After a few disappointing months with Skype, I decided to try SIP based VOIP. The difference is quite incredible. I bought myself a proper VOIP handset - a Grandstream GXP 2000 and signed up with http://www.voip.co.uk/ and SIPGate.

Both allow me to have proper telephone numbers and even better Perth ones too for just signing up, although voip.co.uk does take your credit card number.

The sound quality of the calls is on par with that of a standard BT voice call or slightly better but the stability of the calls is way better than that of Skype. There's no jitter and delay and it just seems so much more polished.

Another advantage of SIP is that you don't need the PC turned on all the time because the handset plugs into an ethernet port on the switch.

The disadvantages are that for the SIP/VOIP newbies the terminology is pretty opaque and it took me a while to work out why I couldn't receive inbound calls and this is why Skype is a more attractive proposition than SIP/VOIP. There's a UK news group for the technology - uk.telecom.voip - but having lurked on it for a while and posted one message, you are presumed to have a grounding in the workings of SIP/VOIP if you're looking for help. The knowledge on how to get this stuff up and running is pretty technically in-depth and somewhat scattered. It's not really boiled down enough for your average Joe Schmoe who really wants to sign up with a provider and plug in his phone and start making/receiving calls. At the end of the day I don't really care what vocoder to use or what RTP, STUN or SIP/SDP message are, just tell me what I need to get the phone working.

That said, once you overcome the technical hurdles, it's pretty neat.

Well...I did the final show last week but the good news is that I'm moving to a new slot with one of the other guys, Eric, on a Thursday night (10pm to 12am). It suits me better because 1) I get my Friday nights back and 2) I missed the on-air banter and spraffing about music we used to have when I started doing Fridays. We kinda always intended to dual up on the show but Fridays were never good for Eric. Anyway...here's the playlist (only if you're faintly interested):

The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You
Sonic Youth - 100%
Boris - Ibitsu
The Fall - Pacifying Joint
Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
Part Chimp - B2
Bowery Electric - Black Light
Do Make Say Think - Dr Hooch
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Sleep
Explosions In The Sky - Have You Passed Through This Night
Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear
Ash Ra Tempel - Freak 'n' Roll
Roxy Music - In Every Dreamhome a Heartache
King Of Woolworths - Stalker Song
FC Kahuna - Hayling

Tess Ferrandez has a great article on why debug=true is generally a bad thing to leave lying around in your ASP.NET app's web.config file. This can be a pain for hosting companies like the one I work for when customers upload their app still as a debug build and with debug=true left switched on. We have shared servers that have up to 700 websites on them and it took us a fair bit of time and effort to tune the Application Pools to work around this problem in ASP.NET 1.x. Fortunately now we get to turn it off globally in the machine.config file in ASP.NET 2.0.

Doug Stewart has a nice article about keeping your production ASP.NET apps happy and healthy. All good stuff.

Back In the Saddle

It's been month since I did a show due to being on call and a dose of the flu and a cough that hung around to make it virtually impossible to speak without spluttering. Anyway....here's the play list for last nights show:

Hayseed Dixie - Black Dog
[correction] Neutral Milk Hotel - A Song Against Sex
The Fall - Clasp Hands
Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk
Beck - Girl
65 Days of Static - Install A Beak In The Heart That Clucks Time In Arabic
Part Chimp - B2
Bed Head - Living Well
Ivor Cutler - Life In A Scotch Sitting Room - Jungle Tip (Owl)
Ivor Cutler - Life In A Scotch Sitting Room - Episode 1
Takako Minekawa - Fantastic Cat
And The Native Hipsters - Mr Magic
Grandaddy - A.M. 180
Grandaddy - He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot
13th Floor Elevators - Your Gonna Miss Me
Silver Apples = A Pox On You
Neu! - Hero
King of Woolworths - Stalker
Bowery Electric - Fear of Flying
Hooverphonic - Sarangi
Santos - Combination
Backini - Little Big Horn
Stereolab - Get Carter
King of Woolworths - To The Devil A Donut

I thoroughly recommend picking up King of Woolworths' Ming Star album. It's a bloody marvellous and the track Stalker will put the willies up you on a late dark and windy night. I picked up some God Speed You Black Emperor and have been listening all day to them. They're utterly amazing, the album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven is incredible. It consists of four 20minute (ish) tracks that take you on an aural rollercoaster ride you won’t forget - in a word mind-bending.