Since we wanted to support Windows versions that we knew only had .NET Framework 1.1 I decided to make it the minimum Framework version. That left me P/Invoking winmm.dll for wave file sound playback. That was easy enough in Windows and I must admit that I ignorantly assumed that P/Invoking in Linux would be almost identical and just as easy...

About two solid days of Linux audio architectures and libraries research, I ended opting for programming my own shared library using ALSA. I also learned a bit about Pulseaudio, sox and esound.

You can look at how I use afileplay in Moihang here.

The other somewhat interesting thing that I tried to accomplish with the development and release of this application was to create a build system for a WinForms app that can integrate with the menus on the GNOME desktop as well as having an Inno Setup script for building the Windows Installer. Just last week I received an email from a fellow that wanted to support build systems for Linux as well as Windows programmers at his shop. He wanted to better understand the way that MonoDevelop generated Makefiles could help with that goal.

Well, I used the incredibly awesome MonoDevelop myself to create the initial build system (did a bit of manual tweaking but truly minimal) and ended up with something that autotools built quite nicely and maintainable.

I will stop talking about this now and give you the URLs already for download and further information on Moihang and the Afileplay library.

Moihang's product page.

I hope to continue improving Moihang -- time and professional obligations permitting. I want to create a Gtk# version of the UI, maybe a Maemo version as well. I want to change the actual hanging depiction from my initial “easy way out” bitmap file sequencing to a 2D drawing system (GDI+, GDK, etc.).

For now, use it if you like and give me feedback or hack it some. Enjoy!

Around the turn of the century -- I love to sound that old (Logan's Run kind of old!) -- I discovered Linux and Free BSD and above all... C#

As Dewey Cox would say: “It's been a beautiful ride”.

Yet playing a wave sound file on Linux from a desktop application is, in my opinion, somewhat harder than in Windows. Of course, there are obvious reasons for this. Microsoft as well as Apple and other commercial OS providers could always dictate a simple, standard and unified way to give you an API call with just a couple of input parameters (file name and/or path usually). The Bazaar nature of Linux programming with its multiple desktops and various low level audio interfaces give you many choices lost of granularity but with all that, comes a lot of homework for those who just want to have a sound clip play when an event in their application takes place.

My beloved daughter Monica is always asking my wife Maria and I to play 20 questions and other word guessing games from the back seat of the car whenever we go from point A to point B – In Texas that may take a long time since point A usually is at least 30 to 40 miles from any point B. One day, we started playing hangman in the car using a piece of paper and a pencil. Both Maria and Monica liked it, and I decided to make it a cross platform desktop app for all our computers.

Although, my first impulse was to make a Gtk# app -- 90% of our computing at home is done on Linux on top of a GNOME desktop -- I instead decided to use WinForms because I wanted try to create RPMs for openSUSE in hopes that I could virally propagate the good news of .NET and WinForms to billions of .NET/Mono embracers that I always read about in slashdot and OSnews <-- sarcasm alert.

Tomorrow, I will make another blog entry where I will share more about my humble solution to the simple programmatic playback of wave and au files while on Linux. Also, the Martinez-Figueroa family Hangman clone: Moihang

I invite you to hug your loved one today and to tell them how much you appreciate them. Also, shake the hand of any service member or veteran you may know and thank them for their devotion to their country, family and friends.

Welcome Home US Service Members!.

A crowd of smiling faces made up of men and women of different ages and ethnic backgrounds is lined up next to the metal handrails that delimit the walk way just outside of the US Customs doors. They are holding home made banners that welcome our troops and are shaking the hands as well as hugging all 302 of us servicemen that just got out of the rotator flight arriving from Iraq.

It was so beautiful and so emotionally charged, since I could not stop thinking about the homecoming that I was receiving in the name of my boy Paquito. In just a few hours I will be repeating that scene but this time, I will be coming out of the DFW airport's arrival gate and the welcoming crowd will be composed of my wife Maria, my mom Mimi, and my sister Tita.

