Same Scheidt, Different Day

Some days, I wonder about the people who write the ASP.NET controls...

Today, I was implementing the AdRotator control on one of our main pages.  The control needed to do the following... display an image if there was something to display, but if not, don't display ANYTHING.

Unfortunately, what the control does if there is nothing to display is set the image source to an empty string.   On Internet Explorer 8, this produces the following lovely result:

Doh!  That's not what I wanted!

Fortunately, there is a quick answer.  The AdRotator control has an AdCreated event.  By assigning a bit of code to it, one can check if the ImageUrl property is blank.  At that point, it's very easy to hide the control.

Here's the code:

protected void AdRotator1_AdCreated(object sender, AdCreatedEventArgs e)
{
  if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(e.ImageUrl))
  {
    AdRotator1.Visible = false;
  }
}

Pretty simple, and gets rid of the ugly red 'X'!

I have always been a long time believer in guitar pedal boards and guitar modeling.  I love the sound of a Marshall cranked, but HATE having to lug a head and 4x12 cabinet around.  I also like to record with the computer.  Recording amps in computer rooms can be tough at ANY given time :) 

About 10 years or so ago (ack… I REALLY hated writing that!) BOSS came out with the GT-5 and GT-3.  I started using the GT-3, and quickly came to use that for recording with the computer.  It also functioned great as a set of stomp boxes if I ever needed pedals with a live amp.  (At the time, I wasn’t playing with any bands, other than an odd audition or two)  When BOSS came out with the GT-6 and GT-8 I jumped on both.  They were great boxes.  I also had worked with a Line 6 POD 2.0.  The POD had a much more ‘open’ sound, and, to my ears, sounded much more realistic in the amp models.  So, I switched to a POD XT Live, the pedal board version of the POD XT.  I still use this unit to this day, as Line 6 released update packs that allowed me to have bass guitar amp models and sounds.  Since I play both bass and lead guitar, having one unit to lug around is awesome.

Which brings me to this weekend…  I am starting to play with my church’s band, and I don’t know from day to day what I will be playing… So I bring my guitar, my bass, my POD, and a full range amp (a bass amp that can double as a monitor).  Since my POD isn’t plugged into the computer any more, I needed to find a way to play guitar when playing with the computer.  I had seen that Waves had started give 1 year licenses to GTR Solo for free.  I’ve played with the GTR demo before, and it wasn’t half bad.  I didn’t have a lot of time to put it through it’s paces, but it worked well enough.  So, this weekend, my thought was ‘what the heck, it’s free for a year, let’s see what we can do’.

It turns out that with a couple of tweaks, the GTR Solo sounded pretty darn good!

I learned a couple of things with the plug-in…  First off, when I was initially playing with the amp simulator, I could hear both the amp sim output and the unaffected sound.  This sounds completely horrible…  To solve this problem, you mute the output of the channel that the guitar signal is coming in on.  The amp sim still gets the signal and processes it, then puts THAT signal out.  Viola!  Next up, there’s a weird sound when bending notes.  This is called ‘aliasing’, and most guitar processors have this issue…  Hmmm… I remember hearing someone say that switching the input and effect to a 96k sampling rate makes the aliasing go away.  What the heck, I went ahead and gave it a try… WOW!!!! IT WORKED!!!!  The latency (time between playing a note and hearing it from the speakers) was down, too!

The GTR Solo stuff looks to be very usable.  The sounds that are in the download are good.  I haven’t even started tweaking yet :)  My next step might be to get the Amp Farm from Line 6.  I happen to line the Line 6 Marshall Amp sound, so it could imagine it’s right up my alley.

As for my Pod XT Live, it’s going to start living up to it’s name :)  I’ll be using that to play more, and less sitting in front of the computer.

Ok, I finally get it…  Recently, .NET code has started to look really funky.  I’ve been reading a lot of the MSDN blogs, and the C# has been looking really weird.  Stuff like (i => i > 5) or even (i => { Console.WriteLine(i); }) have been showing up, and I’ve been like ‘What the heck!?!’ 

