Archives
-
Whats up with the iPod Nano posts on the .NET Weblogs website?
Before I get flamed more on posting my various iPod Nano adventures here, I should explain that for me, music is a required precursor element for proper coding - like caffein and a short deadline. So, the importance of these topics to coding is paramount (at least to me) and should not be disabused by those who would police topics on this site. :P
-
iPod Nano Accessory Reviews
After receiving my new iPod Nano (4gb/white) for xmas, I rapidly felt a need to accessorize. First, I wanted to be able to wear the iPod during exercise or while on-the-go. My preference has always been some sort of lanyard neck-band because I really didnt feel comfortable with something worn on the wrist or arm - plus I already had a pager and phone on my belt, so I couldnt fathom adding yet another belt clip. My preference was Apple's Lanyard Headphones, but for $39 they were overpriced, and the sound quality of the headphones wasnt acceptable.
-
FW: CLR Profiler 2.0 and the WebDev Server
-
Maxthon & Microsoft IE Team at CES2006?
I am a long-time user of the Maxthon tabbed-browser, which is mostly just a shell that hosts IE. Today, when loading up my browser, it included the following interesting announcement:
-
Nice iPod Nano skins
I like these "skins" on DecalGirl...planning to buy/review one sometime soon.
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #6
"Ignorance most definitely is not bliss! However, much can be said of being ignorant of your own ignorance." - Lance Hunt
-
iPod Nano doing good...iTunes not
It appears that my USB hub was the cause of my previous iPod Nano freeze. In fact, this explains why my Dell Axim X5 was freezing-up too. After depositing my Belkin 4-port in the trash, I moved on to enjoying my new toy...
-
New Apple iPod Nano - new Lockup - new Reset technique
Yesterday, my wife gave me an early Christmas present of an Apple iPod Nano 4GB. (woohoo!)
-
Neodynamic Barcode Professional for Sql Reporting Services
This product from Neodynamic looks rather interesting. As a long-time user of barcodes in reports (both Crystal and Sql Reports), I appreciate anything that might simplify the design, development, and deployment experience.
-
Correction: Phidgets URL
Matt, from Phidgets, pointed out that the URL was incorrect for the Phidgets webste in my previous post about the PDC05 exhibitors (unless you live in Canada). Here is the correct URL for the US distributor (who was actually at PDC05).
-
Blogmarks: E4X
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #5
"Where there is pain and frustration, there is also opportunity." - Lance Hunt
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #4
"If it isn't broken, take it apart and figure out how it works. If it is broken afterwards, blame the vendor." - Lance Hunt
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #3
"When life hands you lemons, find some pieces of copper and zinc and make a lemon-battery." - Lance Hunt
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #2
"Make sure you have a methodology, not a mess-odology." - Lance Hunt
-
Proverbs of a Corporate Coder #1
"When surrounded by idiots, make sure you aren't one too." - Lance Hunt
-
HelpSvc.exe causing explorer hangs on new Windows XP SP-2 install
Lately I have started having problems with the entire Windows Explorer shell becoming unresponsive. I have a new Dell Latitude D810 laptop with the factory install of Windows XP with SP-2, so I am surprised that I could have such a problem.
-
FW: A low-level Look at the ASP.NET Architecture (...and IIS)
I highly recommend this article by Rick Strahl of West Wind if you are trying to debug IIS 5/6 with ASP.NET or simply wanting to learn more about how web requests are processed.
-
Weblogs.asp.net Future revisited, questioned, and discussed....
Based upon the number of comments It seems that my last post on this topic struck a nerve with some of the weblogs.asp.net bloggers as well as Telligent. I read the many comments and other posts on this topic, and even had a little more to say in my post's comments. I don't want to give ScottW and Telligent too much grief over this, they have worked hard on the implementation over the years and I applaud them for it. However, when discussing this site, you really have to break the discussion into 2 parts; the Engine/Codebase, and the Blog Site.
-
PDC05: Hands On Labs rediscovered
Shortly after the end of PDC, Microsoft briefly posted a huge list of all the Hands-On Labs that were available during PDC. Unfortunately, while I was downloading them they removed the files and links from the CommNet site, and later I had a HD crash and even lost those.
-
Scott (Telligent), where is our blogging relationship going?
