Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

Today we had an electricity outage cause by thunderstorm. While UPSes were still alive on both network segments connected via ZyXel PL-100 power line adapter, I tried connecting them into UPS and see what happens. Unfortunately it didn't work. When both adapters were connected to UPSes, Link led on both adapters was off. After power came back up, it changed nothing - no connection through UPSes. When I connected one adapter directly to the wall, and one through an APC-made UPS, Link leds came on, but computers still didn't see each other. As soon as I connected both adapters to the wall, connection was re-established.

The bottom-line: If you need network connection in your house to stay on during power interruptions, use wireless networking instead of power-line adapters.

Just read the review of the BMW 335i hard-top convertible in the New York Times. The review was warm - quite typical for the car this good. One thing that the author could not do without, is conforming to the common understanding that BMW's iDrive - the integrated computer control console and navigation system - is horrible. As someone who had Honda Accord with a touch-screen navigation for a few years, I can attest that knob/joystick-based iDrive is completely usable. More so with the string of programmable shortcut buttons, which according to a dealer were added to the dashboard of 3-series in March of 2007. With all the most-frequently-used functionality already accessible through the specialized buttons and knobs on the BMW dashboard, iDrive is a totally adequate user interface conduit. Maybe back in 2002 when the first version of the iDrive was introduced in the 7-series, it was bad - I don't know. I hear it was the only way to control the car and even most basic functions required lots of knob action. If that was the case - it was a really bone-headed design. As someone who designed quite a few user interfaces, including a CAD UI, I have this rule of thumb: put most critical functions at user's fingertips, and organize the rest of commands in a well-structured, easy to navigate menu. Today's iDrive accomplishes that. I got iDrive with my 335i coupe simply because I couldn't imagine living without navigation system, and after reading all the bad reviews I was bracing for supposedly abysmal UI and control abilities of the iDrive. To my surprised I don't really have anything to complain about. It's not touch-screen, but from my point of view touch-screen is a toss compared to joystick: touchscreen is easier to operate when car is not moving, but it is very inconvenient on the go. I am not trying to say that iDrive is perfect - I hear praises to Lexus control console, but these days iDrive is not bad at all as far as functionality and convenience goes. Now, to those who claim that iDrive is hard to figure out, I don't really know what to say. If you were able to figure out how to make enough money to buy a BMW with iDrive, you should have no trouble figuring out iDrive. Otherwise let me know what you are doing for living - I may want to get into it.

I switched to Cingular from Verizon about a year ago because Cingular has GSM phones, and I want to use my phone when travelling to Europe. I got Cingular 3125 (a.k.a. HTC Star Trek, a.k.a. QTEK 8500), based on Windows SmartPhone WM5. The phone, of course, was locked by Cingular. Now the time came for me to take the phone abroad, and knowing that there are two ways of unlocking the phone: through the provider, or using 3rd party tools/services, I started with less risky - called Cingular.

I called Cingular (the new AT&T) help line and told the tech support lady that I was travelling to Europe and would like to have my phone unlocked. Without even asking me what country I am travelling to, she said that they will not unlock my phone and instead I would have to pay for their international roaming package.

Then I tried cellunlocks.com - one of the many services that claim to unlock the phone remotely. I paid $6.99, followed the instructions - only to receive the email stating that unlocking my phone was not possible, with no details about why, and that the full refund will be posted within 10 days. Eight days later there is still no refund, so you may want to stay away from this "service". UPDATE: Refund was finally posted two weeks after they stated they can't unlock the phone.

Then I called Cingular again, and this time I told the rep that I am travelling to Ukraine, that I will be using SIM card provided to me there, and that I would like to have my phone unlocked. This rep seemed more attentive. First, he made sure that my phone will work on Ukrainian networks. Then he said that they will unlock the phone. He made me pull IMEI ID and placed an unlock request with Cingular. Within hours I received the call from Cingular with the unlock code and unlock instructions - all I needed now is a SIM card from a foreign GSM service provider, because phone prompts for unlock code only when "non-naive" SIM card is inserted. Luckily, my relative visiting us here, had her SIM card with her. I popped it in, entered unlocked code and that was it.

