For about two months I have been really looking forward to the 4.9 version of iTunes
- I expected seamless podcast support and most importantly auto conversion to bookmarkable
aac files. When you listen to number of podcasts I do you want a good podcast receiver.
So what did I find:

• Intergration with iTunes is OK - a true GUI directory is sweet although it is
  more basic than corporate GUIs I churned out in 1994 on 16 bit 386 machines
• No bittorrent support - this means podcast providers hosting bills will skyrocket if
  many users move away from iPodder
• We cannot paste custom urls when a podcast is not in Apple’s directory, like My’lanta for
  instance
• There is no Auto conversion to bookmarked files (aac) -aargh, bookmarks
  are why I bought an iPod in the first place
• No playlist per podcast - all podcasts are dumped into the same playlist. Do Apple
  not realize many people use their iPods solely for podcasts and don’t want to be scrolling
  through 100+ files at 90mph on the highway while simultaneously riding the bumper
  of a 911 and flipping off the SUV that they just cut up?

Ok enough of a rant already. I tried the Primetime
Podcast Receiver a month ago which looked promising but turned out to be
a little buggy with no bittorrent support either. Hopefully it will improve or iPodder
will add auto bookmarkable aac conversion. It is quite tempting to write something
myself building on my two week hack of my MP3
Jukebox (it looks rubbish but functionally was better than any commercial
MP3 Jukebox in 2001) .

Posted by Paul Lockwood as IPTV, Podcasts at 8:36 PM MST

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Bet you did not expect that! Has Paul given up on technology and turned to the slippery
side? Nah of course not; property is vague hobby of mine and the material is fascinating.
Plus when flipping houses you save almost 3% on each transaction (less MLS + Broker
fees). Recently I worked on Real Estate software and have seed ideas for a company
if anyone out there has a million or two in VC money.

So is anyone interested in hearing about my experience? If so speak up and I’ll post
some summaries of what they teach (to the allowed limits, if there are any - I’ll
ask tomorrow), how hard it is to become a Realtor etc.

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 7:17 PM MST

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It
took about five hours all-in to move from .Text to Das Blog. Thanks to
Michael Earls
for his part in dottext2dasblog.
I had to make a change to their codebase so my comments would import (I simply made
the tool drop bad comments rather than stop the entire import), but that was about
the only hiccup in the conversion process. Other issues were just time in setting
up dasBlog + trying to make it run alongside .Text - I gave up on that!

Comments won’t
be working until my hosting provider tweaks the security on a few new folders - this
should happen early on Monday.

Also I have not
finished the blog roll + url list, if you are missing it is nothing personal I just
wanted to wrap up now. Also if you are ATL .Net blogger please let me know and I’ll
add you to the list.

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 7:16 PM MST

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On my current
project we wished to impersonate a WebService for test purposes and decided to record
live messages using XmlSerialization. For the first few messages I manually implemented
code to serialize to a file. This cut-and-paste reuse obviously had to be refactored
but I was unhappy manually passing in the filename to every call of the new method
since the files are named the same as the webmethod. Somehow the generic serialization
code needed to know who called it, or to put it in Jerry’s terms it had to ask ‘Were
were I?’. Jerry replied
to my first ever blog post and finally I got a chance to use his suggestion:

http://dotnetworkaholic.com/PermaLink,guid,692ca362-89cb-4dad-985f-92aea92ca96b.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/customtracelistener.asp

The crux is the
StackTrace class which resides in the System.Diagnostics namespace. It is exactly
as you might expect - very simple when you know it exists but I believe it would be
hard to find using Google etc.

This is the code
snippet I used after re-reading Jerry’s Code Project article:

#region Get the
calling method (”Where were I” - courtesy of Jerry Dennany)
System.Diagnostics.StackTrace st = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace();
string methodName = “unknown”;
if (st.FrameCount > 0)
{
System.Diagnostics.StackFrame sf = st.GetFrame(1);
methodName = sf.GetMethod().Name;
}
#endregion

Being a stickler
for simplicity I read the MSDN help and reduced the code to:

#region Get the
calling method name (”Where were I” - courtesy of Jerry Dennany)
System.Diagnostics.StackTrace st = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace(1, false);
string methodName = st.GetFrame(0).GetMethod().Name;
#endregion

I am not sure
that my employer will be sending a Mr. Dennany a check anytime soon, but I appreciated
the helpful article. This is a good reminder of why we ‘waste’ so much time with blogs.

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 6:47 PM MST

1 Comment »

Just a heads-up. Love or hate certifications we will likely be hearing that
next year for any senior .Net position. Even if you are already MC*.* you don’t have
this one which is coming next year:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/architect/

I stumbled across this while researching MCDBA. Apparently if you are an already MCSD,
only two more exams are needed for an MCDBA. It is probably worth the $250 + a
couple of months study time - yes Dave I am a slow learner ;)

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 5:50 PM MST

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Two important points here:

1. Radio
   Me is a term coined by Peter Day of the BBC for what was formerly known as podcasting.
   English media appears to bending over backward to never say the word iPod or
   podcasting
2. If you have a commute more than a few miles each day and are not listening to
   Radio Me then stop reading right now and order a portable MP3
   player asap -an iRiver or an iPod are probably the best options (iPod may
   not good if you listen to music because of Apple’s iTunes store lock-in, I consume
   free podcasts + do a lot of running so the iPod mini was perfect)

Ok, you have an MP3 player. Now go and subscribe to feeds. There are many clients
out there that will auto download new ‘RadioMe transmissions’ in the way your
aggregator gathered this blog post. iPodder is
a good one to start with - it works with any mp3 player and works flawlessly
with my iPod Mini (which cannot
bookmark MP3s - aarghhh, bloody marketing - that’s why I bought it).

In a year of listening to Radio Me this is what I think all my .Net buddies
should at least try:

Yes, that is the list, notice how short it is? I have about ten more shows I
listen to regularly, but none I would strongly recommend to anyone else. Just like
blogs there are a many Radio Me broadcasters, but making quality audio appears
to be much harder than buying a $40 microphone - the best all have a background in
TV or Radio. Within a year I think Radio Me will have circa twenty well known
technical shows with others trying for a while then fading (back
to blogging?). As an example you have time to scan my ‘F-List’ blog in a few seconds
to evaulate if a post is worth reading. Listening takes much more effort.

Final point on in car use of MP3 players: Transmitters are OK if you are patient trying
different frequencies, but drain the battery and do drop out occasionally. I bought
a ‘Head Unit Aux Adapter’ from my dealer ($40!) + dismantled the dash and connected
it to the stock radio. I hear Best Buy etc will do the work, but personally it took
30 minutes install time which was fine apart car looking like this for a
few minutes:

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Podcasts at 12:02 PM MST

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