Back in the days when this blog site was "dotnetweblogs.com" it was exciting and fun because it was new and ever-changing. Like watching your niece or nephew growing up, it was fun to see the improvements and changes that Scott introduced to the site each month (sometimes each week or day). Not that blogs were new, but I was new to blogs, this was a new blog engine, and it was written in .NET and dedicated to .NET which made it uber-cool.
-
FW: Rico on Narrowing Down Performance Problems in Managed Code
I keep finding myself forwarding links from Rico Mariani's blog whenever I am involved in troubleshooting .NET bugs or assessing performance in managed code.
-
Tool: IIS Debug Diagnostic Tool (DebugDiag)
I recently was referred to this tool by a MS rep while troubleshooting some IIS Hangs and Crashes. It is still in Beta, but you can grab it via the Guest ID "DebugDiag" at http://beta.microsoft.com :
-
PRB: ADO.NET ConnectionPoolManager throws OutOfMemoryException when trying to update it's Perf Counters
When running into this problem, I have had some success working-around it by increasing the value on the fileMappingSize attribute on the performanceCounters element within the config file.
-
Controller compatibility between XBox360 and Windows XP
I had previously seen some announcement saying MS was going to make the XBox360 controllers compatible with Windows XP via USB.
-
FYI: MDAC Component Checker utility
Today, during the discovery phase of a troubleshooting incident, the MS rep had me download and use the MDAC Component Checker utility to verify the MDAC install.
-
Blogger Spotlight: David Wang
Occasionally when searching on some topic, I find myself bumping into the same blog over and over again and getting great results every time.
-
FW: IT Work: Contract Sadness
This article hit WAY too close to home for me:
-
Google vs MSN debate....IE Toolbars, IM, Desktop Search, Blogs, and Email - oh my!
I have used a combination of Microsoft MSN and Google internet tools and services for years now, and have flipped back and forth a few times on my preferences Here is where I currently stand with my usage of Google tools & services vs. Microsoft MSN tools & services:
-
Using ASPNET_RegSQL.exe with SQL Express databases in APP_DATA
I was playing with some of the PDC05 session samples (session PRS404) again this weekend and the sample had a script to extend the default ASP.NET membership and role tables. I could have just used my ASPNETDB instance installed on SQL Server 2005, but I didnt want to impact anything I was working on with my "real projects". Therefore, I needed yet another ASPNETDB instance to apply their sample SQL Scripts on. I toyed with temporarily detaching the current ASPNETDB instance from SQL2005 and creating a new DB as a one-off, but that left me feeling a bit dirty and it wouldnt help me when I needed a 3rd instance to play with. Then, I recalled the power of using file-system attached SQL Express Databases offered in the new version. I had played with this earlier in the beta's when using the SQL Express provider to attach a DB located within the APP_DATA folder of my website, and it seemed to be a perfect solution.
-
My Blog skin...and thoughts on Blog personalization
I began tinkering with my CSS again recently and instantly got frustrated with the skins offered on this blog host. The lack of support for more reasonable skins in the ASP.NET Weblogs site is pretty bad, and I'm getting a bit jealous at the extensive skin support on other .TEXT sites such as dotnetjunkies and sqljunkies. I always liked the cache' and feeling of being on the .NET blogs equivilent of Boardwalk/Park Place with my blog being hosted by an official Microsoft site (www.ASP.net) but that is starting to wear thin these days.
-
PDC05: Exhibitor reflections
There were a number of interesting exhibitors at the PDC this year. Beyond the swag, I found a few interesting products here and there. Here are a few that leap to mind:
-
PDC05: "Ask the Experts", Architectural Symposium, and final day
Last night, David and I stumbled into the "Ask the Experts" and enjoyed talking with Anders Heijlsberg and discussing Linq on the whiteboard. There were noticeable "pods" of developers surrounding the marquis MS "Rockstars" like Don Box and Anders. In addition, there was plenty of lively discussions around the Language teams with Brad Abrams, Eric Meijer, as well as many other product teams. Overall it was a fun night...
-
PDC05: Good sessions, great discussions, lots of swag, and extreme exhaustion...
Well, my plan to blog my way through PDC05 didnt work out as planned. I have been so absorbed with the constant train of sessions, and followup discussions that I have been busy from 6:00am to midnight every single day. I'll try to do a brain dump after I get back home, but for now, here are some quick impressions:
-
PDC05: Framework Design Guidelines: The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library Pre-Con (#2)
Yesterday I attended the Pre-Con session "Framework Design Guidelines: The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library" presented by Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina.
