bloggingonit.com -- IT Blog Feeds Consolidated

Fall events

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:05:52 GMT

It seems that every spring and fall the developer world seems to ramp up and developers around the world flock to conferences and user group events. For me this usually means I'm out and about for the better part of 2 months straight. If you're interested, here's my schedule for the next couple of months. Some I'm speaking at (presentations listed) and others I'm just an attendee. Either way, if you're going to be around at any of these events shoot me a note and we'll hook up for a drink and conversation.

October

16th @ 7pm in Victoria BC -- Victoria .NET Developer Association -- ORM Fundamentals

20th in St. John's Nfld -- St. John's .NET User Group -- TBD

21st in Halifax NS -- DevEast -- The Big OO

22nd in Moncton NB -- DevEast -- The Big OO

23rd @ 7pm in Fredericton NB -- Fredericton .NET User Group -- The Big OO

30-31 in Austin TX -- KaizenConf

November

10-14 in Barcelona -- TechEd EMEA

December

1-5 in Montreal PQ -- DevTeach -- ORM Fundamentals, Refactoring to Logical Layers, Fluent Interfaces

Justice Gray's NHibernate War Stories: Don't Use Int If You Mean Enum

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:08:06 GMT

Trust me, if the war stories were like this NHib would be a *lot* more widely adopted

Trust me. I've been there, I've felt that pain, I've even debugged the NHibernate source to figure out what the heck was going on.   Please, I beg of you, tell my tale to those who ask, tell it truly...and let me be judged accordingly! And let me tell you, this Hamlet quotation is appropriate because going through this problem will make you feel as if your mom just slept with your uncle. Do I take NHibernate difficulties too seriously? Maybe.

Anyway, some of you NHib rookies out there might think that if you have an enumeration, it's easy enough to just map it to an int for DB storage, like the following:

namespace J
{
   enum JusticeCharacteristics
   {
       Sexy,
       Sultry,
       Seductive,
       *Sassy* // This is fake code homeboy! I can use whatever characters I LIKE!
   }

}

and then in the mapping file put the following for a class using the JusticeCharacteristics in a property called "Characteristics":
<property name="Characteristics"
              column="JusticeAppeal" type="Int32" />

Bold in this case stands for THIS WAY LIES MADNESS.

You see, when you do something like this NHib tries to map back and forth between two different types - the moment you retrieve the object from the database it is marked as "dirty" and thus you will get an automatic update call every time you close the NHibernate session. Trust me, nothing is more confusing than profiling your application and noticing that you've got random update calls firing every web request! Certainly a very confusing and time-intensive operation, made quadruply so when a himbo like myself is trying to figure out what destruction our team has wrought!

The solution to this problem is actually pretty simple - just use the enumeration type as the mapped type:

<property name="Characteristics" column="JusticeAppeal" type="J.JusticeCharacteristics" />

Italic in this case stands for YOU ARE NOW AN NHIBERNATE NINJA.

Given the skew of the audience that reads this blog, I fully expect:

99.999999999999999% of you read this post and thought, "Thanks for sharing something completely obvious" (trust me, it won't be the first time)
0.0000000000000001% freaked out and raced to their production application and now have me to thank for saving their system performance
one of you doesn't even know what NHibernate is, but that's okay Dad! I'll explain it to the entire family over dinner this Christmas!

Anonymous Access to SVN Repository for IglooCommons

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:15:17 GMT

I've had a problem with the anonymous access settings for my VisualSVN installation that is hosting IglooCommons. It just didn't work without prompting for credentials. Understandably, no one seemed to care until the other day when Sebastijan shot me an email claiming that he wanted to take IglooCommons for a spin. Interestingly, Rob posted a fix for my problem on the same day, saving me the pain of having to figure shit out on my own.

So now, IglooCommons has been released to the masses! I expect the race to download to be tantamount to a snail race!

Exclusive Photo!

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:19:10 GMT

After digging deep into the seedy underbelly of the .NET community, I managed to get some details on the PDC conference and TechEd Europe. My sources having survived a hectic rickshaw chase through the streets of Balzac managed to get to me their precious, illicit cargo. In their possession was a photo, a photo I thought some .NETters would find interesting.

Below are Don Belcham (left) and James Kovacs (right) trying out one of the possible uniforms for their tour of duty as a elite JetBrains booth babes while at these events.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Ruminations

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:43:08 GMT

Today was my last full time day on this contract. Tomorrow I start up full-time with another. Personally, I've gotten in the habit of looking a my past contract and conducting my own personal retrospective on what I learned or how I would do things differently. I figured that because my memory is getting worse in my old age, I'd started putting these things down on my blog.

