All Things Geekery – A blog by Eric

Being self-employed (not entirely by choice), I’m dabbling in things on the side to bring in some extra income.

I’ve been buying and selling on ebay, trying my hand at internet marketing, and doing surveys (yes, the online kind where you get paid).  I’ve made a couple of hundred dollars now (over several months) and some Amazon gift cards (always useful).

So far, the best place I’ve found to do surveys is SurveySavvy.  They pay for many different types of surveys, and some of the surveys can lead to a “focus group” that has it’s own payments (like the Amazon gift cards I’ve been getting).

So, if you want to do surveys, head on over to SurveySavvy and sign up.  You complete a couple of “profile surveys”, and then you get the paid survey links in your email. 

The Northeast Roadshow will be in Augusta this year (well, the Maine venue is).  It’s scheduled for December 16th (a Tuesday).  They’ve moved the venue, since the previous location was packed to overflowing.

Chris Bowen (one of the speakers) has more details (including the agenda) on his website.  I’m planning on attending.

Chris Harrison (a PhD student at CMU) is working on a new input method.  Scratching.

Yes, scratching.

Johnny Chung Lee (from the Wii remote fame) posted an article with some videos.  The technique looks rather interesting.  You can scratch and tap on a surface, and use it to control your computer, PDA, etc.

The full article is here (including a video of the scratch method).

Scratch Input and Low-Cost Multi-spectral material sensor

Here is another user interface.  It uses a space and time method to keep track of what you were doing.  The video explains it better than I can.

SpaceTime

I started to use ZSNes.  But I found that the development had pretty much died about 1.5 years ago.  So I checked to see what was good, but still had active development.  I found BSNes.  It doesn’t play all the games, but it does play most of the ones I want to play.

You can download the emulator here.  I’ll let you find your own Roms.  I’ve been playing Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda and Mechwarrior no problems.

bsnes – Super Nintendo Emulator 

Here are the system requirements.  They are a little hefty compare to many emulators, but, it plays very smooth on my dual-core machine. 

Minimum system requirements:

• 2ghz Athlon 64 or Core Solo
• 32mb RAM free

Recommended system requirements:

• 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo
• 64mb RAM free
• Video card that supports Direct3D9+
• Sound card that supports non-standard sampling rates natively (32khz, 64khz, …)

One quirk I found.  It didn’t automatically detect and use my MadCatz XBox 360 controller.  All I had to do was configure the “joypad” and it worked fine.

I’m a .NET Developer.  Primarily Visual Basic, but I’ve worked in C# before too.  I’ve also done some RPG (on the AS 400) and some PHP.

I’ve recently been contacted to do some contract PHP/MySQL work again.  So I started looking to see what was available for IDE tools.  I wanted something that would appear familiar to me.  I didn’t want to have to relearn the PHP language, AND learn a new IDE.

I found VS.PHP – It’s a PHP IDE that sits in the Visual Studio IDE.  They have several versions depending on what you need.  I chose the Standalone version, since I develop in a Virtual PC Windows XP box.  I didn’t want to install my VS 2008 license there, and not be able to use VS 2008 under Vista (where I do most of my .NET development.

I’ve only completed some sample projects, but so far, I’m impressed.  The IDE is familiar to me, and I get syntax checking, intellisense and the F5 functionality to test.  Reminds me a lot of doing ASP.Net development. I’m still using the free trial, but for the price of $99, it’s a definite “Must Buy” if I get the contract.

For the MySQL front-end, I’m trying MySQL-Front.  It has a trial version, so I’m using that.  So far, it’s decent.  The UI is a little old, but fairly easy to figure out.  I’ll be looking around for other visual front-ends for MySQL.  I like the SQL Server Management Studio, and I’d like something similar for MySQL.

Two methods, one for .NET (Visual Basic, but easily adjusted for C#) and the other for VB Classic (VB 5 and 6)

To check and see if the .NET code is running from the IDE:

More specifically, the .NET method checks to see if there is a debugger attached.  It is possible to attach a debugger to a compiled exe, so this would return True.

<code>
  If System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached Then
    ‘This is a way to see if we are running in the IDE. 

  End If
</code>

And, if you’re using VB Classic, you can use this:

<code>
‘Since Debug commands are compiled OUT, this will never return an error
‘when the code is compiled.
Private Function IsDebugMode as Boolean
  On Error Resume Next
  Debug.Assert 1/0
  IsDebugMode = (Err.Number <> 0)
  On Error Goto 0
End Function
</code>

Chris Bowen and Jim O’Neil are on the road (starting today).

I’ll be at the Augusta show, on October 3rd.  I’m definitely looking forward to the RoboLunch.

Here is the address for the Augusta show (you can find the other addresses when you register).

