TDD Tips: InternalsVisibleTo - Keep your API clean

...or how to have all the great benefits of clean code and 100% code coverage too.

Although the .NET 2.0 Runtime has been out for quite sometime, I'm still surprised that most people are not aware that the 2.0 framework supports a concept known as "Friend Assemblies", made possible using the InternalsVisibleToAttribute. For me, this handy (and dare i say awesome) attribute solves an age old problem frequently encountered with Test Driven Development and when I first stumbled upon it about two years ago, my jaw hit the floor and I was all nerdy giddy about it.

This has all been blogged about before, but I want to comment on some of the best practices this approach affords us. As a general rule of thumb, you should always try to keep your Unit Tests out of your production code. After all, the classes needed for testing will never be used by end-users, so to prevent bloating up your assembly you should put the tests in a different assembly and leave 'em at home when you release the code. Unfortunately, this produces a strange side-effect: Types and Methods that would normally be marked as internal or private must be made public so that the external Test assembly can access them. You're left with a difficult compromise... either choose to violate your API access rules to support testing, or forgo all unit testing and code coverage for clean code. While the practice of exposing types is relatively harmless, it can introduce some negative side-effects into your project, especially if you're producing a library that is shared with other applications or third parties. Specifically, it can hurt usability and performance:

• Usability of your assembly will be reduced because users will have a full gammet of Types to choose from. A clean API with only a few public facing classes is easier to understand that dozens of utility and helper classes. If you only have a handful of classes, this doesn't apply to you -- but if you've ever inherited a project with hundreds of Types and piss-poor documentation, I know you know what I'm talking about.
• Performance of your API will be compromised if you follow FxCop recommendations -- which btw, is good advise. With all these public facing types you'll need additional parameter-validation and error handling because you can't guarantee how third-parties will access your Types. If your app is for internal-use, you can shirk this responsibility, but be warned: the onus is on you to enforce proper use of your library and to ignore several dozen FxCop violations. If you have third-parties using your library, this is extra plumbing is hard to avoid so it's more likely the Types and Methods are kept private/internal and the tests are simply neglected. Which, IMHO is where you really need the tests since the bugs are more likely to be nested deep in your implementation rather than the public exposed API, and hey ...bugs are bad for business.

Here's a few links that refer to these best practices:

• Validate arguments of public methods
• Validating arguments
• Framework Design Guidelines

Fortunately, the InternalsVisibleTo attribute fixes these issues. By placing the attribute in your assembly, you can keep types as internal and still allow unit testing.

Attribute Usage Examples

Using the attribute is quite simple. The attribute is placed in the assembly that contains the internal classes and methods that you want to expose to other "friend" assemblies. The attribute lists the "friend" assembly.

using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;

[assembly:InternalsVisibleTo("assemblyName")]

MSDN documentation refers to strong names when referring to the friend assemblies, however, a strong-name is not required. This is extremely useful if you're just starting your project or not ready to strong-name the assembly. Note that if you are using a strong-name, it's the full public key and not just the public token.

[assembly:InternalsVisibleTo("assemblyName, PublicKey=fff....")]

To get the full public key of your assembly, you can use the strong name tool that ships with the .NET Framework to extract the public key:

sn -Tp Code.dll

Alternatively, David Kean has published a handy tool that can help you generate the InternalsVisibleTo attribute, so you can simply paste it into your assembly. However, his site is presently being reworked. I have the binary downloaded from his site, though I have no where to host the file. Give me a shout if you're interested... and David, let us know when you're site is back up.

Note: Although the strong-name is optional, you should be using strong-names on your assemblies as a best practice to prevent this type of runtime injection. And if you go down this route, all referenced assemblies must also been signed (all the more reason why you should be using strong-naming in the first place).

A Code Example...

This rudimentary example shows how you can create a class that takes advantage of the InternalsVisibleTo attribute. There are two assemblies: "Code" is my main assembly has the InternalsVisibleTo attribute and public facing API, "Test" is my test library that references "Code". If these assemblies weren't friends, all Types within "Code" would have to be public.

// within Code.dll
[assembly:InternalsVisibleTo("Code.Test")]

namespace Code
{
    public internal class StringUtility
    {
        public static string ProperCase(string input)
        {
            CultureInfo culture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
            return culture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(input.ToLower(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
        }
    }
}

// within Code.Test.dll
namespace Code.Test
{
    [TestFixture]
    public class StringUtilityTest
    {
        [Test]
        public void CanGetProperCaseFromInternalClass()
        {
            Assert.AreEqual("Hello", StringUtility.ProperCase("HELLO"));
        }
    }
}

Kudos to Rick Strahl for the ProperCase string tip.

The Payoff...

So now that you've got your internal classes with test coverage goodness, treat yourself by opening up FxCop and viewing the reduced violations report.

FxCop before:

This screen capture of FxCop shows a few standard FxCop violations (my assembly isn't strong-named, yet) and a violating public arguments warning.

FxCop after:

Since most FxCop rules are centered around designing public APIs, classes that are marked as internal are exempt from certain rules. This snapshot shows how our internal class isn't subject to requiring additional validation logic.

 

.NET Garbage Collection Behavior for Release Code

Every so often, I pick up my copy of Jeffrey Richter's CLR via C# which provides a great low level look at the .NET Framework intrinsics. When I read this book two things are likely to happen, either I fall fast asleep, or I discover something that makes my head snaps backward at break-neck speeds. Here's a great mind bender on garbage collection. Take this simple console program:

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // setup a call back for every two seconds
        Timer t = new Timer(Callback,null,0,2000);
        
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
    
    private static void Callback(object state)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Callback called.");
        GC.Collect();
    }
}

This simple console program when compiled in Debug mode has different behavior than when it's compiled in Release mode.

Skeptic? Try it.

Debug Mode:

1. Compile the solution in Debug mode.
2. Open a command-prompt and execute the app
3. The callback is called every two seconds until the Console reads a line.

Release Mode:

1. Compile the solution in Release mode.
2. Open a command-prompt and execute the app
3. The callback is only called once.

...does your neck hurt? ;-)

In Release mode, the code and the JIT compiler are optimized. At the first callback where we force Garbage Collection, the Garbage Collector determines that our timer is not used in the remainder of the Main method, therefore not "rooted", and can be safely garbage collected. As this behavior would wreak havoc on debugging sessions, the JIT compiler treats un-optimized code (Debug) differently: it artificially "roots" all variables within a method to prevent them from premature garbage collection. Note that release code running under a Visual Studio debugging session will have the same behavior as debug code, that's why you need to run them from the command-line. You can fix this code by adding another call to our timer object further on down the method. When the Garbage Collector runs it will walk the stack and determine that our variable is "rooted" and our Release code will work just like our Debug counter-part.

Here's our Main method modified to prove that point:

public static void Main()
{
    Timer t = new Timer(CallBack,null,0,2000);
    Console.ReadLine();
    
    // our object is now rooted and will survive garbage collection
    t.Dispose();
}

Jeff also points out that simply adding code like:

t = null;

...won't change anything since this line will be optimized out of the code during JIT compilation. In short, what this means is that all objects don't have to fall out of scope (ie, end of the method) to be garbage collected. The garbage collector operates under the assumption that all objects are garbage until proven useful, regardless of where the object appears on the stack. So if you're not using it, the garbage collector is going to throw it out.

