dumbastic

Goal.com Is Not Accessible

2010-08-02T15:43:00.002+07:00

It's been a long time since my last post. My duty forces me to abandon this blog for a while. Now I'm ready to write again when I got something to tell.

Today at 3:26 PM (GMT+7) when I open goal.com, one of my favourite websites, there's something strange which make my brain freeze for a while. First I'm not sure what's happen then I tried to refresh my browser times and times again desperately. Finally I tried to use another web browser but nothing changed at all.

Why a big site like goal.com give 504 - Gateway Timeout error page without any notice of maintenance or another? This is quite a phenomenon I guess. I has been reading goal.com everyday for months now and I never run into such experience before. Nevertheless I think this may only be temporary error as I'm sure that goal.com engineer will try their best to eliminate it. Good luck guys!! :)

Microsoft Office 2010 Has Been Released in Indonesia

2010-06-18T15:40:00.006+07:00

Microsoft begin offering Office 2010 to the entire world. There are three editions, Office Home and Student 2010 ($ 149), Office Home and Business 2010 ($ 279), and Office Professional 2010 ($ 499).

Office 2010 has multiple new features, such as Backstage as menu replacement.

Some very good improvement are on the new picture editing and video editing tools. Excel with features such as Sparklines, which appears on the Microsoft Office Web and loss of picture cells in the spreadsheet.

SignTool Error: ISignedCode::Sign returned error: 0x80880253

2010-06-18T13:39:00.005+07:00

Today i got following error when trying to publish my project within my development server :
"SignTool Error: ISignedCode::Sign returned error: 0x80880253"
Cause of this error is the server trying to sign the application using an expired certificate.

After some search, i found a few methods to solve this issue. The first is install .NET framework 2.0 SP1 if the client use Windows XP, which is my case. After applying this method, nothing happened, the error still popping up in my IDE. Then the second is create new certificates to sign my application, and it works.

This is how I do it :
1. Go to Project Properties -> Signing
2. Click "Create Test Certificate"
3. Put username and password on the pop-up prompt
4. Try to publish again
5. Gotcha!! no more error

You can find the details here.

World Cup 2010 Match Schedule

2010-06-11T09:57:00.004+07:00

World cup 2010 opening ceremony and first match will be held today. Are you ready for the excitement? Bring it on guys!! Enjoy a month of full-throttle-world-class football matches between the earth's most talented and skillful footballers. So, prepare yourself for the glorious battle.

You can check the match schedule here.

Apple Safari 5 is Released

2010-06-10T14:36:00.008+07:00

Good news for Apple fans, Safari 5 finally released today. It seems that its new version comes with a bunch of Apple-style new features. Apple claims it as the fastest web browser on earth. Does it sounds arrogant for you? If so, then you should give it a try. Check out the new and improved features below :

Safari Reader

Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story. It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view.

Even Greater HTML5 Support

Safari 5 supports over a dozen new HTML5 features that allow developers to create interactive content and media experiences that work right in the browser — without the need for third-party plug-ins.

View demos that illustrate the capabilities of HTML5 and web standards.

Better Performance

Enhancements to the Nitro Engine in Safari 5 mean you experience web browsing at greater speeds than before. Behind the scenes, Safari employs a technique called Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching. Improved page caching means more of the pages you viewed in the past load faster than before.

How does Safari performance compare with other browsers on the Mac? View the performance charts.

Bing Search

Safari gives you even more search options with built-in Bing search, in addition to Google and Yahoo! Search. Just choose Bing in the Smart Search Field, start typing, and get search suggestions that help you find what you’re looking for fast.

Safari Developer Program

Customizing Safari and the web.
Extensions made simple.
Signed and sandboxed.
Safari Extensions Gallery.

For more information click here.

Smarter Address Field

In the Smart Address Field, just type what you do remember, and Safari matches the text against the titles of web pages in your history and bookmarks. Safari also offers suggestions when you type any part of the address.

Tabs Setting

Safari 5 helps you clean up your desktop. A simple setting lets you open new web pages in tabs — instead of separate windows. No more screen clutter, and no more clicking across multiple browser windows to find what you want.

Hardware Acceleration for Windows

Tap into the graphics processing power of your PC while browsing the web. Safari 5 adds hardware acceleration support for Windows, so rich media and interactive graphics execute smoothly and speedily in the browser.

