IIS7 , Seattle, etc

I'm in Seattle this week for technical preview of the next version of Microsoft's web server, IIS7. As usual, they're not committing to any release date but say it'll be about a year or so before it's available. So far, I haven't been really impressed by it. It seems their biggest objective for the release is to make it as flexible and extensible as possible - and I'd say they've accomplished that. They have also provided mechanisms that allow you to integrate managed code (i.e. code running in the .NET CLR) into the HTTP pipeline of IIS, so I guess that's kind of neato too. I still have a couple of more days to see what else they've got planned, but I'm pretty bored by the whole thing.

Seattle is a nice city, but I haven't seen the sun in 3 days. I guess that's typical. Tonight, we went to a bar near our hotel to get a beer and some food. I kept smelling something awful and couldn't quite figure out what it was. Eventually, it turned out to be our waitress. She had the worst BO ever. Pretty gross. The beer was good though.

Sub-standard

I just had lunch from Subway. Why is it that Quiznos toasted subs are good, but Subway toasted subs suck? It's an age-old question (months old to be sure).

Improv Everywhere Mission: Even Better Than The Real Thing

This is great:

Improv Everywhere Mission: Even Better Than The Real Thing

Cars

I have two car-related things to discuss tonight.

The first is regarding the cool new Audi A3. This car has been available in Europe for some time now, but they are bringing it to the North American market. One of the coolest features that this car has is that it has 2 Secure Digital (SD) card readers built into the stereo system. This allows you to copy your MP3s to your SD card(s) and listen in your car... no need for messy cables to hook up your MP3 player, or burning to CD.

The other car discussion really stinks - literally. I think something crawled into my Mazda 3's engine area, or under the body somewhere - and then it died. There is a stench of something dead emanating from under my car. Originally, I assumed that Ewan had spilled some milk somewhere and I could not find it. I knew this wasn't the case when I continued to smell it when I was outside the car. I'm not sure what to do about this. I have looked everywhere under the hood and under the body, but with newer cars such as mine, there is not much to see unless you remove a bunch of plates and panels. I guess I will just have to wait for this thing to dry up and stop being smelly. Gross.

Guess Which Movie

This is kind of fun...

Guess Which Movie

New blog

I've created a new blog, PhotoBabbler. It will consist of nothing but pictures taken from my cell phone and posted by emailing directly from my phone. If I am feeling energetic, I might even type a word or two describing the picture, but don't count on it.

Yahoo Music Engine Plugins

As I discussed yesterday, I recently downloaded the Yahoo Music Engine (YME) as a part of my search to replace Windows Media Player as my media library management software. One thing I failed to mention about the YME was that it has a completely customizable plug-in architecture. This allows anybody with moderate software development skills to write their own code that runs inside the YME.

You want the YME to do something, but it doesn't do it "out of the box"? Write it yourself. Sounded interesting, so I gave it a go.

As a test, I wanted to see if I could search my library for tracks who's metadata did not contain a URL for album art. (I'm kind of picky about little things like that. When I play a song, I want the album cover to be displayed.) Since the YME automatically attempted to update the metadata with this information when it created my library, I was curious to see how efficient it was.

I assumed that to create a plugin, I was going to have to brush the dust off of some of my old C++ books. It's been a while since I've written C++, but I was up for it. As it turns out, creating a plugin couldn't be easier. The Yahoo team was kind enough to expose almost the entire programming interface through COM components. Better yet, they have created a mechanism by which YME will host an HTML page thereby allowing you to create simple HTML forms and use Javascript to access the Engine's API.

Anyway, I didn't spend much time on it, but I did get some results. The image below is a screen capture of my plugin after if performed the search in my library.





