Richard Todosichuk's Blog

Digital Magazines

2009-12-20T19:56:00.002-05:00

Could this be the future of magazines?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The Future of Technology

2009-10-22T06:17:00.001-04:00

My thoughts on where technology is heading:

More real-time information: I believe one interesting aspect of Twitter is that it has a real-time flow of information. We are a society filled with people that don’t trust the media and are discovering that we ourselves are the media. I think most people have a desire to share their brilliance and their thoughts with others. We all want a voice in an increasingly noisy world. The voices of all these people combine with professional sources are generating a large amount of data. This information is then subscribed to and viewed by people in real-time. We are coming to expect that the information that we care about flow to us in real-time. Magazines, newspapers, and even TV aren’t real-time enough. Nobody wants to wait for next month’s publication, when they can just Google for it. People don’t even want to wait for the “6 o’clock news”. There are currently efforts underway to aggregate and analyze the flow of information not just from the end user but also from the source. One day we may be able to predict or contain outbreaks of diseases and respond to disasters by simply analyzing the flow of information. Decisions may be based on what a population is doing at a given moment in time. Information is much faster and in such greater quantity that the questions we must ask ourselves are: “How will we use this real-time information?”, “How will we control this real-time information?” and “How will we analyze and make sense of it all?”
More consolidation: Over the years it seems that we are moving toward a more consolidated technology world. I don’t think people want to experiment with different technologies like they did in the past. Apple’s popularity can be attributed to their professional and polish look along with the idea of getting people hooked on their suite of technologies. Of course I am speaking about people that are busy professionals that are more concerned with getting things done as opposed to spending time and money to find the best way to get things done. Ultimately the best way is always changing. Furthermore, the gap isn’t very big between the best way and the good enough way. I think the abandonment of email systems in favor of sites like Facebook is about going into one site to manage a large portion of your life. More features and open platforms that allow users to have a single consistent experience is going to be key for many companies.
More accessibility: We are getting more and more connected devices. We have our cell phones, our TV, our computers, and even our cars. With all of these devices we want ways to access and manage our data. We should be able to view our calendars from home, from work, or from the road. With 3G, 4G, Edge and city wide WIFI we have created the 24 x 7 connected world. With this new world we want to access our data at any time and by any device. We want to view our calendars (and tasks) before we get into the office. All of this is going to require better ways to synchronize and/or access our information at all times and from all places.
Platform: To large degree when you ask the older generation what they think about when they hear “platform”, you will hear things like Windows, Apple, Linux, etc. However, when you ask the younger generation what they think about when they hear “platform” they may say things like Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple (Safari). The younger generation is so connected that they view the browser as the OS. I believe that this is something that will impact our world in ways that we have yet to conceive. We will use the cloud as our storage and our browsers as our client. Google is planning on the web as being the back end and the browser as being the client. I believe that they are going to take this to new heights with the Google OS, but this is only speculation because Google hasn’t released much information on what exactly is the Google OS. However, perhaps the future may prove to swing things in the opposite direction. There are attempts to get out of the browser. With technologies like Silverlight and Adobe Flex perhaps the browser will change to something else. There have also been advancements in Virtual Machines and Virtual Environments. I could see OS’s as just hosting Virtual Sandboxes that can run a wide variety of applications that we access from the web. At this point it is unclear what the future platform will be, but it is clear that it is changing to accommodate web applications.

Willard Wigan's Microscopic Masterpieces

2009-08-15T19:52:00.005-04:00

Willard Wigan's amazing creations. Click here to hear his story.

Learning Assembly

2009-06-18T21:59:00.002-04:00

A colleague of mine demonstrated a vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader that exploits the way images are loaded. It is possible to send someone a PDF that once opened could download a file and run it. The details of the vulnerability aren’t important, but the process of understand how a hacker might discover such a vulnerability is quite interesting. One would have to have a good understanding of how computers work as well as how to disassemble and understand an EXE. Being a software developer I wanted to brush up on assembly. My colleague emailed me the following set of videos:

Assembly Primer for Hackers
Part 1 - System Organization
Part 2 - Virtual Memory Organization
Part 3 - GDB Usage Primer
Part 4 - Hello World
Part 5 - Data Types
Part 6 - Moving Data
Part 7 - Working with Strings
Part 8 - Unconditional Branching
Part 9 - Conditional Branching
Part 10 - Functions
Part 11 - Functions Stack

The Apple "i"

2009-03-02T21:50:00.004-05:00

Very funny!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

.Net Enum.Parse()

2009-02-09T20:11:00.001-05:00

Let’s say you have the following enumerated type:

enum Rainbow
{
    Red,
    Orange,
    Yellow,
    YELLOW,
    Green,
    Blue,
    Indigo = 8,
    Violet = 8
}

You can then use Enum.Parse() method to convert a string to the enumerated value. This is demonstrated by doing the following:

Rainbow rainbowValue = (Rainbow)Enum.Parse(typeof(Rainbow), myString, true);

Where myString is a string variable that holds the string you want to convert.

When you perform Enum.Parse() you should be aware of a few things that may not be obvious.

1) String numbers can be used. For example “1” will convert to Rainbow.Orange.

2) A string number that is out of range doesn’t throw an exception. You must use Enum.IsDefined() to make sure that the number is in range. For example if you assign “100” to mystring you won’t see an exception thrown.

3) The last argument of the Enum.Parse() method allows you to ignore the case. If you do ignore the case the first value found in the enum will be used. If you plan on ignoring case then you should make sure that the values of the enum are unique ignoring case. The compiler will fail if you have enum Rainbow { Red, Red}, but will not fail if you have enum Rainbow { Red, RED}.

4) You can assign the same number to two different enum values. Surprisingly this doesn’t throw a compiler warning or error. Equally surprisingly the last number is chosen. For example if you assign “8” or “Indigo” to mystring, the enum variable will be set to Rainbow.Violet.

5) A comma separated string can work, but it is probably not what you want unless you are using the FlagsAttribute with the enum type and assigning number values in a way that can be masked. For example if you assign “Orange, Green” to mystring, the enum variable will be set to Rainbow.Blue. This is because you are actually doing Rainbow.Orange | Rainbow.Green which is actual (1 | 4) and in binary (0x0001 | 0x0100) with is 5 (0x0101).

Conclusion

If you are using Enum.Parse() to convert strings to enum variables you should keep these things in mind. Dispending on what you are doing these issues may not be a problem, or they may be hidden gotchas with unintended results.

MacBook Wheel

2009-01-18T22:59:00.002-05:00

Very funny.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Standard System Fonts

2008-10-20T22:15:00.001-04:00

I have been looking into system fonts and "Windows Form Applications" in Visual Studio. You can change your OS system fonts on XP via the “Display” property dialog. In the Display” property dialog, under the “Appearance” tab, there is an “Advanced” button that will allow you to configure the system font. Furthermore, .Net has the System.Drawing.SystemFonts object that can be used to access system fonts.

The following table maps the fonts that can be configured via the “Advanced Appearance” dialog to the fonts that are available from System.Drawing.SystemFonts.

Advanced Appearance Dialog	System.Drawing.SystemFonts
n/a	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DefaultFont
n/a	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DialogFont
Active Title Bar	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.CaptionFont
Icon	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.IconTitleFont
Inactive Title Bar	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.CaptionFont
Menu	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MenuFont
Message Box	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont
Palette Title	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.SmallCaptionFont
Selected Items	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MenuFont
ToolTip	System.Drawing.SystemFonts.StatusFont

Important fonts in System.Drawing.SystemFonts

System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DefaultFont is the default font of the operating system and it is defined in the registry at “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes\MS Shell Dlg”. It is defaulted to “Microsoft Sans Serif” and is the font that Visual Studio seems to use for Windows Form applications.
System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DialogFont is defined by .Net and, as far as I can tell, it is hard coded to “Tahoma 8 pt” font for Windows 2000 and higher, otherwise the System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DefaultFont is used.
System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont is the default for message boxes and is also the default font for WPF Applications in Visual Studio. System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont defaults to “Tahoma” on Windows XP and “Segoe UI” on Vista.

Conclusion

The default font provided is not good enough for today's professional looking applications. System.Drawing.SystemFonts.DialogFont seems to be a good choice, but doesn’t change on Vista. I believe System.Drawing.SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont should be the primary font used in Windows Form Application development.

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist

2008-09-01T15:49:00.006-04:00

I passed a second Microsoft certification exam. Now I'm a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist.

Office 2007 and Fitts' Law

2008-08-08T20:09:00.001-04:00

Whether you think Office 2007 is brilliant or if you're wondering what was Microsoft thinking, Jensen Harris’ blog has some fascinating insight into UI design. He explains Fitts’ law and how it was used in the creation of Office 2007.

Think about Word 1.0, which was designed for a common maximum 640x480 screen resolution. Toolbar buttons in Word 1.0 were 20x20 buttons with 16x16 icons in them.

Word 2003, on the other hand, is commonly run at resolutions as high as 1600x1200 and beyond--yet the toolbar buttons remain the same 20x20 size they were in Word 1.0. But because the screen is so much larger, most of the time your mouse cursor will be much farther away than it could have been on a 640x480 screen. Greater mouse distances mean an increased MT target acquisition time.