Improved Web Inspector

The new Timeline pane in the Web Inspector lets you view how Safari interacts with your website. Loading, scripting, and rendering timelines show you how and when Safari parses HTML, executes JavaScript, and performs other operations with your web application.

See more features of Safari

Download Safari 5

DataReader and DataSet Performance Comparison

2010-06-09T15:18:00.008+07:00

Acknowledgement : This following article is taken from MSDN library.

The DataReader is a better choice for applications that require optimized read-only and forward-only data access. The sooner you load the data off theDataReader, close the DataReader, and close the database connection, the better performance you get. Because the DataReader holds a database connection that cannot be used for any other purpose while the application reads data, it could limit scalability if the application holds the DataReader long enough for contention to occur.

The DataSet only needs to hold a connection while it is being populated. Once it is filled, the connection may be closed and returned to the pool. Delaying reading the data from the DataSet will not cause contention to occur, as the connection might have been returned to the pool already.

When the number of concurrent users reached 20, contention for database connection started to occur and, hence, the performance of the DataReader started degrading. Note that the DataSet outperformed the DataReader beyond 20 concurrent users. Also note that the response time of theDataReader exceeded that of the DataSet beyond 20 concurrent users.

Conclusion
Performance and scalability are among the many things to consider when choosing data access techniques. As these comparisons have shown, throughput can often be multiplied by choosing one data access technique over another, yet no single approach performs better in all scenarios. Because overall performance is affected by so many factors, there is no substitute for performance testing using realistic scenarios.

Rounded Corner and Shadow Box Using CSS

2010-06-09T15:10:00.006+07:00

Web design is an important part to attract visitors. You can make your visitors come and stay for a while if you dress up your website to make their eyes comfortable, maybe with some addition of "cosmetics".

If you want to make a beautiful and eye-catching user interface for your webpage, then you can start from making a rounded corner box to make it looks more modern and futuristic. Here's a simple way to create rounded corner using CSS :

.rounded {
-border-radius: 5px;
-o-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
}

There's still one more thing to do. If you want to make your page look even more prettier, you might consider giving shadow effects around it. See CSS code listing below :

.shadow {

-box-shadow:0px 0px 5px #666;
-o-box-shadow:0px 0px 5px #666;
-moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 5px #666;
-webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 5px #666;
}

Where "o" for opera, "moz" for firefox, and "webkit" for chrome, because these three major browser using different rendering engine. Therefor we must name it one by one. But wait, where's Internet Explorer? The most widely use browser seems to be forgotten. Here's the fact : IE 8 and its previous versions doesn't support rounding and shadowing. See table below for the details.

Convert C# to VB.NET and Vice Versa

2010-06-08T14:03:00.009+07:00

.NET is a software development framework from microsoft which makes progammer life easier. Microsoft provided complete tools to develop a software (IDE), starting from Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft SQL Server, with a user interface designer come as a package. The good news is we can get those tools free of charge for the Express Edition.

VB.NET and C# is two most popular programming language in .NET world. Many software developer use them as their main language. Although .NET framework enable us to use those languages in the same time in one particular project, sometimes we need to move from one language to another.

I used to code using VB.NET because I'm not too familiar with C# despite I wrote my first program in C and quite familiar with Java myself. When I faced a problem to interpret C# code, converting C# to VB.NET is the first thing comes in my mind. After a bunch of time wasted in front of PC, I find a very interesting tool to try, it's called .net code converter. You must give it a try too. Unfortunately it doesn't support LINQ yet.

Configure XAMPP Apache and IIS to Run Together on Windows XP

2010-06-08T09:14:00.006+07:00

Most of webserver application, including Apache and IIS are running on port 80 by default. It's a good behaviour because our browser is set to make a request to port 80 for every web pages we requested (if we're not specified a particular port for the page).

But how if we want to run 2 webserver on a same machine? Is it possible to run those things on the same port. The answer is obvious, we can't. So, we must provide another port to use by Apache or IIS.

On my first try I change Apache port from 80 to 8080 but it seems not the problem still exists, Apache start and then stop immediately. After searching the web, I found that the problem is Apache SSL configured to use port 443, the same port used by IIS SSL. Gotcha!

