Archives
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Why Glitches over the Holidays are Bad
We determined the source of the technical problems we are having on our servers. It seems that between Longhornblogs.com, PatchDayReview.com, and the rest of the Interscape websites, we were getting so much traffic, that our dinky little 10-Base-T network card was pegged pretty much all the time. Well, early Monday morning it decided to totally crap out on us. The problem with that is, there is minimal staff at our hosting center right now due to the holidays, so it won't be fixed till Friday at the earliest.
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.Text Tip
One of my MS friends (who asked to remain nameless) stumbled upon a nifty piece of code that you can use to help improve your .Text aggregated sites. Leave it to Steve Schofield to come to the rescue again. He talks about how to add a link to the comments of an entry on the aggregated home page. Thanks Steve! I'll be making that update globally as soon as .Text 0.95 is released.
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Technical Difficulties
A glitch on my servers brought the whole network down this morning. This means that InterscapeUSA.com, PatchDayReview.com, and LonghornBlogs.com are currently down, and may be that way for the next several hours or so. I apologize for the inconvenince, and we'll be back online as soon as possible.
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The Confusing Role Of Programmers
I was surfing the Blogosphere tonight, catching up on some of Don Box's writings, when he led me to Chris Sells. Sells, it seems, was distressed that the Don Box / Mary Jo Foley interview was just plain boring, so he left a RFC post on his blog, soliciting questions to ask him in a later interview. What I found there was startling.
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DotNet Jobs
For those of you that think the tech market has slowed down, there are plenty of .NET jobs available. dot-net-jobs.com has over 20 listings from job opportunities all across the US. Looking to change jobs? Check it out!
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Strong Naming Notes
I noticed earlier in the week that someone pointed out that you can use ILDASM to pull out the strong-name from a strong-named assembly, and recompile using a different key. I remembered an article I came across on MSDN that talked about this, so I thought I'd quote it here.
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DeadBolt.NET Re-Released
Merry Christmas Everyone! Just wanted to let you know that DeadBolt.NET is ready for download... again. In case you missed it, DeadBolt.NET is an Assembly Signing Addin for Visual Studio .NET 2003, written by Jamie Cansdale and Michael O'Hearn. Oh yeah, and it's free (my holiday present to you). We're now using the proper procedure for extracting the PublickKeyToken of the Assembly Signing Key, and it has been tested on about 20 different keys. If you download it, make sure to read the User's Guide. There is a two-page introduction to Assembly Signing, and a bunch of walkthroughs on how to use the app.
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My Christmas Present To You
A version of ScrollingGrid that actually works in a production environment. Today I've released ScrollingGrid 1.1. This new version opens up the previously private variable that sets the width to adjust for the Scrollbar. Now, if it's not rendering properly, you can adjust it yourself. ScrollingGrid was originally designed this way, but we had a design review a few weeks prior to launch, and it was determined that the property did not need to be exposed. A month's worth of real-world use showed this not to be the case, so I overrode the team and put it back in.
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Interscape Blogscape
Just wanted to let my readers know that the Interscape Blogscape is now online. Over the next few weeks, you'll see several other Interscape employees talking about various issues relating to being a start-up software company. It should be really exciting. First on deck is our CEO, Michael Mahoney. He's going to blog about a range of business topics. He's a total blogging newbie, so don't tear him to shreds just yet.
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DeadBolt.NET Suspended
Tim Heuer pointed me to an article that represents a fundamental flaw in our implementation of DeadBolt.NET. It is written by the great Don Box and Chris Sells, and describes what is going on under the covers of SN.EXE. I did a lot of research on the subject of Strong Name Signing before helping to write this add-in, and never came across this article. Hopefully, by pointing it out, more people will understand how it works, as I obviously didn't. Basically, our implementation is flawed because we're pulling the PublicKeyToken from the combined public/private key, and not just the public key (apparently, SN.EXE dioesn't pay attention to the difference). The assembly is being signed properly, we're just extracting the wrong information for the Public Key part.
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Credit Card Processing for .NET Developers
A few months ago, I had a huge problem with Interscape's credit card processing. I bloggeed about it in a post entitled “How To Screw Up And Still Come Out Ahead” It was quite an ordeal. Well, I decided that I wanted to help make the process easier for people in the .NET world. So Interscape teamed up with MerchantPlus.cc for Phase One of a two-phase system to make it ridiculously easy to process credit cards on a website. Phase One is the Merchant Account, which is the way that the cards are processed. These accounts are tied to a “gateway”, which in this case is Authorize.net, and that is included in the package. We worked to get the lowest prices possible, and we're passing those prices directly on to you.
