Michael.NET

Time to update your feed..

2008-03-14T07:51:00.001-05:00

I'm closing down the Michael.NET feed, be sure to subscribe to the new one at The Prokrammer!

Closing time....

2008-03-04T22:23:00.001-05:00

Hey gang, I've decided to move off of blogspot and go to a self hosted solution... come on over to The Prokrammer and follow me on my coding adventures!

A New Day Dawns...

2008-02-21T11:26:00.001-05:00

Microsoft is releasing the majority of their API and promising not to sue OpenSource for interoperability. It's brought of a "broad interoperability strategy".

All I can say is. Wow. If this is even half of what comes from all of this, Microsoft is no longer the one we all knew, real changes are being effected from inside. Once I see the full details, I'll post more complete thoughts. Details on the conference call here.

The Grass May Not Be Greener Yet, But The Soil Is More Fertile

2008-02-06T21:04:00.001-05:00

The founder of the Ruby.NET project announced yesterday that he is leaving active development of that project and moving over to fully supporting the IronRuby effort. Based on everything I've heard about Dr. Kelly and Ruby.NET, this is fantastic news. Hopefully this will spurn even more activity on the IronRuby project. Some of the important quotes from his post are:

"I've come to the conclusion that the DLR is clearly here to stay - it's becoming an even more important part of the Microsoft platform."

"I now believe that IronRuby is more likely to succeed as a production quality implementation of Ruby on the .NET platform."

That's quite an endorsement. I have a feeling the next year or so will be the year of the DLR, we'll begin seeing it's API solidify with more and more languages being implemented on it.

That all said, IronRuby still has one major roadblock. That is the perception of it's corporate sponsor. I had another dev tell me this today:

"Well, ironruby is mostly being developed inside Microsoft, so almost everyone that talks about ironruby dev day-to-day does so on MS-internal mailing lists. "

John Lam say it ain't so...

The ironruby-core mailing list is fairly active, and the MS-PL is OSI approved. Yet, Microsoft has to actively be promoting these things, otherwise the outside perception will not change and IronRuby will be the less for it I fear.

What IronRuby needs more than anything right now is a large group of outside contributors, so come on down and get coding, testing, and documenting!

(Semi) Practical IronRuby

2008-01-31T09:06:00.001-05:00

So you followed the quick start I posted earlier, and you're thinking "So what? What good is IronRuby and DLR to me?" The DLR provides an extensible, powerful way to add scripting capabilities to your application. Let's take a look at how IronRuby and C# can really interact. We'll create an "IronLogo" application, consisting of a windows form we can draw on utilizing a simple DSL implemented in Ruby. Commands can be loaded via a file or through a console.

Our bulk of our application is actually going to be in C#, the details aren't important, but let's take a quick look at the class definition.

I've hidden a lot of the cruft, but the important things here are the TurtlePoint property that holds a Point object of the turtle's current location, and the MoveTurtle method. What we're going to want to do is take the current turtle's location and move some offset. Of course we don't have to write some complicated command parser, so we're going to use IronRuby and the DLR to handle all the heavy lifting. Let's take a quick look at the application's Main method:

    1        static void Main()
    2         {
    3             Application.EnableVisualStyles();
    4             Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
    5 
    6             LogoWindow logowin = new LogoWindow();
    7 
    8             IScriptEngine ruby = IronRuby.GetEngine(IronRuby.CreateRuntime());
    9 
   10             Dictionary<SymbolId, object> globalvars = IronRuby.GetExecutionContext(ruby.Runtime).GlobalVariables;
   11             globalvars[SymbolTable.StringToId("logowin")] = logowin;
   12 
   13             IScriptScope IronLogoScope = ruby.Runtime.CreateScope();
   14 
   15             ruby.Execute(IronLogoScope, ruby.CreateScriptSourceFromString(Properties.Resources.IronLogoRuby, SourceCodeKind.File));
   16 
   17             logowin.PassScopeAndEngine(IronLogoScope, ruby);
   18 
   19             logowin.ShowDialog();
   20 
   21         }

You can see a lot of the same stuff happening here as you did in the quick start, though there are some subtle differences. First, if you look at line 11 you can see that we're actually assigning a global variable to the reference to our windows form. That's right, our Ruby code will be able to access our Window form object directly, all though the magic of the DLR! Also, on line 13, I create a scope using the Runtime property of the engine, this is important as this will create a scope that has references to the right engine, context, and so forth. We learned from the quick start about the IScriptEngine.Execute command, but what are we running on line 15? Why, it's an embedded text file that contains our ruby code that implements the DSL! Would you believe it's only 15 lines? See for yourself:

    1 def up(steps=1)
    2     $logowin.MoveTurtle($logowin.get_TurtlePoint.X, $logowin.get_TurtlePoint.Y - steps)
    3 end
    4 
    5 def dn(steps=1)
    6     $logowin.MoveTurtle($logowin.get_TurtlePoint.X, $logowin.get_TurtlePoint.Y + steps)
    7 end
    8 
    9 def rt(steps=1)
   10     $logowin.MoveTurtle($logowin.get_TurtlePoint.X + steps, $logowin.get_TurtlePoint.Y)
   11 end
   12 
   13 def lt(steps=1)
   14     $logowin.MoveTurtle($logowin.get_TurtlePoint.X - steps, $logowin.get_TurtlePoint.Y)
   15 end

Here you can see we're defining four methods, they take a parameter called "steps" (which defaults to one) and then accesses the main form object through the global variable and calls the MoveTurtle method, as well as accessing the TurtlePoint method (remember that properties are really just syntactic sugar/metadata for method pairs, so we're actually calling the get method directly).

The other bit of trickery in the Main method is on line 17, this is where I pass both my engine and the scope that the above Ruby script was executed in, to the LogoWindow form.

Let's take a look at what we can do in the LogoWindow form since we have a reference to our scripting engine and scope. Let's say we want to be able to load a script of our DSL and have the application run it. Let's create a text file that looks like so:

up 10
lt 10
dn 10
rt 10
dn 10

As you can see, what it really consists of is just calls of the methods we defined above, let's see how we load such a file in the application:

  147        private void applyIronLogoScriptToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
  148         {
  149             OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog();
  150             ofd.Filter = "IronLogo Files (*.ilogo)|*.ilogo|All Files (*.*)|*.*";
  151             ofd.Title = "Apply An IronLogo File...";
  152             if (ofd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
  153             {
  154                 this.scriptengine.Execute(this.scriptscope, this.scriptengine.CreateScriptSourceFromFile(ofd.FileName));
  155 
  156             }
  157         }

Thats.... it really. See how simple that is? Loading the file results in our methods being executed and our Turtle being moved:

Yay for the power of the DLR! What if we want to be more interactive though? We actually want to open a console and let people run the commands interactively. No fear, with the DLR that's easy as well! Since this is a Windows application first, we do need to import a couple of external Windows API funcitons, namely AllocConsole and FreeConsole. Once we do that we can then create a console window and tell the DLR to open a Ruby console in it. There's some Threading trickery going on that I'll spare you from, but the method for actually opening a console looks like this:

    1         private void RunConsole()
    2         {
    3             if (AllocConsole())
    4             {
    5                 this.consoleopen = true;
    6                 Ruby.Hosting.RubyCommandLine rubycommandline = new RubyCommandLine(new Ruby.Runtime.RubyContext(ScriptDomainManager.CurrentManager));
    7                 Microsoft.Scripting.Shell.SuperConsole superconsole = new Microsoft.Scripting.Shell.SuperConsole(rubycommandline, this.scriptengine, true);
    8                 rubycommandline.Run(this.scriptengine, superconsole, new Ruby.Hosting.RubyConsoleOptions());
    9 
   10             }
   11         }

11 lines of code...and the real heavy lifting is only done in three of them. Wow. All that work, done for us. What you end up with after that is something that looks like this:

Summary

There you have it, a simple implementation of LOGO as a DSL in Ruby, running on the DLR, interoperating with our C# code. I've uploaded the above application to CodePlex for your enjoyment.

IronLogo CodePlex Project

IronRuby Quick Start

2008-01-28T09:25:00.001-05:00

IronRuby is Microsoft's, with collaboration by the public, implementation of Ruby on their Dynamic Language Runtime. There's another version of Ruby for .NET called, ironically, Ruby.NET that runs directly on the CLR. This post won't be about that though, if you want to see a comparison, look here for a fairly good write up.

Downloading IronRuby from the SVN server and compiling in VS2005 was actually pretty painless. But after that I couldn't find any, working, examples of getting an Ruby script running in the DLR. A big part of this is due to IronRuby still being officially "pre-Alpha" with the Scripting Host API in flux. Regardless, I hope this will be enough to get some people trying to use the latest SVN (rev. 75) up and running.

Building The Source

Download the latest revision from RubyForge using SVN, if you need a client I HIGHLY recommend TortiseSVN. Once you're done downloading the source, you should be able to open the IronRuby.sln file in Visual Studio. We only need to make one change, and that's to the Microsoft Scripting Project. Bring up the project properties and go to the Build tab:

We have to remove the Conditional compilation symbol of "SIGNED", otherwise the Scripting host will be looking for Microsoft signed copies of the IronRuby library, which we don't have. After that go ahead and build the solution (cross your fingers if it makes you feel better).

When all is done you should end up with a bin\Debug folder in your SVN root that looks something like this:

You can go ahead and start rbx from right there and begin playing with Ruby if you'd like. But if that's all we wanted to do we would have just downloaded Ruby, right? This is IronRuby, let's do it the .NET Way!

Hosting IronRuby in C#
Create a new Console Application solution in Visual Studio, say RubyExample. Add References to the Microsoft.Scripting.dll, IronRuby.dll, and IronRuby.Libraries.dll files.

Let's begin with the most basic, a simple Hello World:

using System;
using Ruby;
using Ruby.Runtime;
using Microsoft.Scripting;
using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
namespace RubyExample
{
  static class Program
  {
      /// <summary>
      /// The main entry point for the application.
      /// </summary>
      [STAThread]
      static void Main()
      {
         IScriptEnvironment scriptenvironment = ScriptEnvironment.GetEnvironment();
         IScriptEngine rubyengine = scriptenvironment.GetEngine("ruby");
         scriptenvironment.ExecuteSourceUnit(rubyengine.CreateScriptSourceFromString("puts'Hello World!
         \nPress Any Key To Continue..'") );
         Console.ReadKey();
      }
  }
}

Let's take a quick look at what we're doing here. We're setting up a ScriptEnvironment, this is where our Dynamic languages are going to live and play. Then out of that environment we're asking for someone who understands Ruby. After that we're just saying, hey ScriptEnvironment, run what the Ruby guy says.

So that's pretty nifty, we could also tell the RubyEngine to CreateScriptSourceFromFile and move whatever code we want out of a string constant. Which is probably a good idea for anything beyond a line a two. But what if we actually want to talk back and forth? Let's move on to the next example.

