Pillars of the tech community giving back
I saw over on Clemens Vasters blog that a number of pillars in the tech community are going to be auctioning off services, with all proceeds going to help Tsunami victams.  This is just a fantastic way for these individuals to help the tsunami victims, bravo!  I'm sure more details will be forthcoming, so be sure to watch Clemens' blog, I know I will.

Mark Miller speaking at CT .net sig

How did I not know this yet?!  Mark Miller, of CodeRush and Monday's fame, will be speaking next Tuesday at the Farmington MS office.  Kick ass.  I have become quite a fan of his listening to him both on Dot Net Rocks, and Monday's, and am now really looking forward to the talk.  Maybe I can even get it from the horse's mouth when we might see a public Refactor! beta for those of us not priviledged enough to have a subscription  :)

Details here

DotText2DasBlog release

Just updated the source and binary local links.  Source is also in CVS.  I really need to start releasing on sourceforge.  Anyway..

Only update is it works with categories now.  Like works, not funky works, but works  :)

Ensight.org contest prizes

A while ago I had won a contest.  In case you were living in a bubble, Jeremy Wright sold some blogging services on ebay.  If you don't read Jeremy’s stuff, I would highly suggest you subscribe.  He is quite a blogger, and is set for quite a venture.  It should be exciting to see where he goes, in spite of other recent unfortunate events.

Back to the point, I was the lucky reader who guessed closest to where the auction closed.  Through some time travel, a few visits with my psychic, and of course mad skills, I guessed $3300, and won.  Although I think I thanked Jeremy, as well as each of the contest sponsors individually, I would like to thank them here as well. 

The coolest prize had to be the poker set provided by HomePokerPros.com.  I just had to take some pictures, they are below  :)  We play quite a bit of poker, and this is a really nice set.  I would highly suggest it to others looking for a poker set.

Once again thanks for the great prizes, and be sure that everyone that plays with these chips will know I won them from a blog (which will of course lead to a long conversation with some blank stares.  That happens alot.)

My favorite new refactoring tool

Since most of my day is spent in vb.net, I don't have the luxury of a “top shelf” refactoring tool (although I am anxiously awaiting a public beta or trial of Refactor!).  Latley, though, I've found the yahoo branded x1 to fit the bill quite nicely. 

In the past few days, on a number of occasions, I've used it to help when making a few changes.  I have it set to index all of my code, so within seconds I can see everywhere a method is called, as well as quickly scan the context of each call in the preview window.  It may not help in the IDE, but I was able to quickly evaluate my options for changes, and then hit the code with a good plan of attack in no time.

Since all the SQL is in scripts in a database project, I can also search across all the scripts in the system as well.  Added bonus that doesn't come with those fancy integrated solutions  :)

 

New DasBlog bits posted

Came through on the mailing list less then an hour ago.  The new bits include a ton of changes since the last “official” build.  If you have been looking for an app to blog on, I would highly suggest looking at DasBlog.  I haven't made the official switch yet, but you can see here what it will look like. 

Get the new bits here.

I'd also like to thank the DasBlog team for their hard work, and keeping the package moving forward!

EA does it again

EA once again has the gaming world in an uproar, purchasing exclusive rights to the espn brand for 15 years.  I guess the motto is don't compete with EA.  Instead of trying to win gamers over with a better product, they will just buy your means to produce your product.  How fair is that?

The only EA game I play right now is Need for speed underground 2, and as far as I can tell this will probably be the last.  Of course this will be very difficult to uphold since they release 80% of the games it seems, but it's just so hard to support a company that has made such a chain of perceived mistakes, and bad decisions.

First podcast wish coming true

After fast forwarding through about 45 minutes of the last dotnetrocks, I realized how important MP3 bookmarking will be.  I have officially requested this for a future iriver h320 firmware upgrade, but am not holding my breath.

Looks like I may have gotten a player just a bit too soon.  This post, snagged from scoble's link blog, shows that the new creative zen's will support this future.  Now just implement Adam Curry's thoughts on processing opml, and we have a fanstastic podcasting device.

Now, how do I convince the wife half way through the year (of course if no new iRiver firmware is released) that I need to replace my player.  Oh well, looks like I'll be fast forwarding for at least 2005.

Podcasts are for (currently) commuters?

Over the past few weeks I have done alot of thinking about podcasts.  In reality, I've been hooked on something like this for well over a year now, as I have admitted my addition to dot net rocks long ago.  So as podcasting starting coming into the limelight, I was an obvious adopter.  The lack of an MP3 player made listening to podcasts a pain for a while.  I was burning quite a few, I mean like 7-10 cd's a week, to listen to on my commute.  I spend about 2 hours a day commuting. 

