Podcasts worth checking out

As I've mentioned before, I have had the chance to listen to a number of podcasts lately.  I try to fit new ones in when I find them, while catching up on older episodes of some of my favorites. 

You'll notice that on the new blog I have a list of podcasts on the right.  Those are on my current “must listen” list.  Most are technical, minus Monday's, which teeters on technical sometimes.

A new addition to this list is Software as She's Developed.  I found this podcast earlier today on podcast.net, and was hooked immeditely.  I listened to the four about agile processes right away since they were all related, and was looking for more.  Too bad I didn't have the time to listen to the last one on interfaces (damn football).  Even if you don't listen to podcasts all the time, but are interested in some details in agile programming methods, snag these.

G'Day world has also skyrocketed up my list of favorite podcasts.  They are doing fantastic work, and grabbing huge names like Scoble, and Doc Searls.  This is some great stuff people, don't miss it. 

In the Trenches offers the view of the world through the IT side of the industry.  The techchats produced by Kevin are also excellent, and every so often even have a developer spin  :)

New blog almost done

The new blog is almost done, and now public.  Here is the link.  Not sure how I am going to handle funneling traffic from dottext to dasblog as of yet, but will figure that out soon enough.  I think Mr. Hanselman's suggestion should probably work nicely since I decided to move the blog. 

This blog will stop getting updates sometime this week.  When that happens, I hope to have a redir on the feed and homepage so that everything but the permalinks will just flow through to the new blog.  I'll give some warning either way when this happens.

DotText2DasBlog now with comments

New release, now with comments.  The commentapi support was staring me right in the face the whole time. 

The new release will now move comments over via http.  The comments will not include the original url of the user that posted, and the html that worked in dotText is not allowed in dasBlog, so comments that include HTML will look as you would expect.  Trackbacks also come over, but only with the name of the site, not the url.  I didn't see these things in in the commentrss feed, but honestly I didn't look very hard yet.  Getting this functionality in was enough for this snowy weekend.

I would like to clean up the issues above by either exploring the commentrss in more depth, or adding comment importing from SQL.  Other then that the next few features are up in the air.  I would like to have something that maps my .text urls to dasblog urls, but thats a pretty vertical need.  If others would be interested in this tool expanding to support multiple blogs, speak up and let me know.  Most of the blogs support some sort of interface in, and it should be pretty straightforward to add support for other blogs into this app.

As always, the source is in cvs, and you can also get it from the urls below.  Please let me know if there are any issues.

Source Here | Binaries Here

[WARNING] 

When importing entries, please be sure to check the setting for outbound pings.  If you are importing your blog, and do not want outbound trackbacks to be created since they have already been created for these entries, be sure to turn off the feature in dasblog before importing!  Don't send bad trackbacks like I did.

Erroneously creating trackback spam

My apologies to anyone out there that I may have created some localhost trackbacks to today.  My test blog was configured to pump out trackbacks, and I have been working with a blog import utility. 

I have configured the blog to not send out the trackbacks, and also changing to a test .text as a host with no real links.  Again, my apologies for any unwanted spam.

 

Book review : Visual Studio .net Tips and Tricks

When I got this book I was skeptical.  I spend more time with vs.net then really anything, so what could this little book tell me about my closest companion?  Well, I was sadly mistaken, and feel cheated, almost like the environment was hiding something from me all these years. 

This book is littered with time saving tips that I had no idea existed in the IDE.  I read the book cover to cover, but find its real value as a reference while I code.  The book is very well organized, making it easy to find the tip you need quickly.  Tips cover the code editor to debugger, and everything in between.  The last chapter covers Whidbey exclusively, which serves as a nice introduction to some of the upcoming IDE improvements.

As you read through this book, even if you are aware of the feature being covered, Minh often adds some additional thoughts to how it can be used effectively.  The majority of the tips are hidden gems within the IDE, but Mihn sometimes covers process hints, such as how he debugs asp.net pages.  These tips are also very solid, and worth the read. 

As Minh states, the majority of the book is already documented someplace, but having the compilation of all of it in one handy book has proven to be quite an addition to my toolkit.  Since I never explicitly went looking for tips like these, a lot of the book was new to me.  If you are a keyboard shortcut fanatic, and have read every source already published on the subject, you may not find this book quite as valuable.  Otherwise, I would highly suggest snagging a copy of this book.

Amazon link

 

cold

its. so. cold.  damnit.  Makes me wonder if I really need that nicotine.

brb

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.