Search results matching tags 'Technical', 'Bloggers', and 'Telligenti'

JavaScript browser detection

James — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:12:00 GMT

Quick shout out to Peter-Paul Koch at QuirksMode.org for his very nice javascript browser detection script.

Clever, and definately deserved more than a tweet.

What he said

James — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:27:00 GMT

Rick Strahl: What can you keep in your Head?

The Ghost in the machine

James — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:57:00 GMT

I was having loads of fun getting a "borrowed" web service running on the staging server yesterday.

As with all code that you take without asking, there are always.. shall we say, "hiccups". Apparently every line in the web.config conflicted with the root web.config. And not in a nice way.

Hack. Slash. Keyword/Value pairs flying everywhere in a mad frenzy.

Then, it worked! w00t!

I clicked around the site checking it out, and then it stopped working.

YSOD.

Insufficient permission. ???

I looked in IIS and there it was, no anonymous access to the web service folder. I was sure I'd set that. Oh well...

Sure enough it starts working again. A few pages later..you guessed it!

I check IIS. No anonymous access.

Now, I'm thinking should I google this bizarre behavior? It's almost like someone is on the server undoing my changes.

Check the calendar - nope, not April 1st yet. (although now I have some great ideas guys )

Then I remember..I had put in a ticket to NetOps earlier in the day about this server. The ghost was Rick, in there changing permissions to investigate. We were basically fighting over the permissions without realizing.

So, Rick, this morning I shall be fixing my permission problem again. Pleasedon'tundoitthankyouverymuch.

Reviewing my links

James — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:45:00 GMT

I'm quite looking forward to reviewing links between my sites and others, and applying XFN's rel="me", rel="friend" etc.

Read more about XFN and check out this cool video from Google (via shoemoney).

The Deleting SVN Folders meme

James — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:24:00 GMT

Perhaps I should name 5 other people to modify this script when I'm done.

First, it was Wyatt, then Jon, then Rich - and probably many others. Well, it's my turn dammit.

I keep getting code from contractors that have _svn folders in them - and the script I got from Jon only looks for the .svn that I use.

So here is the quick fix (emphasis on quick)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\DeleteSVN]
@="Delete SVN Folders"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\DeleteSVN\command]
@="cmd.exe /c \"TITLE Removing SVN Folders in %1 && COLOR 9A && FOR /r \"%1\" %%f IN (.svn _svn) DO RD /s /q \"%%f\" \""

My handy-dandy MS-DOS Encyclopedia came to the rescue with the syntax for the "set" part of the FOR statement.

Seems to work for me so far.. but I might be back to fix it later. Be warned

Wow, that's fast

James — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:44:00 GMT

I was just reading Jason Alexander's new blog post about an old code drop for Authorize.net and was trying to find the old post he was referring to.

Obviously, I went to Google to find the old cache; http://www.google.com/search?q=authorize.net+jason+alexander

What amazed me was the first result - not the old one, but the post made 35 minutes ago!

Big surprise, you can't use Firefox

James — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:50:00 GMT

I went to renew my Microsoft Partner Program membership today before it runs out at the end of the month. For a few hundred bucks I get 10 copies of XP and Office to use around the house - there are other benefits, but that alone makes me renew each year.

This year, something is different. I'm now using FF as my default browser...

So when I click the renew link, I get a message saying that the LiveID that I'm signed in with doesn't match my Partner account. Hmmm. So I try a few other combinations (but I only have one LiveID account, so kinda fruitless). Finally I get a page that says I should contact MSFT. I click the link, it says that I am using an unsupported browser for that page. Seriously, in 2008 we have to still play these games??

So, I open IE7 (see, it does have some use) and click the renew link as a quick way to get to the right part of the site - fully expecting to still have to contact support.

Guess what? Yeah. I *knew* you'd guess..

Mike knows the answer, don't you Mike?

It said, "Hello James, thanks for renewing..etc, etc". No problems with my LiveID at all.

Funny that.

Sending people large files

James — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:08:00 GMT

Yeah, there are a million services out there that allow you to upload files and then you can tell someone where to download it. Most however, don't get it. They are trying to cash in on it by making the pages complicated and asking too many questions.

Oh, and would you like a business registration? etc

senduit do it perfectly. You might not find them when you Google "file upload" (the vultures are all there, circling).

But next time someone's email to you bounces with "message size exceeded", send them to senduit.

Browse for your file.
Hit Upload (a really LARGE button for end users to hit)
Click on email this link
Enter email.
Done.

It's perfect. I bet this is even simpable (sic) enough for Scott. (Of course it is, I just realized that's where I got the original bookmark from!!)

Reading XLS spreadsheets from ASP.NET

James — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:01:00 GMT

Here's a tip for when you need to read a spreadsheet from ASP.NET (well, .NET really). Thinking about it now I'm surprised that I haven't needed to do this before.

The second or third article I found was John Kilgo's Reading Excel (.xls) Files with ADO.NET... and I admit I was sceptical when I read the method outlined there..but it works a treat. File this under ".NET voodoo"..

Simply put, you add a row of columns names and create a named range around that row plus the data that you want to import. Then you import it with this code...

string connstr = @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OleDb.4.0;data source=c:\my.xls;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;";
string sql = "SELECT TOP 10 * FROM namedrangename"; // or whatever you called the named range
OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connstr);
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, conn);
conn.Open();
something.DataSource = cmd.ExecuteReader();
something.DataBind();

Not much is it? But I think it's a pretty cool trick. Thanks John!

Duck Typing

James — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:17:00 GMT

The funny thing (I suppose I should be embarassed, but I'm not) about the recent post "How Duck Typing Benefits C# Developers" is that I thought it was going to say that we should use "hunt and peck" typing instead of touch-typing.