Apple needs to sort out their API
I have some code that uses Apple’s AppConnect API to query App store related things. I wrote a C# script that I run from LINQPad that gives me a weekly sta...
Posts by Year
- 2024 1
- 2023 1
- 2022 3
- 2021 9
- 2020 8
- 2019 3
- 2018 7
- 2017 16
- 2016 10
- 2015 20
- 2014 26
- 2013 19
- 2012 9
- 2011 13
- 2010 25
- 2009 36
- 2008 108
- 2007 58
- 2006 63
- 2005 177
2024
2023
MyFirebaseMessagingService android:exported needs to be explicitly specified
I needed to make a small change to an Android apop that we have in the Google Play store. I made the change, generated a new apk and we submitted to the ap...
2022
My new Xamarin.Forms 5 Pluralsight course is out
I have a new course that was just published this week on Pluralsight, “Xamarin.Forms 5 Fundamentals”. It’s seven hours of tutorials and demos for the devel...
Running the iOS simulators after updating to Xcode 14
So Apple updated Xcode on my Macbook from 13.4.1 to 14. I wasn’t paying much attention to the prompts or even the version numbers. After doing so, I could n...
A quick check to see if the user’s locale is metric or imperial
While working on a demo mobile app for a course, I needed to know if the units of measurement on the app would be in Imperial units or Metric units. Since I’...
2021
A failed MakeValid call in SQL Server
We hit this strange bug in SQL Server earlier in the year. A single SQL Statement would just kill the connection. It would kill it 100% in any version of SQL...
Moved the blog from WordPress to Jekyll
First post under the new regime.
Resolving the .NET MAUI “VersionCode 1.0 is invalid. It must be an integer value.” error when updating Visual Studio 2022 Preview
I hit the “VersionCode 1.0 is invalid” error with .NET MAUI and resolved it.
Controlling a WSL installation of redis-server from the Windows command line
Some shortcuts accessing redis-server running under WSL via PowerShell
How to access Apple’s App Connect API from C#, Python, and Go. - Part 4
Welcome to Part 4 of a three part series. Last month, I did a series of posts on how to use Apple’s App Connect API to query the team membership list using C...
A quick PowerShell tip
Simple tip for adding your own memory aid to your PowerShell profile.
2020
Quick and cheap audio editing for online courses
Some quick and cheap tips to cleaning up the audio for video training courses
Using PowerShell to set the Num Lock state
A quick PowerShell script for setting the Num Lock state
Colored notes in OneNote
A quick way to color paragraphs in OneNote.
Add a POSH ADB to your Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal is so close to being out of beta. It’s been my default CLI on Windows for about a year. I still don’t think in PowerShell, but I try to use ...
Some quick improvements for the home video conferencing experience
A few things that I have done to improve video conferencing from home.
Bag man
If you haven’t listened to Rachel Maddow’s “Bag Man” podcast, you are missing a great tale of corruption.
Why I like working on Open Source (back to FocusUF)
About a month ago, I blogged about an update to a webcam hack that I did called FocusUF. There wasn’t much to the code and I put it all up on GitHub. Someone...
Return to FocusUF
A while back, I blogged about a command line hack to set the focus for a web cam. I was using a Microsoft LifeCam HD-5000 and it has the annoying habit of re...
2019
Getting a new dev machine set up, macOS Style
It’s that time of the decade when I get a new Macbook Pro. I use a Macbook to compile iOS apps with Xamarin which makes it required equipment. Even though my...
When your Apple device refuses to be trusted
Back in July, I received a new Macbook Pro. A lovely little device, but I had this one problem. It wasn’t showing up as a trusted device under my iCloud acco...
Opportunity has ended it’s mission
NASA’s Opportunity Rover looks back over its own tracks on Aug. 4, 2010. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
2018
That time I taught that dog a trick
Image by FiveRings [CC BY 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons Many, many years ago, I used to work with Jack*. Jack is a musician and at the time ...
Fix for “[Network & Virtual Switch] Failed to update DDNS “myQNAPcloud”
After Windows Home Server was more or less retired by Microsoft, I bought a new NAS server for home. After some deliberation, I bought a QNAP TS-451+, a coup...
Planning for Wi-Fi
After 20 years in our existing home, we are getting ready to move to a new home. The new house is still being built and I had CAT6 run to the places where I ...
A Xamarin wrapper for the ACS USB library for Android
ACS ACR122U USB NFC Reader
FocusUF or how to turn off the autofocus setting of the LifeCam HD-5000 webcam
<img loading="lazy" class="size-medium" src="https://i0.wp.com/photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-BgcrnZW/0/7d3ad5c8/S/i-BgcrnZW-S.jpg?resize=399%2C225&ssl=...
It’s 2018, time to join that David Bowie Book Club that his son has started
Bowie's READ poster from the American Library Association (1987)
2017
What not to do on a job interview: Don’t play the arrogant card
Original image courtesy of Amtec Staffing
That time I took a group of people to Boston for the Azure Red Shirt Dev Tour
I had tweeted out the hashtag #BostonOrBust. Seriously, don’t do that. I tempted Fate, and Fate called me out on it.
Checking Hypervisor status with PowerShell
Image courtesy of Serge Melki
Using the Multilingual App Toolkit with the Microsoft Translator service from Azure’s Cognitive Services
Image courtesy of M. Adiputra via Wikimedia Commons
Debugging devices without displays or debuggers
I’ve been writing firmware for an RFID reader that connects over USB to an Android device. Our installers will need to upgrade the readers out in the field ...
Using console jQuery to scrape lists from Apple’s developer portal
I needed to grab the lists of registered devices and developers from our company’s Apple Developer portal. Unless I’m being particularly obtuse (an outcome ...
A Xamarin port of the usb-serial-for-android library
Back in January, I ported the excellent usb-serial-for-android library from the Java source code to Xamarin C#. We have an Android application that needs to...
And then my blog was defaced
A couple of weeks ago my blog was defaced through a security hole in WordPress. About 800,000 blogs were hit via something called the REST-API exploit. I saw...
My book about localization with Xamarin is out
Cross-platform Localization for Native Mobile Apps with Xamarin
2016
Quick Powershell tip for avoiding file name collisions when you have images from multiple cameras
My wife and I both have Sony mirrorless cameras. She has an Alpha 5000 and I have a NEX-6. I back up all of our images to my home dev box, and then to a QNAP...
Modifying test data for privacy
Sometimes I get actual live data from a client to track down a bug that only happens with their data. That data will contain student records and we don’t li...
Found the cause for ADB error message “Could not open interface: e00002c5”
Frustration by Peter Alfred Hess
Thoughts on One Trick Ponies
When your company is a one trick pony (Apple), that pony (the iPhone) better be a compelling trick. ZDNet’s Ed Bott just wrote an article that shows where A...
Get AMPed for faster page loading on mobile
I just updated this blog to use the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) plugin for WordPress. AMP is an open source project designed to optimize page content for...
Generating new row numbers in SQL based on a starting value
One of our support people came to me with an interesting task. He needed to add rows from a SQL Server table to another table and populate a row number type...
FBI vs Apple vs the Consequences
There has been a lot of conversations about the court order that the FBI has filed on Apple. If you are following this story and have not yet read the court...
Use Powershell to batch rename files from digital cameras
If your household is like my household, then you’ll have more than one digital camera laying around. My wife and I have similar Sony cameras (NEX-6 and an a...
“What would you do to revive Windows Phone?”
A recent post on Twitter by Brad Sams asks the question
2015
Marvin Gaye as an antidote for Road Rage
Marvin Gaye
Microsoft’s Privacy Manifesto
In the Cloud We Trust
On sharing media files between Windows Phone and OS X
There used to be a Windows Phone Connector app in the Mac App store. It was the way to directly copy music and images to and from a Windows Phone and a Mac....
When a UX hack has unexpected consequences or “Why did my iOS app name get truncated when I used TestFlight?”
While testing a iOS app with TestFlight, we noticed that the app name was being truncated. The name was just under the length where iOS truncates it and add...
Waiting for Microsoft’s hardware event on the 6th
As a long time Verizon customer and a Windows Phone fan, I’ve been waiting for the new Windows 10 for Mobile flagship phones from Microsoft. In a couple of ...
Why the Virtual Keyboard on the Microsoft Band doesn’t work with Android and iOS
Microsoft Band’s Virtual Keyboard (image from Microsoft)
Exporting SMS/MMS messages from Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone Message Backup as displayed in the Windows Store
My MVP V-Conf session on localization for mobile apps is out
Two weeks ago I participated in the Microsoft Virtual Conference. I did a session on cross platform localization for native apps using .NET. It’s a continu...
Yes, you can judge a book it’s cover
View image | gettyimages.com
Trying to get Apple Testflight to send new build notifications
I used TestFlight 18 months ago when I finished our first iOS app. It worked great. It was a stand alone service that allowed you to beta test your apps be...
Registration is now open for the 2015 Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference.
2015 Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference
The first US MVP Open Days was a success
Last week I attended the first US MVP Open Days. It was held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern, PA. It was a 2+ day conference for US Microsoft...
A little late to the Band Party
My Band with some decoration for the upcoming US MVP Open Days
The coolest tool that you are not yet using (Xamarin edition)
Have you played with Xamarin Sketches yet? Sketches was announced at Evolve back in October and is available in Xamarin Studio on OS X. It gives you a real...
Taking care of a pet peeve with the Xamarin Build Host
I write code in Windows with Visual Studio, but parts of it compile and debug on OS X. I’m doing mobile (Android, iOS, and Windows) development with Xamarin...
Getting a new dev machine set up, OS X Style
So I’m on my second Macbook. I use a Macbook Pro for iOS development and I was due for a new one. I went from a Late 2011 MBP to a late 2014 MBP. Except no...
Ignite your IT and Enterprise Dev skills this May
Get ready for a glimpse at what’s possible today and in the future
Quick work around for unresolved Xamarin components in Visual Studio
Have you ever had an unresolved component when using the Xamarin plugin win Visual Studio? You add a component from the Xamarin Component Store and after y...
2014
Looking back on Xamarin Evolve 2014
Xamarin’s Evolve 2014 conference was a great experience. I attended it last week in Atlanta and while you see a lot of the cool new features from the live s...
And then they added Xamarin support to the Multilingual App Toolkit
As of 6am EDT today, Microsoft’s Multilingual App Toolkit officially supports Xamarin for making it easy to manage language translations in mobile apps. Orig...
Booked my flight for the MVP Summit in November
I finally got around to booking my flights to the MVP Summit in November. Getting a rental car this time, one of my co-workers will be the same flight and we...
Just got a nice bump in speed from Verizon FiOS
This morning I received an email from Verizon FiOS informing me that my upload speeds are now as fast as my download speeds. I currently have the 50 Mbps do...
My Hallway Conversations interview is out
Hallway Conversations Podcast
Using Powershell to concatenate files and strip off the headers
#185282284 / gettyimages.com </div> We had a request from a client to merge some files for an import proce...
Comcast did WHAT in Houston? You are now a public hotspot.
