expertise in a couple of years, it takes a whole life of effort to become a real expert in this field. And if we don't change our mindset about what a coder is the amount of good developers we are going to have in the future is going to be ridiculous.

If you are a developer take pride in what you do. An engineer with an infinite number of pieces to choose from. A general with an infinite number of soldiers doing exactly what you tell them to do.You are the maker.

We, developers, need to improve the way we think about ourselves, we need to improve the way companies look at us.

We need a Developer's Pride Day.

If you love learning new tricks, if you love it when a class does exactly what you want and how beautiful is the way you made it do it. If you love to improve the code in every iteration or if you manage to change a method, improve it by an order of complexity and feel the happiest guy. If you love coding... Don't change.

We need you to be a developer. The world needs you to become a great developer. The world needs you to improve it.

And that takes time.

Changing the Branding on Blogspot

After changing the name of the blog it needed a new look.

My first choice, as always, was to try to do it by myself. I thought about it for a while, I'm awful when it comes to design and Quite Surprisingly now I don't have the time to play the One Pixel Up - One Pixel Down game so I tried to find some templates.

Great idea! There are thousands of blogger templates out there and even better, most of them are free.

I got mine from Deluxe Templates and the hardest part was to chose one. I wanted something more fantastic but finally I decided for this one because it looks more professional. The name of Code Grimoire is weird enough, I don't need the picture of a lich even though I would like to have one.

The only thing you have to bear in mind when changing your template is that most of the content of the widgets will be lost and replaced by the one in the template so make sure you have it saved somewhere before you upload the new one.

The way of applying the new template is really easy, in Template click on the button on the top right corner's button and upload the new template. After that go to design and play around with the widgets until you are happy with your "new" blog.

I was so easy now I will be tempted to do it again... soon...

Saturday Afternoon Fever

Isn't is nice to work in the night when everyone is sleeping or in a Saturday afternoon when everyone else is having fun with their friends and family or simply resting after the week. If you want a short answer No, it's not.

But if you want a long answer...

The world is quiet, no one asks you anything, no phone calls. It's the perfect ambiance to dive into The Zone for a couple of hours in a row.

• You chose the exact time when you want to start to work
• There's no noise around
• No meetings
• No calls to see how you are doing
• No emails with new problems

It's just you and your code.

I know there are coders who don't recommend it... You can be against the zone but you know you like it.

And as it's Saturday and I have to code that's where I'm going now.

See you later.

Please do not disturb.

No wonder why my weeks are so long and my weekends seem so short to me.

From Developing is Painful to Code Grimoire

Yesterday I didn’t write anything because I spent the time for the writing in buying a domain for the blog. You might have noticed that the URL has changed already, the new look will come today, hopefully.

 

I have been called a freak just for using the word Grimoire, in case you don’t know what a grimoire is as my spelling dictionary did a grimoire is a textbook of magic.

 

I have always thought about the code a bit as magic, sometimes you can’t see why a bit of code doesn’t work and sometimes after you fix it, you can’t understand why it is working. That’s what I call magic.

 

Wizards spent their whole lives investigating, most of the time by testing and, after living in their towers for years and years, they managed to acquire a kind of knowledge that was completely foreign to the rest of the population, just as we do… except for the towers.

 

Every wizard would have a spell book or a grimoire to write down their findings and experiences, in the XXI century we use blogs.

 

I’ll change the branding of the blog, I don’t want it to look like a WoW page, it will be clumsy, but maybe just a bit more esoteric than it is now.

 

Hopefully Adam will help me with it.

Loving my Lumia 920

I was told that WP8 is almost like WP7, same look and feel, same tiles, same functionality… boring. I had my new phone on Wednesday and I tell you, NOT AT ALL.

The push notifications is now working as it should, every time something happens I get a notification. With WP7 this was true only for the email.

The mini tiles are a fantastic way of being updated on all your email accounts and apps without having to scroll. gMail, Outlook, 2 inboxes linked in one for the company product’s emails, my company email, phone calls, SMS, Whatsapp, Me and the calendar all there. It’s there. When I look to my screen I can see all at once.

The dynamic lock screen is also great, I have installed the free Accuweather app and it updates the lock screen with information. I am so relieved now that I don’t need to look at the window to see if it’s sunny…

Office, OneNote, Photos, everything is now connected to SkyDrive seamlessly and works as expected.

Skype integration is really good. For the first time I have been able to make and receive calls seamlessly with the mobile phone and the quality of the sound is as good as with normal calls (both over 3G and of course WiFi)

And finally the Nokia Apps. City lens made me feel for for the first time what augmented reality is, I had seen it but never experienced it. All the Here apps are great, very well finished, I have used mostly HERE Transit. And of course Nokia Music, I don’t know yet how it works but so far I have been able to listen to a lot of good music of my choice completely for free.

It could be that we are in that phase of the relationship but I was expecting a dull, more of the same phone and I found a very exciting device that really improves the productivity and has a big screen for games.

The Ultimate Blog Challenge

April fools!

Actually it is not a joke. I want to post more and this is a great excuse.

Going from my usual one post per month to the required one post per day sounds a bit daunting a lot, actually, but it also looks like a very interesting experiment and a great challenge.

Most of the times I don’t get to post because I think a bit of code is not interesting enough to be published, discussed or even commented and I am probably right, but in the other hand sometimes there are posts that I find not so good and they end up reporting the most visits to the blog.

The Ultimate Blog Challenge will be the perfect alibi to start posting more and to see if it improves the blog or not.

Let the posting begin.

I have been chosen as one of the MAPs for 2013

Most of the time I think I am shouting in an empty hall when I publish new posts.

When I feel like that, I still post what seems interesting to me when I get the time to, which is almost never because sometimes I like to read my blog and remember the way I have gone through.

It is so gratifying to see that someone out there cares.

Coding, exploring new things and writing are some things that I love but, even though, sometimes it is becomes hard and tiresome guess why I call my blog Developing is Painful...

Getting this recognition was completely unexpected, a great surprise, and it really pushes me to keep on spreading the word and in contact with the new technologies.

Thanks for noticing Microsoft.