I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up about the IADNUG meeting tomorrow night at the DMACC West campus.  Nick Parker will be doing a presentation on  dependency inversion in .NET.  I hope to see you there.

This week I hit the 250 mile running mark on my Nike + iPod and I love it.  I definitely hate running though, it’s rather boring and tends to be a lot of work, but adding a bit of technology to it that allows me to monitor my progress makes it bearable and keeps me in better shape.  The Nike + iPod consists of a wireless sensor that attaches to your shoe, a wireless receiver that plugs into your iPod, and the nikeplus.com website.  This wireless sensor is designed to slip under the sole of certain Nike shoes which now appear to be down to as cheap as $40, but when I got the device the cheapest shoes that supported it were $100 so I opted for the RunAway which cost me about $10.  I read a few comments on the Internet saying these adapters don’t work  because the sense works by pressure which you don’t get by strapping the sensor to your laces, but I haven’t had any problems.   Now that the Nike shoes have come down in price though, I may get a pair and test out the difference.  The sensor and receiver combo runs around $25.

Basically the entire add-on is a glorified pedometer, but it has some great features that allow you to monitor your running.  First off you are able to monitor your running, while you’re running.  With one push of the center iPod button, you get informed of your distance, time, and pace.  You’re also able to monitor your overall running by syncing your runs up to the Nike+ website and tracking how well you’re doing over time.  You can also set target goals on the website and track if you are meeting them.

Another nice feature is the ability to set up a power song.  Mine is The Eye of the Tiger and it plays whenever I need a little extra motivation by holding down the center iPod button for a few seconds.

I love this add-on and the ability to track my running motives me to run more, but one thing I don’t like is the fact that I can’t change the song very easily while running since the iPod is strapped to my arm and I can’t see the screen.  Hopefully this problem with be resolved if the Nike Amp+ ever comes out.  It is a wristwatch like remote that allows you to control the iPod while running.

Check it out and I’ll let you know when I hit 500 miles.

This weekend I have been spending most of my time rebuilding my KnoppMyth box by installing the lastest version, applying the patch to handle the new tv lisings provider, Schedule Direct, and adding a new 500GB drive for recording tv.  I wrote down most of the steps to get things setup and plan to do a blog posting about soon.  At the moment what I did want to post is a link to a page on how to add a second drive to linux. They are clear instructions and worked nicely.  I'm mounting this new hardrive to the /myth/tv directory so that all tv recording will go to it.

If you're trying to do exactly what I did, then you also need to set the proper permissions back on the /myth/tv directory or you will get a bunch of errors.  First set the owner of the directory back to mythtv by doing this

chown mythtv /myth/tv

Then to get the permissions exactly back to where the were I added write permission back on for the group by doing:

chmod g+w /myth/tv

You can compare the before and after permissions and ownership my doing ls -l /myth  before you make any of these changes and then again afterwards.

I said goodbye to Wells Fargo this week and hello to a new job that will hopefully fit my style much better.  Wells Fargo just wasn’t hitting the mark for what I wanted to be doing professionally and I found myself doing a lot of content changes and minor code changes, many of which were in classic asp and .NET 1.1.  I was about to start a new project from scratch in .NET 2.0 that would have taken the next two or three months to complete, but I realized that once that was finished I would probably be back to handling minor changes.

                I’ve worked at two different large companies in my development career, and I have come to the conclusion that they do not respect the individual developer as an asset.  Don’t get me wrong, in both cases my direct manager has been very good and I felt they considered me an asset, but in general I think management as a whole in a large company doesn’t care who the developer is sitting in the seat and thinks all developers have the same skill set.  From what I have seen this is definitely not the case and except for a couple of very smart developers I have met, a significant number of developers in general really don’t seem to have the aptitude nor ambition to do their jobs

                The biggest thing I think corporations with development departments need to start doing is charging their internal departments.  A significant amount of money and time seems to get wasted with users and management abusing their development department by flip flopping on changes, and general indecisiveness.  I think by billing the department that the application is for (at a reasonable rate) the requesting department would be more conscience of the time that they are utilizing for development.  It’s very easy to take advantage of the development department, when you have no consequences from it.

