Scott Hanselman

I've got a lot of different sound devices like USB Headphones, a formal Conference Room Speakerphone for conference calls, and 5.1 Surround Sound speakers, as well as different mics like a nice Shure XLR connected to a PV6 USB Audio Mixer, as well as the built in mics in my webcams and other devices.

There's lots of great audio apps and applets that can improve the audio switching situation on Windows. I like Audio Switcher and the similarly named https://audioswit.ch/er, for example.

You can also automatically change your audio inputs automatically depending on the app. So if you always want to record your podcast with Audacity you can tell Windows 10 to always set (lie) the audio ins and outs on an app by app basis. The app will never know the difference.

But I need to change audio a lot when I'm moving from Teams calls, recording Podcasts, and watching shows. I've got this Elgato Stream Deck that has buttons I can assign to anything. Combine the Stream Deck with the lovely NirCmd utility from NirSoft and I've got one click audio changes!

The icons are just PNGs and there's lots available online. I created a bunch of batch files (*.bat) with contents like this:

nircmdc setdefaultsounddevice "Speakers" 0

and

nircmdc setdefaultsounddevice "Headphones" 0  

The last number is 0, 1, or 2 where that means Console, Multimedia, or Communications. You can have one sound device for apps like Netflix and another for apps like Skype that identify as Communications. I just change all defaults, myself.

You can also add in commands like "setsubunitvolumedb" and others to have preset volumes and levels for line-ins. It's ideal for getting reliable results.

Then just use the Stream Deck utility to assign the icon and batch file using the "System | Open" widget. Drag it over and assign and you're set! If you can't figure out what the names of your sound devices are, you can call nircmd showsoundevices.

It just took a few minutes to set this up and it'll save me a bunch of clicks every day.

Sponsor: Like C#? We do too! That’s why we've developed a fast, smart, cross-platform .NET IDE which gives you even more coding power. Clever code analysis, rich code completion, instant search and navigation, an advanced debugger... With JetBrains Rider, everything you need is at your fingertips. Code C# at the speed of thought on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Try JetBrains Rider today!

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.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

OK, fine maybe they DID teach you this in class. But, you'd be surprised how many people think they know something but don't know the background or the etymology of a term. I find these things fascinating. In a world of bootcamp graduates, community college attendees (myself included!), and self-taught learners, I think it's fun to explore topics like the ones I plan to cover in my new YouTube Series "Computer things they didn't teach you."

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: I think of this series as being in the same vein as the wonderful "Imposter's Handbook" series from Rob Conery (I was also involved, somewhat). In Rob's excellent words: "Learn core CS concepts that are part of every CS degree by reading a book meant for humans. You already know how to code build things, but when it comes to conversations about Big-O notation, database normalization and binary tree traversal you grow silent. That used to happen to me and I decided to change it because I hated being left out. I studied for 3 years and wrote everything down and the result is this book."

In the first video I covered the concept of Carriage Returns and Line Feeds. But do you know WHY it's called a Carriage Return? What's a carriage? Where did it go? Where is it returning from? Who is feeding it lines?

In this second video I talk about Code Pages, Character Encoding, Unicode, UTF-8 and the BOM. I thought it went very well.

What would you like to hear about next?

Sponsor: Like C#? We do too! That’s why we've developed a fast, smart, cross-platform .NET IDE which gives you even more coding power. Clever code analysis, rich code completion, instant search and navigation, an advanced debugger... With JetBrains Rider, everything you need is at your fingertips. Code C# at the speed of thought on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Try JetBrains Rider today!

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.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

It's no secret I dig WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and now that WSL2 is available in Windows Insiders Slow it's a great time to really explore the options that are available. What I'm finding is so interesting about WSL and how it relates to the Windows system around it is how you can cleanly move data between worlds. This isn't an experience you can easily have with full virtual machines, and it speaks to the tight integration of Linux and Windows.

Look at all this cool stuff you can do when you mix your peanut butter and chocolate!

Run Windows Explorer from Linux and access your distro's files

When you're at the WSL/bash command line and you want to access your files visually, you can run "explorer.exe ." where . is the current directory, and you'll get a Windows Explorer window with your Linux files served to you over a local network plan9 server.

Use Real Linux commands (not Cgywin) from Windows

I've blogged this before, but there are now aliases for PowerShell functions that allow you to use real Linux commands from within Windows.

You can call any Linux command directly from DOS/Windows/whatever by just putting it after WSL.exe, like this!

C:\temp> wsl ls -la | findstr "foo"
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root     14 Sep 27 14:26 foo.bat

C:\temp> dir | wsl grep foo
09/27/2016  02:26 PM                14 foo.bat

C:\temp> wsl ls -la > out.txt

C:\temp> wsl ls -la /proc/cpuinfo
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 28 11:28 /proc/cpuinfo

C:\temp> wsl ls -la "/mnt/c/Program Files"
...contents of C:\Program Files...