In other words, the same button takes much longer to click than it did fifteen years ago.

Win32 vs. WPF Performance

2008-08-05T22:12:00.002-04:00

I created two similar applications in Visual Studio 2008, one as a Windows Forms Application and the other as a WPF Application.

I then preformed the following tests (ran tests three times and recorded the average) as listed below:

Time it takes to open one window.
Time it takes to open 100 windows.
Time it takes to open a window with many controls.
Amount of memory consumed after opening the application.
Amount of memory consumed after launching one window.
Amount of memory consumed after launching 100 windows.
Amount of memory consumed after launching a window with many controls.
Amount of memory consumed after launching a Win32 open dialog (only in WPF).

Note: I only tested this on a single Windows XP machine and a single Vista machine. And I am ignoring hardware configurations.
Note: Memory was recorded from the task manager.

Windows XP – Time in seconds

	Win32	WPF
Launch Single Window	0.0233669	0.2370075
Launch 100 Windows	1.0548501	21.5009168
Controls Window	0.3838853	0.4473099

Windows XP – Memory

	Win32	WPF
Just Application	13,345K	19,340K
Launch Single Window	13,885K	20,867K
Launch 100 Windows	15,089K	55,685K
Controls Window	16,333K	24,859K
Launch Win32 Dialog		23,440K

Vista – Time in seconds

	Win32	WPF
Launch Single Window	0.0170000	0.913333
Launch 100 Windows	1.1940000	12.43466667
Controls Window	0.2886667	0.4900000

Vista - Memory

	Win32	WPF
Just Application	3,623K	11,995K
Launch Single Window	3,715K	12,595K
Launch 100 Windows	4,377K	15,715K
Controls Window	6,132K	16,241K
Launch Win32 Dialog		14,132K

Results

Windows XP

Unless you have a lot of controls on a window, Win32 is faster. In my test of the control window Win32 was faster, however WPF was not far behind.
WPF can manage a lot of controls on a form better then Win32. It is hard to show in a benchmark, but by running the applications you will notice that sizing the controls window in WFP is more responsive then Win32.
Launch many WPF windows is slow and consumes a lot of memory.
When you launch a Win32 dialog from WPF there is overhead.
In general WPF comes at a cost in memory and performance.

Vista

For the most part the story is the same. WPF comes at a cost in memory and performance.
It seems that WPF doesn’t consume as much memory in the 100 windows test (at least on Vista machine that I tested).
On my Vista machine there was a noticeable difference in appearance between WPF windows and Win32 windows. The Win32 windows looked blurry and not as clean and crisp as the WPF windows. This alone may make WPF worth it. Sure it is slower and takes up more memory but it does look nicer.

Vista Images

Click the images to see them at full size.

How To Make A Wi-Fi Extender

2008-04-06T20:28:00.002-04:00

This reminds me that there are still simple solutions to high tech problems.

youTube Link

House of Cards

2007-12-09T09:50:00.000-05:00

Building software can be like managing a house of cards.

Maybe we should hire this guy.

Geek-O-Lanterns

2007-11-03T21:39:00.000-04:00

I found a link to some pumpkin carvers geeking out.

Windows XP + Office 2007 = 13.5 GB

2007-10-03T22:02:00.000-04:00

I reinstall Windows XP on my Tablet PC. I noticed that it is taking up a whopping 13.5 GB. This is after installing Windows XP (Tablet Edition), Office 2007, and all of the Microsoft updates (SP2 and about 120 updates). I should also mention that I did install a few extra options for both Windows XP and Office 2007. Sure you could remove a lot of things you may not use, but I would rather not for two reasons. First, it is time consuming to have to figure out what you don’t need. And second, I like having more features at my figure tips, not less. I really done like hunting for the install disk when I discover I need some feature that wasn’t installed. However, I am a fan of compression and I did compress my drive.

Inside of Hard Drive

2007-09-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

This is a interesting video on how hard drives work.

Microsoft Certified

2007-08-26T21:39:00.001-04:00

I passed a MCTS exam. I guess that makes me a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist.

Microsoft Certification Exams Completed Successfully

	Exam ID	Description		Date Completed
	536	TS: Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation		Jul 18, 2007

My Twin

2007-07-28T20:59:00.000-04:00

I made the mistake of telling Brett that I had a twin brother. He repeatedly asked me for a picture and when I constantly refusing to give him one. He then took matters into his own hands.

(My face on Arnold and DeVito)

My Screencast on Lifehacker

2007-07-24T22:26:00.000-04:00

I created a screencast about my Windows Key + R post and submitted it to Lifehackers. Seeing something that I have done on Lifehackers is very cool. I can’t wait to read my very own copy of the Lifehacker book.

Medieval Tech Support

2007-07-22T20:00:00.000-04:00

I had a good laugh when I saw this. Although I tend to give users a little more credit.

Microsoft Surface?

2007-07-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

A spoof on Microsoft Surface.

Programmers Prayer

2007-06-22T22:14:00.000-04:00

From Billy Hollis

Help me learn the things I have to know,
Help me to except the things I don't have to know,
And give me some way to tell the difference.

Windows Key + R

2007-05-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

From the run dialog in Windows XP you can open folders by using the following shortcuts.

.	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\
..	C:\Documents and Settings\
\	C:\
Assembly	C:\WINDOWS\assembly
Cache	C:\WINDOWS\system32\Cache
Desktop	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Desktop
Favorites	C:\Documents and Settings\Me\Favorites
Fonts	C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
My Documents	C:\Documents and Settings\Me\My Documents
SendTo	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\SendTo
Start Menu	C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu
Tasks	C:\WINDOWS\Tasks

*The folders may vary depending on your windows configuration.

As far as I can tell, you can open directories that exist in the following directories by just typing in the directory names (without the full paths):
· C:\WINDOWS\
· C:\WINDOWS\system32
· C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\

This got me to thinking. If you are like me and would like to quickly go to different directories, you can creat shortcuts to those different directories in your “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\” directory. Give this a try. Hit Windows Key + R to bring up the run dialog and type “.” to go to the “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\” directory. Right click in the directory and select “New\Shortcut” and create a shortcut to another directory. Now hit Windows Key + R to bring up the run dialog again and type in the name of the shortcut that you just created. You should be taken to that directory.

ASCII Art

2007-02-21T06:05:00.000-05:00

I was searching for some ASCII art and I found some cool sites.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AsciiArt

http://www.chris.com/ASCII/

http://www.won.nl/dsp/usr/mvketel/Internet/Asciiart/linemain.html

http://www.messhits.com/ascii-text-art.html

Google Calculator

2007-01-08T17:08:00.000-05:00

www.google.com has become more then just a search engine. It is a phone book, it looks up local movies, it looks up stock quotes, it can tell you the weather, and more. One thing that I thought was interesting was that it can be used as a calculator and can perform conversions between different units.

Example
- 1 + 1 in hex
- 10 + 10 in roman numerals
- 1 metric ton in ton
- 5 cubits in feet
- 20 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit
- 30 degrees C in F
- 6 fortnights
- 6 fortnights in weeks
- pi + 10 / 2
- 100 miles in kilometers
- 0b1100101*0b1001 (Binary math)
- 0x7f + 0x7f (Hexadecimal math)

I can't seem to find a full list of valid units, but it does seem to support quite a lot.

Also, google has patent searches (http://www.google.com/patents), source code searches (http://www.google.com/codesearch), and blog searches (http://blogsearch.google.com/).

Stereograms

2006-12-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

My last name in Stereogram.

(Click the image to see at full size.)

Create your own at http://www.eyetricks.com/stereograms/onlinetools/stereocreator.htm

Zune XP Theme

2006-11-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, a free XP theme from Microsoft (and it’s not blue).

You can download it from here. Or, you can download it from the Zune website.

Happy Birthday Google

2006-09-07T12:51:00.000-04:00

Google turns 8 (not seven as previously posted) today. Google's official birthday is September 7, 1998. Unfortunately, the folks at Google did not make their usual birthday doodle this year, so we had to take matters into our own hands...
You can read about Google's history here. And, if you are looking for the September 7 date, you will just have to google for it.

Maintainable Software

2006-08-07T22:40:00.000-04:00

In looking at some code today, I was reminded of Billy Hollis’s 2005 Grok Talk. If you haven’t seen it (or want to see it again) it can be found on Google Videos here.

I think the real point is that building maintainable systems is more important then just cranking out reams of code. Software spends most of its life in the maintenance phase and not in the creation phase. This is a very important lesson for developers to learn. Although it is not easy to do, there must be a conscious effort to build maintainable software.

Some things that I have found:
- Inheritance can be very useful when you are trying to create things quickly, however inheritance can be very difficult to maintain. Form inheritance is one of those things that can make development very fast, however will ultimately make it very difficult for someone else to maintain. I am talking about the case where you have a base form that tries to do some logic and then you inherit off of it and try to extend it in a way to add or change the logic.
- Another thing to think about is how many classes you have to touch in order to add a new field. You should try to keep the number of classes as low as possible. Try to separate your objects so that they don’t rely heavily on each other. Adding a new field is one of the most common ways software is grown.
- Something else that should be obvious is that less code is better and the more straight-forward your code is, the easier it will be to maintain. Of course that is easier said then done. But none the less, it is something to strive for.

