This has been one of the more memorable years with moving to a new house, my boy turning four, working on awesome projects, running consistently and getting into the best shape I've been since my twenties.

Looking forward to 2013, even though I have this strange propensity to select even numbers on thermostat and volume controls.

We just got back from a great weekend at the beach; my sister-in-law got married on the sands near Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, OR. Really a great trip from start to finish.

My wife accepted the photographer duties and snapped nearly 2K photos with our Nikon D40 and a Nikon D60 that we borrowed from a friend. She had a zoom lens on one and a short lens on the other to avoid the need to change lenses in mid-moment. That part worked great.

The part that we overlooked was the current date/time on each camera; they were not synchronized. This will make sorting photos by time more difficult. No problem, I say, on the drive back home. I’m a developer and JPG files have meta info that I can manipulate, right?

It turns out that its not all that easy. Its actually a remarkable pain in the ass, hence this blog post (that’s the remark-able part).

I started with an online search and found Hanselman’s post about combining PowerShell with Omar Shahine’s library, ImageLibrary.dll that is evidently no longer accessible. Big phat 404 while trying to get that assembly.

Next, I did some searches specific to StackOverflow.com and saw some posts about how difficult reading/writing this meta data can be. At this point, I was beginning to wonder if my wife was going to hear a broken promise or not. It wasn’t looking good.

I found out that JPG files store meta data using EXIF, or Exchangeable Image File Format, a standard used by the digital still camera industry. It looked like C# 4.0 could crack this open, but I might have to do get my hands dirty with some bit shuffling. No worries, I was up for it. It didn’t look like there was a library out there that was going to fall into my lap, so I cracked open Visual Studio 2010 and saw what kind of trouble I could get into with Intellisense and a gin and tonic.

Let’s Take It Out for a Loop

I created a new project, loaded a Bitmap class with a sample JPG and iterated over the properties:

               1:
              using System;

               2:
              using System.Drawing;

               3:  

               4:
              namespace ReadExifInJPG

               5: {

               6:
              class Program

               7: {

               8:
              static
              void Main()

               9: {

               10: var
bitmap = new Bitmap("c:\\temp\\somephoto.jpg");

               11:  

               12:
              foreach (var
item in bitmap.PropertyItems)

               13: {

               14: Console.WriteLine("Id:
{0}, Type: {1}, Value: {2}", 

               15: item.Id,
item.Type, item.Value);

               16: }

               17: }

               18: }

               19: }

I had lots of properties in my sample photo:

I was thinking that this was going to be smooth sailing until I saw the values listed as byte arrays. Ugh. Then I read a EXIF specification that said the values can be stored in multiple formats and there are a ton of properties. I had over fifty on a single JPG image. I needed to find the property that told me if the given photo was taken by a Nikon D60 or a D40, and then change the date on the D60 images. Here’s the EXIF specifications: http://www.exif.org/specifications.html, and what a great document to read! Ugh.

I Just Want My Property

I found a list of property tags in numerical order on MSDN, note the id values are listed in hex, so 0x0132 (hex) equals 306 (decimal): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms534418(VS.85).aspx

When you go about reading or changing a given property, there are three parts to consider:

1. the id number that identifies the given property
2. the type number which describes the data format
3. the actual data, encoded in the least accessible format you could want

Here’s a list of numeric types that identify the corresponding data format:

1. A Byte
2. An array of Byte objects encoded as ASCII
3. A 16-bit integer
4. A 32-bit integer
5. An array of two Byte objects that represent a rational number
6. Not used
7. Undefined
8. Not used
9. SLong
10. SRational

Fortunately, everything I was interested in was of type 2, a byte array. This is a great MSDN article that gave me a bunch of tips on how to manipulate the EXIF data: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xddt0dz7.aspx

The property id of 306 holds the date of the photo, its a type 2 property, so the value is stored in a byte array. Here’s how to read the string value:

               1: var
property = bitmap.GetPropertyItem(306);

               2: System.Text.ASCIIEncoding
encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();

               3:
              string
              value =
encoding.GetString(property.Value);

Caution, Byte Counting Ahead

Note, the date properties that I’m interested in updating have values stored as byte arrays. More specifically, they’re exactly 20 bytes long. At first I wasn’t respecting that boundary and I just let .Net do it’s thing to convert my formatted date string into a byte array. When I tried to read the value back, it was empty because I overflowed the value.

After some noodling, I changed my code to write out exactly 20 bytes of data, starting at precisely 23 bytes into my new byte array, as follows.