I wasn’t getting this new code.  I felt like the time I same my first Windows C program.  (Where’s main()?  How do the methods get called?  Why’s there this giant switch statement?)

In an article entitle ‘Java vs. .NET developers’ by Greg Young, where he discussed Davy Brion’s article ‘At This Point, I’d Prefer Java Developers Over .NET Developers’, a couple of things hit me in the head…  First off, Davy Brion mentioned that the 2nd year Java developers he interviewed seemed to understand many patterns and how to use them effectively.  Heck, after reading his article, *I* had look up several of the things that he talked about.  One of those that he mentioned was the Inversion of Control pattern.  What I do find interesting is that IOC is just a fancy name for delegates.  .NET developers have been using those for YEARS.  What the article did do was raise my awareness of delegates and IOC. 

A bit later, I was ready the pick-ax Ruby book, and came across how Ruby does it’s callbacks / delegates.  It REALLY made sense.  Then it hit me… This is was .NET is doing with the Lambda expressions!  I then looked the Lambda expressions up, and re-read my books on .NET 3.5, and lo-and-behold, they made PERFECT sense!  Being able to nicely add delegate code to a method call… really cool!

Just another one of Dave’s ‘Doh!’ moments :)

Yes, I’ve been away from blogging for a bit.  I wish this one was something cool, but alas, it’s just a tip on development configurations.

So, here goes…

Problem:

My development team has a common development configuration file.  This file contains a reference to a shared development database machine.  This is fine, as long as everyone is using the same machine and instance of a database.  But what if a developer wants to use a different database machine to test a change that breaks the database?

One Solution:

One thing that I came up with is to add a machine name to the HOSTS file.  In Windows, this is under C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.  Add a new entry to the file, something like DevelopmentDB.  Then, just reference that machine name in the configuration files.  Each developer can then have the DevelopmentDB machine pointing to different IPs, but still maintain a single reference in the configuration file.

Wow, where to begin… Apple dropped a SLEW of updates today, and they didn’t even do a ‘Event’!  There is a new Airport/Time Capsule, new Mac Minis, new iMacs, new Mac Pros, and a quiet update to the MacBook Pro.  Plus, a couple of video cards showed up, an ATI 4870 and an nVidia GT 120, for the Mac Pro…

There’s a LOT to digest here.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Apple release so many products on one day, EVER.

First off, even though a lot of stuff is ‘new’, it isn’t really.  The main thing that changed on all of the machines is that the base line video is now fairly decent.  The worst video option available on any Mac is now an nVidia 9400M chipset.  It’s a good graphics card that can do all of the fancy rendering, play DVDs well, and play a decent game.  No, it’s not going to be a 3D shooter monster, but since developers have a very limited set of cards to write for, they can optimize for that card.  (And they will, as most Macbooks, Macbook Pros, Minis, and some iMacs will contain this video card.)  The processors got bumped a bit, but not much.  Memory has gotten better, as all but the base Macs come with 4 gigs of memory, and have options for 8 gig upgrades.  Hey, the Mini can even be upgraded to 4 gigs.  Also, the hard drives increased up to a decent amount.  Nothing earth shattering, but still respectable.

Now, the Mac Pro is VERY new… in fact, INTEL hasn’t even announced the chips that are being used in the Mac Pro.  This has happened before, Apple gets chips that are unavailable to the rest of the world.  The Mac Pro also got cheaper for a single processor box, and more expensive for a dual processor box.  The video card options have increased, and they are finally getting the latest cards available from ATI and nVidia (well, at least today… ATI is supposed to be bringing out new cards in a couple of weeks).

Here’s the dilemma…  All of these updates are VERY welcome.  They bring the Mac hardware in line with the rest of the industry.  The only problem is that they still are more expensive than a similar Dell system.  A Quad Core Dell with 6 gigs of memory, a 640 gigabyte hard drive AND a 22” LCD monitor goes for around $950… It’s hard to convince someone to send $1500 for an iMac with less memory and two fewer cores, even though it might have a bigger monitor.

