Riaan Lehmkuhl's Blog

Get DOS 8.3 short name with VbScript

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:26:00 +0200

Create a new text file called shortname.vbs Open in notepad and paste the following code in it:

set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 
strLongName = Wscript.Arguments(0)
strShortName = "Invalid File/Folder - (" & strLongName & ")"
Set fsoFile = Nothing
On Error Resume Next
Set fsoFile = fso.GetFile(strLongName)
if Err.number <> 0 then
Set fsoFile = fso.GetFolder(strLongName)
end if
if fsoFile is not nothing then
strShortName = fsoFile.ShortPath
end if
Wscript.Echo strShortName

Run the script using cscript:

cscript shortname.vbs "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe"

You will then get the following output:

C:\PROGRA~1\Adobe\READER~1.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe

Windows.Forms Binding errors with .Net 2.0 (Part 4)

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:53:00 +0200

The problem:
In a DataGridView, after adding a new row, and clicking away, the new row disappears.

The solution:
This is most likely caused by an error being raised due to a data input error. Im my case it was because of a non visible column not allowing nulls.
put a break point in the "DataError" event handler. Even though the error might be written to the row's ErrorText, it is never displayed because the row disappears.

MSTSC /console not working anymore

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:13:00 +0200

When using the "Virtual Server Administration Website" to admin your Virtual Server 2005 R2 virtual servers one needs to be logged on to the console of the host server or you get a HTTP 500 Internal Server Error message. For this reason I've always used the mstsc /console command to log in to session 0 of the host server, but to my dismay this just didn't seem to work anymore.
I opened the command prompt and typed in mstsc /?. Lo and behold, the console option is gone:

---------------------------
Remote Desktop Connection Usage
---------------------------
MSTSC [] [/v:] [/admin] [/f[ullscreen]]
[/w: /h:] [/public] | [/span] [/edit "connection file"] [/migrate]
"connection file" -- Specifies the name of an .rdp file for the connection.
/v: -- Specifies the remote computer to which you want to connect.
/admin -- Connects you to the session for administering a server.
/f -- Starts Remote Desktop in full-screen mode.
/w: -- Specifies the width of the Remote Desktop window.
/h: -- Specifies the height of the Remote Desktop window.
/public -- Runs Remote Desktop in public mode.
/span -- Matches the remote desktop width and height with the local
virtual desktop, spanning across multiple monitors if necessary. To span
across monitors, the monitors must all have the same height and be aligned
vertically.
/edit -- Opens the specified .rdp connection file for editing.
/migrate -- Migrates legacy connection files that were created with
Client Connection Manager to new .rdp connection files.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

I noticed the /admin switch, which seemed to do the trick.
After some more research I've found that this was apllied with XP SP3 and supposed to be because of some new security features in Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1. Due to this fact this trick won't work on these.

RE: Updated SyntaxHighlighter Extension for BlogEngine.NET

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:59:00 +0200

There seems to be a conflict between the SyntaxHighlighter javascript and the BlogEngine.NET Widget Zone administration drag-and-drop javascript. When the SyntaxHighlighter Extension is enabled, the drag-and-drop in the Widget Zone does not work although there doesn't seem to be any javascript errors.

Luckily we don't need to rearrange the widget zone that often. So when you need to do that just disable the SyntaxHighlighter Extension temporarily, rearrange your widgets and enable the SyntaxHighlighter Extension again.

Updated LinkList widget for BlogEngine.NET

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:51:00 +0200

Here's an updated LinkList widget that allows for changing the order of items in the list with a 'Move Up' command.
Also updated the txtUrl control's ValidationExpression to cater for urls starting with '/', '~/' and 'mailto:'.

Download the updated LinkList widget or get the patch files from CodePlex to apply to your working copy.

Grass And Sky BlogEngine.NET 1.4 template

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:09:00 +0200

As promised in a previous post here is the Grass And Sky template adapted for BlogEngine.NET 1.4

This theme is not a 100% complete yet, but maybe you can make it work for yourself.

Download and give it a go.

