Dan Hounshell with Cheese Salt

Telligent Theming Guide

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:56:00 -0700

Today ScottW announced the release of the Customization Guide for the Telligent Evolution Platform.

There are a lot of ways you can customize the look and feel of your Telligent Community and Telligent Enterprise site.

While there is a lot of content on this site, we thought it would be helpful to put it all in one easy to read guide. So today, I am happy to announce we have published the first version of the the Customization Guide for the Telligent Evolution Platform.

The guide will walk you through all of the ways in which you can quickly and easily customize your sites appearance (usually without having to write any code).

Please let us know what you think about the guide.

- via Telligent.com

“Customization Guide” and “Theming Guide” don’t do the thing justice. This isn’t your everyday little how-to pamphlet. It is a 130 page BOOK! I’ve been looking through it the last hour or so and I have no qualms in stating that it has descriptions and examples of features that I didn’t even know existed. This guide is documentation about the product written by the team working on the product. If you’re doing any kind of Telligent Community or Telligent Enterprise (or Community Server 2008/2008.5 for that matter) theming work then do yourself a favor and grab this free guide now.

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Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:07:00 -0700

I finished reading Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0 this past weekend. Keyvan Nayyeri and Simone Chiaretta did a great job with this book. It should be simple enough that a pure beginner will be able to get up and running yet it contains enough depth that anyone but an ASP.NET MVC expert will learn at least a couple of new things. It is easy to read and the examples are well done. The examples are not too contrived and are “real world” for the most part. In fact Keyvan recently expanded on the blog sample code in the back of the book and is now running his site on that code.

If you have some experience with ASP.NET MVC then you may want to just skim the first half of the book that focuses on concepts and dig into the second half of the book which has more detailed implementation examples. Or you can jump straight to Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 . [Disclaimer: I have not read the Professional book yet]

If you are interested in learning about ASP.NET MVC but have not spent much time playing with it yet then this is definitely the book for you.

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Posterous

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:54:06 -0700

Any of you dear readers who are subscribed to my blog via RSS may have noticed several posts coming through the RSS feed recently that are not on this site (http://danhounshell.com). That’s because I’ve combind this feed with a blog I created, CheeseSalt, on Posterous, that I use as a sort of “mini-blog” for posting content that is not quite worthy of a full blog post but too long to share on Twitter.

Posterous is so dead simple to use that I’ve found myself posting nearly everything on that site rather than here. I’ll continue to post longer articles on this site, but because Posterous makes it so easy I’m more willing to post things as I find them rather than put it off (and never get to it). The end result is that I’m posting more often than I have in the past.

What makes it so easy to use?

You don’t even have to sign up for an account. Just send an email to post@posterous.com with your post title in the subject and the post body in the content and they will create an account for you, create a blog for you, create your post and email you back the details.
Going forward, creating a blog post is as simple as sending an email.
You can post from your mobile phone, too.
They have a Firefox Bookmarklet that makes is super easy to share links, photos, etc (I use this 90% of the time)
They can auto post to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, too.
You can easily add images to your blog post by just including the images as attachments to the email.
You can easily add video to your blog post by adding the url to the video (supports YouTube and more).
It easily integrates Google Analytics
It easily integrates Feedburner
I could go on and on

I’ve been amazed by the features and frictionless use that Posterous provides. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or even a second blog just for certain types of content than you should give Posterous a try.

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Finished Rifle Project #2 – Turk(ed) Mauser

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:53:00 -0700

I can’t believe it has been over 3 years since I finished my first rifle. Times slips away too quickly. The lapse could have something to do with spring of 2006 being when Dawn found out she was pregnant with Tucker. We spent that summer and fall doing all kinds of construction projects to get the house ready for the new addition to the family. I’ve probably spent a good portion of the rest of my spare time since tending to the little guy.

I finally finished up my second custom rifle project this past weekend, a 1950’s/60’s sporter inspired hunting rifle in 8x57 Mauser built on a surplus military action.

I received the donor rifle for this build several years ago as a Christmas present from one of my brothers. At the time Aim Surplus was selling fair/good Turk Mausers for $39.99. Today you can’t touch any mauser, even a mis-matched fair condition Turk rework, for under $100. Over the years since I performed a little bit of work on it at a time – replacing the trigger, safety, springs, etc. – but never really had a vision or devoted myself to finishing it until earlier this summer.

A little history lesson first. During the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire before it, kept its military very well armed and liked to be on the bleeding edge of small arms technology. They, like many other countries (European, South American and Asian) bought lots of military Mauser rifles from the Mauser brothers and Germany starting in the early 1890’s and running through World War II. The Turks also bought lots of surplus rifles after WWI and WWII from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other European countries and were awarded rifles and parts as war reparations. Turkey also made their own rifles, under license from Mauser. The Turks had lots of rifles and parts on hand and several times performed large refurb projects on their entire arsenal to bring all their rifles to the latest specs. Two of the largest refurb projects were done in 1938 and 1954. The one in 1938 involved converting stocks and sights and the cartridge of older rifles to the 8x57 Mauser (or simply 8mm Mauser) round so that everything they had would look the same and fire the same round. The 1954-1956 project included refurbishing WWI German mausers from their surplus and building new rifles from parts.

