There are things that people do that are in poor taste.  Some things that come to mind is scavenging at the dump (yeah, I saw this guy do that one time), yelling at the waitress for onions on your burger,  or leaving the lavatory without property sanitizing your hands.  If you do any of those things you are likely guilty of poor taste. 

Now, I don't really like Bush nor do I like Obama but I do show proper respect to both of these individuals.  Being a Republican without a party I tend to starkly disagree with much of President Obama's platform.  I understand that many people have a lot of pent up emotion and anger toward the decisions the previous administration has made.  Personally I have much of it toward both former President Bush and President Obama, but there is absolutely no way I would ever boo either of them at the inaugural ceremony!  Apparently many of those in attendance choose to boo anytime President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney where shown on the screen.  Having recently undergone back surgery, Vice President Cheney was in a wheel chair for heavens sakes! 

I have personally never been to an inauguration, but I should think that the kind of patriotic atmosphere that exists would prohibit such disgustingly undignified acts.  To those who choose to boo, you have none of my respect!  I place you below the people who use profane language, below people who put gum under restaurant tables, below people who throw lit cigarettes out the window, and even below people spit on the ground while indoors.  You people have no sense of taste and could never earn respect from anyone who does.

I don't normally do product reviews on my blog but recently I have come across some really poor electronics and have had such a bad experience I want to warn any potential buyer -- These products are beyond poor, they are unacceptable!  So I have decided that at least for the time being I would share my experiences online. 

There are all kinds of new electronics out there to buy.  Flat screen TV's, iPods, iPhones, HD Radio's, BluRay, etc.. However, I personally feel that there are some companies who's business model is to produce junk and sell it as these new style electronics.  In the case of both of these products it is obvious that they rushed to market in such a way that makes them completely worthless!  This is much reminiscent of the late 90's where computer manufacturers were pushing out components before they were ready resulting in very unstable PC's!

Another thing to note is that I am a little more savvy than the average consumer.  Not to tout too much my credentials as a "product test guy" but I did used to work for a service company called Service West and I would fix electronics.  When you see the guts of some electronics you really see the difference between brands!  You could (at least then) really tell the difference between a Sony and a JVC!  The Sony was eloquent and beautiful inside and I never saw many of them!  Some of the JVC's I worked on I had to de-solder wires just to get the unit open to perform a simple mechanical adjustment and they were always in there because the user tried to do two things at once (like change disks and press play in rapid succession).  In short, you get what you pay for.  Unlike computers where you buy a Dell for the name or cereal where you pay a lot more for the little improvement in quality; electronics are a little different.  If you can make a cheaper brand electronics component work for you then that's great but it is not going to be as good as quality as a better brand.

Westinghouse 32H570D Flat Panel TV

When we first purchased this TV we loved it!  The best feature was the DVD player, it is built in such a way that you can pop a DVD into the front of the TV (front loading) and it will turn the TV on and start playing the DVD.  How they were able to do a front-loading DVD slot and keep the TV so low profile I'll never know.  I bought this from Target back in April 2008 and returned it exactly 90 days later.  I was hoping to find something else to replace it with but we're going to be doing a lot more homework before trying that again. 

The Pro's:

• Front loading DVD slot!
• The price
• Very low profile
• Great picture
• Easy to play DVD's

The Con's:

• The TV would hang every one in a while.  Not an innocent "the picture is frozen" but it completely FROZE!  You would have to get up, un plug it, and plug it back in!  You can't even power it off with the remote!  Yes, there was adequate ventilation and the TV did not appear to be hot.
• The audio inputs did not work!  I spent literally DAYS trying to get audio from my computer (where we would watch online content) to the TV!  Getting the audio from the laptop speakers was not desirable! 
• The HD tuner was clumsily laid out.  You could literally take a full 20 seconds just to flip past channel 7!
• The remote was nothing special!  It had a poor layout as well and did not have buttons for things you would do often.
• The menu did not have a lot in the way of customization & function.  This may be part of the "easy to use" but I was unable to select an audio source.

I would not recommend this unit to a friend!  It's possible they fix the "bugs" and will have a good product in the future, but from other reviews their technical support was very poor and sending the TV for repair is very expensive.  I can not recommend this brand to a friend either.

