Tuesday, February 12, 2008
TyTN II First Thoughts
So its been a couple of weeks with my TyTN II so I thought it would be a good time to write about my experience.with it. Well as I type this I am sitting at McDonalds watching the kids play. In this time I've answered some work emails, checked the cricket score, taken some photos (and posted them to flickr) and chatted on messenger (not to mention writing this post).
Some of the drawbacks I've found are very trivial, I think that it takes to much effort to create a new sms, I get annoyed at silly dialog boxes that assume that you have a stylus. I find the keyboard reasonably easy to use and my thumbs are pretty big.
I really like the home screen that comes on this device, all the tiles are a nice size for my fingers. I must say that windows mobile 6 seems much improved, the multi-tasking is much smoother than previous versions.
I read that one of the cons of this device was the battery life, I haven't experienced any problems myself but I do tend to have it tethered to my laptop most of the day. The other con was the camera speed, this is most certainly an issue it is very slow, for no apparent reason.
I really can't believe its taken me this long to finally go mobile, being able to just browse google maps for the nearest shop of type X or reading google reader on my way home on the train ... I will never go back.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:57:07 AM UTC
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Windows Mobile
Last week I attended a training session on windows mobile, the training focused on the corporate features of windows mobile and exchange 2007.
Well that inspired me to go and get a HTC TyTN II on the Three network. I rarely stray outside their coverage area, so I think they will be a good fit. The device is absolutely awesome, I've used a number of windows mobile devices over the years and I haven't been overly impressed with them. There are still a few things that really annoy me with windows mobile like silly message boxes (I hate anything that pops up, what's worse is when you need to use the stylus, I HATE the stylus). Windows mobile 6 is a big step up in my opinion, not just for the corporate features.
The device has an inbuilt GPS, which was another influencing factor, since I do a bit of GPS development work. It was the first time that I've had a chance to run google maps, which is simply unreal.
I really like the slide out keyboard, it really works for me, I can use the device without the stylus (maybe 95% of the time), the camera also seems usable.
The big thing is really the data plan, being able to download content in high speed, I really love being connected full time, nothing beats it.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 1:21:53 AM UTC
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Visual Studio helpful XML tips
I've been doing a bit of XML work lately, writing and testing XSLT's. I've found that visual studio 2008 is a fantastic environment for this.
Firstly you need to use the properties window of an XML document the two relevant properties are the Schemas and Stylesheet settings.
By assigning a schema to your XML document you will then get validation and intelli-sense when you edit your XML document.
The stylesheet property allows you to select an XSLT to apply to the XML document you are working on, this can be run from the XML menu option and will produce a new output file.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 5:08:02 AM UTC
Head First Design Patterns
One of the subjects I did for my masters degree was enterprise design patterns based around Fowlers Enterprise Architecture book, one part of an assessment piece was to review a book on patterns. I choose the book Head First Design Patterns, at first I thought I would just glance over it and get a feel for what the book was saying, but I found that I couldn't put it down. The narrative for each pattern is really engaging, it takes you down one path to see the mistakes and finally brings you back to view the full solution. The book is based around java, but the language isn't really important.
I would highly recommend this book regardless of your experience with the classic GOF design patterns.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:50:39 AM UTC
Monday, January 14, 2008
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
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
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
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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
Friday, October 05, 2007
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
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
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
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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
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