My rifle is one of those WWI-era German 8x57 Gew 98’s that was refurbished in 1954. I call it a “Turk(ed)” Mauser because it is not a rifle manufactured by Turkey or originally built for them, but instead one that they refurbished, altered, or built from surplus parts. The original German crest and markings were scrubbed and replaced with “ATF 1954” on the receiver ring. “ATF” is the abbreviation for the Turkish arsenal where the rework was performed. I did some research to try to determine the origins of the German rifle, trying to find any markings that would disclose its original place of manufacture and date, but I found nothing that yelled out to me. I’m sure someone could have dated it, but I’m just an amateur Mauser historian and gave up after a few hours. Had the rifle been in good shape and had matching numbers then it would have been an interesting and (somewhat) valuable collectible. However, mine had some light pitting on the receiver and barrel and none of the serial numbers between the receiver, barrel, trigger guard, bolt or anything else matched. It was apparent that it had been cobbled together from spare parts and really had no collector value, which made it a perfect choice to use as the base for a custom rifle.

To keep the build affordable and to show a little love to those before me, the inspiration for the rifle was a 1950’s/60’s sporter rifle. Thousands of sporter (or sporterized) rifles were built in the 50’s and 60’s from surplus military Mauser rifles by professional and amateur gunsmiths alike. The rifles were readily available, having come home in the duffle bags of returning soldiers and being imported by retail stores across the country like Sears and Montgomery Wards. Though each rifle has its own style there are several defining characteristics that define the look of that era, including use of the original military barrel, white line spacers, high see-through rings, very slim almost European-style stocks, and more. Most of these sporters were not intended to be show pieces or collectibles, but because of the low-cost of the surplus rifle were built as budget hunting rifles. Many of these older sporters are re-emerging on the market today as they are being passed on from the WWII generation and their children to younger generations who don’t want or need an old rifle and have no idea of the work and skill that their grandfathers poured into creating such a piece. They can be found in garage sales, estate sales and on online auctions like Gunbroker.com and AuctionArms.com. Some of them are in great shape but most need a little TLC to bring them to their former glory. Alas, styles change and the look of those 50’s/60’s sporters is no longer fashionable. However I still admire the workmanship and honor the heritage.

Now enough of the history lessons, let’s on to the specifics about my build. The original barrel’s rifling was in surprisingly good shape so I chose to keep it and the original caliber rather than re-barrel it with a new commercial barrel to another caliber. The 8x57 round, though designed over 100 years ago, is still popular today, especially in Europe. In the US it has seen somewhat of a revival over the past 10-15 years because of the new surplus import rifles from countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Turkey (though sadly these imports seem to be drying up) and the large amount of surplus ammo available. The 8x57 round is no slouch and is comparable in performance to the ever-popular 30.06. It is fully capable for use on even the largest game in North America, something that is often said about the 30.06. After deciding to keep the barrel I had to clean it up as well as I could. Even though the bore looked good I swear I had to run 100 patches or more through it in addition to bore brushes, copper remover and various other cleaners (Hoppes #9, FTW!). The military sights were removed from the barrel and I cut it to 24 inches and re-crowned it. I had to do quite a bit of metalwork, including filing, stoning, sanding, and sandblasting, to the receiver, barrel, trigger guard, etc. to remove light pitting and clean up 80+ years of patina. A lot of the internal parts were replaced and/or updated. All the springs in were replaced with new Wolff springs. The safety was replaced with a Timney Buehler-style low scope safety. The military trigger was replaced with an adjustable Timney trigger. I added a Brownell’s extended floorplate release and swapped out the bolt with one with a forged handle so it would clear a scope. The bolt and extractor spring were cleaned up and polished. I added a Redfield 1-piece scope base with Millet rings and topped it off with a nos (new old stock) 1970’s era 3-9x40 Tasco scope that was made in Japan. The scope looks brand new, the optics are crystal clear, and I think this is the first time it has ever been mounted on a rifle. The stock was a used stock that I got from ebay that was in decent shape; it just needed some sanding, cleaned up, and a little Tung oil to make it respectable. I performed all the work myself including the metal prep, drilling and tapping for the scope base, fitting it to the stock, bedding, and finishing all exterior metal with a Duracoat spray-on finish that is a “gun blue” color.

Though there are some things I would change if I had a chance to do it again, I am rather pleased with the end result, especially considering it is just my second project and the budget price for the entire project. Even though I replaced the springs, trigger, safety, etc. I have less than $250 in the project including the scope, base, and rings. Not too shabby for a couple hundred dollars and many, many hours of work. I’ll be even happier if she’s a good shooter. And while you wouldn’t mistake it for a 60’s era sporter, the heritage can be seen.

I’ve already started on my next project – hopefully it will not be 3 years before I complete it.