#481207079 / gettyimages.com
Been reading “iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook”
iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook
This one is for your grandparents (aka “I’m calling you from Windows and you a have virus”
Only you can save Grampy and Oma
Using the Windows Phone 8.1 Start Background to personalize your phone
A great way to personalize your Windows Phone 8.1 device is a custom start background. You are no longer limited to using the 20 or so accent colors as the ...
Best single source for dealing with iOS battery drain
If you or anyone you care about has been dealing excessive battery drain on the iPhone, a former Apple Genius Bar staffer has written the single best resourc...
Bundling jQuery 2.x and jQuery 1.x in ASP .Net MVC and staying NuGet fresh
If you use Nuget to install jQuery into your application, you’ll need to take some extra steps to support multiple versions of jQuery. By default, NuGet wi...
Validating a GUID input, TryParse vs RegEx
Once again I’m validating some text inputs, this time I need to verify that a user has entered a GUID in a valid format. While I can’t verify that the user ...
Getty Images now providing a huge selection of images free for non-commercial use
Getty Images is how made available a large selection of images from their gallery free for non-commercial use in social media. For free. Which is pretty cool...
Today I remembered that every URL is an URI, but not vice versa
I was writing some validation code for a desktop app and there are some fields require web page URLs. My first thought was to a regular expression to valida...
Assigning adorners with dynamically created controls
I was trying to add an adorner to the WPF TextBox to add a cue banner. I was creating the controls at runtime and I am relatively clueless with WPF. I want...
Converting enums and Camel case text to words
I have enums that I want to display on a form and I wanted to make them look a little better on the screen. The constants defined in the enumerator list are...
And then I stuck shipping tape on the back of the SIM card
I just did a simple hardware hack to my HTC 8X phone. I have been having random problems where the phone loses it’s ability to make calls or to send SMS mes...
How to use Bing Code Search when ReSharper is installed
Microsoft Research just released a cool add-in for Visual Studio 2013 called Bing Code Search. It allows you to search for code samples from with the IDE an...
When the EditorPackage does not load correctly
I had this “The ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.Editor.Implementation.EditorPackage’ package did not load correctly.” error message when I started up Visual Studio 2...
Locating the right web.config file at runtime
I created a Web API web service that’s part of a shrink wrapped application. The service has a web.config that the end user will need to configure some setti...
While I don’t recommend messing with scammers, it can be entertaining
I was doing coding on my home machine when the phone rang. The Caller ID said “Out of State”. When Caller ID comes up like that, I know the call will not b...
2013
When Windows Phone Mail can’t display an image attachment
I came across a strange little problem reported in answers.microsoft.com with Windows Phone 8 Mail. It wasn’t downloading jpg images.
It’s 2013, stop trying to write to the Program Files folder already
Type to Learn’s login screen
Cross-Platform Localization for Mobile Apps in CODE Magazine
The January/February 2014 issue of CODE Magazine is up on the CODE Magazine site. This issue focuses on mobile development. There are a couple of Xamarin f...
Moved this blog from Blogger to an Azure colored WordPress
You may have noticed that this blog looks a little different. I just migrated my blog from Google’s Blogger platform to a self-hosted WordPress blog. And i...
Just ordered our Christmas cards
I finally got around to ordering our Christmas cards. We’ve been using Shutterfly for the last few years. I’ve been please with the quality, choices, and c...
A work around for the files in use bug with HeatDirectory in MSBuild
I have this multi-project solution in Visual Studio 2013 and one of the projects is a Windows Installer project. It uses WiX (Windows Installer XML) 3.8 and...
Taking the Acer W3 from Preview to RTM
It was time to install Windows 8.1 on my Acer Iconia W3-810. I received the tablet at the Build conference. The W3 came with the 32-bit edition of Windows 8 ...
Today’s lesson in voice mail etiquette
I just had a fun adventure in returning a wrong number voice mail. I arrived into work late today and I had a voice mail message time stamped at 10:00am. The...
Increasing the target area of a table’s DetailDisclose button with Xamarin.iOS
Can you make that button bigger? I went slightly under the hood in Xamarin.iOS to make an accessory button target area larger.
Getting around 0x80073cfb errors after installing Windows 8.1 Preview
As an attendee of the //build/ conference, I received a Surface Pro and an Acer Iconia W3, along with a USB drive with the Windows 8.1 Preview update for eac...
Certified Xamarin Mobile Developer
I just received the email notification from Xamarin that I successfully passed their Mobile Developer certification exam. I was given a free pass for the exa...
There should be a Blue Rhino for Electric Cars
What if the car companies came together and come up with a standard for replaceable electric car batteries? It takes hours to charge an electric car battery...
I git it now
Sharing code across OS X and Windows was a bit more challenging than what I had expected. We have our own TFS servers, but Xamarin Studio on the Mac really c...
Getting Hyper-V to work on a HP Envy23
I finally got Hyper-V working on our HP Envy 23. For Christmas, I had bought a new PC for our family. We have a shared PC in a our family room that everyon...
Why was microphone button on the iPad virtual keyboard disabled?
After demoing some voice dictation with an iPad app that I am working, the microphone button stopped working. It was fine for one demo, disabled for the nex...
Today I learned that my daughter has never seen a 3.5” disk
I was watching my 10 year old daughter work on a story in MS Word 2007. To save the document, she was going into the Word menu to select save. I asked her wh...
A quick photobook order on Shutterfly
A $20 coupon code from Shutterfly showed up in my inbox a week or so ago. I could spend it any which I wanted on Shutterfly, that was pretty decent of them....
2012
The HP Printer Display Hack (with financial goodness)
The HP Printer Display Hack article has been posted to the Coding4Fun site. This is an article and application that I wrote that lets you display a stock pr...
Taking Office 365 for a spin
As the leader of the Tech Valley .NET Users Group (TVUG), I have the opportunity to use Office 365 for a year. I’ve become gypsy like in my use of PC’s for ...
Every 30 seconds, the cursor would turning into the spinning donut of death
I was working from home today when I kept seeing something strange. About every 30 seconds, the cursor would go from normal to busy. It would last for a se...
Thinking about Windows Phone 8
I watched Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 Summit on Monday and I came away impressed. My phone contract is up and I have been holding off on getting a new phone...
Need to kick my Windows Home Server every now and then
For some reason, my HP MediaSmart Server EX495 seems to be locking up. It’s very infrequent, but when it happens, I can no longer access it and I have to bo...
Kill all the SQL connections for a DB or app
One of customers needed to be able to clear all of the connections to a database before running some maintenance tasks on the database. So the question came...
I’m bothered by the idea of using the homeless as office infrastructure
There has been a lot of comments regarding the use the of homeless people at the SxSW Interactive conference as roving hotspots. BBH Labs, a NYC based marke...
Ratcheting up the scroll with my Logitech mouse
With the PC that gets used by the family, we use a wireless Logitech mouse. It’s the VX Revolution. It’s a few years old, but it has all the functionality th...
An open letter to Newport Television
This is a copy of an email that I just sent to Newport Television, owners of WXXA-FOX23
2011
Replacing GetHostByName with GetHostAddresses
I’m working on some C# code that needs to send some data over a socket connection. The user can specify the destination by name or by IP address. I was usi...
An odd way to post
This short little post was composed with the Blogger iPhone app. It’s running on my iPad and I’m using the BlueTooth keyboard that HP made for the ill-fated ...
How to set the DevExpress ASPxScheduler current time line marker to only appear for the current date
I’ve been using the DevExpress ASPxScheduler with one of our WebForms apps and it’s been a pretty good experience so far. It does pretty much what I need for...
Binding an Enum to a DataSource
I had some code for an ASP.Net Webforms app where I need to present to the user a list of options that were define as Enum. I want to populate a combobox wi...
There was a Time Warner Cable Disconnect Technician in my yard this morning.
I had an interesting conversation this morning with a Time Warner Cable (TWC) Disconnect Technician. I went out to get my paper and he had the cable junctio...
One week with FiOS TV
It’s been a week since I switched from Time Warner Cable to Verizon FiOS TV. After years of having only one choice in my town for cable TV, Verizon just sta...
Initial impressions of the Netgear WNDR3700
I recently upgraded my home network with a new router. I have Linksys WRT54GS router, running a custom firmware called DD-WRT. DD-WRT provides a lot of ext...
How I patched a Dell workstation with a firmware update from HP
About 18 months ago, I got a Dell Precision T5500 workstation. A decent PC with a Xeon quad core processor which has bee a pretty decent box for doing devel...
Reflections on Red Gate and their decision to charge for .NET Reflector
The chattering classes in the .NET world have been buzzing about Red Gate’s decision to start charging for the .NET Reflector utility in March. I’m been ama...
Price Chopper’s RoboDeli is great idea, but flawed
I just did some Sunday shopping at a local Price Chopper supermarket. It was pretty busy and there was a long line at the deli counter. With in the last...
A Random Vegas Observation
I like walking the strip in Vegas at night, it makes for great entertainment. I just love watching everything going on. I’m not into gambling, so I just wa...
Scrolling a ListView’s EditItemTemplate with some help from jQuery
I’ve been using ASP.Net’s ListView control and I cam across a little quirk while setting up the editing bits. I have an EditItemTemplate defined that has so...
Cable TV Competition coming to Bethlehem? (FiOS TV vs Time Warner Cable)
On January 12th, 2011, the town of Bethlehem (NY) will be holding a monthly town meeting. One of the topics on the agenda is to have a public hearing to all...
2010
One final migration from Vista to Windows 7
Over Thanksgiving weekend, I upgraded our last Vista PC to Windows 7. We have a family PC, that we all share. It’s nothing too fancy, a three year old Dell ...
How TweeVo survived the OAuthcalypse
Last month, I spent a few evenings adding OAuth support to Brian Peek’s TweeVo application. TweeVo is a little WPF based application that runs in the backgr...
Care and feeding of your wireless router
This morning I went to check my email from my iPad and had a unpleasant surprise. No Internet. I have the Wi-Fi only version of the iPad and it usually has...
There was a problem sending the command to the program
I hate error messages like that. It’s both detailed and vague at the same. What command was being sent and what was the problem? Let me back up a few steps. ...
All about “F# and You”
Last night at our monthly Tech Valley .NET User Group (TVUG) meeting, we had Rick Minerich come in and do a presentation on F#. It was a very good presentat...
Resolving "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" with Compiled HTML Help files (.chm)
I’m working with a SDK from a vendor that we have partnered with. They provide the SDK as a download that I grabbed over FTP with Internet Explorer. The SD...
A Disaster Recovery Plan is useless if you don’t verify that it works.
I was just reading a Computerworld article about how American Eagles Outfitters just went through an eight day web outage (originally covered by StorefrontBa...
DynDNS is making making changes to their free Dynamic DNS accounts
I use the free version of the dynamic DNS names provided by DynDNS. It gives me an easy way to connect to my home VPN. They provide a domain name, usually ...
A change at TVUG
For the last couple of years, Griff Townsend has been the President of the Tech Valley .NET Users Group (TVUG), here in Albany NY. Griff has put in many hou...
You should have WinPatrol on your system
You really should have WinPatrol installed on your system. It’s a service type of application that monitors changes to your system. For example, if an app ...
Why are there randomly named folders with mpavdlta.vdm files on my C: drive?
I was looking for a folder on a PC at home (Vista, 32 bit) when I saw a bunch of folders with oddly formed filenames. There were 13 of them, with names and ...
