Mono.Zeroconf allows a .NET programmer to utilize Zero Configuration Networking in their application with minimal fuss. I wanted to integrate this library into a little application I wanted to build. The application would announce its presence via Mono.Zeroconf and wait for subscribing clients to connect to it.

From reading the documentation, Mono.Zeroconf looked perfect. It even works in Windows as long as you have Bonjour installed. Mono.Zeroconf is currently at release 0.90 so I expected some bugs. But I quickly found a fairly big bug in the library.

Its briefly addressed in the Known Workarounds section of the Mono.Zeroconf page. There, you see discussion of the Port property defined in the Mono.Zeroconf API. An additional property UPort was created to address issues in Mono.Zeroconf versions prior to 0.90. There however is a bug in the Bonjour implementation of Mono.Zeroconf.

It appears the new UPort property as implemented in Mono.Zeroconf.Providers.Bonjour.Services.UPort has a bug. When I attempted to run sample code that came with Mono.Zeroconf, any attempts to register a Bonjour service failed. After some debugging, I noticed the Port and UPort properties were set to 0. After further investigation, I saw the underlying code in Mono.Zeroconf.Providers.Bonjour.Services was incorrect.

I’m not the first to notice this. The Mono bug tracker suggests bugs 529363 and 502560 are already filed on this issue. I wasn’t sure about the solution offered in the description for bug 502560, but I found another solution on the Mono mailing list that looked more promising. It is contained in a thread from Casey Marshall that included a patch to fix this bug. His description of the problem is as follows:

The endian conversion in the property Mono.Zeroconf.Providers.Bonjour.Service.UPort is wrong; casting between an int and a ushort doesn't do the right thing — NetworkToHostOrder will shift the low bytes into the high bytes, but casting that to a ushort discards the high bytes.

The last patch he submitted to the mailing list that addressed big endian architectures was unfortunately also broken. Specifically, the setter for UPort was incorrect. The fixed code is as follows:

public ushort UPort
{
  get
  {
    if( BitConverter.IsLittleEndian )
    {
      return (ushort)( ( ( port & 0x00FF ) << 8 ) | ( ( port & 0xFF00 ) >> 8 ) );
    }
    return port;
  }
  set
  {
    if( BitConverter.IsLittleEndian )
    {
      port = (ushort)( ( ( value & 0x00FF ) << 8 ) | ( ( value & 0xFF00 ) >> 8 ) );
    }
    else
    {
      port = value;
    }
  }
}

This looks to be a better solution than is listed in Bug 502560. But as far as I could tell, neither the fix proposed in the bug report nor the patch from Casey Marshall appears to be in the code repository. It looks like I’ll have to figure out how to get this fix committed to Mono.Zeroconf. But now the first few lines of my application appear to work. Progress!

The Wonders of Mono and Zeroconf originally appeared on kyle's blog on February 17, 2010.

This flakiness was enough for the feature to be disabled by default in the final version of Firefox 3.6 that shipped several weeks ago. Fortunately, the developer assigned to fix this bug thinks he has isolated the problem and has offered a solution. Best of all, the solution may be applied by the average user given some simple instructions.

If you haven’t already, enable taskbar previews by following the instructions I listed in my earlier post.

In Comment #61 of Bug 522262, the following solution is offered:

Close Firefox. Find the folder modules/ where Firefox is installed. Edit the
file ‘WindowsPreviewPerTab.jsm’ in notepad.

Replaced line 422:

let preview =
AeroPeek.taskbar.createTaskbarTabPreview(this.tabbrowser.docShell, controller);

with

let preview =
AeroPeek.taskbar.createTaskbarTabPreview(tab.linkedBrowser.docShell,
controller);

Save, start Firefox. Seems to be working so far, I only see the spinning
circles for a split second then the previews appear.

I applied this fix to my installation of Firefox 3.6 and can report I have not had any issues since. Mozilla is working out the details on releasing this fix, but by following the simple instructions above, you won’t have to wait!

An Update for Firefox 3.6’s Taskbar Previews originally appeared on kyle's blog on February 9, 2010.

Project 365 – Week 2 originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 17, 2010.

“After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.”

“My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.”

At the moment, Conan appears to be without an offer for a new show, assuming NBC allows him to leave for another network.

“There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.”

Someone give this funny man a job. Before your competitor does!

In the meantime, Conan might have to keep doing commercials.

Conan O’Brien Says He Won’t Host ‘Tonight Show’ Following Leno – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com.

Conan O’Brien Wants No Part of NBC’s Late-Night Hijinks originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 12, 2010.

The final version of 3.6 is likely to be very similar to this release candidate. Unfortunately, this means if you use Windows 7, one useful new feature will be missing from this version and the final version of Firefox 3.6: taskbar previews.

With taskbar previews, every single tab you have in your Firefox windows will get their own individual thumbnail preview when you hover over the Firefox in your taskbar. Additionally, the number of icons stacked in the taskbar will reflect the number of tabs you have open. This is best illustrated with the screenshot below.

From the screenshot (larger version) you can see I have three tabs open. Thumbnail previews are shown for each of the tabs. Additionally, in the taskbar you see three stacked icons. This allows you to switch rapidly between tabs in Firefox, just from the taskbar! With Window 7’s new taskbar, this new tab interaction paradigm makes a lot of sense!

