Scott Hanselman

As a remote worker I'm always looking to find better ways to work with the team that don't involve actually going to Seattle. As much as I love/hate Microsoft, I'm not moving. However, this always puts me at a disadvantage. There's only so many places (and only so far) i can go as a remote worker.

When Phil and I made the "HanselPortal," essentially a persistent always-on Skype Chat, that gave folks a place to drop by and chat (at least those two lazy to just call me via Office Communicator) but there's already two people in Phil's office, I can't move (I'm a desktop computer) and my field of view is very small. Phil has a small inside office and I can't exactly hold meetings. It's a start, but it's not perfect.

I stumbled upon the Embodied Social Proxies project at Microsoft Research and got a tour from their team. While their system costs about $3000 to $4000 (While I'd love an Axis 213 PTZ camera I can't afford the $1300 and I'm still trying to convince the boss.) and has a great cart, monitor and camera, I figured I could at least do a proof of concept on the cheap. And by proof of concept, I mean, in the same way my 1963 Ford Falcon was a proof of concept; I kept driving it until it stops, then started walking.

The Idea

While the name "Embodied Social Proxy" is very PHDy and very Researchy, the idea is that you want a physical stand-in for yourself. Sure, people can call me and contact me in any of a dozen ways and honestly, it's one click at Microsoft. I'm in the address list, I'm on chat, and I've even got a 5 digit phone extension. I've done all this and more to integrate with headquarters. However, out of sight, out of mind is really true. People subconsciously or not like to associate something physical with you. So, until I can get a 6 foot tall mobile video conferencing robot a $20 cart with a laptop super-glued to it might help. I'll set it up in an office in Building 5 so folks can "stop by." I can be "brought" to meetings where perhaps setting up a RoundTable isn't feasible. Maybe it'll work, perhaps not. But I'm going to continue to try.

The Problems

The researches have done many iterations and discovered many things. You want "eye gaze" to be natural so you can tell when folks are looking at you and they can tell when you're looking at them. They recognize that you need to "look around" and watch whiteboards, so being able to pan and zoom around is important.

Security is important also. We don't want a domain-logged-in real user on a mobile cart wandering around Microsoft. However, as a remote person I need to be able to start up the camera without having to ask a person to do it. I need to control as much of the cart as possible remotely.

The General Solution

I've got Office Communicator "corporate chat" on my side, so that makes things easier. If you wanted to generalize this solution you could use Skype or other things. I also have Exchange so my free/busy details are available programmatically. Again, this could be Google Calendar, or whatever.

I'll have a laptop mounted (not movable) to a cart. It'll include an HD Webcam at a fixed position (no zoom or pan) and a second IP camera that allows Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ). This should let me look around a bit. This is an IP camera because there are no good pan/tilt/zoom USB cameras on the market. PTZ cameras can be $200 or up to $3000 and more. Mine's $200.

I need the laptop to have both wired and wireless. Here's where things get a little weird. The camera will have one IP and the laptop will have another. However, the laptop will have a security certificate that will allow it to get on the network while the camera will not only not be reliable, but it'll be hard to find from a DNS perspective. I would like to be able to access both the camera and the machine as a unit, reliably. I solve that below, in what I think is a pretty clever way.

The (Cheap) Hardware

The hardware for my build is beyond cheesy cheap.

• Rolling Cart from Office Depot: Height-Adjustable Mobile Laptop Cart, 33 1/16"H x 23 5/8"W x 15 3/4"D, Black/Silver - On sale for $20
• APC UPS from Amazon: APC BE750G 10-Outlet Power-Saving Uninterruptible Power Supply - Yes, I realize we're talking about a laptop on a UPS, but this'll give me 4-6 more hours of power if I get stuck, plus it'll power the secondary IP PTZ camera and the Hub
• IP Camera: Panasonic BL-C111A Network Camera Wired by Panasonic
• WebCam: Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD by Microsoft - HD or not (perhaps you don't have the CPU or bandwidth, this is a crisp, clear camera.
• Laptop: I used a crappy Dell Latitude D820 I had lying around. Decent, but not awesome.
• Hub: Netgear FS105NA Switch 5Port Metal by Netgear
• Zip Cable Ties: Buttloads of them. Deluxe Cable Tie Kit - 1,000 Pieces.
• A weight and pipe from a $14 Steadycam to give my IP Camera some height.
• 3M Fasteners, I used like 12-16 strips to hold down the laptop and cameras. 3m Company 17202 "Command" Small Interlocking Fasteners & Strips

The Software

There's a custom WPF-based .NET client written by the MS Research Team. I'm gonna continue to bug them to let me release the code or Open Source it or something. I don't think the software is the important part, it's the idea. The software is a little tricky and cobbled, but workable.