New Windows Live Writer Plug-in Submission Process
I just received an email from Microsoft about changes to the submission and and hosting of Windows Live Writer plug-ins. It goes into effect on September 10...
How to shoot yourself in the foot writing installer upgrades
I’m in the middle of a development cycle for one of our products, when QA logged an unexpected bug. When you upgraded an existing version of the product to ...
Notes on installing FinalBuilder 7
VSoft Technologies just released a new version of their build automation tool, FinalBuilder. Version 7 gets a new look to their IDE and you can finally have...
Wifi password cracking in the clouds
Bruce Schneier posted an article on his blog about wpacracker.com, a service for cracking WPA and other passwords. Basically, you send them a dump of networ...
The Delmar Kid Chaser
I’ve been following the story of the Delmar Kid Chaser. If you had not been following this one, it made the local news a few days ago. Four teenagers raise...
Enjoy some Bar-B-Que for a good cause
There’s a flyer floating around in the office and it’s worth sharing the details with the rest of the world (the part of the world that lives near Latham, NY...
Using robocopy with Visual Studio 2008 Post-build events
I have a solution that has about 15 odd projects in it. It’s for an application that has multiple optional services with shared assemblies. Hence the 15 pr...
Suppressing a repeated column value in SQL
I was asked by one of my co-workers for some SQL help. He needed a SQL statement that would suppress repeated column values for the result set. Basically the...
What to do when Firefox displays multiple versions of the Java Console in the Add-ons list
I upgraded to Firefox 3.6.3 the other day and at the same time, upgraded one of the add-ons I use (Xmarks). I love Xmarks, but that’s for another time. Whe...
Twitter? Time Warner Cable gets it
I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. Some days, I think it’s greatest time waste since they invented the meeting. Other days, it’s an endless sour...
What to do when a Windows 7 desktop icon has the wrong image
We are in the middle of rebranding our applications and as part of the rebranding, the icons for each application have been updated. We are having lots of f...
This connection is Untrusted (another ID10T error)
The other day, my PC died. After some angst, I was able to fix it by replacing the power supply. After starting the PC, I fired up Firefox to check my emai...
What do you mean the computer wont turn on?
Last Monday, I came home from work and went to check my email on my home PC. I went into my home office and sat down at the PC. I turned on the monitors (I...
Just watched a movie in HD using Amazon Video On Demand through my Tivo
I had some credits with my Amazon account so I decided to “rent” a movie through their Amazon Video On Demand program. TiVo had offered the Amazon Video on ...
2009
There is no sense of humor on the North Face
I was just read about how the North Face is suing the South Butt. The South Butt is a parody line of clothing started by Jimmy Winkelmann, a college freshman...
Getting the list of databases that a user has rights to from SQL Server
We have a few applications that let the user select the database connection details. It’s for SQL Server 2005/2008 and they can pick the server protocol, se...
I’m now a MCP
A couple of weeks ago I went away to a “boot camp” to prep for a set of Microsoft certification exams. After a few years of plugging away at .NET programmin...
When HTML encoding can bite you
I’ve been using TweetDeck to follow Twitter. It’s a great app, but it has some quirks. Like it’s ginormous memory usage. Another is how it renders the te...
Fess up when you made a mistake
I was working on a installer project for a new tool that we will be releasing this fall when I hit the most odd error. Right after the installer started up,...
I don’t care who signs a petition, Roman Polanski is a convicted sexual predator who needs to do his time.
I’ve never subscribed to the “Hollywood Elite” theory about radical liberals being in charge of Tinseltown, but I do think more attention is paid to people w...
You always need to read your bank and credit statements
It was with some interest that I read today’s “The Advocate” column in the Times Union. A man had $400 taken out of his credit union account and the credit ...
Wireshark work around for Windows 7
I do a fair amount of programming at the socket level and Wireshark is one the tools that I use to test the data going over the wire. Wireshark is a free ap...
Blocking spam that appears to come from your own email address
At work, I get a lot of email where the sender has spoofed the email address so that it appears to come my work email address. It’s annoying and our corpora...
When Page Up and Page Down behave oddly in FireFox
I was viewing a web page with Firefox 3.5.2 the other day and I noticed the Page Up and Page Down keys were not behaving the right way. Instead of scrolling...
Looking forward to Delphi 2010
I just got the email from Embarcadero with the access code to get my copy of RAD Studio 2010. Almost all of our products that are Delphi based are compiled ...
I haven’t seen gas that cheap since the Carter administration
Our local supermarket chain, Price Chopper, has been running a promotion this summer in combination with Sunoco. The more you spend, the greater the discoun...
Why it can be good to build a PC instead of buying a prebuilt one.
After installing Windows 7, I wanted to install Windows Virtual PC. Windows Virtual PC requires that your machine support hardware virtualization. My home ...
Using uberOptions to extend the functionality of Logitech devices
A few weeks ago, I picked up some Logitech mice that were on sale as “dented box” items on the Logitech site. They were new mice, but their boxes had some m...
Offload TCP processing to the network controllers under Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7
After upgrading my home PC to Windows 7, I was decided to see if my motherboard/CPU combination support hardware virtualization. You need hardware virtualiz...
A work around for Delphi 2007/2009 with Windows 7 64 bit
I just installed Windows 7, 64 bit edition so that I could code and test against this new operating system. Visual Studio 2008 installed and ran without any...
When installing apps in a Terminal Server or Citrix environment
When you install an application on a Windows Server running Terminal Services or a Citrix server, the user should go into Add/Remove programs and run the ins...
Facebook does not need a “dislike” button
With just about everything you get to see view in Facebook, there’s usually a button or a link displayed as “like” associated with the topic. If you click t...
Checking to see Microsoft Report Viewer 2008 SP1 has been installed
We are updating the installer for one of our applications and that app now requires the Microsoft Report Viewer 2008 Service Pack 1 to be installed first. T...
If this isn’t the first sign of the apocalypse, nothing is. (Jon & Kate & American Chopper)
A few months back, I posted this as a joke. Now I’m seeing pictures like this floating across the Internet:
Tag your junk mail before it gets sent to you.
Even though we live in the world of tomorrow, we still get junk mail. The old fashioned kind made of out paper and stuff like that. Junk email annoys me, b...
A followup to my post about SC Johnson not manning a customer hotline.
A few days ago, I posted about my experience trying to get a hold of customer support after my dog ate some ant bait. SC Johnson has a contract with a healt...
If you sell poison, I think your customer hotline should be manned 24/7
A couple of weeks ago, we had some unwanted visitors coming in from under the front door. Pavement ants. You know, Tetramorium caespitum. They are tiny an...
Remembering Alivia Lovell
Last October, our company constructed 8 playhouses that were donated to some patients at the Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders at Albany Medica...
Natasha Richardson
I was shocked when I first heard about the tragic accident that took the life of Natasha Richardson. I am finding it hard to accept that a small fall could ...
What to do before your camera is stolen
I just read about a guy in Poland who bought a camera on an on-line auction and it came with a memory card with someone’s travel pictures. He figured that th...
Getting back the Ctrl-N shortcut with SQL Server 2008’s SSMS
After I installed SQL Server 2008, I noticed that the Ctrl-N keyboard shortcut in the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) no longer worked. What it’s suppos...
And the Chess King is gone
2009 Me: And by 1995, the last Chess King had closed it’s doors for good.
Have you had any bizarre IM messages from a person with “coho” in his screen name?
I was moving some Visual Studio projects around when an odd AIM window popped up. It was from someone named “limbercoho” and the message was “Hail, Fellow”....
On this episode of “Jon and Kate and an American Chopper”…
On this episode of “Jon and Kate and an American Chopper”, Kate and Paul Sr have it out over how dirty the OCC office appears to be. Jon struggles to find h...
Resetting the mouse cursor
Some app on my XP development PC left the mouse cursor stuck in the “move” state. The mouse was behaving correctly, but it was stuck in move image, the one ...
Sorry it didn’t work out
My work email inbox had a lot of spam this morning. The messages were very similar in content with subtle variations in the sender and subject fields. Noth...
Dealing with static electricity during winter
Lately I’ve had bad luck plugging in USB devices into my home development PC. I would go to sync up my Zen (or since Christmas, my iPod Touch) and bad things...
What to do when an antivirus vendor has flagged your software as a virus
I usually don’t talk about where I work, this is my personal blog and where I work really doesn’t matter to the content of blog posts. This post is a little...
Renabling maintenance plans on SQL Server 2005
We have a couple of SQL Server boxes that we use in our department and of them has some mission critical databases. Our defect tracking and source control d...
2008
Some odd TiVo issues
I have couple a couple of Series2 TiVo DVRs and they just received the TiVo Fall 2008 Service Update for 9.3.2. It’s basically a few tweaks to the UI, but ...
Fast way to resize a virtual disk with VMware ESX Server
We’re starting some SharePoint development and I needed to create a development environment on Windows Server 2003. So I created a new virtual machine (VM) ...
DevTrack woes with build 1833 of mfc80.dll
We use TechExcel’s DevTrack tool to track our defects and project modifications. A few weeks ago, one of our QA specialists installed SQL Server 2008 Expres...
Installation is not configuration
Christopher Painter has a good post about the problems inherent with with having installers run SQL scripts. Having an installer communicate with a database...
Strange 64-bit error with LayoutKind.Explicit
I have a C# service that collects data from another company that we do business with. They send the data in a binary format from one of their C++ applicatio...
Restoring missing Build Events in Delphi 2007
If you have a Delphi 2007 project that was ported from Delphi 2006, then you may be missing the build event project options. The .dproj file that Delphi 200...
"Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" by Byrne and Eno
David Byrne and Brian Eno have a new album out, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”. It’s available exclusively through their web site, http://www.e...
Old School modeming
The always entertaining DadHacker has a great post on how he used to write code in the old days at 300 baud. When he was in school, he had to submit course...
Refreshing a SOAP WSDL import file with Delphi
I’m consuming a web service from a Delphi desktop app and both the web service and the desktop app are being developed at the same time. Because the WSDL g...
Using the test form from remote connections for .NET web services
I’m working on a web service using C# and targeting the .NET 2.0 Framework. Nothing terribly fancy, but it has some code to log the caller’s IP address (via...
Using Delphi in a team
I was just reading Marshall Fryman’s post about getting Delphi set up in a uniform way in a team or group setting. He’s looking for a tool to manage the 3rd...
Get ready to say good bye to Google Page Creator
When I get some spare time, I plan on revamping the layout of this blog. Right now, it’s an ugly mess of hacks placed in Blogger templates. I want to make ...
Why www.nbc.com wont load with IE7 on Vista (and how to get around it)
My kids wanted to watch the Olympic swimming events going on in Beijing. Since NBC is streaming all the venues, I figures I would just fire up the web brows...
How to log the TIDSmtp component
I have some Delphi code that needs to send a quick mail message so I was using the Indy 10 TIdSmtp component. The code was working just fine for a few month...
How to disable the Windows Shutdown Tracker Dialog
Rick Strahl posted a great tip on how to disable the Windows Shutdown Tracker Dialog. That’s the dialog that Serer 2003 and Server 2008 make you respond to w...
