Thoughts on the MDA Vario

You`ll find lots of reviews on the net about the MDA Vario, so I`m not
going to do a review here - I just want to mention some of the things
that I do and don`t like about it.

Overall. I love it - in fact, I`m writing this on it.

Good
The fact that it has full qwerty keyboard is great, and not only lets
you type text messages more easily, it also lets you do things that
you wouldn`t be able to do without it, like type this post. It`s
obviously not quite as good as a laptop keybaord, but if you`re used
to typing with your thumbs it`s fine.

Most settings, like the today screen, program list, and soft keys are
fully configurable.

There are some nifty effort-saving things, most of which work so
effectively that you aren`t really even aware of them - like the
screen switching to landscape mode automatically when you open the
keyboard, the phone dialler that opens when you press the dial button,
etc (there are lots more - basically everything combines to make the
phone easy to use).

Bad
The stylus is at the bottom of the phone, so that it`s on the right
when you have the keyboard slid out. I`m used to having it at the
top, so I keep moving my hand up to the power button to find the
stylus and then realise it`s at the bottom. It also sits flush with
the phone casing, making it unobtrusive, but it does make it difficult
to get out if you have very short nails.

There seem to be some things that you just can`t do on the keyboard -
like select a Word document from the list. You`d think you could just
scroll using the arrow keys and press enter, but there doesn`t seem to
be any way to set the focus to the document list without using the
stylus.

There`s a similar problem with IE - you can, technically, get to the
address box without using the stylus, but in practice you have to tab
through all the tab stops on the webpage before you get to it, which
is rather painful.

Another thing I can`t seem to do with the keyboard is insert a
non-keyboard symbol, like an angle bracket. The `sym` key doesn't
seem to do anything, in word at least, so you have to use the stylus
and the on-screen keyboard. And of course, there`s no ctl-c ctl-v for
copy & paste.

Still on the keyboard, the shift and the ... Well, I don`t know what
its official name is, so I`ll call it the symbol key (the blue dot
key) are difficult to get used to. I`m used to the concept: pressing
it one applies to the next keypress only, pressing it twice sets it
'permanently'. That`s fine. But: if you`ve pressed it twice, you need
to press it twice again to switch it off, otherwise it applies to the
next keypress again. And there`s no indication of what state you`re
in, so it can get very confusing.

Update: The sorting of contacts in the address book is also quite annoying. If I add the contact 'Cathryn Johns' (and yes, I did put myself in my address, although as 'me' rather than using my full name, which would feel somewhat silly - I never phone myself, so I do tend to forget my home, work and mobile numbers) it displays and sorts it as Johns, Cathryn. I see the point in that, and maybe some people prefer it, but I tend to know people by their first names rather than their last names, so it's more difficult for me to notice them when scanning through the list if their last name is listed first. And like my msn messenger list, I'd prefer to see them sorted by first name as well. It shouldn't have been difficult to make it optional - there is an option to view (and sort) by name or company, so why not an option for first or last name as well?

Indifferent
The word completion feature is something I used a lot on my old phone,
but don`t really use much on the vario. If you`re typing away
happily, it just slows you down to notice that one the word choices is
the one you want, move your thumb overto the cursor, select the word,
etc. It`s probably more useful for typing short messages, if you`re a
one finger typist, or if you`re not in the typing zone :-) It does
add the words you use frequently to the dictionary, which is also
useful.

Something I`d like, although it`s not crucial, is to put the recently
used programs list on the today screen, rather than on the start menu.
It might end up getting too crowded, but if the quicklaunch panel (or
something similar) could do that instead of showing predefined
shortcuts, it`d be great.

These are mostly minor issues, though - there`s a lot that they`ve done right.

ThinkGeek

Tomorrow I'll post some observations about my MDA Vario (not a review, since there are plenty of those out there already - just things that I found particularly annoying). But today, some fun stuff! I came across a link to ThinkGeek today, and since I haven't been to their site for ages I thought I'd go take a look. All I've looked at so far are the ladies' tees, but they're so great I thought I'd blog about them. Pity that (a) they're quite expensive, and (b) they only ship via DHL from the US, so the shipping would probably be prohibitive. Although, thinking about it, maybe that's a good thing - otherwise I'd be tempted to buy a bunch, and how many tees can I really wear?

