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Updated blog

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I have updated my blog to use DasBlog. If you happened to be subscribed to the direct link, which you are if you are reading this through a feed, you should redirect your subscription to http://feeds.feedburner.com/netWandering

IADNUG Meeting Tomorrow

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up about the IADNUG meeting tomorrow night at the DMACC West campus. Nick Parker will be doing a presentation on dependency inversion in .NET. I hope to see you there.

Nike + iPod – 250 miles later

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 06:00:00 GMT

This week I hit the 250 mile running mark on my Nike + iPod and I love it. I definitely hate running though, it’s rather boring and tends to be a lot of work, but adding a bit of technology to it that allows me to monitor my progress makes it bearable and keeps me in better shape. The Nike + iPod consists of a wireless sensor that attaches to your shoe, a wireless receiver that plugs into your iPod, and the nikeplus.com website. This wireless sensor is designed to slip under the sole of certain Nike shoes which now appear to be down to as cheap as $40, but when I got the device the cheapest shoes that supported it were $100 so I opted for the RunAway which cost me about $10. I read a few comments on the Internet saying these adapters don’t work because the sense works by pressure which you don’t get by strapping the sensor to your laces, but I haven’t had any problems. Now that the Nike shoes have come down in price though, I may get a pair and test out the difference. The sensor and receiver combo runs around $25.

Basically the entire add-on is a glorified pedometer, but it has some great features that allow you to monitor your running. First off you are able to monitor your running, while you’re running. With one push of the center iPod button, you get informed of your distance, time, and pace. You’re also able to monitor your overall running by syncing your runs up to the Nike+ website and tracking how well you’re doing over time. You can also set target goals on the website and track if you are meeting them.

Another nice feature is the ability to set up a power song. Mine is The Eye of the Tiger and it plays whenever I need a little extra motivation by holding down the center iPod button for a few seconds.

I love this add-on and the ability to track my running motives me to run more, but one thing I don’t like is the fact that I can’t change the song very easily while running since the iPod is strapped to my arm and I can’t see the screen. Hopefully this problem with be resolved if the Nike Amp+ ever comes out. It is a wristwatch like remote that allows you to control the iPod while running.

Check it out and I’ll let you know when I hit 500 miles.

Adding A New Harddrive To Linux

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:00:00 GMT

This weekend I have been spending most of my time rebuilding my KnoppMyth box by installing the lastest version, applying the patch to handle the new tv lisings provider, Schedule Direct, and adding a new 500GB drive for recording tv. I wrote down most of the steps to get things setup and plan to do a blog posting about soon. At the moment what I did want to post is a link to a page on how to add a second drive to linux. They are clear instructions and worked nicely. I'm mounting this new hardrive to the /myth/tv directory so that all tv recording will go to it.

If you're trying to do exactly what I did, then you also need to set the proper permissions back on the /myth/tv directory or you will get a bunch of errors. First set the owner of the directory back to mythtv by doing this

chown mythtv /myth/tv

Then to get the permissions exactly back to where the were I added write permission back on for the group by doing:

chmod g+w /myth/tv

You can compare the before and after permissions and ownership my doing ls -l /myth before you make any of these changes and then again afterwards.

Goodbye Corporate, Hello Jeans

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:00:00 GMT

I said goodbye to Wells Fargo this week and hello to a new job that will hopefully fit my style much better. Wells Fargo just wasn’t hitting the mark for what I wanted to be doing professionally and I found myself doing a lot of content changes and minor code changes, many of which were in classic asp and .NET 1.1. I was about to start a new project from scratch in .NET 2.0 that would have taken the next two or three months to complete, but I realized that once that was finished I would probably be back to handling minor changes.

I’ve worked at two different large companies in my development career, and I have come to the conclusion that they do not respect the individual developer as an asset. Don’t get me wrong, in both cases my direct manager has been very good and I felt they considered me an asset, but in general I think management as a whole in a large company doesn’t care who the developer is sitting in the seat and thinks all developers have the same skill set. From what I have seen this is definitely not the case and except for a couple of very smart developers I have met, a significant number of developers in general really don’t seem to have the aptitude nor ambition to do their jobs

The biggest thing I think corporations with development departments need to start doing is charging their internal departments. A significant amount of money and time seems to get wasted with users and management abusing their development department by flip flopping on changes, and general indecisiveness. I think by billing the department that the application is for (at a reasonable rate) the requesting department would be more conscience of the time that they are utilizing for development. It’s very easy to take advantage of the development department, when you have no consequences from it.