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The Long Road To _______
Seems nowadays everyone says that MS is on a long road to somewhere. Salon.com yesterday talked about the “Long Road To Longhorn” (wich is kinda catchy). LonghornBlogs.com made it in there (top of Page 2) which was kinda exciting. Now, News.com shows it's lack of creativity the next day with “The Long Road to Yukon”. I can't wait till the “Long Road To Whidbey” article comes out. The ought to be interesting, seeing as how Whidbey is an island and everything.
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Why All The Fuss About Strong Name Keys?
A couple weeks ago, I was very strongly frustrated. Why? Because I fielded about 30 e-mails in the span of a few days that all basically went like this:
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Blog Courtesy
One of the things that I have noticed in the past few weeks on this site is a serious decrease in what I call “Blog Courtesy”. What is “Blog Courtesy”? It's the consideration that the way your posts look affects other people's blogs. For example, not checking your HTML for extra whitespace at the end of a post is a serious BlogPaux. Another one is the use of non-standard HTML tags in your posts. For example, using tags in your posts, or stray
closing tags. One little stray tag can throw off the whole site, as you can see is happening right now. I'm not naming any names, it's easy to see who the culprits are. Please, just remember that your posts are aggregated onto the main site, and not everyone uses the RSS feeds to read the posts.ScottW gave me a great tip.... if you need to display HTML tags in your comments, without that nasty “morphing <> error” that pops up with DHTML RichText Box solutions.... use an <XMP></XMP> tag. It's a tag that doesn't format anything that's inside it. I had never heard of it before, bit apparently it works... watch this:
<hello> Cool, huh?
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Only Use Microsoft Patches
News.com tells us about an open-source patch for a flaw in IE that was actually more damaging than the original flaw. Just a reminder that you should only install official Microsoft-built patches for Microsoft products. Personally, I would think that would be common sense, but I guess not.
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MicroSpeak
This week's edition of the Only4Gurus newsletter came in this morning. I think it was like a month late or something, but then so was my latest product so I don't have much room to talk. Anyways, of note this time around was a reprint from MicroNews, MS' internal newsletter, on the different lingo uttered throughout the halls of One Microsoft Way.
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Scuba Diving with Rob Howard???
Alright, this has to be BY FAR the craziest thing I've ever seen. You get on a boat in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and spend a week with the likes of Rob Howard and Brent Rector on a .NET cruise. Here's the thing I don't get though.... is the cruise ONLY for techies? Cause, I mean.... I've never been on a cruise before, but if I were to go on one, I would want there to be, oh, I don't know, WOMEN there.
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US: Terror Alert "High"
For those of you that don't watch TV much.... holiday colors this year in the US consist of red, green, and orange.
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I don't get it...
Why, all of a sudden, is everyone and their mom building O/R mapping frameworks? Is that like some kind of “rite of passage” into the land of OOP? I would think that with so many options out there already, that people would find something else to innovate in...
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Copying, Compression, and Availability
Having completed CarbonCopy.NET this morning, I spent most of the afternoon and evening cleaning house on my webserver. Now that I have spent the day with my new hard-linked templating system, I'm much better off in many ways, but it is still lacking. I wish there was a way that I could hard-link a directory, to where new files that get added to the “virtual” folder subsequently appear in the folder's other locations as well. Right now, I have to re-run the utility if I add a new file.. Mind you, it's still a vast improvement from where I was at before, but it is still far cry from 100% ideal.
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Just A Note
I would like to reiterate my previous request for all GDN bloggers to fix their blog settings to reflect their full name, with an “[MS]” at the end for good measure. I know you guys used handles before, and that's really cool, but the blogs are read by more than just internal MS employees, and we don't know who many of you are. I don't have a nifty look program on the corporate intranet that I can go to if I want to look someone up, like you guys do. While we'd really like to get to know you all, Microsoft makes us memorize enough acronyms without adding all you to the mix. It would also be nice to differentiate the ants from the beetles, as it were.
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Sun: Another Step To Irrelevancy
Sun today says that Microsoft is forcing customers to upgrade their software due to the removal of Java.
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This Just In
Federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. rules that the RIAA lawsuits against fileswappers are illegal.
