Frank Hambach

Across the Nordic Sea

There I was. On a boat. The day ahead was a sea day. We had to cross the Nordic Sea to reach Copenhagen the next day. So, as there were no new lands to explore this day, we shall dive into the topic of entertainment on boats.

While, in the early days of seafaring, passengers were entertained by keelhauling and the occasional case of scurvy, today's audiences demand higher standards. Quite rightfully I should say. Cunard, the owning company of the Queen Victoria, attempts to meet these demands with a potpourri of lectures, entertainment and activities, some of which could even be misconstrued as sport.

Setting Off for the Baltic Sea

It was the summer of 2010. My sister invited me on a visit to her workplace once more. Surely that would not be worth mentioning, if my sister wasn't working for Cunard and her workplace wouldn't be the Queen Victoria. For me this effectively translates to “Free Cruise”.

I had the pleasure before. In 2008 I travelled the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. This time it would be the Baltic Sea. From Southampton we would go to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Oslo, Kristiansand and back to Southampton.

Now sadly the great age of the vacation slide show has come to an end. I can't come to your homes, put up a slide projector and let my monotone voice recount overly detailed stories of non-interest while you fade into unconsciousness. Even if I could, I'd probably be to lazy to visit you all. Thankfully the technologies of today offer convenient alternatives. I will therefore strive to relive the excitement of such an evening through a pointless travelogue stretching over ten to fifteen ill-written blog posts. And yes, I really mean it.

Dominosteine

Each year I spend one day at the beginning of December making gingerbread dough. Initially I just wanted to build my own gingerbread houses. But these became quite elaborate construction projects. One year I build a tree house, another year a train station and yet another year I even build my own gingerbread train. While those are pretty to look at, eating them can be quite a challenge because of all the icing I had to use to keep the parts together. It's also not really something you can share among friends and colleagues.

So over time the gingerbread houses became smaller and I started using part of the gingerbread dough to make sweets. I decided to re-establish a tradition started by my father when he was a student. The story goes that he once returned home for Christmas to his parents' house but they weren't there yet and the house was cold. So he started making Dominosteine. At least that's how I remember the story. There definitely was something with Dominosteine.

Calling Base Methods When Mocking Abstract Classes With Moq

I use Moq. Mainly for its nice fluent API and because it allows you to not only mock interfaces but also abstract classes. I do have one problem with it though. Let me explain.

Mocking an abstract class basically works through dynamically creating a derived class wherein all virtual methods are overridden to create the behaviour specified by the Setup calls. If you don't set up anything for a method, you can let the mock object call the base method. This is done by setting the CallBase property to true.

But if you do set up any behaviour for a method, there is no way to let that method call the base implementation. Even if you only want to verify that the method gets called at all.

Thankfully Moq is open source. So we can stop whining and start modifying Moq. But how can this be implemented? And how can it be fit into the existing API?

Festival of Lights 2010

It's that time of the year where the nights get longer, the landmarks of Berlin get strangely colourful and all the photographers come out. We like to call it the Festival of Lights. No one cares if you're walking through the city with a tripod, because everyone does it. And we're all taking the same pictures.