Windows PowerShell

2006-07-17T08:51:00.000-04:00

I downloaded the (CRT) version of Windows PowerShell (formerly known as Monad). I wanted to see how easy it would be to create a command off of an assembly. The idea of writing a library that can be used in a WinForm application, web page (on the server side), and now from the command-line is very exciting. I find batch files and script files very useful. There are times you need to perform a simple task and it is just easier to write a simple script file and run it from the command-line. It would be nice if you could develop applications and expose the same functionality in your application via command-line commands. Although PowerShell does have the ability to “new” any .Net object and perform operations on it just as easily as you would a COM object in VBScript, it also has the ability to load custom Cmdlets. A Cmdlet is a command-line command that for the most part is very similar to an old DOS command. Microsoft has added this concept of verb dash noun (example get-command or get-process) as a naming convention, but other then that it still accepts arguments in pretty much the same way as a regular DOS command (example "get-command *PSSnapin*" or "get-command –verb “get”"). A Cmdlet lives as a first class citizen in the PowerShell world and Microsoft has made it fairly easy to create new ones. When you install Windows PowerShell you will get the System.Management.Automation.dll that will hold the classes that you will need to inherit from when you create your own Cmdlet. It should be noted that your Cmdlet lives in an object called a PSSnapin that descends from Installer. The Installer is used by InstallUtil.EXE to install your assembly and PSSnapin into Windows PowerShell. However, even though it is installed you must call Add-PSSnapin followed by the name of your PSSnapin (the name that is defined in the Name property not the name of the DLL) before you will be able to use your new Cmdlets in Windows PowerShell. One thing to remember when you are creating a core DLL, a command-line object is a little different then objects that you would use in a WinForm application. The command-line is a different environment. It is transaction based while WinForm applications are primarily event driven. You should expect that if you want to have a DLL that will be used by both a WinForm application and a Windows PowerShell Cmdlet that you will have to design it in a way that would make it useful for the two environments. There is a pretty good article on creating Cmdlets on CodeProject. This is a good place to start if you want to write your own Cmdlet. I do like the way that command-line flags and parameters are easily defined by just adding attributes to properties. This really simplifies development (no more reading the args parameter in the traditional static main method). Microsoft has done a really good job of handling this. After working with this for awhile you will wonder how we ever programmed command-line applications before Windows PowerShell. I also like the way that Cmdlets are executed. You override the BeginProcessing, ProcessRecord, EndProcessing and then you can use the WriteObject, WriteError, WriteWarning, WriteVerbose and WriteDebug to send different levels of information to the console that is controlled by standard flags that all Cmdlet have. It is exciting to see a more powerful command-line shell and I look forward to the official release.

By the way, if you want to create and launch a WinForm from Windows PowerShell, enter the following at the command-line:

[reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
$form = new-object system.windows.forms.form
$form.text="HELLO WORLD"
$form.showDialog();

New Microsoft Keyboard

2006-07-04T15:06:00.000-04:00

Yes, a Microsoft green button and and a Microsoft blue logo.

Windows Colors

2006-06-14T06:07:00.000-04:00

As Don Box points out, the four colors in the Windows logo (red, blue, yellow, and green) are the same colors that appear in the Google logo. Are these the magic colors? Did Google consciously or unconsciously copy Microsoft? Or are there just not that many primary colors to choose from?

Or maybe, both Microsoft and Google are using the Olympic colors.

Steganography

2006-04-27T18:35:00.000-04:00

Steganography is the science of hiding messages. Steganography is from the Greek for “covered writing”. The idea is that you can hide a file (or message) in an image. Images such as bitmaps and gif store the values for each pixel in a series of 3 bytes (where the first byte is for red, the second byte is for green, and the third byte is for blue). If you use the lower bit of the 3 bytes to store the bits of your hidden file, the image will still appear to be the same as the original image. An example of this can be found at http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/books/mos2/zebras.html (the web site for the book “Computer Networks” by Andrew S. Tanenbaum). In the Tanenbaum example he has a 1024X768 pixel bitmap that contains a compressed file of five complete works of William Shakespeare. (BTW “Computer Networks” is an excellent book and is the primary book that is used in the CSCIE-131b course that I am taking.)

This technique can also be used to watermark images and can also be used on music and video files (just imagine what you could store in a 1GB video file).

(There is no hidden file in this image)

Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite

2006-04-16T21:58:00.000-04:00

If you haven’t seen this yet, you should check it out.

Brought to you by YouTube.

Brett’s Corner

2006-04-13T09:24:00.000-04:00

I have added the “Brett’s Corner” to the right hand side of my blog. The "Great" Brett McNealy requested a place on my blog to post his pictures. The first picture is a picture of me done in ASCII art. Brett’s hobbies include putting coworker’s faces on different bodies, so I expect that some of Brett’s pictures may get a little crazy.

Model-View-Controller Song

2006-04-07T16:37:00.000-04:00

I borrowed the book Head First Design Patterns from a coworker. I wanted to read the section on Model-View-Controller. In the book there are the words to the “Model-View-Controller Song” (you can also listen to the mp3 from their website). The song is a little cheesy but I do like geek songs.

Ctrl+Mouse Wheel

2006-02-15T08:05:00.000-05:00

I just found this one yesterday. Being that I just love finding shortcuts and hotkeys I wanted to share this one. If you hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse wheel you can change the font size in IE. This also works in Outlook. Also this will zoom in and out inside of Word and Excel. I am not sure how often I will use this but it is cool.

FedEx

2006-01-29T12:51:00.000-05:00

My brother ruined FedEx for me.

If you look at the white space between the E and the X you will see an arrow. Now every time I see a FedEx truck or a FedEx label, all I see is that crazy arrow.

I wonder if FedEx did this on purpose. Is it some kind of subliminal message?

Shipping in the Technology Age

2006-01-08T20:11:00.000-05:00

I think there is a lot that we can do to make the internet buying experience better. Why can’t companies tell you how long it will take to deliver your online order? I ordered iPod’s for my brothers this past Christmas from www.apple.com. I ordered them on Saturday and paid the extra $20 for the 2-3 day FedEx delivery thinking that I would receive them before I left on Thursday. (I should have known that 2-3 day delivery would really mean a 6-7 day delivery). I didn’t receive an email from apple until Tuesday telling me that they had sent the iPod’s and after checking the FedEx web site, I noticed that it was being sent from China. I quickly realized that I would not receive it until after I left. Why couldn’t apple tell me that my 2-3 days delivery would not actually be shipped for another 2 business days? We need to get to the point where companies can tell us exactly how long it will take to fill and deliver our orders. I was even willing to pay the extra money for the delivery. Online buying is all about delivering products. If you are in a hurry to receive it and pay the extra money to get it they should tell you how long it will take. I don’t think that it was FedEx’s fault. The problem was that apple didn’t tell me how long it was going to take for them to fill the order. This is a problem that most of not all online companies have. I realize that this can be a tricky thing, especially when quantities run out and things go on back order, but if I was willing to wait I would not have paid the extra money.

Dating Design Patterns

2005-12-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

I have been spending a lot of time looking into various software design patterns, so when I saw this on Thinkgeek.com I couldn’t help but laugh.

Christmas is almost here. What a great gift for your single geek friends.

Web Messenger

2005-12-15T08:29:00.000-05:00

I did not know there was a web version of MSN Messenger. It doesn’t have everything that the desktop version has (it only focuses on chat) but if your company has blocked the MSN Messenger ports this is a great work around.

Actually the company that I work for blocked this site but didn't block the MSN Messenger ports.

Chat on!

IM the Encarta Server

2005-12-01T20:23:00.000-05:00

I saw this on Chris Sells' blog. What you do is add encarta@conversagent.com to your MSN IM contract list and then you can chat with the Encarta server by asking it questions. The questions are somewhat limiting, however the idea of chatting with a computer is very interesting. Being that you are using an application that is primarily used to communicate with humans, this has an AI feel to it. It is very cool.

Example Questions:

What is the population of the earth?
Solve x+2=5

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets

2005-11-21T08:13:00.000-05:00

I thought this was good.

The funnies thing is that the first picture (of Ali Rahimi) looks just like one of the guys that I work with.

Application Response Time

2005-11-07T15:47:00.000-05:00

I was listening to a podcast interview with Joel Spolsky and the interviewer mentioned a quote that I thought was quite good. He quoted Jacob Nelson (I hope I got that correct).

“If the application responds in a 10th of a second, then you feel like you are in control. If the application responds in a second, then you feel like you are being controlled. And if the application responds in 10 seconds, then it is broken.”

BTW: Joel had some interesting ideas on Ajax and Web 2.0.

Silicon Art

2005-10-19T14:29:00.000-04:00

This is really cool. Over at Silicon Zone you can find some images found on processors.

I find it amazing how small these things are, you have to use a high powered-microscope just to see it. Even more amazing is the fact that chip builders would put these images on processors in the first place.

Daffy Duck

Where’s Waldo?

