What the... Hey!

Good News, Bad News

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:32:52 GMT

The Good News: VS 2008 is out (the RTM only, and you need MSDN to get it). The bad news: there’s currently no support for Silverlight 1.0. I’m trying very, very hard to not gripe about this. After all, VS 2008 is just RTM, not really released yet. And, Microsoft (in their infinite wisdom) released it on Thanksgiving. Things may change in the coming week. Here’s hoping.

Back to You premieres

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:09:53 GMT

Last night, Fox premiered Back to You, the new sitcom starring Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton. The ads for this show looked pretty good, though it had all of the earmarks of a standard sitcom.

Sure enough, the show is textbook. There’s nothing suprising about the show, including the “twist” that Heaton’s show daughter is also Grammar’s love child. I have a feeling that this subplot will probably end up going away. The interaction at the news office is just too rich.

While standard fare, the show is well written, and the jokes very funny. This is a good companion to Fox’s returning ‘Til Death (which is also looking good in its second season).

A Surprising Kid Nation

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:05:39 GMT

The press has been all over Kid Nation, talking about injured kids and broken child labor laws. It looked pretty bleak for the show (which sounded pretty lame from the get go).

It premiered last night, and Ta Dah! It was fine! The show was darn good. Like all reality shows, there were annoying participants and more viewer friendly participants. CBS did a very good job of tugging at the ole heartstrings with this one.

I’m fascinated with how these kids interact with each other. One thing that most adults don’t consider is that kids don’t act around adults the way they act when adults aren’t present. This could turn out to be a very fascinating show.

As for the bad publicity, I have a feeling that CBS wanted this. Frankly, it smacked of the kind of press buzz that surrounded the multi-racial Survivor season (which also turned out to be nothing). CBS basically got a ton of free publicity around an idea that sounded like a yawner.

I’m once again pleasantly suprised about what’s showing up this season.

Fall Preview

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:30:13 GMT

The Fall TV season starts during the next couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to it. When I first saw the new shows in May, I was underwhelmed. It’s amazing how a summer of reall horrible TV can change your outlook. Don’t get me wrong. Now that I’ve seen some scenes (and even a pilot), the fall season is looking up to me.

Bionic Woman: I saw the pilot last night. NBC posted several pilots on Comcast’s On Demand channel (I guess hoping to attract some attention). Anyway, this was one of the shows that I didn’t have high hopes for. The original show was terrible, a cheap knockoff of the original six million dollar man. The pilot, however, was great. It looks like this is going to be a great show.

Cavemen: This show had all of the signs of a loser. It’s based on the characters from they Geico commercials. I hate those commercials. The scenes, however, were hilarious. I don’t know if its going to make it, but it definitely doesn’t look like it will suck.

So, I have my premiere schedules printed out, and am programming my DVR’s as the schedules permit. Who knows? this season may not be so bad after all …

Subversion Revisited

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 19:08:22 GMT

I was getting ready to make some changes to my regular expression editor, and once again wished for a Subversion repository on my home system. The last time that I tried to set this up, I failed miserably. The ugly underside of open source projects is that newbie support can be spotty at best.

I rummaged around quite a bit, and first managed to get the subversion server running from the command line, but once again failed to get it running as a service (my preferred method). This time, I persisted and began to get some traction.

Issue 1: version. The 1–Click Installer that’s available online is pretty old (version 1.3 of Subversion). The docs I found was for version 1.4. Also, it turns out that version 1.4 of svnserve supports running as a Windows service. I dumped the 1–Click stuff and dug up the 1.4.5 (the latest) installer for Windows and got it going. Still no luck.

Issue 2: network drives. Then, I remembered an issue we ran into at work: services cannot access mapped drives (and, in fact, have trouble with drives that require user id’s and passwords). I changed the mapped drive letter of the repository to a UNC path. Bingo! I actually had a connection.

Issue 3: creating the root project. I followed the instructions I found to create the root project, and it seemed to work. But, when I tried to browse to it, Tortoise couldn’t find it. I went back to the instructions. I’d skipped a few steps around security. I went back and set up security properly. Another Bingo! I now can browse!

So far, everything seems to be working well. I have my SVN repository set up (as a Windows service) and I have TortoiseSVN installed (a requirement for easy SVN use). Now, I’m ready to get back to work …

I'm getting game-crazy

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:55:50 GMT

The Wii has lived up to my expectations in a big way. However, I’ve run into one big problem: quality games are few and far between. So, two weeks ago, I broke down and picked up an Xbox 360. I’d heard that the Xbox arcade (part of the Xbox marketplace) was a great place to get/play simple games. This was just what I’ve been missing with the Wii; its online store only has old Nintendo games, nothing aimed at the Wii specifically.

Right away, my Xbox experience was great. I have it hooked up and doing 1080i video; the difference from the Wii’s 480p is very noticeable. And, the games are definitly high quality, even thought the controller is 10 year old technology (except, of course, for the fact that its wireless).

