Kim Bach . Org< kim.bach@gmail.com > wrote this “code”. As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff.
If we ever meet at a BarCamp, and you think this “code” is worth it, you can buy me some æbleflæsk in return.
-Kim Bach
I denne uge var der hele to udfordringer fra Udfordring.dk, den første var en videreførsel af sidste uges økonomi-udfordring samt en livsstils-udfordring.
Jeg vidste godt at jeg ikke kunne klare budgettet fra sidste uge pga. forventede udgifter i denne uge, men jeg prøvede alligevel at holde øje med udgifterne.
Livsstils-udfordringen: motion
Livsstils-udfordringen gik ud på at dyrke mindst 30 minutters motion om dagen, det har jeg opfyldt gennem gang. Jeg vil tro at jeg har gået samlet 15-20 timer med en længde på ca. 50 km i løbet af ugen. Tirsdag var den længste enkelt strækning fra mit hjem i Taastrup til Avedøre Station, det tog 4-5 timer.
Alt i alt vil jeg sige at jeg har bestået livsstils-udfordringen.
Økonomi-udfordringen: intet budget, ingen kontanter
Nedenfor er nøgletallene for uge 8 2014 gengivet:
| Tweet | Debit | Kredit | Kasse-behold-ning | Transport | Mad | Café | Drikke-penge | Flasker | #twitter-indsamling |
| #uge2014_08: Total | 2.857,55 | 550,50 | 36,00 | 241,70 | 337,85 | 66,00 | 6,50 | 17,00 | 62,00 |
| #uge2014_08: Andel af samlede udgifter | 8,46% | 11,82% | 2,31% | 0,23% | 2,17% |
Som det fremgår var det en dyr uge, men “you’re worth it”, her i den dobbelte betydning “du og i” ;-).
Der er indført en ny regel, og det er at “overskuddet” går til velgørenhed, i uge 7 var der indtægter fra flaskesamling på 61,70 kr., det blev rundet op til 62 kr. og doneret til #twitterindsamling på BetterNow.Org. Jeg er ambivalent mht. BetterNow.Org, de har omkostninger på 7,50% hvoraf de 1,5% er kreditkortgebyrer, så det lyder som en bedre idé at aflevere sine småpenge i kirkebøssen.
I uge 8 er velgørenhedsreglerne omdefineret til at de kontanter der er i lommen ved ugens udgang bliver doneret til velgørenhed, i uge 8 var der indtægter fra penge jeg fandt flydende omkring i min lejlighed samt indsamling af flasker, det giver 36,00 kr.
Mine transport udgifter steg i forhold til uge 7, hvilket skyldtes at jeg var i København 5 gange mod 4 gange i uge 7, vi landede på 241,70 kr..
Udgifterne til mad steg kraftigt til 337,85 kr., det skyldes bla. et besøg på et spisested.
Hvis vi ser bort fra ekstraordinære udgifter i løbet af ugen, så lander vi på 587,40 kr., så det betyder at jeg har holdt de normale udgifter i ro.
Økonomi-udfordringen fortsætter på ubestemt tid, det er en sund øvelse, og jeg vil begynde at registrere alle udgifter og indtægter i mit regneark.
“Friheden” er en hård test
Billedet ovenfor er taget ved bagindgangen til 7-11 på Friheden Station, det var målet for min lange gåtur til Avedøre. Turen var foranlediget af at en hjemløs mand var død ved Friheden Station udenfor 7-11. Personalet havde, forgæves, forsøgt at få myndighederne til at tage sig af manden dagen før. Det provokerede mig, ikke mindst fordi jeg er vokset op i kvarteret, og så hjælper det ikke at der findes en sang af “Malurt” der indeholder følgende tekstlinje:
På Friheden Station//Er Friheden kun en illusion
Så jeg tog derud, mest fordi jeg ville vise sympati med personalet, det må være uendeligt svært at leve med, og de havde jo gjort hvad de kunne. Det var en ganske nedslående oplevelse at tage derud, jeg skrev dette på Facebook
Det var makabert. Madrassen ligger der stadig…En søster har sat lys, en buket roser og en gave fra mig…That’s it…at Friheden Station.