So that you can see how little code I wrote, here's the entire source:

<HTML>
<BODY>
<script language="javascript" src="yme.js"></script>
<object classid="clsid:5F810AFC-BB5F-4416-BE63-E01DD117BD6C" height=90% width=100% id=datagrid VIEWASTEXT>
  <PARAM NAME="CheckBoxes" VALUE="0">
  <PARAM NAME="ShowAlways" VALUE="1">
  <PARAM NAME="FullRowSel" VALUE="0">
</object>
<br><br>
<A href="javascript:startSearch()">Search</a><br>
<script>

  datagrid.AddColumn("Artist", 150, 0, 0);
  datagrid.AddColumn("Album", 150, 0, 0);
  datagrid.AddColumn("Track Title", 150, 0, 0);

  function startSearch()
  {
    mediaDatabase = window.external.MediaDatabase;
    allMedia = mediaDatabase.GetAllMedia();
  
    itemIndex = 0;
    for( var i = 0; i < allMedia.Count; i++ )
    {
      media = allMedia.Item( i );
      metaData = media.Metadata;
   
      imageUrl = metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_IMAGE );
     
      if( imageUrl == null || imageUrl.length == 0 )
      {
        datagrid.AddRow();
        datagrid.SetRowData( itemIndex, 10 );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 0, metaData.GetPredefinedValue(  METADATA_ARTIST ) );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 1, metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_ALBUM ) );
        datagrid.SetElement( itemIndex, 2, metaData.GetPredefinedValue( METADATA_TITLE ) );
        itemIndex++;
      }
    }
  }
</script>
</BODY>
</HTML>

I also had to manually add a key to the registry that enabled the "Al's Plugin" item to show up in the left-hand navigation pane of the YME.

All in all, I am pretty impressed. I might just keep it around a little longer.

Music Management Software

About a week and a half ago, I decided to replace my current music management tool - Microsoft Windows Media Player. Media Player is fine for simply playing music, but I found it very cumbersome for managing portable devices like our Dell DJ and Creative Muvo Micro N200.

The leading software in the non-iPod/iTunes market is Musicmatch Jukebox. I used this a few times a couple of years ago, and at that time, I thought it sucked. But, being open minded, I decided to give it a try. After a few days of using Musicmatch I decided it was significantly better than Media Player, and that it would now become my music manager of choice. It has quite a nice user interface, and it is extremely simple to synchronize my portable devices.

My only complaint about Musicmatch is that it does not have the ability to resample my media files to a lower bit-rate. Most of my music is encoded in WMA format at a relatively high bit-rate. I'd like to reduce the bit-rate to increase the number of tracks I can copy to my devices. The Musicmatch documentation states that WMA files can no longer be resampled (I guess this was possible in previous versions) because of license arrangements with Microsoft. Hmmm...

A few days after becoming satisfied with Musicmatch, I learned of Yahoo's Music Unlimited service and its accompanying Yahoo Music Engine software. I decided to give it a try. I originally decided to try only the Music Engine software. I didn't think I'd care for the music "rental" business model...

The Music Engine software is mediocre. It does not have as many useful features as Musicmatch, but it does have a few useless features that Musicmatch does not offer (like integration with Yahoo Instant Manager - big deal).

I then decided to give the Music Unlimited service a try. With a 1 week free trial, I figured it couldn't hurt. What I found is that the service is extremely addictive. Heidi and I just sat there for an hour and typed in artists and songs, found them and played them. It was pretty fun. At just $5 a month ($60 per year, billed monthly), it's hard to complain about the price. You can download and listen to any song in their library provided you pay the monthly fee.

I ran in to one serious issue with the Unlimited service though. The tracks downloaded are NOT compatible with either of my portable devices. That is a serious drawback. The list of supported devices is still pretty small but is sure to grow as the service catches on. The newer Dell DJs support the format, but my model is not supported. And from what I've read, a firmware update will not be offered that would make mine compatible. I can probably sell my DJ for about $190 on eBay and get a new one (with 30GB vs my 20GB) for about $230, but I haven't determined if it's worth it yet. I haven't learned if the Muvo will eventually support the format, but I doubt it. Besides, since our Muvo is only the 256MB model, it would quickly get filled since the downloaded tracks from the Unlimited service cannot be resampled to smaller bit-rates.

So, the jury is still out. For ease of use, features, and performance, Musicmatch is the clear winner. However, the Music Unlimited service is quite attractive. It is possible to use the Music Unlimited service for music download, and Musicmatch for music management (Musicmatch honours the DRM built into the downloaded tracks), but I'm looking for a single solution.

Guess I will just have to get an iPod and use iTunes... right Matt?