Monica, my almost 8 years old daughter, refused to pick me up at the airport, because she wanted me to surprise her in her classroom as I pick her up while still wearing my uniform.

There were so many tense moments as the base was attacked with rockets and mortar fire. So many times that I felt exhausted and overheated while I rode the turret of our uparmor hummer at asphyxiating hot temperatures for over 11 hours carrying an excess of 50 pounds of body armor, personal equipment and munitions. The stress of those hardships now fade and are replaced by the euphoria and happiness of our return.

I dedicate this homecoming experience to my son and to every son and daughter that did not make it back. Thank you America for your love and support

However, I can tell you that I specifically work securing everything (personnel and materials) that rest within the many miles of perimeter fence that surround the base. I work on a portion of the base that actually gives me what I consider is the best mix of Kirkuk's views. From some of my posts I can see the oil fields with these gigantic oil reserve tanks and ever burning torches that illuminate the day and night skies. I also post at locations where I can see the very busy streets, markets and neighborhoods.

I have had very little interaction with either Arab or Kurdish people, but the little I have had has always been very pleasant and inspiring. From the looks at their streets and way of life I can tell you that things are so very different from what I had seen before in Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe.

I have gone back to programming a great deal while out here. I have put together a multiple choice test taking system that will likely become the standard Skill Level preparation tool for our Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron. It uses an Access database file as its data repository - for legacy issues (Don't Ask) - and a SQLite Ver 3.0 database file for the multiplatform version of the program. My App, SF Tester, was written using .NET Framework and runs perfectly well in Linux thanks to Mono!

The US general election is the next milestone in my electronic calendar - kept in my omnipresent nokia N770 - and then Thanksgiving, Christmas and so on.

Can't wait to get home and see my loving Maria, Monica, Mami, Tita and all of my good friends and supporters. God bless Kevin Shockey and his family, Jay Duggan and his family, the 610th SFS and all of the Mono Project developers that keep the advances coming.

There will be many pictures once I get back.

The preparation usually involves attending a 2.5 to 4 week long training at a regional training center. Here the service member learns and practices combat skills, law of armed conflict, concepts and principles relating to the rules of engagement, first aid, land navigation, and much, much more.

Since I belong to the United States Air Force Security Forces, I also received training on many small arms as well as the qualification that is required before being armed with them. Lots of emphasis went into recognizing the threat that Improvise Explosive devises pose on our forces and the civilian populous.

I also got a lot of drive time with a number of tactical vehicles like our 5 ton truck and our uparmor HUMVEEs. We also received a number of immunizations and performed our physical fitness test.

We also received a ton of equipment to use while at the AOR. The down side to all of this cool gear (special uniforms, boots, ballistic helmets, body armor, cold weather gear, field mess kits, etc) is that it makes for some very heavy bags to drag around airports. But better to have it and not needed than to need it and not have it. ;)

All in all, I feel that I am now as ready as I can be to deploy to Iraq or anywhere else where my service could be used to protect our men and women serving our county.

The military has done their part to get us ready to go, but one can not say enough about the many other folks that make it all possible.

I would start by thanking my wife Maria and my beloved Monica for all of the sacrifices that they have already made and for their willingness to do much more. My two girls are truly my reason to live and the most important reason for me to remain alive and anxious to return home. My mother Mimi Martinez, my sister Maricarmen and her two sons – Christian and Ryan – also commit to do without uncle Paco for six months.

Then there is the members of my local community. Monica's School, Temple Christian School and their great staff and students, our favorite Pizza parlor, Charlie's Pizza in Fort Worth, as well as our local TV station, Fox 4 news, NBC 5 and Telemundo. Important to include the staff at the Shooting Gallery on Lancaster Ave. Fort Worth for all their support during my training sessions.

I thank the members of the Mono and Open Source Community who keep putting out a superb product and always have words of encouragement and strength.

I want to also give a big embrace to my friends and their families. Matt Gutierrez, Jay Dugan, Dan Garvin, Rino Amenta, Raymound Cheung, Heath Mitchell, Jose J. Cruz Falcon, and Harry Burgess.