Det mest syrede var at der lå en anden hjemløs indenfor på stationen, han sov tilsyneladende, antager at der er nogle der holder øje med ham, men antagelser er jo, som bekendt, the mother of all FUs…
(fra min egen tid som “hjemløs” kan jeg oplyse at danskere går forbi med bemærkninger som “den stakkels mand”, turister prøver at ruske liv i en…).
På trods af denne nedslående oplevelse, havde jeg en vidunderlig uge, flere af dem.
Som i, kære læsere, vist har opdaget på Twitter, Google+ og Facebook så er jeg ret glad for @lenkaotaps projekt Udfordring.dk.
Konceptet er dette:
Udfordring.dk er pt en personlig blog med ugentlig udfordringer for sportens, selvudviklingens og eksperimentets skyld.
Ejet og vedligeholdt af Lenka (& Lenka) (red: har de mon samme Twitter-profil?).
Så hvad har det med reglerne for Fight Club at gøre? Ikke andet end at de har inspireret de to første regler for BarCamp:
1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
Det synes jeg passer fint til udfordring.dk;
The Rules of Udfordring.dk
1st Rule: You do talk about Udfordring.dk.
2nd Rule: You do blog about Udfordring.dk.
Der er som bekendt 8 regler, de sidste 6 har jeg ikke omformuleret (endnu), og det er vel også op til Lenka (og Lenka).
Udfordret
Jeg har deltaget i samtlige udfordringer indtil videre, med svingende succes, men i uge 7 2014 skulle det handle om økonomi:
I denne uge skal der fokus på hvad der egentlig når at ryge ned i kurven på en uges penge, både fysisk og online. Jeg har sat en max-grænse på 500 kr for ugen, med eneste undtagelse den bryllupsgave jeg skal købe til på lørdag.
Jeg hoppede straks på, og satte samme loft, og det burde være lettere for mig da jeg, i modsætning til Lenka (og Lenka), er enlig og – vist (nogle vil sikkert være uenig) – heller ikke udsat for det ekstra benspænd at jeg også er en anden end mig selv.
Hvordan gik det så? Jeg tabte! Men…
For det første må jeg konstatere at jeg har tabt :-(:
Jeg har brugt 502,10 kr.., altså sølle 2 kr. og 10 øre over budgettet.
Jeg skulle aldrig have givet de 6,50 kr. i drikkepenge på Café Nutid i fredags, faktisk udgør det 1,29% af budgettet…
Tweeting my day-away-e-oh, eller mit liv som “hulledame“
Billede: Wikimedia Commons User:Hansjorn
Hvordan er det så gået? Tjah, jeg “hullede”, dvs. Tweetede, alle udgifter, indtægter og andre relatede ting og markerede (taggede) med Økonomi og #udfordring, og så er det er jo legende let at lave en Twitter-widget. Jeg markerede også mine Tweets med #debit:beløb, #kredit:beløb og #valuta:iso_4217 (https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217) og #kassebeholdning:beløb.
Jeg har indsat en Twitter-widget i bunden af denne artikel, så du kan se hvor meget jeg fik “hullet”.
Vi kan beskrive et Økonomi-#udfordring hulkort, aka. Tweet, på denne måde i EBNF:
oekonomi_udfordring = blanktegn, "Økonomi-#udfordring", blanktegn, ["#debit:"
blanktegn = " "{" "}
beloeb = tal, { tal }["," tal, [ tal ]]
tal = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9"
iso_4217 = latin_bogstav, latin_bogstav, latin_bogstav
latin_bogstav = "A" ... "Z"
fritekst = { unicode_tegn }
Jeg har samlet alle mine “hulkort” op i et regneark, dette kunne naturligvis have været automatiseret, specielt nu hvor jeg har noget EBNF til at fodre en fortolker med, men jeg gjorde det manuelt.
Regnearket er på Google Drive #uge2014_07 Økonomi-#udfordring for @kim_bach
Transport – en aktiv uge
For det andet så er den største udgiftspost transport med kr. 216,40 udgør den hele 43,10% af budgettet, det skyldes at jeg har været i København tirsdag (#tagINTERNETTETtilbage) onsdag (niecen, familien og opsøgning af gamle stamsteder på Vesterbro), torsdag (foredrag om hisba og Vesper i Hellig Kors) og fredag (orgelkoncert i Trinitatis Kirke og Natkirke i Vor Frue).
Alt i alt, en meget aktiv uge.