Accessing Global Variables

The easiest way to pass data between IronRuby and C# is via Global Variables. See below for an example.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Ruby;
using Ruby.Runtime;
using Microsoft.Scripting;
using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
namespace RubyExample
{
  static class Program
  {
      /// <summary>
      /// The main entry point for the application.
      /// </summary>
      [STAThread]
      static void Main()
      {
          IScriptEngine rubyengine = IronRuby.GetEngine(IronRuby.CreateRuntime());
          Dictionary<SymbolId, object> globalvars = IronRuby.GetExecutionContext(rubyengine.Runtime).GlobalVariables;

          globalvars[SymbolTable.StringToId("widget")] = ".NET";
        
          IScriptScope scope = rubyengine.CreateScope();
        
          rubyengine.Execute(scope, rubyengine.CreateScriptSourceFromString("puts 'Ruby and  ' +
          $widget.to_s + ' together at last'"));
        
          SymbolId rubynumber = SymbolTable.StringToId("mynumber");
          int mynumber = 12;
        
          globalvars[rubynumber] = mynumber;
        
          rubyengine.Execute(scope, rubyengine.CreateScriptSourceFromString("$mynumber = $mynumber
           + 13"));
        
          mynumber = (int)globalvars[rubynumber];
        
          Console.WriteLine("The variable mynumber = {0}", mynumber);
          Console.ReadKey();
      }
  }
}

As you can see I switched it up a bit and inited the Environment and Engine a bit differently, one way is more general, the other specific to IronRuby. The power of the ScriptingHost API is you can on the fly decide what language you want to use. But if you know you're only going to be doing IronRuby, you can use the above method.

The real trick is in the second line, we get a reference to the GlobalVariables of the current IronRuby execution context. Once we have that we can start assigning global variables values and retrieving them back.

Summary

Hopefully this is enough to get you started. As I continue to delve into IronRuby, I will be sure to post what I find here, so keep an eye out!

IronRuby Homepage
IronRuby RubyForge Project
Ruby Language Homepage
DLR Hosting Spec
John Lam's homepage

Developer Events In North East Ohio

2008-01-26T17:45:00.001-05:00

North East Ohio seems to suffer from a dearth of good Developer centric events. And the events we do get seem to be poorly advertised. And the developers who would be interested in planning and implementing events can often have a hard time finding like minded souls. To help alleviate both problems, I am implementing the North East Ohio Developer Events blog and Google group. The blog is intended as a place where North East Ohio based developers can hear about upcoming events that may interest them, while the Google group is a place where those passionate North East Ohio developers can collaborate and plan events. I'm hoping that we can really get some activity going in this region, I truly think it's under appreciated, and I know others feel as I do. The blog kicks off with details on the next Cleveland ArcReady event. I hear word of an upcoming Coding Dojo, with other talk of a Code Camp and rumors of a possible DevCares event both in the near future. As I get details they will be announced on the NEODevEvent blog.

North East Ohio Developer Events Blog

North East Ohio Developer Events Group

CodeMash 2008 Wrap Up

2008-01-26T16:24:00.001-05:00

A little late, I know, but I finally got some time to put my thoughts into place. First I want to send out my congratulations to Jim Holmes, Brian Prince, Jason Gilmore, Jason Follas, Dianne Marsh, Jeff Blakenburg, Josh Holmes, and John Hopkins for putting on ANOTHER wonderful event. I went into CodeMash '08 with very high expectations based on last years spectacular event, and the group did not disappoint. A quick thank you to the CodeMash sponsors for helping those folks do that job! Your loyalty to the development community will not be forgotten by this developer.

It was kicked off by a very insightful panel on how to "sell" yourself and your ideals to clients and/or colleagues. Then were the two days of sessions which were again some of the most insightful and educational I've ever had the pleasure of attending.

The keynotes were five star once again, with Scott Hanselman, Neal Ford, and Brian Geotz all doing an outstanding job.

I strongly urge everyone to go listen to Chris Woodruff's CodeMash Podcasts, as well as checkout the CodeMash site for slide decks and session audio.

Of course the other half the conference occurs after the sessions are long over and deep into the night. I had great conversations with folks like Joe O'Brien (who is a way bigger twitter addict then me, Keith) , Jay Wren, and Steven Harman that I am still digesting over.

Let the countdown to CodeMash 2009 begin!

Changes At CodeBetter.

2008-01-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

Looks like Glenn Block, from Microsoft's patterns & practices group, is now blogging at CodeBetter. I'm sure it's only a coincidence that Scott Bellware (ooold link, but only one still valid) no longer is (and had all his content removed).

Update: Glenn replied in the comments that Scott was actually the one that asked him to join CodeBetter.

Why It's STILL Good To Be Married.

2007-12-18T14:14:00.001-05:00

Since I just switched jobs and my previous employer paid me due vacation time, we had a little extra cash in our coffers. My aforementioned wife suggested I get myself an early Christmas present. As you can no doubt tell by the GamerCard on the site, I am now the proud owner of a Xbox 360 Elite. I was also able to pick up the HDDVD drive. Though unlike the list earlier in the year I did not get the wireless adapter nor Gears of War. I had already gotten a wireless bridge for the PS2, so connectivity was no issue. I ended up getting Assassin's Creed, as well as the Serenity HD-DVD. Feel free to send me a friend's request on XBox LIVE. Which, by the way, is everything I had hoped. Between the marketplace and the arcade it's nothing short of awesome. The XBox itself makes a wonderful media extender. I tried Windows Media Center, but quickly dropped it in favor of TVersity. Check it out! Now that I'm settled in at my new job, be on the look out for some blog posts in the coming days...

T-SQL Hex String to VarBinary (Improved)

2007-11-13T16:18:00.001-05:00

Peter DeBetta posted a while back with a function to take a hex string and convert it to varbinary It has a couple of slight issues, the biggest of which is it can't handle an odd number of hex digits. Below is my replacement, because it's using bigints the upper limit isn't as high, but it's good enough for most things:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.HexStrToVarBinary(@hexstr varchar(8000))
RETURNS varbinary(8000)
AS
BEGIN 
    DECLARE @hex char(1), @i int, @place bigint, @a bigint
    SET @i = LEN(@hexstr) 

    set @place = convert(bigint,1)
    SET @a = convert(bigint, 0)

    WHILE (@i > 0 AND (substring(@hexstr, @i, 1) like '[0-9A-Fa-f]')) 
     BEGIN 
        SET @hex = SUBSTRING(@hexstr, @i, 1) 
        SET @a = @a + 
    convert(bigint, CASE WHEN @hex LIKE '[0-9]' 
         THEN CAST(@hex as int) 
         ELSE CAST(ASCII(UPPER(@hex))-55 as int) end * @place)
    set @place = @place * convert(bigint,16)
        SET @i = @i - 1
    
     END 

    RETURN convert(varbinary(8000),@a)
END
GO

Does xkcd Influence Microsoft Campus Design?

2007-11-08T09:28:00.001-05:00

It appears that the new Microsoft Campus for the Entertainment and Devices Division is going to have a bar. One wonders if they are not shooting for the "Ballmer Peak"...

How To REALLY Get A Company's Attention

2007-10-26T13:35:00.001-05:00

Forget blogging, tape a letter to their door! Looks like Nick Starr was tired of not having IMAP for Gmail and decided to go right to the source. Thanks for Steve Rubel's tweet.

Two Microsoft Licenses Now OSI Approved.

2007-10-17T21:34:00.001-05:00

Am I blind, or is noone talking about this? Microsoft finally getting two approved official Open Source licenses is big news. With the approval the two licenses are being renamed:

Microsoft Permissive License (MS-PL) -> Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)

Microsoft Community License (MS-CL) -> Microsoft Reciprocal License (MS-RL)

via sburke, and now numerous other MSDN blogs now as well.

Seriously this must be being treated pretty low key, it's certainly not being trumpeted from the towers like it should. I heard many pundits say it would never happen...

Fun with Twitter.

2007-10-04T09:11:00.001-05:00

Dan Hounshell announced his new little side project RandomTweets. Basically it's similar to bash.org or qdb.us but for Twitter. Right now Dan is using the API to pull random tweets and then manually sorting through them for humor or inspirational value. He states his intention is to make the site more community driven in the future, but he's got some pretty funny stuff up there already. You should check it out!

Twitter Updates Look.

2007-10-03T20:38:00.001-05:00

Twitter, while being a canonical Web 2.0 poster child, has never really looked the part. After their database upgrades Sunday they've very stealthily updated their look.

The first hints that something was afoot was the mysterious disappearance of the "back" button to few your followee's previous tweets. Well that's back with a much slicker looking interface. It's a much classier look, less "done in the backroom" and more "done by an actual designer". Well done! It's a subtle change to be sure, but something that is easy on the eyes makes it easier to use.

Also, be sure to stop by my twitter page and say hi!

The Microsoft .NET Framework Source Available for Developers!

2007-10-03T11:48:00.001-05:00

Scott Guthrie just made an exciting post, starting with .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 the .NET libraries will have source available! This is quite the boon to developers, the ability to drill down to source level while debugging should lead to more accurate code. Of course there could be a downside, namely developers coding around implementation details rather then the exposed methods. But regardless this is a very cool move by Microsoft. It's being released under the Microsoft Reference License which doesn't give you a whole lot of rights (none really, other then to look at the source), but it's something. Considering how important the framework is to Microsoft this is a bold move. For a truly permissive license check out Mono, here's hoping there's no "patent/copyright" pollution there either...

MichaelDotNet's Leaderboard

2007-10-01T19:59:00.001-05:00

If you haven't heard, Techmeme has a new feature, the "Leaderboard". TechCrunch is heralding it as the defeating the last stronghold of Technorati. Robert Scoble is lamenting the "death of blogging". Techmeme itself says the list consists of "Techmeme's top 100 sources, including blogs, non-blogs, and everything in between", so they're not trying to be the sort of "Blog Authority" everyone else seems to be trying to make them.

I don't think Technorati nor blogging in general have anything to worry about. Technorati is suppose to be aimed squarley at blogs, in this case I'm defining a blog as "The single and unfiltered voice of an individual". Techmeme's Leaderboard is solely a list of the most newsworthy sites in a particular month, some of which just happen to be blogs.

The best authority for the top bloggers is, of course, the bloggers themselves. Until Google starts to release an aggregated form of their users's Reader Stats (which may indeed herald the end of Technorati), we'll have to turn to each other and Technorati will show us that.

In the interest of promoting tech blogs that deserve to be noticed, I provide you with my current personal "Tech Blog Leaderboard" based on my personal Reader trends:

MSDN Blogs: Surprised? You shouldn't be, Microsoft employs alot of smart people, this is the best way to find out something you didn't know before. And it's not necessarily Microsoft specific all the time.
Worse Then Failure: Geeky humor, and great examples of what NOT to do for coders.
Slashdot: Still a good resource after all these years, not a blog, yet still not on Techmeme's Leaderboard either...
CodingHorror: Everyone in development should be subscribed to this blog.
Scobleizer: Cause Robert Scoble always has neat stuff.
Robert's Shared Items: Doing all the crawling/subscribing so I don't have to.
Jon Skeet's Coding Blog: Man knows his C#.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Cause deep inside we're all evil geniuses.
Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen: I mean, doesn't the fact he's not on the Leaderboard make you question it just a bit?

That's just a sampling, alot of webcomics and non-tech blogs in my reader too.

What are some of your favourite/regular tech blogs? Is there anyone that I'm obviously missing that I just HAVE to subscribe to?

CodeMash 2008 Registration Is Open!

2007-10-01T09:13:00.001-05:00

Be sure to go and register now! The sooner you do the cheaper it is. I want to CodeMash 2007 and it was one of the most awesome experiences I had, be sure to check out my blog entries detailing last year if you want an idea of what it's all about. It's inexpensive, it's at a waterpark, it's easy to get to, people are friendly, what more reason do you need? Do you live to code? Why aren't you already registered!?

Finally, Compression in SQL.

