I found a very cool open source continuous integration server for C#. CruiseControl.NET is by ThoughtWorks (Martin Fowler’s company).

CC.NET integrates with several versioning systems, including CVS and VSS. Essentially, what CC.NET does is monitors the source repository and when changes are detected, CC.NET rebuilds the project from an nAnt script.

When this is complete, you can have email sent out to a configurable group of users. Email can be sent to users always or only on change (ie: build broken or fixed). CC.NET also includes a web site so you can view previous build results. All output is customizable via XSLT.

We are using it currently on a project Im involved with at work, and finding it very useful. We are working on a very rapid development project, and because of the nant scripts that were generated, we have the most recent successful build available at all times in a .zip format.

While CC.NET is not perfect, it is very nice for a 0.2 version. One of my biggest complaints about it is having to look through XML to find the error message. Granted, because all presentation is handled by XSLT, this is a complaint right now because Im too lazy to put it in there. The other thing that I ran across was having to modify some code to get it to run as a service. The XSL paths were relative paths, and since services typically run out of the Windows\System directory, it was looking for them there, rather than in the application directory. I do love open source. :=)

I’m looking forward to seeing this project evolve. A definate +1.

This may be old news. Saw that Martin Fowler and Eric Rudder both got blogs.

Subscribed.

As promised earlier, here is an updated release of MovablePoster. Not much new in this version. However, I have updated the code to remove all the Outlook line breaking “features”.

With this, the plugin now is not hardcoded to set the entry breaks to None, as it was in previous versions.

Threading support has not been added with this version, as this is probably something that Greg will want to incorporate into NewsGator, so that *all* plugins wont have to implement this.

As promised to Chris Pirillo, you will no longer be required to remove the existing version anymore. This .msi will just install over the top of any existing installation. Took me a while to figure out how to do this; Im still kind of an InstallShield rookie. Thanks for bearing with me.

download MovablePoster .msi | .zip

Comments and requests are always welcome.

Yikes… Just checked my site after the previous entry and realized its been over a week since I posted anything.

So, where have I been?

• I spent a wonderful weekend in San Francisco over Memorial Day.
• Work has been taking up a great amount of my time, due to a deadline rapidly approaching on the project Im working on.
• Ive been pretty caught up in the Stanley Cup playoffs (go Ducks), and the NBA playoffs. Unfortunately, now that the Mav’s lost, Im done with NBA for the year. I *was* rooting for LA, but since they lost, the Mavs were my next choice. Since I dont think the Nets have a prayer against the Spurs, I guess Im not even gonna watch.

I promise Ill make it up to everyone with the release of a new MovablePoster plugin within the next few hours.

So, I just went and checked Google for my page, and for some reason, all the other pages on my site have been updated somewhat recently.

Why then, has my index.html page not been updated in their cache? The version that they’re showing is from April 21, 2003. I dont think Im familiar with all the finer points of Google. If anyone wants to share their knowledge, Id greatly appreciate it.

Also, how do you increase your page rank?

Seems like Michael noticed some issues with the MovablePoster plugin.

Let me start by saying that I realize that the MovablePoster plugin is not perfect. The majority of items being discussed have already been thought of by me and should make it into a subsequent release of the plugin.

MovablePoster was really orignially tailored to the way that I use MovableType, and the continuing discussions help me to realize how people other people are using it, and in what ways I can make the plugin better, so Im really grateful for this.

Let me start by addressing these items:

• An extended UI to support the additional MT features (extended entries, exceprts, keywords) is being drawn up right now. Currently, there is limited support for categories through the NewsGator interface. The drawback is that the categories must be set up in Outlook as well as on the blog. I dont think Greg has found a way to hook into the category list in Outlook. After your categories are setup in Outlook, select the category(ies) you wish to use, and the plugin will associate your post with the selected categories (if they match an MT category) upon submission.
• Multiple MT blog support is not currently included, but will be supported soon. Im still trying to get a feel for how the best way to do this will be. My preliminary thoughts are that there should be a default blog which will be used when posting from Outlook’s UI, and the plugin’s UI could be used to post to additional blogs.
• Submissions need to happen on a background thread. This was completely my bad. Im not sure what I was thinking.
• Outlook formatting issues… Need I say more?

I plan on releasing a minor update later tonight that addresses the last two issues (background threads, and removal of any Outlook-injected HTML.

Again, thanks for the feedback, both positive and negative. Its very beneficial to making a better end product, so keep it coming.

Update: This update will most likely occur on Tuesday, not yesterday/today as originally planned. Im heading to San Francisco for an extended weekend of fun, and will finish on getting some of these issues wrapped up when I get back.

I cant believe that Im actually going to admit that Ive been watching American Idol religously for the past several months.

A few months ago, I watched this show for the first time and got hooked. What got me hooked was Clay Aiken’s absolutely stunning version of Elton John’s classic “Dont Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. Ever since then, I havent missed a single week, always wondering how Clay was going to better his prior week’s performance.

With every passing week, he did. From renditions of Neil Sedaka’s “Soliatire”, to the Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody”, to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water”.

The only thing that bothered me about the show was that even though I honestly thought that Clay was the best singer on the show, I really didnt think that he would win it all, because, quite honestly he is kinda goofy looking. Not really the American Idol look. He looks like he cut his hair with a hacksaw.

Well, last night was the finals, and unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Ruben won it. Out of 24 million votes, only 1300 votes separated the two. While both were wonderful singers, I *still* believe that Clay had the better voice, which just reaffirms my original concern about Clay not winning.

There was a silver lining to this though. Both of them will get to record a CD, and Im really anxious to see who beats who in the charts.

I have updated MovablePoster with the following changes:

• Integrated WMP blogging plugin support. Thanks to James Edelen for the links.
• Corrected potential issue when hostname entered in the http://www.servername.com/ format. Code now checks for http:// and does not add this if it already exists.

To use the integrated WMP blogging plugin, you will need to download the WMP 9 Partial Fun Pack 2. When this is downloaded and installed, open the MovablePoster configuration dialog, and you will see the WMP plugin tab. You can create your signature in any format you desire, utilizing the following tags:

• {Artist}
• {Title}
• {Album}
• {Duration}

For example: [Currently listening to {Artist}/{Title} -- {Album}]

The resulting signature line is output as

<div><b &>Signature</b></div>

allowing you to add special formatting through your css, if so desired.

download MovablePoster .msi | .zip

Comments and requests are always welcome.

NewsGator 1.2 has been released! Among the new features, posting support for a number of common blogging infrastructures (including a plugin for Movabletype, created by yours truly). Posting to your blog directly from Outlook… wait no more.

Get it here.

Great job, Greg and everyone involved.

Tomas Restrepo writes:

While useful, I’m not quite sure if it’s actually needed at all. The reason is that IBlogExtension itself lends very nicely to stacking, so it’s fairly easy to introduce preprocessors by simply stacking them up. Heck, I could easily modify my own to make it usable with any IBlogExtension by adding a simple extra configuration dialog.

Im not completely sold on this. I believe that the IBlogExtension and the preprocessing need to be separated. When they are separated, then you’ve achieved code reuse.

For example, if the Outlook HTML preprocessor is implemented in a manner described in my earlier post, then the preprocessor can also plug into another IBlogExtension without writing any new code. Simply drop the assembly in place, and any IBlogExtension using the described architecture can take advantage of the preprocessing features.

Maybe it is too early for this discussion, but we should still keep something like this in mind…