For a greenfield project, don't use the database someone hands off to you

The project I was working on was greenfield - almost. The business analyst spent a lot of time and effort gathering requirements, and this spilled out into him creating the database for us. On the surface, to most people, this seems like a good idea. In reality, I'd rate it slightly above mixing nuts and chewing gum for a snack. Why do I say that? Because, the database schema that was handed to me was highly normalized and (so I was told) optimized for reporting purposes - at the expense of the application. This application was more like an order-entry system, with snapshots of the data at points in time being very relevant. This "...optimization for reporting..." cause a lot of unnecessary work on the part of us poor developers.

The argument of "...the schema is this way to make reporting easy..." doesn't fly with me. First off, we don't have any reports defined. In fact, reporting wasn't within the scope of this project. So, why are we worrying about it? Secondly, if a certain schema was necessary for reporting, then that is where views and stored procedures come into play.

I very much wish that we would have said, "Thanks for the effort, but we will create the schema we need to delivery the product.".

Lesson learned for future projects: Greenfield projects should not accept databases designed by someone who has no stake/input/authority on the application architecture.

People are inherently obsessed with local optimization at the expense of the whole.

One example of this I've already quoted: effort was expended to create an academically pure database that would be good for reporting. This local optima cost the project in the whole, because it incurred extra effort in developing the application.

A second example in support of this claim is a touch more elusive. I witnessed a fair bit of "requirements dickering". Rather than looking at the project as a whole and trying to get the most bang for the buck (this project had a hard limit on dollars, but not on time), a lot of time was spent on arguing requirements. There was a perception that unless everything that was in the requirements document was done, "professionally" tested, and properly signed off, the application as a whole was not useful. It seemed that everything was important and had to be done. This obsession with getting everything done was, in my opinion, getting in the way of getting things of value done.

To misquote Napoleon: he who defends everywhere defends nowhere.

Lesson learned for future projects: Really to me, this experience did provide more anecdotal evidence supporting the Agile Manifesto and agile techniques. Being a lowly contract developer, I was in no position to dictate priority or importance of work. I'm kind of used to that as a consultant. My opinion and advice was provided and the project leadership did with it what the wanted. However, the process did open my eyes a lot. I hope that if I ever find myself running the show in similar circumstances, I have the wisdom and the patience to see the big picture, and not the black and white words of some document written almost a year ago.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Expected Downtime

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:25:22 GMT

Looks like I'm getting a new static IP this week, so if you can't reach my site on Oct 3 , well now you know why.

Tom Opgenorth ...

A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:24:53 GMT

I rarely if ever do this but...

I told you so.

I TOLD YOU *ALL*!!!

At last my brothers in arms, we are *VINDICATED*!!!!

Celebration is forthcoming next February!!!! Big announcement to come!

New Hardware in the Family

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:20:57 GMT

One thing I've always regretted about building my new house was not running copious amounts of CAT6/CAT54 and RG6 co-ax to every wall in my house. Being that my career is so depending on technology, in hindsight it seems not having a wired house.

Then along came wireless, and I thought my problems would be solved. Turns out they were - to a point. Wireless is indeed handy, but there are some spots in my house where the signal isn't the best. I'm not enough of a radio geek to pretend to understand why, I just accept the limitations and carry on. In particular, the room where I keep my XBOX 360 is kind of crappy, which made me sad.

I thought I was going to crawl around in my attic and spend some quality time pulling cable. Before I did that, I started looking around for some sort of wireless repeater/relay/bridge. I came across the Netgear WNHDEB11 HD/Gaming Wireless kit. It was a bit tricky finding someone in Canada who had one in stock, but eventually Maurice at HardData found me one. One of the things that I like about this is you have two Ethernet ports on the back so it's pretty easy to hook up things that don't have a WiFi card but do have a NIC.

Setup was drop dead easy. It took maybe all of 20 minutes to set up the kit. I don't know if this was something a non-tech type would be able to do easily, but they could do it. I didn't like the lack of documentation in the kit. They expect you to drop in the CD, and read a PDF on it for installation and configuration directions.

I have my XBOX360 and my laptop currently plugged into one end of the bridge. Speeds don't seem to be that bad, all in all. Using Speakeasy.net's speedtest, I had about 2800kbps download and around 900kps upload against the Seattle, WA server.

So far, I'm content with the kit, but then again I've only had it about a day.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Recruiting firms

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:08:50 GMT

My past experience with recruiters has been at a level that I put on par with my recent experiences with newbies to my team. Today I got this from a guy I know who just changed jobs through a new recruiting firm.

Recruiting Firm X is smart. They sent me a giant gift basket to my job.. one branded coffee metal big mug thinger.. two glasses and a bottle of wine.. total cost probably not very high.. but it got noticed by my co-workers and more importantly the coffee mug has their name in a fairly noticeable fashion on it.

