Two goals in the space of five first-half minutes put the U’s in charge, Matt Green firing them in front from 18 yards with a neat half-volley.

James Constable doubled their lead with a fierce left-foot drive.

U’s keeper Ryan Clarke fumbled in Ben Purkiss’s cross to give York a lifeline only for Alfie Potter to wrap it up.
Given that Oxford finished third in the Blue Square Premier, eight points clear of York, after topping the league for so much of the season, it was perhaps fitting that they went up.

It was certainly a much better experience of the play-offs for U’s boss Chris Wilder, whose Halifax side lost to Hereford in the 2006 final.

Read the complete story

I followed the game Live Report on BBC and wanted to post earlier. But too bad no good clips found on YouTube. And now that I found it, I will put it here for me to view over and over The DVD of the match is coming soon.

• How do I get “lastLogon” from ActiveDirectory
• Howto: (Almost) Everything In Active Directory via C#

Note: You need to include Active DS COM Library in your project references. Your project references should roughly similar to the picture on the left.

Here are teh codez:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.DirectoryServices;
using System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory;
using System.IO;

namespace ActiveDirectoryQuery
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            DirectorySearcher ds = new DirectorySearcher();
            ds.SearchRoot = new DirectoryEntry("");
            ds.Filter = "objectCategory=user";
            ds.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name");
            ds.PropertiesToLoad.Add("email");
            ds.PropertyNamesOnly = true;
            ds.Sort = new SortOption("name", SortDirection.Ascending);
            SearchResultCollection results = ds.FindAll();

            //Write output
            StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(@"c:\ad.output.txt");        

            foreach (SearchResult sr in results)
            {
                DirectoryEntry entry = sr.GetDirectoryEntry();
                if (entry.Properties["name"].Value != null && entry.Properties["mail"].Value != null && entry.Properties["accountExpires"].Value != null)
                {
                    //Must Add COM Active DS Library in the reference (ActiveDS.TLB)
                    ActiveDs.LargeInteger li = (ActiveDs.LargeInteger)entry.Properties["accountExpires"].Value;
                    Int64 liTicks = li.HighPart * 0x100000000 + li.LowPart;
                    Int64 curTicks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;

                    //List only those account with no expiration/expired in the future
                    if (liTicks == 0 || liTicks > curTicks)
                    {
                        writer.Write(entry.Properties["name"].Value + ";" + entry.Properties["mail"].Value);
                        writer.WriteLine();
                        writer.Flush();
                    }
                }               

            }
            writer.Close();
        }
    }
}

So after scratching my head for quite sometimes, I found out that the solution was quite simple.

Using sessFact As ISessionFactory = CreateSessionFactory()
   Using sess As ISession = sessFact.OpenSession()
      Using transact As ITransaction = sess.BeginTransaction()
         '....
         Dim con As IDbConnection = sess.Connection
         Dim cmd As IDbCommand = con.CreateCommand()
         sess.Transaction.Enlist(cmd)
         cmd.CommandText = "select MyPackageName.MyFunction(" & myFunctionParam & ") from dual"
         dim objResult as Objetc = cmd.ExecuteScalar()
         '.....
      End Using
   End Using
End Using

I know this is not the right way, but I need to make compromise considering that this is a legacy database.

A simple check to the truncated string, whether it ends with a face-blushing word or not, should be sufficient.

Go Green

To make the ‘encouragement’ to have a little more ‘muscle’, you could put announcement in the printing room that says that the printer usage is being monitored. Of course it should not be just a bluff, you could utilise PUMA to help you monitor the printer usage.

PUMA is written in VB.NET (.NET 2.0) and SQL Database as the backend. It consist of two parts, the monitoring service (installed on employee’s PC) and the Management Console (act as the server, in which the monitoring services submit their reports). I have not tried it myself, but I already submit it to management for approval

The usage of computer based business application was supposed to reduce the paper consumption. But actually it ends up increasing it by many folds. Hopefully PUMA will help all of us to reduce our office paper consumptions.

So before I get down and get my hands dirty, I googled for solutions. But the closest I can get is:

• Process Monitors.
• Crash restarter

So I guess I need to write it on my own. Enlighten me please

No blank CD? No problem. You can also use thumbdrive and make it bootable. How? read README.TXT inside the ISO CD Image file.

Too lazy to read? Well basically it consist of two steps:

1. Copy all files from the ISO CD Image to the thumbdrive
2. Assuming that your thumbdrive is mounted as drive F:, open console/command-prompt and execute this command: F:\syslinux.exe -ma F:

Thank You pnh@pogostick.net, you saved me today

Bear with me please

Update: 11-Jan-2009

There’s a glimmer hope by using direct HTTP post to the Jasper Report’s web service using techniques described here:

• Programmatically generating web service calls
• Making raw web service calls with the HttpWebRequest class
• Invoking Web Service dynamically using HttpWebRequest

By using above method, we will get the full stream of the response. Now the problem is how to separate the binary data and the text data.