               1:
              private
              void ChangeTimeStamp(Bitmap
bitmap, int minutesToAdd)

               2: {

               3: DateTime
originalDateTime = GetOriginalDateTime(bitmap);

               4:  

               5: var
newDateTime = originalDateTime.AddMinutes(minutesToAdd);

               6:  

               7: BinaryFormatter
bf = new BinaryFormatter();

               8: MemoryStream
ms = new MemoryStream();

               9:
              string formattedNewDateTime
= newDateTime.ToString("yyyy:MM:dd HH:mm:ss");

               10: bf.Serialize(ms,
formattedNewDateTime);

               11: ms.Seek(0,
0);

               12:  

               13: var
tempArray = ms.ToArray();

               14:  

               15:
              byte[]
byteArray = newbyte[20];

               16:  

               17: var
x = 0;

               18:
              for (int i
= 23; i < (23 + 19); i++)

               19: {

               20: byteArray[x]
= tempArray[i];

               21: x++;

               22: }

               23:  

               24: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 306);

               25: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 36867);

               26: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 36868);

               27: }

Note, the previous code shows I’m writing the same date to three different property settings (306, 36867, and 36868). They all had the same date value, so I figured the best thing to do was keep them all in sync.

It Works on My Machine

So, I was finally done with the code and I tested it with a bunch of files on my machine. Worked great. I installed VS 2010 C# Express on my netbook so I could create a console application and run it on my wife’s laptop. I had been abusing a ASP.Net Web Forms application with Visual Web Developer Express on my netbook. I made a quick console app, copied it to my wife’s laptop and ka-pow! It no worky. Puzzled, I tried to think what was wrong for about 30 minutes. After a couple of assertions inserted into my code, I realized she had some non-JPG files in the folder and my program wasn’t filtering for only JPG files. Doh! I did manage to get in a quick “hey, it works on my machine” comment to my wife, but she didn’t think it was as funny as I did.

Nothing But The Code, The Whole Code, So Help Me .Net Runtime?

Here’s the final class I built, in “good enough” format. The entire coding time, not including the installation of VS 2010 Express on my netbook, or .Net 4 on my wife’s laptop was about 90 minutes. The console program just takes this class, passes in the source and destination directories, along with the number of minutes to adjust the timestamp on the photo.

               1:
              using System;

               2:
              using System.Collections.Generic;

               3:
              using System.Linq;

               4:
              using System.Text;

               5:
              using System.IO;

               6:
              using System.Drawing;

               7:
              using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

               8:  

               9:
              namespace ImageMetaTool

               10: {

               11:
              public
              class TimeEditorService

               12: {

               13:
              public
              void AdjustDateTime(string soureDir, string destDir, int minutesToAdd)

               14: {

               15:
              if (!Directory.Exists(soureDir))

               16: {

               17: Console.WriteLine("Source
directory does not exist.");

               18:
              return;

               19: }

               20:  

               21:
              if (!Directory.Exists(destDir))

               22: {

               23: Console.WriteLine("Destination
directory does not exist.");

               24:
              return;

               25: }

               26:  

               27:
              int x
= 0;

               28: var
list = Directory.GetFiles(soureDir, "*.jpg");

               29:
              foreach (var
filename in list)

               30: {

               31: Console.WriteLine("Processing
image {0} of {1}; {2}", x, list.Length, filename);

               32:  

               33:
              using (var
fs = File.OpenRead(filename))

               34: {

               35: var
bitmap = new Bitmap(fs);

               36: ProcessFile(bitmap,
minutesToAdd);

               37: bitmap.Save(Path.Combine(destDir,
Path.GetFileName(filename)));

               38: x++;

               39: }

               40: }

               41:  

               42: Console.WriteLine("Processing
completed.");

               43: }

               44:  

               45:
              private
              void ProcessFile(Bitmap
bitmap, int minutesToAdd)

               46: {

               47:
              if (!IsD60(bitmap))

               48:
              return;

               49:  

               50: ChangeTimeStamp(bitmap,
minutesToAdd);

               51: }

               52:  

               53:
              private
              void ChangeTimeStamp(Bitmap
bitmap, int minutesToAdd)

               54: {

               55: DateTime
originalDateTime = GetOriginalDateTime(bitmap);

               56:  

               57: var
newDateTime = originalDateTime.AddMinutes(minutesToAdd);

               58:  

               59: BinaryFormatter
bf = new BinaryFormatter();

               60: MemoryStream
ms = new MemoryStream();