He's right. It is a great advertising move on their part. Especially if they had it sent to the front desk. Inevitably the overworked, under appreciated receptionist had it sit there for an hour or more. That whole time people came and went and saw the recruiting firms colours and name. Once the receptionist found the time, the basket had to be packed through the office, past a bunch of prying cubical gophers who wanted to know one thing only: who got the pressie? By the time that basket reached my friends desk, the recruiting firm had generated a great deal of buzz...which is exactly what advertising is meant to do.

What I like the most about this is that they sent booze to the work place. It's almost a free ticket to get drunk (or keep your morning vodka and Cheerio buzz going) at work. This guy was talking about how great a marketing idea it is that the recruiting firms name is on the coffee mug when he walks around the cubicle maze during the day. I say, what a great marketing ploy to have a developer walking around the cube maze all day with a glass of wine in his hand! Who doesn't want to be associated with a group that empowers you in that way.

Anyways...I had to get a positive story about recruiters out there on the web. There's more than enough bad ones, let's not forget that there might be one good one...is Agile Recruiting in Calgary it? I dunno, but I like the booze part of them already.

Squawking About The Manning Early Access Program

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:38:00 GMT

Note: I orginally wrote this post on August 23, 2008. As things change with the book NHibernate in Action, I will be updating this post and resetting the date.

I'd like to take a break from boring you two readers of my blog about my experience with Linux and VMware, and take a moment to annoy you with a rant. Diversity is the spice of life after all.

This little remonstration of mine is about the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP). Well, specifically just one book. I've got my eye on a couple of other books available with MEAP to see how they pan out before considering the whole "early access" useless. Anyway...

It's been over a year ago that I "bought" a copy of the book NHibernate in Action. I did so because I want a bit dissatisfied with the documentation for NHibernate 1.2, and thought that the book would help me. I wasn't an NHibernate virgin/noobie, but I did need some help with a couple of things, and I really didn't have a large network of NHibernate masters to turn to for help.

I was disappointed when I saw that the book wasn't in print yet. Then I was happy to see that I could order the book, download a PDF, and the hardcopy would be sent to me when the book went to print. Given that, in the summer of 2007 it was expected NHibernate in Action would be in print in late 2007, I thought it was reasonable to pay the money up front, and get the finished product mailed to me a couple of months later (I like to have hard copies of my books).

Well, here we are now, a year later. As of September 9th, 2008 writing, summer of 2008, the softbound print date for NHibernate In Action is schedule for December, 2008. Since I downloaded my PDF of the book in August of 2007, there has been a total of one updated PDF.

Now, I can understand when deadlines get missed, and stuff is late. But, I think that, with a technology book, being over one year late is inexcusable. A lot happens in one year in the programming space: ~~NHibernate 2.0 is now in Alpha. What will be released first, NHibernate 2.0 or the printed copy of a book on NHibernate 1.2?~~ NHibernate 2.0 is now available.

I think the money spent on the PDF was worth it, but I honestly feel I got hosed on the cash I paid out for the hardcopy.

I just can't help but feel that the extra money I paid to get a hardcopy of NHibernate in Action would probably have been better spent using the bills to make little origami swans, ducks, and platypuses and then floating them out to sea.

I will be watching a couple of other books of interest to me on MEAP. But, in all honesty, I don't think I will be buying any more books in this fashion until Manning Publications does something to restore my faith in their Early Access Program. I still my get the PDF's if I have an immediate need for them, but I can't see purchasing a book in this manner anymore.

Updated August 25, 2008: NHibernate 2.0 has been released

Updated September 9, 2008: I see that the softbound print date has changed from November, 2008 to December, 2008.

Updated September 19, 2008:

Well, I just got the following e-mail from Manning publications:

Dear NHibernate in Action MEAP customer,

NHibernate in Action is almost ready! The last updates have been submitted,
the technical review is complete, and all chapters are in final production.
Some of you have been working with the MEAP for over a year, but we expect
the final ebook to be released in just over a month, with the print book to
follow shortly thereafter.

We appreciate your participation in the MEAP and especially all the valuable
feedback you provided in the Author Online forum. Your excellent comments
helped shape the final book.

To thank you for your patience, we'd like to offer you a $15 Manning Gift
Certificate to use for any print, ebook, or MEAP at Manning.com. Just enter
"_____" in the Promotional Code box when you check out. The Gift
Certificate will expire October 1, 2008.

Happy reading,

Manning Publications

(Note: I removed the promotional code from the e-mail and added emphasis on the expiry date)

I guess this is some sort of attempt at placating us for unacceptable amount of time this book has taken. Is it just me, or does anybody else see the irony in them thanking us for our patience with this book by telling us to hurry up and use the $15 Manning Gift Certificate?

Tom Opgenorth ...

