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.  sure, sure, you may say that the adobe guys just did that and i stole my idea from their airbus tour.  not true.  i stole it from the .NET Rocks! roadtrip (their link is gone, but you can do some searching).  i thought it was great that people hopped on an RV and headed across the country talking to developers.  so i thought, why shouldn't microsoft developers do that?  we need to be one with the land and people as well!

now since our teams are more geographically based, i'm not planning on spanning the country/world (unless of course, scott invites me and someone pays my way to get to the gold coast).  so for me, i'm talking the western states in the united states (rocky mountains and anything west).  my thought is we get the message out about next generation web platforms...i'm talking silverlight, i'm talking live platform services, etc.  get out there, go to places where we haven't been, stop where people ask us to stop...get out there man.

i could rig up my golf cart and repaint it:

(before)

(after)

but then i realized it might be a little drafty across the desert.  i've named it the 'silvertour' in my head and had visions of old-school airstreams:

yeah, baby, that's what i'm talking about.  so what do you think?  who cares if it has been done before.  did people go to flagstaff, arizona to talk to developers there?  heck the adobe guys passed right by phoenix, arizona!  i think it needs to be done...who's with me? (i'm now envisioning the speech from animal house).

but seriously, i've been talking to some folks at microsoft, working on details, but help me out...good idea or completely lame?  if not completely lame, then post where you would want us to stop...i'll keep you all posted here!

viva le' silvertour! (or perhaps it should be 'coding on asphalt' -- anyone want to submit some logo designs are welcome)

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 named emeril.  it was pretty much the only channel i watched.  i like to think that my nielsen ratings usage helped propel the food network into stardom...hey, i can dream can't i?  i watched all the food celeb up-and-comers, but one reigns supreme above all others (a close tie between him and bobby flay) and that is alton brown.  if you ever want to know anything about food, you should immediately set your tivo's to 'good eats' right now.  the man either has incredible writers/researchers or is immensely knowledgeable...and i vote for both.  regardless, the show is entertaining (as much as food shows go, i mean there are no special effects that blow up cars or anything) and informative.

alton also started a new show last year that has a 'season 2' this year entitled 'feasting on asphalt' and is him and a bunch of other motorcyclists traveling across areas of the united states in search for unique food stops.  what i like about this show is it is a little less scripted, a little more raw, but still core to the main character: food.  it takes me along a journey with them (did i just say journey?) and i like it.

but as i started to watch this second season, i began to realize that i wanted more from the shows.  i wanted more about the areas that ended up on the cutting room floor.  but most of all, as a geek i saw too much potential go to waste about what they were doing.  how are the cameras hooked up on the motorcycle?  how are they getting good audio from the cyclists from the handhelds as they are driving?  where is the exact route on gps?  etc.  it made me think more about what that show (and network) could do.  here's my ideas.

first the show...

• give me a blog/podcast/behind the scenes!  heck, i'll come aboard.  my love for technology and food, c'mon this is the perfect trip.  i want to hear about the cutting room floor stuff, the anecdotes of each stop, etc. -- hook me up some vidcasts alton!
• gps -- route yourself online -- you have a microsite for the show, give me some virtual earth love with points/stops/etc. -- then you can link them to the actual locations of the places you stop and/or vid/podcasts
• tech gear -- you are riding motorcycles...people like those...how about a little about the rides, the rigs, and the overall equip -- give us the behind-the-stage ticket!

now the network...

i noticed that they do have media content on their site.  guess what...it is WMV format!!!  when i go to the site on windows in IE i see:

see the embedded winmedia player?  all is well.  however when i view in firefox (note: same for ff/safari on mac) i see:

note the win media plugin is not there.  side note: notice the flash requirement to display a list of shows in the upper right?  c'mon flash for simple text?  surely there isn't a need for that...simple css should work here for what they are wanting to accomplish.

at any rate, with an investment already in windows media formats, i'd love to see the food network adopt silverlight for their media playback areas...someone should probably talk to them...or if you know anyone there, give my number :-)...i'm happy to set up a 1:1 with alton brown to explain the merits of silverlight given their existing windows media content :-).  i'm a horrible designer/creative, but with 5 minutes of cut/paste:

watching this show and thinking through some things made me really refine an idea of mine and colleagues we've been noodling on for a while...more on that soon.

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 and the capture into my group that i needed.  so i was happy.  the explanation of why the first pattern wasn't working was because my ".*" was slurping up all the good stuff including all text until the last double-quote.  to my feeble brain it didn't make too much sense as when i look at the pattern it looked good, but i digress.

anyhow, in this exercise i learned that zain had a webcast series on regex.  so if you want to be immersed in a series of non-readible characters with all sorts of brackets, head on over to zain's world for his webcast series all about regex.

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 the componentone lab site, featuring "Sapphire" -- their control suite for silverlight.  here's a list of a few (note: few, there are a lot):

• textbox, masked textbox, numeric textbox
• combobox
• lists galore
• layout controls anyone?: stackpanel, hyperpanel, etc.
• date pickers
• color picker, sliders, etc.

they really are worth taking a look and i'm sure whomever gets to the market first will get LOTS of attention!