Running Multiple .NET Services within a Single Process

I love the fact that .NET makes it profoundly easy to write Windows Services. Most of the low level details have been abstracted away, and while this makes it easier to write and deploy services, sometimes it doesn't work the way you'd expect. For example, I noticed something odd when I tried to write a Service that hosted multiple services. According to the API, it is possible to provide multiple ServiceBase objects to the static Run method as an array:

public static void Main()
{
 ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new Service1(), new Service2() };
 ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
}

However, when my code executes, only the first ServiceBase object runs, which seems suspicious. The culprit is that the API is somewhat misleading -- the ServiceBase.Run method is not actually responsible for running your services. Instead, it loads them into memory and then hands them off to the Service Control Manager for activation. The service that gets activated is the service you requested when you activated it from the Services Applet or command line:

NET START Service1

This error has appeared in many different forums, but no one seems to post a working example, so maybe I'm not entirely alone on this one. I think part of the confusion stems from the fact that I can give the first ServiceBase object in the array any ServiceName that I wish and it will execute.

public static void Main()
{
 ServiceBase myService = new Service1();
 MyService.ServiceName = "ServiceA";
 ServiceBase.Run(myService);
}

How to make it work:

The correct way to allow multiple services to run within in a single process requires the following:

1. An installer class with the RunInstaller attribute set to True. The class is instantiated and invoked when you run InstallUtil.exe
2. The installer class must contain one ProcessInstaller instance. This object is responsible for defining the operating conditions (Start-up mode and User) that your service application will run under.
3. The installer class must contain one ServiceInstaller instance per ServiceBase in your application. If you plan on running multiple services, each one must (sadly) be installed prior to use.
4. For the service that you anticipate being started from the Services Applet, list the other services in the ServicesDependedOn property so that they will be started when your service starts:

[RunInstaller(true)]
public class MyServiceInstaller : Installer
{
 public MyServiceInstaller()
 {
     ServiceProcessInstaller processInstaller = new ServiceProcessInstaller();
     processInstaller.Account = ServiceAccount.LocalSystem;
  
     ServiceInstaller mainServiceInstaller = new ServiceInstaller();
     mainServiceInstaller.ServiceName = "Service1";
     mainServiceInstaller.Description = "Service One";
     mainServiceInstaller.ServicesDependedOn = new string [] { "Service2" };
  
     ServiceInstaller secondServiceInstaller = new ServiceInstaller();
     secondServiceInstaller.ServiceName = "Service2";
     secondServiceInstaller.Description = "Service Two";
  
     Installers.Add(processInstaller);
     Installers.Add(mainServiceInstaller);
     Installers.Add(secondaryServiceInstaller);
 }
}

Now when Service1 starts, Service2 is also started. Happily, both services log to the same log4net file and the number of Processes in the Task Manager increments only by one.

Note that when Service2 is stopped, Service1 will also be stopped. However, shutting down Service2 will not stop Service1. If you want tighter coupling between the two services, you might consider adding ServiceController logic to Service1 to start and stop Service2 during the Service1 OnStart and OnStop methods... maybe something I'll follow up with a later post.

ASP.NET Uri Fragment is not available

Recently, a question came my way about filtering URLs that contain fragment-identifiers. A fragment-identifier goes by many different names (bookmark, pound, hash, named-anchor, etc) and is represented as a pound symbol (#) at the end of a querystring:

http://server/path?query#fragment-identifier.

Unfortunately, I had looked into something similar only a few months previously, so my response came immediately: "this cannot be done." While researching a problem several months ago, I was surprised to learn that the fragment of the URL is a client-side only html tag, meaning that most modern browsers use this primarily to scroll the named element into view -- they do not transmit this information to the web server. A simple test shows this value is NEVER populated.

public partial class PageTest : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Response.Write("Fragment = " + Request.Url.Fragment + "<br />");
    }
}

Sadly, this is not ASP.NET specific. It's part of the Uri specification. A Wikipedia article on this topic suggests that you can pass "#" to the server if it is encoded as %23, although this value is treated as part of the querystring instead of being interpreted as the Uri fragment.

If you need these values in the URL, put them in the query-string.

Visual Studio "Format the whole document" for Notepad++ using Tidy

I've started playing with Notepad++ over the last year, and really liking it. If you've been living under a rock, its an opensource replacement for the boring windows notepad.exe and has appeared on top-ten lists, including Scott Hanselman's list Ultimate Developer and Power User Tool List. While I haven't completely replaced Visual Studio, I have found a few neat tricks that have saved me a lot of grief.

My recent favorite is Tidy, an open source tool that can format HTML output, is included as a TextFX plugin for Notepad++.  By default, it doesn't do much, but the magic starts when you drop a configuration file into the TextFX plugin folder. Here's how I've configured mine:

1. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\NPPTextFX
2. Create a text file named htmltidy.cfg and place the following contents inside:

   indent: auto
   indent-spaces: 2
   wrap: 72
   markup: yes
   input-xml: yes

3. Enjoy!

The configuration above is a basic format, which automatically wraps and indents XML/XHTML files nicely. To use just load up your XML file, choose "TextFX -> TextFX HTML Tidy -> Tidy" and your document should automatically indent properly. If you need more options, check out the Tidy quick reference guide. If you format a lot of XML documents, you can speed things up by assigning a ShortCut key:

1. Choose "Settings -> Shortcut Mapper"
2. Click on the "Plugin Commands" and scroll down to entry "D:Tidy" (entry 241 on my system).
3. Double click the item and assign a ShortCut key.

A quick aside on the Shortcut keys, I had to try a few different options until Tidy formatted my document. I suspect that Notepad++ doesn't detect duplicate Shortcuts. I settled with CTRL+ALT+K, which seems to work without issue.

Lastly, if you want to completely replace "notepad.exe" with "Notepad++", there's a neat replacement utility referenced on the Notepad++ site that you should download and follow their basic instructions. Note that this utility is not the same as renaming notepad++.exe to notepad.exe and dropping it in your Windows directory; it's a utility that looks up the location of notepad++.exe from the registry and forwards requests to it. Also note, if your machine shipped with a copy of the operating system (typically a i386 folder), you need to replace the original notepad.exe there as well.

Selenium 0.92 doesn't work in IE over VPN or Dialup

I've been writing user interface tests for my current web project using Selenium. I really dig the fact that it uses JavaScript to manipulate the browser. I'm working on building a Language Pattern, where my unit tests read like a simple domain language -- it involves distilling Selenese output into a set of reusable classes.

I ran into a really frustrating snag during a late-night coding session and I started to freak out a bit -- my Selenium tests just magically stopped working! Instead of getting the Selenium framed window, my site was serving 404 messages. At first I thought the plumbing code that I had written was somehow serving the wrong URL.

I quickly switched my tests to FireFox and was relieved to see them working fine -- and under the same URL. Since my client uses IE 6, dropping Internet Explorer support for UI tests would be a deal breaker. I was surprised to see the tests work when I switched the URL from localhost:80 to localhost:4444, which is the port Selenium's proxy server runs on. The light in my head started to glow...

The aha moment came when I switched back to FireFox: I noticed that none of my FireFox plugins were loaded and that the Proxy server setting had been enabled to route localhost:80 through localhost:4444. Selenium is controlling registry settings for the browser, meaning that some setting was missing in IE. Although Internet Explorer had been configured to use my Selenium proxy-server settings, it ignores these values when on dial-up and VPN connections. You need to specify a different proxy server through an Advanced settings menu.

Both FireFox and Internet explorer use PAC files, which are used to automatically detect the configuration settings for your proxy server. Selenium generates a new PAC file between executions, so you'll quickly find that manually fixing it becomes a pain. To fix, create your own pac file and wire the setting in yourself.

Here's a snap of my connections dialog:

And the contents of my selenium-proxy.pac file:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
        return 'PROXY localhost:4444; DIRECT';
}

Danger: Visitor Design Pattern can be useful

In seems that in my circles that out of all the design patterns in the gang of four, the Visitor pattern is often seen as confusing and impractical. I'd agree with that assessment: patterns like the Command, Strategy, Composite, and Factory are commonly used because it's easy to think of examples that work. Whereas the Visitor Pattern has a confusing relationship between objects and requires a lot of upfront code to make it work. It's easily filed under the i-don't-think-i'll-ever-use-this category.