2007-09-30T19:13:00.001-05:00

Here's a good overview of the compression in SQL 2008 and why it's a good thing. Though I don't quite get the point on memory, don't you have to decompress the data at some point? Surely this will end up using more memory resources, say you have a 50% compressed piece of data in memory, to store the uncompressed data would require another 100% on top of that, effectively using 150% more then if you just had the uncompressed data in memory to begin with. Or am I missing something? Regardless, if you've ever zipped up a SQL Backup (I have, more times then I can count) then this seems like an obvious piece of "low hanging fruit" for the SQL 2008 team. I've always wondered why they didn't at least include built in compression for database backup and restore...

What's New In The Microsoft C# Community?

2007-09-30T19:08:00.001-05:00

Charlie Calvert's Community Convergence posts are a great way to catch up with the Microsoft C# team. Be sure to check out the latest edition!

My personal Highlights:

Microsoft Gets Transparent on Wikipedia

2007-09-30T18:38:00.001-05:00

Or at least one employee does. Peter Torr, a program manager at Microsoft, admits to editing Wikipedia articles on HD-DVD in order to "[keep] the pages interesting, up-to-date, and accurate". He also comes clean about doing a bit of anonymous editing in the past and states he created a Wikipedia account so noone can "stumble" on his edits and accuse Microsoft of astroturfing or such. Which of course people will. I personally applaud Peter for being upfront with his editing, it will be up to the users of Wikipedia to decide if his comments are biased or not. I would encourage Microsoft to make a standard corporate Wikipedia account that their employees should use if they want to edit Wikipedia. Or establish a policy that they must create a MSFT* user or some-such. Though most companies are becoming transparent wither they want to or not, thanks to WikiScanner. Regardless, another sign that Microsoft is more open then people give them credit for.

Query Analyzer, Resurrected.

2007-09-29T14:04:00.001-05:00

Carpe Datum over at MSDN talks about people wanting Query Analyzer back over Management Studio. I admit, the lack of Query Analyzer has been a source of ire for me as well. I like the default Management Studio for editing databases and what not, but if I want to whip up a quick query or something I miss query analyzer. Unfortunately the solution he provides causes Management Studio to always assume you want to run a query. After a bit of fooling around, I came up with a batch routine that seems to mimic Query Analyzer pretty well. I present to you isqlw.bat :)

@echo off
if  '%1'=='' goto nofile
goto file
:nofile
echo. > %TEMP%\Untitled.sql
start sqlwb -nosplash %TEMP%\Untitled.sql
goto end
:file
start sqlwb -nosplash %1
:end

This works well for me, YMMV of course, but I hope you might find it useful.

Are You Just In It For The Money?

2007-09-28T20:29:00.001-05:00

Peter Van Ooijen made a post today that ended up being Kicked and generated some discussion. Basically he's saying that a Software Architect should code. I agree. A Software Architect should be someone who is passionate about technology and development. Some people say they were never given time to code. I say that's bullshit. Are you a developer for the pay, or because it's something you love?

If you are not passionate about what we do, get out. Seriously. I don't want you in my industry, make room for those developers who ARE passionate about what they do. Make room for those developers who spend at least some of their free time putting around with languages they don't know, technology that's just coming out. If all you want is a paycheck there are plenty of other places you can go.

I want the kid who hacks on vBulletin in his spare time for his World of Warcraft guild. I want the father who waits until his kids go to sleep and then spends a few hours hacking in XNA. Where are those people?

Why does the guy who simply got in this business because it was "hot" get promoted, while the people who Live To Code are left at the bottom rungs? Part of it is choice I'm sure, I've done the managerial bit, it's less "fun" for sure. But those in the trenches are frequently ignored, while those who read "Buzzword Weekly" make all the important decisions.

Fortunately, it seems Peter has a good architect who at least knows what he doesn't know, and that's a good start.

Microsofties Aren't Robots? Perish The Thought...

2007-09-28T19:51:00.001-05:00

Glenn Bock over at Microsoft recently blogged that he was not a robot because he uses the following non-Microsoft technologies: A Mac Mini (which really doesn't count, Microsoft doesn't make computers and as far as I am aware they still write software for the Mac), an iPod, Yahoo, Google, NUnit (MS tech related), Firefox, OpenSource, Resharper (MS tech related), Ruby on Rails, and Linux. That's all well and good, but would he still follow the Programming Promises? I bet he at least tries, though I'd also guess he's a tad biased. :) Regardless he's also right in he wouldn't be doing a good job if he wasn't examining and using alternatives, especially when they were better then the items he could dogfood. It's a reminder that we all need to continually be exploring and expanding our exposure to technology from all fronts.

Microsoft: Cool or Stuffy?

2007-09-27T22:39:00.001-05:00

Janelle at Microsoft had an interesting post asking if Microsoft was cool or not. She argues that since Microsoft launched Halo 3 and is rumored to be talking to Facebook that there should be some coolness points awarded. My personal take? Microsoft has cool people, that do cool things. But the two examples she gives are both things that Microsoft did not internally develop. Halo 3 is a Bungie product, and they're specifically talking about buying Facebook, not creating it. This tells me that Microsoft knows cool when they see it, but are they able to produce coolness themselves? Sure somethings they have are cool, Tafiti, CodeToLive is cool, alot of the stuff out of Microsoft Research is too. But is SharePoint cool? Is BizTalk? Do they need to be? Should they be? Coolness doesn't sell to CIOs, cool does play well with the people actually having to work with the products though. These are the people that will ask for or recommend things to the CIO. So by necessity I think Microsoft has to be Cool on the one side and Suit on the other. What do you think? Does Microsoft need to be cooler? Or is it hip to be square?

ArcReady, CodeToLive, and Sidewalks 2.0

2007-09-26T22:04:00.001-05:00

Attended the Microsoft ArcReady event yesterday. Got a chance to see Brian H. Prince and Josh Holmes again. I always look forward to try to absorb what I can from these two, very very bright guys.

Josh made a point to show me his new 2007 Road King, hinting that it was somehow relevant to his job. It seems that Josh is doing what looks like is going to be an awesome show, called CodeToLive. He is taking the bike across America with Steve Loethen and interviewing developers. Based on the trailer (which he showed during the presentation) and the first episode, it looks like this is going to be a blast to follow. CodeToLive is definitely a mantra I live by, developing isn't what I do, it is who I am. I'm hoping to see many more episodes from those two.

Due to an administrative error (specifically an admin confusing Kansas City and Cleveland), there was a surprisingly small turnout. That did not prevent a few spirited exchanges though, it was interesting to hear how some could not fathom how Twitter and Twittervision applied to the concept of Platforms being better products then Applications. One of the real benefits of these events is getting a chance to interact with fellow professionals in different areas with different background. Getting those unique perspectives and having a chance to articulate your own positions really helps put things into focus. So regardless of the turn out it was a worth while and lively crowd in my opinion.

Josh's presentation was enjoyable as always, interspersed with personal stories and anecdotes that help illustrate situations we may find in our day to day jobs. The first story he relayed was his treacherous experiencing trusting a single data provider, namely NavTeq. The second related to utilizing your users to drive design. His alum Franciscan University of Stubenville, had installed some new sidewalks and were dismayed to see none of the students using them. They had elected, rather, to cut through the grass along a shorter and more direct route. When the university expanded and added new buildings, the initially did not put any sidewalks in. Instead the planted grass. They then waited until the students had worn trails in the grass along their preferred routes and paved those. It's really quite a good story about the importance of user-centric and user-driven design.

Brian talked next and demonstrated how some of the concepts are used at QuickSolutions. You'd think it'd be incredibly boring, but Brian's skill as a presenter is such that you really don't notice. He demoed a bit with the BizTalk Labs site, specifically the Connectivity Service and went over some of the procedures QS uses. A joy to listen to as always.

Josh also gave us a brief overview of Tafiti (which I had seen before, but it's always good when the MS guys start doing new demos ;) ). And things wrapped up then with the usual giveaways. A few books, a copy of Expression and Office 2007. Though my chances were good I walked away empty handed, yet not empty headed :) I am definitely looking forward to the next ArcReady!

Don't forget to checkout CodeToLive, and a reminder that CodeMash registration will be opening soon!

My Nerd Score 2.0

2007-09-23T17:05:00.001-05:00

Still a Nerd God it seems...

Your Last Email

2007-06-29T10:54:00.001-05:00

When you leave a position, sending out your farewell email is a crucial part of maintaining a good relationship with your soon to be ex-coworkers. Make sure you use it wisely.

Determining the Ordinal of A Weekday.

2007-06-18T15:17:00.001-05:00

So, at work I'm having the fun experience of having to write a job scheduling app, using MSSQL as the back end. One of the things I had to figure out was how to determine of a day was, say, the first Monday of the month or the third Thursday or so forth. I couldn't find any built in functions that did this, so I had to write one. Behold:

Create Function fn_ReturnOrdinalDay
(
 @TestDate datetime
)
returns int
begin
declare
@ordinal int,
@loopdate datetime

set @loopdate = @TestDate
set @ordinal = 0
while datepart(m, @TestDate) = datepart(m, @loopdate)
begin
set @ordinal = @ordinal + 1
set @testdate = dateadd(d, -7, @testdate)
end

return @ordinal
end

When called like fn_ReturnOrdinalDay(getdate()) will return 1 - 5 depending on how many times that day has occured. For instance for today (Monday June 18th, 2007) it would return 3 since this is the Third Monday of the Month.

Behind the News

2007-06-11T09:45:00.001-05:00

But it's still sad when you find out. I hope that everyone that worked at MMORadio landed on their feet, I enjoyed the station and just found out when I went to put it on today. :/ If anyone knows any similar stations that are still on the air, or any places the DJs went, drop me a line.

An Oldie But Goodie

2007-06-07T13:50:00.001-05:00

Back in the day I used CrimsonEditor alot, it was a good, free source code editor. Unfortunately it was a one man job and the developer stopped maintaining the application in late 2004. Enter the EmeraldEditor group! EmeraldEditor intends to be a new CrimsonEditor-like editor (ugh that's an awkward scentence), written to be cross-platform and open source. But the news gets better, CrimsonEditor itself was open sourced by it's author and the EE team has effectively taken over maintenance of it! So grab the code and get cracking! I'm glad to have CrimsonEditor back and look forward to EmeraldEditor.

Flies in the Pipes.

2007-05-18T11:57:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has announced the private alpha of PopFly (love the .ms domain BTW!), their Yahoo Pipes! competitor. Looks like there's a bit of social networking involved as well with the ability to vote on user's projects and track their progress. One of the big things going in Microsoft's favor is the Visual Studio integration. See some details here. I asked for an invite so we'll see....

WTH is a GWHHM?

2007-05-11T19:54:00.001-05:00

The latest issue of Redmond Developer News has a column by William F. Zachmann (got to have the middle initial), BTW he doesn't appear to have a blog...I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. Somehow blogless commentators feel less "authorative" to me...or something. Anyway, he talks about a phenomenon that he terms GWHHMs or Gwhyms, otherwise known as "Geeks WHo Hate Microsoft". His main point is a good one: "Remain open to alternatives that make sense when they do in fact make sense." However, I think he comes down a bit to harshly on the "alternatives" in my opinion.

He does a good job of condemning some of the zealotry that's out there, but unfortunately he really only talks about half the problem. There is another side. GWOLMs (pronounced Qualms) or Geeks Who Only Like Microsoft. Much like Gwhyms, Gwolms are found in every IT department across the Industry. They will turn a blind eye to any and all solutions that are not stamped with the Redmond Seal of Approval. They can cost your company thousands of dollars in licensing fees for potentially inferior products. They are the ones who dismiss AJAX until Microsoft releases their AJAX Library or dismiss Ruby until Microsoft releases IronRuby and then fawn over how wonderful it all is.

