StokeMaster Development Note

SQL Express Connection Times Out Even Though It is Up

2012-05-16T16:04:00.001-07:00

Symptom:

I can access the local SQL Express server instance without a problem using the SMSS, but from my application the SQL connection times out almost immediately.

Cause:

In my situation, it was a connection string issue. In production I use a mirrored connection. So just out of a laziness, I just change two of the hosts in the connection string to be the same.

Like this,

Data Source=localhost;Failover Partner=localhost;Initial....

Apparently the driver does not like this type of conneciton string and give you an immediate timeout error.

Fix

Just remove the Failover Partner part and try. It always does the trick to me.

WFC Services Runs OK on Visual Studio Web Server But Not on IIS When Deployed

2012-05-14T16:12:00.003-07:00

Symptom:

You have created an WCF "web" service. It debugs and runs fine on the Visual Studio's web server, but when deployed the directory to the IIS 7 (even on the same local machine) you get a script error.

The Root Cause

The WCF is not fully enabled on your IIS 7.

The Fix

The complete fix is from this web site at Microsoft. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752252(v=vs.90).aspx

Open the IIS manager and Go to the Default Web Site, Double-click Handler mappings in the Features View.
In the list of application mappings, verify that the .svc file for the .NET Framework in use (2 or 4) is mapped to the aspnet_isapi.dll. If the file has not been mapped:
Click Add Managed Handler.
Type *.svc into the Request path:.
Type System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 into the Type textbox.
Type svc-Integrated into the Name: textbox.
Click OK.
Click Add Script Map.
Type *.svc into the Request path:.
Type %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll into the Executable: text box.
Type svc-ISAPI-2.0 into the Name: text box.
Under the right "Actions" Panel, select "View Ordered List" then Using the Move Up/Move Down controls, ensure that the managed handler (svc-Integrated) appears before the aspnet_isapi (svc-ISAPI-2.0) handler in the list.
Click OK.
Give it a shot.

Visual Studio 2010 Reloads Microsoft.VisualStudio.IDE.ToolboxControlsInstaller,ToolboxInstallerPackage'{2C298B35-07DA-45F1-96A3-BE55D91C8D7A} Every Time

2012-05-14T10:12:00.001-07:00

Symptom

When opening a forms designer on Visual Studio the following toolbox loads each time and it takes a long time by loading the toolbox with the following information.

Microsoft.VisualStudio.IDE.ToolboxControlsInstaller,ToolboxInstallerPackage'{2C298B35-07DA-45F1-96A3-BE55D91C8D7A}

Possible Solution:

There are various options on this, and the best discussion about this is at this URL: But it appears that this is related to Silverlight SDK corrupting some data in the SDK based on this post.

There are other discussions on this post.

In my specific case, setting

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Packages\{2c298b35-07da-45f1-96a3-be55d91c8d7a}\Toolbox\DefaultItems to 0

made it worse. I cannot recommend this.

Instead try un-installing and re-installing the Sliverlight SDK in the order of versions to fix the toolbox issue. Namely remove 5.0 SDK and 4.0 SDK then install the 4.0 first then 5.0 if you are still (having to) coding with Sliverlight.

As with anything, approach your fix with a big caution when dealing with config issues like this. Have a good back-out plan like backing up the registry settings etc.

ATT Momentum 4G Adaptor Blue Screens Windows 7 X64

2012-05-10T00:13:00.001-07:00

Symptom:

When you plug in ATT Momentum 4G (Sierra Wireless Momentum), you get a blue screen (with memory violation from a driver) when the driver in being installed.

Root Cause:

I do not know exactly which driver causes this, but...

It appears that the Sierra driver is not compatible with the USB-3 interface (at least on my ASUS u46s). Try plugging this into a USB-2 interface slot and start the installation over again.

Also, in my situation, I had to call the ATT's automated activation phone line to activate the SIM in it.

Collecting PDF Form Data with ASP.NET C#

2012-04-26T19:21:00.003-07:00

I recently had to investigate the technique to capture the form input data collected on Adobe PDF for radiological procedure report results.

This, though very simple, information was scattered around all over the places so I can provide you the gist of what you need to do by means of a simple demo code.