Included in this post are some pics from rifle #2 for your enjoyment. You can view the entire series of pics here: http://danhounshell.com/photos/diggerdanh/tags/8x57+Turk+1954+ATF/default.aspx

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Easy Bootable USB for Installing Windows 7 to Netbooks

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:11:00 -0700

I’ve done two Windows 7 installations on my netbook (an eeePC 900) – Windows 7 Beta and Windows 7 RC. Both times involved creating a bootable USB drive with the Windows 7 files to use as the installer. My little netbook does not have a DVD drive and I don’t own an external DVD drive so a bootable USB drive was the only option, well – the only sane option. The documented steps are better now than they were then, but it still took several hours just to prep the USB drive. I had to use 2 or 3 separate utilities that I didn’t already have installed on my PC so I had to hunt them down and install them. I found that I had to flip between 2 or 3 different sets of directions to do everything that I needed for my individual scenario. It was really a pain in my rear but in the end (no pun intended) everything worked out well. Side note: I try not to say “ass” anymore because the baby repeats everything, so “rear” has become a normal part of my vocabulary.

Fortunately technology continues to evolve and in a few short weeks/months there is now a much easier way to create a Windows 7 bootable USB drive: http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/An-Easy-Way-to-Create-a-Bootable-USB-Drive-for-Windows-7/. Or a Windows Server 2008 or Vista bootable USB drive even.

I have not tried this little utility yet, but if it is as easy to use as has been described then it will be an answered prayer.

Select your USB drive, select the DVD/ISO, Click Go. Really? Arghhh. You kids have it so easy these days. Back in my day we had to walk up hill, both ways, in the snow, …

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An answer for the “So what do you do?” question

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:35:00 -0700

I get asked this question a lot from friends and family, I’m sure we all do. It’s easy to explain to my geeky friends, not so easy to explain to my friends and family who aren’t so geeky. It usually goes something like this

Me: “I work for Telligent Systems, we build community collaboration tools.”

Them: <blank stare>

Me: “We build forums, blogs, wikis, … that kind of stuff.”

Them: <blank stare>

Me: “Companies like Dell, Intel, Microsoft run our software for a lot of their customer community sites.”

Them: <more blank stares>

Me: “You ever used MySpace forums? That’s us.”

Them: “Oh, okay. That’s cool, so what do you do?”

Me: <sigh, I know this is going nowhere fast> “I’m a programmer.”

Over most of the last year I’ve worked on a product called Telligent Analytics, formerly called Harvest. It’s a package that mines a Telligent Community site’s information and shows all kinds of cool stuff. The last version, Harvest 2, was a pretty good product. But we’ve been adding a lot of great features since November and I think we’ve put together a great product.

We’ve been really tight lipped over the past few months about the new features in Telligent Analytics and I’ve felt like I was going to explode because I really wanted to tell people about the great stuff we’ve been adding: Social Network Analysis (showing how people interconnect and rank inside the community), Topic Detection and Analysis (showing what things people are talking about), Sentiment Analyis (showing how people feel about the things they are saying), Web Analytics (showing the page views, logins, unique visitors and all the things people expect from “web tracking”), extending the monitoring of your keywords to outside your community (looking for the topics that you care about in key sites and services on the internet), and much more.

Did I lose you somewhere in the above paragraph? I hope not, but if so just check this video out and it should help. Rob Howard, our founder and CTO, did a brief interview and demo of Telligent Analytics at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference (about 15 minutes). This will help you see and understand what I’ve been working on. I think I’m going to try to load this video to my phone and when someone asks “So, what do you do?” I’ll just hand it to them.

[You can also see the video here: http://www.livestream.com/E2TV/ondemand/pla_6832848320377413728]

I’ll be talking a lot more about all of these awesome Telligent Analytics features over the coming months – expect lots of demos, insider information, how-to customize, etc.

Don’t worry if you still didn’t “get it”, Becki. I’ll explain it to you later.

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How to add NUnit as a test framework option to the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 dialog for VS2008

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:42:00 -0700

There are much longer more detailed ways involving editing the registry, running "devenv ..." command-line stuff, etc. This is by far the fastest and easiest way:

0.a. Make sure you have the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Framework installed. I'm a dummy and still had the Beta installed and was surprised when the project wouldn't build. Then I realized my blunder.

0.b. Close any open instances of Visual Studio 2008

1. Go to this URL: http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2009/04/28/updated-nunit-templates-for-asp-net-mvc-1-0-rtm.aspx

2. Click on the "NUnit Test Templates" link. Download the zipped file.

3. Unzip the file.

4. Run the installNUnit.cmd file.

That's it. Done. Enjoy.

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Nerd Dinner at Dewey’s Pizza in West Chester tonight

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:28:00 -0700

There is a Nerd Dinner at Dewey’s Pizza in West Chester, OH tonight (June 12, 2009) at 6:30 PM.

The organizers of the event intended it to be a:

Gathering for those in town and those coming in town for the CINNUG ORM Firestarter at Dewey's Pizza, West Chester, OH

I’m fairly certain we’re a little more all-inclusive than that and we will welcome anyone who would like to attend. If you meet any one or more of the following criteria you are welcome to join us for the fun and festivities:

You are a nerd
You normally don’t consider yourself a nerd but you work in a traditionally nerdy job or industry
You are not a nerd buy you like nerds
You are considering choosing a nerd to be your next significant other
You have the innate ability to make people laugh
You have the innate ability to make people think
You like talking about technology and other nerdy things (like Star Trek)
You want to drop some knowledge on your peeps
You want to find some new peeps
You want to learn something
You like to laugh
You like good beer. Dewey’s Pizza keeps a variety of micro brews on tap. I’m sure there will be one or two that you’ve never even heard of.
You have ever been called “eye candy”
You have ever felt excluded from anything in your life

I know this is late notice but if you’d like to attend make sure you submit an RSVP on the NerdDinner.com web site so we’ll know how many to expect.