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Recursive File Count Function
Private Sub Test()
Dim fileCount As Integer = 0
Dim Dir As New System.IO.DirectoryInfo("c:\")
RecursiveCount(Dir, fileCount)
End Sub -
Windows XP Service Pack 2 Revealed
Microsoft has posted a Word document on its downloads site entitled “Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2”. If you want to go REALLY in depth on the changes, this doc is for you. Weighing in at 73 pages, you'll know eveything you could have possibly wanted (and more) about SP2.
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I Don't Believe In Interface Versioning
I was thinking about how to implement folder recursion for CarbonCopy.NET while taking a shower earlier, and somehow my mind wandered to the topic of interfaces. In. .NET 2.0, I'm told that you'll bee seeing new versions of interfaces implemented like this: IDataReader2 for the new ones, so that old code can still support IDataReader. Does anyone else think this is a really lame way to design an API? What happens when you have .NET 6.0 (VS.NET 13.0 for those of you keeping track) in 8 years.... are we going to have to browse through:
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Making NTFS a Little Bit Friendlier
A while back, I posted in my LonghornBlog about how I wanted to have a file live in several locations in WinFS. A few hours later, I got two comments that I considered fairly condescending, because they just assumed that I knew what they were talking about, and didn't provide any further information (besides that really stupid for not knowing it was possible). Steve Maine, who is a really cool guy, jumped in and talked about a tool from SysInternals, but I could not find it after scouring the site. Disappointed, I blew it off and forgot about it.
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Feds: Tech on the Rise
... but jobs are not, says News.com. Here's my prediction for the first part of 2004.
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What's the deal?
Marc Canter's back to the blog. He's been moving, and as such was without internet access for something like 2 weeks. Wow. I don't think I could handle that. I'd start convulsions after 2 days. So what's the first thing he does when he gets back? Rips off Scoble's new blog banner. Huh. If I were Scoble, I don't know whether I'd be flattered or pissed. I guess it's a good thing they're friends. Hey, I guess if Marc freakin Canter likes it, it must be good, right?
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Rory + Caching = Honeymoon in the Bahamas
Sometimes I worry about Rory. I mean, really worry. That guy's crazy. He really likes the ASP.NET Cache. The way he talks about it, you'd think he wants to marry Rob Howard or something. He says he's toned it down, but I think he needs to get a second opinion... that therapist of his isn't paying attention.
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.NET for the Needy Auction
5 minutes left to bid on training at InterfaceTT in Phoenix, AZ. The highest bidder is at $820, and your money goes to help needy families. Go Bid!
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Here Comes IE 6.1
Microsoft is doing a major overhaul of IE for Windows XP SP2. Ryan Naraine of InternetNews.com outlines for us just what's in store. Among the changes:
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Microsoft in the Year Ahead
David Coursey: What Microsoft Needs to Do in 2004. [Via Scoble]
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Microsoft PressPass: Year In Review
Microsoft PressPass reviews the big MS news of the past year, and previews what's ahead in 2004.
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The Consulting Conundrum, Part 2
In my previous post, I discussed project management. Julie brought up an interesting point (and several agreed):
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The Consulting Conundrum
Brady commented earlier about the A-number-1 problem with being a contract software developer. I've been burned by this more often than not. So I've stopped allowing those kind of events to take place. Instead of playing Swammi The Magical Mind-Reading Bridgebuilder, I start out by charging a flat rate for what I call "Project Discovery". At this point, we build the bridge's blueprint. We interview everyone currently involved in the existing processes, and map them out. Then we separate manual from automated processes, and kill any steps that can be eliminated.
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OT: In case you're just waking up...
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ScrollingGrid 1.1 Status
Head on over to my corporate blog for some information regarding the next version of ScrollingGrid, tentatively set to launch at the end of next week, barring any unforseen curcumstances.
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Short Server Control Rant
I came across another reason today why building cool server controls is way too complicated in VS.NET. Two words: XSD Schemas. I wanted to give ScrollingGrid a schema so that it doesn't freak out on anyone, so I thought I'd be sneaky and add the following line to the end of the element definitions in asp.asd:
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A Request for all GotDotNet Bloggers
Can you guys please change your settings so that the “Author” field reflects your full name and not your blog address? It would also help if you added “[MS]” to the end of your name too, so that we know who you are. Thanks!
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Strongly Frustrated
I'm going to pose a few questions to the community. I'd like you to comment on your experiences after answering these questions:
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OT: My Crazy Day, Part One
Did you ever have one of those days that just defies comprehension? Today was one of those days. Read more about it over in my personal blog: Good Luck Finding THAT Divot, Part One.