Don't get me wrong, I love Microsoft in a number of ways, I make a living coding in C# using the .NET framework. However I also run Firefox as my main browser and use a GTK based IM Client (Pidgin). I use these not because they are open source or because they are not Microsoft. I use them because they are (in my opinion) the best solutions out there. I recently utilized PDFBox in a solution for the same reasons.

Also, I can not agree with his recommendation to make Microsoft solutions your "default choice", my advice is to look at all possibilities in a problem area and choose the best one that fits in with your style, budget, and resources. One shouldn't have a "default choice" in my opinion.

Personally, that's why I can't wait for the next CodeMash, a conference like that epitomizes how software development should work (incidentally Microsoft was a sponsor of CodeMash, so even they realize the importance of learning from one another).

Day of Dot Net: Ann Arbor, MI.

2007-05-10T09:22:00.001-05:00

Ah the first real blog post in a while, and even this is late, hoping to get back in the groove here with this one!

After leaving Cleveland at 6am I ended up arriving at Day Of DotNet a little late. Not too bad for a three hundred mile drive, I ended up walking into Josh Holmes' talk on "Architecting the User Experience" (part of the ArcReady series, this was like a sneak-peek) about 10 minutes late. What I saw was awesome though , definitely some things to think about. Jason Follas, who I met at CodeMash and an organizer for DoDN, was kind enough to grab my name tag for me in exchange for me doing a head count of the session (76 people if you're curious).

After having a few minutes to mull over what I had heard, it was time for the next session. "Hardcore Reflection" by Dustin Campbell. This was by far the most valuable session of the the day, for me. Dustin was a great speaker and really knew his stuff. I learned alot there that I'm looking forward to using in my day to day work.

I then had a chance to attend red-gate Software's vendor session, mostly a bore-fest infomercial. Then Lunch, Domino's pizza (if you could get it), I had a couple pizza's and called the wife.

Off to "Next Generation UI" session by Mark Miller. Poor guy, his speaking skills are awesome, but the technology did not want to cooperate! I heard his second session went well, but I had opted to go to "Multithreading in Windows Forms Applications". Patrick Steele gave a good talk on the basics of multi-threading a form application, I was hoping for something more in depth, but all in all a good refresher.

Then we had the Microsoft Vendor Session, which was also hosted by Josh Holmes, he didn't have anything prepared so I threw out the DLR and IronRuby. Well, he didn't have IronRuby, but we got to see some of the DLR in Silverlight 1.1 with IronPython, cool stuff! Someone asked about Silverlight on Linux (which Mono is working on). Josh said that if it made business sense Microsoft would do it (being that they're a business and all), but he didn't think that the Linux made much business sense right now. He's probably right (though I did rib him a bit about Dell putting Ubuntu on consumer systems now), but sometimes developer and community good will pays more then a strict bean counter could see. Could you imagine if Microsoft announced Linux support for Silverlight? I think it would be a brilliant PR move myself. You keep saying your open and look at these cool standards and we're cross platform, and blah blah blah. Just do it already! :)

Anyway, wrapped up the day with Brian Prince's talk on "Agile Processes", I didn't get a chance to hear Brian speak at CodeMash, and I must say I came away impressed. He's quite an awesome presenter! I hope to incorporate some of his company's ideas into my own practices, and at least I'll be more prepared if I ever get a job at an agile shop.

I was glad I went, I learned alot and had a great amount of fun and will be attending the next one! We need more events like this in the Northeast Ohio area!

Thanks Anyway

2007-04-12T20:31:00.003-05:00

Must. Blog...

2007-04-02T12:28:00.001-05:00

It's been way too long, way too busy. How Busy? Why....this busy!

Busy Time

2007-02-18T20:02:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the lack of postings, work has been kicking my butt. We have an important client coming up so my energies have been pretty focused on that. But there have been a few things I've noticed going on around the net.

Carlos Men'steal'ia vs Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan is my new favourite person just for the utter way he destroys Carlos. At a deeper level though it's an interesting allegory for intellectual property rights. There's ideas and then there's implementation. It's one thing to take an idea and expound upon it, it's another to steal an implementation outright. (as an aside Microsoft's spell checker recommends "Menstrual" to replace "Men'steal'ia").

Give Me A Friggin' Break

Rex Dixon & Scot Duke's new site. It's kind of like digg but with a satirical twist. Have you ever seen something that made you go "Give me a friggin' break!"? Well here's your chance to share it with the world. It's a fairly well done site that's gone through some cosmetic changes since it's been launched, I'd wager it'll go through a few more, but the idea is a good one I think.

Havidol

Is something missing from your life? Feel like all your material possessions you've acquired isn't enough? Do you want more then more? Perhaps Havidol is right for you. Take the self assessment and find out!

GMAiL.pl

So much for that "Do No Evil" slogan. I still think this may be the year that Google looses it's luster. With all the bad press the time may be ripe for a new geek friendly search engine to take the throne. Remember, it was word of mouth that made Google, it can break them just as easy.

Always A Bridesmaid

Poor Mark Martin. He's literally within seconds of winning the Daytona 500, and up comes Happy to steal it from him. He's the eternal runner up. Nice guys don't finish last, but they do finish second alot. I wonder if there'll be a backlash against Harvick, regardless his late run was amazing. I'm more upset at NASCAR for not throwing the caution.

Microsoft: Stop Making Fun Of Us

2007-02-03T21:49:00.000-05:00

This is probably old, but I found it funny:

via AmberMac

But Does He Have An Eye Patch?

2007-02-01T09:29:00.001-05:00

Looks like someone was trying to make a buck off of Microsoft and Adobe. Microsoft is heaping praise on the Sheriff department for making the arrest. I especially like the name of the task force: "Computer And Technology Crime High-Tech Response". "High-Tech Response" sounds like they should have friggen laser beams on their heads.

Apparently the guy made three quarters of a million dollars selling SQL Server and Creative Suite 2 on eBay (excuse me "online auction sites"). Of course Microsoft makes $750, 000 every 37 minutes. So that's a major criminal off the streets.

They're calling this a "mid-level" piracy operation. It was one guy selling two products online....I think they may be overstating it just a bit. I'd expect a "mid-level" operation to having three or more people and be making a couple million a year. But then I'm not in copyright enforcement.

The thing that really surprised me is the guy was 64 years old. I could see if it was some punk kid, but the guy should have known better. One thing I do know is that he's praying he doesn't end up in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.

WinDevPowerTools Launches

2007-01-29T13:29:00.001-05:00

Jim Holmes and James Avery's book "Windows Developer Power Tools" now has a companion website. WinDevPowerTools is a simple, yet interesting website. Once you register you can create your own toolbox letting you share with others those utilities you find useful. You can then browse via the tag cloud and "love" those tools you think worthy.

Right now it appears that only Jim and James can add tools (they're working on getting the ones from their book up). I think a tool submission page would really be useful. Letting users submit tools would add to the overhead of the site of course, and I'm not sure if the authors are willing or able to take the responsibility. Even though currently the only method of getting a tool added is to email James. So maybe it would actually free him up more. However, I think a user based submission method could really add to the usefulness of the site. There's a definite feeling of community trying to be built (after all one of the authors helped organize CodeMash), freeing up the tool submission process would really increase that. Maybe that's coming down the road.

The site opens up the possibility for some interesting statistical profiling. Adding the ability to add some user specific profile information (i.e. industry, location, etc) could lead to some interesting information beyond the current "Most Loved Tools". I'd be interested to see what tools were in how many toolboxes broken down by industry, location, or even age group. Right now you just submit desired nick, email, and desired password. Which may be a big plus to some people, but limits any of the interesting reporting that would be possible. Of course any demographic information should be totally optional.

One of the hallmarks of the developer community is the sharing of information, a site like this could definitely help with disseminating information on tools. I could see sites created for Mac and Linux very easily (maybe with companion books?), with a unified toolbox between the sites. Especially with the number of open source cross platform tools.

WDPT is a site just starting out, but with the possibility of being very useful to the Windows developer community, sort of a FreshMeat for the rest of us with a bit of social networking for spice. Be sure to check it out!

Microsoft Mea Culpa

2007-01-29T10:08:00.001-05:00

Microsoft's Dan Fernandez has issued a statement apologizing for the company submitting a patent that appeared to copy BlueJ. They have promised to pull the patent submission and investigate what caused it to be filed in the first place. Microsoft has always had a bad image with patent applications, and this is just the latest in a series of bad PR moves. The most recent of which was the RSS Patent Controversy. Nail Kennedy at the time commented that there were some patent worthy inventions in that case, but that the patent as a whole was probably invalid. Nail's summary is also relevant to this latest episode, specifically where he mentions the importance of patents in the Microsoft culture:

"Microsoft employees receive an inscribed granite cube and a financial reward for each patent granted. The trophies are often displayed with pride for any visitor to quickly count. If you possibly invented something you're encouraged to submit a patent to reward yourself and the company."

It's obvious that Microsoft employees are being a little over-zealous on filing for patents.

I wonder if it's a managerial problem personally. How far fetched would it be to believe that employees in some groups have a "patent application goal" that they are to meet? Perhaps they're throwing stuff at the wall for their manager's sake, not really believing any of it will stick (i.e. get past legal).

Regardless, Microsoft has to re-examine it's patent application structure or the bad blood will continue. The developer community is wary of software patents to begin with. For every point Microsoft gains with the developer community for an open standard or some cool technology, it loses two points for every sinister looking patent application.

Kudos for Microsoft for doing the right thing in this case though! Remember, they're like "Blaster" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, not evil, just big and dumb.

Categories/Tags FeedFlare

2007-01-28T18:28:00.001-05:00

I went ahead and bit at one of the101 FeedFlare ideas on the FeedBurner site. I went ahead an wrote #25: Display categories/tags. See how to set up the flare here. Oh and if you don't use FeedBurner, I highly recommend it. Let me know what you all think!

Why It's Good To Be Married.

2007-01-28T18:21:00.001-05:00

If I didn't have a wife, I'd probably have all the toys I want...I'd have an XBox 360, a Nintendo Wii, and a PS3. I'd also be living at my parent's house and very very lonely. Me and my wife have a good back and forth relationship. I'm the spender, she's the saver. I'm the little kid who never grew up, she's the little kid who had to grow up fast. In alot of ways we really do complete each other. Sometimes she has to work very hard to reign me in.

I've been itching to get a next generation game system since I purchased my HDTV earlier this year. The PS2 in 480p just does not cut it. Being a new father one as to be responsible. As my loving and caring wife is quick to remind me. This quickly eliminates the PS3 from contention as a possibility. Even I can't rationalize a purchase like that. So that leaves the XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii as finalists. While the Wii is fun to play (my brother's own one), the XBox has something that no other console has: XBox Live.

XBox Live is simply the killer app for the XBox. My brother's (who live at home, are sometimes lonely, and have every video game system imaginable (they're also quite a bit younger)) have shown me this. All my other gamer friends who have XBoxen have shown me this. No other gaming system has an infrastructure that can come close to what Microsoft has put together.

The only debate has been if I should wait until the new revision comes out or if I should get it now. Well, as my wife was quick to point out, with a 3 month old "now" isn't going to happen. I've been told that I have to save the money up first and pay with cash for the system and accessories. With the date of the new revision ranging from "soon" to "June" to "Christmas", I've decided not wait on Microsoft and will purchase the XBox as soon as I have the money saved up.