               61:
              string formattedNewDateTime
= newDateTime.ToString("yyyy:MM:dd HH:mm:ss");

               62: bf.Serialize(ms,
formattedNewDateTime);

               63: ms.Seek(0,
0);

               64:  

               65: var
tempArray = ms.ToArray();

               66:  

               67:
              byte[]
byteArray = newbyte[20];

               68:  

               69: var
x = 0;

               70:
              for (int i
= 23; i < (23 + 19); i++)

               71: {

               72: byteArray[x]
= tempArray[i];

               73: x++;

               74: }

               75:  

               76: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 306);

               77: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 36867);

               78: SetNewDateTime(bitmap,
byteArray, 36868);

               79: }

               80:  

               81:
              private
              void SetNewDateTime(Bitmap
bitmap, byte[] newDateTime, int propertyNumber)

               82: {

               83: var
property = bitmap.GetPropertyItem(propertyNumber);

               84: property.Value
= newDateTime;

               85:  

               86: bitmap.SetPropertyItem(property);

               87: }

               88:  

               89:
              private DateTime
GetOriginalDateTime(Bitmap bitmap)

               90: {

               91: var
property = bitmap.GetPropertyItem(306);

               92:  

               93: System.Text.ASCIIEncoding
encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();

               94:
              string
              value =
encoding.GetString(property.Value);

               95:  

               96:
              string value2
= value.Split(' ')[0].Replace(":", "/")
+ " " + value.Split('
')[1];

               97:  

               98:
              return DateTime.Parse(value2); //2010:08:14
14:23:14

               99: }

               100:  

               101:
              private
              bool IsD60(Bitmap
bitmap)

               102: {

               103: var
modelProperty = bitmap.GetPropertyItem(272);

               104:  

               105: System.Text.ASCIIEncoding
encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();

               106:
              string modelName
= encoding.GetString(modelProperty.Value);

               107:  

               108:
              if (modelName.Contains("D60")) //
NIKON D60

               109:
              return
              true;

               110:  

               111:
              return
              false;

               112: }

               113: }

               114: }

I hope you have a good time futzing with your EXIF data!

I was crawling around the CodePlex site and discovered a cool utility:

"Google Book Downloader is small utility which allows you to save book as PDF from google to your local filesystem."

Google has made public domain books accessible online and this .Net app can make them accessible on a plane. What will they think of next?

My buddy Steve was on Wheel of Fortune last night. The actual taping of the show was a few weeks ago and he was pretty tight lipped about it.

He said he won enough money to pay for the flight out there, so he was happy, err... I mean Happy! He did outstanding on the show and his wife came up afterwards to give him a hug. He won over $80K and a trip to Thailand! Congrats!

I think you're a good person, but I can't be with you. I have to break up. Sure 2007 was a fun year, galloping around the estate with that thick scent of delicious coffee in our hair and eager for the new dawn of a dark roast. We had some good times. The Techni Vorm label made me feel European too and I tried to embrace it, I really did. Its not you, its me.

It wasn't easy with your friend, Virtuoso, the coffee grinder. He never made it simple for us. I don't think he ever really accepted me. What was up with that static electricity? It let forth a brilliant shower of charged coffee grounds after each use. I'm mean really, how can he expect to keep someone around? Sure his sleek exterior and large bean reservoir would make anyone grin, but I've got to think of myself sometimes, I have to ask, what's in this for me? It was just too much of a mess to clean up after every grinding session.

Mocha Master, why did you start spilling over? At first, I was willing to blame it on the other people you saw. There were several accounts sent around on how to properly make coffee. But time and time again, you spilled when no one was looking. The final straw was when you spilled yesterday for me. It was me Mocha Master! I was here all alone with you and yet you forsake me. How could you do it? You know the level of coffee grounds in there was well within the accepted norms. Somehow you clogged up and spilled over the counter just like all of the times before. I have to give you up.

Hello Mr. Coffee, its been a while. I know I've been a bad friend and traipsing all over the coffee producing regions of the globe with my European friend, but its over, I swear.

I see you've gotten some new buttons and they look great, all shiny and in different colors. I've even started using a carafe so you don't need to worry about burning the coffee and ruining the flavor.

Oh, and hello little grinder! How have you been? I sure do miss you. Sure, you're from Starbucks, but that's ok. You're a good little guy and you don't have any static electricity. We love large machines and small machines alike. Sometimes you're abused and blamed for a mess, but its far and few between and I know you mean well. You can't fight gravity! Plus, you can grind your beans in 10 seconds flat. I'm going to enjoy seeing you around.