                So where are you off too, you ask?  Well I’ve headed over to work with Nick at Two Rivers Marketing.  It will be nice to finally leave my kakis hanging in the closet and be able to wear some comfortable clothes to work for a change.  I’ve met several of the guys there through the IADNUG and felt they had the type of attitude that I was looking for.  I hope that I can learn a lot there and maybe even teach them a few things.

                Lastly I would just like to point out that most of us developer work at least forty hours a week, probably even more, so if you’re not doing something you are enjoying then you owe it to yourself to do something about it.  If you’ve been telling yourself for awhile now that things will get better soon, or that a fun project will probably be around the corner, then you need to start considering a job change and at least stick your resume out there to see what the world has to offer you. 

Take a look at the decTop.  Its a small computer weighing three pounds that can run Windows CE or linux.  It has 128mb of memory and 10GB for storage.  With four USB ports you could easily add a wireless usb stick for network connectivity and do some cool things.  I came across this on LifeHacker and my mind is full of ideas for it.  Plus at $100 its not to bad of a price.

Well I thought I would be nice and put up the code sample for implementing FizzBuzz using and extension method in VB.NET.  To read my full explanation of FizzBuzz and extension methods please read my previous post.

Those of you that know me, know that I could care less if you program in VB or C#, but I definitely prefer C# because it allows me to type a lot less.  Extension methods appear to be no different are a bit more complicated in VB, requiring that they are in a module and decorated with an attribute.

Module ExtensionMethods

    Sub Main()


        For i As Integer = 1 To 100
            Console.WriteLine(i.FizzBuzz)
        Next

        Console.ReadLine()

    End Sub

    <System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ExtensionAttribute()> _
Public Function FizzBuzz(ByVal Value As Integer) As String
        Dim rtnVal As String = ""

        If Value Mod 3 = 0 Then
            rtnVal += "Fizz"
        End If

        If Value Mod 5 = 0 Then
            rtnVal += "Buzz"
        End If

        If rtnVal = "" Then
            rtnVal = Value.ToString
        End If

        Return rtnVal
    End Function

End Module

For those of you that don’t know what FizzBuzz is, it became quite popular awhile back when Jeff Atwood posted to his blog a few quotes from people about interviewing candidates for programming jobs and the fact that many of them can’t code. (It’s possible that the topic originated from someone else.  I heard it originally from Scott Hanselman’s blog who referenced Jeff.)  FizzBuzz is a simple coding exercise where you write a loop that prints the numbers from 1 to 100, except if the number is divisible by three it outputs Fizz and if the number is divisible by five it outputs Buzz.  If it is divisible by both you output FizzBuzz.

What is an Extension Method?  An extension method is a new feature in .Net 3.5 that allows you to add methods to an existing object.  It allows you to modify an object without needing to create your own version of it through inheritance.  Why is this useful?  I’m sure there are many reasons.  One is that if you don’t have the ability to change the object that is being passed to your class then you can’t just use inheritance and create your own version of the object, but what you can do is create an extension method.

This example that I am going to walk you through will add a method to int called FizzBuzz.  Calling this method will output a string with either the number of your int, Fizz, Buzz, or FizzBuzz depending on the criteria stated above.

This code for the extension method is fairly simple:

namespace ExtensionMethodExample

{

    public static class CustomExtensionMethods

    {

        public static string FizzBuzz(this int value)

        {

            string rtnVal = "";

            if (value % 3 == 0)

            {

                rtnVal += "Fizz";

            }

            if (value % 5 == 0)

            {

                rtnVal += "Buzz";

            }

            if (rtnVal == "")

            {

                rtnVal = value.ToString();

            }

            return rtnVal;

        }

    }

}

Here I have a static class called CustomExtensionMethods. Next, I have created a static method called FizzBuzz.  The magic happens when I all this to the input parameter. I then calculate FizzBuzz on my input parameter and return the appropriate string.  (I’m sure there is a better way to implement FizzBuzz.)

That’s it.  I then utilitize the new FizzBuzz method like this(In my case I have created a simple console application):

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using ExtensionMethodExample;

namespace ExtenderMethodExample

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            for (int i = 1; i < 100; i++)

            {

                Console.WriteLine(i.FizzBuzz());

            }

            Console.ReadLine();

        }

    }

}

It’s that simple.  Drop this into a VS2008 console application and try it out.  You will have complete access to your extension methods via intellisense.  Happy coding.

Was this post helpful? Post a comment and let me know.

