HttpCode

2007 technologies to watch for 2008

Last year saw the introduction of a bunch of cool new bits to play with, visual studio 2008, the MVC CTP for ASP.NET and the parallel extension CTP are the things that I'm most interested in.

I love the new features in the 3.5 .NET framework offered by visual studio, all the cool language enhancements really make c# sweet. I'm also impressed with LINQ, I've been doing some work generating some complex queries with it, the SQL it produced really blew my mind. Combine the parallel extensions with the LINQ stuff above and you start to see how cool the whole model is, some pretty big brains have got this stuff right.

The MVC framework for ASP.NET is another interesting technology, I've had a look at other ASP.NET MVC frameworks in the past but none has really done it for me, mostly because it didn't feel integrated enough. I also love how they have incorporated all the new language features into the ASP.NET MVC framework, it's very cool.

I'm looking forward to the next few months to see how some of the CTP projects evolve, I've already got plans to use parts of the MVC framework on some of my projects, the parallel stuff is interesting but I'm not sure that I can make good use of it on anything at the moment.

Monday, January 14, 2008 3:01:08 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

Quad Core Media Center PC

Our Media Center PC reached its end of life when we returned from our holidays and found that it wouldn't boot. I had a look at the internals and I found that the power supply was dead. The power supply wasn't a standard off the shelf part that we could easily replace so we bit the bullet and went shopping for a new media center PC. We choose the following:

HP m8190a Media Center PC with:

• Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q66002.4GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB, EM64T, Execute Disable Bit
• Intel G33 Express Chipset 
• Memory - 2048MB DDR2 
• Integrated Intel High Definition Audio, 7.1 Surround Sound Ready
• Hard drive - 500.0 GB 3G Serial ATA hard drive at 7200RPM
• SuperMulti SATA Drive with Lightscribe Technology, Double Layer (8.5GB)
• HD DVD Player for high definition movies 2.4x HD DVD-ROM, 5x DVD-ROM, 15x CD-ROM
• nVidia GeForce 8600GT 3D PCI-Express Graphics card with 512MB DDR2 dedicated graphics memory with HDMI, DVI and TV-out capability
• Wireless 802.11 b/g LAN
• Single PAL TV Tuner HP
• Media Center Remote Control
• 15-in-1 Digital Media Reader

So far it's been a beast, runs media center really smoothly, all the HD channels are crystal clear without any stuttering etc. I'm a little annoyed about the HD DVD drive, we bought it a day before the HD war was won by Blue-ray, we got given a copy of Harry Potter in HD DVD, pretty funny.

I've dropped some more hard drives in it and intend to replace the single tuner with a dual tuner from the old media center PC. The good news was that the old media center PC was put into a new case and is working fine (apart from all the connectors that were on the old HP case), this upgrade was planned for later in the year, so it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things.

Monday, January 14, 2008 1:32:54 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

2007 gone ...

As usual it's been a long time between posts, I guess this post is really just a quick recap of the past year. 2007 was a pretty good year, work wise it was my most productive year by far, work was busy and interesting all year and to top it off I completed my Masters as well, it's going to be hard to top off that in 2008.

For 2008 I've moved into a new job, back to the consulting world of ironed shirts and early mornings. I don't really have any well laid plans at the moment, just to see where the ride will take me. Outside of work I want to improve and play lots of golf, if I can get my handicap below 18 by the end of the year I would have exceeded my expectations. I really want to make Golfplotr better, I've done a bit of work on it over the xmas break, but it's not quite ripe yet.

I guess I should resolve to post more often, not making any promises but ...

Monday, January 14, 2008 1:18:36 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

Golf

I've started to get interested in playing golf again. My wife Rebecca got me a gift voucher to a driving range for a fathers day present. Since then I managed to score an early xmas present in the way of some new golf clubs. I played my first real round on the weekend just past at the beautiful Northlakes golf course, it was unreal.

So all this golf excitement got me thinking that it would be cool to be able to share my golf round on my Facebook page, then I thought, maybe it would be cool to see my round plotted on a google map. So I started building a web application called GolfPlotr, the idea is that you can either enter your score card details, or use some windows mobile software (with GPS support) to enter your golf rounds. Then you can compare your rounds with other people.

I also made the Facebook version, so that you can see and compare your Facebook friends golfing endeavors.

It's still mostly a work in progress, but I think its getting to a useable stage.

Let me know what you think, or leave a comment at the GolfPlotr Blog.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007 1:55:41 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

Facebook.NET

I've been doing some Facebook application development using Nikhil Kotharis Facebook.NET framework. I must say, I'm very happy with it. I thought I might post a simple class that I created that lets me use the infinite sessions that Facebook can provide you with. It might be the wrong way to go about it, but it works for me.

Firstly you need to store the SessionKey from each user as they use your application, you should also store if they are infinite by checking the SessionExpires property on the Session object.