But just in case someone wants to send me an early birthday present or something, here are the ones I like the most:

• cHixOr, my absolute favourite
  
• The classic There's no place like 127.0.0.1 and Binary People
• Pi by Numbers is cool
• as is ...
• I like the Geek Love Poem too
• and the retro RPG
• and though it's probably too geeky-yet-trendy to wear, I like the I'm blogging this one too.

Of course they have a whole bunch of cool stuff that isn't a tee-shirt, so go take a look.

On the topic of my current favourites, this is what I'm listening to at the moment - I tend to go for songs with lyrics that are appropriate to me at the moment, but preferably with good music behind it:

• Push the Button - Sugababes
• My Happy Ending - Avril Lavigne
• So Sick - Ne-Yo
• Wonderwall - Oasis
• The Hardest Part - Coldplay
• Move Along - All American Rejects
  

Anyway, that's it for today - more on the Vario tomorrow.

My new MDA Vario!

Got my T-Mobile contract today - the Flext 35 with Web 'n' Walk, with a 25% discount :-) I was going to get the MDA Compact II, but no-one had stock (except for one place that only had the pink one, which I wasn't too keen on). It turns out that this was a good thing - luckily one store said, "But we've got stock of the Vario", which I hadn't known was available on the special.

The Vario is basically, as far as I can see, the same as the Compact, except that it has wireless support (yay!) and a full qwerty slideout keyboard (double yay!). It's the same size as the Compact, except that it's a bit thicker. I was worried that it would be too big to actually use as a phone, but it's actually not that much bigger than my current Motorola V300 - certainly not as big as my Treo, which is what I was picturing. So it won't be embarrasing talking into a huge gadget :-)

It's not 3G, unfortunately, and some reviews say that it can be a bit sluggish since the processor is a bit slow, but I'm not too concerned (haven't tried it yet, though). And the battery isn't great - 8 days standby, only 3 hours talktime. But I'll just put it on charge overnight, so it's not a big issue either.

I'll probably post some pictures at some point (comparing to my V300, and my Nokia Coolpix P1), but in the meantime there's a fairly good review with pics here.

It's got Windows Mobile 5.0 as an OS, and comes with the Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, Powerpoint Mobile, integrated Zip, Clearvue PDF viewer, and Outlook. Oh, and MediaPlayer, and of course, Pocked IE. Even better, for me, it comes with Pocket MSN, so when my internet connection is flaky at home, or during my lunch hour at work, I can sign into MSN on my phone! With the web'n'walk package, I get unlimited internet, so I don't even have to worry about how much bandwidth I'm using. And I can check my gmail during lunchtimes too :-)

Not 3G, as I mentioned, but it does support GPRS (obviously), bluetooth, wireless, usb, and infrared. The slide out keyboard is awesome (great for text messages, at the very least!) and it has a touch screen as well. What's cool is when you slide out the keyboard, it automatically switches the display and joypad into landscape mode. It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera, which takes video as well. (Yeah, I know all this stuff is pretty standard - but coming from a Motorola V300, I'm quite excited :-). Oh, and as a bonus, when I left the T-Mobile shop, they were handing out T-Mobile stuff, so I got a pen, a keyring, and a squishy stress cube :-)

I was quite impressed that in the box is a charger, usb cable, screen protector sticky thing, and a case as well as earphones (which let you set the volume as well as answer/hang up calls).

This is going to be so cool - finally, something to do on the tube on the way to and from work :-)

The Development Abstraction Layer

I just read this really great article by Joel Spolsky (which I found a link to on GeekRant). It's about the Development Abstraction Layer, and how to get the most of out programmers. It's something that every programmer should read, every manager should read, and pretty much something that everyone in the IT industry should read. I'm not going to do it justice by trying trying to summarise or get across what it says, because it's written really well - the best thing is to just go read it yourself. I really, really recommend this.