First you will need to use the PDF Form Editor, for example Adobe Acrobat Pro. I am sure there are a lot of different ones.
Next you either scan a form or create one which output the usual .doc file.
Import the document and edit the form using the PDF form editor, drag and dropping the fields.
Finally add a submit button with a submit action of http://localhost/xfdf
On Visual Studio, create the xfdf web project and you can add the following code in Page_Load of Default.aspx

public partial class xdf : System.Web.UI.Page

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

        var name = "junk.xfdf";

        string filename = Path.Combine(Server.MapPath(""), name);

        using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Create))

            byte[] bytes = new byte[8192];

            int bytesRead;

            while ((bytesRead = Request.InputStream.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)) &gt; 0)

                fs.Write(bytes, 0, bytesRead);


Compile above code.
Submit the PDF form to the URL

Then if you open junk.xfdf on your text editor, you will see something like this. The key part is that you will see the field and value elements in the XML. From this point it is quite easy to parse this stuff using the XDocument class and LINQ.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xfdf xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/" xml:space="preserve"
><fields
><field name="Heart Rate"
><value
>10</value
></field
><field name="Submit"
/></fields
><ids original="BFF11731D28F744F901901CF60BBED7A" modified="B0328D96D4E3F242A93BC5512C7B97E6"
/></xfdf
>

Getting XTIDE Up on Joyent SmartMachine (Solaris 11)

2012-04-09T08:39:00.001-07:00

This is my note on getting the XTide (learn more) up on the Joyent SmartMachine on which I am running various personal web projects. My XTide was previously hosted on a shared Linux machine (i.e., no root access) before but the provider upgraded the Linux and then it broke. Since I now have an Intel Solaris 11 virtual machine of "my own," I have decided to transition to this server (as I find time, of course.) Installing and configuring XTide on a shared machine was a real hassle as they did not have X11 installed and they won't install it for me, but now with the virtual machine in which I have the "root" things are becoming much easier, in addition there are a lot of pre-built installs that's available (still require the root access.) {Why Joyent SmartMachine and Solaris? Don't ask. But I am extremely satisfied with it. }

Perhaps you may have the same problem and here is how I got around the issues.

Note that I am only interested in running this as a command line to compute the tide and graphics in the area I surf using a cron job. So if you have an X-Windows issue, this article won't help much.

Getting It Installed

Getting it installed is fairly simple.

The page http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/files.html tells that on Solaris you go to Blastware.COM, but almost all of the mirror sites it points to are broken. Instead, if you go to http://www.opencsw.org/packages/xtide/ it is still avilable. The maintenance of this stopped around 2.10 (in 2008) but for my purposes, it is OK. Someday, when I have more time, I may volunteer to contribute to Opencsw to maintain this. Not now...
It comes with required libraries, and also the original harmonics and wvs files it was built with in /opt/csw/share/xtide
If you don't know what I am talking about but you have the root access to the machine, just follow the instructions on the OpenCSW web site, install the pkgutil installer first as a root (if you don't have) and then install the xtide with it. You would be all set in a matter of 5-10 minutes. And if you still don't know what I am talking about, then it is best to ask your IT admin buddy to get that done as it can affect other OpenCSW packages other people may be using on your machine.

Getting it to Run

"Out of the box" by typing in {tide -l "princeton"} it did not run. In fact it threw an exception about saying the following:

XTide Fatal Error: BAD_OR_AMBIGUOUS_COMMAND_LINE

but do not dismay yet...!
Here is what I have done to get it going!

The "tide" command on /opt/csw/bin/tide is a shell script which, in turn, will run tide.bin after "tide" sets various environment variables. There appears to be an issue with the WVS_DIR environment variable and if only have the HFILE_PATH it works (in other words comment out WVS_DIR definition in the tide script), and it will output the tide. The graphics output also worked.

To test if anything works, you can first only EXPORT the HFILE_PATH in your shell then run /opt/csw/bin/tide.bin directly like this.

HFILE_PATH="/opt/csw/share/xtide/harmonics.tcd"
export HFILE_PATH
/opt/csw/bin/tide.bin -l "princeton"

The Harmonics Database Location Names Have Changed

In my old script I had -l "half moon bay." This time it did not work as the program could not find the station name. So be sure that you look at the Location List (http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/locations.html) that matches your Harmonic file you've downloaded.

Hope this helps in your situation.

ASP.NET GridView and LinqDataSource Stuff...