So where are you off too, you ask? Well I’ve headed over to work with Nick at Two Rivers Marketing. It will be nice to finally leave my kakis hanging in the closet and be able to wear some comfortable clothes to work for a change. I’ve met several of the guys there through the IADNUG and felt they had the type of attitude that I was looking for. I hope that I can learn a lot there and maybe even teach them a few things.

Lastly I would just like to point out that most of us developer work at least forty hours a week, probably even more, so if you’re not doing something you are enjoying then you owe it to yourself to do something about it. If you’ve been telling yourself for awhile now that things will get better soon, or that a fun project will probably be around the corner, then you need to start considering a job change and at least stick your resume out there to see what the world has to offer you.

Check out the decTop!

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Take a look at the decTop. Its a small computer weighing three pounds that can run Windows CE or linux. It has 128mb of memory and 10GB for storage. With four USB ports you could easily add a wireless usb stick for network connectivity and do some cool things. I came across this on LifeHacker and my mind is full of ideas for it. Plus at $100 its not to bad of a price.

Implementing FizzBuzz Using an Extension Method in VB.NET

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Well I thought I would be nice and put up the code sample for implementing FizzBuzz using and extension method in VB.NET. To read my full explanation of FizzBuzz and extension methods please read my previous post.

Those of you that know me, know that I could care less if you program in VB or C#, but I definitely prefer C# because it allows me to type a lot less. Extension methods appear to be no different are a bit more complicated in VB, requiring that they are in a module and decorated with an attribute.

Module ExtensionMethods

    Sub Main()

        For i As Integer = 1 To 100
            Console.WriteLine(i.FizzBuzz)
        Next

        Console.ReadLine()

    End Sub

    _
Public Function FizzBuzz(ByVal Value As Integer) As String
        Dim rtnVal As String = ""

        If Value Mod 3 = 0 Then
            rtnVal += "Fizz"
        End If

        If Value Mod 5 = 0 Then
            rtnVal += "Buzz"
        End If

        If rtnVal = "" Then
            rtnVal = Value.ToString
        End If

        Return rtnVal
    End Function

End Module

Implementing FizzBuzz Using an Extension Method in C#

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:00:00 GMT

For those of you that don’t know what FizzBuzz is, it became quite popular awhile back when Jeff Atwood posted to his blog a few quotes from people about interviewing candidates for programming jobs and the fact that many of them can’t code. (It’s possible that the topic originated from someone else. I heard it originally from Scott Hanselman’s blog who referenced Jeff.) FizzBuzz is a simple coding exercise where you write a loop that prints the numbers from 1 to 100, except if the number is divisible by three it outputs Fizz and if the number is divisible by five it outputs Buzz. If it is divisible by both you output FizzBuzz.

What is an Extension Method? An extension method is a new feature in .Net 3.5 that allows you to add methods to an existing object. It allows you to modify an object without needing to create your own version of it through inheritance. Why is this useful? I’m sure there are many reasons. One is that if you don’t have the ability to change the object that is being passed to your class then you can’t just use inheritance and create your own version of the object, but what you can do is create an extension method.

This example that I am going to walk you through will add a method to int called FizzBuzz. Calling this method will output a string with either the number of your int, Fizz, Buzz, or FizzBuzz depending on the criteria stated above.

This code for the extension method is fairly simple:

namespace ExtensionMethodExample

{

public static class CustomExtensionMethods

{

public static string FizzBuzz(this int value)

{

string rtnVal = "";

if (value % 3 == 0)

{

rtnVal += "Fizz";

}

if (value % 5 == 0)

{

rtnVal += "Buzz";

}

if (rtnVal == "")

{

rtnVal = value.ToString();

}

return rtnVal;

}

Here I have a static class called CustomExtensionMethods. Next, I have created a static method called FizzBuzz. The magic happens when I all this to the input parameter. I then calculate FizzBuzz on my input parameter and return the appropriate string. (I’m sure there is a better way to implement FizzBuzz.)

