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.