Tatham Oddie

Even after running it for over a fortnight now (I think?) I only just found out how to submit feedback about my experiences. Surprisingly, this beta isn't covered by the new Microsoft Beta Client tool that is used for Windows Vista. Instead they use a program called "Send a Smile".

As gimmicky as it looks and feels, it's actually pretty nice to use. It adds two little faces to your notification area – one happy and one sad:

When you click either one of these buttons it automatically takes a screenshot, gathers all the version information and platform data that they might possibly need, gathers some free-form text to describe the experience you just had, then sends it off to the product team. Of course, if the screenshot isn't perfect then you can refresh it, or if it's irrelevant you can choose not to send it.

I wonder if this approach to the problem is another case of Microsoft being the out-of-touch parent?

Of course – they couldn't stick to the nice simple "Send a Smile" name could they – under the covers it's called the "Microsoft Office Information Worker Feedback Tool".

For my inner web developer:

• Really easy field validation with Prototype
• Prototype class: FastInit()
• Faster DOM Queries

Writing:

• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing
• One Simple Rule for Improving Your Writing
• Commas, Commas, and More Commas

(just noting the links here so I don’t loose them)

About an hour ago I blogged about the fact that the Media Center packaged with Vista Beta 2 couldn't even play an MP3 file smoothly (along with a number of other issues). It turns out that there seems to be a memory leak in the eshell.exe process (the Media Center) UI which keeps spiralling it into an obscene footprint and chewing up most of my CPU cycles before eventually crashing. I've found a partial workaround that at least lets the sound work for a short amount of time during this destructive period.

From http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/kristans_blog/archive/2006/06/05/2992.aspx:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click “Hardware and Sound”.
3. Click on “Audio Devices and Sound Themes”.
4. Double click on the playback device you have installed in your computer.
5. Navigate to the “Options” tab.
6. Under “Exclusive Mode”, check “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device”.
7. Also check “Give exclusive mode applications priority”.
8. Press OK.

Now when you are rockin’ to your
favorite tunes in Windows Media Player while doing some heavy data
crunchin’, you won’t miss a beat!

Now to try and work out where the issue is coming from and how to fix it. I almost have a working system again!

technorati tags:windows, vista, mediacenter, mce, mp3, eshell.exe

Update: This post refers to Beta 2 of Windows Vista. It remains for reference purposes, however is most likely innacurate in the context of the released product. 

The first stage of my enthusiastic upgrade push was to upgrade my Media Center box to Windows Vista Ultimate. The install experience was great. Vista is great. The included build of Media Center is somewhere between appauling and utterly pathetic.

• Launching Media Center from the Start menu or the official remote results in me seeing a black screen (not even a mouse cursor) for about 30 seconds with no sound. Eventually I see and hear the Media Center UI appear. The used to load almost instantly in XP MCE even though the machine had 256MB of RAM instead of the 1GB that I installed in preparation for Vista. The graphics card has another 256MB of video RAM on it so there shouldn’t be any delays there either.
• It can’t even play an MP3 file smoothly – it stutters and jerks every 15 to 20 seconds.
• It took almost 3 hours to add 14 MP3 files to the library from a local folder.
• All of my movies (XViD and DivX format primarily) play fine in WMP11, and both Windows Explorer and Media Center display thumbnail snapshots (which are generated separately instead of being shared), however they won’t play in Media Center. I get a black screen and audio … nothing else … not even an error message so I can start diagnosing the problem.
• The user interface feels like a serious step backwards, but that’s just my subjective feeling.

Overall, my experience with Vista has been great so far. I haven’t had a single crash / bug, even though I quite willingly expected to see 1 or 2 by now. My experience with Media Center leaves much to be desired, and I’m currently reformatting back to XP MCE again so that I can actually watch TV. We shouldn’t be seeing issues as deep as this by the second beta.

technorati tags:windows, vista, xp, mediacenter, mce, wmp11, wmp, mp3, xvid, divx

Update: My XViD and DivX movies now play properly. The DivX codec seems to be incompatible with this build, but the XViD codec can decode both formats. Having DivX installed kills both formats though – wierd. I still consider this to be a bug on Microsoft’s side as it wouldn’t report the codec error at all like WMP does. Most of the time it shows a scrambled screen (because of the transition effect) that is meant to be drawn over by the movie but just never does. I’ll see if I can stay on this platform after all … but most likely not considering it still can’t even play an MP3 file.

Over the last 4 to 6 ish years that Microsoft computing has been relatively stagnant, I've invested a lot of time in "branch solutions". For example, I don't use ASP.NET Webforms – I use MonoRail. As a result I've had an equivalent of master pages for years now. While this was a great solution at the time I made the decision, it now means I've strayed a bit too far from the pack to really know what's going on. Sure, I know the marketing pitches for all these new technologies almost backwards (I even present on some of them), however I don't use these new technologies. Well, it's time to see what's out there and spend a few weeks in "official land".

I've also decided that it's time to start seriously kicking around with WPF, WF, WCF, WCS and all the other cool bits that are starting to fall from the heavens.

technorati tags:.net, wcf, wcs, wf, wpf, microsoft, office, windows, vista, monorail, activerecord, castleproject, asp.net

Initial Problem:

Lacking a working body clock means that sometimes my work day goes from 0900 to 1700, but other days it'll go from 1600 to 1000 the next day … One of the downsides to working through the night in the middle of winter is that it's bloody cold. Even during summer my house is dubbed 'the freezer' and is often colder inside than out (I'd be warmer in a tent on the front patio if it wasn't for the wind).