I suspect that I was successful in my second attempt to unlock the phone through Cingular because they probably don't have roaming agreement with Ukrainian providers.

The bottom line is: If you want to have your provider unlock your GSM phone, tell them you are travelling to a country that does not have roaming agreement with your provider.

CodePlex.com - a relatively new open-source collaboration platform from Microsoft that came to replace old and cranky GotDotNet - has impressed me quite a lot. Of course it closely resembles SourceForge.net, with the main difference of CodePlex being underpinned by Team Foundation Server (TFS) for source control and issue tracking functionality.

People often don't realize that TFS client that integrates into Visual Studio 2005 can be downloaded and is completely free.

I currently host a couple of projects on Codeplex:

• MS AJAX 1.0 Setup Project Prerequisite for Visual Studio 2005.
  It makes MS AJAX redistributable by including it into the Setup.exe bootstrapper prerequisite manifest. The prerequisite integrates nicely with Visual Studio 2005.
  
  
• Simple ASP.NET 2.0/C# MP3 Player.
  This application demonstrates a possibility of building a web application for home users. It includes redistributable UltiDev Cassini Web Server for ASP.NET 2.0 to not make the application dependent on the presence of IIS on users machines. The app is AJAXed to minimize music interruptions and uses Flash player to playback MP3 to avoid dependency on any particular media player. 

After releasing build 1.7 of my open-source redistributable ASP.NET-based MP3 player application, I used it for a while and I am pretty happy with its stability and functionality. The design goal for the project was to demo a concept of an easily-redistributable web application for SOHO market. With unquestionable popularity of web-based applications in the business world, removing complexity of the web hosting infrastructure to make home web applications possible as a category is poised to be the next big thing.

MS AJAX is great, but if you wanted to make an installable application with it, there was no way of including AJAX into your MSI-based setup project. I made a Visual Studio manifest that makes MS AJAX Extensions a Visual Studio Setup Project prerequisite:

To AJAX-enable your existing ASP.NET 2.0 application follow this video. It takes only a few minutes and essentially makes you create a dummy new Ajax-enabled ASP.NET application and then copy & paste relevant pieces of its web.config file into your application's web.config.

If you are planning to use Ajax Control Toolkit, then instead of creating dummy project from the "ASP.NET AJAX-Enabled Web Site" Visual Studio project template, create the dummy project using "AJAX Control Toolkit Web Site" template. Its web.config has additional entry in the <controls> section of the web.config that will be necessary for your application.

Microsoft is showing off its new Acropolis framework for .NET. It seems to be a little more than good old CCmdTarget of late MFC. 

Back in 2001 when I was making a transition from C++/MFC to C#/.NET two things I missed the most were C++ templates and CCmdTarget/Doc/View architecture of MFC-based Windows UI. I could not believe Microsoft didn't port CCmdTarget at the time and naturally wrote my own. But pretty soon it was obvious that with C# and Visual Studio .NET writing ASP.NET web applications was easier than making Windows UI apps, and people wanted web UI more than windows UI.

Combine dwindling demand for Windows UI with inferior development tools and you end up in the situation where software architects don't even debate whether their next enterprise application should have Windows UI or web UI. It's assumed and understood that it will be a web-based application. If you think an application needs to have Windows UI - you will face an uphill battle convincing other project stakeholders it's the right way to go.

Simply put, Windows UI is so out, and web UI is so in that incremental improvements in Windows UI world like WPF and Acropolis is too little and way too late to save the day. We've got AJAX, thank you very much. In my arrogant opinion enterprise apps will not go back into Windows UI world. The last bastion of Windows UI applications is SOHO market, but that is about to change with HttpVPN making it possible to make easily redistributable web applications for consumers and small businesses. Once that happens, Windows UI will become just gaming and other graphics-heavy applications platform.

