I blogged a bit ago that I was going to try MediaPortal and Daemon Tools as a solution for storing all of my DVDs on a home theater PC and having it work like a big movie jukebox - but with hard drives instead of DVDs.

I have the day off, so I thought I’d give it a run.

I downloaded Daemon Tools and installed it. Fine. I downloaded MediaPortal and installed it. Fine. Spent quite some time configuring MediaPortal and trolling through the available options (there are a lot). I got all of that set up to a point where I figured it would work. I configured MediaPortal to know where Daemon Tools got installed and was ready to go.

I grabbed a movie at random from the cabinet in the other room (it happened to be Collateral Damage) and brought it into the computer room to get an ISO of the disc. ISO ripped, software installed, ready to rumble.

Fired up MediaPortal, told it where to get the ISO I just ripped. That’s when I ran into the first complaint I have about MediaPortal - pretty much any configuration option you change requires a full restart of the application. Add a new folder where movies are stored - restart. Add the extension “.iso” as a movie extension - restart. Lame.

Finally got all that configured and found the ISO. Clicked it to play, and Daemon Tools pops a warning about secure command lines. Click OK a bunch of times and set Daemon Tools to not be in secure mode. In the meantime, MediaPortal isn’t doing anything. Try again.

Clicked the ISO again and MediaPortal tells me it’s loading, but nothing seems to be happening… until the stupid InterActual media player thing fires up and tries to install. No, no, I don’t want that. I just want to see the movie. Cancel install.

No luck. After fussing around with it for some time, it looks like MediaPortal will generally defer to the default movie player assigned when it uses the ISO stuff.

I decided to try it with a regular DVD and the magic combo for that seems to be to disable any autoplay for DVD movies. Even then, the playback seems to be a little choppy. Of course, that might just be my hardware setup - it’s really not designed for this sort of thing.

Back to the ISO now that I have the DVD stuff mostly working. It’s still giving me the stupid InterActual player notification.

I messed around with it for a lot longer and there are two things that need to be done to get this thing to work.

First, set up the Daemon Tools virtual drive so it does not give the Auto Insert Notification. This is key so when the ISO is mounted it doesn’t do its autoplay garbage and try to install crap.

Second, in the MediaPortal configuration, make sure the drive letter that MediaPortal is using for the Daemon Tools drive matches the one you set up to not autoplay. I’ve set Daemon Tools drive 0 to be drive ‘M:’ (for “movies”). MediaPortal needs to know that information, too.

Once you do that, things seem to work. But it’s definitely an undocumented process in getting the planets to align.

Now I just have to figure out whether it’s going to be worth it. You can get hard drives cheap, but I’m going to have to get a new computer for this (connected to the TV) with all of the stuff fast enough to work in this configuration. I can probably put it together for not a lot, but when all is said and done I’m sure I’ll be looking at a couple of grand or more. I also need to figure out how the integration with DVD Profiler works (if it integrates at all) since I have all of my movies cataloged in there.

I’m recovering today from a pretty crazy weekend in Vegas. Stu, Jason, and Adam went with me down to Vegas to do the bachelor party up right.

We headed down there on Friday and checked into the Aladdin (which is being refashioned into the “Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino”). We took most of Friday to trek around the central and northern portions of the strip, seeing the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace (and the Forum Shops), and the Paris (still my favorite place down there). We even ran past a place where Richard Kiel (“Jaws” from the James Bond movies) was signing autographs. Very cool.

We also went to the Star Trek Experience and rode the two really cool motion simulator rides (Jenn’s not a big Trek fan so I didn’t see that last time I was there) and after almost more Trek than one person can handle, we ended the night at Scores (it’s a bachelor party, right?).

On the way back to the Aladdin, the cab driver lady, in severely broken English, asked us if “we liked the girls.” Yeah, we did. Then, in further broken English, informed us “there are places you can get fuck.” Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nice shootin’, Tex. Let’s just reel that in a couple of notches, there. Why don’t you just drop us off back at the Aladdin and we’ll call it good, shall we? Man, the cabbies there are an interesting bunch (we had several other interesting cabbies while we were there, providing us with a variety of entertainment and near-death experiences).