The media aspects of the Xbox marketplace are also great. Now, this is serious video on demand. Between the trial games and the quick video downloads, the Xbox has definitely filled out my entertainment center.

So far, the only problem I’ve had with the Xbox is that it won’t play Divx encoded video. I have it set up as an externder to my Media Center (which is great; the Xbox has much better video than the MC does), however, it won’t play downloaded videos that are Divx encoded. I’ve found several applications on the web that provide streaming video decoding for the XBox, and I may move to that eventually, but nothing seamless. Hopefully, MS wakes up and deals with this soon.

Finally, the Wii is not orphaned. I’m currently playing Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii, and its great. It makes great use of the Wiimote/nunchuck combo, and the graphics are much more “on par” with the Xbox (though still just 480p).

So much fun, so little time …

My IronRuby "Aha" Moment

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:11:15 GMT

A week ago, I attended a PADNUG presentation by John Lam on the IronRuby project being done at Microsoft. In short, IronRuby is a Ruby implementation that runs in the .NET CLR, and therefore has native access to the .NET libraries.

This both intrigued and confused me. Last year, at Portland Code Camp 2.0, I attended a session on Iron Ruby. That wasn’t presented by John. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Well, today I found Wilco Bauwer’s blog. Wilco’s the developer of the original IronRuby, and the presenter that I saw last year. Apparently, the current IronRuby has no relation to Wilco’s project. However, Microsoft did ask Wilco for permission to use the name, and he did agree.

At least, my confusion is now cleared up.

Builds and Build Scripts

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:58:42 GMT

Currently, I’m using BAT files for my build automation. Over the years, I’ve been pretty happy with BAT files for this purpose. Microsoft has done a very good job of improving the capability of the command language over the years. Recently, though, I’ve been bumping into the limitations of BAT files.

My main problem is the weak support for variables. I use Environment variables and SET for script variables. In most use, it works great. Since each invocation of a BAT file gets its own Environment, new variables are automatically “local” to that file; this makes structured programming easy, as long as you don’t mind each subroutine being in a separate file (I don’t). However, global state management is extremely difficult.

So, I’ve been looking for an alternative.

One obvious choice would be vbscript or javascript, using Windows Scripting Host. After all, it was built for scripting, right? I tried this years ago, when WSH first came out. I learned that both vbscript and javascript are horrible programming languages (hence the move at Microsoft from ASP (vbs, js) to ASP.NET (c#, vb). The scripts were only marginally more maintainable than Perl (my first build scripting language, 10 years ago).

My next choice was PowerShell. I’ve been intrigued by PowerShell since I first saw it at PDC two years ago (when it was still called “Monad”). The idea of seamlessly calling into the .NET library is compelling. Reality turned out to be a different story. While I’m sure that PowerShell makes doing routine WMI or ADSI automation easy (the interfaces in .NET for these are horrible), batch-style automation (where you are automating the execution of programs themselves) is terrible. I found myself repeatedly calling directly into .NET to do things that should have been built into the scripting language (like changing the current directory). It was slow, slow going. When I finally hit a wall, unable to figure out how to do what should have been a simple task, I gave up.

I decided to try Ruby. Now, as some of you know, I looked at Ruby for scripting way back in the ‘90s when scripting (around Python back then) was just heating up. I was looking for an alternative for Perl (sound familiar?), but didn’t like the arcane syntax of Python. Ruby looked promising, but since there wasn’t a community of any size around it, I abandoned it as an alternative. A decade can make a big difference. Thanks to Ruby on Rails, its now (in my opinion) hotter than Python. I did a quick check on capabilities, and it looked like I could easily do with Ruby what I couldn’t figure out how to do in PowerShell. I decided to give it a try.

Sure enough, in less time than I spent with PowerShell, I was able to get a couple of my BAT scripts coverted to Ruby. As an aside, I’m using Ruby in Steel as my development environment. It’s great: it allows me to do my work right in Visual Studio 2005, with syntax highlighting, Intellisense, and integrated debugging.

The only real problem I was running into was Ruby’s syntax. Ruby is definitely not in the “Algol” family of languages like C, C++, Java, and C#. I was handling the simple stuff easily, but the more complex stuff was sailing over my head. The books I had (O’Reilly’s Learning Ruby and Ruby in a Nutshell) were very little help. I decided to pick up a couple of other books. Since the Ruby Cookbook was some help with my trial scripts, I picked it up as well as the “Ruby Bible”, Programming Ruby (the “pickaxe book”). I was shocked to discover the existence of a utility called Rake!

Rake is a Ruby-based Make utility. This intrigued me, so I did some research. Rake is a cross between Unix Make and Java’s Ant. With it, you can do dependency-style builds (like Make) or task-style builds (like Ant or NAnt). The beauty of it is that the build scripts are still just Ruby!

