SCIP.be - News

Ethiopia

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of my journey to Ethiopia. We started our trip at Lake Tana and the impressive waterfalls of the Blue Nile. In the Simien Mountains we hiked for 5 days and saw beautiful landscapes and fascinating wildlife. In Lalibela we explored the famous rock churches from the 13th century. Then we travelled further to the south and the national parcs of Abiata and Nechisar. We also went to the unique Omo valley; this region is the home stay of the 20 ethnical tribes who still have authentic body art, traditions and rituals. We visited 8 tribes and we were quite impressed by their way of live.

Sahara and southern Tunisia

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of my 5-days hike in the Grand Erg Oriental, a part of the Sahara desert, in southern Tunisia. Together with two Bedouin and six camels we hiked in the desert to enjoy the unequalled landscapes, the peace and quiet, the rolling sand dunes and typical desert fauna. After the hike we explored the impressive old Berber villages Chenini and Douiret and the amazing ksour of Hallouf, Hedada and Ouled Soltane for two more days.

New version TscExcelExport

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 23:00:00 GMT

The TscExcelExport component is an advanced, powerful but easy to use VCL component which enables you to export all records of a dataset from Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero Delphi to Microsoft Excel. Version 4.2 offers support for Embarcadero Delphi XE3 (32 and 64 bit) and Office 2010. The component is free for non-commercial use and all sources are included.

Photo blog : Insects

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:00:00 GMT

This past summer I have been photographing insects with my new macro lens and extension rings. This resulted in some nice pictures which reveal a lot of interesting details of these insects.

Photo blog : Flowering heathland

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 22:00:00 GMT

From mid-August the heather blooms in our nature reserves in the Kempen (region in Flanders). I went to the Maasmechelse Heide in The Hoge Kempen National Park and two days I woke up early to photograph the sunrise and the rich colour of the purple flowering heathland in my hometown Lommel.

Photo blog : Running horses

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 22:00:00 GMT

On the last day of July our photo club ISO400 had a great photo-shoot in the nature reserve the Sahara in Lommel. 4 people of a local horse stable came with their beautiful horses to run through the water and in the white sand which resulted in some great action photos.

Devon & Cornwall

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:00:00 GMT

My best photos of a 9 days photo trip to Devon and Cornwall in the southwest of England together with 2 friends of my photo club. It is an interesting region with rolling landscapes, winding roads with flowering hedges, fantastic rock formations, impressive rock coasts and cliffs, beautiful lighthouses, old churches, picturesque villages, prehistoric monuments, ...

Photo blog : Young wild animals

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:00:00 GMT

This spring I spent a lot of time in nature and I had some unique opportunities to photograph some young animals and birds. These are my best photos of a wild boar piglet, young tawny owls, a juvenile woodpecker and a cute red fox cub. All photos except the ones of the wild boars are made in their natural habitat in my home region.

Photo blog : Evening photography in Duisburg

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:00:00 GMT

A couple of photos of evening photography in Duisburg. The �Tiger & Turtle� sculpture is a walkable roller coaster. And in a small parc the Mercator globus can be found.

Photo blog : Flowering tulip fields in Zeeland

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:00:00 GMT

In spring a lot of tulip fields are flowering in Zeeland (The Netherlands). I went there and on an early morning I started photographing these magnificent display of colours.

Photo blog : Snow and ice

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of snow and ice in my hometown Lommel and surrounding areas during the coldest week of this winter.

Photo blog : Flamish and Zeelandic coast

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:00:00 GMT

A day of photographing at the Flamish and Zeelandic coast in Breskens, Cadzand, Knokke and Blankenberge.

Photo blog : A weekend of photographing birds

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of a weekend of photographing birds from a hide in Viroinval in the Belgian Ardennes.

Western Canada

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of my trip through the states of British Columbia and Alberta in western Canada. In the beautiful Rocky Mountains we did several hikes. Regulary we spotted deer, black bears, squirrels, ... At the west coast we took the ferry through the fjords and remote islands of the Inside Passage. On Vancouver Island we explored the rugged beaches and impressive rainforests and took multiple sea trips to observe orcas, whales, sea lions and bald eagles. The highlights were the encounters with grizzly bears during the annual salmon run.

WCF RIA Services code generation

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 22:00:00 GMT

SP1 of Visual Studio 2010 and the new WCF RIA Services Toolkit makes it possible for you to implement you own code generation classes that can manipulate the client code generation of WCF RIA Services. In this article I will describe how the code generation works and I will demonstrate some scenarios and ideas were customizing the generated code is a nice technique to extend your own framework.

Photo blog : Tree frogs

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of some European tree frogs (Hyla arborea) in a nature reserve. The frogs are range from 3 to 4 cm in length.

Cappadocia and Istanbul

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 25 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of my journey to Turkey in May 2011. We hiked for one week in Cappadocia in the G�reme region with fruit trees en vineyards, spectacular rock formations, fairy chimneys and a lot of cave houses and Byzantine churches. Each day we stayed in another village. After the hike we flew to Istanbul and in 3 days we visited the impressive mosques, beautiful palaces, museums and markets.