Jeg var også udsat for et benspænd, i at jeg ikke kunne finde mit Rejsekort da jeg skulle af bussen tirsdag, det resulterede i en dummebøde. Uden den havde jeg holdt mig under budgettet (kr. 481,50). Man kan også overveje om jeg ikke skulle anskaffe mig et periodekort, på en normal uge er jeg i København 2-3 gange (mandage og torsdage, og ofte også tirsdage).
Alternativt kunne jeg begynde at cykle, der er ikke så voldsomt langt til København fra Taastrup – mindre end 20 km – og jeg har da cyklet vejen ofte. Desværre er min cykel i stykker, og jeg har ikke råd til at få den repareret, noget af en ond cirkel.
Mad – her er der meget at spare
På mad brugte jeg kun kr.112,20, svarende til 22.35% af budgettet, man kommer langt med havregryn og rugbrød og så var der to dage (onsdag og torsdag) hvor maden var gratis.
Luksus – det skal der være plads til
Der blev også plads til lidt luksus, en enkelt Erdinger på High-Q og en kop kaffe på Café nutid, alt i alt kr. 58,00, men det er alligevel 11,55% af budgettet.
Vi fortsætter da!
Det var lærerigt at tage økonomi-udfordringen, i næste uge vil jeg fortsætte med at holde øje med mine udgifter uden at sætte et budget, og da jeg skal til hele to fødselsdage samt betale et kursusgebyr, bliver det en dyr uge.
Jeg vidste godt at jeg bruger mange penge på transport, jeg vil tro at det ligger på 30% i normale uger.
I næste uge er det ikke sikkert at jeg vil Tweete alt, mine følgere er sikkert godt trætte af det, men på den anden side er det jo let at filtrere det fra, og Twitter er min hukommelse.
Det kunne bestemt også være sjovt at lege med at automatisere indsamlingen af Tweets og lave dem til et regneark, og her skal det nævnes at jeg har hentet inspirationen til synkaksen for mine “hulkort” fra DidThis en “quantified-self” platform. DidThis hed tidligere Quantter og jeg var en af de første til at teste, jeg fik det faktisk til at bryde ned mens de var midt i en præsentation, da jeg Quanttede som en sindsyg (bingo! :-)).
Jeg kan tilføje at kassen stemmer, jeg har kr. 6,50 i kontanter i lommen, og da jeg havde indtægter fra flaskesamling på kr. 61,50, vandt jeg måske alligevel 🙂
Næste uges udfordring er i øvrigt også i livsstilskategorien: “motion”, så måske jeg skal se at ofre penge på at få den cykel repareret…
Her er mine “hulkort” for økonomi-#udfordring
Udfra informationen på websiden er det uvist hvordan preadly har tænkt sig at tjene penge, preadly appen er p.t. gratis, i Politikens artikel står der at de sælger den, så jeg kan kun gisne. Enten er der tale om reklameindtægter genereret af indhold fra blogs, eller også koster det penge for en blog at deltage. Det sidste er dog næppe tilfældet, da der loves 70% tilbagebetaling af indtægter til blogs.
Hvis der er tale om reklameindtægter, forestiller jeg mig at preadly præsenterer blogindhold med deres egne reklamer. Denne side synes at bekræfte dette https://angel.co/jobs?slug=preadly-aps, underligt at det ikke fremgår af deres webside, eller også er jeg blind.
Jeg har tilmeldt mig preadly, og jeg har endnu ikke set reklamer, det kommer jo nok første senere, det er muligt at dette er implementeret i appen, men jeg har kun prøvet websiden da appen kræver iOS 7 som jeg ikke har.
Mit første indtryk er at preadly minder lidt om Pinterest. Når man logger på preadly bliver man præsenteret for et Dashboard, hvor man kan se blogindlæg, der anvendes “infinite scrolling”. Når man placerer musen over et indlæg, bliver man præsenteret for muligheder for at “like” indlægget, dele det på Facebook, Twitter og Google+ samt få vist indlæggets tags med en mulighed for at bladre i indlæg med de samme tags, der vises også et uddrag af indholdet.
Det er praktisk at have en ensartet grænseflade for alt dette, men man skal huske at man deler links til preadly ikke til bloggen, og det er nødvendigt at logge på preadly for at få delt indhold at se, dette er forståeligt og kan nok ikke laves anderledes. Når man læser et indlæg på preadly, er det dog muligt at få vist det oprindelige indlæg på bloggen.