I recently found a great code example on Haibo Luo's blog that involved using reflection to read IL (using Method.GetMethodBodyAsIL()). In it he posts two very different approaches to parsing the IL, the first post shows a Reflector-like example of a IL-Reader; the second post is focused on a related side-project but outlines how he was able to use the Visitor pattern to allow different interpretations of the IL. The Visitor pattern is perfect here, because IL is based on a fixed specification that will never change. (A side note: the entire ILReader class is attached as a zip at the bottom of the post and is worth checking out if you're interested in parsing IL using Reflection.)

After showing this example to a few colleagues (with some heated debates), I found new appreciation for the Visitor pattern. The Visitor Pattern can be really useful anywhere you have a fixed set of data, which surprisingly happens more frequently than you might think.

Take "Application Configuration" as an example. Normally, I'd write a simple Parser to read through the configuration to construct application state. Since the configuration elements are a fixed object model, they can be easily modified to accept a visit from a visitor:

public interface IConfigVisitor
{
    void Visit(MyConfig configSection);
    void Visit(Type1 dataElement);
    void Visit(Type2 dataElement);
}

public interface IConfigVisitorAcceptor
{
    void Accept(IConfigVisitor visitor);
}

public class MyConfig : ConfigurationSection, IConfigVisitorAcceptor
{
    // config stuff here, omitted
    
    public void Accept(IConfigVistior visitor)
    {
        visitor.Accept(this);
    }
}

public class Type1 : ConfigurationElement, IConfigVisitorAcceptor
{
    // config stuff here, omitted
    
    // example fields for Type1
    public string Field1;
    
    public void Accept(IConfigVisitor visitor)
    {
        visitor.Visit(this);
    }
}

public class Type2 : ConfigurationElement, IConfigVisitorAcceptor
{
    // config stuff here, omitted
    
    // example fields for Type2
    public string Field1;
    public string Field2;
    
    public void Accept(IConfigVisitor visitor)
    {
        visitor.Visit(this);
    }
}

Little modification needs to be done to the parser to act as a Visitor. The parser is simply a visitor that collects state as it travels to each configuration element. This example is a bit trivial:

public class ConfigurationParserVisitor : IConfigVisitor
{
    // example internal state for visitor
    StringBuilder example = new StringBuilder();
    
    public void Visit(MyConfig configSection)
    {
        // a custom iterator could be used here to simplify this
        foreach(Type1 item in configSection.Type1Collection)
        {
            item.Accept(this);
        }
        foreach(Type2 item in configSection.Type2Collection)
        {
            item.Accept(this);
        }
    }

    public void Visit(Type1 data)
    {
        example.AppendLine(data.Field1);
    }
    public void Visit(Type2 data)
    {
        example.AppendLine(data.Field1 + " " + data.Field2);
    }
    
    public string GetOutput()
    {
        return example.ToString();
    }
}

public class Example
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        MyConfig config = (MyConfig)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("myconfig");
        
        ConfigurationParserVisitor parser = new ConfigurationParserVisitor();
        config.Accept(parser);
        
        Console.WriteLine(parser.GetOutput());
    }
}

Here's usually where the argument gets heated: Why would anyone do this? Wouldn't you be better off writing a parser that accepts your configuration element as a parameter? A very valid question, it does seem an obtuse direction to follow if you only need to read your configuration file. However, where the Visitor pattern becomes useful is that new functionality can be added to the configuration elements without having to modify the object model in any way. Perhaps you want to auto-upgrade your settings to a new version, produce a report, display your configuration in a UI, etc.

One of the subtle advantages to this pattern is that new functionality can be expressed in a single class rather than spread about the solution. This makes it perfect fit for adding plugins to your application, or building an application that is composited together with a Command pattern.

While not all application will require this level of flexibility, it can be a very useful pattern when you need it. The upfront cost is a one-time event, so it's a pretty easy refactoring exercise.

Debugging HitBox Page Attributes

After spending a few hours debugging HitBox page attributes by using "View Source" and digging through the HTML markup, I whipped this together: Drag this link to your browser's bookmark toolbar: Show HitBox Inside this hyperlink:

javascript:alert('Page name= ' + hbx.pn + '\nPage Category=' + hbx.mlc);

Simple enough. I wonder if this approach would work for WebTrends or Omniture as well. If anyone has any examples, post a link.

Update 6-19-08: WebTrends link also available.

Google Outlook Sync - Wait

When I learned that Google had an Outlook Sync feature for Google Calendar, I was quick to download and experiment with it. While I was able to sync successfully between both Google and Outlook, I did notice some quirks that others have also reported:

• Calendar items appear in your Deleted Items folder in Outlook
• Outlook is shutdown during sync.

Of course, the forums have some nasty comments in them, my favorite draws the analogy between Google Calendar Sync and Windows ME. I'm going to hold off on this version (0.9.3) until some of these issues are resolved.

Redirect Standard Output of a Service to log4net

I recently wrote a simple windows service that hosted batch files and other applications within a service process. I found some great stuff located here, which really helped me along.

Like many other developers, I quickly discovered that debugging and diagnosing issues wasn't particularily easy. On my machine, it was fairly simple to set a break point and manually attach to the service, but diagnosing issues on other machines lacked detail in the Event Log. What I needed was a way to capture the output of my hosted application.

As I was already using log4net to trace through application flow, I used the following approach to redirect the output of my hosted application into my logger.

using System.Diagnostics;
using log4net;

public class MyService : ServiceBase
{
    private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(MyService));

    private Process process;

    public override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {
        process = new Process();
        
        ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();

        // configure the command-line app.
        info.FileName = "java.exe"
        info.WorkingDirectory = "c:\program files\Selenium\RemoteControlServer"
        info.Arguments = "-jar selenium-server.jar"

        // configure runtime specifics
        info.UseShellExecute = false; // needed to redirect output
        info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        info.RedirectErrorOutput = true;

        process.StartInfo = info;
        
        // setup event handlers
        process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
        process.ErrorDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler(process_ErrorDataReceived);
        process.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler(process_OutputDataReceived);
        
        
        process.Start();

        // notify process about asynchronous reads
        process.BeginErrorReadLine();
        process.BeginOutputReadLine();
        
    }

    // fires whenever errors output is produced
    private static void process_ErrorDataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Data))
            {
                log.Warn(e.Data);
            }
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            log.Error("Error occurred while trying to log console errors.", ex)
        }
    }
    
    // fires whenever standard output is produced
    private static void process_OutputDataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Data)
            {
                log.Debug(e.Data);
            }
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            log.Error("Error occurred while trying to log console output.", ex);
        }
    }
}

Twelve Days of Code - Wrap up

Over the Christmas break, I started a series of posts about Visual Studio templates. I did some additional work, but never posted that information. I've got some new ideas for some code that I want to experiment and blog about and I may be afforded some additional time at work to pursue related issues, so hopefully I'll find the time to post about those.

Anyway, to clear out the cob-webs, here's the last segment in that series...

My experiment with the Multi-Item Template was to create two projects, create references between them, reference third-party assemblies and create a default class implementation. The biggest challenge and limitation to overcome is that the user supplied settings in the Multi-Item templates are not shared with each of the Project-Templates, resulting in the Project-Templates reverting to their default values. Very frustrating indeed. (Visual Studio 2008 apparently fixes this)

The best way to really manipulate the projects in a solution is to obtain a reference to the Project through the COM Interop libraries for Visual Studio. Once you have a reference to the project, you can fix the project name, add references, etc.

To overcome the limitations of the Multi-Item template, I used WizardExtensions in both the Multi-Item template and the Project-Templates, then used a singleton to carry settings between the projects.

This approached works, but seems pretty complicated, especially dealing with the COM Interop for Visual Studio. I still would need to strong-name the assemblies and write an installer that installs the templates and the assemblies.

It'll interesting to contrast this to the Guidance Automation Toolkit.