Namibia

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of my journey through Namibia. We went on safari in several wonderful national parks like Waterberg and Etosha where we spotted a lot of animals and birds. The Namib desert with its pans and sand dunes was breathtakingly beautiful, our visit in a Himba village was fascinating, the quadbiking and sandboarding in the dunes at the coast was exciting, the canyons in Naukluft were very beautiful, ...

Custom functions Entity Framework

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:00:00 GMT

In this third article about the Entity Framework 4.0 I will explore some SqlClr features and show how to call custom .NET functions in LINQ to Entities queries. In previous article I already demonstrated how to map UDF's and Entity SQL expressions to Model Defined Functions and how to execute stored procedures.

Functions in the Entity Framework 4.0: part 2

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:00:00 GMT

In this second article about the Entity Framework version 4.0 user defined functions and the new Model Defined Functions will be explored. Based on a series of simple examples I will show how to map UDF's and Entity SQL expressions to Model Defined Functions and how to call them in LINQ to Entities queries.

Functions in the Entity Framework 4.0: part 1

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

The Entity Framework together with LINQ to Entities are very powerful technologies to access and manipulate data from a database. But when you need to gain performance or need extra security, stored procedures and user defined functions are often required. In this first article in a series of three I will focus on how to use stored procedures in the Entity Framework 4.0.

Photo blog : Insects

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Some macro photos of dragonflies, beetles and grashoppers.

Photo blog : Fauna in the Eifel

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Some nature photos of a walk in the national park of the Eifel in Germany.

Photo blog : Living Statues in Lommel

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Last weekend my hometown Lommel organized the 3th European Contest for Living Statues. Several wonderful living statues and street artists from all around Europe, Cuba, New Zealand and Brazil were invited and during 2 days they demonstrated their skills.

Photo blog : Blue tits

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 29 May 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Also this year a couple of blue tits (parus caeruleus) have been living in the birdhouse in my little garden. The whole day they were flying in and out and feeding their young ones yellow caterpillars. The last few days the small blue tits have fledged.

Photos of the Western Desert in Egypt

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of the Western Desert in Egypt. From the Bahariya oasis, we drove through the Black Desert in the direction of the El Aqabat region, the wonderful White Desert and Wadi Biddendee. From there we started a 6 day walk over and through big boulders, all sorts of limestone formations, sand plains, immense sand dunes, small oases with palm trees, ...

Photo blog : Ghent

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Some photos of the beautiful historical centre of the city of Ghent.

Silverlight 4 design-time features for ViewModels

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4 offer a lot of new features. I like all the new features but I was especially interested in improvements that could help my current developments which are based on a M-V-VM architecture with ViewModels and a lot of bindings with UI controls. In this article I will focus on the improved design-time features. Along the way I will show a lot of screenshots and try to cover some other new Silverlight 4 features.

Photo blog : Winter in Lommel

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Some photos of winter time in my hometown Lommel.

Photos of Ecuador and Gal�pagos islands

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of my 4-weeks during journey through Ecuador and the Gal�pagos islands. On the mainland we explored a few colonial cities such as Quito and Cuenca, we visited the colourful markets of Saquisili and Guamote, we spent 3 days in the Amazon jungle and twice stood at high altitude on the Cotopaxi and Chimborazo volcanos. On the wonderful Gal�pagos we explored 8 islands and during our boat trips, walks and snorkeling we could spot from close distance almost the all animals (iguanas, tortoises, sea lions, ...), birds (pelicans, gents, frigate birds, ...) and fish which can be found in this archipelago.

New version TscExcelExport for Delphi 2010

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The TscExcelExport component is an advanced, powerful but easy to use VCL component which enables you to export all records of a dataset from Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero Delphi to Microsoft Excel. Version 3.9 offers support for Embarcadero Delphi 2010. The component is free for non-commercial use and all sources are included.

Advanced databinding with ViewModels in Silverlight

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Silverlight and RIA Services are great technologies and the Model-View-ViewModel (M-V-VM) pattern is a nice approach to keep UI and logic separated. But using the combination of view models with item controls, dataforms and commands can be a laborious task because the databinding features in Silverlight are quite limited. In this article I will demonstrate how binding with ViewModels can be improved by using the BindingHelper class and by creating your own command behaviors.

Photos of a hike in Gran Paradiso

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of my 6-day hike trip in the national park Gran Paradiso in the Italian Alps. The park is characterized by the different high summits with glaciers and there are still a lot of marmots, chamois and rock-goats which live there. We climbed the 2 mountains, the Gran Serra (3552m) and the Grand Paradiso (4096m), the highest mountain in Italy.

Photo blog : Fauna on Texel

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:00:00 GMT

A few photos of seals and birds on the Wadden island Texel (The Netherlands).

Photo blog : New life

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The spring new-borns are beginning to grow up. These photos were taken during some walks in my hometown Lommel and in Turnhout.