Okay, you probably aren't going to go read it unless I show you why you should, so here are a couple of quotes:

Software is a conversation, between the software developer and the user. But for that conversation to happen requires a lot of work beyond the software development. It takes marketing, yes, but also sales, and public relations, and an office, and a network, and infrastructure, and air conditioning in the office, and customer service, and accounting, and a bunch of other support tasks.

and

Any successful software company is going to consist of a thin layer of developers, creating software, spread across the top of a big abstract administrative organization.

The abstraction exists solely to create the illusion that the daily activities of a programmer (design and writing code, checking in code, debugging, etc.) are all that it takes to create software products and bring them to market.

and one of my favourites, because it has a personal resonance for me:

If a programmer somewhere is worrying about a broken chair, or waiting on hold with Dell to order a new computer, the abstraction has sprung a leak.

But just go read the whole thing yourself ;-)

Being ET

Or, How To Phone Home :-)

But first, one of the things I love about living in not-SA: decent TV. Tonight, I could, if I wanted, watch 2 solid hours of Friends. What I'm going to watch is 1 hour of Friends, then House, and then Grey's Anatomy. (Aaargh! For some reason, I can't get 5 o Freeview! That means no House, and no Grey's Anatomy! Hmm, maybe I can switch aerials, or unplug the Freeview box...)

One of the things I hate about living with flatmates: not being able to watch what TV I want because they're watching TV (but luckily tonight they're out, so I can watch what I want).

But, back to the main topic: what's the best way to phone home to SA from the UK? There are a bunch of options, and they can be combined in various ways, so let's just rule out some of the obvious ones first: phoning directly (or calling collect) via a payphone, landline, or cellphone is a bad idea and you shouldn't do it. Actually, I haven't even looked at the costs, but it will be way more expensive than the other options.

There are basically three other options that I know of: calling cards, skype, and telediscount.

Calling Cards
There are a whole range of calling cards; I personally use the Post Office cards (backed by Nomi), which cost 6p per minute to SA, with no other costs. The actual Nomi card is cheaper, and rechargeable online, but you have to register your credit card details with them rather than just entering them each time you want to recharge, something I prefer not to do for security reasons.

Calling cards normally have 2 numbers: a toll-free number, and a chargeable number. The toll-free number sometimes costs more, but not on the Post Office card. On my landline, I can only call toll-free numbers, so that's something to take into consideration. On a mobile, you'll generally pay a surcharge for toll-free numbers, whereas phoning a local UK number comes out of your free minutes (or with Vodafone, is included in Stop the Clock).

Skype and Skype Out
Skype is free, but odds are that if you're phoning someone in SA, they're not going to have broadband and skype won't be so free for them if they're on dial-up... plus, the quality isn't going to be that good. Skype out is pretty cheap (just under 4p per minute, I think) and the quality is pretty good, generally. Of course, this means that you'll have to have broadband, and you'll have to have a skype phone, or a headphone/mike combination.

Telediscount
The final option, that I know about, is telediscount. Basically, they charge about 4p per minute, plus the local call charge, but it all gets billed to your local account - so you can't use it if your landline only allows outgoing calls to toll-free numbers, like mine. You can use it from payphones, although you'll probably pay an extra surcharge. You can use it from your mobile, but it's classed as a non-geographical number, so it will probably not come out of your free minutes/call allowance/off peak rate, so it can work out more expensive than you think.

So those are your options - there may be more, but I think they'll probably fall into one of those categories. If you know of some other, cheaper way, please let me know by leaving a comment :-)

Nikon Coolpix P1 & Wireless

Finally got my camera set up to talk to my laptop wirelessly - whew, what a mission! If you know what you're doing it's probably not too bad, but I know pretty much nothing about wireless.

First I had to get my pcmcia card to work with the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration, so that I could assign an SSID to my laptop. Then I had to set up the network on the camera - then I had to start all over, because I was using an infrastructure network instead of an ad-hoc network.

