Last night was our fourth hockey game of the season. We lost the first two, both by a single goal; the first one we really should have won, the second was just a hard-fought game. We won the third game, 7-1. To be honest I felt kind of bad about that one. You’d think it would be fun to have a game like that, but I always remember the times I was on the losing end of those games and it’s hard to enjoy it.

Anyway, like I said, last night was the fourth game of the season. We ended up coming back from a 2-0 deficit to tie it, but it felt like a win, the way we played. Our opponents were the best team in the league (same team that won the championship last season), so a tie isn?t bad at all (we can do better, though. ;)) After the game, our goalie stood up in front of everyone and announced that I had had a ?monster? game, my ?best game of the season, by far?, and that I was ?absolutely everywhere on the ice?. I think I blushed. :) Anyway, it was a really good game; I had lots of great defensive plays, stopping breakaways, cutting off passes, etc.

I did have one big fall, though, which everyone teased me about mercilessly. The captain said he was taking up a collection to have my skates sharpened. :) We had the puck in their zone, 2nd period, we were getting lots of good pressure. Curry, one of the forwards, got the puck at the left wing and saw me completely open at the blue line. He passed it to me, perfect pass, and right as he did my legs just shot out from under me. Nobody within 20?, a perfect pass, and I just BAM! fell down. What?s worse is that, as I was laying on the ice, the puck was coming straight towards me. I mean, STRAIGHT towards me. If I hadn?t moved it would have hit me right in the middle of my stick. Of course, like a total idiot I tried to lift my stick (as I?m laying flat on the ice) to take the pass with the blade, and the puck goes under the stick, under me, and out of the zone. Brilliant!

Anyway, like I said, I had a good game—almost had a goal. I had the puck all alone against 3 defenders, I faked past one, ended up right in the center of the ice with the 2 defenders in front of me. I seem to find myself in that situation about once a game, so I’ve been trying to make it work for me. My current move is to cut right just a bit to get the defender between me and the goalie, and then shoot the puck through the defender’s legs, so the goalie has trouble seeing the shot at first. This time, I?m pretty sure the shot hit the post on the far side, it was a really nice shot and I don?t think the goalie really saw it. Eventually one of those shots is going to go in, it just didn?t happen that game.

I’ve also noticed a number of Spoonerisms coming out of my mouth lately. After the game I wanted to talk about the fact that especially in the second period, it’s important to keep our shifts short so we don’t get tired and caught out of position (which is why we were down 2-0), only I said it was important to keep our “shorts shifted”. You can guess what kind of jokes were made at my expense at that point. ;) I actually really like this team. Everyone on it is always in a good mode, there’s teasing and camaraderie in the locker room. Jen says she approves of their teasing me all the time, and frankly I agree; it’s a really great group of guys and I’m glad to be a part of it. What’s even better is that I know other guys on nearly every team in the league (last nights’ opponents are pretty much the exception), so there’s always someone to say hi to or trash talk before the game. It’s a lot of fun, and it makes me wish I could play hockey every night. :)

Playing games without Jen in the audience is kind of weird. She’d only missed a few games before this season, and I was pretty used to looking up and seeing her in the second or third row, reading her book at period intermissions or cheering during play. I keep looking for her, and of course she’s not there. She’ll get to see my game this Saturday, though, so hopefully I’ll have another good game. :)

As far as work goes, it’s pretty busy right now. We have our second-most-major deadline of this entire release coming up, and everyone’s scrambling to get ready. I’m in the middle of a really frustrating problem (been working on it about 14 hours thus far, with no resolution). It doesn’t help that making brand new code work exactly like the old code did six months ago—which is what we’re doing—is one of the more tedious, uncreative jobs in programming. It has to be done, and it will be worth the effort at the end, but any programmer will tell you that solving new problems and writing new code is much more fun.

Aside from work and hockey I haven’t done much; I have a million things to do to the house that I just haven’t had the time to do, and we’re supposed to hang out with some friends for July 4th, but other than that my social life is essentially nonexistant. :) Sorry. No new baby news, either; we won’t know the sex for another 5 weeks, and that’s really the next big milestone. I’ve actually only told 3 people at work, partially because everyone who knows Jenny is pregnant seems to only talk to her about that sometimes, and I don’t want that to happen. Of course I’m also a pretty private person in general.

Latest LINQ CTP released for download.

The list of goodies is here:

What?s new?

Enhanced DLinq Support: This CTP adds support for Inheritance, Stored Procedures, User-Defined Functions, and Optimistic Concurrency Conflict Resolution (OCCR).  The new DLinq Designer provides a visual design surface for creating DLinq entity classes from database tables.