-
PDC05: Fun with Power Outages
While walking back to today's Pre-con session, the power went out on PDC05. It turns out that it wasnt the hundreds of PC's, network equipment and technology, but was a larger power outage across all of downtown LA (reuters).
-
PDC05: A plethora of after-hour PDC choices
One last post before I find a pillow....
-
PDC05: Windows Internals Pre-Con (#1)
David Soloman and Mark Russinovich did an excellent job tailoring their typically infrastructure-oriented Windows Internals course to fit us PDC attendees.
-
PDC05: Arrival & First visit to PDC
After a draining 9+ hour ordeal trying to fly from DFW to LAX involving 1 broken plane in DFW and another upon arriving at LAX, we finally arrived in LA. (Thanks for the memories American Airlines!)
-
SqlRS2000: Answers to common questions
This is just a collection of links to newsgroup posts that answer commonly asked questions:
-
Google Desktop Search 2 kicks butt!
Google just released a new version of their Google Desktop Search software. It has tons of configuration options and a new "sidebar" to help you keep information ready at your fingertips. As a developer, I also like the extensibility which now includes many 3rd-party file parsers and sidebar add-ins. If you are interested in writing your own plugins, there are even a couple .NET Wrappers available.
-
Fiddler 1.0 - Web performance analysis & optimization
I first discovered Fiddler over a year ago after trying several other HTTP trace/proxy tools like YATT for tuning ASP.NET 1.0 applications. Although many of the other tools worked well, they often had extra dependencies or more complex UI's. None of them quite matched the ease-of-use of Fiddler - especially with its IE integration. Much has already been said about this tool on various blogs, so I won't repeat the typical praise and standard explanations.
-
VisualStudio 2005 Tutorials
Bob has recently has updated his site, LearnVisualStudio.NET, with over 50 new video tutorials on VisualStudio.NET 2005. Here is a quick sampling of some of the topics:
-
VS2005: Uh, wow! Late change fixes System.Nullable type confusion....
David sent me this gem recently and it frankly surprised me a bit to see (what I consider to be) such a high-impact change to C# and the CLR so late in the game.
-
FW: Visual Studio 2005 previous beta removal tool
Just discovered this tool by Aaron Stebner while continuing to fight install problems with Visual Studio.NET 2005 Beta2:
-
VS2005: Beta2 install fails during Sql Server 2005 Express install
Beware if you are installing Visual Studio 2005 Beta2 on a PC with an existing SQL Server 2000 installation, because it will cause the setup to throw an error, eventhough it continues to successfully finish the setup.
-
Excellent article on COM+ Callable Wrappers (CCW) in .NET
A couple years ago I spent time developing BizTalk 2002 AIC components with C#/.NET Framework v1.1 and learned tons about COM+ interop. I always planned to go blog about the basics and various tips and tricks for composing your COM interfaces, but after stumbling across this article, I'll happily point people to it on Peter van Ooijen's blog instead.
-
Video eLearning via LearnVisualStudio.NET
Over the past couple years, my friend Bob Tabor has put together an impressive collection of .NET tutorial Videos to help noobie .NET coders and experts alike learn how to develop with VisualStudio.NET via his awesome site LearnVisualStudio.NET.
-
PDC05: My Pre-con session selections
I'm still researching my main PDC session picks, but here are my tenative pre-con selections...
-
CodeSmith: Custom Exception Template v1.1
I recently picked up a license for CodeSmith Professional and upgraded from version 2.6 to the brand new version 3.1. As a long-time user of CodeSmith, I love the new enhancements to both the core engine and the Studio! The built-in Statement Completion (e.g. intellisense-style lookup) feature is worth it alone! Great work Eric!
-
I'm going to PDC05!
I got a late approval today from management to go to PDC! Woohoo!
-
FW: SQL Server Reporting Services - Lessons Learned In Development and Deployment
Someone recently pointed me to this excellent article on EggheadCafe. Much of what it contains is dead-on and amounts to what has taken me a good year and a half to learn through a combination of trial & error, the anorexic Reporting Services books online, and hundreds of posts to the Microsoft public Reporting Services newsgroup.