I've got it working now, mostly, although there are some clashes with my internet connection, which is a wi-fi connection to my wireless router in infrastructure mode. If I set that to connect manually, or I have my laptop somewhere where it can't connect to the router (which you'd think would be easy, considering the connection problems I have - but Murphy's Law has kicked in), then my camera connects and transfers the photos fine. But I don't really want to leave that connection on manual, nor do I want to have to change it to manual every time I want to transfer photos - it kinda makes it not so simple and easy as the wireless was intended to make it. The problem is that if it tries to connect to the router automatically, then it disconnects the camera connection. I thought I could just change the order of the preferred networks, but those 'move up' and 'move down' buttons are now disabled - it's as if an infrastructure connection will always take preference over an ad-hoc connection :-( In the advanced settings window, the only options are (a) Any network, access point preferred; (b) infrastructure only; or (c) ad-hoc only. What I need is (d): Any network, ad-hoc preferred. Pity that doesn't seem to exist. Is it so odd to want my camera connection to take preference over my internet connection?

Like I said, I don't really know a lot about wireless networks. So maybe I need to go do some research on this - but I don't really even know enough to understand what I read. So if anyone reading this has any ideas as to what I could do, I'd really appreciate it...

Update: just by the way, I kinda got this sorted eventually - I got my own router, and got much better access; it also meant that I could set it up in infrastructure mode, since I can set the allowed mac addresses on the routher. So now it works just fine with my laptop connected to the internet via the router, and the camera connected to the laptop via the router.

Gadgets & Gizmos

Camera
I bought a new camera to celebrate my new job - a Nikon Coolpix P1. It's an awesome camera, and I'm really happy with it. I've had a Fuji FinePix 1400 for about 5 years, and it takes really good pictures (it's only 1.3 megapixels, but the sharpness and the colour are excellent). But it's started to develop some problems, like it sometimes just freezes and you have to turn it off and on a couple times to get it to work again; also, one the battery cover catches has broken, so I think it's just a matter of time until the battery cover won't close at all. So those are my excuses for getting a new camera - truly, I just wanted P1 with all its cool features :-)

I'm not going to go into detail, since there are tons of really informative reviews on the net (my wireless connection is down right now, again, but do a google search and you'll find tons of great reviews). But basically, it's an 8 megapixel camera, with video (and sound, with the video - or you can attach a voice note to a photo). It's got a really good default point-and-click mode, or 16 pre-set modes. And there are various things you can set yourself, like aperture and white balance, but I trust the camera more than I trust myself, so I don't touch them :-) It's got face recognition autofocus, so if there's a face in your shot it will automatically focus on it; it's got anti-shake for the video mode (which works well - I went on a boat on the Thames, and the water was a bit rough; I tried to video it, and the stabiliser stabilised out the movement!). It's got a best shot selector, so can take a bunch of shots with varying settings and figure out which is the best; and a bunch of other stuff.

But the best part is that it's wireless! I haven't got it working yet - purely my fault, I haven't gotten around to it - but it'll be really cool to transfer photos to my laptop without digging out the cable, plugging it into the laptop, plugging it into the camera, dragging and dropping the pictures... it uses PictBridge to transfer the photos, and apparently you can transfer by date, or the selected photos, or only new photos that haven't been transferred yet - no more duplicates! (I tend to copy everything off, then not delete the photos on the camera - then next time, I copy everything again, get filename clashes, create a temp directory, copy them all... over and over. You don't want to see my directory structure).

It takes really good photos, too, and the movies are really high quality (up to 640 x 480 at 30fps), sharp and with good colour. Compared to getting a digital camcorder which takes good movies but only crappy digital stills, this takes excellent stills and good movies. Certainly replaces my need for a camcorder, but then I'm very much just a tourist-level camera user :-)

I bought mine at Jessops online, as the P1 is exclusive to Jessops in the UK - the price was better than in their physical store, and they were offering 50% off memory cards at the time, so I got a 1Gb SD card (the camera has, I think, 128Mb onboard).