Tasmanian Devil

The Space Shuttle

Dilbert

External Hard Drive

2005-10-10T19:52:00.000-04:00

After a couple of hard-drive failures I decided to get an external hard drive. I bought an external Coolmax CD-310-U2 series. It does not come with a hard drive but instead allows you to put your own hard drive in it. It connects to your computer via a USB connection. Being a hard drive junky, I like to have a couple of hard drives kicking around that hold my data. You can use any 3.5” IDE HDD (ATA66/100/133). (It does NOT support SATA hard drives.) It is quite easy to setup, all you do is plug in a formatted hard drive (set to master or default) into the case then close up the case and you are up and running. I then downloaded SyncToy for Windows XP and am using that to synchronize directories from my computer to the external hard drive. SyncToy was originally created to synchronize pictures across different machines. The only thing that I found that I wish it supported was the ability to synchronize just the files in a directory without scanning the subdirectories. So if you have files in you’re My Documents directory that you want synchronized, you have to synchronize the entire My Documents directory and subdirectories or copy the files to another folder. I ended up copying the files to a My Docs folder under My Documents. This is a little annoying but doable.

Microsoft LogParser

2005-09-01T15:29:00.000-04:00

Coding Horror had a write up on the Microsoft LogParser. LogParser is an application that you can download and run via the command-line (there is also a COM DLL that you can use). You can write queries against the event log, the registry, CSV files, etc.

I downloaded it and gave it a try. Here is a walk through of a test that I did to query a CSV file(s).

The Test

I created a file called Test.csv that contains the following:

TimeStamp, MessageType, Message
2004-03-14 18:56:55, Warning, One
2004-03-14 14:02:23, Information, Two
2004-03-14 14:02:23, Information, Three
2004-03-14 12:00:00, Information, Four
2004-03-14 00:41:47, Warning, Five
2004-03-13 22:17:00, Information, Six
2004-03-13 22:06:48, Information, Seven
2004-03-13 22:06:48, Error, Eight
2004-03-13 12:00:00, Information, Nine
2004-03-12 22:30:47, Information, Ten

I saved the file to the C:\ and then from the command-line I did the following:

C:\Program Files\Log Parser 2.2>logparser "Select * from c:\test.csv"

The result of that was the following:

Filename RowNumber TimeStamp MessageType Message
----------- --------- ------------------- ----------- -------
c:\Test.csv 2 2004-03-14 18:56:55 Warning One
c:\Test.csv 3 2004-03-14 14:02:23 Information Two
c:\Test.csv 4 2004-03-14 14:02:23 Information Three
c:\Test.csv 5 2004-03-14 12:00:00 Information Four
c:\Test.csv 6 2004-03-14 00:41:47 Warning Five
c:\Test.csv 7 2004-03-13 22:17:00 Information Six
c:\Test.csv 8 2004-03-13 22:06:48 Information Seven
c:\Test.csv 9 2004-03-13 22:06:48 Error Eight
c:\Test.csv 10 2004-03-13 12:00:00 Information Nine
c:\Test.csv 11 2004-03-12 22:30:47 Information Ten

Statistics:
-----------
Elements processed: 10
Elements output: 10
Execution time: 0.00 seconds

I then copied the Test.csv file, creating "Copy of Test.csv", and ran the following:

C:\Program Files\Log Parser 2.2>logparser "Select Filename, TimeStamp, MessageType, Message from C:\*.csv where messageType ='Warning'"

The result of that was the following:

Filename TimeStamp MessageType Message
------------------- ------------------- ----------- -------
c:\Copy of Test.csv 2004-03-14 18:56:55 Warning One
c:\Copy of Test.csv 2004-03-14 00:41:47 Warning Five
c:\Test.csv 2004-03-14 18:56:55 Warning One
c:\Test.csv 2004-03-14 00:41:47 Warning Five

Statistics:
-----------
Elements processed: 20
Elements output: 4
Execution time: 0.02 seconds

Conclusion

The idea of being able to query a directory of files is cool.

There is a lot more to LogParser so download it an give it a try.

I also found an artical on using the LogParser DLL in a VBScript "All You Need is Log (Well, Log Parser)".

Floating-Point Numbers

2005-08-25T20:55:00.000-04:00

I have been working with floating-point numbers. Floating-point numbers are not exact in computers, they are numbers that closely represent a decimal number.

See the following URL’s for more information floating-point numbers.
www.lahey.com/float.htm
www.codeproject.com/dotnet/ExtremeFloatingPoint1.asp
www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/decifaq1.html

Here are some things that I found quite surprising.

1) In Microsoft Excel, enter the following into a cell.

=(0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1)

The result should be 0, however it is actually -2.77556E-17.

2) I created a C# windows applications and dropped a button onto the form and then added the following code to the button’s click event.

double f = Convert.ToDouble("1000000000.12345678901");
MessageBox.Show(f.ToString("0.0000000000000000"));
f = f - 1000000000;
MessageBox.Show(f.ToString("0.0000000000000000"));

When you run the application you will get the following message boxes:

1) 1000000000.1234600000000000
2) 0.1234568357467650

You would expect that the number displayed in the second message box would be 0.12346 because that is what the fractional part is after the initial assignment of the f variable. But it turns out that after you subtract 1 billion, something happens to cause the numbers at the end to appear.

Geek Joke

2005-08-17T16:34:00.000-04:00

I read this awhile ago. And, the more I think about it, the funnier it becomes. It is funny because it’s true. Then, if you step back from it, it is just plain funny and clever.

From Coding Horror:

A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt, scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?
"I know", said the Departmental Manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way."
"No, no", said the Hardware Engineer, "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way."
"Well", said the Software Engineer, "Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again."

Mashups

2005-08-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

I have been listing to some Mashups from www.MashupTown.com. These are awesome peaces of arts. If you have never listened to a Mashups before check out some of my favorites listed below.

Gotta Make Betty Sweat
Sharp dressed party
Bootystition
Spending one of these nights with Kelly
Stairway to Bootleg Heaven

VBScript - Add a file to iTunes

2005-06-08T11:19:00.000-04:00

Rab dropped a comment on my iPodder VBScript(Copy New PodCast to My SD Card) post with an example of how to adding a file to iTunes. After looking at his script, I thought it might be cool to see if I could create a Playlist in iTunes and then add the file.

001 ' Variables
002 dim iTunes, FullPath, playlist
003
004 FullPath = "C:\Music\Machups\wewillrockbeverlyhills.mp3"
005
006 ' Connect to iTunes app
007 set iTunes = CreateObject("iTunes.Application.1")
008
009 ' Create playlist
010 set playlist = iTunes.LibrarySource.Playlists.ItemByName("My Test")
011 if playlist is Nothing then
012 iTunes.CreatePlaylist("My Test")
013 set playlist = iTunes.LibrarySource.Playlists.ItemByName("My Test")
014 end if
015
016 ' Add file to playlist
017 playlist.AddFile(FullPath)
018
019 set iTunes = Nothing
020 set playlist = Nothing

Line 10 tries to get a reference to a Playlist called “My Test”. If the Playlist does not exist the playlist variable will be Nothing. If the playlist variable is Nothing, “My Test” Playlist will be created (line 12) and on line 13 the playlist variable will get a reference to the newly created Playlist. Then on line 17 the mp3 file is added to that Playlist.

Google-fu

2005-06-03T09:49:00.000-04:00

There are some great Google commands over at Coding Horror. (I keep going back to this page, maybe because of the Ninja.)

Also, Engadget has a cool article on how to customize a Google map.

The Long Tail

2005-04-29T16:12:00.000-04:00

If you have not seen Chris Anderson's artical The Long Tail in Wired Magazine, it is worth a read. It is about how buying and selling books, music and movies has changed (and is changing) with the internet.

TaskList

2005-04-19T17:15:00.000-04:00

TaskList is a cool command-line Windows XP command that can tell you additional information about processes that are running on your machine. I happened across this when I was looking for what the svchost.exe does. (You may have seen this in your “Windows Task Manager”.) svchost.exe runs services on your machine and to see what services are running enter the following at the command prompt.

tasklist /svc

Actually the /svc will display all the services for all the running processes and if the process isn’t running a service it will display “N/A”. If you only want to look at the svchost.exe process you can use the /fi switch.

tasklist /svc /fi "IMAGENAME eq svchost.exe"

IMAGENAME is the name of the column that you would like to filter (IMAGENAME is actually the process exe name). eq stands for equals and svchost.exe is the value.

Another useful switch is the /m. This will display all the DLL’s that are loaded for each of the running processes. Enter the following at the command prompt.

tasklist /m

To see a list of all the processes that have a specific DLL loaded you can enter the following.

tasklist /m netapi*

This will display all the processes that are running with the netapi32.dll loaded. (“*” is a wildcard. You can type out netapi32.dll if you like.)

For more help on this command you can use the /? switch. Enter the following at the command prompt to see more information on using the tasklist command.

tasklist /?

Will monkeys replace programmers?

2005-04-07T14:13:00.000-04:00

As I was pondering and Googling this, I came across the term “Code Monkey”.

Wikipedia's definition - "Amateur computer programmer who stiches together snippets of code found on the internet and in books and puts them together to make an application, without having an appreciation or understanding what the principles behind the code or the concept of coding are."