Personally, I think OS X is worth the extra money.  The machines are exceptionally well designed, and they are a lot less hassle.  I know that a Mac Pro is gonna be on my wish list for Santa!

Today, Apple released a public beta of Safari 4.  I pulled the Windows version, and all I can say is ‘WOW’!  It definitely has some nice features, like the ‘Top Sites’ feature.  Coverflow for bookmarks is interesting IF it would automatically load the pages (I haven’t seen that behavior yet).  The tabs at the top is OK, makes sense, but does break a lot of UI conventions.  The Windows version looks like a Windows application, not a ‘Mac-skinned wanna be’.  Can’t wait to try the Mac version at home.  The new Developer tools are nice, as well.  The new Safari really rocks!

This video shows off Microsoft’s new Exchange Outlook Web Access that is coming in Exchange 14.  Biggest feature is that the AJAX / full interface now works with Firefox and Safari!  Awesome!

I’ve written a LOT about Garageband, and how I really enjoy it.  I just upgraded to Garageband ‘09, and find it a nice upgrade, but I’ve been hitting some snags.  I have been trying to take my Garageband experience to the next level.  I work with MIDI a LOT, making backing tracks from MIDI songs.  I’m starting to get to the point where Garageband just can’t do what I need done.  The main thing is Multiple Time Signatures in One Song.  Anyone who’s ever looked at ‘The Ocean’ by Led Zeppelin in a MIDI editor knows what I’m talking about. :)

So, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Rick and I were over at the local Apple store.  It was relatively quiet (for an Apple Store), so I decided to play with Logic Studio and see how hard multiple time signatures were.  After a few minutes of figuring the time signatures out (it was VERY easy), one of the Apple Store employees came up to help.  I explained what I was looking for, and he went and brought over their Logic teacher!  He ended up showing me a BUNCH of stuff that I could do very easily with Logic that was taking a lot of time in Garageband.

I ended up ordering Logic Express and a PeachPit book on Logic.  Everything arrived, and I’ve been able to start playing around with it.  It is definitely a step up over Garageband, but one of the beautiful things about Garageband is it’s simplicity.  It was a good thing I ordered the book, there is a lot to learn about Logic, and the book is great.  Both programs are great tools, and I plan to continue using Garageband, as it is VERY fast to set up good sounding backing tracks.

Well, it looks like Microsoft finally got the free POP3/SMTP access working for Hotmail and Windows Live Mail in the US.  This is one of the LAST pieces of ‘Windows Only’ things that I used to use. 

There are only 2 reasons I keep Windows around anymore… One is for Microsoft Money.  This is a major sticking point for me :(  Quicken has not released a ‘DECENT’ version for the Mac, and I doubt Microsoft will ever port Microsoft Money to the Mac.  All I ask for in a program is that it connects to my banks/credit cards/401k and automatically downloads the information.  And, by automatic, I do not mean that *I* log into the site, download a file, then drop it into a program.  Several Mac programs say ‘connect to your bank’, but they require going through a very manual process.  If Quicken Financial Life will do true automatic downloads, I’ll switch to Quicken, but as I’m using the beta, automatic downloads really don’t seem like a feature that is implemented yet.  Come on guys, if Microsoft can do it, surely Quicken can.  The second reason is Visual Studio.  As I make my bread-and-butter with .NET, I have to keep a copy of it around.  Oh, and there is Windows Live Writer, from which I write this blog.  But, many things might be changing with this blog soon, so that might not be an issue :)

Sorry, got a bit off topic…

To set up Hotmail in either the Mac’s Mail or the iPhone mail, one will need the following settings when setting up a POP3 account:

Use SSL for the outgoing server (port 587).  Use your full email address for the Username.