The task is now simplified by 2 steps below

1. Change Apache port

Open C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf
Replace “Listen 80″ with “Listen 8080″
Replace “ServerName localhost:80″ with “ServerName localhost:8080″

2. Change SSL port

Open C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-ssl.conf
Replace “Listen 443″ with “Listen 4430″
Replace “VirtualHost _default_:443” with “VirtualHost _default_:4430”
Replace “ServerName localhost:443″ with “ServerName localhost:4430″

That's all. Easy isn't it?

Personalize Google Homepage with Your Own Background Image

2010-06-08T08:23:00.010+07:00

Google dress up their appeareance again after made a shiny new look last month. It is likely that they want to give their user great browsing experience with a fresh new look after a long long time getting used to the google ~~boring~~ classic look. What is the new feature anyway? The new feature presented by google this time is background changing for its homepage.

Everyone may have a different personality and taste of art, therefore google tries to accomodate it by providing a way to personalize the homepage for each and every user by making personal image or photo as background of their personal google homepage.

Unfortunately, this new feature seems available in US only for the time being, but soon it will be roll out to the rest of the world. If you want to try it right now, you might consider using US-based proxy server to open google.com.

Blogging to Make Money Online with Advertising

2010-06-07T16:48:00.008+07:00

Money blogging is a common phenomenon nowadays. Many people start blogging to make money online and it makes SEO a must-learn subject. There are many ways to achieve that goal, one of those is using advertising to get some money. While some people might consider it needing a lot of efforts just to get a few cents, I'd say it's just a bonus money from my spare time activities. I don't consider it as my prime source of money.

So, here is a list of some of the Advertising Network which spreading around the web. You can choose one or more as a mean to generate money to your personal account. There's still a lot more to add, therefor I need your suggestions to make the list a little longer :)

Adbrite

Adjuggler

Adknowledge

AdsenseCamp
Advertising.com

Axill
Burst

Value Click Media

Go grab your money dude!!

Adobe Flash Player Bug

2010-06-07T07:20:00.003+07:00

On June 4, 2010 Adobe System Inc. announced security vulnerability on Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions while Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.x confirmed not vulnerable. Adobe categorizes this as a critical issue.

The company advises users to download the latest Adobe Flash Player update version 10.1 Release Candidate which does not appear to be vulnerable. Meanwhile they still scheduling to release a fix for this critical bug.

The security bulletin for this issue can be found here.

Simple Guide to Optimize Windows XP

2010-06-02T14:58:00.031+07:00

Windows XP is one of the most successful Operating System Microsoft ever build. Until now still many of XP fanatic users (including me :D) don't want to migrate to another OS, even the rising star Windows 7.

There are many useful tweaks to optimize your XP to run faster and maximize its performance. You can search in google to find those tricks. I will only cover some tricks that I use myself everytime I'm doing fresh install on new machine or to help my friend that got tired of waiting some heavyweight software consuming their computer resource.

OK. now let's start the lesson :)

1. Right click my computer then select properties, open advanced tab and click settings under performance. Choose adjust for best performance if you don't care about visual experience, or mark the last option "use visual styles on windows and buttons" to keep the theme.

2. Open control panel -> add or remove program -> add or remove windows component. Unmark indexing service, internet explorer (if you use another web browser), MSN explorer, outlook express, windows media player (if you don't need it), and windows messenger. Don't forget to uninstall program that you never use.

3. Open windows explorer, from toolbar menu select tools -> folder options, select view tab. Unmark automatically search for network folders and printers, select show hidden file and folder from radio button, and unmark hide extensions for known filetypes.

4. Open run then type services.msc. You can choose what services do you need and don't. Usually i prefer to turn off these services by stopping them and change the startup type to manual or disabled :

- Automatic updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service
(if you know the risk of not updating your windows)

- Computer Browser, Distributed Link Tracking Client, DNS Client, Network Location Awareness (NLA), Network Provisioning Service, TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, WebClient
(Networking services that can be ignored if you only use your machine to browse the internet and do simple network task like file sharing, network mapping, etc.)