See you there!

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Say Hello to Homebrewing

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:10:00 -0700

My brother, Andy, and I began homebrewing beer in January of this year. We had been talking about taking up the hobby for years and finally made the leap. Since then we’ve brewed about seven 5-gallon batches of different styles. We’ve used ingredient kits from Brewer’s Best, Midwest, and one from a local company. We’ve been really pleased with the Brewer's Best and Midwest kits.

One of our best and favorites (so far), a Russian Imperial Stout, was reviewed by Mr. Porch of BeerAndCigars.net about a month ago.

Saturday we brewed up a batch of American Micro Style Pale Ale, a Brewer’s Best kit. I was surprised to learn that Sam from BeerAndCigars.net would be joining us. Sam took a bunch of pictures as we tried to relay the little bit of knowledge that we’ve built up over the last couple of months to him. Sam published a short video of the experience and he did a great job!: http://www.beerandcigars.net/2009/home-brewing-in-5-minutes/

Now that we have a few kit beers under out belt we’re planning on stepping things up a bit. Next we’re going to move up to 10-gallon batches doing a full-boil. Full-boil means we’ll be boiling the full batch rather than only a portion and adding the remaining water to fill out the batch afterward (on the home stove we can only keep 2.5 gallons at a full rolling boil). For us, this means a 15+ gallon brewing kettle and a turkey/fish fryer – the kitchen stove won’t handle it. After that we’re planning on going full grain where we will actually buy our own grains and boil the starches out of it rather than use the cans of extract that kits provide. Among other things this gives the brewmaster more control over taste, texture and finished product.

There is nothing wrong with the kits though – there have been plenty of home brewing awards won with kit beers. They make great beer at about half the price it would cost for something equivalent off the store shelf. And you get the pleasure of saying that you brewed it yourself.

It’s really easy to get started and the equipment requirements are simple, as you can see in the video. If you’re at all interested in beer, especially good micro brewed beer, then find someone in your area who brews and ask if you can sit in on their next brew session. Home brewers are a really down to earth and overly friendly lot and love to share info, recipes and even beer. They’ll usually have a couple of different styles of brew on tap and are more than willing to pour you a pint or two or three. You might be surprised to learn (or not) that a lot of home brewers are nerds (programmers, engineers, etc) like yourself.

HomeBrewChatter.com is a great resource and welcomes beginners. And BrewCast.tv is a new site from the founders of HomeBrewChatter that’s really enjoyable, too.

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Must Have Windows Home Server Add-Ons?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:15:00 -0700

I’m still an inquisitive kid at heart. As soon as I bring home a new toy I spend a lot of time figuring out how it works, customizing it to my liking, adding things to it to make it better. My browsers have my favorite add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins installed (del.icio.us, Evernote, etc). I add memory, hard drives, etc. to my computers and laptops. There are few things that I own that are easily modified that are not modified.

The surprising thing that I haven’t mucked with yet is my Windows Home Server. When I was doing the research before buying and setting it up I saw that there were a lot of commercial and community developed add-ons for WHS. I just knew that I would add all kinds of cool things to it. Yet here I sit nearly 9 months later and I haven’t really touched it. One of the reasons is because it “just works”. I don’t have to think about it, worry about it – it just cruises along and does its thing. In fact a lot of times I completely forget that it’s there (until I’m coding something late at night and get a popup warning that a backup is about to start on my PC).

But I still have a desire to make it “better, stronger, faster”. Rather than just jump in head first I’ll question the community for suggestions. So, community, what are the must have Windows Home Server add-ons that I should try?

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Best @TFFRatio Requests, Part III

Fri, 29 May 2009 22:09:00 -0700

I’ve been trying to convince myself over the last couple of weeks that I should write a blog post, but I truly feel that I have nothing worth sharing that couldn’t be put down in 140 characters or less (referring to Twitter/Facebook, of course). I’m sure you don’t really care about the minor yard work I’ve been doing or the hours I spend puttering around in the garage. Now that warm weather and sunshine have returned to my part of the world I’ve been spending more free time outside and as far away from the computer as possible. Less time spent monkeying around with new technologies means less blog fodder. The time I have logged on the computer at night has been spent on maintenance, updates and small new features for the TwitterRatio and AspDotNetMVC sites. There’s really nothing new worth calling out about those sites that I haven’t already. I’ve also challenged myself to read a fiction or non-computer related non-fiction book between each programming-related book (Dan Brown’s Deception Point is a great read!).

Since I don’t have anything new for you I’m falling back to something tried-and-true: the Best @TFFRatio Requests!

