Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 04/27/2008

Friday, May 02, 2008

JPL Open House This Weekend (May 3rd & 4th)

"NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will welcome members of the public to its Open House on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4. Children will be able to participate in many hands-on activities.

At this free, all-day event, visitors can watch 700-pound robots glide under artificial stars in JPL's Robodome, get an up-close view of full-scale models of Mars rovers, and learn how spacecraft are prepared for their journeys in special clean rooms.

They will see numerous solar system, robotics and Earth science exhibits and learn about various space missions, including the Mars Phoenix Lander, scheduled to land on the Red Planet on May 25. Visitors can also see how NASA instruments measure greenhouse gases, which will help scientists better understand global climate change.

..."

How awesome is that? I wonder if I can talk my son into going with me...

(via LAMetblog - it’s a damn geeky weekend in los angeles [by Wil Wheaton...])

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 - Now with Vista/ Windows Server 2008 and x64 Support

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 (for IT Professionals)

"...

In response to direct customer need for a streamlined method of identifying common security misconfigurations, Microsoft has developed the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA). It includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems.

MBSA 2.1 extends previous versions by adding support for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008. MBSA 2.1 also provides full 64-bit installation, scan tool and vulnerability assessment (VA) checks, improved SQL Server 2005 checks, and support for the latest Windows Update Agent (WUA) technologies. More information on the capabilities of MBSA 2.1 is available on the MBSA Web site.

MBSA 2.1 runs on Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems and will scan for common security misconfigurations in the following products: Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0, and 6.0, SQL Server 7.0, 2000 and 2005, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000, 2002 and 2003. MBSA also scans for missing security updates, update rollups and service packs published to Microsoft Update.

Choose the appropriate download below for English (EN), German (DE), French (FR) and Japanese (JA) for x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) platforms. [Overview leached in full]

..."

Installed smooth and easy on my Vista x86 and run pretty quickly...

Sometimes it's good to have a second pair of eyes (well zero's and one's) look over my systems and make sure I haven't jacked up the security at some point in the past...

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Expression Studio 2 RTM's Today

Somasegar's WebLog - Expression Studio 2 RTMs today!

"Last year the Microsoft Expression team shipped a new suite of tools for creative professionals. This first release of Expression Studio marked a significant milestone in the history of development tools at Microsoft, delivering superior designer-developer workflow and providing designers a set of interaction design, graphic design, Web design, digital asset management and video production tools to deliver better user experiences on Windows and the Web.

I am pleased to announce, just one year later, the team has done it again with today’s release of Microsoft Expression Studio 2. [GD: emphasis added]

I wrote about the beta release of Expression Studio 2 announced earlier this year at MIX08. Since then, the team has put the final touches on Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Media, and Expression Encoder delivering over 100 new features ranging from support for Silverlight, .NET Framework, Office 2007, and Office for Mac 2008 to PHP and Adobe Photoshop import capabilities. You can learn more about the latest Expression Studio features here.

..."

It's not yet on MSDN Subscribers Download (Universal Subscription). When it is I'll update this post...

Update #1 5/6/2008:

It's available for download from MSDN, if you have the right subscription... BUT not yet via the "normal" MSDN Downloads site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx), but instead via the Top Subscribers Download list.

Downloading it now... :)

SQL Server 2008 FILESTREAM Attribute from Start to C#

MSSQLTips.com - Using FILESTREAM to Store BLOBs in the NTFS File System in SQL Server 2008

"Problem
SQL Server 2008 provides the capability of storing BLOBs (e.g. MP3, Word, Excel, PDF, etc.) in the NTFS file system rather than in a database file. I am interested in how to configure the FILESTREAM technology in Management Studio. Could you help us to understand the benefits and provide details on how to implement this new feature in SQL Server 2008? Further, I am interested in how to use this functionality with the C# programming language.
...
In this tip we are going to gain an understanding of FILESTREAM by walking through a simple code sample to demonstrate the steps to:

Configure FILESTREAM
Add a BLOB from T-SQL code
Add a BLOB from C# code
..."

A nice start to finish FILESTREAM article.

I wonder how many code wrappers are going to be written to encapsulate the required .Net code? (i.e. this looks like a wheel we're going to be recreating for every project/group/company/etc...)

Also I wonder what the Linq to SQL/Linq to Entities and the FILESTREAM attribute story is going to be?