Use Real Windows commands (not Wine) from Linux

Windows executables are callable/runnable from WSL/Linux because the the Windows Path is in the $PATH until Windows. All you have to do is call it with .exe at the end, explicitly. That's how "Explorer.exe ." works above. You can also notepad.exe, or whatever.exe!

Run Visual Studio Code and access (and build!) your Linux apps natively on Windows

You can run "code ." when you're in a folder within WSL and you'll get prompted to install the VS Remote extensions. That effectively splits Visual Studio Code in half and runs the headless VS Code Server inside Linux with the VS Code client in the Windows world.

You'll also need to install Visual Studio Code and the Remote - WSL extension. Optionally, check out the beta Windows Terminal for the best possible terminal experience on Windows.

Here's a great series from the Windows Command LIne blog:

You can find the full series here:

• Part 1 Take your Linux development experience in Windows to the next level with WSL and Visual Studio Code Remote
• Part 2 An In Depth Tutorial on Linux Development on Windows with WSL and Visual Studio Code
• Part 3 Tips and Tricks for Linux development with WSL and Visual Studio Code

Here's the benefits of WSL 2

• Virtual machines are resource intensive and create a very disconnected experience.
• The original WSL was very connected, but had fairly poor performance compared to a VM.
• WSL 2 brings a hybrid approach with a lightweight VM, a completely connected experience, and high performance.

Again, now available on Windows 10 Insiders Slow.

Run multiple Linuxes in seconds, side by side

Here I'm running "wsl --list --all" and I have three Linuxes already on my system.

C:\Users\scott>wsl --list --all
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-18.04 (Default)
Ubuntu-16.04
Pengwin

I can easily run them, and also assign a profile to each so they appear in my Windows Terminal dropdown.

Run an X Windows Server under Windows using Pengwin

Pengwin is a custom WSL-specific Linux distro that's worth the money. You can get it at the Windows Store. Combine Pengwin with an X Server like X410 and  you've got a very cool integrated system.

Easily move WSL Distros between Windows systems

Ana Betts points out this great technique where you can easily move your perfect WSL2 distro from one machine to n machines.

wsl --export MyDistro ./distro.tar

# put it somewhere, dropbox, onedrive, elsewhere

mkdir ~/AppData/Local/MyDistro
wsl --import MyDistro ~/AppData/Local/MyDistro ./distro.tar --version 2 

That's it. Get your ideal Linux setup sync'ed on all your systems.

Use the Windows Git Credential Provider within WSL

All of these things culminate in this lovely blog post by Ana Betts where she integrates the Windows Git Credential Provider in WSL by making /usr/bin/git-credential-manager into a shell script that calls the Windows git creds manager. Genius. This would only be possible given this clean and tight integration.

Now, go out there, install WSL, Windows Terminal, and make yourself a shiny Linux Environment on Windows.

Sponsor: Like C#? We do too! That’s why we've developed a fast, smart, cross-platform .NET IDE which gives you even more coding power. Clever code analysis, rich code completion, instant search and navigation, an advanced debugger... With JetBrains Rider, everything you need is at your fingertips. Code C# at the speed of thought on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Try JetBrains Rider today!

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.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

OK, fine maybe they DID teach you this in class. But, you'd be surprised how many people think they know something but don't know the background or the etymology of a term. I find these things fascinating. In a world of bootcamp graduates, community college attendees (myself included!), and self-taught learners, I think it's fun to explore topics like the ones I plan to cover in my new YouTube Series "Computer things they didn't teach you."

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: I think of this series as being in the same vein as the wonderful "Imposter's Handbook" series from Rob Conery (I was also involved, somewhat). In Rob's excellent words: "Learn core CS concepts that are part of every CS degree by reading a book meant for humans. You already know how to code build things, but when it comes to conversations about Big-O notation, database normalization and binary tree traversal you grow silent. That used to happen to me and I decided to change it because I hated being left out. I studied for 3 years and wrote everything down and the result is this book."

Of course it'll take exactly 2 comments before someone comments with "I don't know what crappy school you're going to but we learned this stuff when they handed us our schedule." Fine, maybe this series isn't for you.

In fact I'm doing this series and putting it out there for me. If it helps someone, all the better!

In this first video I cover the concept of Carriage Returns and Line Feeds. But do you know WHY it's called a Carriage Return? What's a carriage? Where did it go? Where is it returning from? Who is feeding it lines?

What would you suggest I do for the next video in the series? I'm thinking Unicode, UTF-8, BOMs, and character encoding.

Sponsor: Octopus Deploy wanted me to let you know that Octopus Server is now free for small teams, without time limits. Give your team a single place to release, deploy and operate your software.