2012-04-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

The DataGrid is one of the components I use quite a bit in my line of work, and they are convenient.

I have also been using LINQ quite a bit. It is a significant time saver as well as making my code more easier to understand. But until today I never bothered to use LinqDataSource just because I did not spend time to learn a bit about it. Instead I always built the DataSets using the designer. The problem with the Datasets for me is that it does not show me exactly what I am querying easily.

Before I get into that, I have to tell you also that if your requirement is very simple, then you can feed the result of the Linq query directly to the GridView (or other data binding controls.) This might be a great way to bind the pull down menu or a list view with small number of selections.

For example,

var customers = from c in context.customers select c;
gridview1.DataSource = c;

And that really all it takes to feed a GridView. For more information on this, learn from this MSDN page.

But this won't allow you to sort or page the grid. For that purpose you need to attach a LinqDataSource. You can easily do that by:

Defining the LinqToSQL object in your project, or pull one in from other assembly
Dragging and dropping the LinqDataSource component on to of the GridView. The wizard will show you which of the LinqToSQL database context object to use.

Well that's great, but I really do not want to use the connection string that's built into Web.config. In my case, I pull the connection string common to all my applications from my own company's registry set. But at any rate, you would assign a newly created data context to e.ObjectInstance of the event argument.

So here is another trick.

Define an event processing method for ContextCreating event.

protected void LinqDataSource1_ContextCreating(object sender,
LinqDataSourceContextEventArgs e)
{
string myConnectionString="your connection string";
e.ObjectInstance = new MyDataConext(myConnectionString);
}

Mac Lion: ssh hangs

2012-03-25T08:07:00.001-07:00

Symptom:

On Mac Lion (10.7.3), when you try 'ssh' it times-out. You know you have the proper login and host parameters because it works from other computers (say Linux or Windows putty, or even running putty on the same Mac!)

Cause:

I do not know, but it appears that the Mac Lion SSH handles UTF-8 character sets in the manner that the remote side do not like.

There is nothing wrong with your network or network provider. Something wrong is introduced in Lion.

Fix:

Essentially finding a line in /etc/ssh_config file that says LANG LC_* should just be commented out. If you do not know exactly what I am talking about the following is the steps to accomplish this.

Open Terminal
sudo vim /etc/ssh_config
Supply your password
Type in below, including the first /
/LANG LC_
This will take you to the line where the problem is
Hit the left arrow key several times, until you are at the start of the line.
Type i to insert
Type # to comment out the line
Press ESC to exit the insert mode
Type wq (means write quit) to save the file and exit vim
Now close the Terminal, Re-launch it and try ssh again

If you do not want to all of this, simply download other SSH clients and use them.

Fix! Pythonwin (2.x) Windows 2008 Event Log Text Get Empty String

2012-01-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

Symptom:

You used to be able to get the Event Viewer text under Windows 2003 using the following call in Pythonwin. After switching to Windows 2008 or Windows 7 the strings are all empty!

events=win32evtlog.ReadEventLog(hEvent,flags,0)

for ev_obj in events :       

   msg=str(win32evtlogutil.SafeFormatMessage(ev_obj, logType))

Now the majority of "msg" comes out blank. Oddly enough any newer programs the msg come out fine.

Fix:

The string messages logged can also be found as tuples in (using above code example) ev_obj.StringInserts as UNICODE strings.

Therefore, for example, to grab the strings as one msg string, you could write a quick loop like this to get you the full string.

                               msg = ''
             for si in ev_obj.StringInserts :
                   msg = msg + si + ' '
             print msg

VoIP "Can't Hear Me, Can Hear Them" Issue

2011-12-26T23:05:00.000-08:00

Symptom:

You have (deployed) a SIP VoIP telephone set (can also be a software SIP phone) at home. Your phone rings and you can even dial out but the recipient of a call cannot hear you, though you can hear the recipient's voice.

Issue:

This means that the SIP protocol is going though but the RTP protocol is not going through. This happens in a typical home WiFi "router" scenario connected to cable or DSL service.

Possible Fixes:

If you cannot make a call at all or if you cannot receive any calls at all: Check UDP 5060-5063 ports.

If the sound is an issue then try opening UDP Port 16384 - 16482, or 10000 - 20000. This depends on the phone implementation.

