I was recently looking for an easy way to run queries and scripts against a hosted SQL Server database without having to come out of pocket and happened upon Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express. While I have been fully aware of the Express tools (C#, VB.NET, C++) I had no knowledge of a SQL Management Express.

Unfortunately part way through the installation I was faced with this message:

“The installed has encountered and unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 29506.”

Now the laptop I was using has 64bit version of Windows 7, and this is what I believe to be the cause of the issue. My brief research did not really find issues with Vista. In response I attempted to install the msi as an administrator and that seemed to do the trick. You can run any msi as an administrator from a command prompt as follows:

Related Links

• Microsoft Visual Studio Express
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

After viewing the videos of Kinect (formerly known as Project Natal) my patience has been rewarded. I resisted on principle the idea of purchasing two consoles especially when one of them (the Wii) amounted to what I figured to be an intriguing, but fleeting, fad. With the advent of Kinect I am seeing a device that fulfils the promise that the Wii flirted with. A device that understands your movement not just in 3 dimensions (ala the Wii remote) but observes and understands all your actually physical movements simultaneously in a very detailed and intuitive way.

Game producer Ubisoft (see Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon, etc) appear to be the first developer to take on the fitness challenge with Your Shape Fitness Evolved. You can take a martial arts class or do some Yoga, you can even decide what kind of cardio coach you want and it seems to gauge how many calories you are burning during your work out.

The video on the site indicates that your Kinect device cannot only track your movements but give specific measurements about you (height, waist, chest) and actually evaluate the consistency and appropriate form of your movements. This is where I thought the Wii (and all its expensive peripherals) failed miserably, it could never tell the difference between a great swing or a flick of the wrists.

The detail with which Kinect appears to verify movements would surely lend itself to other applications mainly sports. Lets say I want someone to check my golf swing, or tennis form, or even my baseball stance. I cannot help but think of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall when Sharon Stones character was getting coached on her Tennis swing.

Imagine the possibilities!

I have recently been fortunate enough to venture back into the world of math, specifically dealing with the idea of complex numbers. I am not sure how many developers are really into math so I will recap some concepts of complex numbers.

One of the main properties of a real number is that it square is nonnegative. For example, there is no real number x for which the following equation is true:

x² = -1

To help solve this kind of problem, a number called the imaginary unit was introduced (i).  The imaginary unit is the number whose square is –1, that is

i² = -1

The system that results from introducing the number i is called the complex number system. Complex numbers are numbers of the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers . The real number a is referred to as the real part of the number a + bi, while the real number b is called the imaginary part of a + bi. For example the complex number -2 + 3i has the real part of -2 and the imaginary part of 3.

Now there are some basic rules for adding, subtracting and multiplying complex numbers as follows:

• (a + bi) + (c + di) = (a + c) + (c + d)i
• (a + bi) -  (c + di) = (a - c) + (c - d)i
• (a + bi) * (c + di) = (ac - db) + (ad - bc)i

In .NET 4.0 we saw the introduction of a new struct designed to represent the complex number called Complex. With this new type the complex number addition, and multiplication patterns become really easy.

            using System.Numerics;

            Complex cpx1 = new Complex(2, 3);
            Complex cpx2 = new Complex(4, 6);
            Complex cpx3 = new Complex(1, 5);

            Complex cpxsum = cpx1 + cpx2 - cpx3; // produces 5 + 4i
            Complex cpxsum2 = cpx1 * cpx3; // produces -13 + 13i

Related Links:

• Math in .NET
• Mod function in C#

I stopped doing meaningful Windows development many moons ago, however, I was recently attempting to setup a simple test application that would send and receive data via a URI. I was taking advantage of existing code and missed the opportunity to do it the right way so I am taking the opportunity to do it the right way here. In this example (inspired by Scott Gu) I am using the WebClient class and the Twitter API. I am using DownloadString*, however, there is also a DownloadData* which returns a byte array for processing.

WebClient mytweets = new WebClient();
mytweets.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(mytweets_DownloadStringCompleted);
mytweets.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=" + _name));

I am primarily using .NET 1.1 at work and so my options would be limited in terms of processing the response. As I am currently testing out Visual Studio 2010 Express, we can and will use LINQ to SQL to process the XML response.

void mytweets_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Error != null)
        return;

    XElement tweets = XElement.Parse(e.Result);
    var sometweets = from twt in tweets.Descendants("status")
                     select new Tweet
                     {
                         ImageSource = twt.Element("user").Element("profile_image_url").Value,
                         Message = twt.Element("text").Value,
                         UserName = twt.Element("user").Element("screen_name").Value
                     };
}

public class Tweet
{
    public string UserName { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }
    public string ImageSource { get; set; }
}

That is it really, if you need to pull string or binary data from a URI in the Windows world WebClient is your class in the world of .NET. An opportunity missed but I feel better for having got it off my chest here.

Related Links:

• Web Client Class

It looks like there has been an update to one of my favorite plug-ins, Outlook Hotmail Connector! The new outlook connector is compatible with Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010. With the latest version we have been inundated with additional critical functionality:

• Junk filter settings. Your safe sender, blocked sender, and safe recipient lists are synchronized between Outlook and Hotmail.
• Integrated Send/Receive. Send/receive works just as it does for your other Outlook accounts.
• Integrated connection status. The Hotmail account status appears in the Outlook status bar.
• Rule support for secondary accounts. Rules can be applied to your Hotmail account in Outlook, even if it is not your primary Outlook account.
• Sync your drafts. The Outlook Drafts folder synchronizes with the Hotmail Drafts folder.

Download it here!

There has been a recent flurry of tweets, blogs and general office comments asking if Silverlight is dead on arrival. It is a first class project in VS 2010 and yet traction with the product appears to be weak. I think before we declare whether Silverlight is dead or not, or even discuss if it can displace Adobe Flash, we should first have brief statement about what Silverlight is.

Silverlight is a browser plug-in that supports multimedia content, it should also be recognized as a slimmed-down, cross-platform version of Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming model. Cross platform does not just mean Mac and as stated it is certainly not limited to the browser. Each successive iteration of Silverlight includes more and more WPF functionality (and vice versa).

Is Silverlight dead, the answer is a categorical *no*. Will it replace flash? *heck no*! Given the advances of HTML 5 even flash has some worries but the thing that Flash and Silverlight have in common is that they are both much more than video players. They provide first class interactivity on a par with any normal desktop experience.

Silverlight has one advantage over flash, it is couched within a trusted IDE and is now positioned perfectly for the entire Windows stack which includes Windows, Windows CE, Windows Phone 7, and the browser. So in my humble opinion Silverlight will be as successful as Windows CE and the new Windows Phone. The idea of developing once and using your code base (with very little updates) on other platforms must be compelling.

Related Links:

• Silverlight for Windows Phone
• Who is using Silverlight?
• Silverlight Animating Objects