Mr. Coffee, I want you to know that I'm ready to get down to work and you won't have to worry about any more whimsical adventures from me. We have a simple agreement in place; you make coffee and I'll drink it. We don't need any drama in our lives around this matter and neither of us wants a high maintenance relationship. I'm glad you were willing to come back. I love you Mr. Coffee.

http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/html_quiz

I forgot some easy ones like <div> and I thought I typed <fieldset> because I also got <legend>, but a respectable score; maybe? ScottV got a couple more than me.

Under ordinary circumstances, all three of my blog readers know that I don't like playing blue. Yet sometimes, it is the only possible response.

This is to the 1998 Honda Civic Headlight Replacement Technical Writer:

You Suck.

I'm no mechanic, but I have replaced my car battery, and I'm generally aware of what goes on under the hood. Plus, I'm a good reader. I can follow directions. In my older cars, the bulb was encased in the complete housing. A few screws and a plug-and-play later was all it took. Not so today. All you get at the store is the actual bulb. Much smaller and easier to ship.

The following images show the 1.5 page description of how to replace a light bulb in a 1998 Honda Civic.

The instructions for headlight replacement begin on the right side of the following page. The author notes some good points to understand before tackling the job.

Then, it gets into the meat of the job with a full page shown in the following image.

As you can plainly see, at no point does the author state the following truth:

If you are reading this manual, then your best course of action is to return it to the glove box and drive to your nearest Oil Can Henry's location. Request a bulb replacement and happily pay the fee knowing that (a) you didn't have to do it (2) you didn't break anything; aka, less swearing and (iii) the delta between the cost of the bulb at the NAPA auto part store and what you paid at the shop are negligible.

And for that malfeasance, this technical writer sucks. It is my opinion that anyone replacing the driver's side headlight in a competent manner would not need to resort to the manual. For if they did, it would be a clear indication of the pain to come.

For starters, a light source for working under the hood is a good idea. I used one of these pod lights. Press the light to turn it on and off. They're small and nimble.

So here's what we're dealing with. The drivers side headlight sits squarely in front of the power steering reservoir. The following image shows my finger on the reservoir. Its connected by one hose on each side and is seated on a small cradle. You can already begin to see the terribly small spaces we're about to engage.

Just from the previous photo alone, you can see how the designers failed with this bulb location on the 1998 Honda Civic. Per the instructions, I am to lift the power steering reservoir out of the cradle and push it aside so I can gain access to the bulb housing. Those two hoses that attach to the reservoir aren't too keen on movement. I finally ended up disconnecting one of the hoses and stuffing it with a rag to stop the flow of power steering fluid to my garage floor. There was quite a bit of cussing to just reach this state.

Now that I had the reservoir propped up and out of the way and the power steering spill slowed to a slow dribble, I could being the real work. The following photo shows an overhead view of the bulb housing and my light source nestled into a good crevice.

Next, I need to pinch the tabs of the bulb housing to release it. This is very important, so you would think that the book would do a good job of describing where they are and what they look like. Not so. The tabs are nearly invisible, even with great lighting. They're about the size of a small pea on each side as indicated in the following photo. Before learning this, I cracked the plastic housing on the bulb housing with the pliers. Go me!

After the bulb housing is removed, the rubber seal and wire latch can be removed to produce the following item of grief - a blown out halogen bulb. I bought a new one at NAPA for $8.00

When you're wrestling with the wire that provides a constant pressure on the bulb housing and keeps it in place, be careful not to snap off the little plastic tab that hooks onto the wire; that's bad. Grrrrrr.....

Finally, I drove (the other car) to the NAPA auto parts store (again) and purchased a small amount of power steering fluid. When I arrived, the very nice man behind the counter saw the section I was looking and advised me on a good brand of leak sealant. I explained that I actually wanted power steering fluid. Sizing me up accurately, the man tilted his head and asked why I wanted power steering fluid. Evidently, I didn't pass muster. I explained that I had spilled some quantity onto my garage floor when I was replacing a headlight. At that point I must have passed some threshold of the "i-know-what-i'm-doing" home mechanic or the "complete-idiot" home mechanic. He was nice enough to stop the inquiry there and saved me a little face. So for $3.75 I left the store with a some power steering fluid and a small funnel to refill the reservoir.

So, in summary, this experience was an absolute unnecessary pain in the ass. I realized the folly of my plan about one-third into the debacle and kept thinking of reasons that I should just fold up now and waltz in to the nearest Oil Can Henry's to stop the suffering. Yet, I persisted and now I have two functional headlights in my car, and one extra piece of wire in my garage.