Google Search Results

Debugging WizardExtensions for Visual Studio Templates

As per my previous post, this exercise would probably be much easier if I used the Guidance Automation Toolkit, but in the spirit of Twelve Days of Code, I promised to boldly venture into areas I normally don't go. I decided that I wanted to try out a WizardExtension so that I could compare the experience with the Guidance Automation Toolkit. So I created a new project and added the following references:

• EnvDTE
• ENvDTE80
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface
• System.Windows.Forms

The Visual Studio Template documentation says you need to sign your assembly and install it into the GAC, but that's crazy. Rather than jumping through hoops, I found a handy forum post that describes that the Visual Studio follows the standard assembly probing sequence, so the assembly needs to be in a place that the devenv.exe process can find it. Signing and installing into the GAC is simply a security measure. I didn't want to dump my custom assembly into Visual Studio's assemblies (where I would forget about it) so I created a custom folder in %program files%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE and added this to the probingPath of the devenv.exe.config. To enable debugging for my custom wizard-extension, I use two Visual Studio instances. One for my wizard-extension, the other for testing the template. Here are the steps involved:

• Add the assembly and class name to your ProjectGroup.vstemplate file:

<wizardextension>
 <assembly>Experiments.TemplateWizard</assembly>
 <fullclassname>Experiments.TemplateWizard.CustomizeProjectNameWizard</fullclassname>
</wizardextension>

• Zip up the updated template and copy it into the appropriate Visual Studio Templates folder.
• Compile the wizard-extension assembly and copy it and its pdb to a path where visual studio can find it
• Launch a new instance of Visual Studio
• Switch back to the other visual studio instance, attach to the "devenv" process (the one that says it's at the start page) and set your break-points
• Switch back to the new instance of Visual Studio and start the template that contains your wizard extension
• debugging goodness!!

Well, at least I saved myself the effort of signing, etc. This exercise showed that very little is actually done at the ProjectGroup level of a Multi-Project template: the RunStarted is called, followed by ProjectFinishedGenerating method. The biggest disappointment is that the project parameter in the ProjectFinishedGenerating is null. This is probably because the item being created is a Solution, not a project.

The last ditch (seriously, ditch!) is to cast the automationObject passed into RunStarted to _DTE, and the work through COM interop to manage the Solution. That sounds romantic.

Bundling Visual Studio templates for distribution

Microsoft's done a fairly good job in packaging for Visual Studio templates. Simply:

1. Create an xml file that adheres to the Visual Studio Content Installer Schema Reference
2. Rename the xml with a "vscontent" extension
3. Place the vscontent file and your template zip into another zip file
4. Rename that zip file with a "VSI" extension.

Now, when you double click the VSI file it runs a wizard that installs your template into the appropriate Visual Studio Template folder.

Visual Studio 2005 Multi-Project Templates - a waste of time?

As part of my twelve-days-of-code, I'm tackling a set of small projects geared towards simple project automation. I've discovered in recent projects that although the road is always paved with good intentions, other tasks, emergencies and distractions always prevent you from accomplishing what seem to be the most minor tasks. So when starting out on a new task, we always cut corners with the intention of returning to these trivial tasks whenever we find the time, or when they become justified in our client's eyes. However, if we started out with these things done for us, no one would question their existence or worry about a catch-up penalty; we would just accept these things as best-practice.

Visual Studio Project templates are interesting, though my first encounters with them suggest they miss the mark. For my projects, I find the effort isn't about creating the project, it's about creating the overall solution: project libraries, web sites, test harnesses, references to third-party libaries and tools, build-scripts, etc. Visual Studio supports the concept of "Multi-Projects Templates", which are limited (see below), but I suspect that the Guidance Automation Extensions might fill in the gaps.

Visual Studio supports two types of templates within the IDE, and a third type which must be stitched together using XML. The first type refers to "Item Templates" which refer to single files which can be included in any project. I'm focusing more on Project templates and Multi-Project templates.

Within Visual Studio, the concept of a project template is extremely easy: you simply create the project the way you like and then choose the "Export Templates..." option from the File menu. The project and its contents are published as a ZIP file in "My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\My Exported Templates". A big plus on the template structure is that all the files support parameterization, which means you can decorate the exported files with keywords that are dynamically replaced when the template is created by the user. The export wizard takes care of most of the keyword substitution for you, such that root namespaces in all files will match the name of the user's solution. With this in mind, a Project Template is "sanitized" and waiting for your client to adopt your structure with their name.

Multi-Project Templates stitch multiple Project Templates together by using a master xml-based template file. These templates can't be created using the IDE, but you can create a solution and then export each project out as a Project Template, then following this handy MSDN article and the Template Schema reference, you can quickly parcel together a master template.

However, there's a few really nasty limitations with multi-item projects templates. The biggest issue is that the Project Name cannot be parameterized, so the template adopts the names that are defined in your configuration file. As a result, the only thing you can really customize is the name of the solution. I was completely baffled by this: I thought I must be doing something wrong. However, after a few minutes of googling, others had come to the exact same conclusion.

Fortunately, the template system supports a Wizard framework, which would allow you to write some code to dynamically modify the solution. Unfortunately, the code for this would have to be strong-named and installed in the GAC. I'm tempted to wade into this, but I fear that I might be better off looking at the Guidance Automation Toolkit.

Visual Studio Templates - Export Template not available

So I was started into my foray of the Twelve Days of Code, focusing on a "Software Automation" theme. First stop, "Visual Studio Project templates". I've played with these templates before, and because Visual Studio makes them considerably easy to do, this first stop should be an easy one. I had an interesting problem with Visual Studio that slowed me down.

The steps to create a template are straight forward: you create the item and then use the "Export Template" wizard in the "File" menu. However, the "Export Template..." option did not appear in the File menu.

I recently got a new laptop, and had to reinstall everything from scratch. At first I thought it was because IT only installed Visual Studio Professional instead of the Enterprise version. But there have been some other peculiarities, for example, the "Debug" tool bar was missing crucial items like "Step In", and "Step Out".

The culprit was that I had installed SQL Server 2005 after Visual Studio. Because they share the same shell (sounds a lot like the Component UI Application Block) SQL Server had changed the default settings for Visual Studio.

To fix:

1. Select "Import and Export Settings..." from the Tools menu.
2. Choose the option to "Reset all Settings."
3. Choose the option to save your current settings, just in case.
4. Pick an option that doesn't include "SQL Server". I chose the "Visual C# Development Settings"
5. Finish

Perhaps the software-automation tip here is to configure your settings with defaults for your team, export them out and share the vssettings file (xml) the team.

The Twelve Days of Code

One of the things I always have enjoyed over Christmas holidays is finding a few hours here and there for myself to explore new technolgies or tinker with side-projects. With all the events and distractions, finding time for yourself can be a pretty challenging task. This year, I'm thankful to have a lot of time off, so I've decided the best way to tackle this is to find projects that are interesting but don't require a huge investment of thought. So I'm not going to bother with cracking open the XAML specifications and trying a SilverLight project. Too much time. Too much thought.

So I've come up with the "Twelve Days of Code". Catchy, but not corny. Here's the rules:

• Tackle a small project each day
• Use technologies I haven't used before or wouldn't naturally use in the course of a work project
• No project should take more than an hour.
• If you get snagged, the hour is about the snag.
• All the projects have to share a common theme
• The projects need to provide value to me beyond the scope of the holidays.
• Keep 'em blog worthy

I've decided my common theme should be "Software Automation" which is anything that saves time for repeated tasks. If I can save other developers on my team time, also great.

I've started a small list of to-do's, and I'm using http://www.rememberthemilk.com to help me with the scheduling, etc.

The list of thing I want to play with are:

• Visual Studio Templates
• Custom Installers / Wizards
• Click Once deployment

I'll keep ya posted.