Hvis man klikker videre til et indlæg, så er det også muligt at skrive kommentarer. Så vidt jeg kan se bliver kommentarer skrevet på den oprindelige blog ikke vist på preadly. Jeg har ikke prøvet det, men jeg antager at kommentarer skrevet på preadly ikke flyder tilbage til bloggen.
Man kan også vælge at følge bestemte bloggere, ved at klikke videre til bloggens profilside fra et indlæg, hvis man følger en blog antager jeg at der dukker en meddelelse op i meddelelsesfeltet, jeg har dog ikke set det endnu.
Jeg ville i øvrigt gerne have prøvet preadlys iOS app (https://itunes.apple.com/dk/app/id804245098?mt=8&affId=1720307), som utvivlsomt giver en meget mere lækker oplevelse end webudgaven, men som sagt kræver den iOS 7, og det er ikke grund nok for mig til at opgradere. Appen er i øvrigt “universal”.
Her er oversigt over mine reaktioner, bemærk at preadly er i testfasen (beta), og at meget sikkert ændrer sig inden tjenesten lanceres endeligt.
Fordele
Ulemper
Alt i alt er preadly, på nuværende tidspunkt, nok ikke noget for mig, og da jeg ikke er modeblogger ser det ud til at jeg er uden for preadlys målgruppe. Jeg er nu ikke i tvivl om at preadly kan generere øget trafik, indtægter og tilgængelighed og fordelingsnøglen 70/30 for indtægter finder jeg meget attraktiv, og der er jo præcedens for at 70/30 er et “sweetspot”.
Jeg synes du skal prøve preadly, og hvis du er blogger kan du skrive til blogger@pread.ly for at få mere information.
Om bloggerne så bryder sig om at få deres personlige blogudtryk presset ned i preadlys strømlinede grænseflade, det får vi at se.
I Politikens artikel står der i øvrigt at der er 12 ansatte i preadly, det er meget ambitiøst men jeg kan godt lide ambitiøst :-).
God vind til preadly!
Alle billeder er © preadly, jeg håber at min brug her falder under ‘fair use’
Picture: By Ð‘Ð¾Ñ€Ð¸Ñ Ð£. (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
Almost seven years ago I wrote an article titled “A-synchronous “swimmingâ€: How I stopped worrying, and learned how to love “presence–. I wrote the article after I was introduced to “micro blogging” or “presence” services, especially Jaiku, a Twitter like service that no longer exists. A presence service is a cross-platform service where you can share information of your whereabouts and what you’re up to, and I immediately took it to heart stating that the presence services were “paving a road towards asynchronous Nirvana”, a Nirvana that would spell the end to instant messaging and phone calls, both of which I find extremely stressful, and they would also “fix” e-mail.
I did see some problems taking that road:
I know that there are problems with the presence services. The biggest problem is that the majority of the world, isn’t ready to volunteer personal information to the public. It’s a bit like doing community service for “Big Brotherâ€.
This was in the days before Facebook shifted it’s focus to being a presence service too, so I guess the majority of the world were ready to volunteer personal information sooner than I thought.
I had no idea how right I was, but I only thought that it would apply to data that I volunteered, and I didn’t imagine that “Big Brother” would keep his own copy of my data, a bit naive since that was something Google already did. Nor did I imagine that the intelligence services would be as crafty as has recently been disclosed by The Guardian “Angry Birds and ‘leaky’ phone apps targeted by NSA and GCHQ for user data“, although we had already heard about something called ECHELON, and that it might be intercepting our e-mails scanning for keywords like Al-Qaeda.
At times I’ve done some pretty stupid things on social media, I’m not going to list them here, because the list is long, and some of them are really embarrassing. After some particular stupid updates, a good friend of mine was worried that I might be spied upon, I thought that he was being paranoid, but it was a wake-up call, and I think that I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I write since then. Now it’s clear that he could be right – we were all being spied upon, and the possibility that I, at some points, have been singled out, is not unlikely.
So what community services am I performing for “Big Brother”?
Quite the list, and I’m sure I missed some.
Apparently all of this can, and probably has been, intercepted by the intelligence agencies and most of it by Google.
So should I start worrying?
