This is very cool, roll on RTM!

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Glucose/Hanselminutes-on-9-Debugging-Crash-Dumps-with-Tess-Ferrandez-and-VS2010/

If your playback is jerky when playing video from the filesystem or a network share then increase the File cache size in:

Preferences –> Input –>Access Modules –> File

I bumped mine to 2000ms, no more jerky. There’s a whole bunch of other cache tuning you can do for other sources such as FTP, HTTP, TCP etc too.

Vanished is the first book in Joe Finder’s new “Nick Heller” series of books. Nick Heller is a “private spy” who works for a private intelligence firm, he’s ex-special forces, tough and doesn’t take any shit. In this first instalment Heller becomes involved in the hunt for his missing brother, a search which sees him embroiled in the goings on of the major defence contractor his brother works for.

Vanished starts off well but I got kind of bored about two thirds of the way through, in fact I don’t really remember much of interest that happened during those middle chapters. The last few chapters picked up my interest again but the ending felt so obvious (and awkward) that I was left feeling pretty disappointed. Vanished is ok, but not a patch on earlier corporate and political romps such as Paranoia or The Moscow Club. Hopefully the next Nick Heller instalment will be better.

5/10

Atheists and scientists are apparently fascists now for defending good science in the classroom and pushing back against teaching crackpot theories such as creationism and intelligent design:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,4432,n,n

Thought I’d give this Twitter malarky another go. You can read my haiverings and waffles at:

http://twitter.com/teh_klev

Normal service to be resumed when I get done with my Windows 2008 Server build docs etc.

The other day I was implementing a page block widget using jQuery and BlockUI. The code kinda looked like this:

The trick it seems is to close empty tags with an explicit closing tag. i.e. <div id=”progressMessage”></div> and then life is good again.

Fiddler to the rescue yet again….

If you’re doing jQuery/AJAX –> web service kinda things like this:

function submitWooshTest() {
    var adslOrderID = gQs.get("orderid"); 

    $.ajax({
        type: "POST", url: "ScriptServices/WooshTester.asmx/RequestWooshTest",
        data: {
            adslOrderID: adslOrderID,
            faultType: $('#wooshFaultType').val(),
            hasWorked: $('#wooshHasWorked').is(':checked'),
            disruptive: $('#wooshDisruptive').is(':checked'),
            faultDate: $('#wooshFaultDate').val(),
            faultTime: $('#wooshFaultHour').val() + ':' + $('#wooshFaultMinute').val()
        },
        success: function(result) {
            $.unblockUI();
            $.blockUI({ message: $('#wooshResults') });
            showWooshTests();
        },
        error: function(x, s, e) {
            debug(x, s, e);
        }
    });       
}

And the web service end point looks like:

Don’t forget to configure your web services protocols in your web.config:

Otherwise when accessing your functionality from a browser that isn’t on the localhost you’ll get the following cryptic error message:

System.InvalidOperationException: Request format is unrecognized for URL unexpectedly ending in '/RequestWooshTest.

[InvalidOperationException: Request format is unrecognized for URL unexpectedly ending in '/RequestWooshTest.]
   System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandlerFactory.CoreGetHandler(Type type, HttpContext context, HttpRequest request, HttpResponse response) +405881
   System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandlerFactory.GetHandler(HttpContext context, String verb, String url, String filePath) +212
   System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory.GetHandler(HttpContext context, String requestType, String url, String pathTranslated) +47
   System.Web.HttpApplication.MapHttpHandler(HttpContext context, String requestType, VirtualPath path, String pathTranslated, Boolean useAppConfig) +193
   System.Web.MapHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +93
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean&amp; completedSynchronously) +155

If you ever end up with a totally broken .NET Framework install (say, after the installer for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 falls over), then head over here and get a copy of Aaron Stebners .NET Cleanup Tool:

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/05/30/611355.aspx

This is a tool of last resort and let me tell you things were pretty grim and last-resort like last Friday night for one of our production boxes (and me). This got me out of a huge hole where both .NET 3.0 and .NET 2.0 were so badly broken, the .NET 3.5 SP1 installer fell over mid flight, that I couldn't even repair/uninstall from Add/Remove Programs and I couldn't even run the redistributable installers to do a fix/replace/repair.

This is the book that the cult of Scientology seem to have managed to pull from sale on Amazon, Waterstones etc using their usual dodgy legal intimidation tactics. The book itself doesn't cover much more than you'll find on Operation Clambake other than a more personal story of one man's 22 year stint with the cult. I quite enjoyed it and read it cover to cover in a single sitting.