Solution:

1. Take laptop to kitchen.
2. Whip up a basic risotto – stir with one hand and type with the other; consult the Cookbook:Risotto entry on Wikibooks if you need to.
3. Load with a significant amount of Tobasco.
4. You'll be warm and toasty for at least the 15 mins you'll spend eating it – and then you can just reload for more.

New Problem:

Rice has a high glycemic load, which triggers an influx of cholecystokinin to be released by the gut. Cholecystokinin does a number of things: it encougrages digestion; it stops you feeling hungry; and it puts you to sleep (not good for midnight coding sessions!).

Oh well … It was nice while it lasted. Maybe risotto + tobasco + Red Bull would work … except for the fact that Red Bull is a disgusting concoction of sugar, taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine with a slew of documented health risks. Even so, they still sell something over 2 billion cans a year so it can't be too much of an issue.

technorati tags:food, cooking, risotto, tabasco, redbull

As listed on http://dot.net.nz/, I will be presenting both the Microsoft "Atlas" framework and the Virtual Earth platform in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin later this month.

In this demo-centric presentation, Tatham Oddie will provide a developer’s overview of the Microsoft "Atlas" framework. This new Web development technology from Microsoft integrates client-script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 server-based development framework. "Atlas" makes it possible to easily take advantage of AJAX techniques on the Web and enables you to create ASP.NET pages with a rich, responsive UI and server-communication.

Following the recent addition of New Zealand mapping data to the Virtual Earth platform, Tatham will also demonstrate how you can integrate VE functionality into your applications using the support already available through the "Atlas" framework.

The talk dates/times are:

• Auckland – Tuesday 27th June at 1800 (Click here to RSVP)
• Wellington – Wednesday 28th June at 1800 (Click here to RSVP)
• Christchurch – Thursday 29th June at 1200 (Click here to RSVP)
• Dunedin – Thursday 29th June at 1800 (Click here to RSVP)

Unfortunately, if you are based in Christchurch I think you will miss out on the VE component of the talk as we will be under stricter time constraints so that people can get back to work.

The talks will be an updated (and slightly reorganised) version of the series I did along the east coast of Australia during April. You can get the resources for these talks from my previous post – "Updated Atlas Slides + Demos".

technorati tags:presentation, asp.net, atlas, virtualearth, new-zealand

In preparation for yet another blog move (this time to oddie.com.au) I've setup an RSS proxy. This basically allows me to hand out one feed URL for people to subscribe to, while I can move the blog anywhere I please.

While the existing feed URLs will continue to work for a few more weeks, you should really change any subscriptions to use:

http://feeds.oddie.com.au/Tatham/Blogs/Professional.rss

Currently I'm just using some funky redirect configurations in IIS6 (that's right – no code at all) however I'm in the process of developing a simple ASP.NET site that will do things like feed merging, stats tracking, and more importantly put the redirect onus on my server instead of your aggregator.

If you want to take a sneak peak at the new site, take a look at the entry page (there are a total of 7 designs – you get a random design every time you load, so refresh a few times):

or the design mockup for the new professional blog:

technorati tags:rss, asp.net, webdesign, mockup

Why is it a geekish desire to obscure everything from the non-geekish members of our community? I received an email today along the lines of "what time will be you home so I can drop by?". I replied with the following:

Ok – the notation isn't perfect – but we were aiming for simplicity here right?

Update: She replied with "Hehe. Math = Funny." Can you tell she's spent too much time at university?

Update: There was only really an 75 minute period where I'd be home and she turned up during it so she must have read it right!

technorati tags:maths, geeks

I found this interesting link through a post that Frank Arrigo made recently – basically it traverses the HTML of a page and then turns it into a pretty little graph. At first glance I dismissed it as totally useless, but then I actually started analysing what it showed. In doing so, it colours the graph nodes based on what type of HTML element they represent (link, table structure, etc).

If you look at the graph for SSW's homepage you can see that it is dominated with a lot of red nodes. These nodes represent table markup (TABLE, TR, TD, etc) and are reflective of their heavy reliance on tables for markup. There are also a significant number of blue nodes representing links. The graph is a pretty good indication that Google will be sifting through a lot of redundant markup to find anything (the red nodes) and any PageRank earned will be diluted across a lot of pages (the blue nodes). The density of blue nodes (links) also indicates there are a lot of possible navigation paths from the homepage, which to me indicates that it's most likely overcomplicated and doesn't provide a clear banana for users.

In contrast, if you look at the graph for Unwired's homepage it's instantly obvious that their underlying markup is much cleaner. Granted, they don't have as much content as SSW, however for a homepage I think that's almost better. The lack of any red nodes (tables) indicates that a search engine will be focussing on more relevant markup and content. The concise number of blue nodes (links) indicates that there are a small set of clearly defined navigation paths from the homepage.

The graph of Fuel Advance's homepage shows a very few nodes at all, even though it has more content than the Unwired homepage. This can be attributed to a combination of a simpler layout (it's fairly bland at the moment – although in the process of changing) but more so to the fact that we eliminated a lot of redundant markup during the development phase. (Take a look at the source code of the page and see for yourself.) This is one of the main reasons why our PageRank is so high for such a small site that few people link to.

You can see a whole gallery of generated DOM graphs by looking at the websitesasgraphs tag on Flickr.

Update (9th June 2006): Added inline screenshots for quick references (but you miss out on the cool animations this way). Added link to gallery of graphs.

Update (12th June 2006): Added inline screenshots of the actual websites instead of just the graphs.

technorati tags:websitesasgraphs, CSS, webdev