Jensen HD5112

This radio supposedly had it all!  Literally!  HD Radio, MP3/WMA playback on CD/CD-R/CD-RW, SD Memory, USB.  IPod link, Aux input, pre-outs, Satellite ready, EVERYTHING!  The problem? None of it worked! (more below)  I really wanted this product to work for me -- epically since these puppies aren't easy to install! Plus it was pretty inexpensive and I knew that anything else wouldn't have as many features.  I thought that if I can just find 1 brand of product compatible with the SD reader or USB, or CD ROM then I would be fine.  I couldn't find any combination that worked!  I purchased this from WalMart in August 2008 and returned it days later.

The Pro's:

• Very Featureful (on the surface)
• Price is right!
• I really liked the HD radio.  It seems like the Satellite radio companies are fighting very hard to limit the number of units with this feature so it was nice to find one.  HD Radio is pretty cool and one of the main reasons for buying this unit.
• I didn't get to try the iPod link (as I do not yet have an iPod and would probably opt for a Zune)
• Once I got the correct dash kit (don't say that you support *any* Pontiac when you don't stupid first dash kit!) installation was pretty easy.  The wires were ISO compliant so I just had to match colors with my GM/Pontiac pigtail.
• The unit seemed to have pretty good power.  It went much louder than my stock radio.

The Con's:

• I could not install it without removing the "warranty void if removed" sticker!  It was right over where the sleeve slid over.  You slide it over that spot more than twice (which is usually required) that sticker is gone man!
• The installation instructions couldn't be accessed.  They are usually provided online through a 3rd party.  You enter your serial number and it will let you download installation instructions for your vehicle.  I suspect I was the N'th person to buy this particular unit and so it wouldn't let me download the instructions!
• I tried 6 different SD cards in this unit and could not get any of them to read.  I tried formatting these every which way possible and even tried a number of different MP3 formats just in case it was not capable of playing VBR.  I tried renaming the files to have as few as possible chars. I never got this feature working!
• I tried 15 different CD brands! Nothing would play.  Though in defense (if you can call it that) this unit must have been defective because the CD playback didn't work with a regular music CD (CDDA) that came straight from the store. That's right, I couldn't play my Blink 182 album!
• I tried all 6 thumb drives I had and it wouldn't read any of them so I bought a new one, and it wouldn't read that either!  Reading other reviews these last three are common.  One guy could only get 1 thing to work and that was a SD card reader to work in the USB slot.  I believe he described it as "an abomination sticking out of my dash!" and that a sudden stop would snap his card reader & radio like a twig!
• The clock looked weird and it would never display the information I wanted. 
• The aux port worked but only if the faceplate was not open (expected but still annoying)
• The faceplate didn't detach or attach without a fight! 
• The snaps that hold the radio to the sleeve weren't great.  After I installed it I couldn't get the right side to snap into place.
• The product manual was very poor!  The website had few answers.

I would not recommend this unit to a friend.  Based on the whole number of poorly implemented features I could not buy this brand of electronics again.

I have bought the XOVision DVD player for my car to replace this CD Player.  It should get here in the next week so look for a review on that.

For now on you may address me as my proper title:

I wish the title was a little less blasphemous; therefore you may alternately call me 'King Nerd'.  That would also match with my wife who is a "Slightly Dorky Nerd Queen".

I also scored quite high on the version 1.0 test:

Remember, that is 92 percentile!

--Nathan Zaugg

Those who know me will tell you that Microsoft might as well just put me on payroll because I talk about their new products all day long.  I have even characterized myself as an "Unofficial, Unpaid, Microsoft Solutions Evangelist".  Having said that, I know what's good and bad about the products I love so much.  I also know when someone else has something worth taking a look at. 

Google Defined

Google: very successful Internet advertising company seeking to find, buy, and evolve technology that has promise and then figure out a way to turn a profit on the new technology. 

And they are very good at what they do.  When Google purchased KeyHole (Google Earth) everyone started scratching their heads and wondered why!  I may not understand exactly how but I am almost positive that they have turned a profit on it. 

