General Geekiness

PDC 09 : Day 2

ChrisD — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:30:21 GMT

Keynote:

HOLY SMOKES!! Now this is why I came to PDC! Announced today: Silverlight 4 Beta. Printing? Yep. Access to Local File System? Yep. Want to share your assemblies between SL and native .NET assemblies? No Problem. Want access to the clipboard? COM Interop? Web Cam & Micrphone? Done and Done.

SketchFlow.. Wha!?!?! OMG thats a cool prototyping tool.

Sharepoint 2010 is looking like a tour de force. The ease of development, integration and deployment. Debugging and sandbox support. Solutions can be deployed and tested on client OS machines. Client toolkits uses REST or a Client SDK make it all so attractive. NICE JOB SHAREPOINT.. NICE JOB.

oh yeah.. and then there was this: Microsoft gives free laptop to PDC 2009 attendees. Some days its great to be a GEEK.

On to Windows Identity Foundation overview.

Windows Identity Foundation Overview:

Covered the basics of WIF: Stand up an STS (custom or ADFS), configure your application (RP) to be defended by the tokens issued from your new STS. Configure the claims to fetch, etc. WIF Wizards take care of the client configuration, and the WIF http modules will map the incoming token to an Identity, Principal, and a set of claims. Optionally you can control authorization logic based on the incoming claims either directly in code or by establishing policy articulated in the RP’s configuration file. WIF supports Active, Passive and Delegated (ACTAS) scenarios.

Nothing new in this session for me, but I still found the validation to be worth while.

Windows Workflow (Overview and Host Deep Dive)

WF (pronounced dub-eff) 4.0 looks like a great improvement over the 3.0 version. The product looks highly extensible and powerful, but the overview session was anything but. Presented by Matt Winkler (Mr. WF) presented a 200 level talk to a bunch of people who were asking “What is Workflow?”. I have some WF 3x experience, and found it difficult to grasp how the pieces fit together.

The follow up session was the “under the hood” of the workflow host, which was surprising interesting and insightful.

The WF presenters needed a session on “How to build, deploy and debug WF 4.0”. It would have provided attendees with the skills needed to get going with WF. For a product line still searching for its user base, I think the WF team missed a great opportunity.

Ask The Experts

Pick a topic, move to the roundtable filled with experts, and dialog with your peers and gurus. I sat at the WF table for a while, then moved over to C#. Met two members of the C# dev team. One, DJ Park, was great to talk with, the other (who shall remain nameless) was an arrogant douchebag. Tomorrow I’m excited to check out the IntelliTrace stuff in VS2010, but now its time to party down, Geek Style.

GeekFest

Wall-to-wall geeks having fun the geek way; there was class video games, air hockey tables, pool tables, on thz,line sessions of Gears of War, and gaggles of geeks competing in a “Puzzle contest”. Yeah thats right, they were competing over puzzles. I enjoyed the video games, pool tables, virtual roller coaster, and free chair massages (I really enjoyed that last one). Plenty of food and drink, and I’m sure somewhere they were hosting a D&D game, but I can’t confirm that.

PDC09: In Review

ChrisD — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:23:21 GMT

My thoughts and observations of this year’s Microsoft PDC conference in LA.

Day 1:

Just registered for the conference. They had many reps available to move attendees through the registration process. We arrived early, and had to stand in line for 15 minutes, while all the reps stared blankly back at us; “We don’t open until 7.” Wow.. Great Customer Service.

Let me take this moment to comment on the Conference bag this year. ITS A CHEAP PIECE OF CRAP. Literally, it looks like a “reusable” grocery shopping bag, except its so thin, I don’t think it will make it through the conference before it rips; something that’s likely to happen at the most inopportunity time, I’m sure.

ok.. I’m on to the “Big Hall” to hear the opening key note. More to come.

Pre-Keynote update: Having just wandered through miles of hallway, I’m thinking that adding a BUILDING MAP to the updated session list would have been a great idea. Just a thought.

Key Note: Yep, its all about Azure. Ray Ozzie announced the beta of MS PinPoint, a discovery and procurement site for azure hosted, 3rd Party developed applications (Think AppleStore for your services that you want to sell to others). Included is an offering, code named “Dallas”. Dallas is a PinPoint channel that’s all about data. Want to get access to the US Census data? Go to The Dallas channel on pinpoint and subscribe to it. Data is available as data feeds, Restful services, and can even be consumed through ODBC connections. Any publically available data can be offered through the Dallas channel, and includes the ability for trail and full subscriptions.

other big announcements; VS 2010 has some pretty great debugging and tracing tools. They have included some of the productivity features included in ReSharper, and have a new tool IntelliTrace. More about this later.