I’m a big fan of the task-style build process used by NAnt, but I don’t like the fact that the input file is XML. XML is just not suited for process-based programming, such as build scripts. It’se extremely difficult to read and maintain. Rake lets me build tasks and task dependencies, just like NAnt, but each step is procedural, not just a list of XML elements. As an added bonus, I get the full power of Ruby to accomplish what I need to do. Remember that the thing that got me down this path in the first place was the limitations of BAT files.

The outcome of all this is, first, that I’ll be giving Rake a try for build automation (and I have high hopes). Secondly, I’m intrigued by Ruby’s capabilities for creating DSL’s (Domain Specific Languages). DSL’s are hot right now. .NET’s LINQ is an interesting example of a DSL. The problem with LINQ is that it required changing the compiler to support it (due to the syntactic limitations of C#). Ruby’s flexible syntax makes implementing a usable DSL possible without changing the interpreter. I’m starting to think that this will be the ultimate advancement that Ruby brings to general programming.

As usual, this ability is not new. Stack based programming languages, like Forth and (yes) Postscript, have had this capability for years (or decades!), but stack-based programming languages have their own problems. Having similar capabilities in a more “traditional”, object oriented language is refreshing.

Now, I’m off to the store, to buy yet more Ruby books …

Big Warcraft News!

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:38:12 GMT

According to The Movie Blog, Blizzard has announced that the World of Warcraft movie will be released in 2009! I can’t wait …

I finally have Orcas loaded

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:31:48 GMT

With the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), I decided that it was time to load it. I’m really interested in Silverlight’s capabilities. I think it may be the final answer to the problems of developing web applications in HTML and JavaScript. Flash comes close, but ActionScript isn’t much differnt from JavaScript. With Silverlight 1.1, I can write a web application in C#, not just an HTML/Javascript emitter (like ASP).

Great idea, but Orcas wasn’t cooperating. I got an error -2147467259 when trying to install. I played with the installer settings, no good. I downloaded the Pro version instead of the Standard version, no good (and why do the installers for these two versions look so different???). I checked the web for days, and no answers. I even found a Microsoft feedback issue around this error. MS said that they couldn’t repeat the error and closed the issue .

Finally, on Saturday, someone said to check if the Web tools were already installed, and if so remove them. Well, I didn’t have Web tools installed, but I did have the CTP of Expressions Web Developer installed. So, I uninstalled that (and a bunch of foreign language dot net stuff). Bingo, Orcas is now installed. Now, I just have to figure out how to do anything useful .

Wii Adendum

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:34:10 GMT

An addendum to my previous Looking For Wii entry: I found one. I was in Best Buy at just the right time, and was able to snag one. I like it. It a lot of fun playing WiiSports. However, traditional games don’t take advantage of the Wii’s unique interface. I’m hoping that more Wii-specific games come out soon. I can only play so much baseball and tennis …

A Bittersweet night

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:31:27 GMT

Last night was a bittersweet night for me. It was the season (and series) finale for Studio 60. When this show started the season, it was the best thing on TV (no, really. No hype.). On the other hand, I thought its fraternal twin, 30 Rock was the worst show on TV.

In the following weeks, Tina Fey got her sitcom legs and the show began to get really funny. It ended the season at the top of my list. At the same time, Studio 60 was tanking. The show meandered around, with plots that could be summed up as “who cares?”. Ironically, it wasn’t until the end of the Fall season that the show started working its way out of the doldrums. It was too late. NBC started sticking other shows in its time slot (none of which did any better, ratings-wise), until it became clear that Studio 60 was dead meat. I started hearing stories that the actors were moving on, and even if NBC had a change of heart, there wasn’t a cast for another season.

Then, after the regular season ended, NBC played the last shows. They’ve been beautiful. While they haven’t risent to the quality of the pilot, they’ve been top caliber TV.

Now, it’s all over. I’m going to miss this cast; they were all stellar talent. I hope that I’m going to see them again soon.

Looking for Wii

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sat, 12 May 2007 21:38:45 GMT

Based on a friend’s recommendation, I decided a couple of weeks ago to get a Wii. Since then, I haven’t seen a single unit in the stores. Nintendo can’t be happy about this. I know my enthusiasm is waning. I used to be a slam-dunk sale. Today, not so much. It just goes to show how important a good supply chain is.

Back in Business

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:34:47 GMT

Okay, it looks like I”m back in the Blog business. At least by still using dasBlog 1.8. Now, I just need to find the time to write. I wonder how Jennifer does it…

Another try

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:32:34 GMT

Trying to post from BlogJet again…. Let’s see if this works now too..

Well, that worked

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:30:06 GMT

Okay, so deleting log files once again got the system to work. Maybe I need to purge old entries...

I can't seem to post

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:29:13 GMT

Okay, second try. Posts don't seem to be working anymore. Maybe its time to abandon DasBlog for a *real* blog system.