Joe Stagner and others have produced a long line of how-to jumpstart videos on learning ASP.NET AJAX and the community supported AJAX Toolkit control extenders.  Video 3 of 72 , How Do I: Use the ASP.NET AJAX CascadingDropDown Control Extender, has some errors that may cause some newbies to get hung up on learning these tools, which is a shame.

First off, I'm a C# developer, and the videos are written from the VB.NET mind set.  If you're like me, you'll need to note that the "shared" VB keyword is functionally the same as the "static" keyword in C#.  You'll also need to take note that the method call QuerySimpleCascadingDropDownDocument returns an array of CascadingDropDownNameValue objects, so you, like I, may miss the fact that he's returning an array from the methods GetDropDownContents and GetDropDownContentsPageMethod.

The big issue that I and apparently others came across is the fact that upon running the application as demonstrated, the dropdowns will be populated with the error message:

[method error 500]

The fix is simple: in the HTML, you must define the ServicePath as follows:

...ServiceMethod="GetDropDownContents" ServicePath="~/CarsService.asmx"...

Note the "~/" at the beginning of the ServicePath.  Without this, the service will get called, you can step into it, yet the results will be an error. 

You know, like learning how to play 32nd not fills on a 3pc drum kit.  5min.com has all sorts of great sub-5-minute tips & tricks, not only about learning instruments, but how to play chess, how to understand pot odds, or how to make a really bad presentation.

Note to self: time to hit the practice pads.

Since I just did an aviation post, I might as well keep the good times rolling.  More than anything, this post is a reminder for me: Quiet Technologies' Halo headset has gotten rave reviews from any private pilot trying them on.  They offer passive noise reduction vis-a-vis in-ear monitors, rather than the alternative, which is a giant bulky headset which usually runs 1.5-3x the cost of the Halo.

At the price, it might not be beatable, and the fact that they're likely a ton more comfortable than can-style, they'll likely be the product for me, at some point in the future.  Extra bonus, you can keep your hat on while wearing them.  In Phoenix, that alone is worth the price.

I was presented with an interesting site that rents out and mails videos direct to the customer, providing a postage-paid envelope for returning the video.  Sound familiar?  It's not Netflix, but AVNac.com, self-billed as "Aviation's video rental store."

What I find interesting about this service is that there are many markets that offer videos which Netflix does not cover.  Aviation is certainly a good example, where thousands of films are produced annually for training, but there are other groups that produce niche videos, including dance and music instruction. 

Bravo to AVNac for filling a void, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to rent some of these products and view them online?  Seems like a better revenue model to me.

I came across a great "article" (is that the right term for an audio segment which is also available online?) on David Swensen.  Swensen manages Yale's endowment, and has managed success even during these trying bear markets, realizing an average annual return of 17.8 percent over the last 10 years.

David Swensen's book, Unconventional Success, has received complaints for being a very dry read.  That's unfortunate, because the message seems to be a good one:

• invest broadly in index funds (avoiding other mutual funds due to their built-in cost structure)
• rebalance your portfolio to match your goals as often as you can while still avoiding fees
• do it yourself, avoiding costs associated with account managers

Swenson suggests the following portfolio:

30% Domestic Equity (VTSMX, TINRX)
20% Real Estate (VGSIX, TCREX)
15% US T-Bonds (VFISX, TCTRX, VFITX, TIORX, VUSTX)
15% US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities "TIPS" (VIPSX, TCILX)
15% Foreign Developed Equity (VGTSX, TIERX)
5% Emerging Market Equity (VEIEX)

The only challenge (that I'm reviewing) is the above portfolio requires an initial investment of ~$60k, since the minimum buy in for VEIEX is $3,000.  Doing the math the rest of the way up yields a starting investment of $60k.

The folks at The Motley Fool agree in general terms.  They say, simply, "Buy an index fund."

GeekDad produced another gem today, FontStruct, a free webservice that allows you to create and distribute fonts.  For free.