You can still order the book from Eason books in Ireland at http://www.eason.ie/look/9781903582848/Complex/John-Duignan.

7/10

Somehow just about every order I placed that was eligible for Amazon Prime arrived later than if I'd stuck to the 2-3 day free delivery. At the moment I'm waiting on a couple of books I'd normally order from Computer Manuals (they're always delivered next day). The books in question were dispatched from Amazon's fulfillment centre in Glasgow and have somehow got lost between there and the local City Link depot in Glenrothes. How hard can it be to send a box from one side of Scotland to the other?

Utterly useless.

Add to that I find that the royal mail have been saving up packages sent by first class letter post and delivering when it was more convenient to the postman.

Amazon Prime is a nice idea but so dependant on the vagaries of our postal service. I cancelled and I got my money back.

More like nothing happening, not even acting. M. Night Shyamalan seems to have some kinda hold over Hollywood but to be honest his films are pretty average to below par. The Happening is just a total waste of time and money. Walberg's acting was appalling and the rest of the cast were a joke.

Utter rubbish: 0/10

Sometime back in July or August Microsoft slipped out a driver for PHP 5 on windows. It uses the SQL Native Client which means that it also supports automatic transparent client redirect. Change this connection info array from:

$connectionInfo = array("Database"=>"AdventureWorks",
                            "UID"=>"sa",
                            "PWD"=>"foobar23$");

to

$connectionInfo = array("Database"=>"AdventureWorks",
                            "UID"=>"sa",
                            "PWD"=>"foobar23$",
                            "Failover_Partner"=>"mirror.sql.local");

and you've now got automatic failover capability. You need to be running a witness for this magic to happen. If you're running on a Linux box this capability is not available but you can always try something like:

http://www.evolt.org/failover-database-connection-with-php-mysql

Despite what SQL Books Online tell you about being able to use IP addresses to specify the failover partner and witness servers, this appears to be not quite true in practice.

I spent almost a day and a half configuring a HA mirroring rig using certificates for authentication (the servers are standalone and not in a domain) and was buggered if I could get the mirror and the witness to connect. Without this there'd be no automatic failover. Manual failover worked just fine, but our project requires Automatic Failover. It all seemed like an exercise in futility.

I even had the FQ domain names of all the machines participating in the Principal, Mirror and Witness rig in their respective HOSTS files, but still no dice.

Eventually I tried setting the PARTNER and WITNESS using the FQ machine names as they appear in the HOSTS files. Suddenly it all started working. Querying sys.database_mirroring on both principal and mirror at last showed the witness as connected.

I caved and bought a Mac Mini 2ghz a couple of days back. I quite like OS X and it has quite a good out of box experience. My only complaint so far is that arty farty aluminium keyboard and the one button mighty mouse. For a developer they both suck in terms of usability and ergonomics. I ended up buying an older A1048 wireless keyboard with proper keys and a proper two button Logitech LX6 mouse to replace them both.

Anyway it's been a long time since I got quite so excited about a new computer. I'm looking forward to honing my Python and Ruby skills in an environment that doesn't have my usual MS crutches like VS.

This quite a handy wee tool from MS -

Bumff:

XML Notepad 2007 Home

Download from:

XML Notepad 2007 Download

Attempting to use aerosol furniture polish as an air freshener in your linoleum floored kitchen...my back hurts...nuff said.

Update: Cats none too pleased either.

This film is so bad that after 20 minutes of watching it my eyes fell out.

Absolutely no redeeming features, not even funny in it's badness. I'm surprised Dan O'Bannon continues to allow himself to be involved in this franchise.

A 'my eyes, my ears!' - 0/10

All I can say is, bloody marvelous. Daniel Day-Lewis at his best. It's a longish film (2hrs 38mins) but you pretty soon become immersed in the story and at no time did I feel compelled to look at my watch.

10/10

I'll keep it simple: "I upgraded to Firefox 3 and all I got was this lousy new back button".

It's hard to believe that Carl Sagan's Cosmos is nearly 30 years old and I never got around to reading it until now, although I do remember watching the TV series as a kid. Whilst the science of astronomy and astrophysics has moved on somewhat since the book was written, Cosmos is a timeless book. Before I started to read it I thought it might feel dated and of its time, but not so. Forget Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", Cosmos is the daddy. It truly is the the Total Perspective Vortex in a handy book format.