That’s it. I then utilitize the new FizzBuzz method like this(In my case I have created a simple console application):

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using ExtensionMethodExample;

namespace ExtenderMethodExample

{

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

for (int i = 1; i < 100; i++)

{

Console.WriteLine(i.FizzBuzz());

}

Console.ReadLine();

}

It’s that simple. Drop this into a VS2008 console application and try it out. You will have complete access to your extension methods via intellisense. Happy coding.

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The Scott Stanfield Show

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Well Greg Brill hasn’t responded to the email with my resume and I haven’t gotten any swag from DotNetRocks!, but you may have noticed that on episode #260 at five minutes and twenty seconds Richard Campbell read my email. I was a little surprised myself as I was only half listening while I was at work, but sure enough he read my comments on show #244 with Scott Stanfield. He didn’t read everything so here is my email in full:

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to let you know that the Scott Stanfield show was great. I am a .Net developer and have been listening to the big three for some time now (.NetRocks, Hanselminutes, and Runas Radio). My only complaint is that I need more content to listen to. I’ve tried a few other podcasts, but either the content or the sound quality sucked and I removed them from my subscriptions. After listening to the Scott Stanfield show I started thinking that you need to get this guy his own podcast. He knew a wide range of topics and obviously enjoyed talking about them. The way he presented information reminded me of Scott Hanselman as they both come across as very excited and enthusiastic about technology. What do you think? If you’re too busy to get it up and going then maybe you could hire a hot intern (or at least you could use it as an excuse to get one.) Just thought I would throw that out there. Keep up the good work.

Anyways, I’m going to officially start the campaign for the Scott Stanfield show. I don’t know If Scott wants to do one or not, but if I can get enough people to ask then maybe he will. My job is getting fairly boring and I need some interesting content to listen to so until I get a new job, some swag as a bribe to shut me up, or the Scott Stanfield show starts I’ll keep bugging for the new podcast. I’ve put together a survey to gather everyone’s opinion about the idea so fill out the survey and feel free to comment about it here.

MythTV Disappointment

dosborn@ctrlalt313373.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:00:00 GMT

If you haven’t been watching Slashdot at all or any of the many MythTV forums out there then you don’t know that we will all soon be losing our free XML feed of TV listings. Zap2it Labs originally provided the feed for free for noncommercial use, but they are going to stop providing this starting Sept 1^st. Several individuals organized and have worked with Zap2it to keep the feed going and have created a new entity called Schedule Direct. Recently Schedule Direct reached an agreement with Zap2it to continue to provide the feed to open source DVR users through Schedule Direct. Of course, the rub is that it is going to begin costing $5 a month to subscribe to. According to the website they hope to turn this into only $20 a year, but they are waiting to figure out how many individuals sign up.

I don’t want to sound like a complete cheapo, but I can get a DVR from my cable company for $5 more a month, and the entire point of me originally building my own DVR was so that I would not have to pay a monthly fee and could instead use that money to keep adding to my DVR. Also, I have no idea how many MythTV and XMLTV users are out there, but someone is bound to make a decent profit off of this at $5 a month per person.

A few of the guys at work, including myself think that this is an area that Google needs to get into. Google’s all about providing different types of data, so why can’t they start providing TV data? It seems like the exact kind of service that they would provide for free. You could probably wrap some ads around it all and generate some very decent revenue. I even considered doing it myself, but I already have two projects going on at the moment along with a full time job, and I didn’t think I could put together a solution quick enough for it to be beneficial.

Anyways, this leaves me with deciding what to do next and I am strongly considering switching my setup over to Windows Vista Home Premium and using the Media Center functionality. From what I have heard it is pretty good, my only concern is if my hardware is all supported, which I can’t figured out without hunting down the details on everything, or just trying it out and killing my MythTV install. Of course, after Sept 1^st my DVR is just going to be a big paper weight anyways. What do you think? Should I not be a cheapo and pony up, or stick to my guns and have a completely monthly fee free DVR?