The reason I felt that I shouldn’t worry seven years ago, was that I didn’t think that I had anything to hide, and I was of the opinion that openness would render “Big Brother” obsolete, since I constantly volunteered information of my whereabouts and what I was up to on Jaiku.
Like I said, this has turned out to be quite naive. “Big Brother” is alive and kicking, feeding on our data with immense, and seemingly unlimited, appetite, growing bigger and bigger.
It seems that I have taken a path that leads away from Nirvana, and as you can see, I do way too much community service, but instead of worrying, I will revisit my article from 2007:
Currently I use the presence services like a public notebook, and it’s so convenient that you can update the log simply by TEXTing the server, most of my presence messages on Jaiku can only be understood by yours truly and, sometimes, people that know me well.
The rest of the world might gain some insight later, because I tend to use the presence messages, as a stepping stone to a blog-post, like the one you’re currently reading, or it might serve as an inspiration for posting some pictures. The positing[sic] of a presence message, can also act as an inspiration for what pictures I actually take.
Think of my Jaiku presence stream as a (public) brainstorm.
If you replace Jaiku with Twitter, you might have an idea of what path I’ll be resuming to Nirvana, and I’m still not worrying, just acting more responsibly, and have been trying to do so for more than two years now – I’ll let you, my dear readers, be the judges of that, and if I ever need to go under the radar, I know what to do:
“TUNE OUT! – TURN OFF! – DROP IN!“
As you might have noticed, I’ve recently begun using “Storify”, and I like it a lot.
From the About page on Storify.com
Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Our users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories
A common use case would be to “Storify” all tweets tagged with a specific tag, or all tweets from a given user, creating a macro blogentry out of micro blogentires in a blink of an eye.
I’d like to describe another use case, which is how to enhance an article, by extending it using” Storify”.
This week VisitCopenhagen published a nice article about the famous philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen, it was great, but as always, they only link to articles within their own portal, I felt that “something” was missing”.
This is the article on Søren Kierkegaard that VisitCopehagen has on their website. I’d like to “Storify” it by adding more “stories”, or what I’d like to call that micro-blog entries, to the article.
I used “Storify” for iPad, which is great, so I just selected the Globe icon and entered the URL for the Wikipedia article, now I could add the article.
Here’s a screenshot after I’ve added links to both the VisitCopenhagen and Wikipedia articles
I added links to Foursquare too, as well as my own comments.
I think this resulted in a nice macro-blog article, that adds significant value to the article from VisitCopenhagen, but I’d let you be the judge on that.
For convenience nothing really beats “Storify”, my main concern is that you buy into their file-format.
You can choose to save your story to your blog though, and it looks like Storify exports everything to HTML.
This was just one example of a workflow that enhances articles written by others, another example is knowledge sharing, a good example of that would be my article on #postPC, my experiences trying to replace my laptop with an iPad and a mobile.
Wishlist and a warning
The only thing I really miss with “Storify”, is the ability to collaborate on stories online, and I discovered a major problem with this. Since “Storify” doesn’t really support collaboration, I experienced that I, after finishing editing a story on my Mac lost that version because I had the story open on the iPad too, so auto-save replaced my final copy.
Best practice is not to leave a story open in the iPad editor, by always selecting “My Stories” before editing on another computer.
“Storify” is fun and makes it easier to create blog-posts, which is good, I’m not sure if the readers agree 4.5/5 stars!
Kim Bach . Org: Kim Bach . Org Colophon
flickr.com: kimbach
da.wikipedia.org: Bruger:Kim Bach
commons.wikimedia.org: User:Kim Bach
en.wikipedia.org: User:Kim Bach
Jaiku: @kimbach
twitter: @kim_bach
TwitterFon najs nok
— Kim Bach (@kim_bach) January 24, 2009
Google+: kim.bach
Jeg er ikke alene, der er folk der følger mig//Har det helt på det René//Jeg har det ligesom mig
With all the talk about g00g+ (Google+), and the comparision with facebook, I came to think about a regular usecase on facebook, can I do that on g00g+ – today?
All of the above, is possible to with facebook in approx. 15 minutes.
So take the Pepsi-challenge g00g+
Crossposted to | g00g+ | twitter | facebook | Illustration from the brilliant comic XKCD – Fanø you Mr. Randall Munroe for luring me to Google+, guess I made a splash though 😉
ps.