Oops, almost forgot. I use (sometimes, when I get around to it), AlbumGV for annotating photos and grouping them into albums, but now that I have movies I figure I need something similar. So what I want to do is use the QuickTime API to write a C# app that will let you associate movie files with a note, group them into albums, and actually play the movies from within the app (with full pause/rewind/etc control, of course). Should be fun :-) And from there, I might even add support for still photos, eliminating the need for AlbumGV (which is a very good app, but why use 2 apps when you can write just one of your own?)

Update (30/04/2006): I really, really like this camera. It takes great photos, great movies, the wireless works great (I have to switch my internet wireless connection to manual first, since that's going through an access point while the camera connection is ad-hoc, so the internet connection has priority and keeps interrupting the camera connection, but that's minor). I rarely use anything other than the default point-and-click mode (although I use the zoom a lot, which doesn't really count since it's so simple), and I get great photos. The one thing that does bug me, though, and I'd appreciate it if anyone could give me an answer: how on earth can I get the date of the file written to the PC to have the date that the photo was taken, rather than the date it was transferred?! I don't necessarily transfer photos every day, so they end up having the wrong dates which is really annoying.

Update (28/02/2007): another update to say that I've had this camera for about a year now, and I still love it. There are four things that I think are the best buying decisions I ever made: my motorbike, my laptop, my phone/pda, and this camera. The laptop and pda, though, and to a lesser extent the bike, are cool because of the general class of what they are - having a laptop is really useful, but it could be any laptop. I love my laptop because having a laptop is great, not because having a Dell Latitude D510 is great. This camera, though, I love for itself - having any other digital camera wouldn't be as good as this one. It takes really great photos, whether you're taking a close-up in macro mode, normal distance photos (like of people), or scenic shots - the focus is always perfect and the photos come out crisp and sharp. I rarely use the scenes mode, because the automatic settings are so good. The colours are always true to life as well, and the panoramic assist mode is really great for those scenic shots - it's incredibly easy to use. The video isn't as great, but that's to be expected: it's only 640 x 480 after all; the frame rate is a bit slow, but overall it's still good. I would really recommend this camera to anyone, and after using it for a year, to still love it so much is quite a recommendation :-)

Cellphone
The other gadget I want to get is a new cellphone (or mobile, as it's called in the UK). My Motorola V300 is fine, but it's getting a bit battered and isn't 3G compatible - besides which, if I get a contract I get free new phone, and who could say no to that?

So my main motivation is really the contract - I'm on pay-as-you-go at the moment, which is great with Vodafone's Stop The Clock option for offpeak (offpeak, any call up to an hour long only gets charged for 3 minutes, at the offpeak rate!), but peak calls are really going to eat up my budget - I could get a contract with a bunch of minutes included for less than I'm using on pre-pay. (Hmm - maybe I should do a post about the cheapest ways to phone home from the UK. I'll make a mental note.)

So the option I'm looking at is T-Mobile's Flext Web'n'Walk - unlimited internet (GPRS or 3G), with £180 worth of calls or texts per month (not including international SMSs or calls, though) for I think about £32 if you order online (£42 normally). With that, you get either the Nokia N70 or the T-Mobile MDA Compact II CoPilot, which is a PDA phone with CoPilot, which is like a GPS mapping system (gives you directions to your destination). I'm not sure which is better:
Nokia N70:

• It's a nokia :-)
  
• It's 3G :-)
  

MDA:

• It's got CoPilot :-)
  
• It runs Windows :-)
  
• It's got MS Office :-)
  
• It's pink :-(
• It doesn't have a number keypad - to dial, you have to select from your address book or enter a number using the virtual keyboard :-(
• It's not 3G :-(
  

They both have all the standard stuff - camera, etc. Not sure what their relative sizes are, but I do want a small phone. I guess the question is: do I want a phone, or a PDA that I can take calls on?

Of course, the whole question is probably academic, since I doubt I could get a contract, at least via their online site. The questions they ask for the credit check are: how long have you lived at your current address? (about 3 weeks); how long have you had your bank account (about 3 weeks); how long have you been working for your current employer? (haven't actually started yet). Which doesn't inspire trust, I guess, never mind that back in SA I've two 2-year contracts, and had a bank account since forever, and can trace my address back to when I was born, here I have no history. I guess it's worth a try, though; maybe they don't really care too much unless your name is blacklisted. I'll wait till I've actually started work, though ;-)

That's it for now - should go to bed! Next time: how to phone SA from the UK, and the touristy stuff I've been doing.

