geekswithblogs
There are 41 entries for the tag
geekswithblogs
OK, so for some reason you have a mega mashup solution with ASP.net AJAX, jQuery and web forms. Perhaps you are just on the migration from AjaxControlToolkit to the jQuery UI framework – who knows!! Anyway, the problem is that when you post back with something like an UpdatePanel, you will find that your nicely setup jQuery stuff, like the datepicker for example will no longer work. You may have something like this… $(document).ready(function () { $(".date-edit").datepicker({ dateFormat: "dd/mm/yy",...
Hey, I need some advice/help, now I’ve been writing on this blog for a few years, I don’t blog a great deal in comparison to many of my peers and my blog doesn’t get a massive number of hits, BUT I seem to get a fair share of comment spammers!! I have image verification on the comments and I have put an Akismet API key into the Geekswithblogs settings, but I still get a bunch of spam comments. They could almost be real, until you see the link going off to some dating site or casino crap. What does...
If for some reason you need to specify a specific connection string for a DataContext, you can of course pass the connection string when you initialise you DataContext object. A common scenario could be a dev/test/stage/live connection string, but in my case its for either a live or archive database. I however want the connection string to be handled by the DataContext, there are probably lots of different reasons someone would want to do this…but here are mine. I want the same connection string...
I am both a Google docs and Windows SkyDrive user, one thing however that I am always thought would help, especially with SkyDrive, as its essentially a backup tool for me is being able to access through Windows explorer (or FTP would suffice!). Well I have found a little app that does just that!! It’s from Gladinet and the catch line is “Delivering cloud services to your desktop and operating system”, it does connect to other things like Azure blob store and Amazon. You can download a free version...
I am talking in the context of services such as Google Docs. I don’t have a huge amount of documents, but I simply don’t have the perfect solution for having these docs available anywhere and everywhere I am. I like many users I expect work on/want access to docs in different locations and on different machines. Google docs seems like a perfect solution, but when you don’t have an Internet connection, like when you are on a plane for example, its not a good solution at all. Then there are services...
The issue is with Sharepoint blog category view. The page should only show the posts which have been tagged with the category you click on, but I have found this not to be the case. I posted a thread on the Sharepoint blog forums and thankfully Laura Rogers came up with a solution. Here we go… Navigate to the category.aspx page of the Sharepoint blog. Add a Query string (URL) Filter web part. Modify the query string web part settings. Query string parameter name must be Name. Remove the filter from...
After watching a DNRTV episode with Scott Cate on EasyDB I was really impressed and could definitely see how it could solve a requirement in a project I am planning... Straight after listening to the show, with the advice of Scott Cate (a promotion code), I hot stepped over to http://easydb.com to sign up. After waiting for a few days, maybe a week and still having heard nothing I tried again and was greeted with this little chestnut... ...and that remains to this day. Why bother doing a dnrtv episode...
Its my birthday in a couple of weeks and as a present my girlfriend bought me an iPhone...its an early present, but she's been going to the o2 shop for the last couple of weeks and this is the first time they have been in stock. Anyway, she is a gem, because she used her contract so I could get it! I had too long remaining on mine! (Which means for the first time in about 5 years my mobile number has changed, which is probably a good thing, anyway, if you haven't got my new number and want it, contact...
Check out my new live search component to the right here -> I came across this on Heather Solomon's blog, thought it was cool so had a play and set one up for my blog. To start with get yourself over to http://search.live.com/site... select the advanced option. I think it only works if you have your blog on a custom domain like blog.steveclements.net as www.geekswithblogs.net/stev... doesn't work. I also created a live search macro for geekwithblogs.net and used and existing one for msdn...
Silverlight makes working with videos pretty straight forward, Microsoft makes Silverlight pretty straight forward with ASP.net and sharepoint is written in ASP.net, so match made in tech heaven!! I wanted a video player web part for sharepoint, that had some simple functionality like play, pause and volume. I started with expression encoder which output a nice media player interface...this is OK, but has a couple of restrictions; 1, its far to rich for what I wanted, animations all over the place...