In my studies I’ve found that there are several types of TFF Ratio requests…

The Brief

MobilityMatters@TFFRatio What up? 10:15 PM Dec 5th, 2008

grabinski@tffratio What is my TFF Ratio? 7:21 PM Dec 23rd, 2008

DapperSnappers@tffratio give it to me 10:47 PM Jan 11th

I_CRE8@tffratio what's my ratio ? 3:15 PM Feb 9th

JamieLottering@tffratio give 3:16 PM Jan 19th

The Friendly

SteveAndrews@tffratio What do you think, old friend? 1:56 AM Apr 29th

sbanwart@tffratio We haven't talked in a while. How are things? 5:47 AM Apr 10th

skimedic@TFFRatio, how are you doing today? 9:04 AM Apr 7th

ninob@tffratio did you miss me? 7:14 PM Feb 18th

jblankenburg@tffratio how are you old friend? it's been a while... 7:30 AM Dec 12th, 2008

The Weird Stalker-like "Romantics"

spiritdeus@TFFRatio I've missed your phone calls, have you found another man? 10:36 AM Feb 24th

mikelikesbikes@tffratio I didn't forget about you. I just had to keep you on the backburner while I tricked @laserem into marrying me. 11:23 AM Feb 21st

objo@tffratio I'm starting to reconsider that whole 'seeing other people' idea. What do you say? 9:05 AM Feb 8th

JimHolmes@tffratio It's been one of those days. Will you pick me up, or, as @fallenrogue would say, hammer me in the sack? 4:54 PM Dec 9th, 2008

fallenrogue@TFFRatio I want to kiss you all over... and over and again... till the night closes in. TILL THE NIGHT CLOSES IN!!!!! 9:03 AM Jan 13th

skimedic@TFFRatio talk sexy to me, tffratio 6:21 PM Jan 11th

The Out of Work Comedians

CyprianoHawaii@TFFRatio ~ You gave me your worst already. What do ya have to say NOW? 9:48 PM Dec 3rd, 2008

graemearthur@tffratio hey whats my twitter ratio or whatever 5:04 PM Jan 17th

lucadip@tffratio let's see how much I suck 3:48 PM Feb 9th

spiritdeus@tffratio I wish you had historical data, so I could see if I'm any less of a loser now than I was when you first started telling me so! 8:16 AM Apr 8th
[Editor’s Note: Ask and ye shall receive!!!]

mjeaton@tffratio "I would drape myself in velvet if it were socially acceptable." 5:59 AM Feb 17th

MayorPercy@tffratio Hello? Testing. Is this thing on? So a priest, a monk, and a rabbi walk into a bar ... 5:28 PM Feb 22nd

Huh?

jordybug2jee@TFFRatio --- do this and get YOUR ratio more deets on there twit page 8:38 PM Mar 5th

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The Bacon and Cheese Stuffed Pizza Burger

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:19:00 -0700

What wondrous specimen of perfection has the following ingredients list?

Two (2) DiGiorno Cheese Stuffed Crust frozen pizzas
Two (2) 12-oz packages of bacon
One (1) egg
One (1) pound of ground beef
One (1) medium sized onion
Two (2) cloves of garlic
Approximately two (2) pounds of various shredded and sliced cheese

The heavenly goodness that is The Bacon and Cheese Stuffed Pizza Burger, that’s what! (Warning: some advertisements on theChive.com could be considered as NSFW)

I won’t cheat you by including a picture of the end result here. You’ll have to click the above link to see the process and beautiful results. That is if you think you are worthy to gaze upon its glory.

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Create a Twitter-like logo

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:48:00 -0700

I recently upgraded the look of the TwitterRatio site. The charcoal look was okay for starters but I wanted to make it look more Twitter-like, something that I’d noticed that a lot of other Twitter utility sites had been doing. In the process I created a Twitter-like logo and thought I’d share how it was done in case one of you loyal readers was wondering just how to make a Twitter-like logo for yourself. Additionally I thought it was about time to impress you once again with my less than adequate design skillz.

I use an old version of Photoshop 7.0 that I’ve had for years. For the minor “design” (psuedo-design-like in my case) things that I do it has more than enough functionality and I find no need to upgrade. You should be able to do something similar with Paint Shop Pro, Gimp or any other graphics editing software. I tried to do something similar with Paint.NET but I’m just not familiar enough with it to be successful.

1. Create an empty canvas. I chose a transparent background approx 400px wide x 100px tall.

2. Add Text.

Choose a font that closely resembles the Twitter font. I’ve read conflicting stories on the internet about which exact font Twitter uses (I’m sort of a font nut, which is kind of weird for a developer). One story is that the font is a hand tweaked version of the Chickens font from SparkyType foundry. Another is that it’s a tweaked version of the Pico font. Either of those is suitable and another similar (and free one) is Tondo. I’m using Pico.
Choose a color of blueish-green that is close to the Twitter color scheme. I chose to use a different shade of blue for each word.

3. Rasterize the text layer by clicking on Layer > Rasterize > Type in the menu.

4. Select just the text by doing a Ctrl + click on the text layer (in the layers “widget”). Notice the dancing ants! It makes me want to fire up some Dave Mathews.

5. Expand the selection in preparation for adding a “halo” around the text. Do this by going to the menu and clicking Select > Modify > Expand > 6px.