LINQ over DataSet: The full power of LINQ can now be applied to the DataSet, allowing you to use the Standard Query Operators and some DataSet-specific extensions to query against DataRows.

?Group By? Query Comprehensions: The compiler now supports ?Group By? as a valid clause in LINQ Queries. 

Outlining support for XML Literals in the Editor: In this release, we added outlining support for XML literals. You can now expand or collapse any Xml element literal that spans across more than one line. 

Value extension property for XML axis properties: We added a Value extension property to the collections that are returned from the XML axis properties (i.e. IEnumerable(Of XElement) and IEnumerable(Of XAttribute)). This extension property does two things, it first picks up the first object in that IEnumerable, and if this object exists, it calls the 'Value' property on this object (either XElement or XAttribute). The following code show the use of this Value extension property:

       Dim contact = <Contact City='Seattle'>

                         <Name>Joe</Name>

                      </Contact>

        Console.WriteLine(contact.@City.Value)

        contact.@City.Value = 'Portland'

        Console.WriteLine(contact.@City.Value)

        Console.WriteLine(contact.<Name>.Value)

        contact.<Name>.Value = 'Sam'

        Console.WriteLine(contact.<Name>.Value)

 

        Results:       

                Seattle

                Portland

                Joe

                Sam

Global Xml namespace support: XML namespaces that are declared using the Imports statement can now be used in the XML literals. The following is an example:

Imports ns = 'http://www.w3.org/1999'

 

Module Module1

  Sub Main()

    Dim book = _

      <ns:Book>

              <ns:Title>Learning Programming Using VB</ns:Title>

             </ns:Book>

    Console.WriteLine(book.<ns:Title>.Value)

  End Sub

      End Module

What?s changed?

Select/From syntax: The previous tech preview supported using Select before From.  In an effort to provide better IntelliSense?, we?re switching to the From/Select format for this CTP.

Joins don?t require ?It?:  You don?t need to use the iterator variable ?it? anymore when performing a join operation, though it?s still required for grouping operations.

Xml axis properties syntax: The late bound Xml feature has a new name and a new distinct syntax where we wrap the element name with angle brackets. This new syntax makes the Xml axis properties visually distinct and solves problems that the previous CTP syntax had. See more information in this blog

If you are designing an application test-drive using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers whose logic includes access to a database, then consider the following mechanism for the database related assertions (also known as specifications: SpecificationByExample):

For a simple example, if you have a business object (also known as processor, unit of work, façade, etc.) ?the kind of business objects suggested by Microsoft for application architecture since Windows DNA? called PatchOperation that receives patch installation status messages over the network from one or thousands of clients then an initial and possible TestMethod for it could be like this:

string PCNetworkID='PCx';string PatchID='Patch123';//this data structure is what the invocation receives//both locally or over the network, sample values follow:InstallStatusInfo status=new InstallStatusInfo();status.PatchID=PatchID;status.Status='Installed';//PatchOperation is the business object,//the following two lines appears in //production code exactly like this:PatchOperation patchoperation=new PatchOperation();patchoperation.ReceiveInstallStatus(PCNetworkID,status);//Asserting post-conditions:DataTable result = Util.SqlQuery('SELECT ... WHERE pc=@PCNetworkID ...');Assert.AreEqual(1,result.Rows.Count);Assert.AreEqual('Installed',result.PatchStatus);// etc.

/// 
/// Base clase for database-based application design./// Intented to be derived./// Derived test classes must override InsertTestData method./// Derived test classes may override GetIsolationLevel method./// Derived test classes must use TransactionalContext in TestContext property./// TransactionalContext is under 'tx' key in TestContext property./// 
[TestClass]public abstract class DatabaseTestClass{  [TestInitialize]  public virtual void Setup()  {    IsolationLevel isolation = GetIsolationLevel();    TransactionalContext tx = TransactionalContext.Create(isolation);    TestContext.Properties['tx'] = tx;    InsertTestData();  }  protected abstract void InsertTestData();  protected virtual IsolationLevel GetIsolationLevel() { return IsolationLevel.Serializable; }  [TestCleanup]  public virtual void Clean()  {    TransactionalContext tx = TestContext.Properties['tx'] as TransactionalContext;    tx.Transaction.Rollback();    tx.Connection.Close();  }  private TestContext testContextInstance;  public TestContext TestContext  {    get { return testContextInstance; }    set { testContextInstance = value; }  }}

public enum TransactionalContextMode{  Read,  Write}public class TransactionalContext{  public SqlConnection Connection;  public SqlTransaction Transaction;  public static TransactionalContext Create()  {    return Create(TransactionalContextMode.Write);  }  public static TransactionalContext Create(IsolationLevel isolation)  {    TransactionalContext result = new TransactionalContext();    string dbconn = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings['conn'];    result.Connection = new SqlConnection(dbconn);    result.Connection.Open();    result.Transaction = result.Connection.BeginTransaction(isolation);    return result;  }  public static TransactionalContext Create(TransactionalContextMode mode)  {    switch (mode)    {      case TransactionalContextMode.Read:        return Create(IsolationLevel.RepeatableRead);      case TransactionalContextMode.Write:        return Create(IsolationLevel.Serializable);      default:        throw new Exception('TransactionalContextMode undefined');    }  }}