- Print Spooler
(if you don't connected to any printer)

- Smart Card
(if you don't have any smart card installed)

- Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
(if you don't connected to camera or scanner)

-Wireless Zero Configuration
(if you don't have wireless adapter installed in your machine)

- Error Reporting Service, Fast User Switching Compatibility, Help and Support, Indexing Service, Java Quick Starter, Messenger, Remote Registry, Secondary Logon, Security Center, Server, Windows Time
(simply not needed)

5. Open run and type msconfig. Then on startup tab unmark any startup item that you don't need e.g. Adobe Reader, Groove Monitor, Yahoo Messenger.

6. One more thing, you should consider to defrag your harddisk once in a while

Recommended Freeware

2010-06-02T13:59:00.022+07:00

In this occasion, i'll try to compile a list of freeware that i recommend to use daily. I'm not some kind of saint indeed, nor that i'm trying to be one, but I suggest using freeware than doing some ~~guilty~~ pleasure activities using pirated software.

Nowadays, freeware have been growing to be a serious contender to proprietary software in all aspects due to the power of community behind it. Determination, commitment, and teamwork are the key factors for a community to create a state-of-the-art freeware.

OK, No more talk. Here is the list :

Web Browser

Download Manager

HTTP Tunneling

Office

Multimedia

System Tuning

Utilities

AntiVirus

Microsoft Security Essentials

Benchmarking

Developer Tools

Notepad++

Stop piracy, use Freeware!!

Could not start the IIS admin service on local computer

2010-06-02T08:38:00.012+07:00

Have you ever face this problem :

"Could not start the IIS admin service on local computer. Error 1068: the dependency service or group failed to start"?

Yesterday I had this similar problem when I started IIS admin. I tried to search google and couldn't find any useful clue. Then my curiosity led me to try starting and stopping another services that might be the dependency of IIS admin service.

After several trial and error, I found that the root of this problem is Security Accounts Manager service that gone down. After I started the service, then IIS admin along with SMTP and www publishing service could start immediately.

So one thing to make sure before starting IIS admin is Security Accounts Manager must be started first.

Cool Website Templates

2010-06-01T08:47:00.014+07:00

Hi guys, are you a web designer? or you need some enlightenment to design your website?

If so, then you may consider this website as one of your source of inspiration. I myself often use this site as a reference before i started designing a website.

Although the contents might not much but its pretty cool for a newby designer like me, and they have many categories that meet your needs. So, try it yourself and get the inspiration. ^^

SMTP Vulnerability

2010-05-24T18:42:00.018+07:00

SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol. For more details visit here.

What is protocol? protocol is a set of rule to perform some operation. Why i discuss about smtp? ’cause you’ll find very interesting fact about how smtp works. When you send an email from your email client, the email client will automatically add header to your email. the header includes email sender & recipient, then followed by your message.

This is the interesting fact :
How does smtp checks the sender? I mean, how does it know that the sender is a valid email account or at least whether the sender is the owner of that email account?

The answer is : It simply can’t… So you can be whoever you wanna be when sending an email. You can change the command MAIL FROM:youraccount@youremail.com to MAIL FROM:whatever@anything.com
(see the command listing here)
That’s it…

**Note: I prefer use telnet to perform the operation.
How to use telnet? You can check it here

A Brief Telnet Guide

2010-05-24T18:40:00.015+07:00

I assume that all of you don’t know where to find telnet. If you use windows, you can find telnet from cmd : start -> menu -> run -> cmd. If you use unix base operating system, you can run telnet from your console.

Now from your command prompt type “telnet” (whitout double quote). Type help to see list of action that you can perform. I won’t discuss about all of the option except o (open connection to remote host). From now on you must know the hostname you want to connect with and which port you wanna use.

Here is some important port that i usually used :
port : used for
21 : ftp
23 : telnet
25 : smtp
80 : http
110 : pop

If you want to connect with smtp server, from telnet prompt simply type :
o smtp.remoteserver.com 25 (change remoteserver.com to the hostname you want to connect, e.g smtp.telkom.net)

Then if the connection successfully established, start to type smtp command.
Note : S (server’s respond), C (client == you/your command).
C : MAIL FROM:youraccount@youremail.com
S : 250 OK
C : RCPT TO:yourtarget@her/his_email.com
S : 250 OK
C : DATA
S : 354 Enter message, ending with “.” on a line by itself
C : From : youraccount@youremail.com
C : To : yourtarget@her/his_email.com
C : Subject : Hello There!!
C : your message begin here. to end the message type “.” (without double quote) on a new line
S : 250 OK
C : QUIT
S : 221 c.smtp.telkom.net closing connection

