Archives

Archives / 2006 / May

  • No more codeplex for me...

    2 Comments

    I tried the forgot my password option and codeplex sent me the email with the link to reset my password. I clicked it and went to the page that let me specify a new password. When I submitted the form it took a long time and eventually just died with no response. (Just aborted the connection, Fiddler showed that it didnt respond with any data.). Now my account is locked out. I sent the codeplex guys an email via the contact us link about a week ago and still havnt recieved a reply. I guess I have to create a whole new login with a different email address if I want to continue trying codeplex.

    Has anyone else been able to successfully use the forgot my password option?

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  • Windows Vista Photo Gallery frustrations

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    I have about 20gig of digital photos. And I'm constantly adding more pictures from my Canon Digital Rebel. I am really looking forward to the Windows Photo Gallery app in Vista. I just installed Vista beta2 and the app seems to run really well.

    I have one big complaint though. The photo import for digital cameras. Why do all the photo apps insist on using the "film roll" metaphor? They all seem to want to organize the filesystem storage based on the date that you import them into the photo app. This is my biggest complaint about iPhoto as well so I'm not just picking on MS. ALL digicams these days stamp the date and time of the picture in the EXIF data. Why cant we use this data for naming the folders and files? Windows Photo Gallery can use this data but in a VERY limited way. I have all my photos organized like this on the file system:

    My Pictures\2006\May\2006-05-01 12-05-37_1.jpg
    or
    My Pictures\Year\Month\YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS_#.jpg
    This makes it very easy to make backups of the photos because they are organized by the date and time they were taken. In the age of 1-8Gig flash cards you can take alot of pictures before importing them so the date that you get around to loading them onto the computer really has little or no meaning. This system works really well when you have tons of photos. I'll use tagging features of photo apps to organize by event types and such. I can use photo gallery to tag the pictures as "birthday" and such. But when it comes to the filesystem structure I need more control!

    It's worth noting that no photo manager out there really supports photo renaming and filesystem organizing very well. This is why I have to use Downloader Pro today.

    I really hope MS gives me more options for naming the folders and files during the photo import process. If its too hard for the grandmas to use just bury it in an advanced dialog or something I dont care. As long as I can  get the filesystem structure above I'll be happy as a clam.

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  • Good writeup on CodePlex and Team Explorer

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    bsimser has a good writeup on CodePlex and Team Explorer here.

    It would seem that Team Explorer still works with any TFS. I'm still in shock that MS actually did this. Now I just have to get everything set up and give it a spin.

    bsimser says that the Team Explorer client comes with TFS. I just finished downloading the CD image and I'm having problems finding a stand alone server install. I know that on MSDN theres a 5 user version of TFS that you can download separately.

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  • Are you using Context.RewritePath and having problems with Themes?

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    Well I sure was. I was rewriting paths in a sub folder to a single template page in the root of the site. This really monkeyed up all the paths to the App_Themes folder. None of the images or css links worked anymore. Then I found that ASP.NET 2.0 added an overload to RewritePath that takes a second param to tell it whether or not to change the virtual path. Setting this to false fixed everything!

    Check it out here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/1kz7fdx9.aspx

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  • My portable thumb drive toolbox as of May 2006

    2 Comments

    Here's a list of my current usb thumb drive build out of portable apps and tools:

    1. Locknote - for all my little secrets (passwords and such)
    2. Portable Firefox
      • Extensions:
        ===========
      • Tabsidebar
      • Gmail notifier
      • Copy plain text
      • Google toolbar
      • Tiny url creator
      • Tag editor
      • DeepestSender
      • Answers
      • Web Developer
      • Tabmix Plus
      • CoLT
      • Javascript Debugger
      • Google Notebook
    3. OperaUSB
    4. PortableThunderbird (email + rss aggregator)
    5. PortableSunbird (Calendar)
    6. Portable FileZilla
    7. PortableGAIM
    8. Notepad2
    9. SciTE
    10. Microburner
    11. Portable ClamWin
    12. ColorCop
    13. Lutz Roder's Reflector
    14. SnippetCompiler
    15. uTorrent
    16. TightVNC (server and client)
    17. Media Player Classic
    18. Autoruns
    19. DebugView
    20. FileMon
    21. RegMon
    22. Process Explorer
    23. Rootkit Revealer
    24. ZoomIt
    25. Bluescreen Screensaver
    26. Portable GIMP
    27. XAMP
    28. Instant Rails

    To tie it all up I have an autorun for PStart, a nice launcher that sits in the tray. Lets me assign hotkeys to the most commonly used  apps.

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  • E3 thoughts...

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    MS is kicking but and taking names with XBox 360. All the trailers and game demos on the marketplace was so cool. I love the live arcade games as well. Uno is alot of fun.

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