[TestClass]public class StatusReception : DatabaseTestClass{  protected override void InsertTestData()  {    Util.SqlExecute(this, 'EXECUTE Computer_Insert 'PCx");    Util.SqlExecute(this, 'EXECUTE PCStatus_SetStatus 'PCx',NULL ');  }  [TestMethod]  public void StatusReception_flat()  {    TransactionalContext tx = TestContext.Properties['tx'] as TransactionalContext;    string PCNetworkID='PCx';    string PatchID='Patch123';    InstallStatusInfo status=new InstallStatusInfo();    status.PatchID=PatchID;    status.Status='Installed';    PatchOperation patchoperation=new PatchOperation();    patchoperation.ReceiveInstallStatus(tx,PCNetworkID,status);    DataTable result = Util.SqlQuery('SELECT ... WHERE pc=@PCNetworkID ...');    Assert.AreEqual(1,result.Rows.Count);    Assert.AreEqual('Installed',result.PatchStatus);    // etc.  }}

An absolutely essential factor in running a software company effectively is the vision from a real, actual professional programmer, period.

Indeed, the technical profile of Mr. William Henry Gates III has been an important factor at Microsoft. Of course, MBAs have their role at any company but please MBAs, consider this: do not try to run a company which does something you think understand but actually don't.

My First BillG Review

Geeks Rule and MBAs Drool

Why eBay Bought Skype

Sometimes, I just need to quickly send SQL queries or commands to a SQL database one by one or in group.

Of course there are serious and full-fledged utilities from SQL Server to doing just that, and have their own use cases.

The point of doing my own basic and focused utility is to test and hence to gain a sense of trust on a particular way of using a basic piece of SQL data access functionality with ADO.NET. That is to say, while in the process of designing a ?say? enterprise architecture of a software service for a given customer and want to check, in that particular point in time how it feels some aspect or aspects of my current design decision that involve SQL data access and if any of those full-fledged utilities are handy, then I just invoke my basic and focused utility, like:

>query 'select au_fname,city from authors'CLR:2.0.50727.42dbcon:Data Source=someserver;Initial Catalog=pubs;Integrated Security=True;Connection Timeout=120Query: select au_fname, city from authorsrowset:au_fname        cityJohnson		Menlo ParkMarjorie		OaklandCheryl		BerkeleyMichael		San Jose

>query 'cmd:exec a_stored_procedure'CLR:2.0.50727.42dbcon:Data Source=someserver;Initial Catalog=pubs;Integrated Security=True;Connection Timeout=120Non query: exec a_stored_procedureaffected rows count: -1

>query @sequence.sql

>query @sequence.sql 'cmd:exec a_stored_procedure' 'select au_fname,city from authors'

Very good article in IEEE Software January/Februry 2006 magazine:

Looking for Powerful Abstractions by Rebecca J. Wirfs-Brock

'Finding the right level of abstraction
takes practice and experimentation.
There are times when both concrete
classes and their common abstraction
add value to a design, and there are
times when they don?t. To find good
classes, experienced designers make
distinctions based on significant behavior
differences.'

There are words and phrases from experienced people in our industry of software design and programming that just feel right, it is like they are describing a higher level of truth I need to aspire.

Another example from How do we tell truths that might hurt?:

'Besides a mathematical inclination,
an exceptionally good mastery
of one's native tongue
is the most vital asset of
a competent programmer' -Edsger W. Dijkstra

That is a reason why these people are pillars of our trade.

CP4E get's regularly noted when folks talk about expanding Pythons m???share by commencing more programmers. Similar to the 'create, don't overtake, markets' thought.

Mats Wichmann threw this discussion an appropriate curveball by asking: 'If Python is so easy for humans to program in, shouldn't it also be an easy language for programs to program in ...?'

Fredric Lundh addresses the literal issue here.

I have never analyzed code generation from UML tools before, but a comparison of model to code from a C++, Java and Python example would add insight here, although the tip of the iceburg for Mats thoughts. 