Well Greg Brill hasn’t responded to the email with my resume and I haven’t gotten any swag from DotNetRocks!, but you may have noticed that on episode #260 at five minutes and twenty seconds Richard Campbell read my email.  I was a little surprised myself as I was only half listening while I was at work, but sure enough he read my comments on show #244 with Scott Stanfield.  He didn’t read everything so here is my email in full:

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to let you know that the Scott Stanfield show was great.  I am a .Net developer and have been listening to the big three for some time now (.NetRocks, Hanselminutes, and Runas Radio).  My only complaint is that I need more content to listen to.  I’ve tried a few other podcasts, but either the content or the sound quality sucked and I removed them from my subscriptions.  After listening to the Scott Stanfield show I started thinking that you need to get this guy his own podcast.  He knew a wide range of topics and obviously enjoyed talking about them.   The way he presented information reminded me of Scott Hanselman as they both come across as very excited and enthusiastic about technology.  What do you think?  If you’re too busy to get it up and going then maybe you could hire a hot intern (or at least you could use it as an excuse to get one.)  Just thought I would throw that out there.  Keep up the good work.

Anyways, I’m going to officially start the campaign for the Scott Stanfield show.  I don’t know If Scott wants to do one or not, but if I can get enough people to ask then maybe he will.  My job is getting fairly boring and I need some interesting content to listen to so until I get a new job, some swag as a bribe to shut me up, or the Scott Stanfield show starts I’ll keep bugging for the new podcast.  I’ve put together a survey to gather everyone’s opinion about the idea so fill out the survey and feel free to comment about it here.

If you haven’t been watching Slashdot at all or any of the many MythTV forums out there then you don’t know that we will all soon be losing our free XML feed of TV listings.  Zap2it Labs originally provided the feed for free for noncommercial use, but they are going to stop providing this starting Sept 1^st.  Several individuals organized and have worked with Zap2it to keep the feed going and have created a new entity called Schedule Direct.  Recently Schedule Direct reached an agreement with Zap2it to continue to provide the feed to open source DVR users through Schedule Direct.  Of course, the rub is that it is going to begin costing $5 a month to subscribe to.  According to the website they hope to turn this into only $20 a year, but they are waiting to figure out how many individuals sign up.

I don’t want to sound like a complete cheapo, but I can get a DVR from my cable company for $5 more a month, and the entire point of me originally building my own DVR was so that I would not have to pay a monthly fee and could instead use that money to keep adding to my DVR.  Also, I have no idea how many MythTV and XMLTV users are out there, but someone is bound to make a decent profit off of this at $5 a month per person.

A few of the guys at work, including myself think that this is an area that Google needs to get into.  Google’s all about providing different types of data, so why can’t they start providing TV data?  It seems like the exact kind of service that they would provide for free.  You could probably wrap some ads around it all and generate some very decent revenue.  I even considered doing it myself, but I already have two projects going on at the moment along with a full time job, and I didn’t think I could put together a solution quick enough for it to be beneficial.

Anyways, this leaves me with deciding what to do next and I am strongly considering switching my setup over to Windows Vista Home Premium and using the Media Center functionality.  From what I have heard it is pretty good, my only concern is if my hardware is all supported, which I can’t figured out without hunting down the details on everything, or just trying it out and killing my MythTV install.  Of course, after Sept 1^st my DVR is just going to be a big paper weight anyways.  What do you think?  Should I not be a cheapo and pony up, or stick to my guns and have a completely monthly fee free DVR?

As I mentioned in a previous post, a couple former coworkers and I are putting together an application that we are hoping to take commercial.  This are going fairly well at this point, but perhaps a bit behind schedule as we are doing it entirely .Net 3.0 so there has been a small learning curve, not to mention the fact that we all still have day jobs.  Of course, unlike me, my partners also have significant others to dedicate time to.

Anyways, one of the things I wanted to utilize for this project because of the team work environment and the disjoint schedules was a build server.  (Okay, I also wanted to learn about the entire concept and functionality of a build server.)   I used CIFactory for our build server which was created by Jay Flowers.  CIFactory is basically a set of scripts that configures/installs the components of the build server so that you don’t have to put together all the integration scripts yourself.  The package works quite nicely and sets up things link CruiseControl.Net, Simian, NCover, NDepend, and MSTest.  I have it integrated with our Subversion repository, but it can also integrate with Visual Source Safe and other repositories.  It also can integrate a lot of other tools besides what I have listed here.

