PowerShell SnapIn for the Digipede Network

October 23, 2007 at 11:34 am · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing

Today we posted a preview of our PowerShell SnapIn for the Digipede Network — go to the Digipede community site for details and download instructions.

This preview provides a functioning command-line interface to much of the available Digipede Network management APIs.  This functionality will continue to be enhanced along with the underlying APIs (more on this in a future post).

This preview is a little bit of a departure for us at Digipede.  While we have targeted previews to customers in the past, this is the first time we have made one publicly available.  A bigger departure, though, is that we are also including full source code to this preview.

Digipede is not open-source, so why release the SnapIn code?

• The SnapIn provides excellent examples for the Digipede Management APIs.  The SnapIn is also a good example of a PowerShell SnapIn.
• By providing a sample as a SnapIn we are reducing the startup costs for our customers to develop their own cmdlets (for the Digipede Network and otherwise).
• We hope that some community members will provide feedback in the form of suggestions, fixes and maybe even new cmdlets — this will help make the SnapIn better faster. 

Another question might be, why do a PowerShell SnapIn at all?  After all, PowerShell does a great job with .NET APIs without any additional support.

• PowerShell does do an excellent job with .NET APIs (and COM APIs too, for that matter).  But this support is better suited to scripting than to a great command-line interface.  I will post an example of this difference later this week.
• For some customers, a command-line interface is important.  PowerShell provides a standard framework into which such interfaces can be built — the days of writing one’s own custom command-line interfaces are thankfully past.
• PowerShell is really cool.

If you are interested in PowerShell, the Digipede API, or a command-line interface to the Digipede Network, please take the time to try out the preview.  We would love to get feedback from you on what else it needs, any problems you find, and ideas for other cmdlets — implementations even better!

To learn more about Windows PowerShell, visit the Microsoft Windows PowerShell home page as well as the PowerShell Team blog.

Tags: .NET, c#, Cmdlet, Digipede, PowerShell

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Solution found to "The problem with Vista"

October 12, 2007 at 8:41 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

Vista has a cool feature called “Problem Reports and Solutions”.  This tracks problems and periodically looks for their solutions.  These kinds of problems include system and application failures, connectivity issues, etc.

Today it notified me it found a new solution, so I immediately went to see what it was:

Of course, immediately I thought which problem with Windows Vista?  And I’m not being sarcastic here.  I’ve had several intermittent issues with Vista related to networking, hibernation / sleep, sluggishness, etc.  (btw, the sarcasm is best applied to the possible solutions ;). 

So I clicked on the link and got a dialog with this further information:

Again, my question of which problem.  Nothing in the main part of the text says anything other than “the problem” and the “Technical Information” box describes some generic problems.

I would like to see two improvements here:

1. Improve the solution title

Instead of “the problem”, how about:

Follow these steps to improve the reliability of Windows Vista.

The actual title may be limited to the software product to which it relates.  If so, that is a shortcoming, because the actual messaging is pretty unhelpful . . . and it opens Microsoft up to further sarcastic jabs.

2. Provide more information about why this solution was chosen for me

The dialog is pretty unhelpful.  Instead of sending me to the knowledge base, how about some specifics about my own machine?  Something like:

There are X problem reports on your system indicating that this update will improve the functioning of your system.  Click “here” to view these reports.

I would actually like to know specifically what this update is intended to fix.

Tags: KB, Microsoft, Vista

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kukunest v2

October 3, 2007 at 5:31 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

With my help (and Ken’s help too), we just revamped the kukunest Web site ().  It is easier to navigate, faster, and now hosts more products. 

Now they have more themes of children’s bedding and art work plus full and toddler sizes.

Great stuff — check it out.

And now back to the regularly scheduled program.

Tags: kukunest

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Vista SP1 Beta

October 1, 2007 at 11:29 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

On Friday, I updated my laptop using Windows Update; the entire install process went smoothly.

Things I’ve noticed.