Jeff Sutherland threatens: 'Therefore, American programmers must find a way to be ten times as productive or they are history', following it up with the dire need for Model Driven Development and resources.  Hmmmm... Python & Java: a Side-by-Side Comparison opens with 'A programmer can be significantly more productive in Python than in Java. How much more productive? The most widely accepted estimate is 5-10 times'. 

Wizards fall in there somewhere also, but are just one slice of that taxonomy. I like task automation wizards and that let me save the steps for later use, ideally in a plain text editable fashion. Which leads to...

Embedded Python for 'code that pushes applications' is also an area where python could use more face time. VBScript is a tired poster-boy, and it seems that with the latest OpenOffice/STAR Office, the window of opportunity is being addressed with Python-UNO.

Also, of note: Learning Tree's Python training is no longer supported! Many alternatives exist, including this one during October in Colorado by a University of Wisconsin graduate.

Python and X10 Home Automation, Part 1

I recently saw an ad from x10.com for a free (you pay shipping) X10 starter kit, including a 'Firecracker' computer interface.  That was a deal I couldn't pass up, so I ordered it through their web site, and 3 days later, the kit arrived.

The kit consists of the CM-17a 'Firecracker' serial computer interface, which transmits via radio, a transceiver module which receives the radio commands from the Firecracker and retransmits them via the X10 protocol over your house wiring, a lamp modules for controlling... lamps, and a PalmPilot-sized hand-held remote control that lets you manually do what the computer interface does.  Oh, and the transceiver module also double as an appliance module, allowing you to control appliances of up to 500 watts.

With the hand-held controller, you can control any X10 modules you have, either the ones that come with the kit, or any add-on modules you may want to buy.  You could go wild, like many do, and completely automate your home -- lights, appliances, garage door, pool heater, ferret feeder, whatever.

But with the computer interface, things get much more interesting.  You can, for example, download from x10.com a free application that duplicates the appearance and functionality of the hand-held controller on your computer screen.  Or, you can download, for $20, an application that fully utilizes your computer and the x10 interface to do full automation.  Want your hot-tub to turn on at a certain time every day?  No problem.  Want your lights to simulate an occupied house while you are on vacation?  Easy.

Naturally, hand an X10 computer interface to a Python programmer, and he'll immediately start writing code for it.  Or that was my intent, anyway.  The first thing I did was google around for any existing Python projects for X10. I found two, Pyxal and Pyx10.  Both projects seem to be unmaintaned.  Pyxal is pure Python, and does not support the recent X10 controllers, like the Firecracker.  Pyx10 uses a wrapper to turn the XAL library into a Python extention module.  It supports recent X10 controllers, including the Firecracker.

I downloaded and examined both.  Pyxal was right out, as it has no Firecracker support (why not add it yourself, you ask?  I'll get to that in a moment...).  Pyx10 and XAL looked good.  After compiling and installing XAL (a snap), I tried compiling Pyx10.  Nope.  The wrapper code for XAL would not compile.  From a quick exam, it looked like it was out-of-sync with XAL.

I could have continued hacking at it to get it to work, but further googling (the trademark police are gonna get me), I found Project WiSH, a project for turning X10 device drivers into... well, Linux device drivers.  Super!  Instead of having to do low-level device handling from my code, I can simply open a linux device driver and write commands to it, just like I was writing text to a file.  And WiSH was a snap to compile and install.  Just make sure you have your kernel source loaded on your machine.  (For the CM-17a 'Firecracker', be sure to download the 1.6.10 version of WiSH.  The later 2.0.1 version does not yet support it.  But both versions support the CM-11a, which is the other modern popular X10 computer interface controller.)

Now, I do my work under Linux, so this is just what the code doctor ordered.  Actually, it's even better than it sounds.  You see, there's this little bit of info about that Firecracker X10 controller...

If you look at one of the other X10 computer interfaces, say the CM-11a that comes with another of the home automation intro packages that x10.com sells, you will see that it is controlled via the computer in a manner rather like an external serial modem.  Connect it to your serial port, and send it strings of ASCII characters.  Not so with the CM-17a 'Firecracker'.  This little guy is a serial pass-thru 'dongle', very small.  From what I can tell from my Google research, you must directly control the radio transmitter in it via bit-tiddling the RTS and DTR lines of the serial port.  You must assemble a 5-byte command via bit masking, then bit-shift it out to the CM-17a by directly controlling the states of the RTS and DTR lines, doing the timing yourself.  There are no smarts.  Ouch.  No wonder this is the bargain-basement controller.

