Discussions went back and forth about the best way to get down there, who was going, whether we were staying overnight, who was going to look after Evie, etc, etc. At one point, it was turning into a mini family holiday, with my mum and dad coming with us to look after Evie while we attended the concert, us all stopping in a hotel overnight, then coming back the following day. In the end, Evie stayed at home and my folks looked after her, while Paula, Chris and I went to the concert by car, mainly because that was the easiest and (more importantly) the cheapest option. The 8+ hours of driving weren’t ideal, and we didn’t get back home until around 2:30am, but I coped better than I thought I would. The tiredness that I was expecting didn’t hit me until the following afternoon.

The concert itself was excellent. Anthony Daniels (yes, that Anthony Daniels*) was the narrator, and introduced the various musical sequences. While the orchestra was playing these, clips from the six Star Wars films were shown on a large video screen behind the orchestra. Some of the clips were silent, while others had dialogue and sound effects. Certain sequences worked better than others, but there’s nothing quite like seeing an orchestra and choir in full flow, especially when performing music that you know and love. Oh, and there were frikkin’ laser beams too!

We saw a couple of famous faces there (famous in Star Wars circles, at any rate): Warwick Davies (Wicket the Ewok) and Jeremy Bulloch (the guy in the Boba Fett costume). The only bummer from my point of view was that George Lucas apparently turned-up on the second night, hence we missed him. :O(

* Mr C-3PO, for the uninitiated.

When Paula became pregnant with Evie, we knew that a small 3-door hatchback wasn’t really going to cut-it and that we’d have to buy a larger car with at least five doors so that we’d be able to get Evie in-and-out easily. After looking around at various MPVs, we got an amazing deal on a brand-new Renault Scenic from a dealer near Sheffield. At this point, I inherited the Yaris as my ‘work-and-back’ vehicle.

That was mid-2007. Little more than a year later, it was becoming clear that the Yaris wouldn’t last us much longer. It failed its MOT on a number of points, and it cost several hundred pounds to sort those problems out. Added to that the engine had started making strange noises, and seemed to want its oil replacing all the time. Whether it had been my driving that had killed the little car I wasn’t sure, but it seemed obvious that it was going to start costing more and more money each year to keep it on the road. I felt we had no choice but to start looking for a replacement vehicle.

And so it was a few weeks ago that we took delivery of a new ‘09-plate Vauxhall Corsa. I wasn’t specifically looking for a brand-new car, but we again ended-up with a great deal that wasn’t much more expensive than buying second-hand. We traded-in the Yaris for recycling, which also saved us some money.

Having driven the Corsa for a few weeks, first impressions are mixed. I like the styling of the vehicle, both inside and out, and it’s got all the stuff I’d consider essential for a new car such as power steering, CD player, leccy windows and air con. However, for some reason it feels quite sluggish to drive: it takes ages to get up to a decent speed, and going uphill is particularly painful. I can easily lose 15-20mph going uphill on a motorway or dual carriageway, even when flooring the accelerator. I know it’s only a 1.2 litre engine, but still. Personally I reckon there’s something wrong with the car, but the dealer said to give it 1000 miles or so before bringing it in for them to look at, so we’ll see.

At least I know why they use the “C’mon!” slogan in their advertising: I’m muttering that under my breath all the damn time now!

protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
    if (m.Msg == WM_DEVICECHANGE)
    {
        // Handle WM_DEVICECHANGE...
    }

    base.WndProc(ref m);
}

Unfortunately the same technique cannot be used in WPF applications. The spiritual equivalent of the Form class in WPF is Window, which has no WndProc method to override. So what to do?

Turns out that there is a helper class in the System.Windows.Interop namespace called HwndSource that can be used to hook into the window procedure (amongst other things). From the MSDN documentation:

The HwndSource class implements its own window procedure.  This window procedure is used to process important window messages, such as those related to layout, rendering, and input.  However, you can also hook the window procedure for your own use.  You can specify your own hook during construction by setting the HwndSourceParameters.HwndSourceHook property, or you can also use AddHook and RemoveHook to add and remove hooks after the window has been created.