Talking to Office Communicator

The machine is running on a local account that isn't Administrator. It's set to log in automatically, but the account has access to nothing. There's another Non-User Domain Account called "hanselcart" but while this account is in the Active Directory, but also has no access to resources or anything. That account has had Office Communicator access turn on so I can chat with it. Communicator is set to start up automatically as well. It's that ability to chat (really "address") the cart that makes it reasonably seamless.

You'll see that if I'm not currently visible on the screen, the program makes a call to Exchange Web Services and uses the Office Communicator Presence information to show where I am and what I'm doing generally, as well as a way to call me.

There's an Office Communicator SDK so you can automate and listen to Communicator:

this.messenger = new Messenger();
this.messenger.OnSignin += new DMessengerEvents_OnSigninEventHandler(messenger_OnSignin);
this.messenger.OnContactStatusChange += new DMessengerEvents_OnContactStatusChangeEventHandler(messenger_OnContactStatusChange);
this.messenger.OnIMWindowCreated += new DMessengerEvents_OnIMWindowCreatedEventHandler(messenger_OnIMWindowCreated);
this.messenger.OnIMWindowDestroyed += new DMessengerEvents_OnIMWindowDestroyedEventHandler(messenger_OnIMWindowDestroyed);
this.messenger.OnMyStatusChange += new DMessengerEvents_OnMyStatusChangeEventHandler(messenger_OnMyStatusChange);
this.messenger.AutoSignin();

The code is very COM-ish, which is unfortunate, but it's easy enough to write to. If I chat "Start Video" to the cart, the program sees it and calls me back:

void StartVideo()
{
    IMessengerAdvanced advanced = (IMessengerAdvanced) this.messenger;
    object result = advanced.StartConversation(CONVERSATION_TYPE.CONVERSATION_TYPE_VIDEO, this.contact, null, null, "1", null);

    // Float a "hang up" window on top
    if(hangupWindow == null) {
        hangupWindow = new HangupWindow(MachineName);
        hangupWindow.Closed += new EventHandler(hangupWindow_Closed);
        hangupWindow.Owner = this;

        // put the hang up window top-right corner
        hangupWindow.Top = 0;
        hangupWindow.Left = System.Windows.SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth - hangupWindow.Width;
    }

    // Set the video to full-screen
    maxVideoTimer.Start();
    hangupWindow.Show();
}

The FullScreen part is a horrific SendKeys hack to press F5 for me until I talk to the OC team and figure out how to do this programmatically.

How to Address the IP Camera - "It's a WebFarm of WebCams with IIS's AAR"

I'm rather proud of this hack. Let's say the cart is called http://hanselcart. I'd like to be able to address the WebCam reliably even though it's not technically a managed-object on the MS network. Essentially, if the cart itself is on and online, I'd like to use the cart to get to the camera.

Then I remember that IIS (Internet Information Services, our Web Server) has an insanely powerful free module you can download called Application Request Routing or ARR. Regardless of what you think of the name IIS ARR, it really takes IIS to the next level. Think about it next time you are trying to do something tricky with IIS. It adds a bunch of features, but I figured I needed a Reverse Proxy, which ARR can do.

Instead, I made my local IIS a WebFarm with one node, the WebCam. ;) I put the Webcam on a local network "behind" the laptop (192.168.x.x) and told my Laptop's instance of IIS to route all traffic to the Webcam. In fact, ARR smartly did it for me when i used the Add WebFarm Wizard. Whole thing took 5 minutes, counting download time.

NOTE: I did also try a tool called WebcamXP, and while it's amazingly cool for other things and has some really diverse features around Webcams, especially IP webcams, it used about 30% CPU for what I wanted, while IIS's ARR used 1-2%.

So now, I can just hit the cart by name and I'll get the IP Webcam. This Webcam has its own HTTP server and includes a quasi-RESTful API for Pan/Tilt/Zoom so I can video chat via Office Communicator and look around with the web interface of the IP Cam.