Saturday morning found Stu and I chowing down at the buffet at the Paris, which is my favorite buffet down there. The line was incredibly long but moved along at a reasonable pace.

After breakfast, we walked down to the Wynn so Stu could check out the Ferrari store in there. It was a hell of a walk to get there, but the store was really cool and Stu came out with a cap and a polo shirt for a not unreasonably gouging price.

We walked back down toward the Aladdin and stopped in at various places on the way, making another run through the Forum Shops and such, before taking a break for an hour or so to let our legs stop aching like death.

Jason and Adam, during this time, were playing in a poker tournament at Caesar’s Palace. I don’t remember exactly how well they did, but I do recall later that night hearing mumblings about certain shirts being unlucky and not doing as well as planned.

We recovered from the walk and then headed down to see Luxor, New York New York, Excalibur, and MGM Grand. After the poker tournament, Jason and Adam met us at the MGM Grand and we ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe.

Once dinner was over, we hung out for a little while longer, and Stu and I parted ways with Jason and Adam and we headed over to see KA.

KA is, in a word, awesome. And if you’re in the center of the front row, it really feels like the only people in the entire auditorium are you and the performers. It makes the show super personal, and I don’t think I’d have traded that. Most of the action happened no more than ten feet away from me - less than that, most times - and it really made me feel much more involved than in some of the other Cirque shows I’ve seen.

Speaking of other Cirque shows, this one is very different than the others. The shows I’d previously seen were loose, abstract stories where some pretty cool acts were strung together to make sense. KA plays out more like a story and the stuff they do is more like a stage performance than a circus act. Not only that, but the set pieces involved in this show are spectacular. Huge sections of the stage fly around and rotate, most of the time with performers on them. It’s really not like anything you’ve ever seen, and I really can’t recommend it more highly.

So we got to KA and our tickets were taken by a fairly brutal looking Chinese guy (in character, of course - everyone’s in character) who harshly pointed us to the entry we should take to get to our seats. It was restroom break time, though, so I headed over to the restroom.

There was this bathroom attendant in there, another Chinese guy, but he looked more like he was 70 if he was a day. There was this large trough in there with spigots coming out of the wall where you washed your hands when you were done. The attendant (who was very reminiscent of Mr. Miyagi) turned the water on for you by waving his hand over the spigot. Pretty cool. I got my hands wet, soaped up, and the water turned off. Here’s the thing - I couldn’t get that stupid water on to save my life. The little Chinese guy came over, waved his hand, and water came out. Water stopped again, and again I couldn’t figure this thing out. Three or four times the guy had to come over and turn the water on for me, and man, he was getting the hugest kick out of it. Just laughing and laughing and mumbling in Chinese. Too funny.

Another fairly harsh Chinese guy directed us to our seats up front and center and told us it was nice knowing us as fireballs shot into the air from the stage a few feet in front of our seats. A nice lady (the “wife of the village mayor”) told us that the Emperor would be very angry with us if we put our feet on the edge of the stage or if we leaned over the edge to look in, so we decided that we’d refrain so as not to incur the Emperor’s wrath.

The show, which was indescribably amazing and involving, started at 9:30p and ended at 11:30p. There was no intermission (which is different from other Cirque shows), which was sort of unfortunate because I really needed a Red Bull or something. After walking all over during the day, some of the music of the show was beautiful and calming, and as amazing as the show was, I felt so relaxed my eyelids started getting heavy. No, I did not fall asleep - but I could have used a little caffeine.

KA is now my favorite Cirque show, and the $150 ticket for front row center was well worth it. I can’t imagine seeing it any other way, and that feeling of personal involvement in the show made it all that much more memorable.

After the show, Stu and I walked back to the Aladdin and crashed, just in time to get a couple hours’ sleep before leaving for the airport at 6:15a.

We were home in Portland by 2:00p and I unpacked all of my stuff and lazed on the couch for a while before Jenn got home from a baby shower she was at. The story of the trip was relayed, gifts were given, and the evening proceeded as usual.