Updated SyntaxHighlighter Extension for BlogEngine.NET

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:52:00 +0200

Looking for ways to add syntax highlighting to my blog I came accross Scott Dougherty's article for Adding SyntaxHighlighter to BlogEngine.NET and then Chris Blankenship's SyntaxHighlighter Extension for BlogEngine.NET.

I really like his extension, but I wanted the installation path and loaded language scripts to be configurable so I've updated his extension to use the BlogEngine Extension Manager.

Download SyntaxHighlighter
Extract and upload the SyntaxHighlighter code to your blog (I renamed the dp.SyntaxHighlighter directory to just SyntaxHighlighter)
eg. ~/extensions/SyntaxHighlighter
Download, extract and upload the SyntaxHighlighter.cs file into the ~/App_Code/Extensions directory
NOTE:
If you already had the SyntaxHighlighter Extension from Chris Blankenship installed, you might have to delete the "~/App_Data/datastore/extensions/SyntaxHighlighter.xml" file before the new extension settings will be loaded.
Login to your blog and go to "Extensions" under the "Control panel"
Click on "Edit" next to the "SyntaxHighlighter" extension and configure as required (see preview below)

For a list of supported languages see the syntaxhighlighter wiki

For Windows Live Writer support:

Download and install Windows Live Writer and the SyntaxHighlighter for Windows Live Writer plugin (Requires .Net 3.5 framework)
Update the blog style (In Live Writer under the "Weblog" menu then "Edit Weblog Settings..." and click on the "Editing" tab)

NOTE:
If you have custom ordered list item styles in your theme, you might have to make a small change to the SyntaxHighlighter CSS. In my case I've got a custom list-style-image so I had to make the following change in the "SyntaxHighlighter\Styles\SyntaxHighlighter.css" file:
in the following bit, I added list-style-image: none;:

/* clear styles */
.dp-highlighter ol,
.dp-highlighter ol li,
.dp-highlighter ol li span 
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: none;
list-style-image: none;
}

Here's the diff:

Index: /BlogEngine/BlogEngine.Web/extensions/SyntaxHighlighter/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css 
=================================================================== 
--- /BlogEngine/BlogEngine.Web/extensions/SyntaxHighlighter/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css 
+++ /BlogEngine/BlogEngine.Web/extensions/SyntaxHighlighter/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css 
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: none;
+	list-style-image: none;
}
.dp-highlighter a,

Firefox 3 Bug: invalid 'in' operand this._sandbox

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:27:00 +0200

If you are getting the following JavaScript error in Firefox 3, here is a quick workaround:

Error: invalid 'in' operand this._sandBox Source File: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsProxyAutoConfig.js Line: 95

Open the file mentioned in your favourite text editor (one that can handle unix line endings; if you have nothing else, use WordPad), and seach for the this line:

if (!("FindProxyForURL" in this._sandBox))
   return null;

and wrap it in a try/catch block like this:

try {
   if (!("FindProxyForURL" in this._sandBox))
      return null;
} catch (e) { return null; }

Save your changes, and restart Firefox.

Although this is probably not the correct way to solve this problem, at least it helps to keep the 'Error Console' garbage free.

Moving from Blogger to BlogEngine.NET

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:42:00 +0200

I just moved my blog from Blogger to BlogEngine.NET. I done this for various reasons, but mainly because I'm a control freak.

Although I could have used the "blog.importer.application" provided by BlogEngine.NET, I did the export and import manually to have full control of the process.

Normally when moving domains the best way would of course be to setup 301 redirects, So my new blog to keep rankings etc. but Blogger has made that impossible.

I searched for ways for just forwarding all the requests to the Blogger blog to my new blog and found many posts on moving from Blogger to Wordpress. So this post just includes the specifics for BlogEngine.NET.

The main two sources I used was:

I wanted my old blog to stay up with posts intact so that people that has bookmarked it or any posts can still find what they are looking for and because read this post: why-you-should-never-delete-your-blogger-blogs.