I turned to podcasting because our local radio.. well.. it's not good.  There are a few channels that play some interesting music and content, but for the most part the radio bores me.  It has for quite a while.  That's why DotNetRocks was a great thing.  Now I could fill otherwise mind numbing time with something I might enjoy, nerds talking about code.  And by golly I did.  I enjoyed it so much, that I ended up downloading and listening to every show. 

So, enter podcasting.  Podcasting is so insanely simple, yet so powerful.  Attach some audio to an xml stream, and you have some sort of makeshift radio where the consumer has control of the broadcast.  Think tivo for radio.  Think tivo for radio where the radio shows can be produced anywhere from a million dollar studio, to a 3 year old pc in someone's basement. 

So how is this a good thing?  Does anyone want to listen to Dave the Engineer talk about cleaning out his fridge tonight?  Probably not.  But, this opens up doors to having specialized audio and video content creation and delivery like never before.  Being a software developer, I am already interested in the different shows that are created on that subject.  This delivery channel is hardly limited to technical content, though.  It's conceivable to think that most knowledge based industries could use a channel of content delivery like this, since the passionate usually are both willing to talk and listen, no matter the audiance size.

I'm not going to touch heavily on the music side of podcasting, but will say this.  ipods (although not at ALL required to listen to podcasts) are in the hands of many, many young people, who embrace technology very quickly.  It will only take one or two good feeds of “new and cool“ music for podcasting to catch up with this crowd.

The problem, though, are the tools.  As with any technology when it debuts, the tools take a while to catch up.  The idea of delivering audio and video through feeds was coming at some point, the questions that remain are what do we do with them, and how do we distribute them.  Monetizing them is another issue, but for now lets say they take the blog route for that (although I doubt that).  Nerds that need something to listen to will support podcasting for another year or so, but for this idea to live up to it's potential it needs to move past that.  To move past that the tools need to be there, and easy. 

I'd like to see packages that record, and, and publish all in one.  Tie it to skype (or some open alternative), and then make it easy enough for anyone to use it.  How about a network of podcast torent seed servers, and have all the major aggregators support retrieving and seeding the files.  Wouldn't it be cool if your mp3 player could sync, and publish your podcasts remotely?  I could drop a message in my family feed and all of their phones could grab and play the feed.

Back to the point of the post title.  I think that I have adopted podcasting because I am a commuter.  I needed something to listen to, and this has filled the void.  I have spoke with some other techies who also read blogs, and many of them are not on board yet.  One thing I have noticed about most of them is that they do not have much of a commute.  Anyone else out there listening on your commute?  Any non commuters listening?

 

DotText2DasBlog last release for weekend

Heres the last release of the weekend.  Screenshot below.  Codes in CVS, and links to direct download are below. 

I have re-added the direct option.  The direction option allows more then 25 entries to be converted.  When moving them over 1 by 1 the active and showonfront page options are moved also, direct db they are defaulted to 1 setting (thatll be fixed later). 

I still have some work to do with the categories which you'll see in the next version of the blog I release.  I hope to fix that this week.  I'm also still working on the comments, trying to figure out how to bring them into DasBlog.  I have seen a post around about it supporting CommentAPI, but haven't found it yet. 

Also the beta blog will be updated any minute now, so check it out if you get a chance, I'd love to hear from comments.  I'm going to hopefully roll it over this week.  I think I will probably move the blog to iceglue.com/blogs/tranqy.  Everything will stay up at the old blog until I can put in a redirection scheme, but the baseurl and xml feeds will be redirected as soon as I flip the switch. 

Get the source here and the binaries here.

Last update tonight

Source will be in cvs..  Heres a screenshot..  Still some fixes to make before another minor release.  Oh soon the frequent updates will move off here too the sourceforge mailing list.

Scriptomatic 2
Saw over on ActiveWin that ms released Scriptomatic2.  This is a cool little app that creates scripts based on the numerous WMI sources on a machine.  It's a neat little tool to easily create some really powerful scripts.  The new version adds perl, and python generation, as well as some new output's.  Check it out here.

DotText2DasBlog release and new home

Another release out the door.  This release works soley with the web services of each product.  It still only moves posts, but it is getting the .text comments :)  I haven't found an xml endpoint in DasBlog for creating comments yet.  If I can't find one I'll see if I can make a small addon release that could handle that.  The DotText service also seems to only return 25 items, which I'll be looking into.  I'm guessing I will be adding a “direct” option that will support everything. 

The sourceforce site was approved, and is here.  I'm stumbling through CVS now, so expect to see some source in the repository later this evening or tomorrow. 

For now, here's a new screen shot.  And heres a link to the source. 