The CM-11a controller has another advantage, too.  It's smart, it has its own processor.  So you don't even need to leave your computer on to do real-time home automation.  Use the scheduling software to send it commands, like 'turn on my security light at local-time dusk, and turn it off at dawn', and the CM-11a will do it, all by itself.

But I don't have the CM-11a.  I have a CM-17a and a Linux box.  Add in the device drivers from Project WiSH, and from a Linux command line, I can execute 'echo 'on' >>/dev/x10/a1', and send the 'on' command to the X10 device at house code 'A', unit code '1'.  How cool is that?

OK, how can we combine equal portions of X10, Project WiSH, Linux, Python, and fun?  (OK, fun gets a bigger portion.)

Here's the deal.  I work for a major software house.  We do automated nightly compiles of our code on all of the platforms we support (Linux, various flavors of UNIX, Windoze).  The last thing you want is for some code change you made that day to 'break the build'.  The automated process sends out email giving that night's build status.  If you broke the build, it's supposed to be your first priority to fix it.

I keep forgetting to check my email.  I have many projects, they grab my attention, and it may be hours before I check my mail.  Yes, I have a little task bar thingie that tells me if I get new mail.  I don't look at it if I'm concentrating on a problem.

Python and X10 to the rescue!  (This is a fun solution looking for a problem.)  I now have a Python script that is run via cron every 10 minutes.  It uses the poplib and email modules to grab and parse my email, looking for the specific patterns that a 'you broke the build' message will contain.  If it finds such a message, it opens and writes an 'on' command to the proper X10 device driver, which then turns on the BIG RED ROTATING LIGHT.  I kid you not.

This is so much fun!

The new PodShow+ site, unleashing pretty darn soon, has a personal bio feature called 'The Legend of me'. I just filled mine out. Here's what I wrote:

I'm a programmer with an apetite for timeshifted media. That pretty much sums it up. In 2000, before I'd heard of RSS, I was using Voquette Media Manager to record Real streams of This American Life, which I'd lovingly burn to CD and listen to on long car trips. Later, in the days of 'audio blogging', I used the Radio Userland news aggregator to automatically pull MP3 files from enclosure-bearing RSS from Dave Winer, Chistopher Lydon and Doug Kaye. I'd then locate these on my hard drive and drag them, one at a time, into the media management software for my Neuros MP3 player. It worked, sort of, but was too much effort, and there was still too little content (especially after Chris took a break) for practical daily use. Adam Curry switched me back on in 2004 with a steady stream of daily content, developer feedback, feature ideas and a critical insight that made the medium: we needed automatic sync to the listening device. The early innovations in podcasting were nearly all Mac-only, which as a Windows user drove me nuts. Erik de Jonge's 'iSpider' project had a decent command-line Python/Applescript codebase, and were up for doing a cross-platform GUI product, which is where I wanted to go. Bringing in some modest COM knowledge that Pieter Overbeeke's 'i-podder' javascript helped me learn, I joined the iSpider team and Lemon was born. Nearly two years and one Ceast and Desist later, Lemon is now known as Juice and has accumulated over 2 million downloads. Along the way, Martijn Venrooy and I built the GigaDial 'podstation factory' (October 2004), and in Fall 2005 I joined PodShow and moved my family from Boston to San Francisco. At PodShow I do a mix of engineering (DGAP, Golden Tickets), developer relations (developer.podshow.com, DevCasts), technical reviews of potential partners and, when anyone will listen :-), talent scouting. I'm bullish on New Media and on the lookout for cool new stuff to build, to make listening and viewing better.

Pretty verbose --- it fills the alotted space on my profile page --- yet it barely scratches the surface.

My New Year's resolutions are to....

• Use FORTRAN on RAILS as my language of choice
• Use Waterfall methodologies
• Use Access for all my database needs

Here's to a productive and happy year!

I have posted slides and demo code from my talks this month at Code Camp 5, DevTeach, and VSLive! on my site here. I have also posted each of these individually on the respected sites for the conference.

Each of these conferences went well. There were lots of great questions, and as with all speaking opportunities, I learn from those attending as well as become more comfortable with the material. One highlight for me was the great evals for each, and at DevTeach, I actually placed as the #1 speaker in the SQL/Data track based on evaluation results.

One issue I had with getting Service Broker to work at Code Camp 5 was resolved before DevTeach. I found that after I attached the new AdventureWorks database (included in the latest April SQL Server 2005 Samples), the authorization for the database was different than what I was using. This caused messages sent from an Initiator Queue to fail for Service Broker. My friend Rushi (a developer on the Service Broker team at Microsoft -- he has a great blog) mentioned I needed to do this:

ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::AdventureWorks TO sa ;
GO

After this step, things were right again and my demos WORKED!