Market Garden

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:43:25 GMT

One September 17, 1944 the Allied forces launched Operation Market Garden against German forces in the Netherlands. The operation consisted of two parts: "Market" involved dropping large numbers of paratroopers behind German lines in an attempt to seize key bridges over main rivers. The "Garden" portion of the operation consisted of ground forces that would follow up, penetrating German defenses and linking up with the paratroopers who had captured the bridges. The intent was to then rapidly advance into northern Germany and to try and end the war before Christmas, 1944. The plan did not quite work as well as the Allies hoped.

The reason Market Garden always sticks out in my mind is because I remember as a boy watching the movie A Bridge To Far with my dad. My dad could recall during the operation, being on the roof of the barn with his brothers, counting the Allied aircraft dropping the paratroopers. They tried to count the Allied planes in the sky, but they couldn't - there were too many to keep track of.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Unit Testing in JavaScript

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:41:47 GMT

Well, I don't know why it's taken me so long to get to get around to this: but I must say that there are now a couple of "must haves" in my web developer's tool box. One of them is jQuery, and now the other is QUnit.

Chad Myers has a good, quick, post introducing QUnit, I'd strongly suggest checking it out if you do web development (which, IMHO, implies some use of JavaScript, right?). Chad's post covers the basics pretty good, and I think I would just be duplicating/plagiarizing Chad's work if I were to blog the hour or two I spent getting to know QUnit here.

It is nice to see that JavaScript is slowly being recognized as first class citizen of the web programming world, and is gradually having it's good name cleared of certain falsehoods. It's been my belief and observation for a while now that ASP.NET has done a pretty good job of stunting and retarding the adoption/use of JavaScript amongst .NET developers, at least in the Edmonton region. Good to see that this attitude is starting to change.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Proof that there truly is no accounting for taste

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:28:35 GMT

Truly we are at a crisis point in our industry when Gray's Matter places #26 in a list of the Top 100 Blogs for Software Development Managers. I was very impressed by Jurgen Appelo's temerity in putting this list together. After all, there are no two bigger middle fingers you could give the software development industry than:

putting Gray's Matter on the list at all
placing Gray's Matter *above* almost 100 other blogs that actually have some margin of technical credibility

Seriously, this is the banner I was provided

Like the rest of you, I'm scratching my head wondering how this was ever allowed to happen. Whether it was:

dinosaurs carrying baseball bats
my proclaiming heterosexual love for Michael Bay
embarassing shots of the del.icio.us feeds of my peers
my review of the best tasting protein supplement ever made
a random draw
Jurgen losing a bet

it's clear we'll never truly know the answer. Nonetheless, this will probably be the only time in my life I see my name mentioned in the same list as people like Seth Godin or Paul Graham so I do want to tell Jurgen that I appreciate the honor of being listed, and that if I need to give him a larger bribe to show up ahead of Leon Bambrick in Q4's polling results just say the word and untold riches will be his! For the rest of you, definitely check this list out - it's got a wonderful list of *truly* thought-provoking and influential people on it!

[Note: I would also be remiss if I didn't point you to Jurgen's own blog, which is as entertaining as it is informative. Unlike when people say this about Gray's Matter, this is meant as a compliment of the highest order!]

A standing offer to Donald Belcham

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:48:28 GMT

Donald,

If you can supply me with the name of the person who put you through the incident you described today, I solemnly promise you that if it is the last thing I do, I will hunt down that man and kick him square in his gonads.

Repeatedly.

(*)

From your description it doesn't sound like this man *does* have functioning testicles, in which case I promise you that I will find some testes, surgically attach them to this man and *then* nail him in the groin.

Repeatedly.

Just a word of warning to people usurping the title of "software developer" who would like to try the same thing they did with Donald and tell me "learning is useless"; I like to think I'm generally a pretty easygoing architect/lead/whatever you call someone who looks this fine. Heck, who *doesn't* consider themselves easygoing even if they're a powderkeg of rage waiting to go off at any second?

However, nice as I am, do not tell me you do not want to learn if you do not want me to have to apologize to your family for the shoddy condition of your remains.

* With apologies to Bil Simser, who I think has a patent on this sort of visual representation

Starting projects

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:57:51 GMT

I had an experience today that made me...well...flat out fucking angry. When you start working with a new team, on a new project, at a new company...heck whenever someone can point at you and call you the "new guy", you need to be very careful with your desire to impose your belief system onto the group. The only time that this is acceptable is if you've been brought in to impose change, but even then you usually will want to wade, not dive, into the pool.