Storing and using a Password with PowerShell - Fun with ConvertTo-SecureString and ConvertFrom-SecureString

Rob Costello - Powershell Tip - Storing and Using Password Credentials

"So I've been doing quite a bit of Powershell scripting lately, and this little tid-bit came in very handy, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

In Powershell you can use the Get-Credential cmdlet to get alternate logon credentials when you need to perform a task from the shell. But the Get-Credential cmdlet won't accept a hardcoded password in a script. So, how do you write a script that needs to run without user intervention and needs to use credentials other than those of the account used to run it?

Well, here is the answer.

..."

A seemly safer approach to storing a password in an external file for later usage by Get-Credential. Much better than hard coding a plaintext password in the script (if you could do that...).

I'm not sure if this scares me or not (i.e. the saving of the password to a file)... but I still like it.

New "Level 200" Threading and Synchronization Article

Microsoft.Net Technology Blog - Vikas Goyal - Master Managed Threading and Synchronization Techniques

"Check out my latest article on Devx.com.
It starts from the basics of Threading & Thread Management, and dives deep into various synchronization
techniques available in .NET framework which includes inter-thread and inter-process synchronization.

The synchronization techniques discussed are:
 Locks / Monitors
 Mutex
 Interlocked
 Read-Writer Locks
 Semaphores
 EventWaitHandle" [Post leached in full]

Another great article by Vikas Goyal. 13 printed pages, with simple, yet effective, examples and code snips throughout.

We're living in a brave new multi-core world and until higher level help is in place (like the Task Parallel Library, CCR, PLinq, etc), we need to start getting comfortable with threading, locking and such.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Easily Geo-locate your photo's with the free Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 1.0 utility

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Pro Photo Tools version 1

"...

The Pro Photo Tools allow you to add, change, and delete common metadata properties for digital photographs. You can place photos on the Live Earth map and then drag them to the right location. The GPS information will be stored back into the photos. If you have a GPS device, can load track route files from the most popular formats (NMEA, GPX, and KML) and see them on the map. Then you can place your photos on the track route. Again, the GPS info will be stored into your file. When you have the right GPS location for your photos, you can automatically generate location info like country, state, city and even street names. Or if you know the location where a picture was taken, you can type it in and get the GPS location information automatically.

..."

This an interesting little utility that makes it easy to apply GPS coordinates to your photo's, to see their metadata, create routes, etc.

Free "Star Wars Legacy: Betrayal" in Audio, PDF, Kindle and Sony Reader formats (Offer Expires May 13, 2008)

Random House - Star Wars Legacy:Betrayal

"...

Have you ever wondered what happened to Han, Luke and Leia after the events of Return of the Jedi?
Now, in BETRAYAL, the legacy that began with Anakin Skywalker has finally come full circle. Join Han, Luke, Leia, and the other heroes of the New Jedi Order in their epic struggle to maintain peace in the galaxy, as a new threat rises from the most unexpected of places.
Download a free copy of
STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE: BETRAYAL
...

For a free digital PDF, click here
For a free Audiobook, click here

For a free Amazon Kindle e-book, click here

For a free Sony Reader e-book, click here
Offer expires at Midnight, May 13, 2008!
..." [Much of the content and download links leached]

Because Free and Star Wars are hard to pass up. Also since I don't yet have audio books on my Zune (all that empty space on my Zune 80 is bugging me... must... fill... zune... must...fill... :)

(via The Road to Know Where - Random House Releases Free Audiobook of StarWars: Legacy of the Force - BETRAYAL)

SQL Metal OSUI - A Visual Studio 2008 Addin, wrapping SQL Metal, to help you Linq to SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 databases

CodePlex - SQL Metal Open Source User Interface

"This project provides an user interface for SqlMetal.exe tool.

SQLMetalOSUI allows users to generate code and mapping files for their SQL Server Compact Edition databases.

SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 is fully compatible with LINQ to SQL but the designer does not. This project will be focused to reach this initial purpose.

...

..."

If you're Linq'ing to SQL CE 3.5 DB's often (or rarely and forget how to use SQLMetal) then this little VS Addin might come in handy for you...

Related Past Post XRef:
LINQ to Compact SQL

EA-Land(of the Dead) - EA-Land Takes a Deep Drive into the Deadpool

TechChrunch - EA-Land (The Sims Online) Joins The Deadpool

"EA-Land, the service previously known as The Sims Online will shut August 1, despite a much hyped revamp announced late February.