At this point we are mainly using the setup to verify that the project is building properly so that someone doesn’t grab the latest code and get stuck with errors that some else has checked in.  If a build fails an email goes out notifying everyone of the broken build so that no one gets updates and the person who broke it can get it fixed.  (Getting people to respect the build server is a completely different complication and topic.)  I want to get more familiar with the other tools, especially the ones that revolve around testing but I just haven’t had the time.  I need to put together a list of things to learn to make myself a better developer over the next six months and add testing tools to the top of the list (along with Ruby).

If you want to get going on CIFactory there is an excellent DNRTV episode on it that I followed to get our setup going.  I had it all setup in a matter of a few minutes and I really like the setup.   Jay is also excellent at responding to any questions quickly and promptly.  There is one negative to the setup though that I came across this past week that was a real disappointment for me.  CIFactory does not support multiple projects.  It creates a separate CruiseControl.Net server for each project and they won’t both run at the same time.  It appears from the news group that someone has made some modification and gotten it working so that two projects are going to one CCNET, but the benefit of CIFactory is the fact that it pretty much just works.  If I’m going to have to dig into scripts to get multiple projects working then I will probably eventually rebuild the build server without CIFactory.

CIFactory is an excellent starter package for getting up and going with a build server and if Jay gets the time to modify it to handle multiple project easily then it will be an excellent solution for a permanent builder server.  My build server path will depend on if Jay gets multiple projects implemented before I get the free time to rebuild the server.

    I use a hotmail account.  I got it a really long time ago and now I'm stuck with it.  If it had a feature to forward email I would have switched a long time ago and had it forward to something else, but it doesn't so I'm trapped.  The new Windows Live Mail is a very good interface, but I prefer to not use a website to check my email when I'm at home so instead I use Outlook 2007, which by the way seems to be extremely slow even after I install a patch that was suppose to speed things up.

    Anyways, ever since I switched to 2007 from Outlook 2003 I continuously get a prompt for my hotmail userid and password even when I click the remember password button.  It was a huge annoyance and it finally got to me enough today to do some Googling.  Here is the patch that appears to resolve the issue.

    Things were even worse this past week when I couldn't even log into my hotmail account with Outlook, for some reason, and I was forced to use the web interface, but it appears that issue is finally resolved.  Anyone know what was going on?  I'm sure eventually I will be annoyed enough to switch my email address, but until then at least I don’t get prompted for my password anymore. (Knock on wood.)

Well I started Twittering last night.  (Would that be the proper wording for it?)  Twitter is a site that allows you to setup a page and post short message too it, similar to a blog, but the messages have to be under 140 characters.  You can post from the website, instant messenger, or a text message from your cell phone.  Basically intended to keep friends up to date on where you are or what you are doing.  I'm using it to vent throughout the day about work and life, hence the reason I haven't posted the link to my Twitter account because I just may be venting a short message about you, but feel free to try and find it.  In general it seems like Twitter is a general waste of space and time, but I also see where it could come in handy.  It would be interesting to try Twittering a diet or spending habbits.  It would also be nice to have all you friends on Twitter to know when individuals are as bored as you or up late at night, so that you know who you can bug.

     On Wednesday night I learned a pretty cool trick at the .NET Usergroup meeting when Jon von Gillern was giving his presentation on RegEx.  When selecting text in some applications like Visual Studio if you hold down the ALT key you can select a vertical column.

     This is one of those things that you would probably never know about unless someone told you, so now you know.

    If you haven't been keeping an eye on Google labs then you have missed the new entry of Google 411.  Simply call 1-800-GOOG-411 and get business directory listing for any city and state.  I have tried it several times and it works fairly well.  It free and doesn't even have any ads so it's hard to complain about it.  It's all based on voice prompts and will even dial the number for you. (This means be careful if you're goofing around and looking up things like the White House.) Currently it just has business listings, but I hope that they will soon add listings for people. As far as I am aware this is Google's first step out of the computer world and into a seperate type of market.  Atleast as far as I know everything else at Google you access with a computer.  The arena makes complete sense for Google though since it is all about data and they have lots of it.  Where I would really like to see Google go next is tv listings.  It's all just data as well and with Zap2it not providing a free feed after Sept 1st it leaves a hole in the US market to be filled.  GIve Google 411 a try and let me know what you think.