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.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

Jupyter Notebooks has been the significant player in the interactive development space for many years, and Notebooks have played a vital role in the continued popularity of languages like Python, R, Julia, and Scala. Interactive experiences like this give users with a lightweight tool (I like to say "interactive paper") for learning, iterative development, and data science and data manipulation.

The F# community has enjoyed F# in Juypter Notebooks from years with the pioneering functional work of Rick Minerich, Colin Gravill and many other contributors!

As Try .NET has grown to support more interactive C# and F# experiences across the web with runnable code snippets, and an interactive documentation generator for .NET Core with the dotnet try global tool, we're happy to take that same codebase to the next level, by announcing C# and F# in Jupyter notebooks.

.NET in Jupyter Notebooks

Even better you can start playing with it today, locally or in the cloud!

.NET in Anaconda locally

• .NET Core 3.0 SDK and 2.1 as currently the dotnet try global tool targets 2.1.
• Jupyter : JupyterLab can be installed using Anaconda or conda or pip.
  • For more details on how to do this please checkout the offical Jupyter installation guide.

Install the .NET Kernel

• Open Anaconda Prompt (Installed with Anaconda
• Install the dotnet try global tool
  • dotnet tool install --global dotnet-try

Please note: If you have the dotnet try global tool already installed, you will need to uninstall the older version and get the latest before grabbing the Jupyter kernel-enabled version of the dotnet try global tool.

• Check to see if Jupyter is installed

  jupyter kernelspec list

• Install the .NET kernel!

  dotnet try jupyter install

  

• Test installation

  jupyter kernelspec list

  You should see the .net-csharp and .net-fsharp listed.

• To start a new notebook, you can either type jupyter lab Anaconda prompt or launch a notebook using the Anaconda Navigator.

• Once Jupyter Lab has launched in your preferred browser, you have the option to create a C# or a F# notebook

• Now you can write .NET and and prose side by side, and just hit Shift-Enter to run each cell.

  

For more information on our APIs via C# and F#, please check out our documentation on the binder side or in the dotnet/try repo in the NotebookExamples folder.

Features

To explore some of the features that .NET notebooks ships with, I put together dashboard for the Nightscout GitHub repo.

HTML output : By default .NET notebooks ship with several helper methods for writing HTML. From basic helpers that enable users to write out a string as HTML or output Javascript to more complex HTML with PocketView. Below I'm using the display() helper method.

Importing packages : You can load NuGet packages using the following syntax. If you've used Rosyln-powered scripting this #r for a reference syntax will be familiar.

#r "nuget:<package name>,<package version>"

For Example

#r "nuget:Octokit, 0.32.0"
#r "nuget:NodaTime, 2.4.6"
using Octokit;
using NodaTime;
using NodaTime.Extensions;
using XPlot.Plotly;

Do note that when you run a cell like this with a #r reference that you'll want to wait as that NuGet package is installed, as seen below with the ... detailed output.

Object formatters : By default, the .NET notebook experience enables users to display useful information about an object in table format.

The code snippet below will display all opened issues in the nightscout/cgm-remote-monitor repo.

display(openSoFar.Select(i => new {i.CreatedAt, i.Title, State = i.State.StringValue,  i.Number}).OrderByDescending(d => d.CreatedAt));

With the object formatter feature, the information will be displayed in a easy to read table format.

Plotting

Visualization is powerful storytelling tool and,a key feature of the Jupyter notebook experience. As soon as you import the wonderful XPlot.Plotly F# Visualization Package into your notebooks(using Xplot.Ploty;) you can begin creating rich data visualizations in .NET.

The graphs are interactive too! Hover over the different data points to see the values.

Learn, Create and Share

To learn, create and share .NET notebooks please check out the following resources:

• Learn: To learn online checkout the dotnet/try binder image for a zero install experience.
• Create: To get started on your machine check out the dotnet/try repo. Select the option highlighted option
   
• Share: If you want to share notebooks you have made using the .NET Jupyter kernel, the easiest way is to generate a Binder image that anyone can run on the web. For more information on how to do this please check out the .NET Jupyter documentation.

Checkout the online .NET Jupyter Notebook I created for to explore the NightScout GitHub project using C# and the Octokit APIs.

• The source is here https://github.com/shanselman/NightscoutDashboard 
• but you can run the notebook live just by going to mybinder https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/shanselman/NightScoutDashboard/master?urlpath=lab 

We hope you enjoy this new .NET Interactive experience and that you're pleasantly surprised by this evolution of the .NET Try interactive kernel.

---

Sponsor: Octopus Deploy wanted me to let you know that Octopus Server is now free for small teams, without time limits. Give your team a single place to release, deploy and operate your software.

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.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

Comment on this post [14]

Share on BlueSky or use the Permalink and post anywhere!