Delphi Win32 gets a TStringBuilder class
The next version of Delphi, code named “Tiburon”, is getting some cool new features. One of these will be the TStringBuilder class and Andreano Lanusse (a C...
How to shoot yourself in the foot with regular expressions
I had some Delphi code that is used a user entered text string as a key. After the user entered in the text, my code would force it to uppercase and strip ou...
Black Crayons and the school psychologist, a true story (just not mine)
I follow Raymond Chen’s blog (required reading if you program for Win32) and the other day he had a link to a story that was both hysterical and scary. My f...
Playing with a new toy, a GPS device
While on vacation in Hyannis, I got annoyed with the one way streets odd layouts so I went out and bought a GPS unit. I had wanted one for a while, and this...
Live from Daryl Hall’s House
I came across an interesting site while looking for something else on Wikipedia….
Bonus TVUG presentation by John Papa
On Tuesday, July 22nd, we will be having a bonus Tech Valley User Group meeting. We usually skip the summer months, but John Papa is going to be in town and...
Handling collation sequences with temporary tables and table variables with SQL Server
When building complex stored procedures that span multiple tables, you will probably need to store some intermediate results in a local buffer and process th...
A nice article about using Custom Attributes in your own code
I was poking around the blogs posts on the Falafel site and I came across a nice concise example by John Waters of how to define and use custom attributes in...
Still time to enter the Darwin Race of Languages
Do you think that hand tweaked C code runs circles around managed code (C#, Java, VB.NET)? Or do you think that your Just In Time compiled managed code gets...
Valleywag: 10 things Twitter users should not do
I got a laugh from Valleywag’s article: 10 things Twitter users should not do. My favorite quote was “Twitter is a heat sink for the unexpressed ego.” If y...
Google is making Ratproxy freely available
Google has just released the source code to one of their internal testing tools. Ratproxy is a web proxy that is designed to scan for and log potential prob...
Where are the Kibos of yesteryear?
To paraphrase an old Yossarian quote, where are the Kibos of yesteryear? The other day I read a question that Jeff Atwood had tweeted about Kibo, a name I h...
It’s not a TiVo, it’s just a DVR
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I see the Cylons found Twitter
Maybe they can fix it? You can get the list of Cylons and associated BSG characters from the Hybrid’s Friends list.
Why I like owning a TiVo
This tip just popped in my email as part of the TiVo Newsletter:
A new user to Delphi reports on his annoyances
Branden Tanga posted a list of annoyances with Delphi on his blog. While there are some legitimate complaints you can make about Delphi (the borked help sys...
Understanding locking issues with multithreaded code
From Joe White’s blog, I came across a link to an interesting article about working with various locking models when writing multithreaded code. It was writ...
Good help (Delphi programmers) is hard to find
I was just reading a post on Bart Roozendaal’s Sevensteps blog titled “Are Delphi programmersa dying breed?”. The title pretty much sums up Bart’s point, it...
I really want a Dalek surveillance cam for my office
I saw this linked to on Boing Boing, a remote control Dalek toy outfitted with a pinhole security camera with wireless transmitter. It will transmit decent q...
Adding SQL Server logins and user accounts for multiple databases in one pass
We have a few applications that include bits that are service applications. These applications talk to SQL Server databases and they authenticate using SQL ...
Sign the "danah boyd proper case" petition
Jeff Atwood is on a righteous crusade against those who insist on using only lower case for their names. He has a petition and he wants you to sign it. It’...
Migrating Delphi versions with DevExpress
I usually run on the latest version of Delphi while the other Delphi developers in our department run a version or two back. I’m the pretty much the sole De...
Proof by lack of evidence
CNET’s Matt Asay wrote an article for CNET’s News.com that was just so bad, it gets the “Epic Fail” tag. You can get the gist of how bad it is by the first ...
Tim Russert, 1950-2008
I was shocked to hear about the passing of Tim Russert. I always enjoyed watching “Meet the Press” and I should have watched it more. I’ve been kicking mys...
Unblocking attachments with Outlook
Today, one of the other programmers needed to send me some odd registry entries that were on his machine. So I asked him to export the registry settings to ...
When chicken bombs are outlawed, only outlaws will have chicken bombs
From the The Hartford Courant:
Backing up your Blogger hosted posts
This blog is hosted on Google’s Blogger platform. It has it’s own domain name, but it’s still on Blogger. While I have faith in our Google Overlords, I sti...
Photrade has updated their license agreement for everyone’s benefit
Yesterday, I posted about a new site called Photrade and it’s license agreement. Basically, section F of their license gave them the permanent right to do a...
Photrade lets you sell your photos online but retains perpetual and royalty-free license to your images
I have updated this post with additional details about how Photrade has revised their license agreement. I also put additional comments in a new post.
Displaying what your TiVo recorded as a blog badge
There have been some people blogging about having what was recorded on TiVo being displayed on their blog. Something like how you have display what you have...
Not a fan of Vibrant Media’s intellitxt popups (and how to get rid of them)
I was reading a blog about pulling an XML feed from my TiVo and I kept being distracted by popup ads over key words in the article. You’ve probably seen the...
One more reason why I’ll never go back to Time Warner Road Runner
Time Warner Cable is implementing metered broad band Internet usage in a few test markets. I switched to FiOS the day it was available and it’s been a posit...
What gives MediaDefender the right to launch a DoS attack against Revision3
I just started reading Molly Wood’s blog and that’s where I first heard about the Denial of Service (DoS) attack that Revision3 suffered from over the Memori...
Brian Peeks new book is already listed on Amazon
Brian Peek (probably the most well known member of our TVUG user group) has a book coming out, “10 Coding4Fun Projects with .NET for Programmers, Hobbyists, ...
Does knowing C make you a better programmer?
Joel and Jeff had a conversation about the merits of knowing how to program in C. Joel’s take was knowing how to program in C makes you a better program. I...
Ack! The Windows Installer does not permit installation from a Remote Desktop Connection
I’m testing a installer that I had migrated from Wise For Windows to InstallAware. I testing the installer from inside a virtual machine. I used do it with V...
IPv6 and Vista
The other day, I read a post that Carl Franklin had made on his blog about a new Vista laptop that he had to buy on short notice. The gist of his post that ...
Checking for the presence of .Net Framework 2.0 SP1
Installware has a lot of built in support for checking for the presence of the various flavors of the .NET Framework. In it’s current incarnation, 7.5, it d...
InstallAware doesn’t automatically remove assemblies from the GAC at uninstall time
I am updating the installer for one of our products to check for the presence of the SP1 version of the .NET 2.0 Framework, when I noticed something odd. Th...
Showing installed app versions with BgInfo
I love it when you can use one cool tool to enhance another cool tool. Duncan Epping posted an English translation of a Arne Fokkema post about how to use B...
Uninstall IE8 Beta before installing XP SP3
If you running the beta version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) under Windows XP, the word is to uninstall IE8 before installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)...
Dealing with the Duplicate Resource: Type 24 when enabling theme support in Delphi 2007
I was writing a little utility in Delphi 2007 to make it easy to work with data stored as the XML data type in SQL Server. While I have been using Delphi 200...
Identity hijacking on Twitter.
The other day, I got an email from Twitter announcing that someone new is following me.
How to rename database objects to comply with naming conventions
We have guidelines for the naming conventions of our database objects. It’s pretty much the common pattern you see all over the place. For example, we use t...
A more robust way of converting a string to an enumerated value (enum)
A while back, I had blogged about a tip that Mark Wagner had posted about converting a string to an enumerated value. Tim Sneath posted a similar tip even e...
Troubleshooting SQL Server connectivity issues
Xinwei Hong (MSFT) wrote a great troubleshooting guide on how to identify and resolve SQL Server connectivity issues on the SQL Protocols blog.
I just installed the PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008
I just installed the PowerCommands 1.1 for Visual Studio 2008. This is a set of extensions to the VS 2008 IDE that provide some additional functionality. T...
My "Windows Feedback" copy of Office 2007 Ultimate just came in
I just received a NFR copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate in the mail. Last December, I signed up for the 2008 Microsoft Windows Feedback Program Sweepst...
How to identify who has a terminal session and how to kill it
Having the ability to use a terminal service (aka Remote Desktop) session to manage a Windows Server (2000, 2003, and 2008) is very useful. If you don’t hav...
System Restore and Vista
After reading the comments posted to my blog entries for USB issues caused by KB938371, I can’t over emphasis how valuable it is to have System Restore enabl...
Dealing with the "Cannot generate SSPI context" error message
One of our sales engineers came up to me with with a problem that I had not come across before. He was getting the error “Cannot generate SSPI context” when...
Looking forward to stackoverflow
Not an actual stack overflow, but the new site, stackoverflow.com, run by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. Their aim is to provide some sort of programming Q&a...
There’s no privacy with infant video monitors
We still have a video baby monitor on our youngest, Laura. She’s 5, but we never got around to taking it down. At bedtime, Laura and her older sister Kathr...
Handy tip for debugging a Windows Service
Debugging a Windows Service is always a pain. You can’t run a service like a regular application, you have to run it from Windows Service Control Manager (SC...
Microsoft admits that KB 938371 kills USB Devices
Various reports on the Intertubes are reporting that Microsoft has acknowledge that last weeks Vista Update, 938371, has been causing “problems” with USB dev...
Know your SQL Server version
There are times where you need to know what version of SQL Server is installed. Usually you want to know which version and which service pack has been appli...
Work around for KB938371 disabling HID-compliant input devices
After a few days of non-working mice, someone found a work around for KB938371. As I noted here and here, Vista Update 938371 disabled two the three mice I h...
KB 938371 woes continue
I still haven’t been able to fix the problem that I reported yesterday. After blogging about how Vista update KB 938371 disabled the mouse on my PC, I have ...
Vista update KB938371 disabled my mouse
Windows Update just pushed down an update, KB938371 on to my main home PC, as a prerequisite for Vista Service Pack 1. After that update was installed and V...
Fun with CoInitialize
I was tracking down a error in one of the command line apps that I use to save web.config settings over upgrades. It was a strange error, If I stepped throu...
Saving application settings over installs
We have been using Windows Installer (WI) based setups for all of our newer applications. I used to use Wise, but I have migrated our installers to InstallA...
Playing with Firefox 3 Beta 4
I’ve pretty much standardized on Firefox as my default browser (but not the default Windows browser). I had been an Opera bigot for years, but the tipping p...
When will the Visual Studio IDE catchup to the Delphi IDE?
Sometimes it just the little things that annoy you. If I add a button to a Delphi form, by default it is named Button1. If I double click on Button1, a Cli...
Miss Bimbo is not welcome in my house
There have been a few articles posted on the Internet about a web site called www.missbimbo.com. It’s supposed to be fashion game for young girls, but it so...
Enabling users with ESX 3.5.0
I’ve been playing admin on our shiny new ESX server and it’s been a struggle trying to get the user accounts configured. I wanted to give our QA staff enoug...
Link rot and the ascendance of Wikipedia
As usual, Steve Tibbets hits the nail directly on the head with his post about link rot and Wikipedia. I would have to say that the domain that I link to th...