Technorati

This last few months I've been playing with all sorts of web 2.0 tools: - TadaLists - Twitter - Jaiku - wakoopa - Flickr - Del.icio.us - and others I just started Technorati, and I'm using this blog post to "claim" by blog. (Technorati Profile)

Simpsons Avatars

me and lori
Originally uploaded by bryanbcook

I spent a good chunk of time with Lori on Thursday night building avatars on the Simpson's Movie website.

The web site is entirely flash, and they have a concept where your avatar appears in the site in various locations. It's a neat idea. Although it appears that most of the site is in "coming soon" mode, which reaks-of web-agency poor planning and scope creep challenges (or a series of well designed strategies...)

Unless I missed it in the UI, the site doesn't provide an ability to export your avatar as an image though it really should! (This image was taken from a screen capture and manipulated in MSPaint) I learned of the site and it's avatar abilities through the viral aspect at work: everyone was making them and posting them to facebook.

I had a lot of fun putting the avatars together and I guess I'm more stoked about the movie than I was before. Since the "coming-soon" aspect didn't capture my attention (the content has to be amazing for that attraction to work) I probably won't be returning to the site anytime soon. My work group is very web-saavy, but I wonder how many other individuals are hacking the site in this nature? If the attraction is the avatar, they should be milking that and allowing users to send them to friends, etc....

Try it out for yourself: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com

Karma bottleneck

I can't believe how buried I've been recently. Couped up. Recoiled. Tucked away.

I think things went south at the beginning of March.

I went away on a business trip for a full week. The flight down wasn't direct, so it was broken up into two small uneventful flights which would make a normal 90 minute direct flight about 6 hours long. On the second leg of the trip, I was tucked in the very back of the plane (did I mention my employer was paying for the trip, we seem to always get the crappiest seats at the last minute deals). On the decent, I was listening to a podcast on my first iPod. The whole podcast experience was significant because my iPod was still very new and you know how us guys get with our new toys, we fall into a ritual with them that seems to define who we are at that time. While they eventually lose their appeal and just become elements of the grind, my iPod was different: It's prototypical of this decade, an extension of yourself in musical form. In that sense, I was very caught up in it.

The odd thing is -- somehow, iPods crash planes -- or at least that's how the flight attendants make it seem, because they want you to turn it off while they descend. I comply, but keep my cherished iPod close at hand by winding up the headphones and setting it into my lap. After a few long solitary seconds, I switch to the book I brought in my carry on.

When we land, it's six hours into my 90 minute flight, and in my haste, I quickly pack up and get off the plane. I'm just worn out. It's not until I'm in the rental car 20 minutes later that I think about resuming my podcast. Since I'm in a strange city on my own in the middle of the night, my attention is focused on getting to the hotel, but in the back of my mind I can't place what I did with my iPod: it's either in my bag or in my jacket even though I don't recall putting it away.

When I arrive at the hotel, I check my jacket pockets as I walk toward the front lobby. It's strange that it's not there, so it must be in the carry on though that seems really "off" somehow. In the back of my mind, I begin to imagine what my wife would do to me when I tell her I lost the Christmas gift she bought me. Chuckle. Let's hope not.

I check-in.
I jump in the elevator. I pat down my carry on.
Yeah, that's not, ...uh, ...not good.

I get to my room and I quickly empty my pockets and check my carry on.
I open all the bizarre pockets that I never use.
I empty the carry-on and shake it.

FaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaK!!!

Yeah, screwed.

I call the airport, and get through to Lost and Found. My flight was the last flight for the night. My iPod is probably sitting on the floor, on the seat, or tucked between the seats of the 9:35pm Delta flight from Cincinnati to Richmond. Although it's only been 40 minutes from the flight, it's gone. Translation: "The white one with no scratches or identifiable marks? Yeah, it's going for $15 on eBay right now"

Somehow, this event has caused a ripple effect in what I envisioned this year to be. The choices between carrying-cases that my wife wanted, the iPod dock in the living room, the new iMac that would house my iTunes library -- all of these decisions, interrupted and sidelined indefinitely.

Instead of moving forward, I seemed plagued with indecisions of either buying a new one, or finding a cheaper one, or buying a stolen one from eBay. All these crazy thoughts happening simultaneously like a neuron misfire causing bottlenecks all the way down the line. In the event, an extension of myself was lost, and it was as though I accepted defeat and stopped making decisions. Coupled with the onslaught of spring-cleaning and never-ending hunny-do-lists, it was though I shut down.

Earlier this week, I managed to get away from the grind. I bought an iPod replacement. I bought an car-charger with FM unit and carrying case. And suddenly, just as summer arrived, so did I.

Impressed with Google's manage History feature

It's been a few months since my last post -- I got sidetracked off my NCover tutorial I was trying a few months back. (Incidentally, my project desperately needs NCover, so I'll finally get a chance to jump back into that game).

Ages ago, I relied exclusively on the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer. But when I realized that big-brother was analyzing every move I made, I got a bit creep'd out so I uninstalled the bugger. The heavy influence of FireFox and it's built-in search toolbar (CTRL+K) made enough impact that I've never looked back.

However, a lot of things have changed in the Internet landscape as well as my personal lifestyle in the last few years: Google Analytics and GMail have rolled into my digital life and even this blog now uses my Google Account. I've come to know of Google's "Do no evil" motto, which has relaxed some of my concerns that gradually, behind the scenes, they are collecting my information without requiring me to install software. Now that I'm using my Google Account for so many things, all my FireFox searches in the last 15 months (bless'ed CTRL+K) have quietly been captured. Although I've seen my searches appearing on my personalized homepage, I haven't been that concerned: at least I know what Google knows about me.

Today I noticed Google's new "Manage History" feature, which required me to install the Google Toolbar before using it. Although I installed the toolbar with some reluctance, I am wildly surprised with the manage history feature. Not only can I view my search history, but I can also selectively edit any item -- it's my data!

Google tells me that I've done waay too many searches, and it tells me what I clicked on per search. It provides trend information on my usage: monthly, by day, by hour. (FYI: I do more searches in January, Thursdays are most popular, and I've never searched for anything between 1 and 5 am) It can tell me the top ten search queries in the last week, month, year or all time.

I can view my history in terms of web, news, images, sponsored links -- even Google Maps and Video. Even scarier: it can offer links that I might be interested in based on my previous usage.

What also seems interesting is that Google is providing bookmark functionality -- a competing feature to online bookmark services such as del.icio.us.

What would be really interesting is to be able to cross reference this history to my activity elsewhere -- the topics in my inbox, the tasks or projects I was working on at that time.

Also -- if Google could have tracked my history using my google-account then why did I need the Toolbar in order to use the history feature?

NCover Setup - Part II

Following up on my previous post, I'm continuing to set up code coverage in my .NET 2.0 project with some specific criteria.

Kudos to Grant Drake (aka Kiwidude) who is very committed to the cause. I spent some time on his site last night, pouring over some of his FAQ. He left a comment on my blog earlier, citing an FAQ that I missed on his site. Plus he recommended version 1.5.4 of NCover instead of the latest 1.5.5beta. Good stuff!

So to follow through on my previous post.

The first thing I did was move my test namespace and their classes into a separate ClassLibrary. This included all the standard stuff:

• remove the reference of NUnit from the Core library
• add an NUnit reference to the Test library.
• add a Core Library reference to the Test project.

After a quick compile, I dropped down to a command prompt and executed the same statement, except this time I had to specify the name of the Test harness assembly:

ncover.console nunit-console Test.dll //a Core

This worked and ...satisifies my second objective! The added bonus is now the coverage report only contains information about the Core namespace. This is great, but as an aside, since nothing has changed in the code I wonder if this is a bug in the "//a" switch? Update: The //a switch is for assemblies without their extensions, not namespaces.