The class is:

public class FBASession : Facebook.Service.Core.FacebookSession
{
    private FacebookService _service;

    public FacebookService Service
    {
        get { return _service; }
        set { _service = value; }
    }

    private Facebook.Service.Core.FacebookSession _session;

    public Facebook.Service.Core.FacebookSession FBSession
    {
        get { return _session; }
        set { _session = value; }
    }

    public FBASession(string appKey, string secret, string sessionKey, string userID)
        : base(appKey, secret)
    {
        _service = new FacebookService(appKey, secret, sessionKey, userID);
        _session = _service.Session;
    }
}

Now with this we can use the data we store to create a session and send messages to any user of the application:

FBASession FBSession = new FBASession("<app key>", "<secret key>", "<stored session ID>" , "<facebook ID of user>");
FBSession.Service.Notifications.SendNotification("<facebook ID of user>", "<fb:userlink uid=\"" + facebookUserID + "\" /> has done something and wants you to know", null);

This will allow your facebook application to send a notification (or update the mini-feed etc ) to/of another user.

I was lucky enough to attend a presentation on ASP.NET Ajax at tech-ed that Nikhil presented, it was one of the better sessions at tech-ed, so thanks for all your effort.

Friday, October 05, 2007 1:25:01 AM UTC      Comments [1]  

JSON Serializer

Working on a project, I wanted to serialize the object as JSON:

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

JavaScriptSerializer jss = new JavaScriptSerializer();
string serializedObject = jss.Serialize(object);

This is using the ASP.NET AJAX framework

I see that ScottGu has a post about building an extension method to perform this function .... very nice.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007 6:15:52 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

CMS

Recently I had the pleasure (or displeasure) of moving some existing asp.net sites to a Content Management System (CMS). The sites relied heavily on some ASP.NET modules for cookie tracking and some other things, so we needed to have an ASP.NET CMS so we could keep this logic. After a bit of searching around I narrowed the scope to two open source products: N2CMS and Cuyahoga.

I actually found Cuyahoga first and had thought that it would be perfect for us. However once I starting having a good look a couple of issues became deal breakers. The first issue was the Cuyahoga uses the Web Project model, which means that the site is complied into assemblies. So if we needed to make a small change to the site we would need to deploy an updated assembly. A rather small issues you might say, but for our needs it's actually a big deal. The other issue was the lack of versioning, hopefully it will get added in a later release.

After it became apparent that Cuyahoga wasn't going to work for us the way we were hoping, I jumped on codeplex to see what else was out there. It wasn't long and I found N2CMS, this looked from the outset to be a better run project. I really liked the declarative approach to creating templates as well.

So I rolled out N2CMS, its worked out OK, a few little things annoy me, but I think they would be a common problem in most low end CMS applications. For example I have some functionality in some user controls, I would love the CMS to allow me to just drop them into a page, rather than creating a template.

Sunday, September 16, 2007 5:23:54 AM UTC      Comments [1]  

Coding Form

I've been experiencing one of those periods lately where I've been really productive, I liken it to cricket when a batsmen is in good form. A number of factors have contributed to this, things like Tech-Ed and the fact that I have had a number of deliverables due. Just like cricket I think you go through periods where your form can slump when the conditions around you stay the same. You might still have lots of things going on around you but for what ever reason you just can't seem to clear them.

Tech-Ed was a big influencer in my recent good form, I had the same effect from the Tech-ed previously, its really good to interact with a bunch of passionate people. Now it seems that I wake up in the morning keen to get into some code, the funny thing as well about being in form is that the solutions you come up with often leave you wondering where they came from (in a good way). 

Saturday, September 08, 2007 1:11:00 PM UTC      Comments [0]  Misc

SQL Server Reporting Services vNext

I was going through the US Tech-Ed DVD's that we got last week, anyway I came across an interesting session where Microsoft announced that they had licensed the Dundas reporting services charts and gauges for SQL Server 2008. This is great news, I haven't used the Dundas controls personally, but I've seen and heard good things about them. Its a shame they couldn't extend the licence back for 2005 users.

The new tablix control and new designer look great, lots of good things coming with SQL Server 2008, I still think my favorite is the MERGE statement, it will really make loading our data warehouses a lot easier. 

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 5:05:21 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

Tech-ed done and dusted

Well Tech-ed is over for another year, this year was fantastic, learnt a lot stuff that will benefit the things I'm currently working on.

I focused my time on:

BI / data mining

SQL Server

ASP.NET AJAX

Then on the WPF stuff, even though I find WPF extremely interesting, I can't justify spending valuable time on it yet, when it is unlikely that I'll be doing any serious development with it in the next 12 months.

So much was going on at Tech-ed, it was a great atmosphere.

It was unfortunate timing that my uni exams landed in the same week as tech-ed, I also elected to take an upgrade exam for the MCSD certs that I have. I haven't found out how I did in my uni exams (I'm confident) but I did pass the 70-553 upgrade exam. I've started looking at the next 70-554 exam, it doesn't look like fun. Only 2 more uni subjects to complete and I should have my masters.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:36:43 AM UTC      Comments [0]  

Vista Updates in the Middle of the night

I haven't had any problems using Vista, its been rock solid on all the laptops that we have. The one thing that really annoys me is the auto update. Well its not the auto update so much, see we usually sleep with two of our laptop in standby in our bedroom. However once a month, these laptops will come alive in the middle of the night and apply the updates and restart. So in the dead quiet of the night you will hear the sound of Vista starting up (it wakes you up in fright, I must say). Worse still, because the laptop lid is closed, the computer will sit at the login prompt until is is due to power down (which was up to an hour). Being cold and lazy I really couldn't be bothered getting up to open and close the lid, also both laptops never seem to update on the same night, so this past week I've been woken up twice by the sound of booting laptops.

Sunday, July 15, 2007 3:46:06 AM UTC      Comments [1]  Misc