Here's a few shots of the cart itself. I'll be driving it up to Seattle for testing and installation this week.

Thanks to Gina and John and especially Peter Provost for helping me (virtually from Dallas) build it. Wish me luck!

Related Links 

• VIDEO: Hanselminutes on 9: Embodied Social Proxies (and Remote Video Heads!) with Microsoft Research
• YOUTUBE VIDEO: Embodied Social Proxy: Connecting Hub-and-Satellite Teams
• Virtual Camaraderie - A Persistent Video "Portal" for the Remote Worker
• Microsoft Research PDF - Can We Make "Distance Matter" Less?
• Steve Easterbrook - Blog post on Social Proxies
• Remote Meetings: Thinking Inside the Box
• Video: Polycom CX5000 - Microsoft Roundtable

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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My TWO-HUNDREDTH podcast is up. It's show 200, and we've got Jon Skeet. Jon writes Java at Google, but he's also got a new book out called C# in Depth, Second Edition. Jon is also well-known for his answers on StackOverflow, gaining him the title "The Chuck Norris of Programmers." Listeners can get 40% off with code "HanselC40" at http://manning.com/skeet2 until March 15th. Someone even made an Ask Jon Skeet search engine!

Subscribe:

Download: MP3 Full Show

Links from the Show

• Jon Skeet Facts
• Protocol Buffers Port
• C# in Depth, Second Edition
• Noda Time
• C# in Depth home page

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

I want to add a big thanks to Telerik. Without their support, there wouldn't be a Hanselminutes. I hope they, and you, know that. Someone's gotta pay the bandwidth. Thanks also to Carl Franklin for all his support over these last 4 years!

Telerik is our sponsor for this show.

Building quality software is never easy. It requires skills and imagination. We cannot promise to improve your skills, but when it comes to User Interface and developer tools, we can provide the building blocks to take your application a step closer to your imagination. Explore the leading UI suites for ASP.NET AJAX,MVC,Silverlight, Windows Forms and WPF. Enjoy developer tools like .NET reporting, ORM, Automated Testing Tools, TFS, and Content Management Solution. And now you can increase your productivity with JustCode, Telerik’s new productivity tool for code analysis and refactoring. Visit www.telerik.com.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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C# 3.0 introduced the implicit type "var". I've explained var as saying:

"I'm too lazy to tell you the type of this variable, so you figure it out, compiler."

However, it's more useful than just promoting terseness or laziness:

var i = 10; // implicitly typed
int i = 10; //explicitly typed

Although var is a great way to start arguments about coding standards at your work, there are times when it is required around anonymous types. Here's an example from MSDN:

/ Example: var is required because
// the select clause specifies an anonymous type
var custQuery = from cust in customers
                where cust.City == "Phoenix"
                select new { cust.Name, cust.Phone };

// var must be used because each item 
// in the sequence is an anonymous type
foreach (var item in custQuery)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Name={0}, Phone={1}", item.Name, item.Phone);
}

C# 4 (not 4.0, the marketing folks say it's .NET 4, etc.) adds the dynamic keyword. I've explained this saying:

"There's no way for you or I to know the type of this now, compiler, so let's hope that the runtime figures it out."

Here's how this looks from an Intellisense point of view. Here I'm hovering over the dynamic keyword:

And here is the tooltip after pressing "." after "calc."

Now, to the interesting question of the day. Christoff Turner asked this question, essentially:

"I noticed the following while doing some research within C# 4.0:"

using System;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
  class Program
  {
      static void f(Int32 x) { }
      static void f(dynamic x) {}
      static void f(Int32 x, dynamic y) {}
      static void f(dynamic x, Int32 y) {}
      static void f(Int32 x, dynamic y, Int32 z) {}
      static void f(dynamic x, Int32 y, dynamic z) {}
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
          f(10); // Works - obvious
          f(10, 10); // Ambiguous - obvious
          f(10, 10, 10); // Ambiguous - not so obvious - since it should be possible to resolve
      }
  }
}

"Looking at f(10,10,10), what is the reasoning behind this call being ambiguous?"

I stared it it a while longer, then realized what is happening, and called Mads Torgersen to confirm. Mads says this.