First we need a HwndSource instance, so that we can call its AddHook method. HwndSource is derived from PresentationSource; using the static PresentationSource.FromVisual method we can obtain a PresentationSource from a specified WPF Window, and cast it as follows:

HwndSource source = PresentationSource.FromVisual(window) as HwndSource;
// 'window' is a reference to a WPF Window instance

Now we have a HwndSource instance, we can call its AddHook method. This takes a single parameter, a HwndSourceHook delegate, the signature for which is:

public delegate IntPtr HwndSourceHook(
    IntPtr hwnd,
    int msg,
    IntPtr wParam,
    IntPtr lParam,
    ref bool handled)

Putting this all together, we end-up with the following:

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Interop;

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    public partial class Window1 : Window
    {
        public Window1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        protected override void OnSourceInitialized(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnSourceInitialized(e);
            HwndSource source = PresentationSource.FromVisual(this) as HwndSource;
            source.AddHook(WndProc);
        }

        IntPtr WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, int msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, ref bool handled)
        {
            // Handle messages...

            return IntPtr.Zero;
        }
    }
}

Here we have a derived Window class called Window1. We’ve overridden the OnSourceInitialized method to create our HWndSource object and call its AddHook method (it’s not possible to do this in the constructor as the window’s handle has not been created at that point, hence there will be no HwndSource).

Our window procedure method is called WndProc (no points for originality), and matches the HwndSourceHook delegate signature, meaning that we can just pass that method name to AddHook.

At this point, we’ve implemented the WPF equivalent of overriding a Form’s WndProc method. All that’s left to do now is to handle the relevant Windows messages as per our application’s requirements. In a future post I’ll detail how to implement those USB drive notifications that were mentioned at the beginning of this article.

First to be trimmed was the Sky subscription. We’ve gone from having the full package (basically all the channels plus movies and sports) to just the Variety and Kids packs. This means we still get the free-to-air channels plus stuff like Sky 1 (important for Lost, BSG, etc) and all of the kiddie channels that Evie watches. We’re still paying for HD, so the subscription is now £27.50 per month as opposed to £57, but it’s a reasonable saving. The only thing I’m really gonna miss is the occasional Liverpool match on Sky Sports (crappy timing given the trip to United this weekend, but there you go).

Next on the list was our broadband service. We’ve been with Zen Internet since we moved here in 2004, and although I’ve been totally satisfied with their service it’s well known that Zen are one of the more expensive ISPs. Then again, you get what you pay for, and I didn’t fancy the idea of switching providers to save a few quid only to lose our rock-solid connection. So I decided to stay with Zen, but switch from our current unlimited product to one of their capped services. At home we mainly use the internet for email and web browsing, so the capping isn’t going to affect us much, if at all. Added to that, the capped service is not only cheaper but also faster: we’ve gone from paying around £24 per month for a half-meg service, to paying just over £17 for a 3½ Mbps service. No complaints so far: the regrade went without a hitch, and our connection seems as reliable as ever. Kudos to Zen! No surprise they’ve won the PC Pro Best ISP Award for the past five years in a row.

Reducing the amount of money we spend on TV and broadband is a start, but we’re still looking to make savings elsewhere. Even then, Paula’s still going to have to go back to work part-time so that we can afford to place Evie in a nursery. When did life get so damn expensive?

I haven’t really enjoyed my job for years, ever since I met my wife-to-be in fact. Whether that’s coincidence or not I don’t know; priorities change when someone special enters your life, that’s for sure. Nevertheless there’s no reason why you can’t be content at work also. Several years ago, I had the good fortune to wind-up in a job where I had a fantastic working relationship with my colleagues, and where I had the opportunity to help design and code a new front- and back-end system more-or-less from scratch. Ever since I left that job, and stopped working with those people, work has never been the same for me. Although I’ve done interesting stuff since, and worked with some nice people, I’ve never experienced the same team spirit, nor cared as much about the end product.