I'm going to need to practice building fonts, but it's great fun to work with fonts if you're into that sort of thing.  For starters, you can always take an existing font, "clone" and modify it to get the feel for how they work.  The tool appears to give you a product akin to what you paid for it, so don't expect miracles.

If you'd rather just buy a good font, FontStruct is associated with FontShop, an online font retailer.  FontShop also has an interesting RSS feed, again, if you're into that sort of thing.  It seems to be fairly low volume, so it might be worth dropping into your reader of choice.

OT, Geekdad is quickly becoming one of my favorite RSS feeds to read.  As a geek and a dad, they speak to my soul. 

Pecha Kucha is coming to Phoenix!  What's Pecha Kucha, you ask? 

Pecha Kucha Night (pronounced pee-chack-shaw is Japanese for the sound of conversation or chatter) [was] devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham... in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

 

But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds... giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

 

(From Pecha-Kucha.org)

The basic idea is that it is a night of presentations by local artists of all flavors.  Think musicians, sculptors, architects, knitters, poets, etc., who are given exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds to talk about their passion.  It's a great way for artists to meet artists and to be introduced to local philanthropists and art lovers alike.

As of this writing, 119 cities across the world are running Pecha Kucha events, and Phoenix, AZ is finally getting it's own chapter.  If all goes well, the first event should be within the first half of the year.  Stay tuned.

More reading:

• Pecha Kucha in Wired magazine (and example 20x20 format)
• http://www.pecha-kucha.org
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha
• http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/phoenix

My son is reaching the LEGO age.  Certainly, he's been playing with blocks since he could manipulate his hands correctly, but DUPLOs don't hold a candle to LEGOs.  LEGOs present two problems: what's the easiest way to store them, and how can you cut cleanup time to a minimum?

Wired's GeekDad found a great solution called the Box 4 Blox.  The idea is simple; once all your pieces are free, just dump them into the top of four stacked boxes.  The biggest pieces will stay at the top, but the smaller pieces will fall through each level, with the smallest finding their way to the bottom once you give the whole stack a good shake. 

I haven't laid hands on the product, but my only complaints are that it's not big enough for some LEGO collections (you should see my nephew's case), and it doesn't have a place to put your "in progress" builds.  I mean, when you're constructing the LEGO Death Star, you need to stop for sleep.

Dear NVIDIA,

I own and work primarily on a Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop, which is equipped with your GeForce Go 7800 display adapter.  I am running Vista SP1 and am patched with the latest NVIDIA video driver available from Dell.  At work, where this issue occurs, I attach and run a second external Dell 21" LCD monitor.

If I lock my computer and the computer goes into screen saver mode, I can most certainly guarantee the following error after logging in to the computer:

Please fix this bug.  Please consider that you last officially released a driver to Dell over 16 months ago today, before Vista was publicly available let alone Vista SP1.  Please also note that the public is under the assumption that your company's products are the cause of nearly 30% of the unhandled crashes in Vista.  You could earn yourself some public good will if you acknowledge the err of your ways.

If I can sum it up, please stop sucking.

Sincerely,
Matt

P.S. I'm not the only one having these issues:
SteveX Compiled
Repair Your PC Now
NVIDIA Forums

Today, Garmin announced Synthetic Vision certification for the Garmin G1000 flight deck tools.

Even if you're not a pilot, this technology makes perfect sense.  Here's the idea: you're flying along when you're surprised by bad weather.  (This can happen for many reasons, but usually is due to out of date weather reports.)  In the clouds, even the best trained pilots will fall prey to their inner ear telling them something that their eyes can't confirm, so you might get led off course.  Unfortunately, in the general aviation (GA) world, this often leads to confusion causing the pilot and airframe to become a permanent fixture atop some mountain at his or her cruise level.

What's a pilot to do?  Well, if they have Synthetic Vision, she only needs to look down at the panel to see a virtual picture of what the outside looks like.  More flying + less crashing == safer flying.

