Tagged: August 2007 Blog Posts

i just put up another podcast video of how to "cheat" at creating a media player for silverlight.  have you been looking at some of these media experiences with all their fancy buttons and dvd player-type overlays, etc. but didn't want to take the time to code your own?  well, you don't have to :-) (man that sounds like an infomercial) in this podcast i demonstrate using expression media encoder as a tool that will essentially generate stub code for you.  now keep in mind that expression media encoder itself generates some pretty kick arse templates that may perfectly suit you. ...

i recently started to embark on a little 3 part series involving taking a pdf document of a baseball field and doing some silverlight and asp.net ajax love with it.  it led me along a path of creating some intense xaml design elements actually and i thought i'd share (in simpler form) the process i used. expression design is a graphic tool that enables creating vector art that can then be exported to xaml (either WPF or silverlight).  it is a great tool that i'm starting to be more and more familiar with.  design understands various import and export format but...

i had my first full fledged second life experience today.  i had signed up a while back out of sheer curiosity, didn't get it really, and just fell by the wayside.  today i saw that brad abrams was presenting a silverlight session "in second life" i figured i'd check out what this experience is going to be.  after all, he was presenting on visual studio island and i figured, cool. to be fair, i'm not a gamer, or alternate world-ist at all, so i absolutely entered this with preconceived notions.  but nonetheless i entered...as a noob. so off i went to the...

due to some feedback, microsoft has added an msdn/technet event to the phoenix area on 26 SEP 2007. for msdn, the topics covered in the half-day session are: LINQ (covered by Rob Bagby) WCF (covered by Rick Garibay) Silverlight (covered by me) please join us and register for both the technet and the msdn event!  they are both free events! register for technet register for msdn tags: msdn , technet , linq ,...

in my previous post i talked about converting rss data to json using the asp.net ajax javascriptserializer class.  i wanted to use this because i wanted an easier way of interacting with some simple data for a sample i was messing with.  i didn't really see the need to wrap it in a web service call, etc. and in the end i wanted json data.  period. so why did i want the json data?  to mess with it in silverlight of course! what i wanted to do was display my rss feed data in a different way, just out of curiosity. ...

here's how hot it was today in hell phoenix, az: that's right...see the "Out. temp." -- i almost melted.  seriously.

i was working on a little sample and wanted to make it a bit easier on myself to work with my rss data.  my thought was to use the JSON format for the data and that way i could get at the data in super-cool-ajaxy-type ways.  what was cool was what i found as i began searching. ASP.NET Ajax provides a class library to javascript!  in System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavascriptSerializer is where you will find your magic.  the JavascriptSerializer can be used on anything that uses XmlSerialization.  sweet. so now all i had to do was take my RSS data (already in good xml format)...

i've finally found the ultimo mp3 integration for my auto.  i don't have a new car, i don't have an aux jack, and i'm no longer in high school where i care about deep bass or wicked features, my factory stereo works fine thank you very much.  fine, that is, except that i can't play my mass collection of audio (unless i do it 6 CDs at a time). well, i've found it.  unfortunately the actual store is in atlanta, ga, usa.  a little too far for me to drive and get it installed...so i begin my research of installing it...

well, in my previous examples, i was using a free linux hoster.  i found another one that was much more reliable from a responsiveness standpoint, but found a snag and wanted to share. you see on some free hosters, in order to be free they'll add banner adds to your pages.  for my purposes, who cares.  i signed up with this particular one and none of my samples were working.  huh, weird i thought.  until you look at the error message of 'unknown namespace' from silverlight.  ahh... you see what the free host was doing was injecting their banner ad code into...

i saw a post over in russell myers' land seemingly acknowledging the confusion that might be out there of hosting silverlight.  he noted my previous post about the topic.  in his note though, russell mentions: ...it seems entirely possible to take a Silverlight application and integrate it on an existing Apache server to create a Silverlight experience within PHP or any other language that can embed the XAML content. he's right on here, in fact, i'm not sure even samples will do it justice, but i tried anyway :-).  take for example another quick...