As a further refinement, I can begin to take advantage of NUnit's Project capabilities. This enhancement simplifies things greatly. It allows me to:

• test/cover multiple assemblies at a time
• shield my build script from having any knowledge about the test harness configuration.
• specify where to locate the configuration file (this should solve my third objective)

To create the Nunit project file:

• open the NUnit-Gui and choose "New Project". I like to save the nunit file at the root of my solution.
• add in the assemblies that contain your test fixtures. In my case, I have to specify the relative path to my Test Harness: /Test/bin/Debug/Test.dll

As an NUnit project file is simply an xml file, my nunit project file contains the following:

<NUnitProject>
  <Settings activeconfig="Debug" />
  <Config name="Debug" binpathtype="Auto">
	<assembly path="Test\bin\Debug\Test.dll" />
  </Config>
</NUnitProject>

With this in place, I can now generate my coverage report at the command line with the following statement:

ncover.console nunit-console TestProj.nunit //a Core

So far, this pretty good. The second objective was fairly easy, and although I've violated my first objective, Kiwidude has suggested this might be something I could correct with part of the build script, so I'll get to that soon enough.

Tomorrow, I'll tackle my third objective of being able to resolve configuration settings.

NCover Setup - Part I

About a year ago, one of my projects established some best practices for test-driven development where we found our sweet spot using .NET 1.1, NUnit, NCover and NCoverBrowser. Things were going great until one day, NCover stopped producing coverage reports. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get it working again. Panic. Frustration. Pain. Despair. Acceptance: no more coverage reports....

Now, a new project is about to take off, this one using .NET 2.0, and I'm determined to get NCover running on this project. Problem is, documentation for NCover is still no where to be found online, only mixed messages in their forums.

So, for my reference, and potentially yours, I thought I'd share how I set this up. As I'm building an application for an enterprise the requirements can get pretty complex... here's what I'm shooting for:

1. I typically structure a project so that I have a solution folder which contains copies of all the libraries my project will require to compile. I also bundle third-party tools with the solution folder so that when a developer checks the project out of source-control, the build script has everything it needs to operate without any configuration on behalf of the developer.
2. I want to structure the solution so that the application code and the test harness are in different assemblies.
3. In addition to separate test and application assemblies, configuration settings from the application code must be used with the test harness.
4. I need to drive the code coverage from a NAnt script
5. I need to integrate the output into CruiseControl.NET

So I downloaded NCover 1.5.5 beta and cracked open a new ClassLibrary project to simulate code coverage. I wrote two classes: a simple class "Core.Class1" and a test fixture "Test.Class1Test". I compiled the solution, dropped to a command prompt and manually tried to execute ncover using relative file paths. "Unable to locate file" errors.

As soon as I put both NCover and NUnit file paths into my PATH environment variable, the error messages started to change. The following statement, executed from the "bin\Debug" folder of my project:

"ncover.console nunit-console Core.dll //a Core"

...worked!

Although adding PATH variables violates objective #1 it did produce a coverage report for the Core and Test namespaces. Since my NUnit test cases are guaranteed to be 100% covered by NUnit, I'll need to find a way to exclude the Test namespace from the report.

I'll reorganize the project into separate assemblies and see how that changes this configuration tommorrow.

Read part two: NCover Setup - Part II

VB.NET Logical Operators are lame

While writing some application architecture documentation for my current project, I drew a blank looking for the technical term "short-circuit" logical operators.

These are really simple in C#.

public bool Method1()

{

   Console.WriteLine("Method1 called.");

   return false;

}

public bool Method2()

{

   Console.WriteLine("Method2 called.");

   return true;

}

public void ShowShortCircuiting()

{

   Console.WriteLine("Regular AND:");

   Console.WriteLine("Result is: {0}", Method1() & Method2());

   Console.WriteLine("Short-Circuit AND:");

   Console.WriteLine("Result is: {0}", Method1() && Method2());

}

Produces the following output:

Regular AND:
Method1 called.
Method2 called.
Result is: False

Short-Circuit AND:
Method1 called.
Result is: False

The concept is really simple too: If the first item isn't true then don't bother executing the next condition.

When speaking with a colleague, he asked if this was possible in VB.NET. Google says yes. But isn't syntax in VB is completely backward??

The C# equivalents map to VB.NET, thusly:

C#: &
VB: And
C#: &&
VB: AndAlso

To quote the article I've highlighted:

If you want the second test to be executed every time, use And. If that's not what you want, use AndAlso.

Syntax-wise, I think that this reads as: "I want this and also this to be evaluated". But if the first condition doesn't pass, (insert smirk) wouldn't it better to say, "I want this, and maybe this to be evaluated."??

I'm not sure what prompted me to switch from VB6 to C#, but boy, I'm glad I did.

Eating dog food I preach

There's a fairly large disconnect between what I personally use and what my industry has highlighted as holy-grail great. So I finally got around to creating a del.icio.us account, and managed to find the time to add it to my blog. (I found a great resource for a list of online-del.icio.us tools here)

While I'm not convinced I need the social-networking aspect, an online bookmark solution makes sense for a few reasons:

Too many browsers. I use FireFox for my day-to-day, but occasionally I'll encounter some weird bugginess in FireFox 2.0 so I'll boot up IE 7. What's interesting about switching back and forth between browsers is that once you get settled into a session with a half-dozen tabs open, you don't want to switch back during that session. I also find that I don't bookmark most pages, I use the Browser History sidebar (CTRL+H) to relocate helpful sites. An online solution makes a lot more sense; I just have to bookmark more frequently.

Obsessive Compulsion Disorder and Format C Colon Slash Syndrome. If I kept an organized list of links from the time that I started out online it would be several reams thick. Unfortunately, I never keep a list of bookmarks for too long because I start to suspect my windows machines with performance and garbage in the registry after the install is over a year old. (I start to get anxi around the six-month mark...) I tend to give into this paranoia and format my drives somewhat frequently and in doing so I always forget to backup my bookmarks.

Blog-worthy, maybe. I started my blog to capture thoughts and findings on the web, but some days, posting a blog entry is a challenge. While I do use my blog to capture URLs for reference, not all URLs are blog worthy.

...and heck, if a colleague wanted to find a URL that I found useful, I could point them to my del.icio.us account. So, maybe I do want the social aspect after all. Hmm.

Well, let's see how this experiment plays out -- I've added the delicious tag cloud to my blog on the right. If it's not there in a few months, maybe I stopped using it.

the Church of Home Depot

I once heard that Home Depot does more business with Canada than the United States does with France. I'd believe it too, I go to Home Depot on the weekends so frequently, I call it Church.

Trusted computing

Great animated short that stabs at Trusted Computing. From the short:

In a trusted computing environment the major goal is to protect us from potential threats. The original trusted computing idea is designed to let you decide what to consider as threat and what to consider as trust worthy. You can control by your own personal conviction. The industry's interpretation of the trusted computing idea looks quite similar, aiming at the same to fight threats and to make computing trustworthier. The main difference is that you cannot decide by your own what is trustworthy and what is not because they already decided for you... and they already decided not to trust you.

Can't Touch This - Touch Screen

I was really quite impressed with the iPhone's multi-touch technology as demonstrated in the MacWorld keynote, but this puts the iPhone to shame. This article on Fast Company might have you thinking that you accidentally woke up in the year 2054. Even better, check out this video demonstration. Update: This based on some amazing work that Jeff Han of NYU has produced. Multi-touch is probably a better name than Frustrated Total Internal Reflection.

Wired 14.08: Be an Expert on Anything

Wired magazine did a how-to issue back in august where Stephen Colbert had the cover: how to be an expert on anything. My favourite: Don't be afraid to make things up. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They're qualified to.

Internet Explorer 7: Quick Reference Sheet

I've always loved that FireFox has CTRL+K for a shorcut to the search window. Turns out it's CTRL+E: Internet Explorer 7: Quick Reference Sheet Here's a shortcut key listing for Firefox which conveniently lists Internet Explorer and Opera against FireFox, though I think it might be for IE6.