It looks like this feature is working perfectly in the screenshot, but the Firefox developers didn’t think the feature was ready to be enabled by default in 3.6. (Bugzilla #525475). From my limited testing, its not the snappiest feature on my older laptop, but it does seem to work reliably. Follow these steps to enable this feature on your computer.

Enabling Taskbar Preview in Your Firefox Profile

1. Type about:config in your location bar.
   
2. Click through the warning page.
3. Search for the appropriate setting: browser.taskbar.previews.enable.
4. Change the default from false to true. Once this is complete, the setting should be bold as shown below.

After you finish, you should start seeing your tabs in the taskbar previews! This setting should persist through the Firefox 3.6 release candidate process all the way to the final release of 3.6. This means you shouldn’t have to go through these steps again to re-enable this setting.

Some other Windows 7 taskbar features, like Jump Lists (Bugzilla #473045) won’t be making an appearance until Firefox 3.7 is released, likely later year (originally scheduled Spring 2010). But enabling this feature in your Firefox profile should make life a bit easier while we wait on Firefox 3.7.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6’s Hidden Taskbar Previews originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 9, 2010.

Since I have an abundance of free time lately, I decided why the hell not, I’ll give it a try. The pictures below are the result of Week 1 of my Project 365. All were taken with the Nikon D50 using a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens. Its likely my point and shoot Canon and iPhone will eventually be the source of some content since they’re more travel friendly. As you can see, a relatively boring week this week. Cold and windy out, nothing particularly interesting to see so all indoor shots. I did manage to create my first HDR.

Yea, I’ve seen better too

Aspirin by wacko_-

HDR of a Plant by wacko_-

An Abandoned Bench by wacko_-

Liquid Refreshment by wacko_-

A Glass Before Nightfall by wacko_-

Majestic Columns by wacko_-

Vitamin C by wacko_-

Project 365 – Week 1 originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 7, 2010.

My First HDR Picture! originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 3, 2010.

Five of the improvements I’ve appreciated most over the past several weeks are as follows.

1) Faster apparent performance

cc licensed flickr photo shared by nahkahousu

I don’t have benchmarks to quantify my perceptions, but Windows 7 definitely feels faster. The computer boots up Windows 7 at least as quickly as it booted up XP. Once I’m logged in, Windows 7 continues to impress. In XP, the computer would be sluggish if I tried to look at other web pages while streaming the Muppet’s rendition of the Bohemian Rhapsody. Now, I can stream that masterwork from Youtube and look at other pages without the lag. I did upgrade my Mozilla Firefox installation, so its possible that upgrade was the true cause, not Windows 7. I have also noticed faster apparent performance in Microsoft Visual C# Studio Express 2008 loading solutions and compiling small dinky programs I cook up. Finally, iTunes honestly seems to load faster. Yes, iTunes. Like I said, I don’t have benchmarks, but it just feels faster.

2) Better organization and use of system tray icons

Instead of cluttering my system tray, Windows 7 lets me always hide icons, always show icons, or notifications for that icon only. Now, I can tweak the settings so my battery status is always guaranteed visible while my Pidgin system icon remains hidden unless I have a new message. Perfect! But that’s not all. The functionality of some of these system tray icons has also been greatly improved. One great example is the wireless network icon, shown below.

Now, after just one click, I can choose which wireless network to connect to. Even Intel’s relatively excellent wireless drivers in XP didn’t offer this!

3) Start Menu Search

This may seem trivial, but Windows 7 now has the ability to search the start menu items as you type. I first got addicted to this functionality using Gnome Do and Google Desktop. Granted Do is significantly more powerful, and Google Desktop indexes more files, but the ability to search the start menu was a major reason I installed those programs.

4) Perfect and Quick Sleep

I’ve been jealous of the ability of Apple’s MacBooks to wake from their version of sleep nearly instantly. Now I can finally do the same. Resuming from sleep now only takes a second at most, whereas in XP sleep took closer to five seconds. Sure, its only a few seconds faster, but the improvement makes a huge difference in daily use. There’s no more hesitation when I want to use the computer, I simply lift the lid and am ready to go almost instantly!

5) Improved DOSBox Performance

Yes, its nerdy, but I’ve recently taken to wasting some of my free time by playing X-Com: UFO Defense and Master of Orion 2. I have  PlayStation 3 so I have my dose of latest generation games, but sometimes I reminisce for the classics. Oddly enough, both games run significantly smoother in Windows 7 versus XP.

My opinion on XP versus Windows 7?

Good riddance XP. You had your time, but now there’s something better.

There are many other improvements in Windows 7, but these are the five that came to mind for me. Its been years since I’ve said this, but I can honestly recommend this Microsoft operating system to others. Ubuntu still has its place and will continue to be used on a daily basis, but Windows has now begun to approach the polished experience of Mac OS X.

Windows 7: Impressions Several Weeks Later originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 2, 2010.

The Food of Vancouver originally appeared on kyle's blog on January 2, 2010.

Some pictures from an amazing show by Ghostland Observatory this past Saturday at the Neighborhood Theater.

Ghostland Observatory Comes to Charlotte! originally appeared on kyle's blog on December 16, 2009.