Note: If you are an Astound customer, try connecting the phone directly to the DMZ port provided by Astound.

Mac Lion Windows Remote Desktop Freezes - Alternate Solution

2011-12-11T11:21:00.001-08:00

Symptom

When you "log out" from a Remote Desktop session using the Windows Remote Desktop client, it either freezes or hangs. If it is in full-screen mode, it would not even allow you to open the Apple Menu to force quit the application.

As of December 2011, there is no updated version of RDP Client from Microsoft.

Workaround/Alternate Solution

Try using CoRD from SourceForge. It actually provides better user experience than the RDP client from Microsoft. It works on all recent versions of MacOS X including the Tiger version. I especially like the fact that the user/password management is built in to the software. (for me the Keychain with MS DRP goes out of Sync very quickly if you are connecting to multiple hosts frequently, usually ending up typing user and password every time.)

Update (5/10/2012): CoRD is not that super-stable either on my iMac with Lion, but it never totally hangs. CoRD tends to crash hard when losing a connection that was running.

LINQ To XML Tips

2011-12-05T09:22:00.001-08:00

Use XElement instead of XDocument in LINQ to XML

I misunderstood that it is usually the XElement that is all I needed and not XDocument to work with LINQ to XML.

XElement has just about everything you need and also LINQ works mainly with XElement.

For example, the following code can locate all the "top level" nodes titled page. Within each of the element you can actually find the element titled "regex" no matter how deeply inside that elemenet's tree. This is because I am grabbing all descendant level nodes.

       public void Test(XElement FinderSpec)
        {

            var pages = from f in FinderSpec.Descendants()
                    where f.Name == "page"
                    select f;

            foreach (var i in pages)
            {
                var reg = from tre in i.Descendants()
                          where tre.Name == "regex"
                          select tre;

                foreach (var re in reg)
                {
                    var rs = re.Value;
                }
            }

        }

The XElement class also has handy Load and Save from file as well.

var el = Xelement.Load("test.xml");
el.Save("test2.xml");

Taking Advantage of the Microsoft XPS "Virtual Printer" Even on Macs and iPADs

2011-11-20T09:20:00.001-08:00

Symptom:

I was using an application and the result of which is only output via a Print interface. To make the matter worse, this was on a remote site so I could not print to my printer either. To make it even worse, I don't feel like adding any PDF printing driver to this machine as it belonged to a customer.

Fix:

I have been aware that Microsoft XPS driver is installed on just about any modern Microsoft OS machines, and it is even often annoying that it comes up as a default driver to my mothers-in-law PC and she cannot print to actual paper.

As it turns out, you can consider this XPS as the pre-installed "PDF" driver that works on Windows. And since .NET Framework 3.0 a "free" viewer comes "pre-installed"; all you need to do is to activate it! Like just about anything Microsoft (Apple) does, XPS is designed to kill other company's product, in this case the PDF.

Whether XPS is superior to PDF or not, I don't care, I am not in printing business, but, this means that we can print at most computers without any physical printer, and take or email the XPS file back home and print at your leisure (or just view them to save the tree) or re-print them in PDF once you get it back on a PDF enabled computer.

To "install" or actually "activate" the XPS viewer, see this MS article. What is XPS Viwer

Other platform users do not need to dismay. You can try uploading the XPS file to your Google Docs account and view it online!

Note that the article is a bit obsolete, in systems with .NET framework 3.5 (probably) or later the XPS viewer enable is not within the .NET Framework feature but are listed in the top level list.

SQL Server 2008: Cannot Detach The Database

2011-11-20T08:28:00.001-08:00

Symptom:

You have a dead file for a database that was active. For example, you have lost a disk drive or if you have lost file MDF file. Now you try to detach it from the SQL Server Management Studio, it won't let you do it.

Fix:

Try manually firing the query then

use master
drop database

The key above is that you are going to the master and not any other databases.

Tortoise Git Tips: How To Use It Behind an HTTP Proxy

2011-11-19T19:03:00.001-08:00

Problem:

You want to connect to the Git Server via HTTPS (say GitHub.com), but you are behind a proxy. You know the proxy information.

Fix:

Issue the following Git command from the Git Bash. In this example my proxy is at DaProxy... port 8123

config --global http.proxy http://DaProxy.myhospital.edu:8123

Where is The DLL for System.Windows.Media.Imaging Namespace?