In short, the behavior is totally by design:

• dynamic in method signatures doesn’t come into it: it behaves like System.Object does.
• Given that, neither of the ternary signatures is better because each fits better than the other on some arguments (Int32 fits 10 better than object does)

The key point here, in bold, because it's significant is: having the type dynamic means “use my runtime type for binding”.

The problem in the context of method calls is that you can't use the runtime type of something until, um, runtime. ;) Binding with dynamic expressions (dynamic binding) happens at runtime.  In this case, we're compiling against method signatures that are known at compile type and we're compiling with a (mostly) static language, so there's no dynamic method dispatching happening that could select a different method overload at runtime.

The dynamic type is statically-typed as dynamic. The compile-time type is "dynamic" (but really it's object, hence the method overloading trouble.)

Another way to look at this is with Reflector. This C# code:

static void f(Int32 x, dynamic y, Int32 z) {}

is essentially this, from a method signature point of view:

static void f(int x, [Dynamic] object y, int z) {}

[return: Dynamic]
private static object GetCalculator() {}

So, given how dynamic works as a type, how the DLR works in the context of method dispatching, etc, you can see why things didn't work like Christoff thought they would.

Enjoy!

Related Links

• Back to Basics: var != Dim
• C# 4 and the dynamic keyword

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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While the boys are only 2 and 4, I'm always keeping an eye out on new ways to teach them programming. Certainly I hope they'll be more well-rounded and I and spend more time outside, but a even a basic background in programming and logic, I think, produces a more empowered individual.

Created by Vijaye Raji, Small Basic is a simple (only 15 keywords) but powerful environment for getting started programming. Great for kids and non-technical spouses, but powerful enough even for the professional game developer. In fact, Small Basic is probably the fastest and simplest way I've seen yet to produce and publish Silverlight-based games. Read on to see why.

Small Basic is part of MSDN DevLabs and just released version 0.8. It's the eighth installment, but I suspect they are too modest to call it 8.0. ;) It's even internationalized in English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Jorean, Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Turkish...so if you know a computer teacher, you might tell them about this!

Take a look at Small Basic Tetris, for example. You can run it in the browser with Silverlight, right here. The full Small Basic source code for the app is listed right on the page. There's a bunch of great sample Small Basic apps here also.

It has a nice friendly IDE (Integrated Development Environment) with a clever take on Intellisense as seen below. The IDE goes out of its way to give you as much information and context as possible not only with the intellisense "arc" but also context-sensitive help in the right doc.

Even more clever, I think, is the "Graduate" button that will convert your Small Basic program into Visual Basic for use directly in Visual Studio.

Here's what a Small Basic text mode application would look like:

number = 100
While (number > 1)
   TextWindow.WriteLine(number)
   number = number / 2
EndWhile

Here's a SmallBasic Windows app:

GraphicsWindow.BackgroundColor = "Black"
GraphicsWindow.Width = 200
GraphicsWindow.Height = 160
GraphicsWindow.PenColor = "Blue"
For i = 1 To 10
   GraphicsWindow.PenWidth = i
   GraphicsWindow.DrawLine(20, i * 15, 180, i * 15)
EndFor

For those of us old enough to remember learning to program with LOGO and its ubiquitous Turtle, Small Basic includes a Turtle object built in! Remember this?

sides = 50
length = 400 / sides
angle = 360 / sides
Turtle.Speed = 9
For j = 1 To 20
   For i = 1 To sides
     Turtle.Move(length)
     Turtle.Turn(angle)
   EndFor
   Turtle.Turn(18)
EndFor

Which gives us this image. See the turtle inside?

The most amazing part from a learning perspective is the ability to publish your game directly to the Small Basic website and play it or give it to your friends. I hit Publish for this Turtle app and Small Basic - in one click - gave me this link: http://smallbasic.com/program/?WKN265. Now I can send my friends or students to that link.  They can play the game LIVE, see the source listing right there, or even embed it on their own website with included HTML.

I'm really impressed with the amount of though that was put into this app and how easy it was. I hope other folks at Microsoft check it out and appreciate the simplicity.