Want to develop Azure services, but run it all locally? Next year, MS will announce Windows Server 2008 AppFabric. That’s the ticket. (If they include the .NET services in the fabric, where does that leave the current on-premises solutions like the Biztalk ESB???)

The other big Azure announcement, is a connectivity kit that allows your Azure hosted services to reach into your local premises data stores (using IPv6 and IPSEC tunneling). NICE!!!

More to come.

What’s New with C# 4.0 (and some interesting vaporware)…

VB & CS Teams will now synchronize their feature sets (am I the only one who sees a problem with this?)

Dynamic Typing, Declarative programming and Parallel execution, all locked into 4.0 CLR. You can download the beta bits now. I must admit I’ve been staying away from Parallel extensions, but they look REALLY interesting and I plan on digging into them a bit.

and then we saw a demo of some interesting stuff that they “might-possibly-some-day-release-in-a-future-version—but-maybe-not”.

Opening the compiler. Lets you write your own custom extensions for the compiler and use compiler native types. This might be good for Tool developers, and opens up the possibility for some interesting aspect oriented stuff, but I don’t think there will be much mainstream interest here.

Simplifying Parallel asynchronous operations. Using the 4.0 code base its possible to control when threads are returned to the pool during a parallel execution, but its not easy. They demo’d some simple extension methods which make it OH SO NICE. I’m hoping this makes it into the 4.x feature set.

I’d write more, but I’ve got to rush off to

Lessons Learned Migrating Applications To Windows Azure

This was a panel of companies that had migrated some of their systems to the cloud. They included B-2-C solutions (like Domino’s Pizza), B-2-B solutions, and Enterprise-only solutions. The common thread across these early adopters was the desire to support peak loads without having to invest in a self-hosted infrastructure. All the companies had significant hand-holding from Microsoft, and as of the PDC, none of them had yet gone live. I didn’t view this as a slam against Azure, but rather the tale of companies cautiously embracing the bleeding edge technologies.

Overview of Sharepoint 2010 Programmability:

Having no sharepoint development experience, I thought this might be an interesting presentation for me. I was right. Two big take-aways from this presentation. Number one; if you developed any sharepoint parts, or integration components for earlier versions of sharepoint, you were either insane or foolish. Sharepoint 2010 takes a big step forward in the development tooling and extensibility. Sharepoint can now give and receive data from any number of sources. Want to expose your SQL Server data as a sharepoint list? No problem. Want to use your Sharepoint documents as data sources in your .NET application? No problem. Need a restful interface to view your Sharepoint data? No Problem. Integration isn’t limited to data however, as they demonstrated Silverlight UI’s sitting in front of Sharepoint. Apparently you can even host sharepoint in the cloud (although that might be a session for tomorrow).

Point #2) If you ever have to make an hour-long presentation of highly technical data, it might be wise not to drink a six-pack of red bull immediately before hand. The presenter was so wired, and went so quickly, that even when I wasn’t getting creeped out by him, I didn’t have time to internalize the words coming out of his mouth. I think at one point he shouted out “I Am Cornholio!” but maybe I just thought I heard that.

EF 4.0 and Beyond (or as I like to call it, Entity Framework 4: STFU)

The theme of the session seemed to be “We introduced Entity Framework, you all said it sucked. We asked what we needed to do to make it not suck. You told us. We did those things, now you need to stop telling us it sucks.” Adversarial? Yeah, but hey, at least we’re getting a better product out of it. They demoed Entity First Design, Support for automatic lazy loading, template generation using T4, POCO support, offlined objects with dirty tracking, improved control over saving entities and eventing, and FK references. They also previewed a code only EF model, that generated a data context without a EDMX file, and provided a strongly typed API for controlling model and context behaviors.

Connecting applications with the BizTalk enterprise service bus

The first session of PDC 2009 that I walked out of. Not because the session didn’t sound interesting, or because the featured product was bad. The presentation was divided between two presenters; the first presenter spoke to the architecture of the service bus and the extensions and providers of the Biztalk ESB toolkit. So far, so good. The problem was the second presenter. He was so poor he alienated most of the attendees. Multiple people left the session soon after he began to speak. It sounded as if he hadn’t planned out his presentation, and his accent made it impossible to discern anything useful. At one point I think he said something about a Zebra. I’m not kidding. For a $2,000 registration fee, Microsoft should ensure their presenters know how to present. I joined the parade of fellow developers making an early exit.