2011-11-14T09:49:00.001-08:00

Symptom:

You wanted to use classes from System.Windows.Media.Imaging Namespace, but there is no such class when you try to Add Reference from your Visual Studio.

Fix:

Add PresentationCore, which you should find under the .NET tab of Add Reference dialog box.

Bluetooth and/or WiFi Abruptly and Intermittently Goes Offline on Windows 7 Laptops

2011-11-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Recently I had a symptom in which Bluetooth and WiFi stops working temporarily. This is a problem for me because I often use RDP to connect to my laptop and it drops connections. Interestingly in my case, each time this happens the CPU fans go faster for a bit, so I suspected that this has something to do with the power.

As it turns out, both Bluetooth and WiFi network devices can shut itself down by default due to automatic power management controls.

This behavior can be disabled from the Device Manager (just type these words in at the Start menu) and go to each Bluetooth Radio and WiFi device properties. You will find the Power Management tab where you can configure this.

I just did it so I will update this will or will not work in a longer run.

Windows SC.EXE Command Gotcha

2011-11-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

Symptom:

You wanted to create/install a service using the SC.EXE command on Windows 2008 (XP as well) but it does not seem to work. It come back with the help message suggesting that you have had some errors.

sc create MyService binpath="c:\MyService\MyService.exe" type="own" start="auto"

This WILL result in errors and it won't tell you how you have errored.

Fix:

Fix your brains that it is not Unix that you are dealing with, since we cannot fix someone who designed it at Microsoft.

sc create MyService binpath= "c:\MyService\MyService.exe" type= "own" start= "auto"

Do you see the difference between the two?

There is a blank after each= sign. Not an example of world-class coding.

How To Escape Textile Formatting

2011-11-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Problem

You want to write express on the text things like %TEMP%\My Directory\ on a Textile format (such as on Basecamp Writeboard) but The % character goes away.

Solution

Use the ==

==%Temp%== and the % will now appear in the text.

MS ReadyBoost Implementation Tips - Do Not Bother

2011-08-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I got a small Lenovo V470 IdeaPad and have been playing with it with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit version. Along with it I found out about the ReadyBoost technology they have added into the OS since Vista.

Initially ReadyBoost does not seem to be doing anything. In fact, initially it even slows you down as it builds the cache, and actually does not make Booting faster by much. What it makes faster is applications to launch faster, especially when more applications are running consuming more RAMs and disks are working hard to service the applications.

I ran into a couple of snags thought I resolved it so here is a quick summary of how you can implement Readyboost on your laptops.

As far as I know this works only with the Built-In SD card slot which is wired into the PCI bus and does not go through the USB.
Get at least a 16 GB SD card with at least Category 10 capability. I had Category 4 and that failed the qualification step to activate ReadyBoost.
Before doing anything, Format the card with NTSF and not FAT32. The reason for this is that for FAT32, the maximum file size will be limited to 4 GB. For your laptop applications, you would want as much Readyboost cache space as possible. Typically this is 3 times or more of the RAM. Given most PCs are sold with 4 GB RAM. Having a 16 GB SD would be sufficient.
Don't use Readyboost on your laptop unless it is connected to the AC power (this makes ReadyBoot almost useless while in battery operation.) As soon as you boot, it starts to cache data and also re-encrypts data. This means this activity occurs during every reboot and every wake-up from hibernation. NOTE: If you run into this situation while in battery operation, you can pull the card out without causing a problem. Re-encryption cannot be turned off on external devices so there is no easy way to turn this off.
If you have lots of RAM, you may not notice the difference.

Hope this helps.

MSMQ, You Get "Invalid queue path name" Exception When Opening a Remote Private Queue

2011-08-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

Example Symptom:

You have a remote computer named XYZZY
Inside it is a private queue named MyQueue
You have written the MSMQ code in C# (or .NET)
When accessing locally within XYZZY, you can use .\private$\MyQueue it works.
When trying to get to the queue using "XYZZY\private$\MyQueue from another computer even on the same subnet and no firewall enabled, you now get an MSMQ exception stating "Invalid Queue Path Name"

Try This:

Instead of

XYZZY\private$\MyQueue

Try this way.

FormatName:DIRECT=OS:XYZZY\private$\MyQueue

Note, spell FormatName exactly how it is. It is the only part that is case sensitive!

