Planet SCM

It turns out that the little video I posted yesterday has taken on a bit of a life of it's own.  Last time I checked, it was in the top 10 Science and Technology posts for YouTube in Ireland.  It's funny how it is always the posts that you do more for your own entertainment that take off. 

Anyway, there is no doubting that Brian is a bit of a character, he's already recorded his first TV appearance as a guest on this weeks, "This Week in Channel 9" (to be broadcast soon).  I wish that Nabaztag had an affiliate program as it sounds like I may have sold a few rabbits for them. 

Anyway, if you can't afford your own bunny, then you can have the next best thing for free.  Your very own Brian the Build Bunny Background on the desktop of a computer near you (standard and widescreen versions available).  Click here to chose a image size that suits you.

I'm always keen try new and novel ways to keep in touch with the status of my software projects.  Fortunately, Team Foundation Server provides many ways to do this.  While the Build Wallboard is fun if you have a spare monitor and machine lying around, I wanted to experiment with some inexpensive dedicated devices, and so Brian the Build Bunny was born.

Brian is a Nabaztag smart rabbit.  He reads out details of check-ins and builds.  If a build has failed then his ears go down to show how sad he feels, but if you fix the build his ears will soon pick up again.

I've had Brian for about a year now waiting to do this project, but when I tried it in the past I always found the response times from the rabbit to be too slow.  However earlier this year, the Nabaztag developers updated the code running the rabbits so that they are now using the XMPP (Jabber) protocol to receive updates and the service now seems pretty good.

Brian is now sitting on my desk chattering away and letting me know what is happening in TFS.  If you want to find out more about how he works and see him in action then take a look at the video. If your company blocks YouTube but you have Silverlight installed then you can view a higher quality version of the video courtesy of the Windows Live Streaming service.  I'll go through the code behind Brian in a later post if there is any interest, but it is pretty much a standard TFS event listener that then sends text to the rabbit using the Nabaztag API.

Ok, I’ll admit it.  My name is Martin Woodward and I am a gadgetaholic.  I have a few USB memory keys and a couple of external USB hard-drives.  However, I’ve been thinking about getting a new memory key for a while because my other ones are either too small or are a bit battered looking.  I was looking to spend £3 yesterday on a UK to US phone adapter and ended up getting myself a new 512Mb memory stick manufactured by Didigo so I would qualify for free shipping on my order.  I’ve been wanting to have a play with TrueCrypt for a while and I think I might create a hidden partition on the device and give it a try.

What’s the big deal you may ask?  Well this model has an integrated ePaper display (or Bistable Reflective Cholesteric Display to give it the proper name).  It shows you the free capacity and also the volume name on a little display that stays visible even when the power source is removed.  If you rename the FAT32 volume (in Windows, Mac or Linux) the display updates to show the new name.

I’ve been a keen follower of electronic paper technology for a while and this is the first time a device with it has come into a price range that I can justify and I have a need for.  We’ll soon probably have these displays built in to all sorts of devices but for now I was willing to pay a little over the odds (£42) for a memory stick so I could see it working for myself.  I’m sure it will give me endless hours of fun demonstrating it to anyone unluckily enough to comment on the display.  If you are coming to TechEd this year be sure not to comment on it or I’ll bore you for hours.  Watching the display work reminds me of the feeling I got when I saw my first pocket calculator, the Sinclair Cambridge, with it’s mesmorizing LED display.