Well, here is another interesting gem.  Google SketchUp is a armature 3D modeling tool.  It's easy to pick up and has some pretty cool features.  I created the sketch below of my back yard (or at least how I want it to be).  There is tons of detail from the landscape brick in the back to the translucent windows.  I did the below model in less than an hour and when I started I couldn't figure out how to add dimension to my square shape or how to move it around. 

Cool Features

Some of the cool features are textures, and the 3D model community.  The textures makes these simple sketches look very life-like.  It has most of the common building materials and many basic outdoor shrubs & plant-life.  You can also capture an image from Google Earth and transpose it onto your work area.  You can even take a picture of something and mold it to your objects. 

I added my model to the Google search and now anyone can use my shop! 

The Not So Cool

It would be nice if there was more keyboard involvement.  I find my self switching between tools a lot and it's cumbersome.  While you can get results pretty quickly the interface is difficult to maneuver even after using it for a while.  Simple tasks like changing the size of a rectangle are complicated.  You also have an inability (or at least it seems to me for now) to make things exact.  I'd like to be able to enter the size of the rectangle and then enter the coordinates.  And although it's pretty fast for 3D modeling it does make you wait quite a while for some tasks and I think it could be a whole lot faster!  It seems to be written in Ruby and my guess is that it does not take advantage of hardware acceleration and that if it were written in a language like C++ or C# than it would be much faster!  Also, I hate the name!  Couldn’t they have named it Google 3D, G-3D, or even GSketch?

All said, for a free pice of software it does help a lot in convincing my wife that a 30-35 shop will not look too big for our yard!

http://sketchup.google.com/

--Nathan Zaugg

Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 has been released.  This version is supposed to be pretty stable as I understand it.  The tools on the other hand, still feel very much like a beta!  I had a heck of a time getting this junk installed!

The link to download Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 for Visual Studio is here: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
(note: This installation package includes all you need including Silverlight runtime and SDK)

My Installation Isssues

 
Installer splash, so far so good.

I got to know these dialogs pretty good as I'd tried this many times!

It makes you close all browsers!  Ok, sure!

DANG IT!  What now? 

So you're telling me that I can't have a patch?

Here is the output of the error:

Created new ExePerformer for Exe item

[6/9/2008, 13:48:11] Action: Performing Action on Exe at c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe...

[6/9/2008, 13:48:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::Launch) Launching CreateProcess with command line = c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe /q /uninstall
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe - Exe installer does not provide a log file name
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) Exe (c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe) failed with 0x80070643 - Fatal error during installation. :
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) PerformOperation on exe returned exit code 1603 (translates to HRESULT = 0x80070643)

[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] Action complete

[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::LogUtils::LogFinalResult) Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), Fatal error during installation.

so I hit the net and find these instructions: http://weblogs.asp.net/bradleyb/archive/2008/03/06/installation-tips-for-sivliverlight-tools-beta-1-for-visual-studio-2008.aspx

try to uninstall the KB:

(found under updates)

 
Kept asking me for some location!  Wasn't going to work....what is the backup solution?

Ok, extract the files in the installer...sure.

I put them in a dir called "Install"

Then RUN: msiexec /uninstall VS90-KB949325.msp /L*vx VS90-KB949325-2.log

Double Dang!  Ok, whats up??

Hit the web agian: http://silverlight.net/forums/p/17663/58925.aspx
and download MSI ZAP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Tripple Dang!  Updates are not listed!

Downloaded tool: MSIINV

Download Link:
msiinv.zip

RUN:

msiinv.exe -p > Installed.txt

No luck!  Still not giving me the GUID for KB949325! 

RUN:

msiinv.exe -v > Installed.txt

Took SEVERAL minuets to run and created a 10MB text file!  When it was done I tried to run msizap but it wouldn't go.  I'm just going to install these packages seperatly now that I have them extracted from silverlight_chainer.exe.

RUN THE FOLLOWING:

1. Silverlight.2.0_Developer.exe
2. msiexec /p VS90-KB949325.msp /L*vx VS90-KB949325.log REINSTALL=ALL
   
   (gave me an error -- ok, I'm skipping it!)
3. silverlight_sdk.msi
4. VS_SilverlightTools_Beta2_Setup.exe

Sat here for quite a while!
devenv.exe seems active though.