• In the past, remote desktop connections to non-Vista machines always prompted the user to confirm connection.   New in Vista SP1 is the ability to turn off that warning on a computer-by-computer basis.  A small thing, but I found this really irritating in the past.  Cool.
• The Start -> Search menu is gone.  A little strange, I think.  You can get the same functionality from any explorer window, so I don’t see how this levels the playing field for other search vendors.
• Strangely enough, when I installed the prerequisites (which are purportedly related to improving Vista update performance), my Alps touchpad tray icon appeared for the first time ever.  I clicked on it and found that, again for the first time ever, the touchpad’s unique “device select” tab was available in the mouse control panel.  Weird, but good.  Now I can turn off the tap while typing.

Things I haven’t noticed.

• Any changes in stability.  In general, I feel that the stability of Vista has improved over the year, but my Reliability Monitor tells a different tale.  My reliability index moves between 1 and 3 and hasn’t gotten over 5 since July 31st.  I hope that this changes in SP1, though it isn’t clear how much of this is the OS and how much is bad application behavior.  I wish I could weight failures on the system for how they impact me and possibly exclude them from the Reliability Monitor.
• Any changes in performance. 

All in all I’ve been getting happier with Vista as the year has progressed.  I initially had all sorts of networking problems, but Dell or Intel seems to have mostly solved those.  Long gone are the days when I had to reboot my machine to get it on a network.  We even now have a VPN solution that supports Vista.

Aside from the trouble, I like Vista.  The only part I don’t like about it is feeling like an early adopter with it.  After all, why did I install SP1?  To provide feedback to Microsoft, yes, but also in hope that it makes my experience better sooner.

Tags: Microsoft, SP1, Vista

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The return of the Newton!

September 26, 2007 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

AppleInsider reports in Up next for Apple: the return of the Newton.

Finally, an upgrade path for my Apple Newton MessagePad 100.  I sure hope they don’t leave us early supporters out in the cold on this one — let’s all team together and demand a deep discount on an upgrade!

Tags: Apple, Gadgets, iPhone, Newton, PDA

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Digipede Network 2.0

September 18, 2007 at 1:27 pm · Filed under Grid Computing

The software is done, the press releases out, John and Dan talking about it in New York.  I can’t say I’m the first to announce it, but I may be the most glad that it is finished and released.

What is new?  A bunch of stuff, but I am most excited about . . .

• Many changes have been made to Digipede Control — it is easier to use and looks better
• The Digipede SDK now has tighter integration with Visual Studio 2005: now it is really easy to debug both sides of your Digipede applications.
• Integrated Windows security

Of course, there are also improvements to the API, performance improvements, and more. 

Soon I will also be announcing the release of Java and PowerShell support in the form of fully functional samples with binaries (for those of you not interested in the details).

And now with 2.0 out, maybe I can find the time to blog a bit more 😉

Tags: Digipede, Java, PowerShell

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Automatic Properties Follow-up

August 27, 2007 at 10:48 am · Filed under .NET

Back in March, I posted Automatic Properties in C# 3.0 which included a couple of questions.  At the time I hadn’t installed any Orcas beta.  My post was based on other posts (including one from Bart DeSmet’s excellent blog: C# 3.0 Automatic Properties Explained).  My questions leapt out at me (maybe I’ll post about why that is . . .). Since that post, I have played a bit with the VS 2008 betas as well as built and tested the Digipede SDK samples.

A recent comment reminded me that I should revisit the questions.

Question 1: Is there an attribute to set the automatic field name?

Reason?  To maintain binary-serialization compatibility when moving from automatic properties to “normal” properties. 

Answer:  I don’t know if there is explicitly.  The underlying field name seems to have been changed since Bart’s first post and VS 2008 beta 2 (they have improved it so the field name can be derived from the property name).  This is good, because it might mean that the automatic property could be converted to the “normal” kind of property while maintaining default binary serialization; however, the backing field name looks like:

<PropertyName>k_BackingField.   

. . . and angle brackets are not valid for member names — the compiler can generate them, but aren’t valid C# syntax.  So, this is not quite what I want.

Question 2: Is there an attribute you can put on the automatic property to hide the underlying field or is it automatic?