Riverview Psychiatric Center

250 Arsenal Drive
Sebago Room Augusta Maine 04332-0011
United States

Here are the available dates, with the link to registration:

The Agenda:

8:30 – Registration

9:00 – Understanding the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Abstraction is frequently used to create difficult-to-appreciate artwork, but when applied to software, abstractions can improve flexibility, independence, and the ability to compose higher-level concepts. ADO.NET Entity Framework, now shipping as part of Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1, helps you create models of your data that enable a familiar object-oriented programming experience. Entities map flexibly to data sources while providing insulation from schema changes at the same time. LINQ makes an appearance as well, using the familiar syntax we’ve seen with LINQ to Objects, SQL, and XML to query entities. You’ve got the picture, so get out there and model some works of art!

10:30 – Discovering Dynamic Data

ASP.NET Dynamic Data, introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release, breathes immediate (i.e., code-less) life into LINQ To SQL and Entity Framework data models by providing a customizable, template-driven, scaffolding framework. Put on your wizard hat, you now have dynamic power at your fingertips.

11:15 – Exploring Internet Explorer 8

Ahoy, developers! The release of Internet Explorer 8 is just around the bend. Of course, we’ll pull out the spyglass and take a look over the sea of new consumer features, but what does this next version mean for you as developer, and what should you do to navigate to glory? You’ll see how treasures like accelerators and web slices can be a differentiator for your company, see the new wave of compatibility features and options, and unearth the tools available for developers to make for smooth sailing on the sometimes turbulent web development waters.

12:00 – RoboLunch

Grab a lunch and join in as we delve into the world of robotics programming with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Think robotics is mostly for manufacturing systems, toys, and those cool little floor cleaning bots? You may be surprised at how the things we cover may come to affect your professional development life! Perhaps you’ll find yourself saying, “Thank you very luncho, Mr. Roboto!”

1:00 – UI, UX, U Confused?

One thing not missing from Microsoft’s development offerings is a choice of options. In this session, we’ll compare and contrast the various .NET technologies available for building client experiences (Windows Forms, WPF, XBAP, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Mobile) to give you some insight in to making the best choices for reaching your applications’ target audience.

1:45 – A RESTed Development

REST (Representational State Transfer) is what all the cool developers are using these days to communicate among distributed resources and services.  So that you’re not left standing idly by on the sidelines, we’ll look at the rationales of the approach, why it’s cleaner than SOAP, and how Microsoft has adopted REST in technologies such as WCF and ADO.NET Data Services.

3:15 – Befriending Unit Testing

Unit testing could be your new best friend, and we’re here to help make the proper introductions. A practice that ultimately results in reduced overall efforts, unit testing is a focus on crafting test code that verifies your application code isn’t misbehaving. In this session, we’ll focus on what unit testing is, how it can be done, and some of the proven and effective practices you can employ to help your unit tests pay dividends over time. If Humphrey Bogart were a developer, he would have agreed, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

4:00 – Wrapup, Giveways, and Bon Voyage!

Information and links courtesy of Chris Bowen’s Blog.  And remember, Chris Bowen will be doing the BAND meeting on October 2nd (topic is XNA Game Studio!)

Since I’m a contract developer, I work for many different clients.  That means, I need many different work environments.  The simplest solution to this, is to use Virtual Machines.

I used to use VMWare.  Now that I have a TechNet subscription, I’m playing with Virtual PC 2007.  So far, it works pretty well.  Very similar to VMware.

I’ll be researching tips on how to keep the VM’s as small as possible, yet still fast.  I plan on setting up a base Windows XP with SP3, and then copy that as my starting point for each client.  It’s rare that I use any OS other than XP. 

I will make a VM of Ubuntu though.  I want to play with that some more, and I don’t want to dual-boot at this point.

Note: To get the Virtual PC to release your mouse, hit the [hostkey].  By default, this is the Right Alt.

There are more Virtual PC Tips here.

Well, I did it. I’ve installed Windows Vista. The install went pretty smooth. I had to locate drivers for my NIC and my Video Card. Both came on the Motherboard DVD, so I didn’t have any troubles there.

Windows Updates gave me a bit of a fit. I think I was trying to install too many things at once. Once I settled down on only installing updates, then installing Office 2007, and then installing my other apps, it worked fine.

Speaking of Office 2007, I’m posting the article from within Word 2007. More of a test run to see if I like it. So far, it works ok… I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to post some articles with pictures and such.

But, back to the Vista stuff. I like the theme colors. But I’m still scrambling trying to find some of the settings that I like to tweak. One item that I really like is the new search functionality. Hit the Windows key, and start typing. It may even cause me to give up SlickRun… we’ll see…

That’s all for now. I have a birthday party to go to. I’ll try and post more thoughts on Vista later.

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders

Kinda hard to read the list of authors in the image on the left, but I’m one of them.  So.. YEAH ME!

This book has 10 robots you can build from a single LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit.  Expected ship date is late November 2008.

You can read more about it at Brick Labs – LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders.  Or, go pre-order the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders from Amazon!