Hopefully, this is all now starting to change. It’s early days at SeaTechnik, but already the signs are very encouraging. I’m using cutting-edge .Net stuff like Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation, and being given a lot of leeway to design and code the final product as I see fit. I haven’t felt as energised about what I’ve been doing since back when I was working on the Amber project with Rob and John. My colleagues and superiors seem to trust that I know what I’m doing, and that’s something I’ve not experienced for quite some time now. Long may it continue.

Anyway, after a couple of hours the update had downloaded, and I watched anxiously while the iPod rebooted itself. Luckily, all seemed to go well, and I was left looking at the new home screen… which looks pretty much the same as the old one to be honest. The dock area at the bottom now has a different background, and some of the icons have been swapped around (I’m pretty certain YouTube was second on the first row before the update). And er, that’s pretty much it. When watching videos, you can now access a ‘Chapter Stops’ screen to jump directly to a particular chapter without having to scan through them sequentially or use the scrubber. I can’t see any other visible changes, and none of the bugs I mentioned previously have been fixed (albums with same name glitch; compilation artists showing up in main artists list). Also, you still can’t select a 12-hour clock if you use the London time zone.

So all in all 1.1.3 is basically a waste of time for those of us not prepared to fork out the $20 (£13) for those five applets that iPhone users already have and that should have been in the Touch from the beginning. Thanks Apple, but no thanks. Of course, they’re under no obligation to provide the applets for free, but c’mon, this is basically the same code that’s already been written for the iPhone and given away gratis. I think it says it all that the ability to view lyrics is part of the paid January Software Upgrade rather than being part of the firmware update. Miserable b’stards.

But the most annoying part of all this? Every single time I connect my iPod Touch to the computer now, iTunes displays that damn page about the January Software Upgrade, and there doesn’t seem to be a way of stopping it from doing so. Sure, you can click the ‘Bug Me Later’ button, but that’s only a temporary solution. Stop forcing this update down my throat Apple: I’m just trying to sync my iPod, for crying out loud.

First impressions are very favourable. The device is reasonably thin (around 8mm), and extremely well built, as you’d expect from Apple. There are only two buttons: the on/off switch on the top edge, and the round ‘home’ button at the bottom of the fascia. Initially I had trouble figuring out how to turn the damn thing off though. Turns out you have to hold down the on/off switch for a bit, then a slider appears on-screen which you have to, er, slide to turn the iPod off.

The screen, as you probably know, responds to touch (hence the minimalist controls compared to standard iPods). In a word: it’s gorgeous (hang on, that’s two words). Bright, with vibrant colours, it’s superb for viewing photos and especially videos. Definitely a fingerprint magnet though.

However, the major triumph (as far as I’m concerned) is the Touch’s user interface, which is both easy to understand and a joy to use. It also looks fantastic: text is easy to read, even at small sizes, and there are graphical flourishes everywhere that bring a smile to your face (then again, I’m a sad geek when it comes to UIs). The on-screen keyboard that appears during text entry is a tad on the small side, but only those with the chubbiest digits would really have any major trouble with it: the rest of us just need to type a bit slower, and avoid using our thumbs!

I do have a few quibbles though. The Touch automatically locks itself and switches off the screen after a certain period of time: this delay is configurable in the UI, but obviously the longer the delay the more you’ll eat into the battery life. I don’t have an issue with this locking per se, however as there are no external buttons for controlling the volume, pausing or changing tracks, this has to be done using the relevant on-screen controls. What’s not immediately obvious is that you can double-tap the home button to overlay volume and transport controls on the current screen, and this works even when the Touch is locked so at least you don’t have to ’slide to unlock’ first. Regardless, it’s still not as convenient as hardware controls (you have to be able to see the screen for one thing), and I’m sure Apple will fix it in future hardware revisions (after all, even the iPhone has a volume control button).