As usual, I'm not sure whether to do one long disconnected, rambling post, or a couple of short single-topic posts. And as usual, laziness is going to win, and I'm just going to ramble. Maybe I'll put little subheadings in, just to make it look not quite so monotonous...

Personal Update
So. Things are going well - I accepted a job offer, and am now proudly employed again. Like I've mentioned before, I generally try not to post about work, and I think that's a policy I'm going to stick to pretty strictly. Not that many people read this blog anyway, and not that I'd spill any company secrets - but rather safe than sorry.

On the flat side - got new flatmates, who also seem pretty nice. And the big news: the landlady brought over a freeview box! Haven't got it hooked up yet, since she forgot the cable, but we'll probably have it working by Tuesday. Which means, more TV! The free channels here pretty much suck, and I've been missing watching decent TV, so I'm really excited. Of course it's difficult in a shared flat - if someone is watching something else, you can't take over and change the channel; and this place is so small that even if they're watching something that you would want to watch, there isn't really any place for you to sit and watch with them, seeing as there's only the one couch. But at least now there'll be TV that I can watch if no-one else is watching... better than nothing :-) Still want to get my own flat, though - I'm on a 6 month lease, but with a 3 month minimum stay, so I'll get settled into my new job, figure out a budget (still not used to the prices of things here), and then start looking around. I found this place via gumtree, which is a useful site, but I think I'm going to go slightly more upmarket next time and try somewhere like rightmove.co.uk - their places seem to be only slightly more expensive, but really nice.

Hmm. I was going to write more about seeing the Tower of London, and about my new camera (the Nikon Coolpix P1), and the cellphone contract and phone I want to get from T-Mobile - but real, true laziness has won out and I'll just end here for now :-)

Wireless Woes

Damn, this is frustrating. One of the reasons for moving to London, I must admit, was for broadband (which doesn't exist in South Africa, and the closest alternatives are ridiculously expensive).

So for the first week I was here, I was staying at a friend's place, and it was great.

Then I moved into my own place (own = room in shared flat, but that's irrelevant for now), and for the last two weeks the only internet access I've had is at the local internet cafe where I'd check my email quickly for news from my agents. This was because the landlord was going to get broadband set up in the flat, with a wireless router so that I could connect using my laptop in my room. It almost got done last Saturday, but they didn't have time, which was pretty disappointing. Eventually it got set up yesterday, which was pretty exciting.

Except.

It works fine in the lounge, where the router is. But in my room, which is only a couple of meters down a passage, nothing. Signal strength varies from moment to moment, from 0% up to 50%. There's one spot where it's fairly reliable, but that spot is about 1.4m high, so it's not exactly convenient. Putting my desk in that spot lowers the laptop by about, I dunno, 60cm, and loses the connection. I've tried moving the aerial around, moving the router from one end of the table it's sitting on to the other end, at that's about the best I can get. Even that good spot is only about 70% reliable, so it's almost more frustrating than it not working at all (almost being the keyword, there).

It's ridiculous, but my old GPRS connection back in SA was actually better than this (well, in that it worked everywhere; in that it was slow and expensive, it was definitely worse).

I suspect that putting the router higher up might help - I tried putting it on a stack of phone books, but that didn't work. Some on myadsl suggest putting a mirror behind the aerial/antenna (what is the proper term, actually?), or using a pringles tube to essentially focus the signal in the required direction, but the latter at least isn't particularly aesthetic. A mirror might be better, but again, given that it's a shared flat the other people might not really be happy with having an arbitrary mirror on the dining room table behind the router!

So I dunno. I've got to do something, but I don't know what. (Well - I need to get my own flat, even if it's just a teeny one. I've only been sharing for 2 weeks, and it's really not bad, and I'm sure it could be a lot worse, and at first it was a little bit less lonely to have other people around - but I'm used to having my own place, where I can do what I like. I want that again! Once I'm settled at work I'll look into it - I'm only a 6 month lease, with a 3 month minimum stay, so it's not too bad. But I digress).