..."

Yes, I was really bored one recent weekend and I installed this. And played it for like 5 minutes...lol

I'm just not a "The Sims" guy I guess.

Oh well... Now I'm glad I didn't hooked. ;)

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Free Spell Checker (Strings Literals, Comments, etc) for Visual Studio - ComponentOne's IntelliSpell Community Edition

ComponentOne - IntelliSpell

"...

You are able to download, pass to your friends, and enjoy the idea of freedom from spelling errors. This version is limited to the English dictionary, and the ability to check the file you are currently working in.
..."

I saw this today in my print edition of SD Times, ComponentOne ships spell checker for Visual Studio, and thought it well worth a quick look.

You have to register to get it, which I found an interesting process. I tried using my primary email address, but it kept saying that address already existed. So I try the "send me my password" which then tells me my email address doesn't exist... LOL

In any case, I finally got an account and downloaded it. Install was fast and easy.

It's easy to use... Open a "document" and Tools/Component One/Check Active Document and that's it. Comments, string literals, XML, HTML, resources, string constants, etc are all spell checked.

What's pretty cool is that if you open a form, and spell check it, all of it's "code behind" files are spell checked too. For example, I opened a form, spell checked it and it found issues in the Designer.VB file, resx file and the main VB file.

And you get all the eye candy you're used to with red squiggly's, suggestions, etc.

For the price it's pretty darn nice... :)

TFS2008 SP1 Coming soon... With all of its new features it's more a v2.1...

bharry's WebLog - Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 Preview

"The stream of new stuff coming out for VS/VSTS/TFS 2008 continues! - see my recent post on an update to the TFS Power Tools. It is time for me to tell you about what is coming in TFS 2008 SP1. The release of the Beta is very close (as always, don't ask me for a date but if you want to play with it when it comes out, start figuring out how you are going to find the time :)).
TFS 2008 SP1 is going to be another fantastic release. In TFS 2005 SP1, we started the tradition of adding small, tactical features that address common customer requests or enable delivering new value out of band. In TFS 2008 SP1, that practice has gone into overdrive and we are delivering a ton of great new stuff for you. Keeping with the theory that an SP should always be better (more stable, faster, etc) than what came before it, we continue to focus on tactical "low risk" improvements that are primarily based on customer feedback. We leave the big game changing, major new scenario features for our major releases.
...
In addition to a long list of bug fixes (which I plan to publish when we get closer to SP1 release), there is an amazing list of new features. The new features in TFS 2008 SP1 include:
..."

Looks like TFS2008 SP1 is going to be a major release (okay more like a minor .1 release, but you get the idea).

Tons of new features and and lots polishing. And IMHO it feels that the features are based on real world usage feedback. I found myself saying, "Oh yeah, I've so wanted that..." a number of times as I read through Brian's list.

Tame the Office 2007 Ribbon UI with this Free Training from Microsoft

Out Of The Box - Scared of the Office Ribbon?

"...

And if that is not enough, check out Course 4697: Introduction to the New Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface. Hurry while it's a free E-Learning offering."

Since I seem to be on this Office/Ribbon kick... Here's some free Ribbon UI training to through into the mix.

Once you sign up, the free E-Learning will be available to you for 90 days...

Now I know most of you will not need this training, but maybe there's a "friend" who could use it... ;)

Office Labs Community Clips - Quick, easy and free Screen & Audio Recording to WMV

PerformancePointy: Wade Dorrell - Show Your Work

"One of the great tools Microsoft Office Labs builds is "Community Clips", which makes it easy to record what happens on-screen, along with microphone-in, as a nicely-compressed WMV file.
..."

OfficeLabs - Project: Community Clips

"...
Community Clips is a portal for viewing, sharing, and discussing informal "how-to" videos (screencasts) on Microsoft Office products. It also includes a client application for easy recording of screen views and voice. [GD: Emphasis added]
..."

Community Clips - Download
"...

Install Community Clips v1.0
1. Install Community Clips v1.0
2. When installation is complete, a Community Clips icon will appear in your system tray and Office Ribbon:
..."

I totally missed this yesterday. I mistook the Community Clips site as a simple video sharing (i.e. Soapbox, Youtube, etc) site. Not only is it that, but they also released is a utility to help you create the videos too! And it works outside of Office.