I mentioned a while back that I had something I was working on that involved a change in language, actually a pretty radical change. I have been working on vocational project written in VB.net and made heavy use of LINQ to SQL. I wasn't sure of LINQ to SQL for anything else other than RAD and to be honest I'm still not. Anyway, I'm not getting into that debate. Needless to say I went all the way and don't use a single sproc in this project. Some of you will know I play cricket every Saturday for...
My first trip to the new Wembley stadium was to watch the Foo Fighters gig on Saturday night, who as far as I am concerned are the best band on the planet right now. They did well to beat Oasis to that accolade, but heh, Oasis haven't done anything for quite a while now!! For those that don't know Wembley is a 90K seater stadium in London and the Foo's sold out in about 15 mins back in December, typical to big show form they promptly announced a second night (which was Friday), and that promptly...
I was just about to blog about this, then I found this post while scanning the asp.net feed. Guy Barrette does a great job of summarising it. If your in a rush, the home page is: http://blogs.msdn.com/sourc... and you can download it from here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.... While in the link mode; I spotted this at the same time on Charlie Calvert's blog a quick list of keyboard shortcuts for VS2008 Technorati Tags: Microsoft Source...
I have been running Google Analytics on my site for while now, cant remember exactly how long! Its pretty good I guess, I haven't really looked at any others!! What I did find interesting was looking at the number of hits from the US - I get more from the US, which is obvious seeing the GWB is a US based concern and well, it's not exactly a small place!! The UK is second though! woot woot!! clearly the highest concentration of geeks, I haven't met either of them mind! :) I almost have a 100% of the...
Recently I have been working on different machines in different locations I have been using foldershare more and more. It's nothing new, basically you configure a folder as shared on the foldershare web site, then install foldershare on another machine and configure a location on that machine you want to sync the files too. Then changes to either location are synced either automatically or on demand. Something to note is that the files are NOT stored online anywhere, so I have found it useful to...
I have recently came up against a perfect opportunity to get stuck into LINQ to SQL, its a small project where RAD is top priority. As often is the case I need to audit changes to properties, normally I would probably do some work in the getter and setter of the property, but of course with LINQ to SQL I don't have access to the properties in the same way. Looking through the intellisense of the LINQ generated class I can see a PropertyChanged and PropertyChanging event, perfect! Not exactly. Here...
When working with asp.net and now XAML I lean towards code view over the designer, a preference of course, but considering this feature I guess I am not alone. When working with events in XAML you can simply type "Click=" and the nice little helper jumps up asking what event handler you'd like to wire it up to or even create a new one and the stub will be created. NICE! As an added little beauty, this doesn't automatically send you off into the code behind. Why-o-Why isn't it the same for asp.net...
This is basically a note for myself as I have come up against this problem three times now and each time had to work it out! (which I put down the bodies natural reaction of forgetting pain!) If you experience the same as me you will find that wireless connections are fine and MSN connects no problem but with wired connections, wether direct or through another switch wont and throw the error 81000306, troubleshooting with Messenger all passes and specific connection tests (like TCP and HTTP from...
I have just built a new PC, nothing super special, but pretty nifty. I have gone for a core 2 duo E8200 2.66Ghz with the new Wolfdale 45nm architecture (w'eva!), 4GB corsair ram, Nvidia 8600GT Gfx, WD Raptor 150GB drive and a Gigabyte board. I have read bits here and there about overclocking, but have never really been bothered to take to much of a look into it. Seeing I had some time this week and I had been prompted by a mate to do so I though I would. I started taking a look around the web and...
I just noticed that my last post was my 100th since starting this blog! I started back in August 2006 so its been a pretty steady climb to the century. I don't plan on ramping up the post count any time soon! I still enjoy the writing the blog and more recently having fun on twitter, met some cool people from Kansas along the way! They have some funny expressions, but It's all good!! I'm waiting for the GWB sponsored "booze up in Bristol"...hehe! Technorati Tags: Steve Clements,Blog century...