Today I had to work with a relatively new-to-our-team person. The previous work that this individual had been doing was being raved about. I believed it. Last week was my first time dealing with this individual and the experience was mixed. I don't mind a good throw down verbal argument about different ideas. I certainly don't back down from them if I am passionate about the topic. We had one last week. The topics is irrelevant, but I was disappointed when he simply walked away from it after making his point, but not defending it when I challenged it. Maybe it triggered some kind of carnal notification of weakness because today I had the need to get aggressive with him and I went after him like he was the falling behind, sickly gazelle you see the hyena grabbing on Animal Planet.

There are some things that get me excited. Some get my hairs to stand on end. Others, well, they just make me flat out mad. One thing you never do is spend 2 days on a successful project and then declare that it's practices are incorrect *unless* the practice in question is impeding the project's ability to improve on it's current state. This individual today declared that an automated build script was a waste of time, that he wasn't going to maintain it and the fact that his most recent checkins breaking the CI server weren't his problem. Like I said, there are some things that just make me mad. By this time all the buttons were pushed and I was in full hunt mode.

The things that he was fighting for were fundamental practices that many of us won't do without anymore. Automated build scripts, Continuous Integration, checking in code that isn't broken, having succeeding tests. All of his arguments for why we needed to remove this standards from our project boiled down to him not wanting to change his ways. The F5 compile and one assembly per csproj file was the only possible way to do things. These are practices that I hold near and dear since they have helped me to significantly improve the delivery of every project I have used them on. So that made me mad. But I turned irate when any challenge to his belief system was met with either silence or "This is what VS is for". If you're going to show up at a gun fight, you'd better be willing to shoot bullets, not blanks. Simply having cartridges ejecting from the rifle doesn't mean that you're in the fight.

The thing that really set me over the edge was when I was told "I'm really surprised by you." When I asked him to elaborate (in my own special profane way) he wouldn't. If you're going to get me mad and then call me out, please step up to the plate with a set of fucking balls.

Since ending the call the thing that has fueled the anger more is that I just spent four days training on these things and this guy was in the room. It's obvious that he didn't pay any attention. Note to never have internet access in a training room again.

Anyways, nothing good came of it other than the fact I reverted back 3 checkins that this guy had made and told him to spend the weekend learning nAnt and TortoiseSVN since we weren't changing what was already working. I'm pretty sure that Tom is regretting leaving work 30 minutes too early now too.

That should be enough venting for one day. Thank god it's the weekend....and that I have a good scotch.

URL Routing Fluent Interface for ASP.NET MVC

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:47:46 GMT

This seems pretty neat. Torkel Ödegaard has come up with a fluent interface for setting up your routes in ASP.NET MVC. He's submitted a patch to MVC Contrib, so hopefully we shall see it in there soon.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Bricks and Sponges

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:51:24 GMT

I had a conversation the other day with Tom Opgenorth about the trends you see when you're ending a contract with a client. Our experiences both show that during the life of a project the client will usually (painting with broad strokes here) talk like they want to learn, understand and be competent with the project. Most claim that they want to grow that knowledge during the life of the project so that, at the time of your departure, they will have the ability to smoothly transition the work. Rarely does this seem to happen. Instead, the end of your tenure on the project comes and the client scrambles to ensure that some knowledge is transferred so that they have the minimum level necessary to start getting up to speed. It's always a mad scramble and the client is left with a huge disruption in the project as a result.

This is where bricks and sponges comes in. It seems that the client (or the employer if you're an employee on a team...it happens their too in our experiences) is a brick while they're on the project. They're porous and quite capable of absorbing, but for some reason they also repel the knowledge they need to absorb. When it comes time to transition off of the project, the client all of a sudden transforms in to a sponge and tries to saturate themselves as quickly as possible. While the metaphor doesn't work a hundred percent, it does fit fairly well.

I've not seen one project successfully transition with minimal knowledge disruption when a team member departs. I think it's one of the major problems that we have, especially if we're working as consultants. We have to find better ways to make our clients sponges through the entire life of the project so that we can pour the water to them gently instead of from a fire hose. Some of that responsibility does rest with the client though, and there's not a lot that we can do to mitigate active unwillingness to constantly transfer knowledge on their parts. If they don't have the desire or the correct motivations to learn during the project's live, all we can do is keep pouring the knowledge to them and let them do with it what they choose.

I know some of you are thinking that knowledge transfer problems can be mitigated by creating a lot of documentation or transition papers. I say that it doesn't work. Every time I've arrived onto a project that has claimed to have these documents, they have been woefully inadequate. Worse yet, many were flat out incorrect. Writing transition knowledge into a persistent state means that you have to continually update it to ensure that it's current state is correct. Development teams are not prone to doing such tasks if they don't see any immediate, or very near, benefit from it. That would indicate that writing transition documents at the last possible moment would be something that a developer would be willing to do, and that's true. But leaving the creation of this type of document until the last moment is like trying to write a book about your project during the two week period between when you've given your notice and you depart. There just isn't the time to do justice to all of the information that will need to be collected, organized and transcribed.