This free utility can be used to capture a video of your screen, your audio (Mic In) and bundle it into a WMV file for uploading to the Community Clips site OR to email it OR to save it to you drive for later uploading to other sites.

The format, bit rate, etc is all hard coded into the app, probably to provide as simple a utility as possible. And simple to use it is.

Windows - Alt - R to start recording (or clicking on the icon in the system tray and selecting Start Recording) and away you go. To pause or stop you click on the system tray icon again. At that point you get a preview window to view your recorded video. From there you can save it, email it, upload it, File 13 it (delete it), etc.

And here's a quick and dirty screencast done with it (I think this is my first screencast on my blog... :).

Related Past Post XRef:
Microsoft Office Labs Launches - Includes a "Where the heck did feature XYZ go" Search Command Addin

Monday, April 28, 2008

Free US ZIP Code Database as CSV

Mapping Hacks - CivicSpace ZIP Code Database

"About four years ago, Civic Space Labs commissioned me to provide them with a freely available database of US ZIP code centroids. For a while, it was hosted on their site, but at some point the link was broken. Since then, I’ve gotten about an email a month from people looking for the database.

For future reference, the free US ZIP code centroid database is now hosted here on the Mapping Hacks site. From the README:

The ZIP code database contained in ‘zipcode.csv’ contains 43204 ZIP
codes for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico,
and American Samoa. The database is in comma separated value format,
with columns for ZIP code, city, state, latitude, longitude, timezone
(offset from GMT), and daylight savings time flag (1 if DST is observed
in this ZIP code and 0 if not).
This database was composed using ZIP code gazetteers from the US Census
Bureau from 1999 and 2000, augmented with additional ZIP code information
from the Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line 2003 data set. Timezone information
was added using cartographic data sets from nationalatlas.gov. The
database is guaranteed to exclusively contain information gathered from
sources in the public domain, and thus be legal to redistribute.
The database is believed to contain over 98% of the ZIP Codes in current
use in the United States. ...

...

The database and this README are copyright 2004 CivicSpace Labs, Inc.,
and are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
license, which requires that all updates must be released under the same
license....

..."

This could come in handy...

Hook in the LinqToCSV project (via WindowsClient.net - LINQ to CSV library) and you've got a real winner.

Microsoft Office Labs Launches - Includes a "Where the heck did feature XYZ go" Search Command Addin

Microsoft Office Labs - About

"Welcome to Microsoft Office Labs!

This site is a proving ground for ideas that come from regular employees and interns who work anywhere in Microsoft. Most of the code prototypes are developed by the Office Labs team in partnership with the teams that make the products. After all, they produce most of the ideas. Some of the things you find here will be web-based, others are downloads. Some will be a combination, something we call "software + services."
The prototypes you see here are like "Concept Cars". They aren't products or features of Microsoft Office. Don't expect them to work perfectly, or be available here forever. Just as when a concept car is shown at an auto-show, one or two or none of the ideas shown might make it into a future vehicle. Everybody knows its unpredictable, so don't go off thinking this is some kind of preview for future versions of Office, ok? Anyway, we thought it would be interesting to present some ideas we are exploring.
..."

Microsoft Office Labs - Project: Search Commands

"
View Larger Image
Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks.
..."

Interesting idea... And interesting first project(s).

I dig the Ribbon UI, but sometimes the "where the heck did feature XYZ go to" game gets old. The Search Commands addin seems like it might help. Worth installing to find out anyway...

[A few minutes later...]

This Search Commands addin is pretty cool. It's less a Ribbon teaching tool, more a Ribbon Filter/Search (hence the name... ;), BUT it will still help you learn Ribbon too. Hover over a resulting commands and it will give you the Ribbon "location" for the given command.

To use it, you just enter the name of the feature, hit search, and you'll get a list of commands that fit that name. And it's not just Command Title text matching but "feature" matching.

For example, in Excel I entered "page" and it returned a few "pages" of results. One was the "Go To" command. Other results included Go to Header, Go to Footer, etc, etc. So it's a context as well as text search.

(via Contagious Curiosity - Search Commands)

[Humor] "Interesting" ActiveWin Headlines...