Two of my favorite geek toys (PowerShell and VMWare) playing together
I can’t wait to get the VI Toolkit for Windows. It’s PowerShell cmdlets that let you manage VMWare. To get an idea of what you can do with PowerShell and E...
The Lost Art of TSR Programming
Scott Allen had a amusing post, “Talks You Won’t See At the Local Code Camp”, on his blog. One of the talks was “The Lost Art of TSR Programming”. That sh...
I like having a build box
This morning I came across a blog by Landon Dyer called Dadhacker. He got linked by BoingBoing for a entertaining post that he wrote about working on the Do...
Fun with changing the IP address of ESX Server 3.5
We (our IT manager and myself) have been having some fun with out shiny new VMWare ESX 3.5 server. We have had it running for about two weeks now and we dec...
Just when I thought my SmugMug plugin was finished…
After tackling the Wix learning curve, I have an installer for my SmugMug plugin does usual things: check for .NET 2.0, install the files, add the registry k...
I hate spam that comes in under my own name
For the last few weeks, I’ve been getting spam email addressed to my work account with the “from:” field set to my work address. That allows it past our com...
Nvidia nForce network driver problem under Vista
On my home machine, I rarely reboot it. If a software update requires a reboot, then I do it. otherwise it stays running for weeks at a time. Vista (32-bit) ...
Using Wix for my Live Writer Plug-in
I finally have version 1 of my Smugmug gallery plug-in completed. The next step is to do the installer. To get a plug-in up on the Windows Live Gallery, it m...
When the clipboard doesn’t work across Remote Desktop
Every now and then, when I have a remote desktop connection open, the clipboard fails to copy across the sessions. It’s usually the remote to local copy tha...
Copying files with VS 2008’s port-build event under Vista
I’m still working on my SmugMug plugin for Windows Live Writer. I’ve ported it from VS 2005 to VS 2008, that was trivial. I’m at the point where I want to de...
What do you mean my router has a UPnP security hole?
It’s been recently made public that just about every consumer router is a security hole wide open and it’s called UPnP. That stands for Universal Plug and P...
How (and why) to increase the Windows Desktop heap size
Jon Galloway had a posting about issues that he came across when he opened too many tabs in IE7. Apparently the Desktop ran out of heap space and Bad Things...
What’s the deal with this .rbf file?
I was updating the installer to one of our applications and every time I ran it, it wanted to reboot at the end of the install. This installer was installin...
NPR broke the podcasting machinery
I like listening to podcasts on my Zen Vision:M player. The Zen comes with a decent enough podcast tool called Zencast. Zencast has an option to convert au...
Windows Live Writer change from beta to 1.0 that affects plugin development
I’ve been working on a SmugMug plugin for Windows Live Writer on and off for the last few months. The code is nearly complete, some other things came up and...
Zero! In!
While at DevConnections, I ran into a former co-worker, Dave Esposito. Late one evening, we tossing back a few beverages and it turned out that 20+ years ag...
2007
Thoughts on trading the Town & Country for the Odyssey
I was reading Steve Tibbett’s post about trading in his Dodge Caravan for a Toyota RAV4 and I started thinking about the last trade in I did. Back in August...
Citizens Bank Debit card security worries me
A few weeks ago (on December 9th), I was reviewing my Citizens Bank checking account history online when I saw two transactions that didn’t belong to me. Th...
Externally signing Wise Installation System generated executables
I had a problem with applying an Authenticode digital signature to installer that I had created with Wise Installation System 9.02. Basically, it was failin...
Just listened to a great interview with Dan Appleman over on Hanselminutes
That spring, I treated my self to an MP3 player, a Creative Zen Vision:M. Why I picked a ZVM is food for another post, but it’s opened up a new world to me....
How can you give away a eight year old?
I came across a news article about the Dutch couple who gave up their eight year old daughter, who they had adopted as a baby from South Korea. They claimed...
Converting Delphi enumerated values to strings
It’s pretty easy to converted Delphi enumerated types to string and vice versa, but I can never remember the syntax. The good thing about having your own bl...
Little Bobby Tables
Not too long ago, the online comic xkcd ran a strip that just killed me.
I used to use Yahoo…
Steve Trefethen’s posting about Yahoo is pretty dead on. I used to use the various Yahoo apps and services, but I have slowly replaced them with the various...
What happened after I emailed Sears
Earlier today, I posted about what I went through with ordering a vacuum cleaner from Sears.com. My first inclination was to just call the store. But I wa...
How not to handle Black Friday: Sears.com
On Saturday I was vacuuming when I noticed a burning smell coming from the vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t the burning rubber smell you get when the belt gets cau...
Digital versus paper books
Charles Petzold has a good point about the digital versus paper books debate. Digital books are great when you first get them, but how are you going to read...
When memes escape out of the series of tubes
It was only a matter of time before one of the candidates played the Chuck Norris card.
My doppelgänger is preventing me from giving blood
About two weeks ago, I went to give blood for the Red Cross. It had been at least five years since I had last given blood and there was really no excuse for...
Technical Support: Verizon FiOS vs McAfee
It all started this morning when my wife went to check her email. She said that it wasn’t working, so I took a quick look. She uses Thunderbird to check her ...
File sharing with Vista Home without passwords
After having several PC implosions, we now have two new Vista boxes at home. Both have Vista Home Premium installed. I’m used to the relative stability of XP...
Allowing Comments on Blogs
I came across a posting by Dave Winer (via Joel) about blog comments. Dave doesn’t easily allow commenting because he thinks it takes away from message that...
Implementing a sortable TCollection in Delphi
Delphi’s TCollection class is very useful, but out of the box it lacks the ability to sort the items in the list. Fortunately, this is easily addressable ac...
REST vs SOAP
In the weekly newsletter from TheServerSide.NET, there was a link to an article titled “REST versus SOAP – the REST story” by William Brogden. It’s a few mo...
Blast from the past: Forth
I came across a link an online version to Leo Brodie’s Forth tutorial, “Starting Forth” today. I used to have a copy of that book eons ago. I learned how t...
I gots my favicon back
A while back, this blog was updated to the new Blogger and I was the custom icon that was displayed with my blog. And of course, I forgot where I had hosted...
Enabling Database Diagrams in SQL Server 2005
I was working on a spec for a new feature in our flagship application, when I wanted to included some simple database diagrams. I was adding some new schema...
When other people host your data….
You are at the mercy of your hosts when they hold your data. Using an online feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader means that someone else is backing ...
The $51 server.
It’s been 6 months since I installed FreeNAS and it really has been like an appliance. I back up my machine and my wife’s machine with just a few batch file...
User specific connection strings
Steve Harmon has a good tip on how to use ASP.NET 2.0’s configSource to store connection strings in a file outside of the web.config. You keep the user spec...
Shawn is dragged kicking and screaming into the year 2004
Shawn Gwin finally has a real blog. As the president of the Tech Valley .Net Users Group (TVUG), it was about time that he started blogging.
TestDriven.NET and Visual Studio Express
There’s been a lot of blog postings about Jamie Cansdale’s legal issues with Microsoft in the last few days. Jamie has a product called TestDriven.NET that ...
Time to get a new PC
My home PC died last Friday and I’m waiting for it’s replacement to show up. I’ve had the machine for years and it’s been running 24/7, something was bound t...
Is Microsoft Dead?
I was reading Mike Gunderloy’s new blog, A Fresh Cup, and I came across a link to an article titled “Microsoft is Dead”, by Paul Graham. Paul’s view is that...
Jeremy Clarkson does more than laugh at rice
I really wish I could get “Top Gear” here. I can just watch that show for hours. The only way I get to see any episodes is through YouTube. I just came a...
Ed Dague’s blog has a new home
This is old news, but still worth mentioning. Ed Dague’s blog has moved from Blogspot to a new location hosted by the Albany Times Union. If you want to le...
Domain name change
As of today, the address of this blog is now http://anotherlab.rajapet.net/. The old name, http://anotherlab.blogspot.com, still works but you’ll see the ne...
Fun with COM and console Delphi applications
I try to make my setup projects upgradeable in place through Windows Installer. This means that if a previous application has already been installed, the in...
SQL UPDATE from another row in the same table
My SQL skills are getting rusty. I have some code where I needed to quickly copy a field from one row in a table to another row in the same table. Basciall...
Understanding SQL Server error 18456
I came across an odd problem with SQL Server Express. We have a test server with various versions of SQL Server installed for QA to use. Of the QA techs w...
Aero Glass on my ancient GX400
My latest video card arrived this morning and installing it was a much better experience than what I went through with the Diamond card. I have a Dell Optipl...
Fixing Wise Installation System 9 problem with shortcuts in Vista
We were testing one of installers under Vista and the dreaded “User Account Control” dialog was being launched for every shortcut that was created by the ins...
I’m not impressed with Diamond Multimedia support
I have a older PC that I just installed Vista. I want to make sure that our apps place well under that OS and I don’t want Vista as my primary OS just yet. U...
Notes on installing Delphi 2007
I got the email yesterday from CodeGear. It was a link to download the newly released Delphi 2007. I will be getting the DVD from CodeGear as part of the Sof...
John Backus, RIP
*--------------------------------------------------------------* Program BACKUSJW** This program notes the passage of the creater of the* Fortran Language* ...
Why I’m looking forward to "Orcas"
I have stayed away from the Visual Studio betas (I beta test enough stuff already, thank you), but the more I hear about the next version of Visual Studio (c...
Julie Lerman’s coming to town
On Tuesday, Julie Lerman is coming in from Vermont to do a presentation about ADO.NET Orcas at the TVUG meeting. This will be the first meeting held at our ...
Thinking about WAIS, Gopher, and ExecPC
I was reading a post by Brad Abrams, where he was wondering why WAIS and FTP had died out. While I disagreed with the idea that FTP has died out, WAIS is on...
Where is puterSoft.com?
Don’t you hate it when a software component vendor disappears without warning? In some of our applications, we use a custom datetime edit control named TPSC...
FinalBuilder to the rescue (again)
One of our applications has an installer that is created with Wise InstallBuilder 9. The application is built from our shiny buildbox under the control of F...
Windows Home Server goes Beta 2
Windows Home Server has reached Beta 2. Foe those of your playing the home version of “Name That Beta”, Beta 2 means that Microsoft has is now soliciting ex...
I hate Macs
You have to love a good rant…
Yet another rebuild (Part 2)
I’m not installing Opera this time. I’ve been an Opera bigot for a long time, but it’s not going on my primary work PC. I’m using FireFox 2 instead of Oper...
Yet another rebuild (Part 1)
After two and half weeks, I finally got my primary development box back from our IT manager. The delay was due to fun with RAID. After two drive failures w...
A new title for Eliot Spitzer
I dub thee “Governor Steamroller”.
Generating UTF-8 string s with out Byte Order Marks
Rick Strahl has a good blog entry on how get data from XmlTextWriter with having a Byte Order Mark (BOM) at the start of the data. The trick is to create ...
Snap Preview Anywhere is annoying
Lately, I’ve been starting to see idiot popup windows on blogs that should know better. The popups are from “Snap Preview Anywhere™”, a javascript thingie t...
What to install, what to leave out…
I have two machines that I do the brunt of my programming on. One is a P4 1.8 Ghz box, circa 2002 that was my main work horse. Last year I got a Pentium D ...