The Walkthrough:

(Remember to replace "YOUR_NEW_BLOG_DOMAIN_HERE" with your blog's address.)

Setup the auto redirect:
Log into your Blogger account, navigate to the "Layout" tab and click on "Edit HTML". In the template editor put the following in the <head>...</head>:
```
<meta content='5;url=http://YOUR_NEW_BLOG_DOMAIN_HERE/' http-equiv='refresh'/>
```
This will handle the front page redirection of the blog.

To let the users know that your blog has moved, and that they will be redirected, add a message to the page:

<div style='position: absolute; top: 30px; left: 30px; border: solid 2px #333; color: #000; background-color: yellow; padding: 5px; width: 400px; z-index: 5; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;opacity: .4;filter: alpha(opacity=40);'>
<p><strong>My blog has moved!</strong></p>
<p>You should be automatically redirected in 5 seconds. If not, visit<br/> <a href='http://YOUR_NEW_BLOG_DOMAIN_HERE/'> <strong>YOUR_NEW_BLOG_DOMAIN_HERE</strong></a> <br/> and update your bookmarks.</p>
</div>

Place this right after the opening <body> tag.

Because your new blog will contain all the posts from the old Blogger blog you need to avoid being penalised for duplicate content, add this to the "head" section as in point one...
```
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"/>
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"/>
```
NOINDEX FOLLOW tells the crawler not to index the Blogger page but to FOLLOW the redirect. NOINDEX will also instruct the crawler to drop any already indexed version of page.

To make the individual posts forward to their new counterparts a few things need to be done:

On the Blogger control panel in “Settings -> Formatting”, change the Timestamps on posts to the MM/DD/YYYY format.
Look for this code in the Blogger Template

<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>

and enter the following widget code under it (combine the three bits):

<b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog' >
<b:includable id='main' >
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"' >
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post' >
<div id='redirectorTitle' style='visibility:hidden' > <data:post.title/ > </div >
<script type='text/javascript' >

var new_domain = 'http://www.lehmkuhl.za.net/blog/post'
function utf8_uri_encode( str ) {
   var high_code = new RegExp(/[\u0080-\uffff]+/);;
   new_str = str;;
   while( m = high_code.exec( new_str ) ) {
      new_str = new_str.replace(m,encodeURIComponent(m));;
   }
   return new_str;;
}
var title = document.getElementById('redirectorTitle').innerHTML;;
// [INCOMPLETE] Keep percent signs that aren't part of an octet?
title = title.replace(/<[^>]*?>/g,'');; // remove tags
title = title.replace(/&.+?;/g,'');; // remove entities
title = utf8_uri_encode(title);; // handle UTF-8 characters
title = title.toLowerCase();;
title = title.replace(/[^%a-z0-9 _-]/g,'');; // remove punctuation
title = title.replace(/\s+/g,'-');; // turn spaces into hyphens
title = title.replace(/-+/g, '-');; // collapse runs of hyphens
title = title.replace(/^-+/g,'');; // remove prefixed hyphens
title = title.replace(/-+$/g,'');; // remove suffixed hyphens
var timestamp = ' <data:post.timestamp/ >';
timestamp = timestamp.split('/');
timestamp = timestamp[2]+'/'+timestamp[0]+'/'+timestamp[1];
var new_page = new_domain + '/' + timestamp + '/' + title + '.aspx';;
document.location.href = new_page;

</script >
</b:loop >
</b:if >
</b:includable >
</b:widget >

This will redirect the blogger post...
http://someblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/some-blog-post.html
...to...
http://YOUR_NEW_BLOG_DOMAIN_HERE/post/2008/06/28/some-blog-post.aspx

To see a working example visit my old blog at http://somethingsubversion.blogspot.com/.

Add Google Talk Online Presence to Web Pages

riaanl.nospam@nospam.gmail.com (Riaan) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:08:00 +0200

If you use Google Talk instant messenger and would like to stay connected with visitors on your website, the Google Talk chatback badge is a cool way to display to them when you are online and available to chat / IM with them.

Just point your browser to http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New, and follow the easy instructions.