UPDATE: visit rob relyea's post on more mime types for all xaml supported apps including xaml browser apps as well. i've been seeing some discussion lately about hosting silverlight.  maybe i can take a moment here to help clarify some things and show some options. there are hosters out there that are promoting as silverlight hosters.  while i think that is great, i think some of the messaging has confused others.  for example, if you go to a hoster that doesn't list silverlight support, are they incapable of hosting silverlight?  no. in fact, a windows server isn't even required for straight-up silverlight hosting. ...

well, you've seen the flurry of tafiti no doubt (at least if you are a regular subscriber to things silverlight).  i'm not here to say "go check it out" and add another post to the flurry, but instead to perhaps look at why tafiti is important. you see, when i look at the site, i think it is cool, interesting, unique, <insert-favorite-word-here>.  but at the same time i'm a little opinionated about the ui design choice.  i should be clear that i'm no professional designer at all, and all of this is my opinion of course.  but i look at the...

as i've found myself doing more editing these days for podcasts, screencasts, whatever, i've been using a mix of tools.  i've been really liking camtasia lately for most as it has provided me with what i've needed...after all i'm no professional. one thing that it wasn't doing for me was allowing me to put overlays on top of video frames.  actually it does, but i was just an idiot looking for it in the wrong place.  camtasia calls these "custom callouts" and are hidden underneath the add callout features.  i wouldn't have thought to look there as all the callouts i've...

i've suddenly (well okay, not suddenly, but now i've had the time) realized that twitter is pretty good at keeping in touch, especially at conferences, etc.  i wish that some partnership with facebook and twitter would occur.  i'm using both of them and wish there was only one place i could update my status that nobody cares about. one thing is annoying me about twitter (and thankfully hasn't happened over at facebook yet ... at least with my circle of friends).  that is the one-sided conversation.  you know what i'm talking about.  the one where someone you are stalking following on...

following up in part 2, we build upon part 1 of our demonstration of using user controls in our silverlight applications.  in part 1, we created our user control in xaml using expression blend and then wired it up in our silverlight 1.0 application using javascript as the code. in part 2, we take the same xaml, but this time compile it into a managed assembly for consumption in a silverlight 1.1 application.  the result is that we now have a modular approach to reusable components in silverlight and the user control in managed code also affords us familiar implementation style...

i just put up my latest screencast featuring a sample on how to create your own user control in silverlight version 1.0.  this is about a 24 minute screencast that walks through creating the XAML as a user control (not the primary focus) quickly, and then consuming this user control in a silverlight 1.0 application, creating the control dynamically using createFromXaml. i also realized that in the screencast i mentioned that i was using the 'open as web site' feature in visual studio 2008 instead of just right-clicking the project in blend and choosing 'edit in visual studio' -- but then...

well, it looks like my efforts with facePhone were short lived.  i started out creating a better mobile UI for facebook on the iphone.  i was challenged, however as the API didn't provide essentially everything i needed/wanted, so i got a limited functionality, but for me, was fine (getting status updates): well, the guys at facebook (presumably joe hewitt -- i actually contacted him about my efforts and never heard back...maybe this is why :-)). i haven't tried on edge, but they are loading a lot of content there.  looks good though. tags: iphone , facebook , iui , facephone

i've been subscribed to a blog called 'foo theory' for a bit now and their content keeps getting better and better.  bennie is now on part 5 of a series on new language features in c# 3.  his recent part 5 talks about lambda expressions but does a good job of walking through some history and defining delegates, anonymous methods, etc. for us minions. you should check out the foo theory guys...good stuff.  main feed here. tags: foo theory , c# , lambda , delegates , anonymous methods , visual studio

there were some issues with the blend 2 august preview tool when used with the silverlight 1.1 alpha refresh-refresh :-).  you could probably see some issues on the forum or if you launched blend 2 and didn't have the .net project types, you were probably frustrated to. in case you haven't heard, i thought it was valid to repeat the echo here on my blog.  the blend guys have refreshed their build to help alleviate this.  i guess it should be called blend 2 august preview refresh edition?  anyway, you can download the update here. tags: silverlight , blend , expression blend...

while chatting with someone earlier commenting about television, i mentioned that 'if you have a tivo setup the season pass' -- his response was priceless: show me a tech guy who does not have Tivo and I'll show you an AOL user priceless.  thanks for the laugh kevin.

in my previous post about a road-trip television show i've been watching, i mentioned that i have been noddling on an idea that i've wanted to do for a while.  i've wanted to get out and meet as many developers as i can and it just seems that the same user group meetings aren't attracting new blood...why is that?  so i thought how can my peers get out there and really reach some people in a different way...and more importantly in different places.  i want to see first-hand the great things people are developing with microsoft. so my thought is road-trip. ...

i'm a food nut.  i pride myself on my ability to eat everything in sight.  seriously, i will.  i'll at least try something once.  there hasn't been anything presented in front of me that i haven't tried.  i'd probably draw the line at coagulated blood pizza or anything else presented on fear factor. one of the only reasons i have cable television is for the food network.  when i first got married my new wife (she's still my wife, btw so i'm not sure why i'm classifying here here as new) was annoyed at my infatuation by a (then unknown) chef...