RIA Services - part 1

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

A few months ago Microsoft released the first preview of .NET RIA Services. This new framework promises to simplify building n-tier Line of Business (LoB) applications by providing patterns, components and tools to build services, query data, handle CRUD operations, resolve concurrency, manage data validation, ... In this first article I will focus on the current limitations and I will offer you some of my workarounds and tips.

New features on SCIP.be

Stefan Cruysberghs — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

My personal website SCIP.be has been updated and now it offers several new features and improvements. There is support for Media RSS feeds and the great browser plugin CoolIris which can be used to navigate through photo galleries in 3D. All images are improved, articles are linked to several categories and pages can be shared more easily.

New connection providers in LINQPad

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

LINQPad was introduced in 2007 and nowadays it is a very mature tool which should be in the toolbox of every .NET developer. Version 1.35 offers new connection providers and it has native support for LINQ to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework data models. It also provides new query types like SQL and Entity-SQL. In this small article I will highlight some of the new features.

Sharing source code between .NET and Silverlight

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

A common problem when developing Silverlight applications is how to share classes and in particular (Entity Framework) entities which are compiled for the full .NET framework in a Silverlight application. Silverlight is a browser plugin and a subset of the full .NET framework. Therefore Visual Studio does not allow referencing .NET assemblies from your Silverlight application. In this article I will demonstrate a very simple technique to share source code and it will give several real world examples and some handy tips.

Cleaning up and organizing Outlook mailboxes

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

This small article contains a few C# scripts which can be executed in LINQPad to clean up and organize Outlook mailboxes. If you want to keep Outlook performing as fast as possible and to reduce the size of mailboxes then these scripts and my OutlookProvider component can simplify this job.

Photo blog : Lommel during winter time

Stefan Cruysberghs — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

A few photos from different spots in Lommel during the snow white but ice cold second week of 2009.

ADO.NET Entity Framework : Metadata extension methods

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

In addition to my article about querying the metadata of the ADO.NET Entity Framework I have implemented several extension methods that utilize this metadata. This article will describe a set of extension methods which can be used to extend the standard Entity Framework classes (ObjectQuery, EntityObject, ObjectStateManager, ...).

Photo blog : Lommel Sahara on freezing winters day

Stefan Cruysberghs — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Photos of Lommel Sahara on the freezing cold but sunny morning of the last day of 2008. The Sahara is a small nature reserve with ponds, woods and some small sand dunes.

Querying Excel worksheets with LINQ

Stefan Cruysberghs — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

A while ago I was looking for a way to query Excel with LINQ. I needed a simple solution that allowed me to query tables in Excel worksheets in a tool like LINQPad. This article will describe how I implemented my ExcelProvider and it will demonstrate its features by giving an example of a LINQ query and the result in LINQPad.

ADO.NET Entity Framework : Querying metadata

Stefan Cruysberghs — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

A few months ago I posted several articles about the ADO.NET Entity Framework beta 3. In the meanwhile the Entity Framework has been officially released and a lot of resources about this technology have become available. In the last few weeks I have been taking a closer look at the metadata services. This article will demonstrate 20 examples which use LINQ to query the metadata collections of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. These queries can be used to examine the structure of your Entity Data Model or to get statistics about it.

Photo blog : Fungi

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

It's autumn in Belgium and so a lot of fungi are appearing again. Here some photos of peculiar fungi like the colorful fly agaric (Amanita muscaria).

Photos of the southwest of the USA

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of my journey through the southwest of the USA (Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California) with a small group of people. We visited wonderful national parks such as the Valley of Fire, Zion, Bryce, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, Antelope Canyon, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Mono Lake and Yosemite. We drove on Route 66, in Bodie we sampled the atmosphere of the wild west, in Vegas we made a small bet and we finished our trip in San Francisco.

New version TscExcelExport (Delphi)

Stefan Cruysberghs — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

The TscExcelExport component is an advanced, powerful but easy to use VCL component which enables you to export all records of a dataset from Borland/CodeGear Delphi to Microsoft Excel. Version 3.7 supports CodeGear Delphi 2009 and it has several improvements and bugfixes. The component is free for non-commercial use and all sources are included

LINQ AsHierarchy() improvements

Stefan Cruysberghs — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

A few months ago I published an article about my LINQ AsHierarchy extension method. This extension method can be used to convert a flat collection of records to a hierarchical structure of nested collections. I got a lot of enthusiastic responses and questions so I decided to improve this technique a little further. This new article will describe the new features and demonstrates how to use the LINQ to Objects and the new LINQ to SQL AsHierarchy extension methods.

Photos of Iceland

Stefan Cruysberghs — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Photos of my journey to Iceland. With a group of friends we made a 6-day hike through a beautiful and varied area from Landmannalaugar to ��rsm�rk and then to Sk�gar. The last few days we hired two cars and visited some spectacular waterfalls like Svartifoss, Seljalandfoss and Gullfoss, the impressive glacier lake J�kuls�rlon, the geyser Strokkur and Cape Ing�lfsh�fdi where a lot of puffins breed.