.. and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your in-laws. By sheer luck and $299.95 for a charm school summer camp a few years back, I have some awesome in-laws.

As I understand it, Jay worked on this web commercial. Anyone wanna take a break and go get some Herbal Mist with me?

I bought a carafe for the office a little bit ago. At first, I kept it on my desk. Arguably, I drink more coffee than anyone here. I offered warm ups, but I didn't get a lot of takers.

After a few days, I got a couple of questions about the strange device too. Some thought it had a little pick-me-up, like Baileys. In an effort to spread some knowledge, I used a little bit of my new found free time and found a way to explain it.

On Friday, our CFA (Chief Front-end Architect), Ryan Parr, received his brand new chair. Unfortunately, he wasn't here to sign for it. Thus, the stray mischievous folk who were in the office on Friday of last week took the following actions.

1. Remove new chair from box
2. Disassemble old chair
3. Placed stained and hairy old chair in the plastic from new chair
4. Shove old chair in box
5. Re-tape box shut

The box waited all weekend for his arrival. This morning, I shot this video on my Treo 700w. (Quicktime version is over here.)

Bahahahahaa!

This site is an great buzz generator for the upcoming Simpson's film. It built by the charming folks who took over the online advertising for Burger King.

http://www.simpsonizeme.com/

This Flash app takes a photo you submit and turns you into a Simpson character.

The man has cleaned up, packed up and gone. Now, I have a brand spanking new 60 amp sub-panel in my basement. My basement was woefully lacking in power outlets. It's a 1925 house and the current panel has a sticker from 1962. I don't know if that's the date the panel was installed or when some dude came out in April of '62 to service it. Since I know precious little about things like amps, watts, hertz, ohms, and kelvins, I apologize for not being able to elaborate. So, enter photo montage!

I needed some power to run a few toys for "a few days":

Workstation, obviously

The wall mounted media center

Subwoofer - the point one of a 5.1 surround sound system

InFocus ceiling mounted projector

And dual tower speakers with a magnets big enough to make your tooth fillings ache - occupying slots #2 and #3 of a 5.1 surround sound system.

How could this be powered, you ask? Well, for a very short term...

The source of all pleasure...

leads to a ceiling mounted power strip,

which traverses to the next hop,

and makes an indiscriminate use of a rogue ceiling hook that finally leads up to the media center on the other side of the basement.

I'm really happy with the new power outlets that were ran every couple of feet with sturdy conduit. The guys from Coho Electric did a great job again on my humble abode. It was about $1,500 to drop in a new sub-panel and run the outlets to all corners of the basement. We pinched some pennies and made room in the budget to do this project. A worthwhile investment indeed!

Time to get back to work!

After reading Rich Claussen's post, I submitted my responses to the online personality profiler and got the following results. Its a little like reading the Sunday morning horoscopes — easy to apply to wide variety of situations. This so good, it might even be a vertoscope!

My programmer personality type is: PLTB

I am a Planner.

I may be slow, but I'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

I like coding at a Low level.

I'm from the old school of programming and believe that I should have an intimate relationship with the computer. I don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.

I work best in a Team.

A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

I am a liBeral programmer.

Programming is a complex task and I should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

I've never been, but I'm told that famous people line the streets in Hollywood. You can go to lunch, look over at a corner booth and see big actor chowing down on a roast beef sandwich.

On Tuesday, I got to hang out with Carl Franklin at Hanafin's Irish Pub. He had just finished a recording a DotNetRocks session with some super stars and sat down with my WCF classmate and me for a beer. I've been listening to his shows for years so it was a real treat to chat it up in person.

Then, today (Thursday), I'm eating my roast beef sandwich at Steve & Cheri's Brooklyn Style Deli when I look over and see none other than Geoff Maciolek chowing down on a delicious deli treat about 3 feet from our table. I wasn't quite sure at first, but then we started murmuring about code and databases at our table and Geoff couldn't resist chiming in with a comment; then I was absolutely sure. It went something like this:

Geoff: Ah, spaghetti code

Me: Hey, you're Geoff Maciolek!

Geoff: Thats me! (ok, he didn't really say that, but that's what I think in my head because he's says it at the end of so many DNR shows... he just kind of stares and looks incredulous because a total stranger said his name)

Me: I know you from DNR and Mondays!

Geoff: Yeah, I'm over there with Carl...

We exchange a few more pleasentries and chat for a minute, then Geoff leaves the deli and I go back to the afternoon session of the WCF Master class - happier than a pup with two peters.