Update: 12-Jan-2009

Found a clue on how to read mixed binary data and text: What’s the best way to read mixed (i.e. text and binary) data

Update: 19-Jan-2009
I have successfully use ASP.NET to invoke Jasper Report web service, and obtain the PDF/XLS/CSV file. The solution is now still very crude, I’m gonna need sometime to clean it up.

The problem with static HTML website is there are many duplicates of information. One news article will show up as many files that located in different folders. It could be under News folder, News Archive folder, Tags folder, etc.

It means my task will become a boring headache, since I will need to add content, add it to the respective folders, and manually update all the linkage regularly.

So I came out with a simple program to help me generating the content, upload the attachment and to update the linkage. This is when I hit the problem. Because most of the time, a news article will contain attachments. The attachments will be stored under Attachments folder, but the pages that linked to that attachment are scattered all over the place. I also need to update the ‘index’ files of each category (Archive by Year, Archive by Tag, Archive by Category, etc.)

Solution

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I asked Google to find me the wheel David M. Howard has solved this problem 9 years ago Thank You David!

His solution was written in Java, I just need to convert it to .NET and tweaked it a little without any difficulties.

Result

The output of the test program are as follows:

Source Code

'Filename: MyPath.vb
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Collections

Public Class MyPath
    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByVal home As String, ByVal remote As String) As String
        Return getRelativePath(New FileInfo(home), New FileInfo(remote))
    End Function
    Public Shared Function getRelativepath(ByVal home As String, ByRef remote As FileInfo) As String
        Return getRelativepath(New FileInfo(home), remote)
    End Function
    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByRef home As FileInfo, ByVal remote As String) As String
        Return getRelativePath(home, New FileInfo(remote))
    End Function

    Public Shared Function getRelativePath(ByRef home As FileInfo, ByRef remote As FileInfo) As String
        Dim homepathList As New ArrayList
        Dim remotePathList As New ArrayList
        Dim result As String = ""

        If ((home.Exists And remote.Exists) Or home.Directory.Exists Or remote.Directory.Exists) Then
            'initialize the paths
            initPathList(home.Directory, homepathList)

            If remote.Attributes = FileAttributes.Directory Then
                initPathList(remote.Directory, remotePathList)
            Else
                initPathList(remote, remotePathList)
            End If

            Dim ihome As Integer = homepathList.Count - 1
            Dim iremote As Integer = remotePathList.Count - 1

            'Do we have common parent
            If Not homepathList(ihome).Equals(remotePathList(iremote)) Then
                Return remote.FullName
            End If

            'remove common parent
            While (ihome >= 0 And iremote >= 0)
                If homepathList(ihome).Equals(remotePathList(iremote)) Then
                    ihome -= 1
                    iremote -= 1
                Else
                    Exit While
                End If
            End While

            'Add relative path
            While ihome >= 0
                result &= ".." & System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()
                ihome -= 1
            End While

            'Combine relative path result with the remote 

            While iremote > 0
                result &= remotePathList(iremote).ToString() & System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()
                iremote -= 1
            End While
            result &= remotePathList(iremote).ToString()
        Else
            If Not home.Exists Then
                Throw New Exception(home.FullName & " is not exist!")
            End If
            If Not remote.Exists Then
                Throw New Exception(remote.FullName & " is not exist!")
            End If
        End If
        Return result
    End Function
    Public Shared Sub initPathList(ByRef f As FileInfo, ByRef ar As ArrayList)
        ar.Add(f.Name)
        initPathList(f.Directory, ar)
    End Sub
    Public Shared Sub initPathList(ByRef dir As DirectoryInfo, ByRef ar As ArrayList)
        ar.Add(dir.Name)
        While Not dir.Parent Is Nothing
            dir = dir.Parent
            ar.Add(dir.Name)
        End While
    End Sub
End Class

'Filename: testMyPath.vb
Imports System.IO

Module Module1

    Sub Main()
        While True
            Console.Write("Home: ")
            Dim homePath As String = Console.ReadLine()
            Console.Write("Remote: ")
            Dim remotePath As String = Console.ReadLine()
            Try
                Console.WriteLine("Relative Path: " & MyIO.MyPath.getRelativePath(homePath, remotePath))
            Catch ex As Exception
                Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " & ex.ToString())
            End Try
            Console.WriteLine()
        End While
    End Sub

End Module