Install Completed!

This is also a good resource:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=50A9EC01-267B-4521-B7D7-C0DBA8866434&displaylang=en

This seems to only be a problem if you were an early adopter of the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1 fix. 

The term "circular dependency" may be foreign to some programmers (especially if you do Java as it is a pretty common practice).  However, anyone who has done some scripting for a referential database knows that you have to run scripts in a certain order.  Running scripts out of order causes errors when you run.  The interesting trick is that if you run that same incorrectly-ordered DDL script again and again you will eventually get it to run without errors.  If you were unaware of the order being incorrect and thought to yourself in that moment "Stupid database!" then this blog post is for you!

What is a circular dependency?

It is simply two libraries that use each other (either directly or indirectly) as shown below:

Figure 1: Circular Dependency

Figure 2: Complex Circular Dependency

The complexity of a circular dependency may vary.  If you are using Visual Studio and have all of your projects loaded into a single solution AND you add Project References (Right click on project -> Add Reference -> Projects Tab -> {Project Name}) then the IDE will not allow you to create Circular Dependencies.  In fact, this is a good practice as Visual Studio will ensure the correct build order. 

Why are circular dependencies bad?

Just like our Database example above, a circular dependency makes it so you can not guarantee that your application has the latest code.  That is a big deal!  Here is why:

1. I make changes to Application 1 (in Figure 2)
2. I build my project, The changes I made in Application 1 may or may not have gotten into Application 2 (depending on build order).  It may have taken a copy of the compiled code that was left over from the last time I built.
3. Application 2 depends on this new functionality to provide services to Application 3; This functionality will not work correctly with this build.
4. Application 3 may or may not depend on these same services to provide back to Application 1

As you can see in this scenario, there is no such thing as a "correct" build order when there are these circular dependencies.  The only way you can arrive at the correct version of the code is to build it as many times as there are nodes in our circle.  That would mean for Figure 1 that we would need to build twice and three times for Figure 3.  Some of these dependencies can get really ugly!  Here is some actual code running in an actual company that I did analysis on some time ago using a tool called Structure 101.

How do I fix circular dependencies?

There are some steps to take to solve even the most complex tangles!  They all involve refactoring your code though.

1. Refactor common code into a "base" dependency; I usually call this "Common" (figure 3).  BEST SOLUTION
2. Remove code that is unused.  In the tangles shown above many of them are using deprecated/unused code.
3. Duplicate the sections of code used.  This should be seen as a last resort but given the choice between code duplication and circular dependencies, I take code duplication ever time!

Figure 3: Refactor a Common

Summary

There are two kinds of design concepts for nTier (and other types of architectures as well) called Logical Layout Design and Physical Layout Design.  The Logical Layout is simply that your software occupies the same project/package but leverage different classes.  In contrast Physical Layout Design forces each tier to be separated into different Projects/Packages.  So long as we are careful to manage the dependencies between these packages from the start this is the preferable way to code.  While the logical layout does not suffer from the dependency problem eventually you may wish to break these classes apart and find that there are a lot of inner-dependency that should not exist simply because they occupied the same project.  Remember to keep it clean!

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation on Silverlight at the Utah Code Camp.  I was really impressed by a presentation I saw last time on Ruby and everyone really liked the cheat sheet that was provided.  For my presentation this year I created an XAML Cheat Sheet.  For those who are learning XAML it is a pretty good resource but it's most helpful for me when I know how to do something but I can't remember the syntax.  This is a work in progress so keep on checking back.  It can be downloaded in the Media section of my website (http://www.InteractiveASP.NET) or by clicking here.

Please drop me a line if you think you have something useful to add or you want to thank me for the hard work it took to put this thing together!

