This week on dnrTV – Rocky Lhotka on CSLA.NET 2.0 (Part 1 of many)

Rocky Lhotka explains CSLA.NET 2.0 from the top down by showing a sample application written in C# against the framework. This is the first of a series on shows we're going to do with Rocky on his CSLA.NET 2.0 application framework.

http://dnrTV.com/default.aspx?showID=12

We’ve fleshed out dates for the VB.NET Master Class for the rest of 2006. Here they are:

April 17–21
May 22–26
June 19–23
July 17–21
August 14–18
September 18–22
October 23–27
November 13–17

The class will not be taught by me. But before you stop reading, it will be either Mark Dunn or one of his best gurus. If you are seriously interested, call us and we’ll send you a pile of testimonials. I personally guarantee the quality of this class.

In other Franklins.Net news, Juval Lowy will be teaching public classes in WCF (Windows Communication Foundation or Indigo). Miguel Castro will be teaching an ASP.NET Master Class as well. Suggestions are always welcome!

Hanselminutes is on vacation this week and will resume next week as planned.

Are you a Mondays fan? Would you like to cement your place in Mondays history?

As you know we’re going to be recording our 50th show soon, and we’d like to play your “phone messages to Mondays” on the show. Give us a call at either of the numbers below and leave us a message of either shiny ass praise or ego-crippling smack. Nothing in between!

Toll Free: (877) 273-4838

Outside the US: (860) 447-8832

This week, Rocky Lhotka discusses his CSLA.NET application framework version 2.0. New features, changes, and migration tips.

http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=172

Mondays Show #50 will be online April 3rd. Thanks for your patience

I know I teased you last year with the PwopCatcher UI in this blog post, and since then everyone has been asking me for it.

I am hereby announcing an alpha version at www.pwopcatcher.com. Here are the features in a nutshell:

• Subscribe to RSS feeds that contain enclosures (of any kind).
• Each feed’s enclosures can be downloaded to a unique folder, or a common folder.
• Each feed can have a different interval (minutes between reloading the feed).
• You can specify (for each feed) a maximum life in days of enclosures. Only podcasts X days old or newer will be downloaded.
• Files are pruned locally: they are deleted after X days (for each feed) to avoid your hard disk getting full of old shows that you are no longer interested in.
• For the destination folder, you can specify either a drive letter or a volume label. In some cases you might want to download directly to a removable hard drive or audio device. Since the drive letter might be different each time you connect it, using the volume label to identify the drive solves this problem.
• Downloads will auto-resume. You can kill PwopCatcher in mid-download. Next time you run it, downloads will pick up where they left off
• BitTorrent support is provided by uTorrent, which is a 155K native Windows BitTorrent client app (see this post for more info). The uTorrent people have allowed me to automatically install it. If you subscribe to a feed that has a .torrent file in the enclosure, uTorrent will take over after downloading it. This requires a little bit of setup, which I have outlined below.
• Since ClickOnce is used, when a new version is available, the user is prompted to download it.

First of all, what is the future of PwopCatcher?

PwopCatcher is a podcast downloader, player, and manager application. The alpha version only has download and subscription features. Future versions will include a Player/Dashboard, and more importantly a podcast manager.

The Player/Dashboard will look like this. There is a main client area acting as a window into the podcasts that you have downloaded, showing a sort of slideshow of podcasts. The information area will look something like this:

These will fade in and out, giving you a nice preview of what has been downloaded, if you care to look.

The most important utility of the player/dashboard is podcast management. I don’t know about you, but when I want to copy some downloaded podcasts over to my iRiver H10 its going to take at least 15 minutes, mostly because I have to figure out what I’ve already listened to, what I want to listen to next, and what I want to delete. When you subscribe to 20 or 30 podcasts, that can be a big pain. It just makes me want to reach for the radio.

We’re introducing the idea of the “already listened to” attribute. Without going into too much detail the basic idea is you can say “give me 30 minutes of podcasts and copy them to my iPod” Those files are now marked “listened to” and so they will not be downloaded again, nor do you have to worry about removing them from your hard drive.

I must stress that this feature is not there in the alpha (see the list of features above).

The player will have several modes. You can listen to podcasts in random order or in order of publication date. Once listened to, they will no longer be in the live list. What actually happens here is that the files are moved to a “listened to” folder where they reside for 30 days (default – you can change this interval). After that they go bye bye. Although many people don’t listen to podcasts at their computer, this is still a good option to have for those times when you do want to listen.

Installation:

PwopCatcher is published with ClickOnce for the .NET Framework 2.0. If you do not have the framework installed, a setup is provided for you at http://www.pwopcatcher.com/install along with the Click-Once button for installing the app.

Note: ClickOnce does not work in FireFox as of this writing.