Partner Expo Reception

The evening’s social event featured an open bar, tasty eats in the vendor expo. Good Food, Cheap SWAG, and all the technical jargon I could grok. Geek-On, Baby!

I’m going to PDC 09 – RSVP Promo Code anyone?

ChrisD — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:16:44 GMT

Looks like I’m heading to LA. I’m really excited to be attending the PDC this year. I went to the PDC in 03 (where they announced WCF, WF, WPF) and it turned my brain to mush by the middle of day two. ANyone else going? Anyone like to share a RSVP promo code to save me some $$$? I’ll buy you a drink or two!

Hope to see you all there!

Google Quick Search for 64 Bit Windows

ChrisD — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:51:26 GMT

I've been using Google Desktop Search for some time now. Most of it however, I don't find useful. I never search my desktop, and store my mail on a different server, so I miss out on a lot of the Google Desktop value proposition. So why use it at all? The answer is Google Quick Search.

Google Quick Search is the little dialog that pops up whenever you press Ctrl twice. I enter a phrase and hit enter and the phrase is automatically sent to the Google search page, rendering the search results in my browser window. Its just so darn handy.. Google is literally at my (pinky's) finger tips.

I got a new PC recently and installed 64 Bit Windows 2008 Server. During my "setup and configuration" phase, I was shocked to find Google had no support for 64 bit Windows operating systems. Apparently it was available at one time but got pulled because of performance and compatibilities issues. Oh Google, why has thou forsaken me?

Since I only really wanted the Quick Search functionality, I decided to write my own Google Quick Search clone. Enter WTF Quick Search.

After installation (it installs itself in the startup folder), pressing Ctrl twice invokes the Quick Search dialog, which looks *ahem* slightly familiar.

Most of the original Google Quick Search functionality is replicated in the WTF Quick Search. Since it doesn't leverage the Google Desktop engine, you can't search your local desktop, and support for Google Suggest is on the horizon, but not yet implemented. Instead this version uses Auto-Complete to remember your previous search terms and offers them as suggestions as you type.

There are a number of Hot keys available for targeted searches. Pressing Enter searches the web, Ctrl+I performs an image search, Ctrl+N a news search. You get the idea. There is a full list of hot keys available in the Options page.

If you like Google's Quick Search, and have either a 64 bit, or 32 bit version of windows, but don't want/need the overhead of local desktop searching, download WTF's Quick Search. (you'll need to rename the .msi_ file extension to .msi before executing it).

As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

July 5, 2008 - Update: I've released an new version. This version fixes a bug with the Search Mode option (web vs program files), adds an Icon to the system tray which lets you show/hide the dialog and exit the application. I've also added multiple monitor support, the dialog will pop up on the monitor that currently houses the mouse pointer. Want it to do something else? something better? Let me know. I'm always open to your feedback.

July 22, 2008 - Update: A new version is available that adds hot key support for searching Google Finance (Ctrl+F)

July 29, 2008 - Update: Don't like the Control+Control hotkey? Define your own. Video Card doesn't support transparency? Try the "basic" interface. Lookup MLS Listings by MLS number with customized MLS market codes. Download it here.

Call For Help - Thunderbird resets my sort order

ChrisD — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:03:11 GMT

I've been using the Thunderbird mail client for a while now, and overall I like it. I've got a number of add-ons that let me download my web mail from Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail and the like.

I've got all my email accounts available in a single client application. So far so good.

I do have a pet peeve however, maybe its a bug, maybe not. It sure feels like a bug. I did some googling but found no one else reporting this behavior, so maybe its my configuration. But I found no configuration setting to support it, so if its not a program bug, its at least (in my opinion) a usability bug.

When I view my inbox for an email account, I like it sorted by Date descending, so my latest mail is at the bottom of the list. Its easy enough to sort it, just click on the date column header in the list view. The problem however, is that the setting doesn't seem to stick. For some reason, its always sorted by sender.

If I sort my inbox view for email account A to Date, then I click on the inbox view for email Account B, and click back on the inbox view for email Account A, my previously specified sort order of date is not persisted, and the view is once again sorted by sender.

Has anyone experienced this?

UPDATE: As I was writing this I was playing more with the Thunderbird UI, following along with my post to ensure I hadn't missed some salient point or user operation. Suddenly, much to my surprise as I clicked from account to account, the sort order preference was getting preserved. The bug has mysteriously vanished. Its like taking your car to the mechanic. When its at the repair shop, it refuses to act up.