6. Apply a color to fill the selection to create the halo. I chose to go with a darker blue color rather than the white that Twitter uses. I thought it looked better with my site colors, but do as you see fit. Apply the fill by going to the menu and clicking Edit > Fill. In the popup change the Mode to Screen and select a color. Hit OK.

Note: You may need to apply #6 above to a new layer and move it below the text layer. I did not need to for the dark blue halo, but I did when using white. I have no idea what I did differently. I really don’t know how Photoshop works, I just keep pushing buttons until I have something suitable.

Note: Rather than expanding and filling as I have explained you can use an outside stroke to create the same effect.

Example with darker blue border (you can see it use on the TwitterRatio site):

The real Twitter logo is below. You can see that there are some slight differences between the font in the Twitter logo and the Pico font. The w, i, and r all look to be right on. The middle t’s are very close, but they seem to have a little bit of a tilt to the left in the Twitter logo. The e’s are way off. But, hey, it’s close enough for my purposes.

For completeness sake, here is an example with a white border, which looks more Twitter-like but doesn’t suit my site as well:

Enjoy and happy Twitter-like logo making!

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A brief look at the Google Chart API

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:36:00 -0700

I needed a simple chart control. I briefly thought about the new ASP.NET Chart control, but that is .NET 3.5 and my current code base is still .NET 2.0. I probably could migrate the code to 3.5 painlessly enough, but “if it ain’t broke…”. I have some experience with amCharts, and they provide an option to use any of their products for freeda, with the only limitation being a small link to their web site being displayed in the top left corner of every chart.

I had read about the Google Chart API in a couple of places so I decided to give it a spin for my simple needs:

The Google Chart API returns a PNG-format image in response to a URL. Several types of image can be generated, including line, bar, and pie charts. For each image type, you can specify attributes such as size, colors, and labels.

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into the address bar:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

Press the Enter or Return key and - presto! - you should see the following image:

My first thoughts were:

"seems simple enough, it’s just an <img> tag with the source set to the Google charts API url with bunch of different querystring params to define the data and formatting"
followed by "all those querystring params look complicated"
followed by “okay the pie chart is cool, but I need a line chart”.

I hit up the line charts section of the documentation, created a simple chart, then just kept experimenting with different settings, parameters, and labels until I had something that looked decent.

The following url emits the below image:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=lc
&chd=t:0,1.91,1.91,1.92,1.93,1.94
&chds=0,2
&chs=500x250
&chl=Big+Bang|4/14/2009
&chtt=TFF+Ratio+for+Dave+Donaldson
&chxt=y
&chxr=0,0,2
&chm=N*f2*,000000,0,-1,11

After that I was able to grab the url, place it in my code and use some string formatting to replace the data, titles, etc. with dynamically generated data.

The Google Chart API is probably not a solution for your enterprise charting needs, but it will help you put together some simple charts easily for your run-of-the-mill web application. Two of the best things about it that make it easy to work with:

The documentation is good enough, making it fairly easy to figure out how to do whatever it is you’re trying to do
Because it is URL based you can keep experimenting with your charts by simply changing values in the URL – no code , no test harness, just a browser and a little time and patience.

You can check out my use of Google Charts at the following:
http://twitterratio.com/history.aspx/danhounshell
http://twitterratio.com/history.aspx/arcware
http://twitterratio.com/history.aspx/jeffhunsaker
http://twitterratio.com/history.aspx/scottw

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Eeebuntu Netbook Remix and OpenGeeeU

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:03:00 -0700

For the last couple of months I’ve been using Eeebuntu Netbook Remix on my Asus eee PC 900. I’m a true blue Windows user and have been since Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS before that. But I’ve dabbled with various Linux versions over the years to keep up to date and to know enough to get around. Because of this I wasn’t too fearful of buying a netbook without Windows. I’d also done enough research prior that I knew what I was getting myself into.

Eeebuntu was built specifically for the Asus eee netbooks and is based on Ubuntu. The Netbook Remix version (NBR) uses the Netbook Launcher, a customized simple tab-based UI. It makes it easy to find and launch the day to day programs you use on the little netbook – mostly just Firefox in my case.

Another Linux distribution optimized for netbooks, specifically the eee line, is EasyPeasy. I have not run EasyPeasy yet since I’ve been pleased with Eeebuntu NBR, but I’ve read some good reviews about it.

Friday I read about a new distribution released specifically for the eee line, OpenGeeeU 8.10 Luna Serena. OpenGeeeU is based on EasyPeasy and OpenGEU. Here is a description from the site:

OpenGEU, previously known as Geubuntu, is a complete and fully functional Operative System based on the popular Linux Distribution Ubuntu. OpenGEU, a project started and designed by the Italian artist Luca D.M. (aka TheDarkMaster), is perfect for any Desktop, Laptop PC or even for a Virtual Machine. OpenGEU mixes the power and simplicity of Ubuntu and parts of the Gnome Desktop with the wonder and astonishing eye-candy of Enlightenment DR17.

I’m thinking about giving OpenGeeeU a spin, especially after watching this video – it is almost breathtaking.