    If you've been watching closely today you saw that Google acquired GrandCentral.com.  This site allows to get a phone number and then have that number routed to any number of other phone numbers you want such as cell, work, or home depending on rules you define.  It has a host of other features as well such as recording the conversation and sending individuals you're trying to dodge directly to voicemail.  I came across GrandCentral a few months ago and have been tempted to try it out, but I haven't had a chance to. If you're using it, let me know what you think about it. 

I decided to repost one of my original blog posts on how to easily build and test your connection strings that was quite popular and somehow lost during the transition to the new site.  This method is fairly simple and I use it all the time when I need to build or test out a new connection string.  The first thing you need to do is create a new empty file and call it Test.udl.  Normally I use Notepad to do this, but you can use anything you want.

Once you have done this your file will display the computer icon associated with .udl files and if you double click on the file it will open up the Data Link Properties window.

Next, you need to fill out your connection information including provider, server, database, and login information.  In order to properly get your connection string you will need to check the allow saving password box.  At this point you can click the test connection button to verify that the connection is successful.  If it is not, you can continue to make adjustments to the Data Link Properties window until it is.

Finally, click OK to save the file, and open up the .udl file using Notepad.  If you did check the allow saving password box you will be cautioned about the security risk of saving the password.  Once you’ve opened the file you will see something similar to the follow:

[oledb]

; Everything after this line is an OLE DB initstring

Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Password=yourpassword;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=sa;Initial Catalog=TimeTracker;Data Source=WDMPDC01

You have now created your connection string and can copy and paste this into your application.  This is also an excellent way of testing connectivity issues from individual computers.

Did you find this posting helpful?  Please let me know by posting a comment.

Scott Hanselman hit the nail on the head with his recent post.  It gave me quite the laugh, but unfortunately it is so true (Just like when I watch Office Space).  I was told the other day by a coworker that I over engineered a solution because I used an httphandler instead of just making a page.  Anyone with a small understanding of ASP.NET should realize that using an httphandler when no content needs to be display is going to be more efficient.  This “page” was going to be hit about every time someone accessed the portal and from what I have come across using an httphandler will increase performance by 5%-10%.  Considering the development time was only increased by the one minute or so that it took to add the proper section to the web.config I would have to say that in this scenario the httphandler was the best way to go and I think that the solution could only be considered “over engineered” if you don’t understand it.  Anyways, I’m beginning to think there is a case of ADD going on in my new environment.

Like I said in an earlier post I’m currently working on a side project with a couple former coworkers that I hope with become a success.  This project has turned my dining room table into an ad hoc office several evening each week and caused the need to setup a development infrastructure to support the project with the backbone of that being the source control repository.  I decided to use Subversion for the source control repository for the initial reason that it was free, but also because it seems to be fairly highly regarded in the community.  I’ve used both Visual SourceSafe 6.0 and 2005 in the past and whereas I’ve never had any direct complaints with VSS it did always seem to be a bit of a task getting things setup initially when starting a project.

Subversion is working fairly well for us.   Because we cannot always get together to work on the project I have http access setup and my partners can very easily sync their source code over the Internet.  Subversion integrates nicely with Apache web server to do this.  Let me point out though that I have all this running on Windows, not Linux.  There are Windows versions of both Subversion and Apache.  For the client side of things we are using both TortoiseSVN and AnkhSvn.  TortoiseSVN integrates directly into Explorer and is handy for setting up new projects and handling the tasks at the file system level.  AnkhSvn is an add-on to Visual Studio that integrates Subversion tasks into the right-click menu of Solution Explorer.

Anyways my goal in this post is to help direct anyone who is Googling trying to setup Subversion get going in the right direct.  Ralph Willgos put together a great article on Code Project walking through the steps of getting everything setup so I will not bother rewriting them.  It is a little old and I skipped the steps of setting up IIS and Visual Studio 2003, but the rest of the steps apply.   I will caution you on a couple things.  First make sure you are using the 2.0.x version of Apache, not 2.2.x and not 1.x.  From my understanding and experience Subversion will only work with the 2.0.x version.  The other thing I will caution you on is to not use the download links that Ralph provides.  They have become out of date as newer versions have been released.  I ran into very cryptic error messages when I had different versions of Subversion and TortoiseSVN trying to talk to each other and this caused several headaches.  To get the files simply go to the links that I have provided and grab the latest versions.