Another Wiki definition - (down on the page) "Rather than an insult for a programmer who is sloppy (which the above implies), I hear it used for someone who is doomed to work on "unglamorous" programming tasks, often using older/antiquated/"uncool" technology. Examples of work that a CodeMonkey might do in this definition (I do not intend to denigrate these tasks myself)" (hmm... Maybe I am a code monkey)

I also thought this was good (also from the wiki site above):

“If an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of type-writers randomly tap the keys, would they eventually produce Hamlet? And would they eventually be able to produce {insert your favorite program}?”

I also found this funny fictional story about monkeys on strike at Fox Broadcasting.
Monkeys NOT Working Around the Clock, On Strike

GMail Drive

2005-03-29T15:27:00.000-05:00

I have installed the GMail Drive. This is really cool if you have multiple computers at multiple locations (not on the same network). It is really handy to have a internet drive. And using your free GMail account is a great idea.

Hmm… I wonder if someone will create a Hotmail Drive?

Linux fan concedes Microsoft is more secure

2005-02-24T16:03:00.000-05:00

This is very interesting. What next, will people say that Microsoft is more stable?

Values of a Great Programmer

2005-02-07T15:25:00.000-05:00

What are the values of a great programmer?

Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris.

Read the Brad Appleton 's Wiki post
Read Dan Miser's Thoughts

Another iPodder VBScript (Delete Old PodCasts)

2005-01-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

Another management problem with iPodder is clearing out old PodCasts. And I have another VBScript file that can help manage this problem as well.

The following script will scan the files in your iTunes looking for iPodder files that are a week old and HAVE been played. Also, because you may run across a PodCast that you would like to keep, I have added and additional check on the Rating column. If you would like to keep a PodCast just set the rating to something other then “None”.

To run the iDelOldPodCasts.vbs script you can just double click it. Or if you want to run it with the –S command line variable you will have to create a batch file or a shortcut.

My apologies for the formatting. (Formated)

001 '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
002 ' This is a script file that will delete old PodCasts. This works with iPodder that
003 ' downloads files to your "My Documents\My Received Podcasts" directory. The files
004 ' in your iTunes library will be scanned looking for files that have been played
005 ' and the “Last Played” date must be older than seven days and the rating must be 0
006 ' (This will not delete old files that have ratings). You will be prompted to delete
007 ' the files. If no files where found you will get a message telling you that no
008 ' files where found. You can use the –S command line argument so that all files
009 ' will be deleted without being prompted, otherwise you will be prompted for each
010 ' file.
011 '
012 ' By: Richard Todosichuk
013 ' rtodosic@hotmail.com
014 '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
015 Option Explicit
016
017 Dim fso ' Scripting.FileSystemObject object used to copy files.
018 Dim Shell ' WScript.Shell object used to access information about the windows shell.
019 Dim args ' The command line argurments.
020 Dim arg ' A command line argurment.
021 Dim iTunesApp ' iTunes.Application object used to access the iTunes application.
022 Dim mainLibrary ' The iTunes Library object.
023 Dim tracks ' The tracks collection object of the Library object.
024 Dim currTrack ' The current track object from the Library in iTunes.
025 Dim TestDate ' Now minus seven days.
026 Dim PodCastDir ' The iPodder root download directory.
027 Dim FileList ' The list of files that have been copied.
028 Dim PromptVal ' The value of the message box for whether to delete the file or not.
029 Dim SilentFlag ' Command line flag that if set will not prompt the use to delete the file.
030 Dim i ' A counter variable.
031
032 Set args = WScript.Arguments
033 Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
034 Set Shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
035 Set iTunesApp = CreateObject("iTunes.Application.1")
036 Set mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist
037 Set tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks
038
039 TestDate = (Date - 7)
040 PodCastDir = Shell.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments") & "\My Received Podcasts\"
041 FileList = ""
042 SilentFlag = False
043
044 ' Scan command line arguments
045 For Each arg in args
046 ' Is it a flag.
047 If Instr(1, arg, "-", 1) = 1 or Instr(1, arg, "/", 1) = 1 Then
048 ' Check for list flag
049 If UCase(arg) = "-S" or UCase(arg) = "/S" then
050 SilentFlag = True
051 End If
052 End If
053 Next
054
055 PromptVal = MsgBox ("Delete all PodCasts that are a week old." _
056 &amp;amp; chr(13) & chr(10) & chr(13) & chr(10) & "Continue?", vbYesNo + vbQuestion, "Delete PodCasts")
057
058 If PromptVal = 6 then
059
060 i = tracks.Count
061
062 While i > 0
063 Set currTrack = tracks.Item(i)
064 If currTrack.Kind = 1 AND _
065 currTrack.PlayedDate <> 0 AND _
066 currTrack.DateAdded <>
067 currTrack.Rating = 0 AND _
068 currTrack.Location <> "" Then
069 If Instr(1, currTrack.Location, PodCastDir, 1) > 0 Then
070 If SilentFlag then
071 'Delete files
072 If (fso.FileExists(currTrack.Location)) Then
073 fso.DeleteFile(currTrack.Location)
074 End If
075 currTrack.Delete
076 Else
077 PromptVal = MsgBox ("Delete file " & currTrack.Location & "?", vbYesNo + vbQuestion, "Delete PodCast")
078
079 If PromptVal = 6 then
080 'Build msg of all files
081 If FileList <> "" Then
082 FileList = FileList & chr(13) & chr(10) & currTrack.Location
083 Else
084 FileList = currTrack.Location
085 End If
086
087 'Delete files
088 If (fso.FileExists(currTrack.Location)) Then
089 fso.DeleteFile(currTrack.Location)
090 End If
091 currTrack.Delete
092 End If
093 End If
094 End If
095 End If
096 i = i - 1
097 WEnd
098
099 If FileList = "" Then
100 WScript.Echo "No files where deleted!"
101 Else
102 WSCript.Echo "The following files have been deleted:" & chr(13) &amp;amp;amp; chr(10) & chr(13) & chr(10) & FileList
103 End If
104
105 End IF

(Download iDelOldPodCasts.vbs)

The code is not that complicated. Lines 45 to 53 handle searching the command line arguments that were passed into the script. Line 62 starts the loop that loops through all of the tracks in iTunes. Line 64 to 69 tests the track to see if it is in fact a file, the “Last Played” column is not blank, the “Date Added” column is older the seven days, the “Rating” column is blank, and the file is in the iPodder download directory. Then line 72 to 75 performs the delete without the prompt if –S was passed into that command line argument. And lines 77 to 85 will prompt you to delete the file and lines 88 to 91 perform the delete. After all of the tracks have been tested lines 99 to 103 will handle telling you either no files have been deleted or will display a list of all of the deleted files.

I should also mention that if you are running McAfee or other virus scanners this script may not work. Virus scanner writers like to re-implement the windows system Scripting.FileSystemObject and WScript.Shell objects. You can re-register the original windows COM objects and this will work fine. However, you should be aware that these files have been re-implemented for a reason. I don’t mean to scare people away from doing this but I mention this for two reasons. First I spent hours trying to figure out why things would not work and I don’t what you to do the same. Furthermore, if you have other virus scanners and spyware installed, you may be in luck. Better (well more script friendly) virus scanners and spyware software will detect that you are trying to run these objects and will prompt you to make sure that you really want to run them. This is a good approach. This will allow you to run VBScript files in a secure way. So, you CAN have your scripts and execute them too.

iPodder VBScript (Copy New PodCasts to My SD Card)

2005-01-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

I have been an iPodder user for a while now. And like others I have been thinking about content management. When you are downloading large MP3 files it makes sense to find ways to try to manage these files. Because iPodder works with iTunes and because there is an API available for iTunes (on Windows) I have created some VBScript files to help me perform some common tasks.

First of all the way that I manage my files in iTunes is to display the “Last Played” column (if it is not visible in your iTunes just right click on the header and click “Last Played”). With the “Last Played” column I can quickly tell if I have listened to the PodCast or not.

The first thing that I wanted to manage was to be able to copy newly downloaded PodCasts to my Pocket PC (I have not broken down and bought and iPod yet). The script that I wrote will scan the files in iTunes looking for files that have been added in the last seven days (“Date Added” is within seven days), has not been listened to (“Last Played” is blank) and is in the iPodder download directory (this should be “My Documents\ My Received Files” directory). The files that are found will be copied to a directory that I pass into the script. I have also added a –U flag that will update the “Last Played” column to now (I assume that if I copy the files to my Pocket PC that I will listen to them on my Pocket PC).

Example:

I have a batch file with the following in it.
iNewPodCasts -U E:\Podcasts

Where iNewPodCasts is the VBScript file and –U is the flag to update the “Last Played” column and E:\Podcasts is the destination folder (my SD card that I will use in my Pocket PC). It should also be noted that the E:\Podcasts directory must exist.

Additionally I have also added a –L flag to the iNewPodCasts VBScript that will just list the new PodCast files. This is useful if you don’t want to copy the PodCast files but just see what the new PodCast are. If you use the –L flag the destination directory will be ignored.