I’m glad I took today off to recover as my feet and legs are killing me. That always seems to happen when I go to Vegas, but it’s always worth it. It was a hell of a weekend and I totally can’t wait to go back.

Something I noticed that is probably good in some cases but kind of sucks, too - I didn’t get a lot of pictures while I was down there, and those I did get don’t have me in them. That’s actually why picture up at the top is Stu with a showgirl and not me - there was just so much going on that I never remembered to take pictures and no one else really brought a camera with them. But, then again… maybe it’s better that way. Hehehe.

Only two weeks until the wedding and a trip to Aruba. I anticipate some great times there, too. 2006 has been a hell of a year and it’s not even over yet. Gonna be hard to beat.

I’ve been a slow convert to the whole test-driven development movement. I’m ashamed, but it’s true. I’ve believed in TDD in principle, but when it came down to it, designing specifically for testability always made my code feel so bloated. I always ended up writing unit tests after the fact, and many times would end up writing loads of helper objects and dummy interface implementations to get things to work.

No longer.

We started looking at mock object frameworks for the latest project at work. After checking out Rhino Mocks (admittedly a decent framework), we stumbled upon TypeMock.

Holy crap, this thing is hot. In technical terms, you might call it the bomb-diggity.

There are several things that make TypeMock the framework to go with. The syntax of the “Natural Mocks” is nice and clean, making the majority of the mocking easy to use. It’ll mock static methods, constructors (and static constructors), and non-public methods - stuff Rhino [currently] won’t let you do.

“But,” you might say, “mocking frameworks are hard to work with because you can’t really see what’s going on ‘behind the scenes.’”

No longer! TypeMock has a trace utility where you can watch in real-time as the mock framework sets up and fulfills expectations. If you want to know what it’s doing, check the window. Want to know specifically what expectations are set up and which ones were left? It’s right there. No more fighting with stack traces and expectation exceptions. It really doesn’t get any easier than this.

A co-worker showed me some code he had written using Rhino. Frankly, I found it confusing and it wasn’t his code making it that way. I tried writing my own tests in it and had a heck of a time figuring it out. I picked up TypeMock this morning and minutes later was flying through it.

Ever tried to test an abstract class? You know how you have to create a dummy class that implements all the abstract stuff just so you can test the functionality? Not anymore - you can get a mock of the abstract class with no “placeholder” or “dummy” classes. Ever tried to test a factory that returns values based on configuration files in the filesystem? You know how you end up having to dump fake config to just the right spots in the filesystem in order to test that factory? And you know how much more trouble it is to test classes that make use of that factory? Forget that. No more having to fight with all that. It’s a piece of freakin’ cake.

Let’s use that factory example. Say I have a factory called CoolFactory that has a method CoolFactory.GetCoolObject(). That method looks up a value in configuration and returns an object of type CoolObject. Now say you have a class called WorkingClass (pun?) that uses the CoolFactory to do some work in the WorkingClass.DoWork() method.

You used to have two options: either over-architect CoolFactory and have a load of various pluggable providers that the factory could use and clutter the API with so you can sub in configuration at test time; or set up configuration, dummy objects, etc., all to support a single test.

With TypeMock, you can mock that static CoolFactory.GetCoolObject() method and skip all that. Here’s what an NUnit test might look like:

[Test]
public void MyTest(){
  // Set up the object you want the factory to return here
  CoolObject factoryGenerated = new CoolObject();

  // Record the actions you want to play back
  // and tell the factory to return your object.
  using (RecordExpectations recorder = new RecordExpectations()){
    CoolFactory.GetCoolObject();
    recorder.Return(factoryGenerated);
  }

  // Call the method that uses the factory
  WorkingClass testObj = new WorkingClass();
  testObj.DoWork();

  // Make your test assertions here...

  // Verify the DoWork method called the factory
  MockManager.Verify();
}

That’s it - when the DoWork method calls the factory, it’ll return the object you set up. No need to dump config to the filesystem, over-architect the factory, or dummy up a lot of extra “helper” classes.