The first time you run the application you are presented with this dialog:

Click Yes, and it downloads right there:

Click “Yes” when asked if you want to make uTorrent the default .torrent application.

uTorrent gives you this dialog next:

At this time you should open up the port you want to use for uTorrent. Remember that you have to open it up at your router as well as the Windows Firewall (or any other software firewall you happen to be using).

I recommend testing the port with the “Test if port is forwarded properly” button. Very handy.

While you’re at it. Go ahead and create some folders for managing torrents. Then open the Options/Preferences dialog, and click the Folders tab. Enter the folders here. Make sure to uncheck “Always show dialog on manual add” or you’ll be pestered unnecessarily when downloading torrents.

Now, back to PwopCatcher.

Go to the Feeds tab, click on the url field and enter a feed url. In this example, I’m using two urls:

http://dotnetrocks.com/DotNetRocks_FullMP3.xml (.NET Rocks! MP3 Torrent)

and

When you move off the row, the rest of the fields will fill in with default values, which you can change. Let me explain what they are:

The Feeds Tab:

Fields:

Enabled: Podcasts are only downloaded when this is checked

URL: url to the RSS feed

Interval (Mins): This is the number of minutes between reloading the feed

Drive (ex: C:): This is the drive letter (and colon) OR the volume label of the drive to where podcasts from this feed are downloaded

Folder (ex: \podcasts): This is the folder name on the drive to where podcasts from this feed are downloaded. If the directory does not exist it will be created, even if it has multiple subdirectories.

Max Days Old: This is the maximum number of days old a podcast must be in order to be downloaded. It is also the number of days after which the podcast will be deleted from the folder.

After entering subsequent urls, after moving off the row, the settings from the previous feed will be copied to the new feed. This makes it easy to customize, but you don’t have to enter the same data over and over again for most feeds.

The panel on the bottom is for error messages that come from PwopCatcher. Unfortunately it is currently very rudimentary. This will be improved in future versions.

The Update Button

The Update Button saves the current settings (they are also saved when the app exits) and also initiates a cycle of checking all feeds and downloading if necessary. If files are already being downloaded, they will be canceled, and then will resume once the feed is re-downloaded and PwopCatcher sees that it was in the process of being downloaded.

The Status Tab

The Status Tab shows the status of all download activity. Multiple files are downloaded simultaneously. Take a look:

The .torrent file downloads immediately because it is so small. Hanselminutes is a 21MB mp3 file, so it takes longer.

Once the .torrent file has downloaded, uTorrent goes to work without prompting. Here’s what it should look like now:

Both of these files should end up in c:\podcasts when everything has completed, and indeed they have:

If you have any issues with the alpha, or any subsequent updates, send me email at carl AT (no spam) pwop dot com.

Until the next round of features, enjoy!

I just read a great article by Jeff Einstein (smart guy, most likely) called The New ROI: Return on Intimacy

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/3093.asp

In it, Jeff talks about how conventional advertising is no longer effective, and that advertisers are too obsessed with (addicted to - as he says) calculating Return On Investment or ROI from advertising and marketing, when what they should be concentrating on is intimacy with the audience.

It really hit home to me because we've seen this happen in our own productions. Our advertisers (for .NET Rocks) have told us that their campaigns with us have been the most effective of any others they have. We think this is because of the relationships we have with our sponsors and their products, and the unobtrusive and natural way in which we tell our listeners about them.

Too many times advertisers fail to put themselves in the consumers shoes. They just think about how they can drill in the message. As Einstein says: better, faster, smarter... The consumers have spoken. They do not like to be lectured, brainwashed, fooled, lied to, or otherwise patronized.  Would you like that?  Mainstream media is full of crap. Marketers are waking up to the fact that megaphones can be annoying, and that we the people are more likely to take advice from a friend than a TV commercial.

Jean Paul Boodhoo on Test Driven Development Part 2 of 2

Jean Paul Boodhoo gets real with TDD in this the second of a two-part series on TDD. Instead of showing simple brain-dead samples, JP uses a Model-View-Presenter solution to populate a drop-down listbox on a web page. This is a really great way to get into the discipline of TDD.

<Microsoft Command Shell (MONAD)/>

Scott digs into MONAD scripts, commands, providers, and more. If you are a .NET developer and have never heard of MONAD, you MUST listen to this show. If you have heard of it, you'll learn something new.

I have officially given up on Azureus, the Java-based BitTorrent client. In it’s place I am using uTorrent, a small (155K) and extremely fast native Windows BitTorrent client. Azureus takes 50MB of memory. uTorrent takes 5MB. Here’s a screenshot:

There’s no tracker built in (Azureus has a tracker), but if you’re just downloading and seeding you don’t need it.

We are actually using uTorrent and BitComet Tracker at Pwop to serve our shows with BitTorrent. We’ve been using it for about 4 weeks now and have had practically no problems. There were times when Azureus would just freeze and nothing but a restart would fix it.