Here is a link directly to the video on YouTube if you’re having trouble viewing it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZBGkuhiZCo

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Frankenstein inspired MAME cabinet

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:28:39 -0700

via frankencade.blogspot.com

I've thought about creating a MAME cabinet for a while now, even going so far as to start collecting controls. But I haven't yet taken the leap. I'm thinking it might be a cool project to take on this winter.

I'd like to build something kind of cool, but I know my limits and I'm sure it will end up being more utilitarian than beautiful. And I know it will be nowhere near as cool as this Frankenstein inspired cabinet. You have to check out the pics. The craftsmanship and attention to detail is amazing.

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Which of these is not like the others?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:31:29 -0700

In yesterday's mail we got a flyer from Hustler Hollywood, which is not that unusual since I live about two miles from one of the stores.

The thing I found interesting about the ad (okay there were other things I found interesting :)) was the list of store locations on the back. Each of the store names/cities are places that you probably don't have to say the state, just the city, and people will know what you mean. Lexington might not be as obvious to those not in the midwest, but around here we know you mean Lexington, KY. Anyway the list is:

FT. Lauderdale
New Orleans
Lexington
San Diego
St. Louis
Nashville
Tacoma
Hollywood
... and ...
Monroe

I'm not sure why they don't just call it Cincinnati? Monroe is a sleepy little suburb about 25 miles north of Cincinnati. Whatever. I just find it funny that my little town is listed right there along with such well known places without any kind of qualifier. It is bold and unapologetic. Monroe - ain't chu herd?!?!

Ever heard of Monroe? How about some of our (in)famous shopping and landmarks? Along with Hustler Hollywood we have Touchdown Jesus, Trader's World, the new Mall. Hmmm, I guess that's about it. Okay, maybe we're not so hot. But there is a big sale this month at Hustler Hollywood! :)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Resource for setting up Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:30:51 -0700

This manual will help you to install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and to configure your pc so you can use it as a workstation. T

If you are still not convinced why to use Windows Server 2008 as your workstation OS, read this article, and you will be installing Windows Server 2008 right after reading it!

Table of Contents

1. Installation, Drivers, OS Language and Owner Information: Installation of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and how to set owner name and -organization.

2. Wireless Networking: (If you don’t use wireless, skip this step) Enable wireless networking in Windows Server 2008.

3. New User, Auto Logon and Strong Passwords Enforcement: How to create a new user, how to configure a user to logon automatically and how to disable enforcement of a minimum complexity for passwords.

4. Shutdown Tracker: How to disable the annoying Shutdown Event Tracker.

5. Ctrl+Alt+Del: Disable ctrl+alt+del at Windows startup.

6. Audio and Startup Sound: Enable audio and Startup Sound in Windows Server 2008.

7. Computername: Change computername.

8. Performance: Increase performance of applications in windows server.

9. Internet Explorer Enhanced Security: Disable Enhanced Security in Internet Explorer.

10. Themes, SideBar with Custom Gadgets, Aero Cursors and Thumbnails: Enable the Vista Aero theme and 3d flip with Sidebar and preview thumbnails in Windows Explorer.

11. SuperFetch: Maintain and Improve your system performance.

12. Delay Activation: How to extend the evaluation period to 240 days.

More Features

13. Windows Search: Install the Windows Search service to search your Outlook and documents.

14. Hyper-V: How to install the Hyper-V virtualization serverrole in Windows Server 2008 x64.

15. Offline Files: Installing the Offline Files feature to improve mobility!

via win2008workstation.com

I recently upgraded my dev rig from a 3-yr-old PC running Windows XP to a nice quad-core Dell box running WIndows Server 2008. All of my home PCs are either still running XP or Windows Server 2003. Having completely missed the "Vista Experience" I wanted to enable Aero, the Sidebar and other toys that I never had a chance to play around with on my new workstations.

None of goodies are enabled out of the box on Windows Server 2008, and the sidebar is not even supported, so I had to do a lot of searching to find instructions. More times than not the best source for detailed instructions was the win2008workstation.com site. It even offered some tips that I had not thought about like disabling the Shutdown Tracker and enabling SuperFetch. It's a very good resource if you're using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation and want to enable some of the UI goodies of Vista.

BTW, Windows Media Player will be installed when you enable the Desktop Experience feature.

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I don't get medical billing : In Valid Logic

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:25:20 -0700

I don't get how the medical industry can function.

Why can't they just do all inclusive billing? I would much rather know all my expenses up front than to get bills trickling in one after another 2 months after the fact.

via invalidlogic.com

Ken Robertson, the author of the blog post from which the above snippet was harvested, is a co-worker and friend. I completely agree with his sentiment and left a comment that I've been wishing for combined billing from healthcare providers for years.

In most things transparency is great. And transparency in medical charges is cool, too. But I'd prefer to not get 8 different bills from 8 different medical "providers" for one visit to the emergency room. Why can't I just get ONE bill from the hospital and have them work out all the details with their "sub-contractors". When your chosen home builder builds you a house you (normally) don't get a bill from them, a bill from the roofers, a bill from the electrician, a bill from the plumbers, a bill from the flooring installers, etc. You choose the home builder, give them money to build your selected style of home, they sub-contract out work to appropriate craftsmen and in the end everyone is happy.