Related Links

• http://smallbasic.com
  • Small Basic Programs in 25 lines
• SmallBasic Forum
• MSDN Beginner Developer Center
• Programming for Absolute Beginners
• Teaching Children and Kids to Program the Old School Way
• Hanselminutes Podcast 194 - Hello World: Computer Programmer for Kids and Other Beginners

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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A few years back I wrote a post on the size of the .NET Framework. There's historically been a lot of confusion on the site of the .NET Framework. If you search around on the web for ".NET Framework" or ".NET Framework Redistributable" you'll often get a link to a 200 meg download. That download is the complete offline thing that developers redistribute when they want to install the .NET Framework on any kind of machine without an internet connection.

The .NET 3.5 Client Profile is more like 28 megs and the .NET 4 Client Profile is a looking smaller than that, in fact. Back then I made this website,SmallestDotNet.com to help out. It'll sniff your browser's UserAgent and tell you want version of .NET you have, how big the download would be to get you to .NET 3.5 and what .NET redistributable is best for you in order to minimize your download.

Now that the .NET Framework 4 is coming out soon, I took an hour and updated it (with Tatham Oddie's help, as he's staying over at the house this week) to support the new framework. We also added a few bug fixes (and I'm sure, a few bugs) and a simple Javascript API to help you detect the .NET Framework on the client side.

You can use the site in three ways.

First, visit the site.

If you've got a machine you want to install .NET on, or you're not sure what version it has, just visit SmallestDotNet.com and I'll do my best to tell you. It works best on IE, but it'll also work on Firefox if you've got the .NET add-on. If you've got Safari or Chrome, I'll apologize but I can't help you as those browsers don't tell me anything about .NET.

Second, include the Javascript that spits HTML.

If you want to tell the user what version of .NET they have with minimal effort and you want to do it on your site, perhaps via your blog, you can just include this line:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.smallestdotnet.com/smallestdotnet/javascript.ashx"></script>

and I'll return something like:

document.write('<span class="smallerdotnet">')
document.write('Detected 3.5 SP1 .NET Framework. No update needed.')
document.write('</span>')

and you can style to taste.

Third, include the Javascript that spits JSON.

The HTML spitter is fast, but less useful if you like control over things. Like, um, text. So, you can include:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.smallestdotnet.com/smallestdotnet/javascriptdom.ashx"></script>

and I'll spit out a JSON object like this:

SmallestDotNet = {};
SmallestDotNet.latestVersion = {
                major: 4,
                minor: 0,
                profile: "client",
                servicePack: null                
        };
SmallestDotNet.allVersions = [
  {
                major: 4,
                minor: 0,
                profile: "client",
                servicePack: null                
  },
  {
                major: 3,
                minor: 5,
                profile: "full",
                servicePack: 1                
  },
  {
                major: 2,
                minor: 0,
                profile: "full",
                servicePack: null                
  }
];

We'll put out the latest version of the .NET framework on the machine, as well as its Service Packs, and its profile (client profile, full, etc) if appropriate. It'll also give you an array of ALL the versions of the .NET Framework it finds on the machine. In my example, it says my machine has .NET 4 Client Profile, .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 2.0.

UPDATE: I've updated the JSON output to return another array with a complete list of all available .NET Frameworks and the URL they can be downloaded from, something like this:

SmallestDotNet.downloadableVersions =
[{
        major: 4,
        minor: 0,
        profile: 'client',
        servicePack: null,
        url: 'http://www.microsoft.com/...'                                        
},
...SNIP...

{
        major: 2,
        minor: 0,
        profile: 'full',
        servicePack: 2,
        url: 'http://www.microsoft.com/...'                                        
},{
        major: 1,
        minor: 1,
        profile: 'full',
        servicePack: 1,
        url: 'http://www.microsoft.com/...'                                        
}];

I currently don't go into deep deep detail, like .NET 2.0 SP2, etc, but if you want that functionality, let me know and I can add it. This is a spike (ongoing for two years, actually) so if it's useful, let me know. If it's missing something, let me know.

From this JSON, you can ask all sorts of questions. Here's a JavaScript alert() example that would work on this JSON object. Of course, you should check things for null, as well as check the length of allVersions.

alert( SmallestDotNet.latestVersion.major ); 
alert( SmallestDotNet.allVersions.length ); 
alert( SmallestDotNet.allVersions[0].minor ); 
alert( SmallestDotNet.allVersions[1].major );");

It'd be cool to add some jQuery love to this and use it to give and end-user some nice feedback on what version of your application to install, or what version of .NET they should install first. It could also be useful for self-troubleshooting your application.

Hope this is useful. Enjoy.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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