GPS technology has borne many great tools, but "synthetic vision" is the best implementation of that technology.  The idea is that given good digital maps, GPS, and a technology called WAAS, pilots can determine their position in the US to an accuracy of less than 3 meters.  If you map this position on a monitor, you can pilot your aircraft without needing to see out the windows.  This doesn't need to only happen in the middle of a cloud; flying over large bodies of water or simply flying at night can cause disorientation.

Synthetic Vision has existed prior to this announcement but required the addition of more hardware (think tiny tablet-PC) in an already cramped workspace.  Consequently, adding this feature to already existing hardware (in the software world, this is called "overloading") is the perfect solution.

Congratulations, Garmin!  I look forward to seeing this product first hand.

Links:

More pictures from Garmin (blog)

I've started migrating all of the light bulbs in my house to CF from incandescent.  As an incandescent blows, in goes its CF equivalent.  About 3 months ago, I replaced all of the lights in my bathroom with CF.  The cost and energy saving made me warm in my heart.  The color, however made me look jaundiced. 

Unhappy with the perceived color, I looked around on the web today for a comparison of CFs.  Thankfully, Popular Mechanics ran an article in May 2007 on The Best Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs.

The punch line: N:Vision Soft White 19W (2700K) CFs are the winner in their roundup.  I'm going out today to pick up a bunch for bathroom #2.

Yeah, but what of the mercury used to generate the light?  Phoenix offers a great program for hazardous disposal (old paint, motor oil, etc) where you can bring these for proper disposal.  Ikea also offers a disposal program, and I expect Home Depot and Lowe's to offer them as well (if they don't already.)  If you want more information on mercury use in CFs, Popular Science also discussed this in a later article, Compact Fluorescent Bulbs and Mercury: Reality Check.

The Police are coming back through the US and will be stopping in Phoenix again.  [This is, my friends, a small miracle.  Despite Phoenix being the 5th most populous city in the US, many great acts refuse to make a stop here.  I digress...]  In an amazing lineup, Elvis Costello is "opening" for them, despite Elvis calling The Police "bloody dreadful."

Today, I purchased my tickets for the show through Ticketmaster.  The process is not the quickest, but that I can live with.  I start to get really steamed when I calculate that for every dollar I spent, Ticketmaster, the venue and/or the promoter made an additional $0.47 above and beyond the cost of my ticktes.  So here I sit, $80 worth of tickets costing me $115.25.

But here's what really chaps my hide: of the methods available to get your tickets, Ticketmaster charges $2.50 to deliver your tickets via email. 

For those of you not-so-technically-inclined, let me explain this to you.  It costs Ticketmaster first class postage to mail your tickets to you.  Today, that's $0.41.  They do not charge you a dime for that service.  Email, if you don't remember, is free.  The tools they use to make the tickets were long-ago paid for.  (Software to create bar codes and PDFs are relatively inexpensive; ~$1000 one time charge.)  So, can you tell me why they charge $2.50 for something that is essentially free?!

This, my dear friends, is highway robbery and just another reason why the music industry is collapsing under it's own weight.  Hangers-on and companies with nominal value-add are squeezing every last dime out of the consumer.  And they wonder why music is being pirated?

My mother is the official photographer at all events.  She takes out her (not-so) trusty $50 point-and-shoot and snaps off a few shots whenever more than one of us are together at any given event.  I love my mom, but it's a running joke with my siblings that none of us have ever seen any of those photos. 

If you're in a similar situation, I urge you to take time at least once a year to have a sitting with a professional photographer.  There's no cutting corners on this one.  Because my wife is a wedding florist, we have the opportunity to virtually interview dozens of photographers a year.  Many are Johnny-come-latelies who never amount to much, but some are very talented artists who rise above and shine brightly.

If you're in the Phoenix area, I strongly urge you to contact Melissa Jill for a sitting.  If you're planning a special event, she should be on your short list of photographers.  She has a great eye and uses her tools very effectively to get the most out of the time and place.  My wife, my son and I spent an hour with her the other day and I couldn't be happier, even though I haven't yet seen all of the results.

Bravo, Melissa.  You've got talent.

http://www.MelissaJill.com
http://www.MelissaJill.net