I haven’t been this stoked about a technology for quite some time.

Now, I’m using the Enterprise edition (they offer a “community edition” that doesn’t have the “Natural Mocks” in it - don’t bother with that, you want the Natural Mocks). I’m not sure if I’d have been so excited if I was stuck at the “community edition” level. But I’m not, so I’ll play ignorant and revel in what I’ve got.

No more designing for testability! No more huge efforts to create dummy objects to get various components working and tested!

You know what? With a framework like TypeMock, I can 100% buy into test-driven development. I can keep API as a deliverable and still get full test coverage - I get my cake and I eat it, too.

Check out TypeMock. You’ll be glad you did.

Lately at work we’ve been working towards test driven development and not just “having a lot of tests.” For pretty much anyone who has written unit tests for anything with any complexity, you know that’s a lot harder than it sounds. You need to be able to test certain components in an isolated fashion and the bits that you need to integrate with may not actually be written yet.

To get around this, you generally end up writing a lot of test and helper classes to stub in the functionality your component interacts with, but that’s a heck of a lot of work. In some cases, you might have to drop live configuration files into the system to get things to work correctly, you might need to craft some dynamic logic into your test classes… it’s a big pain.

Some folks choose to architect their components to be easier to test. This usually implies there are more publicly exposed methods than you might normally have so that certain internal properties can be checked on, substituted in, or otherwise dealt with in a test environment. It also means there are a lot more moving parts - interfaces for “plugging in” components that wouldn’t normally be there except for the need to swap in at test time. We’ll call that “designing for testability.”

Unfortunately, much of what I work on has the API as a deliverable. Which is to say, I can’t just have a load of exposed public methods floating out there solely to support my tests. I can’t “over-architect” the usage of the components because part of the goal is to make the components simple to use. Instead of designing for testability, we have to test what’s designed.

The problem, then, is how to “plug in” or stub out things in testing to isolate the component being tested? Enter mock object frameworks.

Mock object frameworks allow you to do that sort of thing on the fly. You can say “give me a mock data provider and whenever anyone queries it for data, have it return this data set here.” It’s a really nice, simple way of doing things that doesn’t require you to bloat your design just so you can test it.

Okay, so that’s your quick “mock objects” intro. The question I’m leading to is: mock objects are very powerful. You can do a lot of stuff with them. So much, that if you aren’t really paying attention, you could very well mock your way into invalid tests. The question on the table, then, is “are mock objects too powerful?”

This is actually an ongoing debate at work as we investigate different mock object frameworks. If we end up with a site license for a fairly powerful mock object framework, what’s to stop an untrained developer from misusing it and giving us a false sense of quality by writing invalid tests?

My view: it’s a tool, like a screwdriver or a hammer. Or matches. If you don’t know what you’re doing with the matches, you’re going to get burned. If you know what you’re doing, matches can be very helpful. It all comes down to education. People just need to be smart enough to know when they’re not smart enough to start using the tool and get educated before picking it up and heading down that path. I don’t think “people might misuse it” is a convincing enough argument to not use the tool. I might also consider that if it’s worrisome to a particular team or project, the folks overseeing that team or project need to pay attention and ensure the right tools are being used by the right people for the job.

Besides, there are so many other ways the uninitiated can mess up production code, somehow I think “using a mock object framework improperly in testing” doesn’t qualify on the top 10 threat list.

After thinking about it for a while and talking about it for, like, a year or more, I finally stepped up and bought myself a PSP (PlayStation Portable).

I realize I’m a little late to the show on this one, but it’s pretty bad-ass. The screen is nice and crisp, no dead/stuck pixels (that I’ve found so far), and I’ve got a couple of games for it that are pretty neat.

I actually ended up with it since I’m going to be taking a couple of trips soon (Vegas this weekend, Aruba for the honeymoon) and want to watch some movies and play games on the flight. I figured, for the price, as a portable game and media platform, it can’t be beat. Plus the package I got was pretty good for all the extra stuff you get.

Now I just need to get a protective case and I’m set to go.