I had to laugh when I saw these two ActiveWin headlines, ordered as you see below. Vista must feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of OS's... ;)

Microsoft says 140M Vista licenses sold
How to Downgrade from Vista to XP

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Use File Preview Handlers in your (WPF) Application

CodeProject - Using Vista Preview Handlers in a WPF Application

"First of all, what is a preview handler? Preview handler is a COM object, that is called when you want to display the preview of your item. In other words, preview handlers are lightweight, rich and read-only previews of file’s content in a reading pane. You can find preview handlers in Microsoft Outlook 2007, Windows Vista and, even sometimes in XP. Can we use preview handlers within our WPF application? Probably we can. Let’s see how we can do it.

...
And now we're finished. We can use unmanaged preview handlers to display content of our files, held by the WPF application. Also, if you want, you can create your own preview handlers and they'll appear in your WPF application as well as they'll magically appear in Outlook. "

If the Preview Handlers are already there on your system, might as well get the best use of them you can!

I can thing of a couple cool things to do with this...

Your chance to code up your own Terminator... Enter RoboChamps

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson - RoboChamps – Online, Virtual Robot Competition

"Most robotic competitions are fairly expensive to enter. The hardware is expensive, hard to assemble and tends to break at the worst possible times. They are lots of fun for hardware geeks but not as much fun for software geeks. RoboChamps is different – RoboChamps is mostly about the software!
The idea is that there are different challenges modeled in a simulator. Participants have simulated robots to program to solve the challenge. The prizes (there have to be prizes) include actual physical robots. From the RoboChamps home page:

RoboChamps consist of a series of challenges. Each challenge comes with a 3-D simulation environment, a robot, a challenge scenario, and the rules for completing the scenario. From there, it’s up to your creativity and coding skills. Using .NET, code your robot to complete the challenge successfully, and submit an entry to the RoboChamps League. A referee service will be running to make sure the rules are being followed, determine your score and send it back to RoboChamps.com.

..."

Coding4Fun - My robot can totally beat up your robot

"

Microsoft launched a new contest called RoboChamp which is a simulated robotics competition.
By using Robotics Developer Studio 2008, you have the ability to write code or use an xbox 360 controller.
If you need some help getting started, RoboChamps has a detailed instructions area
..."

Oh my, that is just officially cool!

What a cool way to "encourage" people to install the Robotics Studio 2008 CTP. (Well it worked for me... downloading it now ;)

And here's my RoboCard (my not come through in feed sub's since it's iframe based)

Linq to HTML via Linq to XML

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB - Querying HTML with LINQ to XML

"Often times we need to parse HTML for data. Sure in a perfect world everything would have a nice service or API wrapped around it but as we all know this is not always the case. Many times we're left with parsing files or "screen scraping" to get the data we need from other applications. Sure this is brittle, but sometimes it's the best we can do. And sometimes you're just trying to get the data once so "good enough" is really good enough.

I was faced with that challenge myself this week. Yes even here not all systems expose services or if they do, finding the documentation or person to consult would take longer than writing a simple program. ;-) At the core all I needed to do was query a couple pieces of data from a bunch of web pages. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use LINQ to XML because the structure of the page was pretty well formed HTML. However there were a couple tricks to figure out mainly because LINQ to XML doesn't support HTML entities. It only supports character entities and the built in XML entities (< > " & ').
...

And that's it. For this simple utility this is good enough for me and took me about 15 minutes to program using LINQ. The trick to loading the HTML document into an XElement is to remove all the unsupported HTML entity references first.
Enjoy!"

This is a cool hack/trick... The challenge, as Beth points out, is dealing with malformed HTML and reserved XML characters. But even there, she provides a method of dealing with the XML character side of the problem.

The next time I need a a quick and dirty way to Linq to HTML I'm going to give this a go...

Consolas for your Command Prompt

IEBlog - Give Your Eyes a Treat

"If you’re a developer, there’s an easy way to give your eyes a rest and make yourself more productive. Use the Consolas font Microsoft developed specifically for you.
...
Look at the difference Consolas makes, for instance, in the CMD.EXE window. Here’s what the standard 8 x 12 pixel raster font looks like…

… and here’s Consolas

...
Bryn Spears on the Internet Explorer team gave me the following simple instructions to turn on Consolas in the CMD Window:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 00 /d Consolas
logoff
Note: In Windows Vista, you need to run the reg command from an elevated command prompt.

When you log back in, Consolas will be an option in the “Command Prompt” Properties. (n.b., Bryn tells me it actually shows up before you relog, but it won’t work.)
You can install Consolas on your Windows system even if you don’t have Vista or Office 2007 with a free download from Microsoft.com
..."