The Apocalypse Coding Group.

I called it weekly roundtable, but Craig hat this nice idea...

So last weekend I woke up and saw, I've been invited to a new skype group called "Apocalypse Coding Group" and there were already more than 99 messages waiting. (I'm 8h behind the US or as we call it UTC+1). 

Members of the group are:

- Craig Chapman
- Glenn Dufke
- Ian Barker
- Jim McKeeth
- Frank Lauter

To keep all the #Stay@Home Developers happy and entertained, Craig would like to build a simple web application cardgame. With a nice TMS-Webcore frontend.

So with this idea in mind, he started a YouTube stream.

If you have 4h (or 8:45h for both parts) spare time and want to see 5 "pro" developers make a fool of themselves: Here is the link for Part I (4:12h) and Part II (4:26h). (so far)

Of course, if any of us had done this project alone and not streamed, everybody could have a finished, working project online, but that is not the point. The idea is to get the people entertained with this kind of interactive show.

With only a few people found the live stream - the announcement was a little bit too short - we are happy to see, that the replay is watched from all over the world. 

To answers some questions:

- The source is also online to the public at GitHub.
- We are doing this not for sale or money, just for your joy.

- There is no Patreon page.

Don't miss the next session - next weekend. We hope that more developers find the time to join the live session so it could be more interactive. 

btw.: The next D.MVVM video is nearly ready and will be uploaded to my channel shortly.

My plan was to upload a new session of my FDK and D.MVVM series every week, but I had some trouble to stay focused on my work in these days.

However, coffee is always gladly accepted, if you like our/my stuff...So stay tuned for upcoming new videos and live streams on Craigs and my channel, please subscribe and don't forget to hit the bell icon to get the notifications.

Delphi monthly round table!

Meetings and shows are canceled all over. The next Apple presentation will also be online-only.

Let us take this as an opportunity to put a new format in place. Yes, of course, we could do webinars. But this is not so interactive besides the Q&A session at the end.

I would like to try it differently. We could use TeamViewer Meeting or just audio-only. One way to go is with a TeamSpeak Server. I have installed this kind of Server many years ago.

At the moment I'm collecting topic.

I've already talked to Jim about this and perhaps we will join with other MVPs to a monthly round table.

If you are interested please leave a comment and stay tuned for the timetable of events. This will be online in a few days.

[EDIT 16.03.20]
This is open to everyone - It would be nice if some MVP's are also online, perhaps to answer your questions. If YOU can answer a question - you are welcome to answer any question, too!

[EDIT 17.03.20]
I forgot: TeamSpeak-Server is up and running.

IP: ts.delphiprofi.de
Password: EMBT

ProjectH - Your solution for Project Management.

8 Weeks ago I did a survey about project management software. // Still open

The answers were as expected. "Nothing on the market works for me" was the common answer.

I've googled, I've tested some of "them" and this is my result:

a.) it is too simple and didn't fulfill my needs
b.) it is to complex and overkill for a single person or a small team
c.) perhaps it fits, but it has a monthly fee that is too high - I'm looking for a one-time purchase.
d.) it's only a website

And of course a combination of a-d most of the systems are b,c, and d. Perhaps some big companies would pay the "Enterprise" Solution for $1500 US/month, but that is not my goal.

Should it be open source or paid source... The survey ration was 50/50. 80% are not using any tool at the moment. There are 6 developers at the moment with interest in helping me build this kind of software. But 50% only wants to help if it is an open-source project.

Perhaps an idea would be to try to finance the development over Kickstarter or an equal portal, but I never tried this and I have no clue if it will work. It would be perfect if we had some kind of software, that is able to calculate the costs of development or can show how long it will take to develop this kind of software. ;-)

Let's forget about the costs or the time it will take. I think I could do my development much better with an App that can give me a good selection of items based on some rules. hmm... Here are some examples.