Blog Tagged
Andy just tagged me. This is the geek version of tag. I share 5 things about myself, then I tag 5 other people. The hard is finding 5 other people who hav...
Removing the Language Toolbar in Windows XP
This was completely copied from here. This was bugging me to no end and I wanted to make sure that I had an easy to find copy.
Ed Dague is more than a floating head
I just came across Ed Dague’s blog. He’s much more than a floating head on a an obscure web site. His comments on local media and politics are both interesti...
Sybase has left the building
We dropped support for Sybase’s Adaptive Server Anywhere, effective 12/31/06. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the right choice for us.
2006
TiVo now placing ads on the delete screen
I finally saw TiVo‘s new advertising placements on the “Delete this recording?” screen. It was a one line blurb for Burger King that you could click into via...
Sometimes there is a free lunch
I had a nice little surprise in my email yesterday. It was a gift certificate from VSoft Technologies for a one free license for Automise. Evidently I recei...
Why doesn’t {$REGION} work above the interface?
Our Delphi code has some standard header comments at the top of the unit. It has some information about the unit and who created it, and the purpose of that...
The Terra Cotta Army: 1000 Chinese statues + 1 German art student
This story off of the AP wire I found greatly amusing. A 26 year old art student named Pablo Wendel joined the Terra Cotta warriors in Xi’an. His home made c...
Where is "Step Into" on my Visual Studio 2005 Debug menu?
I was debugging some code in VS 2005 when I noticed that I could no longer find “Step Into” on the debug menu. I was already used to the keyboard short cut ...
Surfing with Takeshi Terauchi and the Bunnys
While skimming Boing Boing, I came across a link to some MP3s by Takeshi Terauchi. These files come courtesy of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Takeshi Terauchi ...
THIS IS YOUR REPLACEMENT TAG
I’m on my third E-ZPass tag. The battery in the first one died after about 5 years. I have had the second one for another 5 years. This time, the E-ZPass ...
Why you wont see Linux on Corporate America’s desktops just yet
I came across this blog post by Robert Scoble while checking something for a GPS data collector that I writing, it has a useful data point to file in the bac...
Project Bluemoon
Dave Zatz uploaded to YouTube a file that’s relatively hidden on TiVo’s web site which details the mysterious orgins of the TiVo device. Tune and watch “Pro...
TiVo Series 3: Looks cool, pretty costly
I’ve been drooling over reading the various articles and blog postings over the soon to be released TiVo Series 3.
Diagnostic mode for Ipod Shuffle
Shuffle Lights
I just took a MSDart to the head and I don’t feel so well right now.
One of clients went to run some of our applications on their Windows Server 2003 SP1 box and it wasn’t very pretty. They got the error message:
Leave that thread priority alone
During initial e-Link web service development, I played around with lowering the priority of a background processing thread. It didn’t need to run in real t...
Stream reading in C#
I was banging my head against the wall with an odd stream reading problem. I was making a web service call as straight http, no SOAP, when I hit a snag read...
Vista performance (or lack of)
I just installed the Beta 2 of Vista on one of my dev boxes. It used to be my primary development box until I got a bright shiny new one last year. About t...
Back from vacation
After a couple of weeks of vacation, I came back to the office to find my old development book DOA. It was worse than a Blue Screen, it was a black screen w...
Dates are not numbers
One of the other developers that I work with had a question about inserting some date values into a SQL Server database. The code in question is doing a bat...
Hidden gotcha in FreeAndNil()
Time to go memory leak hunting in my service. I’m using AutomatedQA‘s AQTime 4, a really cool tool. I’ve used it’s profiling features in the past, but not th...
Poor man’s guide to memory usage tracking
I have a service and I need to make sure that it doesn’t have a memory leak after running for a sustained length of time. I’m doing all the good stuff in co...
SQL Server WHERE clause tip (not needed for SQL Server 2005)
One of my services logs every request to a private log table. That table mainly a diagnostic tool to provide some crude performance benchmarks. It’s not desi...
Migrating to Delphi 2006
I’ve been working on migrating our Delphi 5 code to Delphi 2006. For the most part it’s been pretty straight forward, the fun part has been dealing with the...
Following Could Have Been Coming From
The following could have been coming from my desk (but didn’t)
I don’t care about RocketBoom
I have seen too many blog postings about Amanda Congdon leaving the RocketBoom vlog. There’s a he said/she said thing going on between her and the other owne...
What do the following have in common?
What do the following have in common?
Tomato funeral
I saw a reference to “tomato funeral” on a .Net developer’s blog. I had to click through the link and ended up somewhere deep in the bowels of Wil Wheaton’s...
Fun with scripted load tests
We are getting ready to do some load tests and it’s time to pick some tools. The app that we want to test is a client/server app with buckets of processing ...
Self installing services in .NET
I have some service applications that I deploy with Wise for Windows. These particular services are .NET assemblies. The usual way of registering the .NET as...
Leaky Abstractions in Wise for Windows
I had just reported a bug with the Wise for Windows Installer (it can’t call the Install method on a service compiled under the .NET Framework 2.0) and I che...
Samsung bans its own product
Samsung has a cell phone with a 8gb hard drive (form musinc playing) and they have banned it from their own premises. They don’t allow portable memory device...
Visual Studio .NET 2005 Keyboard Shortcuts
Jeff Atwood has a great list of keyboard shortcuts for Visual Studio 2005.
Rants against the machine: Are stored procedures inherently evil?
Jeremy MIller has a good rant against the use of stored procedures. He thinks prefers to keep his code in the application and use T-SQL sparingly. HIs view i...
DIY Mosquite Trap
Here’s a home made misquito trap. The translated instructions can be read here.
Delphi 2006 quirks
As I move over to Delphi 2006, I came across an odd new behavior. In Delphi 7 and prior versions, it was very easy to view/edit the project (*.dpr) file. U...
Using Cache in Your WinForms Applications
Here’s a decent article about using ASP.NET cache (System.Web.Caching.Cache) in WinForms applications (or services). This would be handy in service applicat...
Playing with Firefox again
As much as I am an Opera bigot, I still roll out Firefox from time to time. This is one of those times. There are enough web sites that still do not work wit...
Tao of the Windows Installer
There are some really good Windows Installer guidelines up on the Windows Installer Team Blog. Part 1 went up yesterday and Part 2 went up today. Most the ...
Spring cleaning
While cleaning out the home office (E-Bay, here I come), I came across a souvenir from Hong Kong. It’s a shopping bag from Watsons, I have held on to it for ...
Tivo, one year later
It’s been a year since we started using Tivo and I wouldn’t want to watch TV without it. It’s more than the time-shifting of hour favorite shows (but that pa...
Demoed FinalBuilder at TVUG
Last month I demoed FinalBuilder at TVUG. That was an interesting experience. I have managed to spend my entire career without having to do a public presenta...
Enhanced version of sp_who
I often use sp_who and sp_who2 to see who is connected to what on our development database server. When we need to restore a database, I need to make sure no...
My web application is running at 98% of the CPU
We are in the middle of testing a new web application and we have 7 instances of it running on 2003 Server box. Each instance has a web page virtual director...
When to use cursors
This is cool <a href=”http://anotherlab.rajapet.net/” http: title=”Running sums, redux”>article</a> that describes a good reason for using cursor...
Get just the date from a SQL Server datetime column
This should be faster than the other way ( converting it to a varchar and lopping off the time part).
Mini-primer on handling exceptions in .NET
There’s a lot of good technique in a short article. I wont repeat it all here, just a taste…
Preventing Automatic Update from rebooting your machine
Here’s how to prevent Automatic Update from rebooting your machine: </p> Start -> Run Type: gpedit.msc Expand Local Computer P...
How to drum up consulting business
This is an interesting article about a guy who jump started his own consulting company in a new town. It’s all about the networking.
This should be against the law…
Ooga chaka
FireFox myths
There’s an interest web page called “Firefox Myths” that takes some of the more common claims associated with Firefox (it’s faster, it’s more secure, it’s a ...
Is soap.tcp with WSE a singleton?
Ok, the title of this post is pure jargon, but it fits. This WSE 3 thing is still new to me and I’m still trying to grok some of the finer details. The abili...
Viewing local XML files with IE without that idiot warning
To take a quick peek at an XML file, Internet Explorer is what I usually use. It knows how to properly format the display and allows you to close and open th...
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Jeff Atwood has a good rant about people asking for web sites that scale to devices like PDA’s or crackberry’s. He takes the view that it would be nice if e...
How expensive are .NET exceptions?
With .NET, I keep hearing “Don’t use exceptions, they’re expensive” and I have always wondering how true it was. I’ve been in the camp of using exceptions w...
Repaving an XP box
I’m getting ready to help repave a family member’s PC (Windows XP). Too many questionable things have been installed and some nasty thing is blocking https p...
History of the C family of languages
Billy Hollis has a funny history of the C language. If you have been in the business for more than 10 years, you’ll appreciate it even more.
Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook
Tragically, I live inside Outlook 2003. Anything that makes it faster for me to use, I’ll take. LifeHacker has some good stuff….
Testing to see if your mail server allows relaying
Ryan Farley has a good artcle on checking to see if your SMTP server allows relaying.
Fun with 802.11
I’m constantly fiddling with my home wireless setup. It’s probably because I’m easily amused. I have a Linksys WRT54GS (version 2.0 if you know what I mean).
Paged recordsets from SQL Server for web pages
I’ve worked on a few web apps where I displayed a paged list of data, but without storing all of the rows in the view state or as a session variable. I prefe...
Argh! Now I have to keep track of Remote Desktop
Raymond Chen has a great article that explains why your program may look different under a Remote Desktop or Terminal Services session. If you do double buff...
2005
How to replace a installed buggy .MSI file with a fixed one.
Aaron listed a couple of ways of removing a buggy .msi file that was installed, but would not uninstall. This is why I test all of my .msi files with VMWare....
Prototype vs. Atlas
I came across an interesting blog posting about the Prototype Javascript package and how it compares with Atlas. It boils down to they try to do similiar thi...
Great, now they are targetting VMWare
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2000 A vulnerability has been discovered in vmnat.exe on Windows hosts and vmnet-natd on L...
The joy of editing the Mac OS X hosts file
I have a G4 iMac on my desk. You know, one of the ones that looks like a desk lamp. It competes for space with my two XP boxes. I do my development under XP,...
Jon Galloway Has Quick Consise Post On
Jon Galloway has a quick, consise post on how to restore a SQL Server 2000 database from a backup. I have all of this encoded, plus a something things, in To...
I I Started Out With Linksys Usb
I’m in the market for a new 802.11g adapter for my wife’s PC. I started out with a Linksys USB adapter, but it gets horrible reception. I ended up taking on...
Adding "Install as…" to context menu
This comes from Michael Willers, by way of Dana Epp. This makes it easier to install .msi packages when logged in as a non-admin use. Too many home PC’s are ...
Disabling the VMWare network adapters
When you are not running a VMWare session, you may want to disable the VMware virtual network adapters. I have found that they can slow down network operatio...
Exceptions and Threads
Scott Allen has a good post about a difference in how unhandled exceptions are dealt with in .NET 2 from how they were handled in 1.1 In 1.1, if a thread has...