I leave this town Saturday. What are the chances that I'll be filling up my rental car at the gas station and see Karen drive by with Richard in the passenger seat and Mark running after them down the street, screaming profanities with a stream of toilet paper trailing out of his pants?

Who are you?

The wife coaches the Knowledge Bowl team at her highschool. She really digs the higher level stuff and enjoys teaching AP math and stats classes. She comes home just completely wiped out some days but I never seen her happier than when she's teaching. She worked at a couple of internet start ups back in the day (in Chicago), has a Masters degree, a whiz at Excel functions, punches you in the belly with SQL queries and knocks your block off with scripting. She never really dug it though (except for the cash). She started teaching a few years ago and never looked back. I'm really proud of her for finding a job she loves.

Last week, her Knowledge Bowl team won the 4A Washington state title!!! She swears she had nothing to do with it, and the kids are just fabulous. I can't tell you how many times my wife has dragged me to bars for trivia night. We used to be regulars at Beulahland for trivia night. Now she has a state title to defend next year. Go wife!!

Sometimes you do something so delicious that you just have to link to it from your other blog.

Thanks Jim! Here I am wasting time on my first day back at work after the holiday break, and apparently, you are too. Here are 5 things you don't know about me.

1. I played varsity basketball my freshman year in highschool, much to the delight of the upperclassmen, and I was the MVP my senior year.
2. As a future software developer, I earned my obligatory black belt during college by training in Ryukyu Kempo karate with Bill Burch, good friends with George Dillman. I met some of the best friends I ever had.
3. At my first 4-H show, I received a red ribbon for my two chickens. I think I was eight.
4. I visited the Blue Hole in Belize with the charming woman I would later marry. We met about 50 sharks, between 6 to 10 feet in length, as they came out of the deep blue center to greet us at a depth of 140ft along the rim. She squeezed my hand very tightly and I knew it was love from then on.
5. During the glorious late '90s I bought a red 1994 Corvette when I had absolutely no business doing so. My wife says she dated me in spite of that car. Boy, that car was sweet.

Here are my five victims of this game: Kelly, Scott, Happy Steve, Lee, and Dave.

Last weekend, during the holiday break, The Wife turns to me and says, "What do you think of getting a GPS device and taking up geocaching?"

I was shocked. I had been secretly coveting the Garmin Nüvi ever since Scott Hanselman talked it up a while back. I was very subtle in my hints, but I finally got it across that I was only interested in the Nüvi.

Well, The Wife is a keen lady indeed on the Google search engine. She discovered that the Nüvi is not recommended for geocaching; its much more suited for use in the car or walking around a tourist town with its (relatively) large screen size and feature set.

There's another set of GPS devices that are better suited for geocaching. The GPSMAP 78CSx series has a better waterproof standard of IEC 529 IPX7, a built in compass, altimeter, celestial information, tide prediction and other things are just meant for folks out wandering around in nature. There are several other sets of GPS units such as marine and aviation. I think my brother has a Garmin in his plane and my other brother has one in his boat.

I was bummed, but glad that we were going to purchase the right device. I'm still keen on the Garmin Nüvi though. :)

My day job involves building websites for companies and giving them a fantastic place to promote their brand, product or service so perhaps my bar is a little higher than some, but the Garmin website blows. The site has a semi-decent Flash piece to promote one part of the site, but over all, its a typical 1998 experience. The user interface could do well with a little bit of polish and take advantage of some usability factors we (the web development community) have learned over the past few years.

With the holiday weekend and all, I did extensive checking online for retailers and let my fingers to the walking. There's a wide range of phone experiences; from appallingly bad all the way to very helpful. REI was one of the best phone experiences, plus they had one in stock!

The Wife and I bundle up for the rain and head out to the local REI to purchase our new GPS device. REI held it for us at the customer service desk, so I just walked up to them and they handed it over. They provide fantastic service and I highly recommend them for your outdoor and sporting needs. During checkout, they asked if we were members and The Wife recalled that we signed up when we lived in Chicago. I had no idea. That ended up saving us nearly $50 off the price! Booya!

We brought the device home and booted it up. It's very pretty and has a great layout of buttons and controls. Unfortunately the device didn't synch up with the satellites. We saw between 2 and 8 bars in varying heights, but they wouldn't fill in, which would indicate a successful initialization. We tried all sorts of things including a reinstallation of the software using the USB connection. We even drove out to the airport to assure ourselves of a wide open range. We got the most bars there, but again, they were not filled in. We left it outside in our backyard for about 90 minutes too, still nothing. I even drove up to Mt. Tabor and tried it there. Nada.