--
This was tested on Windows Server 2008 R2 with .NET 3.5

Tortoise Git Annoyance Fixes and Tips Collection

2011-08-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

I am collecting some quick fixes that I had to do to make this work the way I want it. I am using Windows 7 64-bits these days. If you are encountering other annoyances or want to share your fixes, please feel free to ask or comment on this article.

Annoyance 1: Cannot Delete A Folder, Folder in Use

This is because tgitcache.exe is running and not releasing the folder. You can temporarily kill this program from the task manager and then you can delete the folder.

Annoyance 2: The Icon Overlay on Folders are Gone

If the overlay icons are showing on certain drives then it is just the setup on the Tortoise Git. Just open the settings and look under Icon Overlays section. It is likely Network or Removable Drives are not checked.
If that is not the case then your computer has gone over the 11 icon limit as you may likely have installed DropBox or JungleDisk or such things that take up icons. If you are brave enough and take your responsibility then here is where the icons are referenced.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers
and then remove anything you don't need above and beyond 11 total that's allowed

Want to use the Git behind an HTTP proxy? Read this article.

How To Use Your DropBox.COM Folder As a Git Repository with Tortoise Git

2011-07-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Update: If you have lost your Tortoise Git overlay icons, you need to do some registry work. See the bottom of this article.

You probably came to this article because you are new to the Git Revision Control System and want to know where to store the "source control database" somewhere other than your own computer.

In my specific situation, I develop software under the Windows OS and I may have some side-project such as some research I am doing outside of my work.

GitHub.com is great, and I use it for my business but in order to get your own private GiT repository, you have to pay. They only allows you to let you have a repository if it is open to the public. But in my case, I use Git not just for software source code but many other types of files, for example, my next epic surf novel.

The main problem for me is that I would like to maintain my small repositories without a need to have an elaborate GiT server. Fortunately a GiT repository server can be nothing more than a file system that's accessible from your computer, and even better there are many "cloud disk" services around, many of them are free. The Dropbox.com based cloud disk is very convenient because it maintains the local cache, so the interaction with GiT is very fast. You just need to remember to allow it the time to synchronize the data.

Before moving forward with my example, I assume that you have installed the Windows Git and Tortoise Git on your Windows machine. I also assume that you have used Git for other stuff, for example at your work, so you are generally familiar with synchronizing your own Git repository against the server.

So here are some very straight forward steps to do.

On your DropBox, create a folder which has the name of your repository. For now I will call it MyRepo
From your explorer go inside MyRepo
Right click and select "Git create repository here..."
A dialog box will appear with a box that says "Make it bare." You need to click that check box and OK.
On any other local disk, I assume you already have your project Git that you want to synchronize.
Go your local project Git folder.
Right click on the folder from the Explorer and select Tortoise Git, and select Settings submenu
On the dialog box navigate down to the Git node and select the Remote sub node.
You are likely to have the "origin" as the remote repository, but you may have others. Select whichever one you would like to connect it to the one on the Dropbox.
On the URL box, type in the path on the dropbox containing the bare bone repo you have just created. For example, C:\Users\Manabu\Dropbox\MyRepo

Now you can synchronize between your repo and the one on the Dropbox.

Fixing the Lost Overlay Icons

Go to http://www.sitepoint.com/missing-tortoisesvn-file-status-overlay-icons/ for more information. But the key for this is to go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

and then remove anything you don't need above and beyond 11 total that's allowed.

Do and Don’ts of Email

2011-07-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

While I am on the email topic from my previous post, I would like to pass on some of the things that made my email in work more effective. You may want to read some of my tips.

Consider Your Subject Line is Being Like a Tweet

Pack in as much useful information in the Subject line. I consider the subject line the Tweet area to contain almost the “body” of the message. This works because most people actually don’t read all email messages. They look at the subject line list and decide whether they will read the message or not.

Start Your Subject Line with the Name of Your Recipient

Again, compare these lines of subjects

1. “Tonight’s Dinner Plan”

2. “Want Join us for a dinner?”

3. “John Let’s Have a Dinner at French Landry at 6”

Which do you think is most effective? To me, it is the third one. If you read the subject line #3, you almost don’t need to read the body of the email. And I know you will click the email to read on.