Updated Template

Along with Blogger's version upgrades are some new templates. Enjoy the new look. I chose this template because the width of the posts expands with the browser window. Maybe now I'll consider posting code examples :D

VS.NET Blogging help

Stumbled across this great post over at Stephen Chu's blog, which points to an open source Visual Studio Add-in. The Add-in allows you to copy any code snippet into the clipboard as properly formatted HTML. A great tool for blogging!

Props to Blogger

Blogspot has finally rolled out their new version. Good job. Better administration, tagging, faster publishing. Only suggestion: spellcheck. I've upgraded my template to take advantage of these new features, and I've even tagged most of my posts. I'll update Cameron's blog soon. I've been posting more to my blog internal to our company, but hopefully this new year I'll find the time to blog more. More pictures too. If you find yourself reading this, leave comments -- they're encouraging and a good prod in the butt to write more. Incidentally, I've got lots of posts I've started but haven't finished. I should get those out, shake off the dust and post 'em.... even if they are several years old.

Software and the Metropolis

Update: the link has changed to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480026.aspx I attended the VS Live conference back in 2004, where Pat Helland gave this really interesting talk about how IT and Software are experiencing the same trends as the evolution of major cities. The parallels are really interesting. According to Pat, we're in 1880 I've referred to this talk many times, so I'm posting a link to it now. I can't believe that was over two years ago. One of the interesting anticdotes made is that after the railroads were invented (the internet), we needed a way to package our stuff up and send it between places. Hence, the invention of cardboard in 1880. XML is Cardboard. Ever buy a memory stick from dell? The cardboard it shipped in probably weighed more than the RAM stick. The cardboard had your name on it, where it came from, a shipping number, a customs tag on it, etc, etc -- but in the end, the contents of the package were more important than the package.

Geeking with Greg: Talk on eBay architecture

Cool post on e-bay architecture. Vertical scalability is where it's at. Interesting that XSLT and local file storage are used.

Rogers Digital Cable

I guess the picture's okay, but I can't get over how cluegy their guide is. Half the screen is taken up by their logo, the picture in picture looks like a stretched gif and the responsiveness of the menu is sloooooow. Thankfully, with my media center, I don't have to worry about that. I download the guide settings off the internet and then use the ever-so-user-friendly user-interface of media center to browse the guide. I can scroll through the channels (all of them) in under 15 seconds, plus I can remove channels from the listings that I don't want to see. Now, the big bonus is that I can multiple receivers (finally) hooked up to the media center so I can record one show while watching another live program.

About Friggin Time

Since February, the Internet connection at home has been flakey.  There had also been a lot of static on the phone line, maybe from a recent snow storm, so I figured this could be interrupting the DSL service. I called Bell to come out and take a look at the phone lines. They claimed they dispatched someone, but I never heard from them.

For a short while, the Internet seemed better and the phone line service wasn't so static-y. But sure enough, the Internet got worse and the static returned. So I called Bell. I asked why they never came by the house; they claimed they had a service technician splice the phone lines. This time, they dispatched someone. They tested the outside phone lines and determined everything was great. They tested the line going into the house and determined there was something wrong.

Aha, admist all the confusion of our new son being born, I had forgotten that we had activated our alarm system. Surely, it must be the alarm system that was interfering.

So I called ADT and asked. It took them a while to get me to a technician (they don't have anybody who can answer these questions on the phone outside of 9-5 PM Monday-Friday).

So I called Bell. Bell ran some diagnostics from their helpdesk and determined that it sounded like an "unfiltered telephonic device". Is it my alarm system? Maybe. Or, it's the new 3-in-1 handset cordless phone. Apparently, they draw a lot of current on the phone line.

So, Bell recommended:

1. Disconnect the alarm.
2. Disconnect the phone.
3. Good luck.

So I decided to disconnected the cordless phone, and well... nothing happened. For about one week, the Internet worked great. After that, well. It was like 14 baud. Not 56,000 baud or even 14,000 baud. 14. Bruuuuutal.

So by about May, I was able to finally get someone from ADT to come by the house. Thankfully, those bastards charged me $150 bucks to install a phone-line adapter which they should have done during the install. (Thanks F#@#ers!!) Surely now, this would resolve the unfiltered-telephonic device.

Unfortunately, no. However, between June and July, every so often, the Internet would work for a few minutes at a time. In September I was able to use a bit-torrent client for about a week before I went back to 14 baud.

So November rolls around and I've had it. Time to get off DSL and onto Cable. Make the switch from dreaded Monopoly Bell to dreaded Monopoly Rogers. We hum and haa about switching, but eventually decide to switch everything: cell, TV, Internet, home phone. We feel glad we've made the purchase, and the installer is coming the following week. Great!

For the next week, every single day Rogers calls and leaves an automated message reminding me to be there for the 8-11 am install. Every frikking day.

Sure enough, at 10:50 the installer arrives. He's bright, cheerful. The first set back is that he can't get into the cable box, so he used a sledge-hammer to annihilate the existing box. He plugs holes and installs new metal clips to hold down the cables. Fantastic.

When it comes time to hook things up inside, it took me a while to convince him that I know where I want everything installed:

"Everything's in the basement.", I say.

"How about on the main floor?", he asks.

My main floor is devoid of technology.  "You see any TVs?"

Somehow the fact that there aren't any computers, phones or TVs on the main floor doesn't phase him.  Puzzled he asks, "So... main floor?"

This guy has been great so far, so I politely assert, "Why not put it in the basement with the TV, Wireless router and phone jacks?"

Obviously, he's either not listening to me or has a fear of finished basements. "We could just move stuff on this shelf and put it next to this phone. Most people do."

I walk over to the basement.  "Okay, so how about the basement then?"

Eventually, several hours later -- everything's hooked up. The installer makes some comment like, "it's not going to work right away. You know some people freak out because it doesn't work right away." I somehow let that slide. I wonder why people would think this?  Maybe because your automated voice-messaging system has been harassing people about the install??

Just as he's leaving, he mentions that there's a provisioning problem and it should be cleared up in a few hours. Not sure what he meant by this, I call Rogers about an hour later and ask for them some clarification. We sit on hold for nearly 30 minutes before the tech suggests that he can call me back when he knows. Gee, why didn't you offer that suggestion seconds after me calling you?? So the voicemail says, "there's a problem with getting the home phone number from Bell. Everything's backed up. We don't know how long. Maybe 24 hours."

So 24 hours later, I'm on the phone again. I'm put on hold for a very long time before someone comes back and tells me that "24-48 hours."

So 72 hours after the install, I get the impression that I'm working for Rogers now. I call in, yell at their stupid automated-voice system. The story I get is "... The work-order is showing as pending. So until we get the home-phone installed, we can't activate the TV or the Internet." This blows me away. Technically, the Internet and TV are hooked up correctly, and should work. But, because the paper work says the home-phone hasn't been hooked up -- technically, nothing can be activated.  So the best they can do, is schedule someone to come out to my house and finish the install in another week. But, he can make sure I get free TV for a month. Arrrgh!!

So they book the install for 5-8 a week later.  Which they show up at 5:01 for.  My wife got home from work (I was away on business) around 5:05 to find the "you weren't here note." Bastards!!

So I book the next install, now nearly three weeks since the original install. We get home at 4:58 to find two nearly identical messages on our phone: "Hello, this is Rogers installer. I want to do install. Please call me back."

Hmmm, maybe I would call you ...if you left your phone number!  So 5:01 he's knocking on the door. The entire home-phone installation takes 1 minute: snip the wire from bell. Plug the modem into the phone jack.

24 hours later. It works.

About Friggin Time.

Running windows 2003 on a mac

Ok, maybe you can use parallels or bootcamp to install a windows OS on a intel-chip mac, but I had no idea that Windows 2003 was supported. When I saw this, I felt inspired to use the extremely crappy camera in my cell phone to take this snap.... Either the staffer who stocked the shelves of the Macintosh section at this book store is incompetent, had no Mac books, or had a sense of humour. 