That’s about it.  Feel free to drop me a line if you get stuck with Subversion and I will try to help you out.  Also, I’d like to read what everyone else has to say about source control in general and what they think about specific products so feel free to post a comment with your experiences.  I’m also running a continuous integration server for our project, but I will go into that in a later post.

Well, I feel it is important to put together a toolkit of controls to use when developing for a client.  One of the controls I have created is the Textbox Filter Extender which will allow you to limit a textbox to numeric, alpha, or alphanumeric characters.  I've post the control for anyone to have access to and use.  Free free to check it out over in the development tools section.   If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for improvements please post them to the proper forum section.

Well I passed the 70-228 exam which means I am one test away from my MCDBA.  The best part of it is that I am done with the SQL tests so now I get to focus on what I prefer more, which is development.  To study I used the Microsoft Press book: MCSA/MCSE/MCDBA Self Paced Training Kit: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 System Administration.  I selected this book simply because it appeared to be the best of the poor quality of books out there.  It was a rather boring read, and the hands on training involved running a bunch of prewritten scripts that were sometimes not explained very well.  I passed though, which is what matters.

   What I have decided though is that instead of providing me with an evaluation copy of SQL Server 2000 (or for that fact the software for what ever test you may be studying for) the publisher should provide the reader with a virtual pc image of what is required for the test.  For example all of the exercises in this book expected SQL Server 2000 running in a domain with a specific domain/computer name.  Also, several exercises required specific domain users be setup.  I would assume that most people do not have a setup like this unless they are studying on company time, and even if I did have a setup like this I wouldn't want to be messing it up adding unneccessary users for use with the exercises.  Now that Virtual PC is free it would be great for this particular test to have been provided with a virtual image of Windows Server 2003 (feel free to have it expire in 6 months like it would if I downloaded the eval copy) along with the install files for SQL Server 2000. (For this particular test installing and setup are part of the test hence not having the software already installed.  For the 70-229 test the server could already be installed as that is out of scope of the test.)  The server could then be preconfigured with the proper naming conventions and users which the setup of is completely out of the scope of the test.  This would allow the user to focus more time on the topics covered in the exam and not on the environment.  I would have to think that something like this would make all of us very happy.  Let me know what you think!

Well I realize that I have fallen extremely far behind and have not finished my tutorial on putting together y DVR setup.  Hopefully I will get to it someday, but now that the steps are no longer fresh in my head it may not happen until I need to build a new box.  If you do have any questions feel free to post a comment and I’ll help you out the best I can.

What I will post about are the steps I need to take to update my box for the new DST settings.  (I hope the energy savings from the change makes up for the pain in that it has been, and the old electronic equipment I have that will now always be off.)

First off check to see what your system is currently set to:

#zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

Using this command from root will provide you with the dates your system has set for daylight savings time.  If it isn’t set to start in March then continue.

Go to the home directory for root, use ‘cd $HOME’ if you are still logged in as root and download the patch:

#wget http://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian/pool/main/t/tzdata/tzdata_2007b-1_all.deb

Now you just need to install the patch.:

#dpkg --install tzdata_2007b-1_all.deb

Finally, if you run the check again:

#zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

You should get the following output:

Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000

/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000

/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

If only it was as easy to do with all my other equipment.  Specially thanks to everyone at the KnoppMyth Forums for posting the information on this.

    Well, the guy who has taught me everything I know about .NET, Bigyan, has taken off for a month to go back to Nepal to get married, leaving me with some very big shoes to fill while he is gone.  While he is gone I have adopted a new philosophy that I am trying to follow, WWBD, What Would Bigyan Do?
    While working on some bug fixes for a web application that we currently have in pilot testing for a client, I found myself working hard trying to prevent a post back, which I knew is exactly what Bigyan would do to increase the quality of the user experience.  I needed to create a custom validator in ASP.NET and could have easily just made it a server side validation, but this would require a post back before telling the user that there was an input error.  The way to eliminate this post back is to create a client side validation function using  JavaScript.
    This first thing that is necessary is to add a CustomValidator control to your page and to associate it to a control on the page by setting the ControlToValidate property. 
    Next, I would typically set the text of the CustomValidator control to an *.   This is the text that shows up on the page where the custom validator exists.  I normally position the CustomValidator either next to the control I am validating or next to the label for the control I am validating.  The * then indicates to the user that there is an error with that field. 
    Following setting the text I set the ErrorMessage property of the CustomValidator to the error message I want to display.  This message will then appear in the validation summary control if you have placed one on the page.
    Now its time to do a little coding.  First thing you will want to do is code up the server side validation for the validator.  This part of the validation is important in case the user's browser doesn't support JavaScript or the user attempts to bypass the script on the client side.
    In my particular case I was validating a rich textbox control that was required.  In my particular case the control would be blank either if it was actually blank or if it had "<p>&nbsp</p>", hence I could not just use the RequiredFieldValidator.  To code the server side check you use the ServerValidate event of the CustomValidator control and check the value property of the args objects that is passed in by the system.  Perform your logic and if the value passes set args.IsValid = True, otherwise set it to False. 

