In script/console you can access url_for, named route url generation methods, and restful url generators using the app variable. It works like so:

That is great. But what if you need to do that in a script that you want to run using script/runner? It turns out that is easy too. You just need to require 'console_app' (in Rails 2.*) like so:

The other day I was playing with Expression Blend and I noticed that many of the keyboard shortcuts in Blend are the same shortcuts that Illustrator uses. Here's a screencast of some of the things I found.

A flash version of the screencast is available here. Microsoft Expression Blend Uses Common Keyboard Shortcuts

Robert Scoble has an interesting post about Microsoft's need to monetize first, build second. His point is how Google seems to be adopting that strategy. I don't disagree with Robert but that isn't my point here.

When I first heard that Expression wasn't going to be included in MSDN this is the first thing that came to mind. I imagined some executive asking the team how they were going to pay for themselves. I imagined that team arguing that they'd never be able to hit their revenue targets if nobody bought a copy of Expression the first year because they already had it in MSDN.

That may not be what happened. But it sure sounds like a reasonable thing. And that pisses me off because it misses the point. It is too short sighted. Sometimes (maybe most of the time) it makes sense to require teams to justify their existence by making them think about revenue first. After all, startups can't survive very long on negative cash flow. Contrary to Bubble 1.0 conventional wisdom.

But the value of some products is much greater than the direct contribution to the bottom line. Expression is exactly that type of product. Without making Expression available to the widest possible audience Microsoft is going to have a much tougher time selling people on the .NET 3.0 platform.

Consider this: The WPF MVP's won't have a copy of Expression Suite. In what universe does that make sense? How does that promote the WPF platform.

After spending some time with Expression Blend I think I will have to invest the $450 in the Expression Suite upgrade dance. But I'm still not happy about it. I'd much rather see Microsoft make Expression Blend available to as wide an audience as possible. As far as I'm concerned they should give a copy away for the first 6 months to everyone who owns a copy of Photoshop or Illustrator. This is not a time to be cheap Microsoft.

Jon Udell is going to be a Microsoft Evangelist. I never saw this coming. I am a huge Jon Udell fanboy. I think this great for Microsoft. I hope it is also great for Jon.

Congrats Microsoft! Good luck Jon!

At Mix06 Microsoft said a CTP of WPF/E should be available in Q3/2006. Well Q3 has come and gone and there is still no CTP. I was begginning to wonder if WPF/E was going to end up just another big cloud of MS FUD.

JCooney wondered the same thing recently:

It's a few days into October, so where is WPF/E? At Mix06 the date for the first CTP was announced as "Q3 2006" or "summer 2006"...So where is it, huh? WPF/E PM bloggers Mike Harsh and Joe Stegman have been very quiet since then...

He pointed to a post from the Firefox team that seems to suggest that WPF/E does exist in some form. That makes me feel a little better, but I'd still like to see some running bits make it public to get a feel for how far away it truly is.

I'm in the process of installing .NET 3 on Vista RC1 and I was looking for a good guide on doing things in the correct order. I should have known that Sam would beat me to it. Sam Gentile has a great guide on getting started with Windows Vista RC1.

Mitch Walker recently posted a short screencast showing off the Game Components features of the XNA Framework.

This is awesome. I completely wrote off the XNA Framework when I read the FAQ and learned how crippled the functionality is in this initial beta. But this short screencast got me very excited about the possibilities.

The idea of component based game development could be huge. If this takes off it could really revitalize the game development world. Personally I'm tired of paying $50+ for another rehash of the latest First Person Shooter. I long for games that focus on new and interesting game play rather than glitzy graphics and crappy stories. Here's hoping that XNA can do for game development what VB did for Windows software development. Good job XNA Team!

This also helps reinforce the idea that a focused, short, concise screencast is incredibly powerful. Thanks to Jon Udell for having the vision, passion, and patience to lead the way. He truly is one of my heroes.

I'm in the market for a new digital video camera. After doing some research I decided to buy the Panasonic PV-GS300.

Yesterday Amazon had this camera in stock for $507. BestBuy's web site said it was in stock at my local BestBuy store. When I added the camera to my online cart to check the price I saw that they wanted $527. I decided to pay BestBuy the extra $20 for the convenience of getting it locally.

When I got to BestBuy last night they did indeed have it in stock. But the price was $569. I told the sales clerk that their site listed it at $527. He said that was strange because they usually sell it in the store for the same price as they sell it online. He went to check. When he came back he had a printout of a BestBuy online shopping cart. The price he was quoted online was $569, the same price the store had it listed. When I got home later I checked again and the price was still $527 when I added it to my cart.

This morning I'm ordering the camera from Amazon. Not only am I saving money on the camera, I'm also saving a bunch of money on MiniDV tapes.

From now on when BestBuy says they are hiding the price from me because the manufacturer requires them to I think I'll be a little more skeptical. And before I go to the local store I'll print the price that I was quoted online. If they don't match the online price, I'll buy from someone else.

It wasn't a completely wasted trip though. I did get to see the camera and compare the size of it to other cameras I was looking at. It is a little bigger, but not too much. And the quality is much better than my old camera and the other cameras I was considering.

In this short screencast I show how you can use IronPython and Snoop together to explore the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

IronPython is a wonderful dynamic language with full access to the .NET Framework. Snoop is a great WPF debugging tool. Together they can help you climb the steep WPF learning curve.

A flash version of the screencast is available here.

UPDATE: Rob Relyea points out a way for me to simply my code. Instead of doing:

           b.Content = TextBlock() b.Content.Text = "Hi" 
        

I could do this instead:

           b.Content = "Hi" 
        

WPF creates the TextBlock for you automatically when you set the Content property to a string. That does work from IronPython. Thanks Rob.

UPDATE: In the comments to Rob's post above he points out that there is a way to refresh the Snoop visual tree (the treeview on the left side of the window). All you have to do is press F5. Very cool.

If you don't have IronPython installed see: HOWTO Screencast: Install IronPython

If you need to know how to build Snoop without Visual Studio see: HOWTO Screencast: Build Snoop without Visual Studio