VS.NET 2005 ASP.NET Web Application add-on

At work, we've shunned the VS 2003 concept of "Web Sites". Who really thinks you can build an enterprise web-application that is developed against the web-server with FrontPage Extensions?

Fritz Onion wrote an article ages ago that showed how you could treat a standard Class Library as a web application. This is the model we've been using ever since.

I've been wanting to try out the new Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project since it was released but am just getting around to it.

There's an Update to Visual Studio 2005 you have to download first.

Haven't spent too much time on it yet, but you don't have to hack the IDE's config settings nor set up IIS.

Bitchin'.

Float's Mobile Agent

I wasn't surprised recently when my laptop's hard-drive started to sound like a Suzuki motorcycle running up and down a hilly road. I'd been running it to the limit since the day I got it, constantly downloading and iterating through several hundred-thousand files. The space around the hard-drive would get so hot that I'm pretty sure that it has cooked the fleshy part of my left-palm. So when it finally died, despite the huge bummer of having to reinstall everything, I saw this as an opportunity to clean up my files and get my laptop organized.

One of the things that I've been wanting to get more out of is my Bluetooth enabled laptop and phone. I'd tried using the Sony Ericsson software that shipped with my phone but was completely unimpressed. I'd heard of this great utility flOat's Mobile Agent (FMA), but just couldn't get it to work.

So before instead of installing the Sony Ericsson software, this time I was going to put more time into FMA. Being open-source, it naturally is a little poor on setup details and documentation. However, I found a great starter document that shows how to get it up and running. In short:

• Using the Bluetooth software, pair your Phone with the PC
• Bring up the context-menu of the phone, choose Connect to Serial Port -- it'll add a new COM Port. You'll need to make note of the COM port it creates (ie COM4, COM5, COM6, etc)
• Launch FMA
• Choose Tools -> Options. Select the COM Port that was defined for your phone. (Mine was COM6)
• OK your way out of the Options and then choose the "Phone -> Connect" option from the menu.

After about 30 seconds, FMA identifies your phone and begins to configure itself. Immediately afterwards, the FMA dashboard knows more about your phone that you do: battery, signal strength, firmware revision, call lists for incoming / outgoing and missed calls. Once you set the "Autoconnect on startup" and "Auto-reconnect (use proximity)" FMA takes care of managing the connection to your phone transparently. In addition, FMA loads itself into your phone like it was a Bluetooth accessory like a head-set or speaker phone.

Although albeit a bit buggy (it *is* OpenSource so that's to be expected) this is a great tool that changes the way you see your phone. It has the standard tools that you would expect, such as the ability to manage your phonebook, text messages, and upload/download files to and from your phone -- plus it has some additional goodies like viewing your call-lists, sending SMS messages from your PC and synchronizing with Outlook. What's more is that it provides on-screen call-display for your incoming calls: I got the onscreen popup that my wife was calling before my phone rang!

My favorite feature is the proximity detection. Mac users with iSync have had the luxury of integrated Bluetooth proximity. When I walk away from my PC, the speakers mute and it locks my workstation. When I return, the speakers un-mute. (The "unlock workstation" checkbox is currently grayed out in the Tools -> Options).

I was impressed that it goes beyond the Sony Ericsson software capabilities and lets you control every aspect of your phone remotely: silent mode, locked keys -- you can even turn off the phone.

Even further still, I was surprised to learn that the developers of FMA have thought of the inverse -- the ability to control your PC from your phone. Once FMA is initialized, it loads itself into your phone like it was a Bluetooth accessory like a head-set or speaker phone. By default, it opens a menu of applications and tools that can be launched such as WinAmp. Among this menu list is a "General Tools" which lets you turn off your monitor, lock the workstation, hibernate, and even shutdown.

Much like UltraMon, this is a utility I'll be preaching to anyone who has a Bluetooth enabled phone and PC.

Windows 98 + high speed Internet = hilarious

Tip: If you have high speed Internet and you don't have a router or other physical firewall device, you are running at serious risk. Go buy a router!! Here's a story about how a simple OS installation turned out to be a nightmare...

My wife and I took a trip out east for my Mother-in-Law's 60th birthday. Anytime she was in our province, she'd always talk about her computer with such disappointment and how I should come out to fix it someday. Well, when I learned that their machine was completely unstable on Windows ME (gawd help me) and their tech-friendly neighbour downgraded them to Windows 98 (holy crap!) -- I knew I needed to help.

So I looked into buying a copy of XP. Strangely, an upgrade is $230 and an OEM copy is $110. The catch is that you have to buy a motherboard in order to qualify for the OEM version -- no exceptions. Even if I bought a cheapo motherboard it would still work cheaper than the upgrade. Hey Microsoft -- fix your pricing, that's stupid.

So instead of purchasing a new version, I decided that my aging computer that I haven't hooked up since we moved into our house a year ago was officially retired -- I could donate that copy to my Mother-in-Law without violating any licensing agreements.

I bought a cheap 80Gb hard-drive for $50 (+ tax, grrr) on the day of my flight out and committed to installing the new Hard-Drive and OS while I was there. The installation turned out to be the most-complicated OS install I've ever performed.

I learned that there must have been some serious security improvements to XP since the first release of the OS -- I received my copy the week XP was launched so a fresh installation needs a zillion updates. I also learned that either the high-speed Internet provider out east could care less about mitigating hackers or I just didn't realize how effective my Linksys Router is.

I ended up installing the OS three times:

The first install went flawlessly -- I kept the Internet connection unplugged until it was ready to download updates. As soon as I started up Windows Update, the initial fix (the background intelligent transfer service BITS upgrade) took forever to install. About twenty minutes in, I realized that some hacker had compromised the machine and in place of the BITS upgrade, a Trojan had been installed with the same name, and the root of the hard-drive was filling up with garbage files and executables, pop-up messages were launching: this pc was now a honey-pot for hackers. In frustration, I put the installation CD back in and rebooted -- screw this!

I wised up for the second installation and took some additional security steps. I changed permissions on the hard-drive, disabled simple sharing. I thought I turned off "File and Printer Sharing" but an hour later, I was screaming politely (in front of my father-in-law) and rebooted with the installation CD.

The third installation, I needed help. I borrowed a neighbour's DLink router and magically all the hacker non-sense stopped. Before I left Nova Scotia I convinced my father-in-law that they absolutely needed to have a router.

Looking back on it -- they claimed they had serious problems with Windows ME but fewer problems with Windows 98. Though I'm not sure how to qualify "fewer" because when I was backing up data for the re-installation their machine would crash two/three times per hour. In a way it was comical because each time it crashed my not-so-computer-friendly father-in-law would ask, "What causes that?"

I explained it the best I could -- "Running Windows 98 nearly ten years ago when everyone was on dial-up was considered "safe". Now that everyone's on broadband things have changed; security has changed. Imagine a bank with security practices from the 1950's that has no bars, silent alarms or security cameras... would you bank there?"

Access / SQL - Write Conflict Error

We've been using an Access Database to front a SQL Server database. It's handy in that we can leverage all the simple UI features that Access Provides, such as drop-down lists.

However, recently we had a problem when we couldn't update any rows and we were getting this mysterious "Write Conflict" error.

Turns out that Access UI tries to assign default values to columns, and for some data-types, this causes problems.

Here's the MS Knowledge base article: You may receive write conflict errors when you update records of a linked SQL Server table in Access 2000

Colbert Roasts President Bush

Saw the Repor(t) the other day where he called out some of the highlights from this speech, but it was out of context....

Here's the full speech...

awesome.

the mesquite-powered car.

Asynchronous client-side error logging

Finally got around to setting up a Bloglines account: handy tool.

While catching up on some of Scott Guthrie's posts, I was intrigued by Logging JavaScript Errors To ASP.NET

The code module is ASP.NET 2.0, and integrates with the Health Monitoring system.