There is a built-in RSS aggregator but it doesn’t always work with RSS 2.0 feeds. So, you may be wondering, how can we use this to automatically download (with BitTorrent) our favorite podcasts, namely .NET Rocks!, Mondays, Hanselminutes, and dnrTV? 

My next blog post will reveal all.

That’s right, I’ve moved from my blog at weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin, where I started blogging October 9, 2003

After talking with Scott Hanselman about dasBlog and the various tools he uses to blog with, I asked him if he’d set it up for me, and here is the result. Thank you, Scott. I know. I could have done it myself, but when you have the opportunity to let an expert set it up for you, you’re crazy not to take it.

Once we got the site working, I called on my graphics guru Dax Pandhi at Nukeation to skin it for me. It all started with a photo that I took of myself in the rear-view mirror of my car that sort of caught my fancy. Here’s the slice of it we used for the composite.

Then Dax had the idea to make the whole top of the blog look like you were in my car driving with me. So daughter 1.0 took the shot of my hands on the steering wheel, and I took a shot of my rear-view mirror head on, and Dax did the rest. The man is amazing. His prices are high, but he’s worth every penny.

I thought since I now have BlogJet and the ability to upload photos to my blog very easily, that I’d share a couple photos from my Canon SD500 that I’ve been meaning to post.

Brian Noyes Recording dnrTV and .NET Rocks!

Here’s a picture of Brian Noyes from when we were recording .NET Rocks! and dnrTV a few weeks ago. What a great opportunity it was for us to have him come to the studio and knock out three excellent shows over a couple days. I’d encourage any future guests to do the same.

The Prius

Here’s my pride and joy. She’s pretty sweet looking, and even more fun to drive. This is a 2005 Prius 4–door hatch back that I picked up in January. I love this car! I get about 50 MPG pretty regularly just driving around town, and the gadgets are abundant. I have the full package with cruise control, A/C, 6–disc changer, a great GPS nav system, on-screen climate and audio control, and voice recognition for nav and other functions.

It has a bluetooth cell phone link so if I get a call while listening to the audio system, the audio stops (or pauses if listening to a CD) and the phone is routed through the audio system, using a mic built in to the dashboard, which I’ve been told sounds pretty good to the caller on the other end.

The brakes are electromagnetic and regenerative. That is, when you brake an electromagnet is activated, and the centrifugal force is captured and stored as energy in the batteries. The automatic transmission is continuously variable, meaning that acceleration is more or less constant (you don’t notice the shifting so much).

Fully loaded it only cost me 29K. Not bad for what you get. The best part of this is the financial benefits you get from owning a hybrid. In Connecticut, you don’t pay sales tax. That saved me a couple K right there. In addition, I get a 3000 tax credit on my 2006 taxes from Uncle Sam, no property tax, and some Connecticut cities allow hybrids to park in metered spots for free.

My Guitar Rig

For fans of my music and/or guitar players out there, this is my current rig. I have several guitars but my axe of choice, at least as far as electrics go, is my 1983 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

1983 was the first year that they started making Les Pauls good again after a long stretch of crappy production in the late seventies and early eighties. I paid $749 for it new with hard case in 1983. $139 of that was case, so I really only paid $610 or so for the guitar. Last year I had it re-fretted and refinished, and put all new Gold hardware on it, as well as replaced the pickups. Prior to this I had 3 EMG active pickups: The standard rhythm position pickup (which I kept), and 2 EMG active tele pickups in the treble position. Those were replaced with a really hot EMG active pickup. This is a standard humbucker but is also an single-coil pickup that has a nice strat-like sound. This isn’t really anything new except that most dual-sound humbuckers are one pickup with 2 coils, and a switch that turns one of them off to get the single-coil sound. This one actually has two pickups, a dual-coil and a single-coil, in the same unit. It is extremely hot in the dual-coil mode, and nice and airy in the single-coil mode. I can get a really wide variety of sounds with this configuration.

I picked up the Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier head from a local player last year for only $800!! It’s mint! mint! mint!  I couldn’t believe it. The guy is a keyboard player, and he bought it but never really used it that much. He said he was glad to see it go to someone who is going to use it. I was happy to take it off his hands! These things are a few thousand dollars new. All tubes, and really a work of art. The cabinet was made custom by another local player, and sounds great with the dual-rect. I haven’t really used this amp on any of my recordings yet, but you’ll know it when you hear it. It sounds amazing.

.NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2005 Road Trip

I may have published this one before, and my apologies if I have, but it’s a great photo of Richard Campbell, Mark Miller, myself, and Geoff Maciolek in the Phoenix area when we were on the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2005 Road Trip last fall. We had stopped at a rest area, and the weather was nice (is it ever BAD in the Southwest?) so we snapped this photo.

That road trip was the highlight of my year last year. A great time was had by all. Perhaps we’ll do it again soon.

More to come on BitTorrent, Audio Tips, PwopCatcher, and lots more.