Scott Hanselman

My seventh Podcast is up. This episode is all about XML. It wasn't nearly long enough to go into the detail I'd have liked. I need to focus! 

We're listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, so I encourage you to subscribe with a single click (two in Firefox) with the button below. For those of you on slower connections there are lo-fi and torrent-based versions as well.

Our sponsors are Automated QA, PeterBlum and the .NET Dev Journal.

Do take a look at TestComplete from Automated QA. It integrates with Visual Studio 2005 and I'm going to try to get a formal review of their stuff soon, particularly their functional Web Testing and Recording.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

• Each show will include a number of links, and all those links will be posted along with the show on the site. There were 15 sites mentioned in this fifth episode, some planned, some not. We're still using Shrinkster.com on this show.
• The basic MP3 feed is here, and the iPod friendly one is here. There's a number of other ways you can get it (streaming, straight download, etc) that are all up on the site just below the fold. I use iTunes, myself, to listen to most podcasts, but I also use FeedDemon and it's built in support.
• Some other clients are Doppler (also suppose Windows CE), FireAnt, Nimiq, and PrimeTime Podcast.
• Note that for now, because of bandwidth constraints, the feeds always have just the current show. If you want to get an old show (and because many Podcasting Clients aren't smart enough to not download the file more than once) you can always find them at http://www.hanselminutes.com.
• I have, and will, also include the enclosures to this feed you're reading, so if you're already subscribed to ComputerZen and you're not interested in cluttering your life with another feed, you have the choice to get the 'cast as well.
• If there's a topic you'd like to hear, perhaps one that is better spoken than presented on a blog, or a great tool you can't live without, contact me and I'll get it in the queue!

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'll be speaking in Vancouver, BC on March 6th, 2006 at .NET BC and in Victoria at the Victoria .NET Developers Group on March 7th, 2006. Both talks are about DasBlog, working on an Open Source application and what code you can steal/borrow from it. Two cities in a row qualifies as a Poor man's Canada Roadshow in my book.

"Scott Hanselman heads the DasBlog Open Source project along with Omar Shahine, following in the footsteps of Clemens Vasters and his dramatic modification of the BlogX engine. DasBlog is now on version 1.8 and is arguably the most successful ASP.NET blogging engine for the single user. DasBlog is now the work of many folks over many years and while it has some very hairy sections of code, it's full of design techniques and reusable components that you can use in your work today.

Topics Covered:

• Httpmodules
• Httphandlers
• Background threads
• Internationalization
• Caching
• Skinning
• Creating a macro language
• Web Services that are more than just SOAP
• More architectural and design concepts that work in any ASP.NET application"

It should be fun. It'll just be me, but Omar will get mad props even though he won't be there. Omar and I have gone through two DasBlog releases together, first the big performance 1.7 release, then the follow-up 1.8 tightening. Currently 1.9 is in the hopper and will be the last .NET 1.x release as we work on a not-so-super-secret DasBlog.Next project. Currently the checked-in source is very much ahead of the 1.8 release with features like Pluggable Rich Editors with FCK and FTB support, Multi-Author/Single-Blog, Custom Plugin Macros, coComment support, and a much-improved commenting workflow.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Cool, Patrick and I are confirmed to speak at TechEd 2006 in Boston. We're talking as part of the architecture track and I think (hope) that our session's title stands out amongst the crowd and generates some buzz:

Dirty SOAP: A Dynamic Endpoint Without ASMX - How and Why? 

If you saw my TechEd 2003 Presentation called "Learning to Love WSDL" (IE only) you might find this new presentation interesting. The system that Patrick, I and others have designed for Financial Services is on version 2.2 now, and our strictly contract-first in-proc system is evolving, as planned, to support SOAP, POX, remoting, Tivo :), and all sorts of things. This system was designed to be, in some ways, future proof, with Indigo in mind. Our developers design their systems with XSD, WSDL (with our custom binding) and code generation and write code like this:

BankingServiceProxy banking = new BankingServiceProxy();
GetAccountsResponse res = banking.GetAccounts(new GetAccountsRequest());
if (res.Success)
{
   AccountCollection accounts = res.Accounts;
   foreach (Account a in accounts)
   {
      print(a.Balance); //or databind, etc...
   }  
}

This puts our developers in a nice familiar place (they've been doing things like this for ~2 years) when Indigo rolls along.

The presentation talks about how we are creating dynamic service endpoints for SOAP and POX, all in .NET 1.1, without ASMX and why we'd want to. (Remember that not everyone uses 2.0 and banks are conservative!) We'll also talk about the (currently being taken) next steps for 2.0 and and world of WinFX.

If you're in or around TechEd this June, be sure to say Hi!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm down here in Birmingham, AL, on the first business trip since Z was born. He's 12 weeks old today. Thank goodness for Video Chat and Webcams.

I picked up an Airlink101 AIC250 at Fry's for $99. They are also available around the net. I was pricing wireless video IP cameras, but they are like $300+ for one that runs their one web server. I didn't want to get a cheapo button camera because I'd have to run the video output through my computer. The idea of a camera with it's own web server is/was very attractive to me.

This camera is interesting in that it includes Java and ActiveX controls that access the video stream. However, tinkerer that I am, that's not acceptable, so I started poking around. The results will turn into a Coding4Fun article and a .NET 2.0 ClickThrice application that's a modification of some code I found and modified with permission on CodeProject. Look for that soon, I should turn it in this week.

Here's some the interesting things that I found and done, as a teaser:

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm blessed (or cursed) with a lot of email asking questions. Sometimes about Diabetes, usually something about computers (.NET, ASP.NET, Web Services, Development, XML, utils, whatever). It's always nice to get such email, and I do read every email I get. However, I do have a (more than) full time job, a new baby (12 weeks on Tuesday), book edits, articles, blogs, speaking, blah blah blah.

That said, I do appreciate it when folks take time to send email. I love blogging and I love the connection/community aspects of it. Please don't take it personally (some do) when I don't have time to help with binding to the DataGrid, how to poke around inside XmlDocument, or dual boot your system.

When a question is truly interesting, truly difficult, and it's clear that the author has tried the obvious stuff (Googled at least ONCE, please) then I'm happy to take a look.

The best questions, for me, are the ones that turn into a blog post. If you read my blog, you know what my style is and what kinds of questions/problems I run into. If you've got one like that, then I may get to you.

I haven't gotten to the point that Scott Mitchell has with regards to answering mail, but I may get there soon if the dozen or so questions a day continue.

Here's an interesting (if only to me) question that just came up from a non-technical reader. Seriously, I apparently have a non-zero number of non-technical readers that aren't related to me. Not sure how that happened or what they are getting from my content. :)

How can I add my Xbox Live Gamer Card (or other generated Gamercard) on my desktop? I answer this question only because it's fun. If the asker had Google'd once, they've have likely found the answer on their own.

• Right-click on your desktop and click Properties.
• Go to the Desktop tab, then click on Customize Desktop.
• Go to the Web tab, then click on New...
• Enter http://gamercard.xbox.com/MYCARD.card in the location field, where MYCARD is your gamertag.

So, good questions:

• Hard
• Interesting
• Aren't Googlable
• Haven't been answered before
• Involve Design, Architecture, Coding in .NET, WS/XML, or on Windows in general

Thanks!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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