Why can't it be like that for health care billing? It's not like you have a choice of anesthesiologist, x-ray tech, etc. You take whoever the hospital provides you - their sub-contractors!

One bill would be much nicer. I would pay it. The hospital would pay their sub-contractors. And everyone would be happy. Okay, maybe not happy, but much more content than I am today.

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Lock N' Load with R. Lee Ermey and Army Toys

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:50:56 -0700

I was catching up on some episodes of Lock N' Load with R. Lee Ermey (http://www.history.com/video.do?name=LockNLoad) last night. I watched the one about AFVs / APCs (Armored fighting vehicles / Armored personnel carriers) and Helicopters (the Huey, Cobra, Blackhawk, Apache, Kiowa, etc). Those were a couple of shows that really brought back some memories.

What kind of memories? Hauling ass across the desert floor in an M113 for one. BTW, stripped down and running flat out on flat ground they'll go a "little bit" faster than the 42 mph that was quoted on the show :)

Another - hanging out the door of a Huey flying "nap of the earth" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nap-of-the-earth) where it seemed like my feet could almost touch the treetops. What a thrill-ride. I've never been on any amusement park ride that beat that one. And I cannot forget the ominous feeling of landing on the ground and running down the ramp of a Chinook in Panama during Operation Just Cause.

The cool thing about being a soldier, especially a grunt (Infantryman) or other combat arms, is the cool shit they let you play with while you're young. While I still think things like rappelling, explosives, and all that still sounds like fun I'm a little more hesitant these days to jump right in. Ah, those were some fun times. There's nothing much cooler than rappelling down the side of a building or down an elevator shaft, blowing holes in doors for quick entry with det cord, setting off claymore mines, shooting anti-tank rounds, oooh - shooting a stinger (that one was fun!), and on and on. Hmmm - I didn't remember being such an adrenaline junkie.

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NFL will offer delayed online broadcasts of blacked-out games

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:32:27 -0700

NFL fans whose local teams’ games are blacked out will be able to watch replays online for free—though not until after midnight.

The recession has left several teams in danger of having games blacked out this season. The league announced Thursday that home fans will be able to view the delayed broadcasts on NFL.com for 72 hours, except during "Monday Night Football."

"We understand that the economy is limiting some families and corporations from buying as many game tickets as they had previously," commissioner Roger Goodell said in a release.

via sports.yahoo.com

Great news, especially for us Cincinnati Bengals fans who are endanger of seeing the opener vs. the Denver Broncos on Sunday blacked out.

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Keep your butts to yourself

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:52:00 -0700

Reader feedback video about cigarette butts

via fox19.com

I saw this video clip on our local morning news this morning. Maybe it's just me and my sophomoric sense of humor, but I believe that the guy reading this had a hard time keeping from laughing. I couldn't have done it.

Highlights:
- "imagine going down the road and having a nice hot butt hit you in the chest"
- "what if it hit you in the neck and slid down your chest or back"
- "I've been hit by a butt at 55... it didn't burn me or cause me pain"
- "what about the ones that fall to the ground - is that not hideous?"
- "Keep it in your car - preferably with the windows up!!"

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Not ready for Pumpkin Spice

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:05:00 -0700

I saw a lot of Autumn seasonal items displayed while shopping at a local grocery store today. Okay, you got me, while picking up a 12-pack sampler of Great Lakes beer at the store today. I don't know about you but I'm just not quite ready for the "Harvest" beer and the "Pumpkin Spice" latte. I'm still enjoying what's left of summer and not looking forward to cooler weather yet. I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but it seems like a little too soon yet. Watching the Labor Day weekend slip away, the unofficial end of Summer, isn't helping.

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hi.im DanHounshell

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:30:34 -0700

Interesting concept:
http://hi.im/DanHounshell

A couple of years ago after seeing what a cool way Pownce had for adding your other sites/feeds, etc. I thought it would be a good idea to build a complete site around the concept. It would serve as one spot to be a pointer to everything/everyplace you are on the web.

I put together a mockup here http://syn.dicate.us/danhounshell/ and I started a proof of concept a couple of time, even as recently as a few weeks ago.

Alas, I was way too slow and someone beat me to it. And they did a good job, too. Really easy to create an account and add your links to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Cool stuff.

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C# IMDb API + Amazon for Movie Info

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:59:56 -0700

I'm working on a little personal/family project that needs to pull movie/DVD info from a service to show cover art, plot, actors, director(s), etc.

IMDb's web services are not open to the public, only for paying customers.

But with my amazing Googlefu powers I found useful, a C# IMDb "API" for pulling that information:
http://code.google.com/p/imdb-api/
I say "API" because all it really does is some screen scraping. It didn't work exactly like I wanted it to, but a couple of changes to the source code was all it needed to make me happy. And using it is a whole lot easier than writing all that screen scraping crap yourself.

I'm thinking that I should try to pull that info from Amazon first. It might be a little more "legal" to do that than screen scraping the IMDb site.

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Welcome to Cheese Salt!

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:50:11 -0700

To try out a new micro blogging style site I chose to recycle an existing domain name: CheeseSalt.com.

Since it's so easy to post images, videos and little tidbits with posterous, I hope my (micro) blogging frequency will increase. It's worth a shot.

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