Reason?  By default, properties with backing fields result in (usually) duplicated information in the debugging views.  If the backing field is generated by the compiler, it would make sense to just hide it (with the DebuggerBrowsableAttribute or some other way).

Answer:  This is automatic.  Good.  Probably a result of the CompilerGeneratedAttribute that is added to the generated backing field.

Summary

Based on what I know now, I wouldn’t use automatic properties if default binary serialization is likely to be used.  Regardless of this possibly arcane issue, automatic properties are cool.  I like them.

Tags: .NET, .NET3.5, c#, C#3.0, Digipede

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System.Uri.Equals(…) What?

August 8, 2007 at 4:03 pm · Filed under .NET

Can someone explain why the following expression evaluates to true?  There must be some historical perspective that I’m just missing.

new Uri("mailto:somebody@example.com") == new Uri("mailto:somebodyelse@example.com")

I would understand:

1. A use case for a separate Uri.Compare method giving the caller control over which components should be compared;
2. If Uri.Equals performed its comparison against canonicalized URIs.

The docs say that the user info, fragment, and  (in older .NETs) query are all ignored for comparison.  There is no mention for the email address in a mailto; however.

What?  Why?

Tags: .NET, BCL, c#, Microsoft

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Twitter and Verizon

August 7, 2007 at 6:01 am · Filed under Web 2.0

Update 2:If you reading this (mild) rant, don’t. Nothing to see here. This all works fine. See updates on the bottom, if you are so inclined.

Twitter is cool.  But is it fun enough for me?

The Twitter page says:

Twitter is more fun when used through your mobile phone or instant messenger client. Set yours up!

I tried to.  And I tried again.

It turns out that Twitter doesn’t talk to Verizon.

This fact doesn’t warrant a mention on the setup page, nor in the Help, and not even in the FAQ.  Nowhere does it say this — mostly nowhere, it is mentioned in some Twitter feed.

So — I’ll just make an outlandish claim here — a whole bunch of people have entered their text number only to find it doesn’t work.  Then these whole bunches of people tried again.  And then, third time’s a charm?  Nope. 

I can understand not leading with your weaknesses, but not mentioning it at all? 

I’m not complaining that it doesn’t work with Verizon.  I know messaging between the U.S. wireless carriers is a crapshoot — my problem is that the Twitter pages don’t mention it.

C’mon Twitter, your app is cool, but have more respect for your users.  That alone will make it more fun for me.

Update: Crystal from Twitter says (very politely) that I’m wrong about Twitter and Verizon. I’ve contacted Twitter support to get it worked out. My fault for not contacting Twitter first — and now I can’t locate the feed that mentioned problems sending SMS to Verizon. It was probably outdated, after all.

Update 2:This all works fine. I made an assumption about the process. All my fault.

Tags: SMS, Twitter, Verizon, Web2.0, Wireless

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The Linux Religion . . .vs. Windows (yawn)

July 19, 2007 at 1:32 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing

The Linux-guru crowd continues to discount the complexity of installation, maintenance, use, and actual cost of Linux-based OSes. 

It would be a full time job to debunk these arguments over and over again.  Occasionally, Dan takes the time to do just this:  see him dismantle another one of Joe Landman’s CCS attack pieces in Yet another poof piece.  And Dan doesn’t even mention the developer-productivity story . . .

Personally, I tend to ignore the “I hate Microsoft, Linux is the answer to everything” arguments.   You can build a feasible solution with either platform.  As Dan said in his post (specifically about HPC):

Look, I’m not deriding Linux as an OS, or as an HPC OS. It’s been very successful, and it will continue to have success.

The fact is: if you’re using UNIX or Linux, it probably doesn’t make sense to port to Windows.

But if you’re already using Windows, it certainly doesn’t make sense to port to Linux.

They are different toolboxes full of different (albeit similar and overlapping) tools.  Depending on all sorts of criteria, different organizations will do better with one platform than the other.

There is huge growth potential in the market for both platforms.  Can’t we just get past this? 

Or has this truly become a religion?

Tags: .NET, CCS, Digipede, grid, HPC, Linux, Microsoft, Windows

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