It should be fairly easy to set these up under both the iPhone and Mac’s Mail program.

One LESS ‘Windows Only’ feature!  Yeah!!!!!

Back in September, I wrote a blog entry on connecting to a remote, non-authenticated network share.  Unfortunately, I made a couple of mistakes in my article.  :(

First off, there is no UnmapNetworkDrive method on the WScript.Network object.  I don’t know where I got that from.  I ended up finding the RemoveNetworkDrive method.  The only problem with that method is it will throw an exception if the drive letter doesn’t exist.  So, I ended up searching the PSDrives to see if the mapped drive already exists before unmapping it.  The last trick was to figure out if the resulting object is null.  To see if an object is null, all one has to do is do

Second, there was a missing parameter in the MapNetworkDrive.

Below is the new script

$pwd = convertto-securestring password -asplaintext -force
$cred = new-object System.Management.Automation.PsCredential "domain\user", $pwd
$net = New-Object -com WScript.Network

$mDrive = get-PSDrive | where-object { $_.root.StartsWith("newDriveLetter:\") }

if ($mDrive)
{
    $net.RemoveNetworkDrive("newDriveLetter:")
}

$net.MapNetworkDrive("newDriveLetter:", “\\123.123.123.123\Share”, 0, "domain/user", $cred.GetNetworkCredential().Password)

Sorry for the confusion!

I ran across a very interesting conversation over at the Cakewalk Sonar forums yesterday.  This thread talked about what a ‘pro’ mixer does when mixing.  The very first question the guy was asked was ‘how attached are you to the sounds of the instruments?’  For most musicians / performers, that is a VERY surprising question.  I was lucky enough in college to have been able to have studied some multi-track recording, and had a little bit of knowledge as to where this was coming from. 

The reason for the question is that mixing instruments is different from getting that ‘perfect tone’ that performers try to seek out.  One of the things that STILL TO THIS DAY stands out in my mind is seeing how a pro recording engineer added an acoustic guitar to a track.  He recorded the guitar a couple of different way, then proceeded to throw out MOST of the frequencies!  He mainly left the ‘sparkle’ or highs in the track.  Soloed, the track sounded tinny and weak.  When mixed into the song, the track sat perfectly, allowing one to hear the acoustic guitar, but the guitar didn’t dominate the track.

After reading that thread, I went back and played with a song I had recorded just for fun, Stone Temple Pilots “Plush”.  This song went through a couple of different changes…  Here are the three versions that I mixed over time.  The first one was just the initial ‘recorded the guitar, and wanted to hear the playing’ mix.  The second link is when I went and started adding EQs, compression, delays, and all the other studio tricks to make something sound ‘bigger’.  The third mix was applying yesterday’s lessons.  Also, I split out the drums to different tracks with different kits to get a better sound.  The biggest change to the third mix was the applications of High and Low pass filters.  I think that using these can be incredible tools to getting things to sit in a mix better!

I would love to know what people think, as mixing on a computer in a spare bedroom doesn’t usually translate well to the real world!

This boils my blood…

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106245/Get-Ready-to-Pay-More-for-the-Web

I have AT&T / Bellsouth / FastAccess.  I am CERTAINLY not happy about seeing caps like this.  Do these companies NOT remember how quickly people switched on the Dial-up from per-hour billing to unlimited dialup?  My main problem is that the companies have sold the cable / DSL services as ‘unlimited usage’.  To force people to switch the their plans is almost ‘bait-and-switch’.  I totally understand that the companies need to fund their upgrades, but sheesh, what more do they want?  When I first started with DSL, OVER 10 YEARS AGO, 1.5 megabit DSL was the fastest thing out there, and it was $60 a month.  Now, 1.5 is $32.  They’ve lowered the price to entice more people to use it, but don’t budget for growth?  How’s that the consumer’s fault?  Heck, I can’t even GET 6 megabit DSL because the switch that they put into my community won’t DO 6 meg.  And guess what?  That’s a NEW switch, not an old one.  What are they thinking? 