Last Wednesday was my last day at the university, where I have been working. I am starting a new job for a law firm, taking a little twist in technology as I move from mainly doing back-end development to a far more user centric environment on a large MOSS 2007 project, which is my preferred space. I have enjoyed my time at the uni, but among other things I will NOT miss the nightmare commute everyday. This is the leaving card I was presented with ;-) And a couple bottles of wine, one being my favourite...
SP1 has been released to the everyone outside of the MSDN subscriber circle at last. Get it from windows update or standalone download from here. Technorati Tags: Vista SP1...
I know, its on everyone's lips!! If you don't know what www.tinyurl.com or www.shrinkster.com are, they take long URL's and shrink them down into a more memorable/manageable length. It's perfect for things like Twitter where character count is important. Something you may not know, Carl Franklin of .NetRocks stardom runs Shrinkster. It did go down and he decided to take it on... To choose between the two is a matter of choice, but I personally like Shrinkster and here's why: 1. Tinyurl's, tiny url's...
Right, the virtual server is up and running...time to soak up some SharePoint...get some dnrTv episodes down my throat. Sahil Malik recorded a series of SharePoint episodes, 4 in fact. He starts with what happens when SharePoint is installed and finishes with some massive XML files for a Business Data Catalogue application. Tip: They are an hour long, so watch it in fast mode, the talking speed is still good and it only takes 30 mins to watch. Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Note: You can...
I am starting down a path with Sharepoint (MOSS 2007), so I found a nice MOSS virtual machine download, its only a 30 day trial, but that'll do for the moment. It's nice that it comes all installed etc, just to get a flavour. The virtual machine is also a domain controller - not sure whether there is any specific reason that relates to a MOSS installation! The image also contains SQL 2005 SP1, Office 2007 Pro, Sharepoint Designer and some other bits...check the above link for more details. Back to...
Last night was the first user group meeting of 2008, and it was my first meeting - I have blogged about it before, just being the socially inept loner that I am!!, I just haven't got round to going. The presentation was on Test Driven development TDD (Another post coming on that!) from a guy called Craig Murphy - this is a really interesting subject to me as we adopt TDD as best we can, it does however sometimes gives way to deadlines!! It was reassuring to see that we go about TDD in the right way...
Having just finished my masters exams for semester 1, I am planning to blog a little more! I am only doing the masters part time over two years so a fair way to go yet but none the less, it's one of my points for being a better developer in done. The semester 1 modules of OO Design and development (Java and UML) and Software engineering concepts threw up some interesting hurdles, like Netbeans and Java (I hope to get back to learn more about Java, but perhaps away from Netbeans!), SE concepts really...
I seem to be working more and more my lappy these days...still always on the my PC at the office but when at home the laptop has taken over from my machine of choice...strange really because I love having two monitors and find it a fantastic way to work but I guess the freedom a laptop has to offer wins the day. Anyway, I digress...seeing I was working on it more and more I decided to get myself a Christmas present in the guise of a specialist notebook mouse, I looked at several offerings from Microsoft...
Well it turns out that yes it is! To be honest I haven't ever given much thought to which the more popular language is but when listening to Scott Hanselman's latest offering it turns out VB is. Scott is chatting with Paul Vick (VB Principle Architect) and Paul Yuknewicz (Senior PM on the VB team) when they also mention that VB Express and even C++ Express have more downloads that C# Express - now I put this down to C# being used by pro's who have access to VS Pro or more Team Suite :) but none the...
This is a great little tool I stumbled across the other day and am so impressed :) For those of us not blessed with Team Suite might not have such a smooth testing experience but I think this little fella solves that. Neatly wrapping up testing with Nunit, Ncover and the Debugger. You can run the test at different levels of the project, above I have right clicked on the project…Hitting Run Test will simply run the test and show the results in the Output window. Coverage will fire up Ncover and execute....