Last night, For 4 News – our local Fox affiliate – aired a small piece on my deployment and my family's reaction to it.

I don't want to close this entry without thanking Chris Vaughn, Tom Pennington, and The Fort Worth Star Telegram for a very beautiful piece that appeared in yesterday's paper. The article honors my family and the sacrifices and efforts of so many reservists and their family members.

I was thinking of keeping my friends and family updated through this blog of my happenings and the occasional mussing during my period of mobilization (pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment).

Two days ago, we returned from a week long vacation in Orlando Florida. The idea was to give Monica a full set of memories that will hopefully help her cope with Papi's 6 month separation. Her fears show up in nightmares, drawings, and conversations with her playmates that we sometimes overhear.

On the eve of her last day of school (first grade), she received some merit certificates and a medal for her academic achievements. Just as Maria and I were about to reach the teacher to thank and wish her a good summer break, a group of parents of Monica's classmates presented me with a basket of goodies (sodoku books, deck of cards, toiletries, candy, pens, pencils and stationary) to help out with my deployment. As if that was not moving enough, the teacher asked us to follow her to her classroom were she then gave me 22 letters that the kids had handwritten themselves to thank me for my service and to wish me well. The letters had all of these great drawings done on crayons and many personal thoughts.

I have known that I was deploying this summer since the beginning of January 2008. I never kept it a secret from prospective employers or the customers of my consultancy. I will share with you that it had an adverse effect on my earing potential. To the point that it once or twice made Maria and I question if we could make it through to the beginning of mobilization. Thanks to some creative accounting and some belt tightening, Maria found a way for our family to make this happen.

I bring this up because my story can not be that much different than that of all other junior enlisted reservist or national guardsmen households that struggle to provide service to our country. In the end we learn that the support our troops slogan is indeed alive within our community but rarely palpable through corporate and commercial entities.

If you are tunning in to my humble accounts expecting a blow by blow description of the daily grind at the airbase you will be sorely disappointed. To avoid getting myself or my brothering into trouble or worst yet, compromise safety and security, I intend to be somewhat vague and to intentionally exclude operational details from my blog entries. However, I think that I will still be able to provide a pretty unique perspective since there are not many 44 year old Air Force Staff Sergeants in the Security Forces career field with an extensive IT background focused on Free and Open Source culture who are admittedly democrats and are native Newyoricans that have been successfully transplanted to North Texas for 10 years.

I figure it would be a nice memorial to share a letter I received earlier this month.

Stacy Walters

As a civilian citizen of the United States of America, I can't wait for all of our troops to come home. Later in November, I will vote to try to make that wish happen.

As a military member, I promise to do EVERYTHING in my power to make sure that I protect the lives of our sons, daughters, husbands, wifes and neighbors so that all will come home to their loved ones.

Lets us have all Americans present during the rebuilding efforts or our own nation.

God Bless you Mr. Walters and your son.

Thank you Mari, Monica, Mami, Tita, Christian, Ryan, Titi, Kevin, Jay, Monche, Garth, Gina, Chris, Matt (Gut), Dan G., Gonzalo, Paolo, Jackson, Miguel, Sebastien, Niel, Joseph, C.J., SMSgt Carreon, Mirella, Adam Farmer, Harry B., PFC Johnson, Pedro, Angel and so many others that over the years support me and keep me strong and motivated.

A mildot reticle is a tool intended for range estimation. The idea is that you would have a visual of an object for which you know its size (a Texas STOP traffic sign measures 24 inches) and size it against the mildot reticle equipped optic (binoculars, spotting scope, rifle scope, etc.). Then you would use a formula that divides the know object size by the mildot measurement and that would give you the rage or distance to the object. This can be very useful when hiking and/or during land navigation exercises, but indispensable when doing bullet drop compensation adjustments on your rifle scope.