Start Your Subject Line with a Verb

Your email will be more effective if you start your subject line more in the “Call for Action” style.

Consider the following examples,

1. “Blood Donation Drive This Afternoon”

2. “Donate Your Blood This Afternoon!”

Do Not Send Additional Messages in a Quick Succession

My experience is that if you do that the recipients will only read either the first or the last message and they ignore the rest.

Carefully Time When To Send a Message

This is a bit tricky, but you need to know when your recipient will read your email message. Most people have their email client set so that the most recent one would appear on top and messages are downloaded automatically. They usually scan only the top 10-20 lines of subject lines on their email clients. So if your message does not make it in that top 10 at the time they are reading, then you might as well consider the message lost.

Another strategy is actually just save it in your draft folder, phone call the recipient and then during the conversation mention to the person you have just send an email.

Typical times people read messages include;

The first thing in the morning

During or just after lunch

Just after dinner

You may want to start tracking the most effective time with respect to your important recipients.

Limit The Message Body Size to One Screen

People are busy (even if they really are not) they can only devote about 1 min of their time to read a message. If you wrote a message that do not fit in one screen then they tend stop reading it, moving on to the next one and never come back to your message.

Organize the Email For The Recipient

You have been frustrated with people who repeatedly ask you to send the same email message over and over again. It is not entirely the recipient’s fault; it is that the email is difficult to manage. Over time you will learn who would be asking for repeats, and in that case, make a CC copy of it on your end, put the copy in a folder with the recipient’s name on it. Then you can quickly re-send.

Use The Phone and Voicemail

If you are dealing with some emotional stuff such as one of you being frustrated, angry or extremely happy etc., then call the person up, or at least use the voicemail to leave your live message. Unless you are a NY Times Best Seller author, it is much easier to convey your emotions via voice. Talk to the person live!

So What’s So Wrong About Email?

2011-07-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

Everyone uses email, even if we asked them not to. I ask people to write issues into our issue tracking system. I ask people not to do attachments, instead upload them to our Google Docs and send links in the email to the document, even then people continue to attach documents, and when it comes to dealing with people outside of our organization, they don’t want to log into Basecamp account we provided, they claim they often cannot see Docs shared on the Google Docs… Some people in my company think I am the search engine and send emails to me essentially the query to our KB or to the Google.

So what’s wrong with all these? Why can’t they use email for all of the above? It is super convenient to write about a product issue and send an email to someone whom you think can handle. Attachments are one of the best file transfer protocol there is, and I can push files to just about anyone without thinking about FTP or user accounts and passwords.

I am starting to think, can we get rid of the web, and we only use the email? It is an extreme thinking but can such a technology possible?

How would I go about to make this happen in a more realistic way? I think that the future email engines would contain a search engine front-end, a lot more statistics driven choice of automated answers, intelligent filters. This sounds awfully a lot like how Gmail works, for example, and I think they are doing a great job.

Email as the Search Engine:

I would like the search engine to already scan the KB or other places I designate based on the content I received and also the prior usage or response pattern, and suggests possible responses I may have already written. I often get, “send me the server specifications PDF” email several times a quarter from the same person. I would like to tell the email system, next time this happens, just auto generate a reply. I then do not have to repeat myself.

I am experimenting with this using the “canned” response on Gmail but that’s not very smart yet, and it fires unnecessary responses.

Email as a File Version Control System:

If the email works a bit more like GiT and automatically aggregate the versions of different attachments that come by, and when I look for the attachments, it can give me a list of all versions, this will solve the problem of versions in attachments. This will also bring down the size of the in-box as duplicate files would be normalized.

Email as an Issue Tracking System

Gmail does this fairly well now, perhaps if I tag an email as an issue to track, then all of the related email messages will be visible by the team that I designate as a separate in-box where other people can respond, and workflow tag such as In Progress, Solved are also easy to put in. Assigning an issue is a snap then, I just forward the email to the person.

Email as a Knowledgebase

May be I can tag some email as a knowledge and the next time I am writing on some topic, dynamic search would be performed to either suggest a response that I already wrote, or other similar email messages I have written in the past.

Most or all of the above can become possible without changing the existing email infrastructure. They are about how email servers are implemented, so it will not break the rest of the world, we do not have to change the behaviors of any of the people I am dealing with now.