I've already got a start. With the $100 gift certificate I won at CodeMash and a $20 rebate from SanDisk, I figure I only have about another $700 to go in order to get everything I want (including the HDDVD drive). Here's the breakdown:

Xbox System   399.99
Wireless Network Adapter 99.99
Xbox Live Gold 12 month  59.99
Gears of War Game  59.99
HDDVD Player   199.99
---------------------------------------
Total:     819.95
Less:    120.00
Remaining:   699.95

So I got a while to go, and the new XBox will probably be out by the time I get the money together (not to mention no one will be playing Gears of War by then). In order to help expedite this process I'm opening the floor for donations. If you feel like helping a guy out, feel free to click on the donation button on my blog and send me some cash (even if it's only a buck). This isn't any charitable cause, you won't be able to deduct this from your taxes, you won't get monthly letters from the child who you're providing an education to , you won't get any stickers to put on your car to help you get out of a ticket. In fact, if all you have is a buck to donate, go to them first please. But if you can help me out, you'll get the satisfaction of knowing you helped a fellow gamer out. If I get enough donations that it significantly helps me towards my purchase (more than $300) I'll let my readers choose my gamertag.

Regardless, I'm happy that I married the woman I did. She makes me a more responsible person, I'm actually waiting and saving up to buy something. I never would have done this before I met her, I'd have just thrown it on a credit card and let my balance go up some more. Honey, I love you. Even if it does drive the child in me crazy.

Please Help Support My Gaming Habit: Friends don't let friends play Sony.

Scoble Gone Wild

2007-01-27T16:19:00.001-05:00

Robert Scoble did an interesting tour of Intel's new fab plant yesterday, he thought so much of this video that he is beside himself on the number of sites that didn't post it. Robert thought that this video was so important to be linked that he admits to comment spamming in an attempt to have major sites link to it!

I really don't understand what's going on here, increasing traffic to his site doesn't increase any revenue for him (his blog has no text ads on it), he's already a well known and influential blogger. Who cares of Engadget and Gizmodo isn't linking your stuff? Maybe it's because PodTech.net is a /direct/ competitor? Furthermore, I wouldn't consider Engadget nor Gizmodo to be a "blog" really. They're both too large and commercial oriented to have the feel of a personal blog.

Scoble does air a concern that the era of linking to each other is over. However, he does not provide any hard evidence for this assertion. I think it would be an interesting experiment to examine some of the bigger blogs in Technorati say, and see who they link to and how often.

I don't think the problem is a lack of linkage, I think the real problem is bloggers producing unique content. Most blogger's are more concerned with getting listed on digg, they regurgitate some other site's story with a little flair added in, and hope they can get on the front page. If you want the link, break the story or produce the content! And if you're so big that you're competing with other sites, don't be surprised if they don't link to you out of habit!

I'll just chalk up Robert's rant to us hitting the most depressing time of year. I still love you man! *blogger man-huggers*

The End Of An Era

2007-01-26T15:43:00.001-05:00

Palm OS is dead, Long Live Garnet OS. Not. As Paul Thurrott noted, they'll be gone so quick we won't have time to care. We should have known that the end was near when the first Palm phone running Windows Mobile was released...though now I guess it's a Garnet Phone...or is it an Access Phone? How the mighty have fallen, I still miss my Palm IIIxe.

Sysinternals Suite Published

2007-01-25T15:39:00.001-05:00

I found out that the Sysinternals Suite has been published by Mark Russinovich via MSDN Blogs, ironically there's no mention on his blog about this release. Anyway, Sysinternals stuff has always been good, but the Suite page doesn't list the contents of the download. It only contains this vague description:

This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault.

So in the interest of community involvement, for your reading pleasure, here are the contents of the Suite:

accesschk: return access rights by user or group
accessenum: shows you who has access to what
adrestore: undelete active directory objects
autologon: autologon utility
autoruns: view system startup info in a gui
autorunsc: command line version of the above
bginfo: create backgrounds with system info
cacheset: control the Cache Managers working set size
clockres: find timer resolution
contig: by file defragmenter
ctrl2cap: makes the capslock a control key
dbgview: display DbgPrint calls
diskext: Display volume disk-mappings
diskmnt: diskmonitor for NT
diskmon: monitor disk access
diskview: disk sector utility with GUI
du: disk usage
efsdump: encrypted file information
filemon: monitor file access
handle: show open file handles
hex2dec: convert hex to decimal
junction: Create NTFS symlinks
ldmdump: dump the logical disk managers database
listdlls: show loaded dlls
livekd: realtime kernel debug
loadord: display device load order
logonsessions: lists active logins
movefile: move inuse files on next reboot
newsid: change a computer SID
ntfsinfo: file system info
pagedfrg: defrag page file and registry.
pendmoves: show file moves scheduled for next reboot
physmem: physical memory viewer
pipelist: view current pipes
portmon: Monitor port activity
procexp: Process Explorer, monitor running proccess
ProcFeatures: process information
Procmon: monitor file system, registry, and processes
psexec: execute processes remotely
psfile: show remotely opened files
psgetsid: display SID of computer or user
psinfo: get system info
pslist: process info
pskill: kill processes
psloggedon: whose logged on?
psloglist: dump event logs
pspasswd: change passwords
psservice: control services
psshutdown: shutdown/reboot a computer
pssuspend: suspend a process
regdelnull: deletes nondeletedable registry keys
reghide: creates hidden registry keys
regjump: go straight to a registry key
regmon: monitor registry activity
rootkitrevealer: scan for rootkits
sdelete: DoD compliant secure delete
shareenum: scan file shares for security holes
sigcheck: File version and signature checker
streams: view alternate NTFS streams
strings: strings utility
sync: flush data to disk
tcpvcon: console version of tcpview
tcpview: view open sockets
volumeid: set labels on FAT or NTFS drives
whois: whois service
winobj: object manager viewer
zoomit: zoom and draw on the screen

These are all great utilities, now that you know what's in it, grab the Suite from Microsoft!

Social Networking For NASCAR Fans.

2007-01-25T11:58:00.001-05:00

I saw this post on Rex Dixon's site "Technically Speaking" on Infield Parking, the new social website for NASCAR fans. I've been a NASCAR fan for a few years now, so this intrigued me. One of the pluses that IP has going for it is that the President and Co-Founder is Little E himself Dale Earnhardt Jr. This fact will instantly give the site credibility to a large segment of the racing fan population (though admittedly there may be some who will forgo it just for this reason).

So I decided to sign up. When you first hit the site, the one thing that stands out is the slick design. It looks clean and professional. Registration was a breeze, but why do some sites insist on emailing you the password you set in clear text? I would recommend they use https for authentication and please don't email me the password I just set up 2 minutes ago in plain text. If you're going to show me what I typed twice in the email, why block it with asterisk when I type it in at the web site? The other thing you have to do is pick a favourite driver, some people have more then one or would rather not specify, so I don't know how that'll work. Then you can set up your "Infield Parking Space", the cool thing about that is the profile pages aren't random numbers, it's a nice intuitive URL naming structure. For instance my profile is here: http://www.infieldparking.com/Michael_NET. Easy to remember and type.

The other strength of the site appears to be its forums. Forums are the way to build community and IP has a nice selection of them with a fairly active community. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out up to the February launch.

The NASCAR fan base (and drivers for that matter) are no longer restricted to the original south base that started the tradition. There's plenty of tech and gadgets in NASCAR for any geek to enjoy. If you haven't checked it out before, I suggest at least giving it a glance, it's much more then people just turning left.

Dare vs Mike: Live at Wikipedia!

2007-01-24T22:27:00.001-05:00

It looks like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch has gotten a little up upset over Dare Obasanjo's experiment on Wikipedia editing. It seems Mike knows how to stir things up, the digg article on the situation is up over 300 diggs at this moment. Mike Arrington is saying that this Wikipedia page is "vandalized". Hardly, Dare simply posted a fact about some people's opinions of the site. Granted it was biased, but that was exactly what Dare was trying to point out.

The question of how to handle obviously biased articles on Wikipedia is a touchy one. You'll hear alot of talk about democracy and freedom of speech in this situation. The problem with democracy is that it's nothing but the rule of the mob. Even if everyone agrees on something, that doesn't automatically make it right. Had no one edited the TechCrunch article back to it's original state, or added in the opposing view point (as what was done) then no one could argue that democracy wasn't followed and freedom of speech wasn't respected.

Mike seems to feel that one sentence on Wikipedia espousing an opinion about someone's credibility with a couple of links to blogs that assert this, is "The Man Holding You Down". The problem with this thought is that you can then argue that anyone that doesn't agree with you or that questions you is simply trying to "silence your view point". This is a common tactic of people who have no argument. Such a knee jerk reaction does nothing more than strengthen your opponent's argument.

The ironic thing is that 1) Mike's original article on TechCrunch was hardly anti-Microsoft, and 2) Dare's purpose wasn't to attack Mike Arrington. Dare was simply trying to point out a flaw in the Wikipedia system, namely that it's a pure democracy where mob rules and not true neutrality.

The whole situation could be resolved by allowing people to edit Wikipedia articles that reference themselves or their companies as long as they do it in a transparent manner.

Is It Astroturfing Even When It Really Is Impartial?

2007-01-24T16:38:00.001-05:00

Microsoft is embroiled in another "scandal", between this and the Ferrari Fiasco it's been a bad couple of months for ol' MS. It's really undeserved in my opinion.

Especially this latest Wikipedia thing, if you go back to the source that started all this hoopla (and was in fact linked on the Slashdot article), you can see that Rick Jelliffe was not paid to promote Microsoft's worldview. In fact, reading the opening paragraph to his article sounds like a nice bunch of reasons why it would have not been in Microsoft's interests to even contact him:

My first computer was a Mac Plus. Loved it. My second computer was an AT&T Unix PC running System V. Loved it long time. My third computer was a Sparc running Solaris or SunOS. Loved it. At work I run Linux, Open Office, Firefox, Eclipse, etc. No drama. For the last six years I have been running a little company making Java programs. Love Java. I do a little open source development, in particular with the Schematron program (quite like it!), but I have also contributed some code to the Flamingo/Substance project over at JavaDesktop, which provides novel looks and feels and more modern GUI components.

Doug Mahugh actually posted to the Slashdot thread with the contents of his email to Jelliffe where he states that all Microsoft was interested in was to get more informed and less-one sided discussion going on. If Microsoft is going to ask a professional to take some of their time to review something and elicit their unbiased input, isn't it only fair that the professional is compensated? If Microsoft was serious about not preapproving any of the changes and honestly wanted to simply open up a discussion they felt was being stymied, they should be applauded not condemned. Replying to the Slashdot thread took incredible courage and guts from Doug, and I applaud him for doing it. I don't see Microsoft as evil, I think the mob is more evil then Microsoft ever could be, and in this case the mob is blowing it out of proportion. Ironically they've done exactly what Microsoft and Doug had hoped:

Good to see the tone of the Open XML debate getting some broad attention and analysis. I'll leave it up to others to reach conclusions, but as always I have confidence that most people are reasonable, and will reach reasonable conclusions from the facts.

Let's turn the debate in a more general manner. What if other corporations sponsored editors to take an unbiased look at articles they felt were skewed? Would this be a problem? I don't think so, and here's why. If the sponsor thought the editor was unfair (or just didn't like what they posted) they could stop paying the editor. But if the editor was no longer being paid, then they have no incentive to edit, and the sponsor looses in that the biased slant can easily come back (in fact all it takes is a revert!). Honestly, if Microsoft paid me to review something or add my view (not theirs) to a discussion, because they thought the current dialogue was onesided, I would have no stronger desire to lean in their favor. Why would I? I'm not their employee, I'm doing them a favor by taking my time to check something out, and they're paying me for that time. Here's the kicker, it's not my full time job. And it wasn't Rick Jelliffe's either, he wasn't offered a position, he was offered compensation for a favor. Nothing more. Haven't you ever given someone a beer because they helped cut your grass?