-
Sql Reporting SP2: Unable to install RSClientPrint ActiveX control
Here is a response I wrote for a problem posted on the Microsoft Reporting Services newsgroup:
-
Registration-free COM articles on MSDN
I played around with Registration-Free COM for quite a while before I truly grokked it. Today, I ran across these Walk Through style articles on MSDN by Steve White that do a good job of explaining the basics in a step-by-step manner:
-
IndieGameDev Blog
I just discovered the "IndieGameDev" blog on tucows.com. Being a frequent indie-game developer wannabe, I dig the concept of this blog and love the cool retro icons!
-
Couple good BI & Sql2kRS links thanks to Google Alerts....
I have a handy-dandy Google Alert setup with the keywords "Sql Reporting Services Download" that paid dividends this week in the form of 2 excellent links!
-
A Service Pack (hotfix) for Service Pack 2?
It appears that we beta-testers didnt do too great a job evaluating Service Pack 2 for Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services (Sql2kRS). There are numerous bugs that have been annoying the early adopters which led MS to publish a Service Pack for their Service Pack. Actually, they call these "Hotfixes" since they typically take far less time to produce than the original service pack (and hopefully contain fewer bugs).
-
Heroic Aventure (rogue-like) game written in VB.NET 2005
via Brad Abrams' blog, some guys have written an RPG in VB.NET 2005 called "Heroic Aventure".
-
FW: An Extensive Examination of Data Structures - Updated for 2.0
I read Scott's original outstanding MSDN articles on data-structures in .NET and was pleased to see that he has revised them for .NET Framework v2.0 & C# 2.0. Specifically, the new articles address the role of Generics in correctly choosing and utilizing various data structures.
-
Sharepoint List DataExtension for Sql Reporting Services & RSTrace
Teun posted this excellent article on creating a custom DataExtension for Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services (SQL2kRS) to interface with the List.asmx web service provided by Sharepoint.
-
Service Pack 2 for Sql Reporting Services!
You can now download the long awaited Service Pack 2 for Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services!
-
FW: New SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Report Pack
-
My newsgroup posts
This is a placeholder mostly for my self, to easily find newsgroup posts I have made, or replied to. Consider this like Blog #2.
-
Other DBMS delivering CLR hosting
I was recently introduced to this article from IBM on DB2 Stinger's capeability of hosting the CLR, and later read this short comparison of the differences in Microsoft's Yukon vs. DB2's Stinger.
-
Recommendation: Books For Nerds
A coworker sent me this link recently: www.nerdbooks.com
-
Sql Reporting Services fails to install to non-default website
Last week I was installing Sql Reporting Services on an existing development box running Windows Server 2003/IIS6.0 and ran into an error during setup that indicated an IIS configuration error. After checking to make sure the service was started, and the usual permissions were correct, I checked the Install Log and found that the install would only work when installed to the "Default Web" (metabase path "/LM/W3SVC/1/1016") which was created when IIS is installed.
-
FW: Reporting Services and Scriptomatic (WMI)
I went googling today looking for info on using WMI to script the configuration of Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services, and found this great post on OdeToCode.com by K. Scott Allen.
-
Design Pattern Links II
I frequently have coworkers asking where to start learning about Design Patterns. Last year I dumped many of my links into a post, but its still easy to get lost when trying to get started.
-
Codesmith: CustomException Template
I recently posted a CustomException CodeSmith template to the CodeSmith Template Forum.
-
Reporting Services: Adding conditional visibility to rows with repeating values
Recently I was developing a Matrix layout report where the row headers repeated for a given value, but the user only wanted to see the first occurrance of each unique row heading value and leave the other row headings blank until the next new value. In a tabular layout, I might have just added a new Group based upon the repeated value and displayed the heading above the set of related rows. However, for a matrix report, that gets a bit too complicated due to the behavior of dynamic row headers and grouping, so I settled on dynamically changing the Visibility.Hidden propery based upon the following expression:
-
IBM makes 500 Patents "royalty free"
Today's announcement by IBM marks a shrewd reversal in its approach to patents. Not only does it help them gain esteem in the Linux/Open source community, it empowers their equally massive consulting division to use, share, and dissiminate their knowledge more widely than before. Worst-case scenario, IBM scales-down it's Patent-enforcement legal staff (and associated expenses), and scales-up it's consulting business (and associated profits). Its likely that any miniscule losses in patent revenue will be greatly compensated by the up-tick in consulting hours.