We bought it on Friday and now it was Sunday. I got in the car and headed back down to REI to exchange it for a new one. I went to the customer service desk and explained the situation. The nice fella gave me a store voucher, took the broken device and asked me to go to the GPS display and get another one (downstairs). I was filled with glee!

I bolted for the display. Too bad, they were out. I did have a quirky exchange with one REI staffer at the display though. I explain the problem to him and he retorts, "Did you initialize the device? Do you even know what initialization is?" I was a tad startled by his gruff questioning, plus I was really interested in getting the device to work. Perhaps I had forgotten something and I was merely a few minutes away from eternal bliss. Alas, no. Everything this jerk explained was something I had already tried. I've written him off though; I still really like REI.

At this point, I could either ask REI to order another device for me, or I could try my luck on the broken device. I decided to go back to the customer service desk, retrieve the broken device and try some more for the remainder of the Sunday. With no luck, I phoned Garmin during the week and explained the situation. The fella was awful nice on the phone and said, based on my description that the device was probably broken. Since the bars appeared at varying heights, the antenna was probably fine and it could "see" the satellites, but it was having problems reading packets from the satellites. He said to return it to REI and grab another. Ha!

The Wife and I went back to REI today and exchanged the device. Fortunately they received a shipment recently, so they had a device available for us immediately. Yay! Plus, they were super nice to us. The Wife was immediately skeptical, so we walked a few blocks down to Jameson Square to test it out. It just took two minutes and we were locked in! Yay!

REI also gave us a $20 gift certificate for an Introduction to GPS Navigation Class. The Wife and I are looking forward to taking that for starters. I've been reading Patrick Cauldwell's posts about geocaching too. This looks like a great hobby to dive into.

I forgot to mention that we we're linked by makezine.com the other day for our efforts in building a large scale labyrinth game.

My friend Dave Selden is the master mind. He had the idea to make the game based on his sweet eBay purchase. He called up some friends and we've been helping Dave build it over the past couple of weeks in the hopes of winning a mini-golf contest. We're up against our neighbors at Wyden & Kennedy, the ad agency for Nike. They are purportedly making a giant whale with the ball shooting out of the blow hole; rumors to be sure but I would expect they have a larger budget too.

The game begins by placing the golf ball in the start position on the board surface. One or two players turn two giant knobs on the sides of the game to manipulate the x and y axis of the board surface. If the player succeeds in moving the ball to the finish hole, the ball descends through a tube, out the side, and directly (hopefully) into the cup. Otherwise, the ball drops out on the far side of the game; where the player must then putt the ball around the rectangular green to the side with the hold. Got to love the mini-golf game!

Thanks Drew! He submitted us to makezine.com. He has millions of hundred dollar ideas.

Jason Mauer's blog let me know that Seattle Code Camp is coming up at the end of the month! Ack!

I'm thinking about heading up with my buddy Kelly. I told myself at the Portland Code camp, I said "Self," that's what I call myself, "you should present at the next code camp." Well, this is the next one, but its right around the corner!

I could do the DotNetNuke presentation, but seeing as how they just incorporated combined with their proximity to Seattle, there's a good probability that a DNN big shot will be there doing a far better show than I could. I was very impressed at the last Portland Code Camp at the quality of the "simple" talks. Things that you should already know, but are fun and refreshing to go over again. For example, the Subversion discussion was really well attended and you always end up learning some new trick or insight. I love that.

I'll put my thinking hat on and see what I come up with.

As a treat to myself for the new office move, I strategically ordered 2GB of RAM for my laptop so it would arrive on the first day in the new office. My Dell Latitude D610 has been a nice work horse for a while, but the paultry 512KB RAM just had a hard time compiling large VS.Net solutions.

I eagerly printed out the memory install instructions and patiently waited for the DHL driver to show up with my package. By using the DHL online tracking tool, I could see the package arrived in Portland on Friday and the driver had it by 9:25AM on Monday. Around 4PM, I couldn't wait anymore and I was being to wear a path in the carpet past the front desk; so I called the DHL line. They had a very good call system in place. I typed in my tracking code and the live person on the phone answered my question quickly. Basically, they knew exactly where they were delivering the package and no problems were reported. Drat!

Then, my (new) phone rang! It was the front desk calling to inform me that my package had arrived at the front desk. Figures, as soon as I call, the dude walks off the elevator to the office. I should have called a noon!