Saving and restoring a forms location on
Raghavendra Prabhu has the start of some code to save/restore a form’s position. This requires the Application Settings feature in 2.0, so this is mostly th...
Multiple remote connections to XP SP2
So I can find it later:Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows XP SP2
I love nerd humor
This was from a Saatchi & Saatchi ad campaign. You don’t often see CMYK humor.
"This is worse than a Star Trek convention."
That was a comment posted on a Gothamist blog entry about making fake MTA posters. The designer types are arguing over fonts typefaces. It’s very much like t...
Set the wayback machine to late 1980’s
SteveX posted some tidbits about his work on VirusX, a virus checker for the Amiga. I get Lattice flashbacks whenever he does that.
Cool site for sysadmins
I just came across adminfoo.net, a site with resources for system administrators for Linux, Windows, and Mac. It’s got a lot of cool stuff.
VMware-authd.exe slowing down my PC
I was doing some work on one of my PC’s and I had the processes list open in Task Manager. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that one process, VMware-au...
Keytools
Today our main app’s help system broke. I hate that when it happens. This app is built with Delphi, which supports WinHelp (*.hlp) files for context sensit...
Delphi Interview Questions
Nick Hodges posted a list of interview questions for Delphi programmers. While I usually like his posts, I didn’t agree with this one. I’ve been using Delphi...
Free icon sets from IconBuffet
Thanks to a tip posted on Forevergeek.com, I came across a site that offers free commercial quality icon sets. IconBuffet.com sells a wide variety of icon s...
From the Department of People with way too much time on their hands…
It’s just an animated GIF, but it’s mesmerizing.
Scott Allen list of ASP 1 to ASP 2 resources
I grabbed this from Scott Allen’s blog. I will probably need it sooner than later….
How to pre-populate assemblies to the Add References dialog in Visual Studio 2005
This one is good to keep track of when working in a team enviroment where everyone uses their own folder structures.
Installing SQL Server Express
There’s a good article on MSDN for controlling the installation of SQL Server Express. If you are bundling Express with your application, you may want to han...
Counterstrings
I was reading some of the older postings in James Bach’s excellent blog, Training the minds of testers, when I found a little gem called “counterstrings”.
Fun with the MSDE: installing
Dana Epp has posted a request for information about the MSDE on his blog. He wants to install an app that that requires a named instance of the MSDE and want...
RE:How to determine if the current user is an administrator
This is pretty cool. A lot of the stuff that I write is low level admin type of utilities. As my coding meter moves further away from the Win32 Delphi to C#,...
Why you wont find C# example code for writing Shell Extension handlers
Jesse Kaplan posted the following (thanks to Junfeng Zhang)
Interesting scientific study about font usage on web pages.
Jeff Atwood posted a cool article from Wichita State about font legibility. Serif mono-spaced fonts were the worst (sorry Courier) and Tahoma did the best.
Client vs Developer
Client vs Developer wars. This is stuff isn’t directly applicable to our development patterns, but it has some useful information.
Grimmy weighs in on blogs
It’s subtle, but I like it. If I was ever to write a blog posting tool, the icon for posting the entry would look like the first panel in that strip. If you ...
That Pesky Sql Server Express
That pesky SQL Server Express. I’m going to have to support it, it’s time to start collecting tips from the veterans….
New tool bar icons for VS 2005
I’m putting this here to I’ll remember where the bits are
File this one under "Huh?"
Rick Moranis has a Country Album. I’m having trouble picturing The Keymaster singing honky tonk, but that’s just me.
Building ASP.NET 2 projects
On K. Scott Allen’s blog, you can find a really good description of how the build process for ASP.NET projects has changed from 1.0/1.1 to 2.0.
Test drive of writely.com
This message was entered with writely.com, a web based document collaboration tool. I usually enter my blog entries with w.bloggar, but I’m game to ...
A suggestion for "Just Think of Canada as 11 More States"
Steve’s has a bone to pick with us.
Allen Bauer Has Cool Post On Reporting
Allen Bauer has a cool post on reporting bugs and the common sense etiquette that should be used.
RE: A better BackgroundWorker : CancelImmediately and other goodies
Hmm, I can use this for a service testing application that I’m working on…
Another way of deleting data in chunks
I’m bloggin this because I’ll need it in a few weeks….
Who Was Microsoft Kidding When They
Who was Microsoft kidding when they promised to end “DLL Hell”? The long dark night of the SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio .NET 2005 beta produced a series of ...
See What Services Are Associated with a Process?
There’s a cool tip on the tech-recipes site to show how to see what services are being run under each instance of svchost.exe. From a command line run the fo...
Bender, Smender. I want Robbie!
Forbidden Planet has always been one of my favorite movies. As a kid, I always wanted my very own “Robbie the Robot”. If I start playing the lottery, I can ...
More news on Sony’s rootkit
The story of Sony’s rootkit continues to live on. After Mark Russinovich first documented his analysis of the rootkit installed by content protected Sony aud...
The arrival of Delphi Man and Doctor Deadline
</p> </p> </td> After coming back to Cu...
China’s Little Green Book
Thomas Friedman had an interesting column today. It’s titled “China’a Little Green Book” and he talks about how the growing conservation movement in China. C...
Sony now installs a flawed rootkit
This is lovely. Sony is now putting a rootkit installer on their Music CD’s. Mark Russinovich discovered a root kit on his machine while testing a rootkit de...
Debugging services
Simon Carter has a tip on debugging services. It boils down to calling the Windows Sleep API in your service constructor code. This gives your debugger enoug...
10 Free .NET Development Tools
Here’s a good list of free and valuable .NET development tools. [via The Daily Grind]
Voices of reason in a sea of hype
I am so tired of the term “Web 2.0”. When ever I see that that term bandied about, I get a mental flashback to an old Verizon commercial where a consultant i...
RE: Yet another command line parsing system
This looks like a logical way to handle command line parameters while still following convention of using an app.config file.
RE: //TODONT: Use a Windows Service just to run a scheduled process
I made this mistake once. But I feel much better now thank you.
Fun with BCP
Here’s a quick and dirty way to export a table to a text file with SQL Server. With some minor tweaking, it should also work for views and stored procedures ...
Whither DAAB?
If you were looking for a reason to dump DAAB, it looks like the good parts have already been folded into ADO.NET 2.0.
How much is your blog worth?
In my case diddly squat….
A blast from the past
Back in the Amiga days, SteveX was a name every programmer knew from his VirusX, ScreenX, PointerX applications. These days, he’s in the .NET world and has a...
Quick lesson on how to strip text out using RexEx
There’s just something about RegEx that makes my ears bleed. Fortunately other people get it. Here’s an example of how to filter text out of an expression, c...
New device detected: Boeing 747
I would have loved to have seen that ono pop up on the scrren.
Deleting lots of data in batches
The fun part is in the “where…” bit, knowing how to set your query to only get a portion of the data is heavy lifting here. I know where I’m going to be usin...
Regular Expression Tools
I’m still at the point where I can use stuff like **^\d{3}[- ]?\d{2}[- ]?\d{4}$** and not fully understand the pieces. So i’m alwa...
RE: Another Blast of Cold Water in the face – "The Build Master" by Vincent Maraia
Bill lists a couple of good references for doing the build the right way. I want these two books.
PRANGSTGRÜP
I had tears coming out of my eyes when I played this.
Internet Health Report
If you think that the Internets are running slow, click this link. What you will see is a chart of the Internet backbone providers and the relative speed tha...
RE: SqlDependency changes for RTM [Sushil Chordia]
I want to play with this feature. I have implemented something with similiar functionality using UDP in an extended stored procedure, but this looks much sim...
Just say no to CLR UDTs
Alex Papadimoulis is pretty adamant about not using CLR UDTs in SQL Server 2005.
Spam weasels
I finally got a spam comment. In fact, it was from another Blogger user. That’s in violation of the Blogger TOS, so forwarded his infomation to the Blogger p...
Nine reasons not to use serialization
There’s a good article on The Code Project that explains why you shouldn’t use serialization to store data. The root problem is that the information that get...
RE:Oldest noodles unearthed in China
Paleolithic dorm food discovered: The remains of the world’s oldest noodles have been unearthed in China. The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a p...
RE: October 12, 2005
As usual, Joel nails this one…
RE: Why do login dialogs have a "User" field?
I like Jeff Atwood’s blog, but I don’t agree with his posting about removing the “User” field from the dialog box. If you pull the user out of the user/passw...
RE: Performance Analysis Tools from Microsoft (Free)
You can never have enough tracing tools…..
RE: If All Movies Ever Made Were Really About Software…
_A Few Good Objects _ Col. Jessup: You want destructors? Kaffe: I think I’m entitled. Col. Jessup: You want destructors? Kaffe: I want deterministic final...
Writing sensible email messages
Writing short and to the point messages has become a somewhat lost art. At 43 Folders, there’s a good article how how to get your message across as briefly a...
RE: Stupid Registry Tricks
Jeff Atwood has a good set of registry tweaks to provide added functionality to Windows.
Converting a vintage cassette recorder into an external Hard Drive
This is a clever little hack. Some guy gutted an old cassette player and made an external USB drive enclosure out of it.
RE: The Pod Replaces Tripods (And has Nothing to do with iPod, Thank God)
This looks cool. I usually keep a mini tripod in my camera bag, but the Pod may work in places where the mini tripod wouldn’t be stable
Updating BrowserCaps to support "down level" browsers
One of my favorite features in ASP.Net is how pages are rendered in other browsers. It seems that ASP.Net thinks that there are two kinds of browsers in the ...
10 Things You Shouldn’t Do with SQL Server
I’ve seen and written too much stuff that violates these rules. Click the link after “Via” for the full article…
RE: Dynamic Behavior with the Decorator Pattern
Here’s great example of how to use the Decorator pattern in C#….
When the going gets tough, the tough fire up the generator.
Just about everyone on the planet knows what Katrina did. And most of us know that New Orleans has been all but abandoned. But not everyone left. DirectNIC, ...
RE: Disabling Windows Authentication in Visual Studio 2005’s built-in ASP.NET server
File this one away…
RE: Thread-safe Format
Oh, the joy of writing multiple threaded applications. I like this little tip that will keep string formatting calls from stepping over each other.
RE: Strings are immutable
Sahil has a good post that explains why you should use StringBuilder to concatenate strings instead of just doing “string a” + “string b”
RE: Great List of Free Windows Software
I’ve always wanted to maintain one of these, but don’t have the time… this one looks great though. http://shsc.info/UsefulWindowsSoftware
String formatting in C#
Here’s a handy link to formatting strings in C#, courtesy of Steve Tibbett’s blog.
Delphi Basics
Here’s a cool site that has a lot of reference information for Delphi.
And now, a word from Phil…
If you want a refreshing take on the current state of Google, Microsoft, Flikr, and of course, Open Source, you have to read this rant from causticTech.
RE: Import/Export to Excel
Every now and then, I need to send stuff from SQL to Excel….
I’ve been looking for a way to hack Google Earth
Google Earth is cool. They took an excellent product called Keyhole and bought the company last year. The first resulsts of that were the satelite image deta...