I’ve included a link to a discussion about the challenges businesses are facing with g00g+ from Advice Digital (in Danish) advice digital: Google+ udfordrer virksomheders digitale position by René Clausen Nielsen and Birgitte Raben. They have answered my questions: “you can’t do this – yet”. I really doubt g00g can top facebook on this – but we should all embrace, and welcome, the competion, and g00g are good at “stealing” ideas.
Update: July 19th 2011
I’ve included a link to a discussion from “digitale tanker: Thoughts on Google+ and links to great reviews” – someday I might “get” “circles” – I’ve focused on a business oriented use-case here.
Update: July 25th 2011
I’ve included a link to an article by Henriette Weber “The social network on steroids – my first thoughts on Google +” – she’s also talking about “circles” – which I still don’t get. BTW, the only reason I noticed this article was because she shared it on…Google+ 😉
This blog-post documents the process involved in solving a strange problem in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
Before I go on to describe the process, I’ll I give you the solution that worked for me, a system DLL called MSVCR71.DLL was missing from the computer that had the problem, copying MSVCR71.DLL from a computer that didn’t have the problem, solved it.
When I say “worked for me”, it means that it might not work for you, but the problem is likely to be caused by another missing DLL.
Frustration
For days I was struggling with an error that meant that I couldn’t debug web-applications from Visual Studio 2008, if I tried to debug a web-application, it would simple show a stack-dump that stated:
The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)
What made it even more strange, was that we had a completely identical computer, in terms of hardware and operating system (Windows 7 64-bit), that didn’t show this behaviour.
The most wonderful thing about the error was that it stated that a specified module could not be loaded, but it didn’t tell me which? Great!
Google to the rescue? Not really! Since this is a very generic error, and a lot of people seem to be experiencing it, and I couldn’t see any pattern in the answers people came up with.
First I tried to reinstall Visual Studio 2008, and, as I expected, that changed nothing.
From Google the evidence was piling up, some file(s) was missing, but why was it working on the other computer.
I clearly needed the help from some tool A tool called “Dependency Walker” (http://www.dependencywalker.com/) was suggested, and it told me that I was missing the files GPSVC.dll and IEShims.dll, but both files were present on the system. GPSVC.dll in a 64-bit version though, IEShims.dll was present in both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.
After strugling with this problem, looking for 32-bit version of the DLLs, I came to the conclusion that “Dependency Walker” was showing false positives, the two files seems to be hidden, at least when using the method of inspection that “Dependency Walker” uses. “Dependency Walker” might be useful to locate missing dependencies of other files, so I’ll keep it in my arsenal of tools, for this particular problem, it sent me looking in the wrong direction though.
Process Monitor
My next idea centered around the fact that a file was missing (DOH ;-)). I knew of a utility that can monitor file-system access, I just couldn’t remember the name, and Google wasn’t immediately helpful, eventually I found a mention of “Process Monitor” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx), and that seemed to be what I was looking for.
“Process Monitor” shows that there’s a lot going on, so I started experimenting with the filters, the easiest way to configure a filter is to right click on a message that looks irelevant, and then select “Exclude”, the right click is context sensitive to the column you’re clicking on.
I quickly focused on the events with the Result: “PATH NOT FOUND” and since I was looking for file-system access, I excluded all events where the Operation was begining with “Reg”, meaning a Registry access.
I suggest that you look for attempts to load a file by traversing the “PATH” environment.
Solution found: MSCVR71.DLL was missing
There was a lot of activity going on, but ended up focusing on a particular file: MSCVR71.DLL, and it was indeed missing
This screen-shot from Process Monitor highlights the problem when the MSVCR71.DLL file is missing:
After I copied the MSVCR71.DLL file to a location where it could be found by Visual Studio, the problem disappeared.
So why didn’t we see the error on other computers, with a seemingly similar configuration? It’s because the MSVCR71.DLL is distributed with several other software packages, and on the computer where Visual Studio 2008 worked, MSVCR71.DLL was installed with two packages: “Java Runtime Environment JRE6” and “DropBox”, and the installers had added these to the PATH environment variable. Since these packages might be found on many developer-machines, this could explain why this problem is not showing up more often.
BTW: Now that I know the solution, it is, of course, very easy to find a post that gives the solution DOTNET Spider: .NET Error: the specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E). Number one hit when Googling for “The specified module could not be found” msvcr71.dll.
External links