My other issues are with the firmware, and are much more annoying. First, browsing albums doesn’t work properly if several albums share the same name, even if those albums are by different artists. Think “Greatest Hits” albums, for example. The net effect is that only one of the albums will appear in coverflow, but this one album will include tracks from the other albums having the same name. So if your iTunes library contained “Greatest Hits” by Queen and “Greatest Hits” by the Bangles (yeah, okay, stop sniggering at the back), then only the Queen album would appear in coverflow: tap it, and the track listing would show all of the Bangles “Greatest Hits” tracks as well as the Queen ones. This bug (and I do consider it a bug) also affects iTunes, but can be worked-around to some extent by using the album sort tags. Unfortunately, these tags seem to be ignored on the Touch, hence the only practical solution is to rename the album itself so that it is then unique. At the moment I’m adding the artist name to the end of the album title, like so: “Greatest Hits [Queen]“. Very clumsy.

My second gripe concerns compilation albums (why does so much hardware and software have trouble dealing with these?). In iTunes, you can tag a track as belonging to a compilation album. When viewing a list of artists on the iPod, those who have only contributed to compilation albums are not supposed to appear in the list, thus stopping those ‘one-hit wonders’ from cluttering things up. However, on the Touch this feature is broken, and the artists list contains everybody. I mean, I’ve got Acker Bilk in my artists list for crying out loud, just because he performed one poxy track on an ‘oldies’ compilation. Again, I consider it a bug because the other iPod models (eg. the latest Classic and Nano) don’t do this. As a workaround, I’m using the ’sort artist’ tag in iTunes to group all such artists together at the end of the artists list on the iPod: still in the list unfortunately, but at least they’re not interspersed with everyone else.

There are rumours of an iPod Touch firmware upgrade being released to coincide with Macworld Expo next week, and I sincerely hope these two issues get sorted. Okay, they’re minor issues in the grand scheme of things, and it seems a little churlish to complain about them when the rest of the device is so fantastic, but hey, there’s always room for improvement, right?

* maybe ‘hate’ is too strong a word, but “it’s a love-minor quibbles thing” doesn’t have the same ring to it
** well, technically it’s last year now

To be honest, I’m still not sure what to make of it. Call me a traditionalist, but I kind of preferred the old design from before the Gillett and Hicks takeover. Sure, the new plans are bold and certainly different, but my worry would be how well the design would age. Are we going to be looking at the stadium in twenty or even ten years and saying “what were they thinking”? Will it be viewed as a bit of an eyesore, an embarrassment even?

(And pity those fans on the new Kop come a sunny day, with that enormous glass window behind them!)

Still, the really important thing is what happens on the pitch. We’ve made a solid if unspectacular start to the season, but the real work starts on Sunday against Chelsea. I hope Gerrard is actually fit enough to play despite his foot problem; if not, we could be asking for trouble in more ways than one. Also, it would be nice if Evie could manage to stay awake during this match after sleeping through the entire Villa game last weekend.

For the uninitiated, Sonos (or the Sonos Digital Music System, to give it its full title) is a set of components that let you stream digital audio around your home. There are basically two bits of hardware: ZonePlayers, that actually play the music through an attached amplifier or pair of speakers; and Controllers, paperback-sized bricks with a scroll wheel and colour LCD screen that are used to choose what the ZonePlayers should be playing. The Controllers are supposedly optional, in that each ZonePlayer comes with software you can install on a PC or Mac that will replicate the functionality of the Controller, thus allowing you to control the ZonePlayers via your computer. In reality, one of the main attractions of the system is in using the hardware Controller to browse through and play your music collection. I doubt many people end-up buying a system without a Controller.

Up to 32 ZonePlayers can be ‘connected’ to each other via wired or wireless ethernet, and then controlled via a single Controller. Each ZonePlayer (referred to as a ‘zone’) can play a different track, or individual zones can be linked such that they play the same track. So you could have two ZonePlayers, one in the lounge and the other in the bedroom for example, both playing the same song, in perfect sync with each other.

Sonos recently started selling a ‘BU130 bundle’ containing two different ZonePlayers and a Controller, and also reduced their prices, so I figured that now was the time to take the plunge. One of the ZonePlayers in the bundle is the amp-less model, so I also ordered a pair of bookshelf speakers (Q Acoustic 1010s) to go with it.