There some software programs out there that perform the computations for you. Yet, I can tell you that it is not so practical to lug around a laptop in the wilderness or an urban battlefield. This is why I always knew that the perfect use for the Nokia 770 is to become a field computer. With its long battery life and aluminum protective cover, the 770 is the ideal companion in a BDU cargo pocket. The Nokia N800 is very capable and very nice in a Starbuck's coffee shop but unfortunately lacks the battery life and the ruggedness of the 770.

Enter Maemo and Mono to the rescue. MilDotCalculator is a Gtk# application that helps you with the unit of measure conversions and the divisions done to achieve the range estimation provided by the mildot reticle. I wrote the software a few weeks before the Mono developers meeting of 2006 but finally have polish it enough to have it run on the 770.

I found a very promising shooting simulation software on the Internet that has a demo of its Mil Dot Ranging Classroom on-line. When use with MilDotCalculator you get a better sense of what I been trying to explain.

MilDotCalculator is open source and free of charge to any outdoors enthusiast (hikers, hunters and counter-snipers). You can always find utilities that help in similar tasks for Palm OS an/or Windows Mobile, but this one is powered by Mono.

You can find the MilDotCalculator debian package for Maemo here. A tarball containing the source code for the debian package as well as for the application can be found here.

What is recorded in history though, is that Sgt. Fischer along with another 4 airmen held his post at Bunker O51 located on the west side of the Tan Son Nhut Air Base even when over 600 attackers attempted to overrun the air base. Although mortally wounded, Sgt. Fischer continued to fight after all of his team members were apparently either dead or dying. He knew the importance of giving time to the blocking force to halt the advance of the North Vietnamese forces.

After running out of ammunition, Sgt. Fischer still communicated to the end, indicating enemy positions and losses, which eventually allowed the blocking forces to push the enemy off the base.

NVA soldiers reached the walls of the bunker, sprayed the inside with AK-47 automatic fire. One by one the Security Policemen's guns fell silent... and with a final radio transmission... they were gone. The Security Policemen in O51 Bunker fought to their death --to the last man-- after taking 20 direct rocket hits from the main attack thrust.

Do you know how hard it is to be posted at an emplacement knowing that the enemy knows your position but you don't know his? To me, the only viable motivation to put aside your own instinct of preservation and not abandon your post is knowing that you and your men are the last hope that the other men and women on that air base as well as their loved ones waiting for them back home have of keeping them safe.

While standing on an Iraqi neighborhood, my son Paquito ended at the cross hairs of an opposing force gunman. His death brought horrible searing pain to myself and the rest of his loved ones back home. Yet had he not enlisted, had he refused to deploy, some other soldier would have been at those cross hairs. It would irrefutably been some other family mourning the lost of their son or daughter this Memorial Day.

I am not making a case for all able United States citizen to try out and do a 3 year contract with the armed service branch of your choice. Rather, I would like for all of us residents of this nation to take a momentary pause and remember all of the fallen that regardless of how they felt about politics, their own personal interest or their ongoing pursuit of happiness, selflessly gave their lives so that others may live and comeback home to their loved ones.

Happy birthday Maria! I love you so much and will forever thank you for all of your support.

PS
I will be a guest of the CNN Newsroom on the afternoon show this Memorial Day. Right after my participation, the family and I will be meeting a the Dallas National Cemetery to put flowers at Paquito's grave.

In 3 out of 4 written tests, my scores have been 95, 100 and 100. This coming Tuesday, will be our fourth and final written test. I qualified Expert on the M4 carbine and the M9 pistol. There are numerous other "Performance Check" evaluations that I have taken and pass. These range from responding to domestic disturbances, utilizing weapon retention techniques, handcuffing (both standing and prone), performing a function check after assembly of the M4 carbine, and many others. These evaluations are required components of the course, but are graded pass or fail.

The instructors are very knowledgeable and extremely dedicated. I have made great friends with the other 14 TDYs in my team (temporary duty students - usually NCOs and other prior service personnel) that like myself, are attending class by direction of our parent unit. The majority of the class is composed of younger students (non-prior service a.k.a. pipeline) that go through Basic Training and straight into Tech School without having been assign to a unit yet.