Any suggestions or ideas? Anything I can do on the receiving end?

Technical C# Interviews

So back to the world of interviews - things are going well, Company A is drawing up the papers to make an offer; I had an all-day interview with Company B, which seemed to go well; I have an interview with Company C on Monday; and Company D have finally resolved their issues and want to set up a final round interview on Tuesday. Oh, and Company A want to take me out for lunch on Tuesday - somehow I've become a hot commodity, and I'm still quite surprised by it (pleasantly, though).

As I think I mentioned in my last post, most of the interviews I've been to in SA didn't have much of a technical component at all. Here in London, though, technical interviews and technical written tests seem pretty standard (as is an initial phone interview, where they also ask you tech stuff, just to check if you're even worth seeing in person). Most of it's relatively normal stuff, although it can be incredibly difficult to remember syntax and how to do certain things when you're speaking to an interviewer, or writing code in pencil on paper! So it helps to brush up on things that you maybe haven't used in a while, or regularly rely on the MSDN or intellisense to do for you. The things that have come up in my interviews include the following:

• Dispose & Finalize: why you'd want to implement them, why you wouldn't, an d the pattern for implementing them (i.e. actually writing the code to implement them);
  
• The Garbage Collector: basically what it does, how it does it, the advantages and disadvantages of having it
  
• Events & Delegates: explaining what they are, why and where they'd be used, and writing code to use them;
  
• Hashtables: what they are, how they work internally, creating your own hash codes to ensure they're unique, the efficiency of a hashtable;
• Searching & Sorting: why you'd want to, how you'd search for a specific item in a sorted list, updating in-place vs updating and resorting;
  
• Big-O notation, and the efficiency of various algorithms
  
• Attributes: what they do, why you'd use them, how to use them (including custom attributes
  
• OO Principles: explaining what polymorphism is, what the 'new' and 'override' keywords do, given a set of of base and derived classes explaining what the output would be of various method calls and why;
  
• Multithreading: updating the GUI thread from a subthread, the various thread synchronisation methods, deadlock and how to avoid it, what object to use in the lock statement, how to create and start a new thread, and how to kill a running thread, and how to deal with a deadlocked thread
  
• Basic sql queries: explaining the difference between 'where' and 'having', explaining what a query would return, writing simple queries (usually containing a join), the differences between the various types of joins, normalisation

As well as general code stuff like writing a linked list class, or writing a method to reverse or parse a string, or finding all the prime numbers below 1000.

Umm, I'm sure that there's more, but I think that list covers the basic areas. I'm not going to give the answers :P - if you don't actually know the stuff, then looking up answers isn't going to help you even just in the short term, and definitely not in the long term - but if it's stuff you know but isn't sitting at the top of your head, it might be a good idea to go and revise it so that you don't have to struggle to remember during the interview itself.

Of course, there are always the other types of questions too - what are you looking for, what have you done in the past, where do you see yourself in 5 years, can you give an example of a time when you... And those are often more difficult than the tech stuff! I used to cringe when they said, "we've got a written test for you to do", but now I think, "oh good, no more questions for half an hour or so!". In fact, one of the most difficult questions is: "So do you have any questions for me? Because there's so much you want to know, and you don't want to look like you're not interested - but very little of what you want to know can be easily phrased in a question, or easily answered (like, the vibe of the company - what's it like to work here? Or, so what will I actually be doing every day?) and a lot of it, while important, is difficult to ask without giving the wrong impression (what are the working hours? and not just the official ones, but the ones that people actually have to work? how much leave do I get? and, most importantly, how much are you going to pay me?). Most of these get answered along the way, but it's still very tricky all round.

So that's my take on interviews - I feel like I'm kinda an expert at this point :-) Of course this isn't complete - there's all that normal advice that they always give you, like be yourself, be enthusiastic, look interested, dress appropriately... and so on and so on. But that's standard interview stuff, and I'd guess most people know all that already.