A couple of days later, a fairly hefty box arrived. This contained both of the ZonePlayers (a ZP80 and its larger ZP100 sibling) and the Controller, together with the Desktop Controller software on CD and a number of connecting cables. Unpacking the devices, I was surprised how heavy the ZP100 was, probably due to the built-in amplifier. I should also state that both units have enclosed PSUs, so there are no power bricks to worry about. Added to that they’re passively cooled, so are almost silent in operation (I’ve noticed that the ZP100 makes a slight hum constantly, but this is barely audible most of the time).

First to be hooked-up was the smaller ZP80. We already had a Denon mini system in the lounge, so the ZP80 was connected to it via the RCA jacks (the ZP80 does have digital outputs, but the Denon doesn’t so I couldn’t make use of them). Although Sonos can operate wirelessly, our house is already wired with Cat5 cable, so I hooked the ZP80 directly to a nearby network socket.

The Controller has an enclosed rechargeable battery that first needed charging via the supplied power brick (a charging cradle is also available, but the price is a bit steep in my opinion). Once charged, the Controller software walks you through the setup process, part of which involves associating the Controller with the ZonePlayer by pressing a couple of buttons on the fascia of the player.

After the Controller/ZonePlayer association has been established, you need to tell the system where your music files are located. In our case, we recently bought an Infrant ReadyNAS box which we basically treat as a huge fileserver, and all of our music files are stored on it. I used the Controller to select the appropriate file share, then the system built an index from the metadata (tags) in the music files. Once the index has been built, the Controller can display the music files in your collection, grouped by artist, album, genre or whatever, allowing you to choose the tracks that you want to play.

The Controller interface is pretty slick. Most screens present a simple list of items to choose from; you use the scroll wheel to move through them, and the centre button to select. There are also three ‘context-sensitive’ buttons located below the screen, the functions of which change depending on where you are in the UI, plus dedicated buttons for selecting zones and accessing the music ‘library’. It’s all a breeze to use; anyone who’s ever owned an iPod will feel right at home.

A day later the dinky 1010s arrived, so I was able to hook-up the ZP100. I decided to put it in one of the bedrooms upstairs, so that we’d have a zone on each floor of the house. Again, it was simply a matter of connecting everything together, using the Controller to indicate that a new player was being added to the system, then pressing the two buttons on the fascia of the ZonePlayer. A couple of minutes later and – hey presto, we now had two zones! However, it was at this point that things went a bit pear-shaped.

The software on the ZonePlayers and the Controllers is stored in firmware, allowing it to be remotely upgraded over the internet whenever Sonos release a new version. When our hardware arrived it appeared to be a couple of revisions behind, and part-way through the setup process I was offered the option of upgrading to the latest firmware. This upgrade had worked fine the previous day on the Controller and the ZP80, however attempting the same on the ZP100 failed big-time. The ZP100 froze during the process, and wouldn’t respond to the Controller. In the end, the only way I could get the system back up-and-running was to power-down everything on the network (router, laptop, NAS, Sonos boxes), then bring everything back online one device at a time. This seemed to do the trick, and (fingers crossed) both ZonePlayers have performed flawlessly since.

Unfortunately, we also experienced a hardware glitch with the Controller. The unit has a built-in sensor that detects the level of ambient lighting and automatically backlights the buttons if it gets too dark. A nice feature, but on our particular Controller some of the buttons were always backlit, and flickered to boot (none of this stopped us from using the Controller however). After initially ringing the supplier (Simply Sonos), I was asked to ring Sonos technical support, who diagnosed a faulty unit and gave me a return code. I passed this information on to Simply Sonos, who immediately sent out a replacement Controller: we posted the broken one back to them. Everything was handled promptly and professionally.

After using the Sonos system for a couple of months, I can honestly say it’s a great piece of kit: rock solid (despite our initial niggles with the software upgrade and Controller hardware), well designed, and very easy to use. I was a little dubious about the multiple zone thing given that we only live in a small detached house, but it really is quite cool to be able to walk from one floor to another with the same song playing in the background. I was also impressed by the quality of the after-sales support, and there’s a really helpful user community in the Sonos website forums too.

All in all, heartily recommended. Now all that remains for me to do is to finish digitising our CD collection…!