DotText2DasBlog update

Well I won't have a beta out this week, but hopefully this weekend I'll release some new bits.  I've been moving the source to the web services and comment api, while also refactoring the app a bit to make it cleaner.  I still have to look into how to post comments to DasBlog via services.  I'm not expecting that to be an issue.

I also applied for a spot on sourceforge.  That would provide some public source control, as well as some tools to manage the project.  Should hear back on that in a couple days.

I'll make sure to post back when either one of those are final. 

Halo2 playing itself?

Today's the second day that my bloglines showed me playing halo2.  I got the same type of entry yesterday.  I haven't played in a month or so (thanks to this damn blog  :) , so I find it odd that I'm still playing.

I'm actually subscribed to a friends halo2 feed that has the same messages, although I haven't checked with him to see if he was playing.  Anyone else seeing this?

Arranged Game: None on Unknown

Game played at Thu, 13 Jan 2005 03:31:53 GMT Playlist: Arranged Game None on Unknown Gamertag (Team): Score, Kills, Deaths, Assists hello (0): 12, 12, 1, 0 goodbye (0): 1, 1, 12, 0

Oh you silly little apple

Obviously this is a very apple week.  The new headless mac may even find it's way into my home this year, although no ipod for me (thanks to iriver's fantastic h320).  Either way, had to check out the ipodshuffle site, and saw a very interesting disclaimer on their site. 

1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.

Well shit.  Who'd have thought the ipod wasn't in the grains group.  Oh well, guess I better plan something else for lunch.

Web Service Testing

Started playing with the .text web service last night to see how I might be able to move DotText2DasBlog to web services instead of direct connection.  My initial thought was to just replace the DB connection with web services, but it's looking like I might build both in.  I don't see a way to extract comments from the web service as of yet (if anyone know a comment would be great), so since a goal is to also migrate comments, I may choose to support both methodologies.  More on this soon.

Either way, as I started testing I started to think about a better way to test web services.  Knowing there are probably a ton of ways to handle this, I went searching.  I was right.  There are just a ton of apps that have been developed to help test, and work with web services.  Most of them cost $$, though, which is not something I was interested in spending for this. 

My search did end up yielding a few cool things, though.  First, is the .net xml web service repertory (del.icio.us'd).  This is a nice collection of resources for web service development in .net.   They also had a direct link to the .net Web Service Studio.  This was an app that I had seen earlier in the search, that seemed to be removed form gotdotnet.  Even though the sources were removed, though, they had a direct link to the binary which is still there.

This little WSS app is very cool.  It uses wsdl and reflection to build a simple web service test client.  It's a very cool little tool, especially for the price.  Released in 2002 so it might be old news for most, but for me it was new.  Wish the source was still out there. 

 

And the desktop search winner is...

Long time readers might remember that I have been using these desktop search tools for a long time.  I started with lookout, moved to copernic, moved on to google (never posted), then msn, and last night installed yahoo.

All of the tools have pluses and minuses, and I have really enjoyed working with all of them.  After just a little time with the yahoo search, though, I think this one will be a keeper (until the next release).  I don't want to get into a full review since there are probably about 50k of them being written today, but I did want to share my thoughts on why I think yahoo will be the keeper.

For me, one of the most important aspects of a desktop search tool is searching code.  Finding emails is great, pdfs, fantastic, but the real power comes from being able to find any code, at any time, just by remembering something such as an obscure comment you may have put (like //comment this later  :)  , in a matter of seconds.  This, to me, is power.  It makes me more productive, and much more likely to do research on past usage scenarios of the various things we do.  That being said, my choice is GREATLY influenced by how the product works with my piles and piles of code.

So, why yahoo?  MSN, and copernic both also index code out of the box, and google's offering can be modified to search some code, so what makes yahoo better for me?  First off, the memory usage.  As a developer, I burn through resources like they were kindling.  Gig of ram?  Filled by noon.  So when I noticed that the memory requirements of the yahoo offering appear to be the lowest, and by a pretty sizable margin.  MSN seemed to be the biggest culprit taking upto 100 megs of memory/swap space at a time (between all of the components combined), where yahoo (so far) never goes above 30.  Still early in the tests, so this may change, but my initial impression is very good on this front. 

MSN's interface was (and probably still is my favorite), but the yahoo offering is a close second, with one huge improvement.  Search context, from the first letter you type.  So lets say you are looking to see how you've used an xmltextreader in the past.  Start typing, and by the time you get to xmlte you have all of the files, with highlighting of the use, in the search app.  Very, very nice.  I knew X1 did this, and knew if it filtered down to yahoo it would be a huge plus for me. 

So it seems like I have changed desktop searches as much as underwear in the past few months, but I think at least for now I have a clear cut winner.  For me, yahoo takes round 1.  And yes, I do realize it probably has ALOT to do with being last to the table.