The only answer that I have for this is pushing the client to actively participate along the way. Don't just say "We're using nAnt to do our build scripts." Say that plus put the responsibility for changing, maintaining and enhancing the build scripts into their hands very early on. This allows you to mentor them through the process of learning and absorbing the information that they will need to succeed in your absence. If they consistently push back at you that you should be doing it all since you know it best, you have to push back. If they can't see why you're forcing the learning experience on them, then you have to leave them to their own devices when the time comes. You can't bear much responsibility for the success, or failure, of a project after you have left it. All you can do is work hard to set it up to succeed when that time comes.

If only we were all running Lynx, we wouldn't have any problems

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:52:14 GMT

Just one week ago, the entire internet community was treated to the least manly display of tears since Steven Rockarts broke down at the conclusion of P.S. I Love You: when D'Arcy Lussier opined for the good old days when we all ran Internet Explorer 4.

(artist's rendition of D'Arcy's post)

We know why this is: D'Arcy loves Silverlight more than he loves John Bristowe, and he loves John Bristowe to an illegal and uncomfortable degree. I was once an unfortunate witness at a bar where someone made the mistake of just making an off-hand joke about John, only to have D'Arcy leap upon him, punch his lights out and then go back to licking his crumpled photo of John in-between shots of tequila. Knowing this, imagine what his lust must be for Microsoft's latest attempt at getting rid of Javascript for all time! Thus I knew once reading D'Arcy's essay that he was experiencing similar amounts of turmoil about how Chrome's mere existence threatens the very bedrock of his entire belief set.

Now, D'Arcy and I are brothers for life so I'm not going to dissect his points, but instead I *am* going to point you to an article where none other than Scott Hanselman and Harry Pierson were interviewed at Tech Ed Australia about how Javascript pretty much puts lipstick on Silverlight before parading it around as its prison servant and trading it for a pack of cigarettes ! Now, my own biases in favor of, you know, being a good web developer and thus knowing how to develop for the web are legendary so it's good to get an unbiased source on this!

Now because you likely don't have any desire to click links that lead away from this blog, I have decided to put on my "Sexiest Reporter in North America" hat and give you the essence of the article* before those hacks at ZDNet got a hold of it.

Scott says that the next 18 months will see an ass-kicking not witnessed since he smacked down that one dude over O^n complexity (in a friendly and non-violent way, I hasten to add)
Harry tells the audience he fears the coming of Javascript, calls it an ugly duckling of a language and tells the audience he would prefer to hide behind a wall of solid C# code
Scott retorts with, "Nah, the Javascript today is different than your momma's Javascript, so maybe you ought to pick up a book once in a while Harry!! AWWW YEAH!!! WHO - IS - YOUR - DADDY?!?!" before downing a case of malt liquor
Jonas Folles tries to find *any* use for Silverlight, saying that maybe we'll use Silverlight for the intranets of the world, or perhaps use it for some neat Hello World demos at TechEds round the world.
End message 1: Javascript is like that girl who weighed 400 pounds and had some *really* funky stuff happening with her teeth, but now she's been working out and thankfully got some braces on those suckers so whenever her mouth is closed she's actually pretty freaking hot!
End message 2: CHROME IS THE FUTURE.

I know what you're thinking, but ZDNet doesn't pay enough to hire the metrosexual Walter Cronkite of the software development industry so in the end you'll just have to be satisfied with whatever poor slobs they were able to haul off of the "former PHP developer" unemployment line!

* give or take some major liberties

Mono 2.0 RC1

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:36:55 GMT

I'm a bit late with this, but Mono 2.0 RC1 was released yesterday. You can download the RC release from http://mono.ximian.com/monobuild/preview/download-preview/.

Tom Opgenorth ...

jQuery And visibility:hidden And display:none

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:52:22 GMT

I ran into an issue that I had with jQuery. It's simple enough, but figured to help my failing memory, I'd blog about it.

I was trying to hide a DIV element on my page, which would then be displayed later on by jQuery/Javascript.

<div id="myHiddenDiv" style="visibility:hidden">
</div>

I thought that using something simple like:

$('#myHiddenDiv').show();

would then cause the DIV to turn up, which didn't happen.

It seems that you use .show()/.hide() from jQuery, you're actually setting the css attribute display, not visibility. So, what ended up doing was change my HTML a bit to:

<div id="myHiddenDiv" style="display:none">
</div>

Now .show() and .hide() work as I expected.

Tom Opgenorth ...