going to post my score from the previous weekend and got an error...look what i noticed: lovely.  anyone who might have sniffed my password while posting, would you mind ensuring that you post good rounds for me? :-)

last week i was getting real frustrated with some regex madness.  i had a string here: >Status Updates</b><br /><form action="home.aspx" method="post"><input type="hidden" name="post_form_id" value="blah" />Tim is testing.... and was needing to get the value attribute out.  i was using the regex pattern of: \"post_form_id\"\svalue=\"(?<formId>(.*))\" and it was giving me the starting point but also the rest of the string at the end.  argh!  i am not an advanced regex guru and was getting pretty frustrated about the solution.  luckily some other people with mad skillz came to my rescue (thanks dino and zain). taking the modified pattern to: "\"post_form_id\"\\svalue=\"(?<formId>(?:[^\"]*))\"" gave me the specific outcome i expected...

as i've been traveling and talking about silverlight, there have been two main things people have been complaining discussing about silverlight, and one of them is the control set (or perhaps lack thereof).  i've had conversations with a lot of people trying to explain that you have the full HTML control set at your disposal, and that seems to work in most situations.  there may be, however, times when you want ultimate silverlight goodness.  i've been saying that i personally think that 3rd parties will beat us to the market with controls...and they are starting to emerge. take a look at...

about two weeks after it was mentioned at oscon, microsoft has submitted 2 licenses to the OSI for approval.  you can read more about it here. i've previously mentioned i think this is a good thing and the OSI process of license approvals is a public one, allowing for comments and seeing the process vetted in the community, not just behind closed doors.  this will be interesting to follow. tags: oscon07 , oscon , oscon2007 , osi , ms-pl , ms-cl , microsoft open source , codeplex

there has been an updated release of the silverlight tools for visual studio beta 2.  it's being pushed to the download servers now, so propogation might take some time. this update resolves some issues people have been reporting about broken references and certain anomalies with visual studio 2008.  you should uninstall the old silverlight tools release before installing to ensure you get the updates.  there is no need to uninstall the silverlight alpha refresh runtime. get the update here: updated silverlight tools for visual studio. tags: silverlight , visual studio , silverlight tools

you can tell when a new fiscal year has started (or at least the month after a new fiscal year).  people are back from vacations, meetings are more frequent, last-minute trips are planned, you get the picture.  all of this has been counterproductive to me being able to really sit down and do some fun things with silverlight.  not to feat though, some great things have been going on. after i had helped "bcl man" :-) upload some videos of ironruby, i decided it did not do him justice to use one of the vanilla templates and altered it a bit...

i'm sick of reality shows...except hells kitchen of course.  but seriously, everything i see on tv is some reality show.  what ever happened to raw, artificial entertainment?  well over the past few weeks i've learned it moved to other networks.  not that i'm endorsing all the actors in these shows as their best performances, but i've been entertained by them...and to me that is what counts. check them out if you are sick of the reality ones as well: the kill point (spike tv) damages...

what do you do when it is still 100 degrees farenheit at 8pm in arizona?  a guitar hero competition at an ice cream store of course.  saw this tonight: the owner of the location (power and ray roads for the locals who want to go) is my neighbor across the street..cool to see him do things like this.

the patterns and practices team released the final version of the TFS Guide, a guide to using team foundation server effectively in development environments. it includes: fundamentals source control builds large project considerations project management process templates reporting setting up/maintenance vs2008 tfs pretty cool, check...

found a new site a while back and forgot to share.  all you ruby-ists or bi-curious .net developers (technical bi-curious that is) should head on over to rubydoes.net and subscribe.  they promise to keep an eye on all things ironruby for us :-).  from their site: We think Ruby is great, but we also think .net is great. Together, IronRuby could prove to be quite a compelling offering that geeks all over the world will love. nice.  subscribed. tags: ironruby , ruby , ruby on rails , rubydoes.net , ironpython

Dear Gmail, Hi.  I like mail.  I like you.  Can you please fix your POP interface?  You see, because I'm starting to want to use it and started investigating the process.  I like that Gmail gives me an awesome spam filter that I would trade my vintage 1980 yoda figurine for.  I also like the filter capabilities that I can set up.  It gives me a clean Inbox...you even call it an Inbox. But when I use the POP services, my Inbox got bigger.  All my filtered mail is in there.  What gives?  Why don't you honor my Inbox the same way...