Hearing Impaired

Last night, I went to see Chevelle at La Zona Rosa. It was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time (despite the fact that they didn't have any pyrotechnics.). It was just a good, solid rock-and-roll show. I'd write more about it, but my head hurts a little today. I'm also quite deaf today.

www.benedictxvi.com

A month ago, a guy by the name of Rogers Cadenhead registered a bunch of internet dot-com domains using names he suspected the new Pope would choose (i.e. LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com etc.) He got it right with www.benedictxvi.com

He's a pretty good writer too. I enjoyed reading his blog.

I Rock

...because I just bought a Kiss belt buckle. Party on, Wayne.

Bomb it

Click here to drop nuclear bombs on this blog.

Orb streaming TV

Orb provides a really cool new service that allows you to stream a TV signal (amongst other things) from your home PC to other networked devices (such as your PDA, or your computer at work). I think my friend Eric might have mentioned this to me be before, but a co-worker was watching TV on his computer at work today (I guess he had lots to do!) and that's when I realized how cool the service could be. Check them out.

Another use

Our dishwasher died again. This is the third or fourth time this has happened, so we bought a new one. While removing the old dishwasher, I realized that I didn't have the proper tool required to remove the drainage hose. The clamp required a flat-head screw driver to loosen the screw. Since I was in the kitchen, I saw no need to walk to the garage and get a flat-head - for in the drawer next to the dishwasher was a perfectly good tool for the job... a butter knife!

Butter knife

Yesterday, Heidi stuck the SD card into my Canon SD300 camera upside-down. It got very, very stuck. I was as mad as a hatter (but I calmly did not let on). I got it out with a little help from a butter knife.

The butter knife is really quite a versatile tool. I suspect its most common secondary purpose is to act as a flat-head screwdriver. My earliest memories of the butter-knife-as-a-tool involve a TV and the little cylindrical transformer that you had to use to connect the cable to the back of the television. Remember those things? Remember using a butter-knife to tighten those little screws that held that thing to the TV?

I've also heard you can use them with an empty 2-litre Coke bottle, an electric stove (with those coil elements) and some hashish. "Hot-knives" is what all the kids called that use of the butter knife.

And of course it spreads butter. But its versatility allows it to spread much more than just butter. Other common items that can be spread include:

• Peanut butter (a form of butter, made from peanuts)
• Jam (or jelly)
• Cheeze Whiz (available in Canada only I think. But that's okay. It's gross.)
• Cinnamon Spread (available in Canada only I think. Too bad. It's great stuff).
• Cream Cheese (I prefer a dedicated "spreader" for this, but a butter-knife works in a pinch.)
• Margarine
• Mayonnaise (I prefer Miracle Whip.)

Wow, look at the crap I wrote. I only intended to talk about Heidi and the SD card (you forgot about that, didn't you?), and it turned into this whacky thing.

It's St. Patrick's day. I'm going to go get a beer.

Dogblog

Poor dogs.

Dogblog

Dance, White Boy, Dance

I'm sure this was staged, but it's still funny...

Dance, White Boy, Dance

Ironic?

In my previous post, I used the word "blog" and "blogging" a few times. Before publishing my post, I spell-checked it. Did you know that the dictionary used by this site (blogger.com) does not contain an entry for "blog" or "blogging"? Crazy, eh? I bet Alanis Morissette would have sung about it back in the 90s...

New Blog

I have created a new blog on another blogging site. Not that I write here very often, but the content will be slightly different on the new blog. Mostly family-related items and what not. The reason it's on MSN is because it offers space for photo albums as well as blogging. Take a look at the new blog here.

P.S. I pretty much use Firefox exclusively now as my web browser. However, I must admit that the photo album feature of the new blog is much nicer if you're using Internet Explorer.

Napoleon Dynamite

I had heard from several people that they thought this was the funniest movie of all time. So as I was flipping through the channels last night, I saw that it was playing on one of my movie channels. Because of the hype, I decided to watch it. I had been hoping for an hour and a half of gut-splitting comedy. I was sadly disappointed. While it did generate a few laughs (I particularly liked the dance routine near the end of the movie), I found it pretty dull overall.

It always seems that when a movie generates hype, I am very disappointed. I enjoy movies much more when I watch them with few or no expectations.

Read more about "Napoleon Dynamite" at IMDB.com.