We did it! CodeMash #1!

2007-01-21T18:50:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Christopher Grant for pointing out that CodeMash moved from #2 on Technorati's search to #1:

Amazing! That kind of exposure can only be a good thing for this unique and wonderful conference.

CodeMash Number 2 Search on Technorati!

2007-01-20T21:23:00.001-05:00

And has been all day:

Only "Colbert Oreilly" is higher. A Midwestern developer conference beating out iPhone says something, I think.

CodeMash: Day 2.5

2007-01-20T17:49:00.001-05:00

Scott's keynote on LINQ was very cool. The concept of using specific keywords for data access (the what not the how) is one of those things that when you see it, you ask why noone's really done it before. I hope other languages and platforms really do pick it up and run with it.

After the keynote I headed to Lean Software Development presented by Mary Poppendieck, which was a great talk and very thought provoking. I look forward to reading some of the books she recommended and at least attempting to put some of the techniques described in practice.

Luckily Bill Wagner's talk, an Introduction to Functional Programming, was in the same room so I got to just hang out while they set up for that. Bill's talk was quite a compliment to Scott's keynote. Bill really showed the power of the LINQ syntax when used against objects and while implementing lambdas. Very cool stuff, I really need to move away from .NET 1.1 as soon as possible.

After that was Lunch, where we got to see Drew Robbin's first python program as they randomly selected the Blogging contest winner (twasn't me). I've seen a couple people complain about the lunches, but for me it was more then good enough. If people really wanted a full blown meal there were restaurants in the resort. And if box lunches keep the price down, then I say change nothing!

Anywho, after lunch it was off to Neal Ford's talk on The Productive Programmer. It was amusing to watch him drink coke out of a pepsi bottle, but the talk was very good. I was happy to see that I was already doing alot of the things he discussed (and can't imagine people NOT doing), but there were alot of utilities and subtle tricks he brought up that I will be sure to use. I look forward to the book!

Then it was on to the last session of the conference (for me), Jim Holmes' presentation on "Improving your testing with Open Source Testing Tools". Lot's of good stuff, and since I hadn't really been introduced to unit testing and what not before, this talk was very interesting. Fortunately I was able to trade in the book I received at the end of mash giveaway for a book on C# and NUnit. Which should be useful.

Speaking of the end of CodeMash meeting, I ended up coming in second place in Pillar's CodeOff challenge. I'm sure I'll put the gift card to full use. The object was to move a company of 100 employees from a building of four floors to a building of six floors while minimizing costs and keeping product teams together. My entry is here, if you're interested.

We also got to see Brian Prince and Josh Holmes shave their heads! That was exciting, even though we didn't quite get 500 blog posts in the time allotted, I think we did pretty good and Brian and Josh were awesome about it (I hope Brian's wife forgives him!).

I must say this was a very awesome experience and I would have never met the people I met or learned the things I learned anywhere else. Thank you for all the organizers for putting on such a great conference, and for just being cool people and to all the speakers I heard and had the honor of hanging out with (even though I'm just an annoying newb). I look very forward to CodeMash 2.0.08 and plan on being there!

CodeMash: Day 2.

2007-01-19T09:00:00.001-05:00

Well, since I had to check out I'm now lugging my laptop around. So you'll get some live blogging from CodeMash today! Yesterday's dinner and after dinner was very cool. I got to meet the pyOraGeek herself, Catherine Devlin. We were both looking for the OpenSpace meeting on Social Networking but couldn't end up finding it (the location on the post-it looked like it read "laguorauer"), so I ended up at Joe Brinkman's OpenSpace on Open Source on .NET.

Joe's get together was very well attended with a couple dozen people talking about GPL and tools and all kinds of Open Source goodness. After that it was pretty much hanging around in the great hall mingling. There is an amazing amount of talent at this conference and it's been quite a humbling experience. I thought I had learned a lot, I've barely scratched the surface. One thing I have learned here is that I know nothing.

I had a chance last night to listen in while Neal Ford, Joe O'Brien, and two other gentlemen were talking Ruby, Java, and Macs. I must say the level of talent was awe inspiring, I am now convinced that at some point in my life I must own a Mac. The opportunity to listen to people that were knowledgeable and passionate about some technology that I haven't had a lot of exposure too was what I think CodeMash is all about. I had the pleasure of sitting in on that conversation until they turned the lights off in the hall around 11pm. We were the only group left there, and we took this as some sort of subtle hint.

After that I made my way to the bar, again, and not learning my lesson the other night I didn't get back to my room until 1:30am. So at 1:30am, buzzing from the booze, I decided to work on my entry for Pillar's CodeOff challenge. That kept my busy until 2:00am. I was able to get it done though, I did a little tweaking today at their booth and submitted my entry. Here's hoping something good comes from it.

Anyway, I'm eating breakfast at the moment, waiting on Scott Guthrie's keynote, and almost just choked to death on my minibagel. So I'm going to go and concentrate on eating before I kill myself.

CodeMash: Day 1.5

2007-01-18T16:20:00.001-05:00

Today's been really interesting, a lot of good talks. I was out a bit late last night with some of the people from CodeMash, very cool group. I felt very inadequate being at the same table as some of those really smart guys and it was awesome of them to let me hang around. Luckily one of the guys there hadn't eaten dinner yet either, and since organizing a conference endows the organizers with amazing powers, I was able to get dinner after the kitchen closed. So after stumbling to my room around 1:30am, I didn't notice that the alarm clock was 12 hours off. Needless to say my alarm didn't go off at 6:30 am like I expected. So I work up around 8:00am and had to rush to get down in time for breakfast.

Glad I did, Neal Ford's keynote to kick off the day was awesome. Neal's a great speaker and has a knack of making just about anything interesting. I then made my way to the fist session of the day, "Building and Deploying Smart Clients with Visual Studio 2005", presented by Keith Elder. Very good stuff with a focus on Deployment, which is what I do. ClickOnce, and it's automatic updating, should be quite useful.

Partially on the basis of Neal's keynote, and partially because I've been curious for a while, the next session I decided to go to was "An Introduction to the Ruby language", by Joe O'Brien. Joe pretty much convinced me that Ruby is the next language I will use. The flexibility is amazing, and as Neal mentioned in his keynote, the ability to create DSL's is something that would help tremendously at my job where we do a lot of the same things over and over again and in ways where the base languages we use aren't very good at expressing what we're doing.

That brought us to Lunch, were we got to listen to Bruce Eckel's keynote on the world being dynamic. Which was a very good, and very entertaining keynote. Though at times it seemed like an advertisement for Burning Man, mostly because at times there seemed to be a number of slides from Burning Man thrown in with no apparent relation to the subject. Bruce mentioned he had just reordered the deck, so that may have something to do with it. At times though, the effect of the Burning Man picture with the topic at hand was quite profound.

After lunch I got to go to "Beyond TDD", presented by Ben Carey, all the Ruby guys were talking about test based development and talking down us compiler guys. Even though, as I told Joe, unit testing is just as important for compiled languages as interpreted. You can create a program that compiles that does nothing you expected. So anyway, Ben's presentation was fairly good, and definitely worth seeing. His slide deck was awesomely put together and quite professional looking.

I didn't get any pictures today because I wanted to really enjoy the sessions, I'll probably have some from the dinner and attendee party though. So keep an eye out!

I'm taking a break from the last session before dinner to write this post and to relax. After dinner they're having an Open Spaces meeting on Social Networking before the attendee party. I'm looking forward to that as I've just recently gotten involved in the social networking space. That's all for now really, I'll probably have another post up tonight (I don't plan on staying out quite as late, unless someone offers to buy.....). Talk at y'all later!

CodeMash: Day 0.

2007-01-17T22:03:00.001-05:00

Just got back from the expert panel on languages, it was most enjoyable. I think they did a pretty good job. I would say Bruce Eckle and Neal Ford pretty much stole the show, but everyone was very informative and entertaining. One of the interesting things I heard was the rise of Domain Specific Languages, something that's been rattling around in the back of my head for work. The only real complaint so far is the wireless connection, it does to drop alot. For instance I've been fighting to upload pictures to flickr for almost a whole hour. Anyway, I've been taking pictures, here's the flickr link. Feel free to tag 'em up!

At CodeMash!

2007-01-17T17:42:00.000-05:00

I'm here! I already had a chance to play the Nintendo Wii since I signed up to win one ;) I'll be the guy taking pictures and posting them to flickr.

Off To CodeMash!

2007-01-17T14:24:00.000-05:00

Well I'm just about ready to leave for CodeMash, next time you see me (and some of you will see me) it'll be at the Kalahari. :)

Botch The Vote: Always Check Your Links!

2007-01-16T18:53:00.001-05:00

Blake Ross pointed out that Rock The Vote is honoring the Good Dr. King by linking to a site which, under even a cursory examination, is obviously a hate site. This is a good lesson and reminder to always double check every thing you plan on posting before you blare it out on the net for all to see. Failing to do that may have cost one webmaster his job.

**UPDATE: 1/17/07@8:40am** Looks like they finally fixed their link. It now points to The King Center. Took them long enough. And one has to wonder...why didn't they just do that in the first place?

Jack and Ahmed Go To White Castle

2007-01-15T23:31:00.000-05:00

24 this season so far as been as awesome as ever! And tonight's episode...well..I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but HOLY CRAP! But every time I see Ahmed, I think of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

In fairness, Kal Penn has done an amazing job, but I still half-expected Ahmed and Scott to light up a fat one...

Dirty Jobs At The Gates Of Dell: CES Keynote Analysis.

2007-01-15T16:15:00.001-05:00

Todd Bishop has an interesting analysis of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell's keynotes up, using Tag Clouds and textual analysis. I think a glance at the tags is pretty revealing of the differences between Apple and Microsoft. The biggest tag in Job's cloud is "Phone" followed by "iphone" and "ipod". Clearly Steve's keynote was very focused on the ipodination of the consumer electronics market. Bill Gate's biggest tags are "great" and "devices" ("windows" and "vista" seem to come in third and fourth respectively).

I find it interesting that one of Bill's biggest tags is an adjective, whereas Steve's is a product. While Bill's keynote may have been less focused than Steve's, Apple's head salesman's highest ranking adjective (which is also great) is somewhere around fourth place. See, a lot of people think Bill's keynotes are boring compared to Steve's; and for the most part they're right. It's the same way that a cool cell phone commercial with the latest teeny popper hit is more exciting than the Discovery Channel. Steve Job's Keynote is nothing more than an advertisement for the ipod and the iphone. Bill Gate's Keynote is more about a vision, the way Microsoft would like the world to be. A lot of "Great Devices" powered by "Windows Vista". I think Bill has a far grander vision than Steve. Steve is just better at packaging his product.

As for Michael Dell... his biggest tags seemed to be gaming, home, online, great. So he's interested in "Great Home Gaming Online" it would seem. Honestly I haven't listened to Dell's keynote so I don't feel qualified to post any opinion, anyone out there that does?

***Edited: 1/15/07@10:30pm*** Figured since I made Scoble's Shared Items, I should make my post make sense. :)

Revealing....

2007-01-12T20:15:00.001-05:00

Indeed... the job of the President, no matter his politics, is a hard and thankless one. In the interest of equal time:

1992

2000

I didn't always agree with him, but I respected him, and thank them all for their sacrafice.