Nathan Zaugg

As promised by Microsoft when Visual Studio 2008 launched late last year, there is a service pack for available both for the .Net framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.  Information about the release can be found on ScottGu's Blog and mostly include bug fixes and performance enhancements, but the points of interest for me are:

• ASP.NET Routing Engine which gives you the ability to map URL's to route handlers. For example the URL http://www.mysite.com/myapp/data/234/editComment
• ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support gives you the ability to control the forward & back button clicks on the browser.  This will be very useful for "single page" ASP.NET AJAX implementations.
• Performance improvements on the web editor in VS 2008.
• JavaScript Formatting Settings
• CLR performance improvements including startup times that are 40% faster and faster ASP.NET requests (up to 10% faster).
• WPF New Features and Performance Enhancements!
  • Performance enhancements using GPU
  • New "WritableBitmap" which allows for tear-free bitmap updates.
  • ListBox, ListView, and TreeView now support "item container recycling" and virtualization which results in better performance.  This will have a huge effect on large amounts of data.
  • Deferred Scrolling which doesn't render until the mouse up on a scroll event.  This will can have a enormous effect on huge data sets.
  • StringFormat support within binding expressions
  • New Alternating Rows support for controls derived from ItemControl
  • Events tab support within the property browser in VS 2008
  • Go to Definition and Find All References now support things declared in XAML
• SQL Server 2008 Support
• The long awaited ADO.NET Entity Framework which includes integration with any database
• Improvements in WCF including scailability, ADO.NET Entities in service contracts, and Improved Debugging support for WCF.
• Improvements to C#; The C# code editor now identifies and displays red squiggle errors for many semantic code issues that previously required an explicit compilation to identify. The debugger in VS 2008 SP1 has also been improved to provide more debugging support for evaluating LINQ expressions and viewing results at debug time
• Fixes to TFS

Installation Cautions

• If you are running this on Vista, be sure Vista SP1 is installed!
• If you have installed the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 Beta1 package on your machine, you must uninstall it - as well as uninstall the KB949325 update for VS 2008 - before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta
• If you are running anything earlier than Expression Blend 2.5, then you need to update it to the latest.  Earlier versions will cease to run.
• This is still beta software -- Install at your own risk!

A direct download link can also be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

--Nathan Zaugg

I have been doing Code Camp for over a year now (that may not seem like a lot but this will be my 3rd time presenting there).  Code Camp is awesome!  It's a full day of free training in a verity of topics that most developers find interesting. 

Topics Include:

• Silverlight 2.0
• Building websites with the ASP.NET MVC framework
• C# 3.0
• Writing Manageable Services in .NET
• Database Performance tuning  Part 1
• IronRuby + C# = Awesomeness
• Game Development in XNA for the Xbox360
• Introduction to Mac OS X programming using Cocoa and Objective C
• Developing For Windows Vista
• T-Sql Querying
• Why C# Namespaces are not the same as Java Packages
• An Introduction to CakePHP

You can visit http://www.utcodecamp.com for more information (Yes, I know I put the Microsoft technologies first -- I'm an unpaid unofficial self-proclaimed Microsoft Technologies Evangelist!).  Wither you are just starting out in your career or have been doing this stuff for years you will get something out of Code Camp!  It's not one of those Microsoft "For developers" class sessions where it's just a giant power point and you didn't get any real substance!  In fact, that is part of the Code Camp Manifesto (http://blogs.msdn.com/trobbins/archive/2004/12/12/280181.aspx)

Information:

Date: April 26, 2008 (This Saturday)
Time: 9:00AM - 5:00PM
Please register here.

I will be doing the Silverlight 2.0 presentation so please come!! 

Thanks!
Nathan Zaugg

I was creating a payment form recently and I wanted to disable the submit button after the user had clicked it so that there was no chance of them clicking it twice on accident. 

This seems like one of those things that just ought to be a slam dunk!  Back when I was doing ASP, this was one of the easiest things I ever did.  I have done it with asp.net before, but I never needed validation to work as well.  It took me a long time, many searches and trial and error but I found a solution that will disable the button and doesn't get in the way of validation.

The javascript is pretty straight-forward.  We are simply calling the validation function ourselves, if it validated we disable the button and change the text.  What does the rest of the code do then? Well, normally when a control is disabled it doesn't post data on postback.  Fortunantly, ASP.NET makes it easy to override that default behavior.  Without this data our button click event would never fire!

You can also do this in the HTML as well.

I hope this is useful to someone!  If you end up using it on one of your sites, please leave a comment!

Thanks!
Nathan Zaugg