If I knew all I had to do was write a blog entry about it, I could have had this fixed weeks ago <g>.

I'll post another update should the bad behavior return. I've also configured my client to show a View dropdown in the menu bar (I think this was an add-on). I suspect this may have something to do with my sort order problem, but can't verify it until it starts acting up again.

QuickTip: Debugging VBS Files with CScript.exe and Visual Studio

ChrisD — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:26:15 GMT

This is another one of those "Posted here for MY convenience" tips.

You can use the Visual Studio Debugger to debug a .vbs (vbscript) file executed with cScript.exe by using the //X flag at the command line.

To debug MyTest.vbs

cscript.exe MyTest.vbs //X

The //X will set a breakpoint and invoke the "select a debugger" dialog where you can choose Visual Studio and step into your vbs code. I haven't found a way to directly edit from the debugger however, so I end up having to debug, break execution, fix my bug and restart the vbs script file again to see my changes.

QuickTip: Good-Bye WinZip, Hello 7 Zip (and JZip).

ChrisD — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:04:06 GMT

My work laptop is a fairly beefy machine. Dual Core Intel T7800 with 4 GBs of ram, running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Some firmware and OS limitations limit my effective memory addressing to 3.26 GB, but still this machine is no slouch. I could never figure out what about my configuration caused seemingly simple operations like extracting the contents of a zipped file to take SO LONG. I fiddled with this setting and that setting but to no avail. Finally I got fed up and turned to the all-knowing Google. "Winzip Extract SLOW VISTA " returned a series of blog posting and user group chats complaining of similar performance. Among the responses was a reference to 7 Zip. A google search later I had downloaded 7 zip from here. 7 Zip is an open source alternative to winzip that is WICKED Fast. I mean orders of magnitude faster than winzip and the window's built-in zip compression.

According to the website, 7 Zip's features include

High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
Supported formats:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
Self-extracting capability for 7z format
Integration with Windows Shell
Powerful File Manager
Powerful command line version
Plugin for FAR Manager
Localizations for 69 languages

Its great to see my laptop perform the way I thought it should. Do yourself a favor and download 7 Zip right now!

Want a better interface, but the same great compression engine? Try JZip. Just as pretty as Winzip, Cheaper (Free!) and Faster.

UberOptions - Filling the hole in Logitech Mouse Configuration

ChrisD — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:01:53 GMT

I recently upgraded my mouse and keyboard to the Logitech Wave wireless combo.

The keyboard is taking a bit of getting used to (odd location and sizing of the delete, home, and end keys) and the wave design of the keyboards is... different.

Overall though I am very pleased with the hardware. The mouse seems responsive and the keyboard is packed with loads of "doohickey" keys for launching media players, my favorite applications, pictures, even Windows media center (which I had never run before getting this keyboard and pressing the media center key). For all of its hardware whiz-banginess (I know its not a real word, but Google returns 39 hits of that phrase, so I feel ok using it), its lacking in the configuration software. Yes, I can map my keys to a predefined set of functions, but I want more. I want to define custom keyboard and mouse buttons for different applications. Logitech ships with special configurations for word, explorer, and a few others but it doesn't allow for user-defined applications and key mappings. Gee, the Intellipoint software that came with my old Microsoft mouse let me configure my mouse buttons per application. Great, now I have intellipoint envy.

Sometimes Google scares me in its omnipotent, oracle-like (that's oracle with a little o, not Oracle as in database) wisdom. I complained to Google "Logitech SetPoint Mouse Configuration Custom Settings" and it returned me a link to UberOptions.

UberOptions blows the lid off SetPoint's limited UI and allows me to map any key or button to any conceivable action, for any application. Now we're talking! A quick download and setup, and a few minutes later I once again had Visual Studio dancing like a puppet on a string.

Update: A reader has pointed out that home site for UberOptions appears to be down. So for now, I'll host the setup on my site. You can download the setup for UberOptions v4.06 Beta here (you'll want to rename the .exe_ extension to .exe prior to running the setup). I also stumbled upon this mirror site

Richard Owens (the author of UberOptions) has informed me the UberOptions has a new home http://uberoptions.net

QuickTip: Resize All Your ListView Columns with a single Keystroke.

ChrisD — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:14:25 GMT

Just when you think you know all you can know about something.. Ctrl+Plus (on the number pad) will auto resize your ListView columns. Go ahead, try it! You know you want to.