Programming Promises

2007-01-11T14:35:00.001-05:00

A few days after reading Ted Neward's post about checking your politics at the door and using the right tool for the job, I read this post from "Reed Me" over at Microsoft. Granted, Reed has a point. There's no one you've paid money to (unless, as he points out in his comment, you paid for support) that will update your Time Zone tables for you in order to accommodate the 2007 changes. However, the tone of his post irked me and I had to reply. I won't go into the details of our back and forth here (you can read our thread at his blog here), but it did make me think of what I think a good programmer should be. So here are my Programming Promises:

I promise to get the job done.
I promise to use whatever tools I need to, regardless of politics.
I promise to listen to the Closed Source and Open Source zealots equally, and then dismiss them.
I promise to support, as long as I am able, any closed source applications I may release.
I promise to release open source any applications I can not, or will not, support.
I promise to learn as many languages and libraries as possible, regardless of politics.
I promise to engage with as many other programmers as possible, both in person and online, in order to learn from them; regardless of politics.
I promise to not bash Microsoft nor GNU, nor others like them, everyone has a place in our industry.
I promise to use both Windows and Linux, both have their uses.
I promise to ask questions when I don't know the answer, and answer questions when I do.
I promise to learn from my mistakes, and to try to the first time.
I promise to listen to any idea, however crazy it may sound.

That's all I have for now, I'll share more as I think of them. What other Programming Promises are you willing to make?

CodeMash Gearing Up!

2007-01-11T13:04:00.001-05:00

It's a week from today! And now they have a Google Group set up, already 50 people are members and the conversation is starting. We're Mashing up before the Mashing, ha! I'm looking so forward to this, and Dianne...do you think we could get an Adult Entertainment Expo next door at the last minute? Pretty Please? Anyway, get in the group and start meeting your fellow attendees ahead of time.

Someday, Apple WILL Win.

2007-01-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

Why? Simple, because they can do something Microsoft can't or won't. Bring competitors together. Google AND Yahoo together on stage! Who would have thought it? With Microsoft screwing their partners, while Apple is brining competitors together, one has to wonder how long until Microsoft implodes. Apple is shrewd indeed. They talk like the iPhone is competing with cell phones, when what it's really competing with is Microsoft's UMPC initiative. What we have is not a phone, but an ultra portable computing platform. It just happens to make calls. So Apple beat Microsoft's Zune with the iPod and is now going to beat Microsoft's UMPC with the iPhone. The only way Microsoft will win is through sheer force of will (and dollars), which is not to be discounted in this case. Bill has to be fuming.

Blogger Issues?

2007-01-09T11:14:00.000-05:00

While the question may be ironic on this blog (note the domain), it looks like Blogspot may be having some problems, there's a number of blogs I can't access today, inlcuding http://ohiomedia.blogspot.com. Indeed Google's very own blog Buzz seems to be down. Here's hoping I stay up long enough to send the word out...

Note: I couldn't use Live Writer to send this... and it took forever for the dashboard to come up....something's wrong..

The Lament Of Those Who Cannot Go.

2007-01-07T22:18:00.001-05:00

Oh man am I tempted to call up Scoble and be all like "Hey man! I want in on the BlogHaus, can you send me some plane tickets? Oh and can I bunk with yas?" All the CES talk has me a bit bummed that I'm stuck here doing my normal, boring job stuff. Oh sure, I have CodeMash in a couple weeks, but it's in Sandusky not Vegas, and it doesn't have an adult convention next door. Poo. So a little piece of me dies every time Scoble picks someone else up in his limo. Looking through my feeds, it looks like there's a ton of bloggers there, alot that don't even necessarily cover consumer electronics regularly on thier blogs. I'm sure the face to face is wonderful, unfortunatly I can't afford in either time or money to go, hopefully there'll be something in the Midwest/East Coast some time soon. I'm looking forward to the Microsoft annoucements most of all, but every year is exiciting to see what toys I'll be buying in the next year or two. Well, while you are are out there enjoying the lights and booze, think of all the hundreds of thousands of bloggers that are stuck at home, wishing they could be out there having fun with y'all. At least CES is one of the most covered events on the web, with all the live coverage I'll at least feel like I'm almost there.

XBox361: Of Sales, HDMI, and Points.

2007-01-05T23:18:00.001-05:00

With word on the next version of the XBox360 coming out "soon" with some nice upgrades (HDMI = yummy). I'm sure glad I didn't push to get my wife to let me buy one over the Christmas vacation. I'm definitely saving up now with the intention to buy one when it's available.

The real question is...how many other people are doing the same? How many purchases is Microsoft going to loose this quarter while people hold off for the XBox361? Of course with 2 million XBoxes sold during the holiday season compared to only 750,000 for the PS3 [source], the climb is probably insurmountable. But still, it should be interesting to see if there's a dip in XBox sales over the next few months.

I also believe that the inclusion of an HDMI port strongly points to the possibility of a HD-DVD drive being built in. If that happens, and Microsoft is able to keep the price of the XBox around where it's been, HD-DVD will win the format war handedly. Of course this would probably piss off the early adopters, and purchasers of the external drive, more then the hard drive upgrade.

Another interesting bit of Xbox speculation occurred at Scobleizer today. Robert speculates on Microsoft leveraging the XBox platform outside of the gaming world and throughout it's Live family. I personally think it makes sense, though achievements may not be the best way. Imagine instead micro-payments of Microsoft Points (notice that they are Microsoft Points and not XBox Points...hmmm), maybe instead of an achievement it's half a point or some such. If the console manufacturers ever decide to allow person to person point transfers (which Microsoft says they eventually want to allow), it would be interesting to see if a third party point system could develop. What if you could earn XBox Points that you could convert to Wii Points or whatever the Playstation ends up with? Or convert it to cash? A gamer point market seems like it would be fun, profitable, and good for all three consoles.

Google Waves To Digg And Others

2007-01-04T09:28:00.001-05:00

With yesterday's post from the googlereader blog detailing how they've added the new personal stats feature, a number of people have speculated on Google releasing the information in an aggregate form. As speculated earlier on this blog and others, Google may be in a position to compete in the social web with the likes of Digg. Of course this would require aggregate data on individual posts (which I'm sure they're gathering). Another site that Google could easily compete with would be Technorati, the stats that they're currently showing are for individual feeds, which usually correspond to an individual site. It would be trivial to provide a listing of most read and most shared feeds, those would be some interesting stats I think. Maybe call it Feedorati? Regardless, I'm expecting with 2007 to be the year of the Social Web that Google will be adding alot more social aspects to their services, and this is likely a step in that direction.

Useful Programming Skill #2

2007-01-03T22:42:00.001-05:00

The ability to NOT overengineer a problem. One of my latest tasks was to take a spreadsheet and update a SQL database with data from that spreadsheet. A pilot had already been run, I was responsible for developing a deployable script. I asked the pilot team to send me the script they used. Turned out they took the spreadsheet, converted it to XML using a XML map, and copied and pasted that into the script. They then used OPENXML and proceeded to use a cursor to update each field one-by-one. Ostensibly, this was done for logging purposes. I replaced it with three update statements using OPENDATASOURCE direct to the spreadsheet with inner and left joins. Much more maintainable and likely more performat. Remember, just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. And XML does not solve everything (sacrilege I know).

Can The Social Web Make A Difference?

2007-01-03T12:19:00.001-05:00

Rex (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him Rex) pointed me to this site. The aim is to raise a million dollars in 30 days for kids with dyslexia and learning disabilities. A worthy cause, make sure you digg the article so we can get the word out. I think Rex brings up a bigger question as well, can the Social Web truly make a difference? Is it big enough, and well connected enough, to really have an impact in the lives of those who are not a part of it? I think the answer is yes myself. And if it's not currently, it's certainly heading in that direction. Unfortunately this is the first I had heard of 8wishes and their self-imposed deadline is in a week. So hurry up and get the word out!

Useful Programming Skill #1

2007-01-02T13:49:00.001-05:00

Knowing when to quit and start over. Sometimes whatever design or architecture you're working on isn't the right one. The trick is knowing when to admit you were wrong, stop and start over. The sooner you realize you've gone down the wrong path, the better. I've just spent too much time trying to embed a number of controls into a ListView in an efficient manner. I went so far as to override WndProc and try to do the scrolling myself. Ah well, a left/right pane approach is probably better anyway.

2007 Is Here!

2007-01-01T00:03:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year Everyone! May 2007 be happy and safe for you all. :)

Blog Wars

2006-12-30T23:00:00.001-05:00

The political night continues...it'll be short, I promise :) Just got done watching Blog Wars on the Sundance Channel. While the title would lead one to think that it would be about the back and forth between blogs in the political world, what it turned out to be is far different. In the end it seemed more about the rise and endorsement of the left-wing bloggers then a balanced look at both sides. But still, the behind the scenes look was somewhat interesting. It could have been subtitled "How We Think The Daily Kos Is Changing Politics".

Microsoft and Ford

2006-12-30T22:52:00.001-05:00

It looks like Ford is partnering with Microsoft to release a new autocomputing platform next year. Since I bleed Ford Blue, and will be needing a new car soon, this is exciting news. I hope my Escort lasts one more year so I'm not limited to the Focus or the Five-Hundred. Oh, and please hold the "Fix Or Reboot Daily" jokes.

The Mythical Internet Savvy Conservative. (or why it's time for a changing of the guard)

2006-12-30T21:50:00.001-05:00

As Teresa points out on her blog, the same old men (and women, of both parties) have been in charge of the country for a long time. According to the Congressional Research Service the 109th Congress was the oldest in history (average age 56 years (Senators averaged over 60 years! (Representatives averaged 55))). When you consider that the minimum ages for Representatives and Senators are 25 and 30 respectively, then you get some idea how long these people have been running the country. In fact the longest serving congressman is John Dingell, Democrat Representative from Michigan. Mr. Dingell first took office in 1955. That's over 50 years! The founding fathers never imagined congressional terms this long. They believed in the citizen congress. Congressmen were meant to serve few terms and then return to their professions, politics where not meant to be their profession.

Obviously it's time for some young blood, from both sides of the aisle. John Edwards has shown that the time of the young, internet savvy politician is, if not here, at least close at hand. Given that Al Gore invented it, it's not surprising that Democrats/Liberals are often viewed as more internet savvy then their peers. Though being young and Democrat doesn't automatically mean you're an internet expert.

But at least the Democrat's have somebody. Where is the internet savvy Republican/Conservative? Contrary to the popular wisdom; there are plenty of small-government-wanting, personal-responsibility-believing, technically savvy people out there. Why aren't any in politics? Are they too intelligent? Is John Edwards simply the smartest idiot? I would be very interested to see how a internet wise conservative candidate (Republican or third party) would play out, I think the results would surprise a few people. If anyone knows of such a person, please let me know.

My Other Side...

2006-12-30T16:07:00.001-05:00

I haven't actually seen this one around too much, looks like I'm Big and Bad and I like it!

Michael.NET's results are:
Michael.NET is Apocalypse

Apocalypse		91%
Magneto		86%
Dr. Doom		81%
The Joker		76%
Lex Luthor		74%
Venom		67%
Riddler		67%
Green Goblin		65%
Dark Phoenix		62%
Juggernaut		57%
Kingpin		56%
Mr. Freeze		53%
Two-Face		49%
Mystique		45%
Poison Ivy		43%
Catwoman		36%

You believe in survival of the
fittest and you believe that
you are the fittest.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

The SuperHero Quiz

2006-12-30T16:02:00.001-05:00

Looks like I'm a Super Ironman...(coincidently two of my favourite superheroes growing up), this seems to be the popular thing to post lately, which one are you?