RE: Skype and Port 80
Here’s a good tip to remember if you are using Skype and doing web developement…
Eric’s Advice For First-Time Technical Presenters
Eric Lippert has posted some really good advice for doing presentations in front of a large audience.
Keyboard Shortcuts in a Remote Desktop Session
From the Windows XP Resource Kit
RE: The Observer Pattern
Dave Burke has a pretty good description of how to use the Observer pattern. I’ll skip into the gory details, you find that on the link to his article. It de...
Free advice from a lawyer
Handy advice from a lawyer who writes from his own experience, a passalong email.
RE: Speed Surfer? Get a ‘Local’ Homepage
This is a clever idea, I think I’m going to do this on the home PC’s. I’ll add links to email and of course, Amazon. I’m always curious about the status of t...
The soda blew out of nose while reading this…
Wil Wheaton answers questions submitted from Slashdot
The Polaroid-o-nizer™
The picture to left is a snapshot of the girls after it’s been run through the Polaroid-o-nizer™. This is a free site that will take an online image (you ca...
www.dumpsterworld.com
“Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource.”
WSE SOAP tracing
This looks cool, a “WSE tracing tool written in WSE. I’m not sure if I would ever use it, I like using Etheral because it’s not limited to SOAP or WSE. I wou...
King King Trailer online
Over the weekend, my Tivo suggested that I record the trailer for King Kong. Being easily persuaded by cheeky gadgets, I let it record it. Come on, it’s got ...
Lemmings in DHTML
They’re back! Just when you thought the 80’s were finally over, somebody has ported Lemmings to the browser.
Uncrippling Windows XP’s IIS 5.1
Testing an ASP.NET application on an XP box can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes (Ok, most of the time). It’s version of IIS is the idiot brother of the ...
RE: Special Directories in ASP.NET 2.0
Here are some interesting tidbits about ASP.NET 2.0….
RE: Why is the DOS path character "\"?
It all stems from Microsoft’s relationship with IBM. For DOS 1.0, DOS only supported floppy disks. Many of the DOS utilities (except for command.com)...
Scott Hanselman’s 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List
Scott Hanselman has put together an extensive collection of programmer tools in one list. As I move deeper and deeper into the .NET world, this kind o’ stuff...
Autoruns, a must have utility
One of the best sources of free Windows system utilities is Sysinternals. Their Autoruns utility shows everything that gets auto-started when you machine boo...
Why I use Delphi
Because it’s so easy to get under the hood and make the UI work the way you want it to. Here’s a tip from Deepak Shenoy on how to set the default button for ...
Upsert
I must have been sleeping under a rock, but when did “Upsert” become a word? It refers to the combination of insert and update statements for a RDBMS. What i...
How to pick a lock with a common house hold hard drive
I came across an article on how to make a lock picker by hacking a hard drive and a mouse. MacGyver would be proud. As available in Spanish!
55 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena
This was pretty interesting. The most extreme one to me was the Rapid coloured afterimage.
Slip ‘N’ Slide
It was pretty hot Sunday afternoon. While Laura was napping, Kathryn and I went down to ToysRUs and pciked up some backyard toys. We grabbed a Wham-O Slip ‘N...
Hot .Net Tip: This will save you a lot of time
Hot .Net Tip: This will save you a lot of time Here’s a quick tip for adding the “View code” and “View designer” buttons to the main toolbar. That way, they...
Causes of Colors – Why are things colored?
Causes of Colors – Why are things colored?
Coding Horror: Recursive Page.FindControl
Coding Horror: Recursive Page.FindControl
.NET Framework Developer Center: New Recommendations for Using Strings in .NET 2.0
.NET Framework Developer Center: New Recommendations for Using Strings in .NET 2.0
Preview copies of "Programming the .Net Compact Framework"
The authors of “Programming the .Net Compact Framework” have put the draft copies of their books (C# and VB.NET flavors) up for review as PDF downloads. You ...
MooreIsLess’s Law
MooreIsLess’s Law. Which, given Moore’s Law, holds that the time taken to boot a Microsoft Operating System is constant.
Event Log RSS Feed Generator
This looks like a cool project. It’s an ASP.NET 1.1 project that allows you to access the event logs from a system as a RSS feed. I usually make good use of ...
More fun with threading
Here’s an interesting post from benwu. After executing Thread1 and Thread2, what are the possible values for “i”?
In New York, no one can hear you scream
Alien Loves Predator by Bernie Hou just kills me. It takes a sureal pup to take two of cinema’s biggest Sci-Fi villians and and have them share a NYC appartm...
Hosted source control
Hosted source control
Geek Joke
Geek Joke
The Human Journey
The National Geographic Society has running a project called the “Genographic Project” that is traces the geographic roots of our ancestors. By tracing DNA m...
The Poor Man’s Steadicam
Here’s a cool article on how to build your own SteadyCam for about $14 in common objects. I would build one, but I think I would feel a little wierd using on...
.NET Tools: Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now — MSDN Magazine, July 2004
.NET Tools: Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now — MSDN Magazine, July 2004
Charles Manson explains static routing
And now a few words from Charles Manson on floating static routes…
15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away) – Tim Yang’s Geek Blog
15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away) – Tim Yang’s Geek Blog
IT cheat sheets for all
IT cheat sheets for all
One Albany Aqua Ducks Entering Into
One the Albany Aqua Ducks entering into the Hudson river. Anne’s 3rd grade class got to go on a free field trip on one of the Albany Aqua Ducks. I tagged al...
A letter to Doctor Laura… (plasticbag.org)
Tom Coates’s letter to Doctor Laura is the best response that I have seen to people who declare that homosexual behavior is described as an abomination in th...
The world’s funniest joke?
Scotsman.com News – Funniest jokes – The world’s funniest joke?
Mom, you can take that box of baking soda out of the fridge
Baking Soda and Odors
How Photoshop and copiers detect currency
Tinotopia: Counterfeiting, Adobe Photoshop, Copyright, and the Future – Part I
DUI – Dialing under the influence
Virgin Mobile Australia adds 333 prefix to prevent drunk dialing.
"In space, no one can hear you scream."
“In space, no one can hear you scream.”
‘Alcohol makes your brain grow
[BBC NEWS Health ‘Alcohol makes your brain grow’](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4496727.stm)
Total Illusions – The Forums -> Dangerous Hacker!
Total Illusions – The Forums -> Dangerous Hacker!
RSS and Atom
This blog offers newsreader syndication using Atom. There’s a button labeled “ATOM MYBLOG” on this page that provides the contents in XML format using the At...
The Ten Rules of Performance
The Ten Rules of Performance
The Code Project – Complete Comparison for VB.NET and C# – .NET
The Code Project – Complete Comparison for VB.NET and C# – .NET
Cliff Yablonski hates you
my name is Cliff Yablonski. I have never met you before, but I hate you regardless. if I met you in public, I’d still hate you. I probably wouldn’t hate y...
Everyone has a blog now.
Everyone has a blog now.
What’s wrong with large values of zero?
We are about to roll out an update to one of our applications and we made some schema changes to the database. A couple of floating point fields were changed...
…and now a random fact about Vin Diesel:
It takes 14 puppeteers to make Vin Diesel smile, but only 2 to make him destroy an orphanage.
Free AJAX library for the Microsoft .NET Framework
There looks like there is a freeware AJAX library for .NET 1.1. I know this stuff will be in ASP.NET 2.0, but that’s not out yet and this one is.
How to handle unhandled exceptions in Windows Forms
How to handle unhandled exceptions in Windows Forms
Eric Gunnerson’s C# Compendium : Visual Studio Debugging Slowness – Solved
Eric Gunnerson’s C# Compendium : Visual Studio Debugging Slowness – Solved It looks like if you have an invalid directory in the “debug source files” list, ...
Performance of Nullable types
I saw a interesting post by David Kean about the performance of the nullable types in .NET 2.0. The new int? type is about 50% slower than int and the bool? ...
Is the handwriting on the wall for Delphi .Net?
I just saw that Xavier Pacheco will not be writing a Delphi 2005 Developer’s Guide. His reasons were logical:
HOW TO: Download, Install, and Remove the IIS MetaEdit 2.2 Utility
HOW TO: Download, Install, and Remove the IIS MetaEdit 2.2 Utility
Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia
Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia
The Old New Thing : The Itanium’s so-called stack
The Old New Thing : The Itanium’s so-called stack: You have to love any sentence that begins with “If the processor runs out of squirrel-space…” I have been ...
Download details: Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
Download details: Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool: “This tool checks your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including...
Download details: Log Parser 2.2
Download details: Log Parser 2.2
Hit me with your rhythm stick
__ In the deserts of Sudan and the gardens of Japan, From Milan to Yucatan, ev’ry woman, ev’ry man. Hit me your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me Je t’adore, ich...
Query Analyzer Tips and Tricks
Query Analyzer Tips and Tricks
Bug Details: Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow with Int32.
Bug Details: Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow with Int32.
Acrobat Reader 7 phoning home
Remote Approach is a company that has designed a way to track PDF files using Javascript. Each time a person reads these special designed PDF files, a connec...
Why did the multithreaded chicken cross the road?
A. to To other side. get the
Build numbers
I can never figure out the naming scheme for version numbers. Is it Major, Minor, Build, Release? Or is it Major, Minor, Release, Build? Borland calls the la...
PRB: Access Denied Error When You Make Code Modifications with Index Services Running
PRB: Access Denied Error When You Make Code Modifications with Index Services Running
Convert a string to an enumerated (enum) value.
Another cool tip from Mark Wagner: Convert a string to an enumerated (enum) value.
String Date Validator
String Date Validator
SqlDataReader performance tips
SqlDataReader performance tips
FBI show how to crack a WLAN in 3 minutes.
At a recent ISSA meeting, a team of FBI agents demonstated how to crack the 128 bit WEP encryption used by wireless routers. They used freely available tools...
Download details: Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager (Standard)
Download details: Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager (Standard)
Bookpool: Discount Computer Books.
I saw a mention of Bookpool.com on Roman Rehak’s blog. It looks like it’s a bit cheaper than Amazon, always good to have an alternative.
DoubleListBox – NinthArray
I just starting playing with this and it’s pretty cool. This is a ASP.NET version of a dual list control, great for selecting a list of things from another l...
PodGuides
“What’s a PodGuide?. A PodGuide is a very simple thing. It’s the combination of a map (PDF) of a certain place and a series of audio tracks (mp3) which you c...
Odd Windows sounds mashup
Here’s an odd one From Adam Curry’s blog
A clickable map of SQL Server 2000 system tables
I like cool SQL Server toys and here’s something I saw posted on Roman Rehak’s blog, a .chm file of the SQL Server 2000 System tables. It’s a clickable map, ...
Shenoy At Work: SOAP bug fix: changes to request don’t get recorded.
This guy is on my required reading list. If you are doing any SOAP work with Delphi, Deepak’s blog is a great resource. Today he blogged about a bug in Delph...
What’s on your USB?
As one of the duties that come with being the computer geek in the family, I get asked to check out the pc’s of friends and family. I usually bring a CD load...
Sharing the Hintpath with multiple programmers
At work we are going from being a Delphi-centric shop, to a Delphi and .NET shop. To say that has been a bit of a learning curve going from Delphi to C#. Jus...
My first entry
Here’s my blog. More to come later…