Until recently I've been running MCE 2005 on Windows XP with Linksys Media Center Extender (MCX) connected to the XP box over 802.11a wireless network. That was a nice and stable setup, but with the technology moving forward it was time for an upgrade. I have successfully upgraded XP to Vista, and since Vista did not support "old" Media Center Extenders like the one I have, I had to get XBOX 360 - the only game in town when it comes to extenders supporting Windows Vista.

Cursory Google search revealed that even most basic and least expensive XBOX 360 version, the Core System, can run the extender application just fine by loading the MCX software from the Vista box over the network. Far more serious issue for me was how loud XBOX 360 is. The thing is that Media Center Extender box is located in the bedroom, and any fan noise from XBOX 360 would be very annoying. Linksys Media Center Extender was not just quiet - it was completely silent. It has no fans or motors at all. The price for the silence was that its CPU was underpowered and therefore it was mostly nothing but a dumb Remote Desktop terminal displaying the UI rendered on the XP box, with the exception of rendering the streaming media on the MCX box itself. XBOX 360 has a very powerful multi-core processor and therefore is easily fit to render all the fancy MCX UI right there, which makes UI of MCX running on XBOX 360 much more responsive compared the Linksys. The price of the performance, besides $300, is the fan and its noise. How much noise exactly? The whole reason I write this post is because after searching the "Internets" I was unable to tell whether the level of noise is acceptable or not. Some people complained that it's horrible, and some said it's OK. Well, here's the verdict: yes, the noise is bad and I can't believe Microsoft didn't find a solution to the noise problem, BUT the remedy is you can turn XBOX 360 completely off when you are not watching it! Noise level when you use the XBOX is not uncomfortable at all. The drawback is that it takes XBOX about 50 seconds to boot, load MCX application from the server, and launch the MCX UI when you turn the XBOX on (which BTW can all be done at once by pressing Mediacenter Green Button on the mediacenter remote). I don't mind paying the 50 second price for the complete silence of the turned off XBOX, while being able to enjoy fast and responsive UI of the XBOX setup.

Another quick note on the subject - the networking of the new extender. Linksys extender had both wireless and wired networking capabilities. I ran it over 802.11a (Wireless-A) network that is fast enough for streaming recoded TV and at the same time is not susceptible to interference from all the 2.4GHz devices like cordless phones and 802.11g (Wireless-G) networks of your neighbors. XBOX 360, however, has only wired networking capabilities, and since our house is not wired for Ethernet, I had to use ZyXel power line Ethernet adapter. I really like ZyXel power line adapters - they are great alternative to wiring your house or using wireless networks. When I was setting up extender piece on the Vista machine, MCE tested the network bandwidth and found the throughput not sufficient for streaming TV. I though it's strange because ZyXel PLA-100 adapter is supposed to be 85 marketing Mbit (about 45 real Mbit) - quite faster than 22 Mbit of the Wireless-A network that was working just fine. Sure enough, TV and video streaming ran absolutely smoothly over ZyXel PLA-100. However, whenever we get an HDTV set connected to the extender, we'll need to upgrade ZyXel adapters to speedier 200 marketing Mbit (hopefully about 100 real Mbit) PLA-400.

[June 12 UPDATE: The same day when I wrote this post I noticed that network performance of the setup has degraded to the point of recorded TV being unwatchable: picture would freeze or won't start playing back at all with the black screen, with "Network Issues" pop-up ever-present on the screen. I thought the problem is ZyXel PL-100. I replaced it with Viewsonic 802.11g access point connected to XBOX 360, and just like with PL-100 it worked flawlessly the first time I turned on the XBOX, but went down exactly the same way as the the power line adapter based network. Funny thing is that if I hit Fast Forward button on the MCE remote, FF works and produces absolutely smooth video! So at normal rate it crawls to the stop, but with fast forwarding there are no "Network Issues"? I was able to playback the same recorded shows over the same network connections using notebook and WIndows Media Player with no problems. I think Microsoft has a whole lot of explaining to do about its XBOX 360 "networking issues".