I saw the other day that zune had released the new "Zune nano 8GB" type version...perfect for me as I only want a small MP3 player for the gym...looking deeper into it - downloading music/podcasts to the zune from Zune Marketplace i discovered this and how shite it is too... Microsoft are you kidding...I'm in the UK! Stick with my iPod and iTunes then, stuff ya. Technorati Tags: Zune 8GB...
You are all undoubtedly aware of LINQ to SQL, its fair to say its had a large amount of publicity and coverage in the .net circle. VS 2008 makes getting going with LINQ to SQL very easy but that is not the case with SQL Compact (yet!). However its not difficult if you have heard of a wonderful little app called SqlMetal, this little beauty will generate the .dbml files for you...happy days :) I have a small SQL Compact database to use for this demo, you can see it here in VS 2008 server explorer...
To celebrate the release of the iPhone in the UK today, I got a new Nokia N95. Why? Well I have read some shocking reviews of the iPhone from people in the US and many have returned the phone. Also, in my opinion the N95 looks to be a better phone. There is of course the ridiculous cost of an iPhone here in the UK it's £269 which you in the US that keep track of the exchange rate will know its nearly $550. Then there's the available tariffs...£35 a month with only 200mins...what a joke, I get 400mins,...
My hosting company who are normally quick to install new technologies have just installed .net 3.5 beta 2 framework. Pretty rare indeed :) If you are looking for a host then check them out, they are top draw and I think you get a 14 day free trial
OK, so just about everyone reading this post will be aware of LINQ, if not you can checkout that link, another great place is that man, ScottGu's blog. Anyway, I found myself with a spare few minutes (hence this post) which was largely due to how quick LINQ dealt with my small and simple task. I wanted to read user data out of a database and create a new XML file with that data (there is some stuff to go on after that but unless LINQ can compress and email files its use ends here!) There is nothing...
OK so anyone reading this is most likely aware that Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 has been released but you may not be aware that today they have released Silverlight RC1, Silverlight 1.1 tools for VS 2008. Plus MS have released a refresh to Expression Blend. Scott Hanselman's has the best post I have seen and is a one stop shop for all VS 2008 info. Check it out http://www.hanselman.com/bl... UPDATEI should really add for completeness, even though its already...
Tim Hibbard has tagged me, so here goes... Meet more developers Not so long ago I posted about a new user group in my area (well, 1hr drive away) yet I am still to attend a meeting, I really must; I know very few developers and I have no doubt I could learn a great deal from attending such event and hopefully enjoy the whole thing! Targeted Reading & LearningI do spend a lot of time reading, researching and playing with new stuff but need to target my reading/learning. I tend to read loads of...
This weekend has been fairly interesting! The Good The weekend started great; left work early, picked a kitchen for my new house then bought a 40" Sony Bravia LCD HD telly!! Woohoo, finally get rid of the big 32" block sat in the corner and we can upgrade to Sky HD and see what all the fuss is about! The Bad Despite another great century by Kevin Pietersen in the cricket world cup helping England to beat the West Indies by 1 wicket in a 300 run chase, certainly the best game of the tournament; England...
I have been having a play with vista sidebar and the Gadget API. I have posted my gadget, source and a walk brief walkthrough of sidebar gadget as an article here -http://geekswithblogs.net/... I actually wrote this gadget about 4 or 5 weeks ago but have just been really busy! Enjoy...
CSS Adapter beta 3 was released just over a week ago now so this is probably old news!! However you should know that the bug I found detailed here is still there, so I still needed to edit a little of the code for IE6 to work OK. However another bug I was invloved seems to be fixed, I must say this fixed bug is certainly more important one to fix so top marks to Russ Helfand on this. Anyone who is yet to use this, I would at least recommend using it on the Menu control; I have saved around 20KB on...
I love using a nice little tab control on my web pages but I never seem to find an good solution…well a FREE (!) one anyway! There are some great tab controls out there to buy but I have never really looked at them as paying for controls is not in my vocabulary. This little control is probably no match for one of those but for a simple and FREE solution look no further! The problem I have with the current solutions I use are 1. The javascript and CSS solution using relative positioning and...