Here is the code.
My apologies for the formatting. (Formatted)

001 '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
002 ' This will copy newly downloaded files from iPodder to a specified directory. Files
003 ' from the "My Documents\My Received Podcasts" directory that have not been played
004 ' and have been downloaded within the last seven days will be copied to the
005 ' destination folder. If the –U flag is in the command line argument then the
006 ' “Last Played” column will be set to now). If the –L flag is in the command line
007 ' then the files will only be listed and not copied.
008 '
009 ' By: Richard Todosichuk
010 ' rtodosic@hotmail.com
011 '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
012 Option Explicit
013
014 Dim fso ' Scripting.FileSystemObject object used to copy files.
015 Dim Shell ' WScript.Shell object used to access information about the windows shell.
016 Dim args ' The command line argurments.
017 Dim arg ' A command line argurment.
018 Dim iTunesApp ' iTunes.Application object used to access the iTunes application.
019 Dim mainLibrary ' The iTunes Library object.
020 Dim tracks ' The tracks collection object of the Library object.
021 Dim currTrack ' The current track object from the Library in iTunes.
022 Dim TestDate ' Now minus seven days.
023 Dim PodCastDir ' The iPodder root download directory.
024 Dim FileList ' The list of files that have been copied.
025 Dim DestFolder ' The destination folder.
026 Dim UpdateLastPlayed ' Flag to update Last Played column in iTunes.
027 Dim ListOnly ' Flag to display only a list of resent PodCasts.
028 Dim i ' A counter variable.
029 Dim Msg ' A string for a message.
030 Dim f ' A file object.
031
032 Set args = WScript.Arguments
033 Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
034
035 UpdateLastPlayed = False
036 ListOnly = False
037 DestFolder = ""
038
039 FileList = ""
040 TestDate = (Date - 7)
041
042 ' Scan command line arguments
043 For Each arg in args
044 ' Is it a flag.
045 If Instr(1, arg, "-", 1) = 1 or Instr(1, arg, "/", 1) = 1 Then
046 ' Check for list flag
047 If UCase(arg) = "-L" or UCase(arg) = "/L" then
048 ListOnly = True
049 End If
050
051 ' Check for update flag
052 If UCase(arg) = "-U" or UCase(arg) = "/U" Then
053 UpdateLastPlayed = True
054 End If
055 Else
056 ' Only grab the first none flag
057 If DestFolder = "" Then
058 DestFolder = arg
059 End If
060 End If
061 Next
062
063 If args.Count > 0 and (ListOnly or fso.FolderExists(DestFolder)) Then
064 If (not ListOnly) and (not fso.FolderExists(DestFolder)) Then
065 WScript.Echo "Folder " & chr(34) & DestFolder & chr(34) & " not found!"
066 Else
067 Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
068 Set Shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
069 Set iTunesApp = CreateObject("iTunes.Application.1")
070 Set mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist
071 Set tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks
072
073 PodCastDir = Shell.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments") & "\My Received Podcasts\"
074
075 For i = 1 to tracks.Count
076 Set currTrack = tracks.Item(i)
077 IF currTrack.Kind = 1 And _
078 currTrack.DateAdded > TestDate And _
079 currTrack.PlayedDate = 0 AND _
080 currTrack.Location <> "" Then
081 If Instr(1, currTrack.Location, PodCastDir, 1) > 0 then
082 If (fso.FileExists(currTrack.Location)) Then
083 'Build msg of all files
084 If FileList <> "" Then
085 FileList = FileList & chr(13) & chr(10) & currTrack.Location
086 Else
087 FileList = currTrack.Location
088 End If
089
090 If not ListOnly Then
091 'Move the file
092 Set f = fso.GetFile(currTrack.Location)
093 f.Copy DestFolder & "\" & f.name
094 End If
095
096 If UpdateLastPlayed Then
097 'Set the lasted played to now.
098 currTrack.PlayedDate = Date
099 End If
100 End If
101 End If
102 End If
103 Next
104
105 If FileList = "" Then
106 WScript.Echo "No new files found!"
107 ElseIf ListOnly Then
108 WSCript.Echo "The following files are new PodCasts:" & _
109 chr(13) & chr(10) & chr(13) & chr(10) & FileList
110 Else
111 WSCript.Echo "The following files have been copied to " & chr(34) & DestFolder & chr(34) & ":" & _
112 chr(13) & chr(10) & chr(13) & chr(10) & FileList
113 End If
114 End If
115 Else
116 Msg = "Usage: iNewPodCasts [-L] [-U] [destFolder]"
117 Msg = Msg & chr(13) & chr(10) & chr(13) & chr(10) & _
118 "-L - Flag to only list new PodCasts. destFolder will be ignored if specified." & chr(13) & chr(10) & _
119 "-U - Flag to update the Last Played column in iTunes. destFolder must be specified." & chr(13) & chr(10) & _
120 "destFolder - The folder that new PodCasts will be copied too."
121 WScript.Echo Msg
122 End If

(download iNewPodCasts.vbs)

The code is a little long, but not that complicated. Lines 42 to 61 handle searching the command line arguments that were passed into the script. Line 63 checks to see if the arguments are valid and if not then lines 116 to 121 will display a message telling you how to call this script. If the command line arguments are valid then on line 69 the COM object that accesses iTunes is created and from that object the tracks collection of the LibraryPlayList are accessed. Then all tracks in the tracks collection are scanned and checks are performed at line the 77 to 82. Kind of 1 means that the track is a file. DateAdd must be less than the last seven days. PlayedDate is the same as the “Last Played” column and 0 means that it is blank. Location is the full file name of the track. I then check to see the location of the file is in the iPodder root directory and then I check to see that the file does in fact exist. (The file can be deleted or moved and iTunes may be out of date.) Lines 83 to 88 build a string that will be displayed at the end if the execution of the script. Line 93 does the actual copy. Line 98 updates the “Last Played” column to now. For the most part that is all there is to it.

I should also mention that if you are running McAfee or other virus scanners this script may not work.Virus scanner writers like to re-implement the windows system Scripting.FileSystemObject and WScript.Shell objects. You can re-register the original windows COM objects and this will work fine. However, you should be aware that these files have been re-implemented for a reason. I don’t mean to scare people away from doing this but I mention this for two reasons. First I spent hours trying to figure out why things would not work and I don’t what you to do the same. Furthermore, if you have other virus scanners and spyware installed, you may be in luck. Better (well more script friendly) virus scanners and spyware software will detect that you are trying to run these objects and will prompt you to make sure that you really want to run them. This is a good approach. This will allow you to run VBScript files in a secure way. So, you CAN have your scripts and execute them too.

Podcasting

2004-12-07T05:36:00.000-05:00

I have been listening to Podcasts for while. It has been a rather cool experience. I really like the idea of subscribing to audio files and listening to them in my spare time. We live in an on-demand society and there is something cool about subscribing to data, getting it when it is available, and then listening to it when you have a chance. I wish TV was like this (it is moving in this direction with Comcast's video on demand and TIVO). Imagine being able to go home, sit in from of your TV, and watch the latest episode of Stargate (I like Stargate); without having to record it or without having to wait for the episode to air. Just be able to subscribe to Stargate and then see if a new episode is available and watch it.

Podcasts do have one down side, they are not regulated and so you have to be careful about all the locker room humor and other offensive material. Free speech is good but at the same time is this the kind of thing we want our children listening too. Well, it is not all bad and as time goes on it seems to be getting better. Now that .Net Rocks has cleaned up its act, I would recommend it.

If you would like to get started Podcasting, download iPodder. iPodder is a tool that allows you to easily subscribe to different Podcasts and will download them to your computer. It works with iTunes and will work on Windows or Mac. Even though it is called iPodder you don't have to have an iPod, as long as you have iTunes you will be find. Most of the files are MP3. This makes it possible to download them to your Pocket PC, Palm or other portable devices.

Avalon 3D

2004-12-03T14:34:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is working on some really cool stuff. If you don’t know what Avalon is, it is a code name for a project at Microsoft that has to do with creating displays on Windows forms using an XML language called XAML. With “Avalon 3D” they have added light sources, camera angles, textures, brushes, and mesh support.

This stuff looks really cool and will raise the bar on application development. This has the potential to change the way we interact with computers. It could make the user interaction with computers a much richer and pleasurable experience.

I really think this is cool stuff. Watch the MSDN Video to see the demo of Avalon 3D.

John von Neuman

2004-11-25T15:43:00.000-05:00

I am currently taking a Java course at Harvard University (taught by Charlie Sawyer) and in a discussion about threads we happened to run across John von Neumann. John von Neuman is the one credited for coming up with a lot of ideas about computers that exists in modern day computing architectures. There is also the "von Neumann bottleneck" which is a limitation on the idea that data must travel between memory and CPU a word/instruction at a time.

SetGlobal

2004-11-16T13:15:00.000-05:00

Now available for download! (It's free man)

SetGlobal is a command line application that I wrote a while ago. It is a useful application that allows you to manage environment variables. Ever since I discovered that you can create an environment variable and then launch it from your address bar in windows, I have found this to be a useful way of creating shortcuts to launch applications, websites, and directories. I like the idea of attaching a short friendly name to a long URL or directory. Then from my address bar on my desktop I can type %myvar% to launch a URL or directory. I suppose you can do the same thing with Windows shortcuts, but then you need to find the shortcut and click on it. For things that I use often, I find this faster and less cluttered. (See the tutorial for example on how to do this.)