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Graphic Rant
I've always wondered why Microsoft has not made more of it's .NET graphics available to be licensed by developers and ISVs. I mean stuff like this:
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Great .NET Blogs
Just came across GeekDojo Blogs in my referrer logs. Cool... this is some of the best .NET content I've seen in days. Subscribed!
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Microsoft Community Solutions
Microsoft has started a new section of their Knowledge Base called the Microsoft Community Solutions. These are KB articles that are written by Microsoft MVPs to help people conquer problems they face. This is ment to be much more formal than, say, a blog entry, because the article is immediately indexed by their KB engine, and comes up in KB search results.
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Test-Taking Strategies
Lots of people I know are either taking college exams right now, or their certification tests. Either way, there's a whole lot of crammin' going on. Thought I'd take a few minutes and elaborate on the test-taking strategies that have served me well.
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A Message From Captain Obvious
“Microsoft Is Not A Charity”
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Any Volunteers?
I need someone who is really familiar with VS.NET's addin architecture to help me with a quick-and-dirty 6 hour project that will be released as freeware and could a) benefit tons of inexperienced developers and b) lead to future paid development opportunities.
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Workspaces WinForms Console
Why can't the GDN Workspaces WinForms console be released as a separate standalone application? Why should I have to go to my Workspace to access it?
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Community
I've talked with several people over the past few days that aren't terribly happy with the new Microsofties that are blogging here, primarily because they feel they can't be critical of Microsoft. Frans, for example, says he might blog elsewhere because of it. I'll throw in my two cents and say that in my experience, criticism towards Microsoft, and really anyone for that matter, is always welcome and appreciated, as long as it is measured and constructive. Don't just be like “This stuff just sucks, and you guys should kill yourselves right now for being this stupid.” That's rude and insulting, and doesn't do anyone any good. Chances are, if this is your MO, you'll just be ignored.
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Using WMI To Query IIS
I need to query IIS using WMI to pull out information about the file extension mappings for the currently executing web. The problem is, I don't have clue one on how to do it, and IMO WMI is a giant undocumented clusterf$@#. Do any of you smart guys have any ideas on how to make this happen? I know there is a fairly simple query to nake it happen, I just can't figure it out.
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SexChange.NET
My good friend Martin Spedding just IMed me. He said the sex change operation went well. He sent me a picture..... I wouldn't date him, but he sure looks a hell of a lot more attractive now. Dude, uh, I mean... girl..... you might want to get make-up lessons from someone else.
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The Old Cows Are Put Out To Pasture
Wow, get them while they're hot... just got this in my newsgroup reader from mictosoft.public.msdn.general:
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Welcome GotDotNet Bloggers!
It seems that the GotDotNet bloggers are all moving over here. Does that mean the great Don Box will soon be gracing us with his presence?
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Scrolling Observations
I came across this very insightful post on the ASP.NET Forums (remember those?) about the pitfalls of making a DataGrid scroll. Great stuff. I hadn't even thought of trying points 3 and 4 that way.
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VS.NET Installer Tricks
I don't think I got the chance to blog about this yet, but with all the installer issues I've been having lately, and the lack of tips, I figured I'd better talk about it.
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Missing Post
Just to clear the air, I did not delete the announcement I made yesterday to ignore the comments that were made. The post is saved here on my computer, and that's where it will stay. I deleted it because it was causing too many negative problems with many people in this community, so I felt it would be best to remove it. I'm going to re-evaluate how I utilize my blogs, based on extremely constructive comments by WallyM, and move forward later this week. You should already see one major change to a few of my blogs, and more are coming.
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Blast From The Past
I've been blogging here for almost a year now. What a difference a year makes. I was going through some of my old blog posts, looking for some good nuggets of information that I might have forgotten about. These tips have helped me immensely, and I hope they help out some of you guys too.
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ASP.NET Forums Enhancements
Over the weekend, I made some serious modification to the ASP.NET Forums 1.0 release to support header and footer controls, for better integration with existing site designs. Jeff Sandquist also made some huge improvements, fixed several long-standing bugs, and added a neat visual smiley panel. It's pretty nifty, and now we're ready to performance test it in a live environment. More improvements are coming, but for now, check it out at http://forums.interscapeusa.com. We'll zip up the source and make it available later on this month, as a courtesy to all ASP.NET Forums 1.0 users.