Call Oracle PL/SQL Stored Procedure

2010-05-24T15:52:00.030+07:00

This following code intended to call stored procedure PKG_NAME. PROC_NAME from oracle database and passing 2 arguments, first for input as date and second for output which is a REF CURSOR. See the code listing below :

Imports System.Data.OracleClient

Dim conn As OracleConnection
Dim cmd As New OracleCommand()
Dim dr As OracleDataReader
Dim reportTime As String = DateTimePicker1.Text.Replace("/", "")

conn.open

cmd.Connection = conn
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure
cmd.Parameters.Add(New OracleParameter("date", OracleType.Number)).Value = reportTime
cmd.Parameters.Add(New OracleParameter("retval", OracleType.Cursor)).Direction = ParameterDirection.Output

cmd.CommandText = "PKG_NAME.PROC_NAME"
dr = cmd.ExecuteReader

**Note : I assume that you have mention the connection string in another part of your code. Then you can use DataReader dt as your datasource for another object like dataset or datatable. Here is an example for you.

Populate Data from DataReader to DataTable

2010-05-24T15:45:00.017+07:00

Here's a trick to populate data from DataReader to DataTable :

Imports System.Data.OracleClient

Dim conn = New OracleConnection("Data Source=PROD;Unicode=True")
Dim cmd As New OracleCommand()
Dim dr As OracleDataReader
Dim dt As New DataTable

conn.Open()
cmd.Connection = conn
cmd.CommandText = "select * from customer"
dr = cmd.ExecuteReader
dt.Load(dr)
datagridview1.datasource = dt

**Note : You can adjust the connection string as per your need.

LINQ to Select First Record for Each Group

2010-05-24T15:36:00.011+07:00

LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is a useful tools for .NET programmers to code a SQL-like code inside the application. You can get the documentation here.

Linq provide some utilities like standard SQL statements e.g. from, where, select, group by. order by, etc. Here's an example of LINQ which return first record based on which has latest "CREATION_DATE" for each "INVOICE_NO". I use DataTable dt as data source of this query. You may use any collection or list data type which is Enumerable or Queryable.

From rows In dtInvoice.AsEnumerable
Group rows By invoice_id = rows.Field(Of String)("INVOICE_NO") Into Group
Select (From rows In Group
Order By rows.Field(Of Date)("CREATION_DATE") Descending
Select rows).First

Export Datagrid to Excel

2010-05-24T15:25:00.013+07:00

Sometimes we need to wok with excel to analyze some data while we view it in datagridview. Following code enable us to export data from datagridview to excel sheet :

Imports xcl = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel

Private Sub ExcelButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ExcelButton.Click

  Dim xlApp As xcl.Application
  Dim xlWorkBook As xcl.Workbook
  Dim xlWorkSheet As xcl.Worksheet
  Dim misValue As Object = System.Reflection.Missing.Value
  Dim i, j As Integer

  xlApp = New xcl.Application
  xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Add(misValue)
  xlWorkSheet = xlWorkBook.Sheets("sheet1")

  For i = 0 To DataGridView1.RowCount - 2
   For j = 0 To DataGridView1.ColumnCount - 1
   xlWorkSheet.Cells(i + 1, j + 1) = DataGridView1(j, i).Value.ToString()
   Next
  Next

  xlWorkSheet.SaveAs("C:\exceklvb.xlsx")
  xlWorkBook.Close()
  xlApp.Quit()

  releaseObject(xlApp)
  releaseObject(xlWorkBook)
  releaseObject(xlWorkSheet)

MsgBox("File stored in C:\excelvb.xlsx")

End Sub

Private Sub releaseObject(ByVal obj As Object)
  Try
    System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(obj)
   obj = Nothing
  Catch ex As Exception
   obj = Nothing
  Finally
   GC.Collect()
  End Try
End Sub

**Note : before you implement that code, you need to add Excel reference to your project and you must have a datagridview object called datagridview1 and a button called ExcelButton or you can named it as you wish.