SetGlobal is a way for me to create a list of variables in a batch file so that I can manage variables across different machines. You could just use control panel/system but I like this better. I like to have a separate file containing all my variables.
SetGlobal does the same thing as the set command in DOS except that it persists the environment variable.

It is your own personal Shrinkster for your desktop.

There are other uses of environment variables and by all means SetGlobal is a useful way of managing any environment variable. (Note, currently only user variables can be created. I thought this would be less dangerous).

Disclaimer: Setting environment variables can overwrite variables that other applications rely on causing those applications to not work properly. It is always a good idea to check to see if a variable is in use before creating a new one. SetGlobal will not let you overwrite standard Windows variables.

%cool%

Four-Wheeled Segway

2004-10-14T06:56:00.000-04:00

I must get one. For no reason other then it looks so cool.

http://news.com.com/Segway+may+go+off-road/2100-1041-5407205.html?part=dht&tag=ntop&tag=nl.e433

:-( I will probably never be able to afford it.

Another Windows XP SP2 Problem

2004-09-28T13:13:00.000-04:00

After installing SP2 I was getting popup errors on my Tablet PC. (An error has occurred in the script URL is res://C:\WINNT\help\tpc_oobe.dll/tabsplash.hta.) The errors where coming from a "Tablet PC getting started" dialog that displays when you log into windows. If I had clicked the “don’t show again” check box on the dialog, before installing SP2, I would not have had this problem. However for some reason I liked the dialog and never checked the check box. Well, after I install SP2 and got the error messages every time I logged into windows. I was looking for a way to kill the dialog. With some greatly appreciated help from Microsoft I learned that the splshwrp.exe was the EXE that was running the dialog and that it was being launched from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

Windows XP SP2 and Firewalls

2004-09-20T10:24:00.000-04:00

I recently installed Windows XP SP2. After I installed it I noticed that I couldn’t connect to my Wireless network any more. After spending a couple of hours searching the web and trying different settings on my AP, I discovered that it was my firewall that was blocking some call to or from my AP. I am running McAfee Firewall and ZoneAlarm. After I shutdown my firewalls I was able to connect. I also think that MAC address filtering doesn’t work the same as it did before (However I didn’t really look into it and just switched over to WEP security). So now I need to figure out how to configure my firewalls to work with my wireless network.

4GL?

2004-09-10T09:18:00.000-04:00

The software industry is about to change. There have been a lot of changes as of late, however with all of the change we are still building software that is error prone, expensive, and unreliable. This however is about to change. There is a push in the software industry to build better software more efficiently and effectively. The answer is with things like code generation, application blocks and software factories. I am excited to think what this will turn into. Will 4GL finally bcome the main stream or will we have to redefine 4GL. Perhapes it will just be 3.5GL. Anyway the future will be interesting.

Code Generation
Application Block (Logging Application Block)
Software Factories

Great Hackers

2004-09-03T10:03:00.000-04:00

Great Hackers is a really great essay. (Thanks to Nick for blogging about is and allowing me to find it.) I think Paul really nailed what makes GREAT programmers GREAT. Being a good hacker (I wouldn’t call myself a great hacker. I think I my even be pushing it with good hacker) I could really relate to a lot of things Paul was talking about. I also realized why I am so frustrated with my current job. We are in maintenance mode which is not feeding my natural curiosity to learn new things. It is also not allowing me to work on anything cool. Having to look at the same code day in and day out and having little power to change the way things are done is not cool. We have a very strict change control process in place and if you want to make a major change you have to first get approval. And getting approval is not easy considering there are tons of request from clients that must be done first. Making more money is a priority. So I am stuck having to deal with the code as is, even though it has grown into a mountain of next to impossible to maintain code. All we can do is try to maintain this next to impossible code and try to build on top of it adding to the problem. I wish management would read Great Hackers an realize that in order to make things cool and exciting all they need to do is allow the developers to fix the problems by redefining the problem. As the essay points out back in the early Mac days when a lot of companies were building computers Steve Jobs came along and said “build me one beautiful”. And that, as the essay puts it “probably drove the developers harder than any carrot or stick could”. All management needs to do is give developers a vision or goal and most developers, well the great hackers, will run with it. But in our company those days seem to be gone. There was a time when developers spend a lot of time and money developing something that nobody wanted, so management decided that it is better to work on customer requests then to allow developers to go crazy. This makes me think that there must be reasons why some software is successful while others fail. But in my opinion if you are afraid of failure then you will probably never find a way to succeed.

I would also like to say that I disagree with ideas that great hackers only use Linux, Open Source software and Perl. I do agree with the idea that great hackers like control and with Open Source you have more control you can go in and change things because you have the source code. However, if you have well documented and well thought out software that is mature then that software may be wiser to use then open source. If it is easier to use and less buggy and will result in getting the end result up and running quicker then it is better. Also when it comes to operating systems and languages it is the one that allows you to do the most things that makes it better. And with that in mind it may just be the one that the hacker has the most knowledge about that makes it the better choice.

Desktops

2004-08-13T09:41:00.000-04:00

I was reading a post from FTPOnline. There is a reference to Google’s Zeitgiest showing that Linux is only on 1% of the computers that accessed Google while Windows XP was at 51%. But the thing that I find most interesting is that 5% is given to the category of “Other”. Does that mean that Google could not identify 5% of the computers? Is there some browser that doesn't send OS information? Is it some application that is accessing Google in a way that Google cannot identify it? What is going on? 5% is quite a bit, it is a lot bigger then Linux and Mac combine.

Postmortem Document

2004-07-23T07:28:00.000-04:00

The following is from the book "Coder to Developer" by Mike Gunderloy. I found if very interesting because I am currently working in an environment where projects often get handed off from one group to another with little documentation from the people that actually wrote it. I think this type of document would be very useful. (Although I am not sure that I could be disciplined enough to write it for every project.)

The purpose of the postmortem is to record the lessons that the teamor the manager learned in the course of building the software (or thethings that they wish they has known before they started). A typicalpostmortem might include these sections:

Overall description of the project
Who was involved on the team
How the projects' scope and features changed from initial design to final ship
A list of things that were done well during the project
A list of things that could have been done better
A list of the tools used, along with en evaluation of their quality
A list of tools that team members wish they had had available
A list of important project documents with their location
Recommendations for the next project: How can things be done better?

Coder to Developer

2004-07-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

I have just finished reading "Coder to Developer". I found it to be a very enjoyable book. It is a book about all of the different tools and skills that a good developer needs to take a software project from beginning to end. I liked it because although the author uses a .NET sample project throughout the book, a lot of tools and skills could apply to any project. The author did a lot of research on this book (or acquired it from real world experiences) and lists many alternative tools ranging from open source to big expensive commercial tools. He also lists many invaluable web sites that are excellent resources for developers.

Reorganizing

2004-07-09T08:53:00.000-04:00

“We trained hard…but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

- Falsely attributed to Petronius Arbiter; more likely Robert Townsend

Project Task Scheduling

2004-07-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

I just read Joel Spolshy’s page on software project task scheduling. He has some really good ideas. I like the idea of scheduling time for vacations, debugging, integration time, and scheduling some buffer time for tasks that took longer or for the tasks you didn’t know you had to do. I also like what he has to say about never letting managers tell programmers to reduce an estimate. In this article Joel also has some very convincing arguments of why you should actually create and manage a task schedule.

Bye Bye to Mr CIO Guy

2004-07-06T11:04:00.000-04:00

Bye Bye to Mr CIO Guy is cool. I laughed then cried (literally). We are living in a changing IT world. I believe that the tech industry is changing to the next level. We are moving away from building applications that manage data on the network to building applications that access data in a wide variety of ways (Example: web, blackberries, application, via web services). We are moving to a more real-time world with instant access from anywhere. We are moving to model that is more diverse. And unfortunately, as the song says, industry is trying to cut cost, outsourcing to cheaper countries. The issue is the bottom line. Companies are tired of software taking too long and paying for features that don’t quite meet acceptations. I believe that this will separate the software developing men from the software developing boys. We are emerging into an era where software must be built cheaper and easier. I believe that technologies like code generation tools (see Code Generation and CodeSmith) and testing frameworks (NUnit) will help in creating software faster and more reliable. We still have a long way to go before we have the software we want at the cost we want. But there is a lot of advancement taking shape.

If only someone would come up with a Rapid Application MAINTENANCE tool.

Pocket PC and Movie Viewing

2004-06-04T11:36:00.000-04:00

I have a Pocket PC and the other night decided that I would try saving an episode of Futurama onto my SD card so that I could watch it on my Pocket PC. I have a TV tuner card on my computer that records and saves it as mpeg-2 files. The Futurama episode that I saved was about 550mb. I downloaded TMpegEnc and converted the file down to about 100mb (mpeg-1). I was then able to load the file into Movie Maker and edit out the commercials, and save it to a Pocket PC compatible file. And then finally save that file to my SD card. So all this sounds cool right, well not really. It took me 4 hours to convert the 550mb file down to 100mb. Then it took me another 20 minutes just to load the file into Movie Maker, which split the file into 150 different clips. That took me about another 1/2 hour to build the storyboard, drag all the clips down and in order while editing out the commercials. Then it took me another 15 minutes to create the movie from Movie Maker. So in less then 6 hours I was watching a 1/2 hour episode of Futurama.
I have two thoughts on this. One, computers need to get faster. When we can edit a 2GB file easily then we will have a good video-editing machine. Second, why doesn't the manufacture of my TV tuner card have the ability to save to a version that I could then view on my Pocket PC. They have the ability to save me a lot of time.
Well I did, in fact, find that I could save from my TV tuner directly to an mpeg-1 file. It was not the same as the 100mb file that I mentioned above, it was about 300mb. But it is easier to deal with, and saves me the 4-hour conversion.