At the beginning of April, I bought a Nokia N800 Internet tablet. Inspired by the awesome OS 2007 loaded on the N800, I went ahead and upgraded my old Nokia 770 with OS 2006. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time on my hands right now to code for this great platform. Needless to say, I have loaded mono and Gtk# on both tablet units and installed and configured my two little apps that I use to help me while on field military operations. My express thanks go to Paolo Molaro and Everaldo Canuto for their work on the mono ports for the Nokia Internet Tablet.

CNN has invited me for an interview that may air on May 28, 2007 (Maria's birthday). My appearance will be part of a Memorial Day program they are preparing. I thank C.J. Adams-Collier, Rino Amenta, Jackson Harper, Jay and Kristina, Dan Garvin, Matt Gutierrez, Gabriel Landivar, Joe Manich and many others for their words of support and encouragement this past March 20.

By now, I know that he is gone and not coming back to this earth. However, it has been nothing short of fantastic, to be given the opportunity to hang around many men and women that like him, hold a lot of promise, devotion and a sense of service before self.

I thank all of our supporters in the name of Mari, Mimi, Monica, Tita, Carmen, and Jean Ray.

As usual, feel free to leave your comments.

I have to put all my development work on hold until I get back from United States Air Force Tech School. The work will resume on the second week of June. I will be checking email, monologue and OSNews as often as possible during the evenings.

There has never been a better time to talk to your family members, co-workers and business associates about Linux, Mono and Open Source.

The first thing attempted was to create a fresh Windows 2000 Pro installation as to launch the Vista upgrade from within. It quickly told me that upgrading from this operating system was not supported and that one must boot from the Vista DVD to do a clean installation.

My second stab at it was more successful and was surprised by how relatively quickly it got installed considering the large amount of disk space it consumed.

Once running the Vista OS, I learned that my system had a 2.8 score (this is the lowest score of all the different metrics it uses do measure the total performance of the host computer). Even though the machine in question was equipped with an AGP nVidia 6800 sporting 512 MB it scored 2.8 on desktop graphics and that seems to be insufficient to run Aero.

The computer has an AMD Athlon 64 2800+ so I first chose to install the 64 bit version of Vista. The first application I tried to install was .NET Framework 1.1 redistributable, since it comes preloaded with the .NET Framework 2.0 redistributable. It gave me quite a bit of warnings and pointed me to some downloadable patches. I then installed my Cygwin vintage Mar 2004, which went through the setup routine without a hitch but ultimately did not work (bash.exe errors left and right).

I installed OpenOffice 2.1, FireFox 2.x, Thunderbird 1.5, and Gvim 7.x. All these applications worked well enough except that the Context menus (shell extensions) that permit me to send to edit in Vim any one selected file I right mouse click while on Windows Explorer were nowhere to be found.

I then thought about dumping the 64 bit version and also do a full installation of Windows XP SP2 follow by an upgrade to Vista 32 bit. I did that, but not before installing .NET Framework 1.1 and Cygwin while still in Win XP.

A few hours later, I had a Windows Vista running again but Cygwin was still broken.

I want to close this entry by expressing a very personal opinion:

• For your Windows development machines stick to Windows XP or even Windows 200 Professional for as long as you can.


• For your day to day workstation, get SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or OpenSUSE 10.2

So, I have decided to share both the text of the email and my reply to it.

FROM: M. Bertozzi
TO: paco at mfcon dot com

Hi, I've seen here Mono and Gtk# 2.8 Release for Windows...
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?monowin32

Thanks.

FROM: Paco Martinez
TO: M. Bertozzi

I guess your email could have begun thanking me for all the hard
unpaid work I have done on *all* of the Gtk# Installers for Win32 that I have provided since my first one -- over 3 years ago!

Paco

I realized that in Open Source we give without expecting to receive. I hate to sound mercenary here -- specially when my blog is syndicated in various places -- but it may help to remember that if you feed the musicians the band will play longer ;)