So, as my first feat of strength, I fired up VS.Net and pointed it to a DotNetNuke v4.3.4 solution that we have in the works. With just 512KB of RAM in my laptop, it took several minutes to compile the entire source code comprised of many thousands of lines. Now, with 2GB of RAM, I slammed through those 33 projects in about two minutes. A marked improvement indeed!

At just a measely 2GHz, my CPU is the dog now; the image of my task manager window bears that out. This is the processor churning through all those lines of DotNetNuke code in VS.Net; at least its not pegged at 100%! 

The holidays are coming soon, perhaps I'll see a new laptop soon? :)

Last night, I finally sat down to watch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, season two. I downloaded it overnight on a prior day. I was willing to put the prior issues aside and enjoy the final segment of season two with a fine glass of Pinot Noir.

What's that iTunes? Got a little more fight left in ya?

Either the new iTunes client needs additional display resources, or the quality of the video is so enhanced, that my measley laptop cannot perform a dual display of the projector and the laptop screen.

At first, I thought the entire full screen mode was broken as the projection show static images of the video, about a second apart. Its not fun watching a television show as a series of Flickr images so I started thinking about other modes of viewing, including just using the laptop itself.

Finally, it hit me that the resources on my laptop were probably insufficient to run on both the laptop screen and the projection screen. Unlike all of my prior downloads on iTunes...

When I set the laptop to display on the projection system only, not dual display, the video returned to an acceptable state. As I was watching the otherwise fantastic end to season two, I kept wondering, hey, did I just see the video stutter a second ago?

I had a fancy date with my wife last Saturday night. We went to the TBA Festival and saw Yubiwa Hotel; CANDIES Girlish Hardcore.

I had two passes that provide access to nearly any show during the eleven day festival, so I wasn't too worried about seats. We arrived at the Artists Repertory Theatre only to find a very long line of people, a few of them looked like they were in charge. We talked with them for a second and learned that there were in fact two lines, one for folks with blue plastic passes like me, and another, much longer, line for folks with yellow paper tickets. The smart people who planned ahead and actually had "reservations" for this particular show were able to simply walk into the theater. The theater seats ~ 130 people.

20 minutes before the show, time went by quickly, even quicker with a glass of complimentary wine; these folks know how to throw a festival. With about two minutes until showtime, our line proceeded to the door in groups of two or three. The blue plastic pass line trumps the yellow paper ticket line. We were about ten back, so I knew it would be close. The sign on the ticket counter said "Sold Out". We finally got in, much to my relief. No quicker way to end a nice date with The Wife than by missing out on the very show we were going to see.

The theater was set up with a main rising section facing the ground level stage. Two other rising sections of theater seating were on the left and right sides. A large black wall made the fourth side, the ground level stage was about 30x50. Two seats in each row, closest to the stage were taped off. When inquired, the seating assistance claimed right of "sight lines". The Wife, being a theater set designer in college recalled the legend and lore instantly. Something about the seats conflicted with the show; perhaps they permitted too much visibility back stage? I didn't buy that; what could they see that I couldn't?

I had pretty much no idea what we were about to see. After seeing the show, I had pretty much no idea about what I saw, aside from the following points:

• The artists were Japanese, thus their lines were in Japanese
• An LCD projector lit up some translated dialog on the back wall
• The seats that were taped off had very little chance of seeing the english subtitles on the back wall. I barely could.
• There was dancing
• There was some story about a mother who died, maybe it was the sister, anyway, a wedding was involved
• They ran a really good drill with a basketball, three groups, pass to the middle, pass to the right, run to where you pass the ball
• They stripped
• Bare naked
• Several times
• They made a nice pancake on an electric grill
• They ate said pancake off of a red leather backpack

I felt fairly well cultured after seeing the show. I find myself thinking back on it several times a day since Saturday night. WTF did it mean?

Before the show, the MC said the creator would be on hand afterwards to answer questions. When I heard that, I had little motivation to stay and listen. While seeing the show, I had more and more questions and I was quite interested in hearing the definitions afterwards. Well the nude part, I understood, but the other stuff, that's what I was interested in.

Yet, when the show ended, my wife was too hungry to stay and listen, so we bounded off for le Pigeon, a nice french restaurant on SE 7th and Burnside. Its a nice urban place, I recommend it. Its just up from the Outlaw Bar and has large windows to sit and watch the weird (and I mean that in the best sense possible) Burnside pedestrian traffic around 8pm when you're eating your meal cooked with large quantities of butter.