Protected Sub CustomValidator1_ServerValidate(ByVal source As System.Object, ByVal args As System.Web.UI.WebControls.ServerValidateEventArgs) Handles CustomValidator1.ServerValidate

            If String.IsNullOrEmpty(args.Value) Or args.Value = "<p>&nbsp;</p>" Then
                args.IsValid = False
            Else
                args.IsValid = True
            End If


        End Sub
   


   This function will then execute when a button that has its CausesValidation property set equal to true is clicked.  Then, at any point in time if you want to check if all the validators on a page are valid you check if Page.IsValid is equal to true.

            That’s it for handling the server side validation, but the next step is to handle the client side validation so that the client is not forced to look at a post back before knowing that they have an invalid input field.

            To handle the client side validation you just need to write a simple JavaScript function that takes two parameters, sender and args.  You can then evaluate args.Value against your logic, and set args.IsValid equal to either true or false.

  function TxtQuestionValidate(sender, args)

   {

     if (args.Value == '' || args.Value == '<p>&nbsp;</p>')

         {

            args.IsValid = false;

         }

              else

         {

            args.IsValid = true;

         }

    }

You have a couple options for placing the javascript function.  The simple way would be just to put it right into the .ascx page.  Whereas this is easy, I try to steer away from this as you would then need to place this function in every page where you need it.  I prefer to write a service layer function that returns it to me as a string and then insert it into the page on the page load event as follows:

Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(Me.GetType(), "TxtQuestionValidate", Services.GeneralService.GetTxtBoxValidateJavascript(), True)

            Finally, you need to tell Studio to use this function as the client side script so on your custom validation control simple set the ClientValidationFunction to the name of your JavaScript function.  You now have a custom validation with a client side script to prevent a post back, which I am pretty sure is what Bigyan would do.  I hope he’s having a good time in Nepal, but I’ll be happy to have him back in 25 days.  Its boring going to Starbucks by myself!

     Well, I've been slacking on getting the next blog post out on the steps I used to build my DVR.  I will hopefully get time to post the next steps soon, but for now I just wanted to post an updated on my hardware setup.  Like I had posted earlier, I been wanting to increase the memory in the computer.  It started out with 512MB which was working fine, but I am sure the system would suffer if I was recording two shows and watching a recording.  I went ahead and added 1GB more of memory, giving me a total of 1.5GB.  I didn't do any specific benchmark testing, but the picture did seem to look a little better.  I really wanted this memory boost for when I add an HD tuner card to the system, which I hope to do in the next couple months.
     The other thing I added was another fan to the system.  I have been experience system lockups about every 2 to 3 weeks and I think it is because the system is overheating.  The box lives on the bottom shelf of a wood entertainment stand so I have a feeling the heat is building up in the enclosed space.  I hope this extra fan with resolve the issue.
     That's about it for now.  For those of you keeping track of the total investment so far that I have put into the system, the fan was $2.99 and the memory was $89.99.  I got both from Newegg.com and including shipping they came to $99.27.  Hopefully I'll have time to get the next few DVR steps up soon.

    Well, for sometime now I have been working on building a DVR from a computer.  After several months I am finally at a point where I consider the project done, and I have decided to post a how-to so that others can build one of their own and hopefully bypass a few of the pitfalls that I hit and benefit from my time Googling.
    I chose to build my DVR using MythTV, a Linux DVR platform, and specifically I used the KnoppMyth version.  Why didn't I use Windows Media Center?  Well, I'm a big fan of the