• I have just one hour until the next skype-meeting. "Hey H, give me a small topic that could be completed in less than one hour"
• I want to develop a topic today that is needed for more than one project and/or more than one project depending on this (like a PayPal interface). "Hey H, give me the most needed topic for all of my projects"
• I'm not creative today. The best thing to do is not programming. "Hey H, give me a topic without programming" - "You could write some documentation for the MVVM Framework" - oh crap, I hate writing docs... But whatever.
• I could get a new assignment developing an app. By predicting the time I get a sum of 240 Points. "Hey H, give me a release date if I add 240 points to my workload while suspending private projects". "You are able to start the new project in 3 weeks and it will be ready in 8 months, not harming any other work-related projects"

I know I'm dreaming... But at the moment EVERYTHING is a guessing game and I'm sure I could work better with some kind of project management tool.

So, I've got a few things I would like to see in this app. It has to be standalone Windows/Mac/Linux Version able to use a REST-Service for data storage and data exchange. A mobile app would also be useful. Perhaps some kind of time-tracking device, like this cube thing you can rotate on your desk. Or just use your phone with the app and some buttons. (Working, on the phone, taking a break)

There have to be points associated with items. Of course some graphs like Gantt or Waterfall. perhaps like in mind maps. Milestones or release/update prediction. An Interface to a bug tracker and perhaps some hooks to git or mercurial. 

I'm still collecting. What do you have in mind, please leave a comment.

Development environment and the ASUS support.

I spend "some" money on my PC to get a reasonable speed for my work. I didn't had the time to build my last PC so I ordered it over the Internet. Overclocked 4,5 GHz water cooling Raid 5 disk array for storage and Raid 0 for the boot drive... 32 GB RAM.

Top on the list at this time.

I upgraded my system with a new RAID controller and 4 SSDs in Raid 10. Wow this was an improvement boost. With this upgrade, I've started to work only in a VM. This was the best decision I've ever made. A little later I got the first 1080TI, which was available here in Germany.

I saw some videos about M.2 SSDs and one from Linus tech tips that trigger me. The ASUS Hyper  Card 16x. With four M.2 that has to buy my next upgrade. ~ 10.000 MB/s

I ordered this card, 4x 2TB M.2 and... Total disappointment. Only one M.2 showed up, the other three aren't working. I called the ASUS hotline and they told me: You must have a Z390 Board to get all 4 chips running. 

Since my Rampage IV Extreme-Board and CPU was running fine - I didn't want to buy anything new again, but over time, I finally ordered all upgrade parts.

- ROG Maximus XI Extreme
- i9 - 9900K - 5.0 GHz on all cores.
- 64 GB of G.Skill 3600 DDR4 - 17-19-19-39
- New water pump (last getting old)

Board, CPU, RAM, works perfectly - nevertheless, only 2 M.2 showed up... Next session with the ASUS hotline - no this config does not work. Great.

So I used the 2 - M.2's on the Mainboard as a RAID 0 - works nice. (not hardware raid). The benchmark was ~3000 MB/s read/write.

After 6 months I got an error from time to time, on one M.2. Windows could always reactivate the raid, but this is always a bad sign. This time I ordered another card: "ADWITS Quad-M.2-NVMe-SSD-PCIe-16x-8x-Adapter" it should work with every Mainboard and could provide 6500MB/s. I also ordered 4x New Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB. I had to order them from different resellers. Btw. it was a good time to upgrade my 1080ti to a new 2080ti.

Good news: The card works - bad news: not all 4 M.2 have the same size. 2 have 1862,89 GB, 2 have 1863 GB. That's why Windows is unable to bind them in a RAID 5 (or RAID with parity as Windows is calling this). But a RAID 0 works fine and I got 5550 MB/s read-write speed on this huge 7,5TB formatted "disk"... Not bad. VM and Delphi is working fine.

I chose  XMP II for the RAM and enabled the CPU clock-AI. It tuned down the clock a little bit - I have no idea why because it runs stable @ 5 GHz all cores in all my Tests. Since my system is running 24/7 @ 42° C or less - I'm fine with 4,8 GHz.

So far so good - Camtasia is now using the GPU for rendering. So let's do some tutorial videos on the FDK and the new D.MVVM framework.