The Rule of 3

2004-05-19T09:08:00.000-04:00

I think Dan has some good ideas. I like this blog because software is an iterative process. You cannot expect to build the perfect software package on the first try. I disagree that it takes three iterations as a rule. It may take more iterations or less iterations depending on the complexity and the client feed back/input. If you get good help from clients when building your application you may get it right on the first try. However, this is a rare case because clients usually only want things that fit into their own personal workflow and that may not be what other clients want. Leaving your software to be a custom solution when you wanted a commercial application.

Google's IPO

2004-04-30T17:20:00.000-04:00

From Wired: If you take a close look at the form Google filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the exact value of its planned offering is $2,718,281,828 dollars, which some would immediately recognize as the mathematical constant e.

BASIC computer language turns 40

2004-04-30T17:18:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the big day.

Channel 9

2004-04-11T21:54:00.000-04:00

I checked out channel 9 from Microsoft. If you have not seen it you should check it out. Leave it to Microsoft to take bloging to the next level. We are living in a more interactive more media rich world. Computers are changing the way we think and the way we interact with those around us. The possibilities are only limited by our imagination.

Adventures of Seinfield & Superman

2004-04-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

My brother told me about this site. I thought it was funny. A good use of technology.

Security is great until it breaks something

2004-03-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

I have running on my machine, Norton AntiVirus, McAfee AnitVirus, McAfee Firewall, and Zone Alarm. (I am not paranoid.) I recently installed Visual Studio. And when I tried to create a new project I got presented with a can not load class error. After searching on Google I discovered that both McAfee and Norton AntiVirus try to register their own version of Scripting.FilesystemObject. In the posting that I read, it told me to go to the registry and change the file back to the Microsoft one. That fixed the problem, however my system is now less secure because my Virus software is not managing scripts that use the FilesystemObject. Security is a great thing until it causes problems. The most secure computer is the one that is turned off. However, this doesn’t help me.

Computers Suck

2004-03-29T22:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I don’t know if I agree that computers suck. However, I do think that technology is only just beginning. What we will create tomorrow will be better, cheaper, reliable, and far more useful.

Building Better Applications

2004-03-28T19:16:00.000-05:00

I see a lot of good ideas and a lot of software that could be written better. In most cases the software that I like and would actually pay money for are the applications that integrate well with windows or other commonly used applications. I use NewsGator not because there is a lack of free blog aggregators, but because NewsGator is easier to use. It adds a popup menu in IE so that I can easily subscript to new blogs. It is an Outlook plug-in so I don’t have to learn a new tool. It also has a website to check my blogs when I am away from my computer. It integrates well into the tools that I use everyday. This is what separates good software from great software.

Good job NewsGator.

Microsoft to remove the Calculator from Windows

2004-03-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

I thought this was good.

Why is code maintenance so difficult?

2004-03-25T19:01:00.000-05:00

The more complicated your code base is the less likely other people will be able to understand it. So how do you make it simpler? Well, there is no easy answer to this, even when you try to write understandable code different people with different ideas may find it incomprehensible. That said here are some things to think about when writing code.

Stay away from form inheritance. Languages like Delphi have the concept of form inheritance (creating a base window and then inheriting off it). Although this can be great in the initial creation of applications, allowing you to create many forms quickly, it is hard to maintain. What if there is a button that is no longer needed, and that button lives on the base form. You can not delete the button because that would delete it on every descendant form. So you end up hiding it. Now you have controls that in design time clutter your designing window. The problem gets worse when you need to radically change your window’s visual appearance. Now what do you do? Hide more controls or start over? Well in this case the two options are not ideal. You will end up with more confusing un-maintainable code or you will waist time rewriting the window. I think rewriting it to the way to go. Rewrite it to the way it should have been in the first place, with out inheritance.

Try not to inherit more then three levels deep. Unless your objects are created perfectly and no one will need to maintain it, inheritance is not your friend. When it comes time to extend functionality it becomes very confusing to figure out where the code belongs. Does it belong in the base or at what level? Fixing bugs can also be difficult; trying to follow the call stack as it jumps from one level to the next can be tricky. There are times that each level is very straight forward however most times the lines get blurred and functionality ends up existing at levels it shouldn’t.

Minimize the amount of code files. If you have inherited objects that exist in multiple files think about putting them into one file. If someone need to make changes it is easier because everything is in one place. Organization can go a long way. Another solution is to create a directory that holds common files.

Try not to wrap objects for the sake of making things simpler. Of course there are times that you need to wrap DLL’s or COM objects. However, if you are trying to create easier access to code by writing more code this is probably not a good thing. The less code the better. Unless you have a really good reason to do it, don’t do it.

If you have a frame-work, document it well or better yet buy one. If in your project you try to make thinks easier by writing a frame-work that you can just plug-in objects, this may seem like a good idea, just make sure that you document it well. Everyone must understand it and be able to maintain it. If you can buy a framework you are probably better off. Developers are more likely to adopt a third-party solution then one created in house.

Diagram your software. A picture is worth a thousand words and a code picture is worth a thousand lines of code. Diagrams can make things easier to understand they can show relationships very well, and can go along way in helping others to understand what your code does.

Try to teach others your coding ideas. If no one understands what you are trying to do then know one will be able to maintain your code. Also in the process of documenting or teaching others you may find code that could have been written better. This is a great opportunity to make your code more understandable.

Top Down VS. Bottom Up

2004-03-25T18:59:00.000-05:00

There are two approaches when it comes to designing software, top down approach and the bottom up approach. The top down approach is when the developer is given a list of requirements and thinks about how the UI will look and how the user will use the UI. The developer will then just start writing code. With RAD development tools like Delphi, VB, etc it is very easy to create a window, start dropping controls on it and start writing code to respond to buttons, menu items, etc. The bottom up approach is when the developer gets a list of requirements and starts thinking about what objects are required to perform the tasks. Thought must be given to what the UI will do and how the UI will interact with the objects, but the UI is only a means to communicate with the core objects. After the initial design the developer will start coding the implementation of the objects and then build the UI to communicate with the objects.

The top down approach is faster. Most prototypes and simple applications are written this way. You can develop it quickly, get feed back and get it to market in a relatively short amount of time. And if the code is not very complicated it is easy to maintain. The problem is when things become more complicated. As time goes on and requirements grow and the amount of code written reaches a level that makes the code difficult to comprehend, maintenance becomes difficult. And if you are working in a team environment probably only the initial developer will be able to maintain the code in a decent manner. Also bug can start appearing because of the complexity of code. Because decisions are based on how the user uses the UI chances are that not all users will agree, some users will want to do things one way while others will want to do things another. This leads to switches and settings in your code that over time can result in spaghetti code, because things are not thought out the end result is very difficult to maintain and error prone. There is also the problem of adopting newer technologies. Because the code base is all tied together chances are that any changes to components will be significant, you will probably have to test everything before you redeploy because you may not know what the impact of the change will be.

The bottom up approach may be slower at the start but more maintainable in the long run. You have to think about what you are doing. If you happen to be wrong you run the risk of wasting valuable time. You also must be careful not to over think things. However, your code will be more maintainable. If you create UML diagrams, this can act as a blue print of your software. Much like database administrators use ERDs (Entity Relationship Diagrams) to view their relationships in their databases, a UML class diagram can show the object relationships of your software. UML can also be used to show the flows of messages through different objects or give a high level overview of how the different sections relate to one another. Further more, as new requirements come in developers are forced to think about how this will affect the core application. Most of the bugs that I see are caused because developers are not thorough when adding new functionality. There are also many benefits to having your UI separate from your object model.
- You can build test scripts to test your object model. This can test the core functionality of your application. Although it can not test everything it can catch some bugs early on and help the developer maintain a reliable code base.
- You can migrate your code. Because you have a separation of UI and objects you have a place to start migrating code. If the UI must change you know that this will not impact the core. Perhaps you are trying to move your application to the web, or perhaps you would like a fancier UI. Furthermore if you would like to move your application to Linux or .NET moving the objects first is easier. Most portability problems are in the UI controls. You may have to rewrite parts of the UI but this is far better then having to rewrite your business logic.
- You can turn your object model into a stand alone API. Perhaps some users would like the ability to create their own UI or may want to integrate your functionality into one of there own applications. This can make your code more valuable and more useful.

I would suggest only using the top down approach in cases when you want to get your software to market quickly and don’t care about long term maintenance. For more serious projects I would suggest the bottom up approach. It may require more time up front however the time saved in maintenance will be well worth the effort.

Why is TDD so boring?

2004-03-25T09:09:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting read on Test Driven Development (TDD).
http://www.ftponline.com/weblogger/forum.aspx?id=9&Date=3/22/2004