Michael.NET's results are:
Michael.NET is Superman

Superman		80%
Iron Man		80%
Spider-Man		75%
Green Lantern		65%
Robin		60%
Catwoman		60%
The Flash		55%
Hulk		55%
Supergirl		53%
Batman		50%
Wonder Woman		28%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Sharing Non-Feed Items Through Google Reader

2006-12-28T12:00:00.001-05:00

With the recent talk about Google perhaps replacing Digg as a social news/link site, a lot of people made the point that you can't share non-feed items through Reader. While it's true that you can't click on a URL and add it to Reader, there is a work around. Admittedly it's technically a feed...but it's your own personal feed of links.

The first thing to do is to setup an account on del.icio.us (note: Originally I wanted an all Google solution, if there was a way to embed HTML in Spreadsheets (or if notebook had RSS feeds) then del.icio.us wouldn't be necessary, and if Google Bookmarks ever becomes shareable with an RSS feed then watch out), this will be where all the non-feed items you want to share will be put. After you've registered browse to your bookmarks (http://del.icio.us./username) at the bottom of the page they'll be an RSS icon, right click this icon and select copy link. Since Google Reader doesn't like del.icio.us feeds for some reason, we have to burn it. Go to FeedBurner and follow the directions on burning your feed. Add the FeedBurner feed to Google Reader.

Now, here's where the trick comes in, once it comes up in Google Reader, Click the Add to folder button and select new folder. Let's give it a good name like...Shared-Links. You should now have a folder that contains the feed of your bookmarked items. Now in order to share it just go to your Settings, click the Tags tab and you'll see a list of all your folders, including the newly created shared-links. There'll be a grayed out RSS icon and the word private in the third column. Simply click the icon and the folder will become public.

Click on the "view public page" link and you'll be given the URL for those items, in my case it's http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/17930628540914156026/label/shared-links . As you add items to your del.icio.us account they'll appear on that page. You can then spread both your Link Blog and your Bookmark Blog. Enjoy!

Google vs Digg?

2006-12-27T09:25:00.001-05:00

Steve Mermelstein of /usr/bin/geek asks what would happen if Google started using some of the stats in their Google Reader app to pull up the most popular stories of the blogosphere (ie techmeme, technorati, et. al.). A couple of others have also picked up on it now. Google Reader's shared items and starred items certainly seem ripe for the picking, I'm surprised there's not already a "Most Starred" and/or "Most Shared" story page. Could Google Reader really be a stealth entry into the user-generated news business? With Blogger recently adding an easy way to put AdSense on their user's sites, you can definitely see Google wanting an easy way to draw people to their user's blogs. Remember, Google's primary business is Advertising, a site ala Digg, using blogs from their Blogger Service has the potential to draw a lot of revenue. Of course not everyone uses Blogger, but how many people use AdSense? It's really in Google's best interest to be driving as many people to as many blogs as possible, and putting a user-generated news aggregation service on their front page would sure do that, and nobody would even have to work that hard! No more "digging" just hit "s" or "shift-s" as you're going through your feeds. And there'd be no overhead for Google, everyone is responsible for their own blog! It's a win-win.

Post-Christmas Report

2006-12-26T13:19:00.001-05:00

Christmas was very enjoyable. Since Marissa doesn't have to be on the apnea monitor 24/7 any more we got to take her out an about. The resulting activity caused her to sleep very well over the night! I also got my first chance to play the Nintendo Wii first hand, it really is a different experince. Wii Sports shows off the console and control schemes very well I think. It's also quite a work out in the end! Twillight Princess is enjoyable, but not quite as revolutionary as Wii Sports I think. The channels show real promise, but there's not alot there, browsing with the Opera browser (trial edition) is suprisingly enjoyable and functional (Youtube on the TV is a sight to behold).

In the Technology arena we have the whole Wikiasari news hitting, seems the founder of Wikipedia is setting out to revolutionize searching. TechCrunch posted a screenshot that purported to be an early beta of the service, but Jimmy Wales denied it's related to Wikiasari. Has one of TechCrunch's readers pointed out to them, the screenshot seems to be from this site. As Michael Arrignton asks, if WikiSearch isn't Wikiasari...what is it? And will Wikiasari contribute to the end of the Google Era? 2007 looks to be the year alot of sites go mainstream. Youtube get's sponsored by Chevy, and Myspace get's used by the Colts. The next week or two should be interesting...

RSS Patent Controversy: Microsoft Responds, Sorta.

2006-12-23T17:40:00.001-05:00

Sean Lyndersay, Program Manager Lead for RSS at Microsoft, has responded to the RSS Patent Flap. Microsoft is essentially saying: "We only patented what we feel is some cool additions we invented, we promise not to try and take over RSS." Niall Kennedy has a good in-depth analysis of the patent application which essentially says "Most of this stuff is all obvious prior art, there's a few new ideas, but not many." He also asks the scary question of "What other "inventions" are yet to be unveiled as the patent system's 18-month privacy rolls forward?".

Oh Rudolph Won't You Guide My X-Wing Tonight

2006-12-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

Stephen Griffen over at MSDN as discovered an easter egg in LEGO Star Wars II. The Santa Clause code was already known, but he discovered a Rudolph Code (using strings no less)! He's asking for your help getting a screenshot, so leave him a comment with a link to one if you can.

Amazing What Editing Can Do

2006-12-22T11:15:00.001-05:00

Just a spoonful of sugar....

Happy Geekolidays!

2006-12-22T11:10:00.001-05:00

Marcel Ortiz and Satish Mathew of the Windows PowerShell team posted this powershell script on the powershell blog yesterday. Save the script as a ps1 file, open up PowerShell and run. You'll be quickly in the spirt! If you don't have PowerShell, download it here. Then we have "Software Wonderland" from The Braidy Tester. WillItBlend asks if you want to drink your Christmas dinner. And last but not least, Happy Holidays To You! What geeky ways are you celebrating the season?

Is 2007 the end of the Google Era?

2006-12-20T14:46:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of buzz in development circles lately about Google deprecating it's SOAP Search API and replaced it with an AJAX widget. Dave Megginson laments the End of Open Web Data APIs, I'm not so sure about that. I think it's a bad move for Google, in that it 1) Makes it less easy for windows developers (as Scoble points out), and 2) It'll make developers less trusting of Google in the future. Obviously Google doesn't want to loose ad revenue, but that might be easily fixed by requiring AdSense on a hosting web page. Or via some other method. Good news though, some people are fighting back. I'm sure EvilAPI will be getting a C&D letter soon, but it's a valiant effort. Google is really shooting themselves in the foot here, Microsoft also still has their SOAP search API. I've recently started really drinking the Google Kool Aid (tm and all that) from an end user stand point, but now I'm really questioning taking the leap as a developer. My instincts say to stay with the 800lb gorilla that can't afford to drop things on a whim. In addition to that news, there's also word that Google is starting to deceptively advertise it's own products (specifically the one that this blog is hosted on) with the ads disguised as "tips" while you search. Maybe they forgot the "Do No Evil" part? It's looking like the honeymoon may be coming to an end. If developers jump ship, and people start writing more apps that utilize Windows Live services....Google may just fade into the background like Pets.com. As the man said, "Developers, Developers, Developers!". Microsoft loves them, Google can obviously care less. Regardless of what actually happens to Google in 2007 (I doubt they're going anywhere anytime soon), I get the distinct impression a line as been drawn, and perhaps an era has come to an end.

Scoble On Some Magazine's Announcement

2006-12-17T21:46:00.001-05:00

One of Scoble's recent posts briefly mentions some announcement by Time magazine. I think I'm going to follow his lead...the blog world is just overrun with this news (Technorati lists 700 blog links), I can understand why, but it seems a tad narcissistic. So I'm just not going to link it myself.

McDonald Night Football

2006-12-17T21:07:00.000-05:00

My little bro sent me this video, I think McDonald's should figure out a way to run this!

A Day Late, A Dollar Short

2006-12-15T14:25:00.000-05:00

Just as I decide to really start a blog, this news from the BBC hits. It seems that blogging is going to "peak" next year because "most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so". Here's hoping I'm just a late bloomer :)

CodeMash Conference

2006-12-14T23:15:00.000-05:00

I guess I should explain the picture in the upper right hand part of the page. CodeMash a development conference that's actually taking place in the midwest! These things never happen close to where I live and this is right down the highway in Sandusky, Ohio! CodeMash is a way for developers of different backgrounds a chance to mingle, I look forward to learning something new. And at $99 you can NOT beat the price. If you still need to convince your employer that you need to go I HIGHLY recommend this blog post from Jim Holmes one of the founders, he lays the case out pretty well. And if you still need convincing..it's at the Kalahari Resort!

links:
CodeMash
Kalahari Resort
Why Conferences Matter, and How To Pitch To Your Boss - Jim Holmes

Happiness

2006-12-14T21:26:00.000-05:00

...is your baby daughter sleeping on your chest. :)

21st Century Santa

2006-12-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

Microsoft announced today that the one and only Santa Claus was going to be available for live chatting exclusively on their Windows Live Messenger service. It's amazing to see the changes that occur to things within one's own lifetime. When I was a good the thought of a "modernized" Santa wasn't really widely thought of. Now he's using IM to chat with the kiddies...AND he has a blog (though Manga Santa is scary)! Simply amazing.

Good Eats, Good Beer.

2006-12-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

Today was the holiday lunch meeting for my department at work. It's a very nice time, usually we go some place nice, last year it was Dave&Buster's, this year we went to Claddagh Irish Pub. Very nice atmosphere, it has a nice brick and stained glass motif that really lends something to the experience. They also have a nice selection of Irish beer, I enjoyed a good Smithwick's with a Corned Beef and Slaw sandwich. The manager took time to go through everyone in the department and relay what their accomplishments were, so it was a good feeling to hear your name and be recognized. The two beers didn't hurt either. Twas a good day :)

Cool 3D Tech in Vista

2006-12-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

The Windows WPF Team announced today the ability to use interactive 2D windows elements on WPF3D spaces, I think Tim Sneath's blog lays it out a little clearer though, could this be the start of true 3D applications? The mind boggles. I can't wait until I can start using this stuff at work!

Sad News

2006-12-13T13:11:00.000-05:00

Frank Barone (Peter Boyle (who was also Young Frankenstein)) has died. :( "Everybody Loves Raymond" is a staple in our house in the evenings. Our thoughts go out to his family.

Back to the Future Timeline

2006-12-13T11:29:00.000-05:00

Wow, the people on wikipedia have waaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands, it is uber cool though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_timeline

via digg

Command Line Fu.

2006-12-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

Now this is kind of funny. I'm sure there's times my wife has felt like that, poor woman, I love her so.

The Joys of Fatherhood...

2006-12-13T08:21:00.000-05:00

Marissa was fussy last night, I think she must have had some gas pains because she was hiking her legs up to her tummy now and again. Kept me and mom up all night though *drinks his Starbucks*, it's going to be a loooong day.

My Current Obsession...

2006-12-12T21:43:00.000-05:00

Trying to figure out a way to change IE7's user-agent string on a per connection basis....at the moment I think the trick is finding out what the current connections HINTERNET handle is...but how to get that out of IE? If anyone has any ideas feel free to drop in a comment...

Greetings Fellow Earthlings.

2006-12-12T11:52:00.000-05:00

Well...my first blog post ever. Uh...Hi, nice to meet you all. I'll be posting probably mostly development stuff. I'm a C#/.NET/SQL developer so that'll probably be mostly what's posted here. I'm also a new father, my baby girl was born at the end of October, so if there's some rambling it's due to lack of sleep :)