A particularly perceptive post

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:30:47 GMT

I wish I could tell you the number of reasons this post is ironic yet so insightful; however I can say with some certainty that this "jdn" person must be a handsome and well-groomed chap to have such well-thought posts!

hpqtra08.exe

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:05:07 GMT

At home I have an HP Printer, an OfficeJet 7580. When installing the drivers for it on my repaved laptop (the Windows XP), it installs this "wonderful" little program htqtra08.exe. Now, near as I can tell this program provides you with a system icon that is supposed to assist you with with diagnosing problems with your HP scanner. It doesn't seem to me to be malware/spyware/a trojan, so you'd think it's okay.

It is also a pain in the neck. On my computers, it has a nasty habit of stopping them from shutting down. When I've got hpqtra08.exe installed, I've found that when I want to shut down my computers I have to first manually kill the process using Windows Task Manager, and then shut down/restart. If you Google for it you'll see that this particular app isn't without issues.

Because I have to do this each time I install Windows (on a VM or on real hardware), I decided to blog about it, to help me remember.

To remove it, all I did was go into my Startup menu, and then delete the "HP Digital Imaging Monitor". That seemed to do the trick. Now my laptop no longer hangs when I shut down.

I did come across another way to stop hpqtra08.exe that involved stopping certain services, but that seems more complicated than necessary.

Tom Opgenorth ...

Using Unity IoC within a WCF Service

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:00:37 GMT

I was investigating using an IoC container with WCF services today. My current favorite IoC is Unity (take it as it is... an opinion). There are a number of different implementations I have seen out there. This one by Steve Moseley is, in my opinion, the cleanest and closest to the intended usage of Unity (no friction-filled object attribution). I like it because the implementation is binding/hosting environment agnostic. Thanks, Steve, for the great (and very helpful) post!

This blog does not endorse Leon Bambrick at Tech Ed Austraia

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:20:36 GMT

I don't think it would surprise any regular reader that this blog, *aside* from being the greatest single continuous writing achievement in North America, is also no stranger to controversial confrontations that shake the development industry to its very foundations. Thankfully, Gray's Matter is also a place that brings men *together* in a close heterosexual bond. With the exception of one notable case that led me to the local police department to talk about whether restraining orders across North America were a viable option, people who enter into conflict with the metrosexual champion of the universe leave it being able to tell friends of theirs that they have actually engaged in dialogue with yours truly. If there is one thing that my interactions with people like Jeffrey Palermo, Carl Franklin, or the entire Castle project have taught me, it is that incredible good looks and witty banter make our industry a better place to be.

Astute readers might have think that the title of this post and the preceding paragraph are contradicting each other. After all, if there is only one thing that his blog has stood for in its lifetime it has been the merciless trash-talking of the rest of the industry! It only seems right that I would be supportive of Leon manning up and showing Scott Hanselman who is really the boss when they have their showdown at Tech Ed. So why is it that I can't bring myself to back Leon in the battle of his lifetime? Hopefully a "tale of the tape" will shed some light on my decision.

Scott Hanselman

I'm not too sure about the rest of you, but when a man attends the Microsoft MVP summit, steals a pair of bowling shoes from the local 10-pin alley and calls himself a metrosexual, the first thought I have is certainly *not* "I trust this man and the advice he is giving." As if this faux pas didn't already demonstrate a significant lack of self-awareness on Scott's part, let's not forget that after a brief flirtation with a blog photograph that women I knew actually found hot (the one where he was making the "Shhh" signal with the brown background? Am the only person who remembers this striking piece of work?) he inexplicably went back to the photo currently on his blog with the "I'm not sexually threatening" smile. My friends, these acts are the acts of a man who has lost touch with erotic reality. Does anyone think attending a session by a man who no doubt wears blue jeans tucked into bright white sports socks is a good idea?

Now let's look at his competition:

The legendary Leon Bambrick

Not only is Leon a genius and an entrepeneur, but he is also a regular reader of this blog, which demonstrates to me he is a man of discerning taste and impeccable intelligence. Those of you who are searching for a photo of Leon on the web, stop wasting your time - Google Images has nothing for you. This is because Leon, like myself, is a sexual powerhouse and thus recognizes the dangers of having an online visual presence. One picture of yourself online and all of a sudden you start getting women showing up at your house at all hours of the night asking you to sign their bottoms with felt markers. This is even more awkward for married men like myself - why do you think Mrs. L and I are moving to Vancouver? - so I can understand why Leon is reticient about posting photos like this online:

Leon Bambrick(*)

Do you now understand why I can't support Leon? It's because Leon has already won in devastating fashion - he doesn't *need* my support. Heck, just read the part where he posts his fake little "apology" to Scott:

"(footnote for the humour impaired.... i'm a big fan of Scott Hanselman, a hanselfan infact, and i owe him a big thanks, because the fact he interviewed me on his podcast is the direct reason i've ended up speaking at tech ed -- plus he's given me various pieces of encouragement in this topic over the last few years. Can't wait to meet the guy in person. (Will he sign my boobs? Let's hope so) All up, he's truly the bestest guy in the whole world)"

"Everything's ok, man, I was just kidding and I love you madly, truly, deeply". Right. That is a charade - what Leon has done here is the verbal equivalent of giving someone a hug after kicking them in the nuts and curbstomping them! Scott Hanselman deserves better than a curb-stomping.

