Silverlight Category: ImageError Message: AG_E_NETWORK_ERROR

There's an error I've gotten a few times, and I think it's one of those ones you'll be seeing a lot of if you do Silverlight development. Sort of like when using a datareader to loop through a return result I know instantly what an "index out of range" exception means (you're looking for a column name that doesn't exist in the resultset), now I know what this means:

Code: 4001
Category: ImageError
Message: AG_E_NETWORK_ERROR

If you get the above error, it's simply because Silverlight cannot find your image. That's it; it's that simple. Maybe you are missing (or need) a slash before your filename; it could be anything. But goof around with your image sources a bit and you should be able to clear it. Why it says "network error" when it's making same-application calls I have no idea, but it is what it is.

Eraza Radar Silver Light

May 2 2009 Video Blog

Late, code's broken, what else is new?

Eraza.org Video Blog April 30, 2009

This is the first video blog of Eraza.org. I hope you like it and find some value in it. Please head over to the eraza.org forums and let us know what you think.

What a CEO's desk looks like

Well I guess I should say a start up CEO's desk. It's certainly a change of pace from my extremely wonderful corporate desk in my corporate office. But Eraza is my future, and costs must be kept low.

I'll tell you something interesting. I look around for competition, and just try to keep my eyes on the "location based service" space. I found gypsii, which seems to have offices scattered around in several different places. A little more digging around, and sure enough they've got $13.1 million dollars in funding.

But see here's what I don't understand. Eraza.org as it currently stands, although far from being feature-by-feature comparable with sites like Gypsii is certainly in the same ballpark. And no $13.1 million dollars required to make that happen. In fact our total operating budget (since we didn't get paid) for 2008 was around $4K.

Granted we're all software developers so that clears up the part about having to hire developers, but even still. $13.1 million dollars is a hell of a lot of money.

There's of course a big part of me that says "whoa.. I would love to have $13.1 million dollars for eraza." And maybe I'm just being silly but not pursuing VC (or otherwise) funding. But you can dig one hell of a hole for yourself with $13 million dollars. When eraza gets on equal footing (as far as market share goes) with sites like gypsii, we'll have a huge advantage in not lugging around massive debt.

Music, software, and sculpting software

I should put out a disclaimer that although I was in a band for a couple of years, I'm hardly a musician. I played guitar and sang in a three piece punk rock outfit, but I was never one of those talented musicians. I can't tune by ear, I can barely improvise, and I sing from my throat (the wrong way to do it).

I first heard about the brain composition of musicians on a Radiolab story. Digging a little deeper, I've found several articles that detail the relationships between creating software and creating music. There's even a book on the subject. I heard it again on .Net rocks in an episode with Bob Martin.

I won't repeat what others have written, but in general the idea is that as a musician you are putting difference pieces of music together and make them fit, and that there are different shapes and patterns that need to be combined into a singular piece of music. Much is the same in software.