Come on ISPs!  Wake up!  Think about the today AND the future, not just what you can put in your pocket today!

Happy Thanksgiving All!!!!

This has been an amazing year with LOTS to be thankful for.  I am most thankful for my family and my friends for helping me get through a year of unreal changes.  I am thankful that those changes happened, both the good and the bad.  I am thankful that even with all the craziness in the world right now, I still have my job and my house.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Day!

The last couple of weeks have been a wee bit busy.  I think I’ve been home in the evenings about once in 4 weeks.  Between trying to work with a band, do my side work, and keep up with friends, life has been very hectic.  And, it feels like things have stalled.  For the last couple of months life has been ‘spinning it’s wheels’.  Today changed a bit of that. 

Since the middle of the summer, my company has been wanting to have a replicated SQL Server system.  We knew what we wanted, but didn’t know HOW to implement it.  So, at the beginning of August, I put together a plan to get our systems working.  It has taken FAR longer than I expected, but today we hit a major milestone… we have an actual system replicating with the ability to do a manual failover.  To get this working required an upgrade of a machine (for testing), a lot of reading, and some good old fashioned ‘hacking’.

The one tidbit that I wanted to drop on my blog so that I REMEMBER what to do is… ‘Set up the security certificates!’  This is a very important step, and is fairly easy to do.  Unfortunately, the SQL Server documentation doesn’t place that much emphasis on that little step!

I’m not one to criticize Apple very often, but recently a couple of actions on their part have really made me wonder if they are really interested in courting developers…

First off, Netflix released their On-Demand movie viewer for the Mac.  What the heck does this have to do with Developers and the Mac OS?  Well, check the article out… Netflix used Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in to write it.  WTF!?!  Why is Netflix using Silverlight?  One, the tools to develop Silverlight code are very accessible to developers.  Visual Studio Express is free, as is the environment for writing Silverlight code.  Two, Silverlight code is also cross platform, it runs under both the Mac and Windows.  No need to develop two versions of code for the two different platforms.  Three, Silverlight supports DRM encoding.  This makes it easier for Netflix to not have to worry about people stealing the video.  What I don’t understand is that Apple has Quicktime / iTunes which support *the exact same features*. 

So, why did Netflix pick Silverlight?  I think that there are many reasons, but here’s the one that sticks in my mind.  Apple is starting to abuse it’s development community.  Yes, the full XCode is free.  The tools are great… BUT… try moving beyond the ‘hobbyist’ developer. 

Look at the iPhone development.  $100 just to run code on your iPhone.  More to develop for a company.  Limited help, and the forums are ONLY for developers who’ve been admitted to the Development program.  Limited betas.  One doesn’t know if their app will be approved until they finish it and submit it.

Then, on the OS X side, Apple started charging for the WWDC videos.  Granted, these are probably VERY in-depth and well worth the money for an OS X developer, but Microsoft gives these kinds of videos away for free.  BTW, they are charging for those videos even if one is paying membership into the Apple Developer’s Connection program.  Previously, those had been included with the price of admission for ADC members.

What totally kills me is that the OS X platform with XCode, Cocoa, and Unix are an INCREDIBLE combination.  I think that the Application Development on the Mac platform is far simpler than in the Windows world.  But, I think Apple is going overboard with some of the policies.  Chasing developers away is NOT what they need.  The more ‘killer apps’ that show up on the Mac platform, the more machines will be sold, and the more Apple will ultimately make.  At least, I HOPE so!

I can’t believe I’m writing this (on SEVERAL different levels :) )… Yesterday was the start of a new session of Weight Watchers.  This is session number 3.  When I first started Weight Watchers I weighed 234 lbs.  Now, 8 months later, I am down to 197.  The math works out to losing 37 pounds in approximately 24 weeks.  To me, that is just amazing.  I still eat what I want, but I’ve learned a LOT about portions and control.  I hope to drop my weight to somewhere around 180.