Scott, I know you have been frantically refreshing the Gray's Matter site for weeks now in the hopes that I would post, so I hope that this missive gives you the inspiration you need to succeed against Leon Bambrick's Herculean physique. Don't worry, my friend...one day you will get a pair of shoes as beautiful as my white Springs and the healing process can truly begin. In the meantime, you are in my thoughts and prayers!

* This was taken from an E-mail I once recieved from Leon saying "This is what I look like in RL, are you sure you don't want to cyber?" I was flattered, my friend, but as I am totally hetero and totally married the answer is still no!

Smart Client Deployment To Different Servers

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:16:05 GMT

For my current client we have an environment where the application is handed over to a deployment team that installs it onto varying test servers. For good reason these servers are locked down and the development teams can not access them. This ensures a clean install and ensures that the version in the test environments gets moved forward only if there are no issues.

Problem 1 - Setup.exe has "baked in" URL

This plays a bit of havoc when deploying smart client applications. One of the reasons for this is that the setup.exe bootstrapper has the URL baked into it so when we try it on a development machine it is actually looking for the install files on the machine that the click once application was developed on!

Now one way to get around this is to set the Installation Folder URL in the click once projects "publish" tab but that would mean we would need to create unique assemblies with the URL baked into them for each environment.

I did happen upon a way to change the setup.exe bootstrapper to have a variable URL though. On the server that the click once application is being deployed from run:

setup.exe /url=http://mytestserver/testfolder/

This will cause the exe to "patch" itself with the new URL.

Problem 1 solved!

Problem 2 - Changing a config file on the server invalidates the application.manifest

Once we have the files installed onto the deployment server we need our deployment team to adjust the WCF bindings in the client.exe.config file that gets downloaded so that the client application talks to the right WCF service. A neat thing with smart client applications is that it generates a manifest file stating all the files the application needs to run and a checksum of those files. Because the team is changing one of those files the checksum of the file changes and so we need to generate a new manifest file with the new checksum for the file in it. This leads to a new problem as there is a deployment file that has a checksum of the applications manifest in it as well so we need to regenerate that as well! Here are the steps I took to create this application:

In Visual Studio:

Goto Project Properties -> Publish
Set the publishing folder to a local folder
Set the install URL to "http://dummy" (this is to prevent the app from running if a later step is not completed)
Click "Options"
Uncheck the "Use .deploy file extension" (this is not 100% necessary but made my life easier when generating the manifests later)
Publish the application

Creating The Deployment Package

For me I then added the outputed files from the publish into my WCF deployment project. This allows me to have one deploy package that installs my WCF service and my smart client to the same spot easily

Added the setup.exe file outputed from the publish tab
Added mage.exe from the Windows SDK (we will need this to recreate our manifest files)
Added configure.bat (see below)
I created a "Client" folder
added all .exe, .config, and .dll files to the "Client" folder. I did not include the .manifest and .application files as I we are going to recreate them with our configure.bat file
Build the project

Now all our team needs to do is:
1. Open the [pathtoapplication]\Client\[appname].config file
2. Adjust any settings
3. Change the app url in the configure.bat file
4. Run [pathtoapplication]\Configure.bat

Configure.bat will use the mage.exe application (found in the windows SDK) to generate all application manifest for the client, the deployment manifest for our deployment, and repath the bootstrapper

Contents of Configure.bat

set Version="1.0.0.11"
setup.exe /url=http://mytestserver/appname/
del ".\Client\myapp.exe.manifest"
mage -new Application -fd ".\Client" -ToFile ".\Client\myapp.exe.manifest" -name "My Smart Client App" -version %version%
mage -new Deployment -ToFile myapp.Application -AppManifest ".\Client\myapp.exe.manifest" -install true -name "My Smart Client App" -version %version%

"setup.exe /url=...." sets the URL that the setup.exe file will be accessed on
I then delete the old manifest (might be there from previous runs)
"mage -new Appliction ... " generates our new application manifest with new checksums for the config files
"mage -new Deployment ..." generates the deployment file (sits next to setup.exe) so that the application can be installed. This has a checksum in it for the application file we just generated.

Now one of the things I have completely removed from this is signing of our files (Done by unchecking the "Sign the clickonce manifests" checkbox under the "Signing" tab of the project). This should be on but unfortunately I have about 60 minutes left of my current contract and do not have time to implement signing on the manifests which is a very very very good security practice for this type of thing.