Companies usually have differing Fiscal Year End dates some have it as 3/31/2009 some have have it as 6/30/2009 and some 12/31/2009 Thus if you need to get the Quarter end date based on differing Fiscal Year end dates… you can use this function I created to get Quarter end dates: 1: public static class ExtensionMethods 2: { 3: public static DateTime MonthEnd(this DateTime date) 4: { 5: return new DateTime(date.Year, date.Month, 1).AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1); 6: } 7: } 8: 9: public class CalcUtils 10:...
Get VS2010 Release Candidate now! In case you are living under a rock, the new VS2010 RC was released yesterday. I am surprised that only a few people have mentioned this. So log into your MSDN accounts and grab it or wait for the public release if you don't have an MSDN account...
I ran into an error today, while trying to execute the following: stsadm –o addsolution mySolution.wsp . The error was “Failed to extract the cab file in the solution.” A quick search found blog entries stating that either a file in the WSP contained an illegal character or two files were named the same. I looked through my files and found a couple of graphics files with names containing a parenthesis. Since all of my file names were unique, which ruled out the one suggestion, I decided to try renaming...
I ran into the error, below, because the host instance didn't have permissions to read the C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0\esb.config file. Also, don't forget to restart your host instance (or run iisreset) after you update your permissions. Event Type: Error Event Source: BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 Event Category: None Event ID: 6060 Date: 2/9/2010 Time: 2:03:58 PM User: N/A Computer: XXXXXXXXXXXXX Description: Error 194008: An error occurred reading the, esb, Section in the config...
...because you might get it... Today I finally got Office 2007 installed on this machine at my client's facility. They even installed OneNote for me. But I made one small teensy error... I neglected to consider what all I am supporting here, and of course the IT's install policy which involves tromping all over the PC with muddy boots. Office 2003 was uninstalled, which under normal circumstances would have been a nice surprise, but then I started thinking about the 4 large MS Access applications...
Phil Lieberman from Lieberman Software talked with us at PDC 2009 about their business, being a Microsoft partner and also the benefits of getting your product certified. Be sure to watch to the end to hear the great comment Phil makes about Windows XP and Windows 7. Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jodonnell/Lieberman-Software-talks-about-being-a-Microsoft-partner-at-PDC-2009/ Thanks for checking out this post! Cheers, Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation My Blog...
Grab the bits and be sure to submit feedback through Connect! Technorati Tags: VisualStudio,VS2010,VS2010RC...
Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jodonnell/Talking-with-NewsGator-at-PDC-2009/ At PDC this year, our team spoke to Glenn Berry of NewsGator Technologies, an RSS platform company, about their work with Microsoft development technologies. This is a great video about Sharepoint, Silverlight and SQL 2008, shot by Warren Wilbee. Definitely worth checking out. Thanks for checking out this post! Cheers, Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation My Blog @ MSDN My Blog @ GeeksWithBlogs...
Gotta flame on the contractor species. Embedded journalists (like those you saw during the most recent invasion of Iraq), were there to protect themselves and share the information that they learned with the world. On the other hand, and Embedded Contractor is someone that works a contract for a long time and learns information, but DOES NOT share that information in an effort to protect themselves. Often this person has a reputation as being able to fix the problems that no one else can. They are...
Saas vs. S+S Saas is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can benefit from the economies of scale of the data and behavior of that architecture being built and hosted in the cloud by a third party in a multitenant fashion. Software + Services is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can achieve some of the same economies of scale as Saas while simultaneously benefiting from the synergies and efficiencies of the data and behavior of that architecture being partly...
Goal: FInd out if you are runing on a 64-bit Processor Answer: Go to the command prompt (type cmd int the Start -> Search box) type the follownig command: set | find "PRECESSOR_ARCHITECTURE" If you get ADM64 back (or something similar with 64 in it) you are running on a 64-bit processor, so you would be able to run Windows 7's 64 bit OS. If you get something like x86 you are running on the older 32-bit architecture and will not be able to run a 64-bit OS...
Joannes Vermorel of Lokad Forecasting is a Azure early adopter and a sincere patron ever since I've been lurking around the Azure forums. Always ready to help and come with innovative ideas to utilize Azure resources. Joannes yesterday has posted a long and very well compiled wish-list for the perfect Azure experience that he envisions. Why is this list important? Lokad in general and Joannes in particular shares my idea of a perfect cloud application. Forecasting requires sudden burst of compute...
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...
You can now get your hands on the Release Candidate version of Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0 if you are an MSDN subscriber. MS also announced that it will make the RC available to all on Wed Feb 10. Upgrade for VS2010 and .Net 4 is an uninstall/reinstall operation. The RC release also includes an updated TFS 2010. If you are upgrading from TFS 2010 Beta 2 to the RC build Byran Krieger blogged some instructions for doing so. Technorati Tags: VS2010,RC,TFS 2010,Upgrade...
Since I got back into programming, I have really been a Microsoft fan boy - our company develops applications solely on the Microsoft stack and we have always felt “well” treated when attending Microsoft sponsored events. In 2008, I and a fellow employee attended our first TechEd, we were blown away with what we saw – we had no idea how behind we were – and since then we have been hooked at attending Microsoft events. So when at the end of 2009 Microsoft announced that for the first time it was planning...
On January 1st I switched focus to 100% Azure. My friend and colleague David Gristwood has been firmly focused on Azure through 2009 working with early adopters. We decided to record a podcast talking about what we are up to and how Microsoft UK has been helping early adopters using deep dive labs, workshops and training. We also have a stab at describing the Windows Azure Platform in 1 minute (I hopelessly overrun by 100%) and we finish with an interview between David and Active Web Solutions (AWS)....
Some days ago I added a feature to an existing application, and when I was testing it, I felt that some calculations in the already existing parts of the software were wrong. After digging through the code I found that an external mathematical library is used, which was developed by a colleague some time ago. Due to its nature (being a pretty basic library), it was well-resourced with unit tests, and a short test run showed all of them succeeding. I sat down and did some old-school pen and paper...
Stonking good news. The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate (RC) is now available to all MSDN Subscribers. It will be available to my dad (who is not an MSDN Subscriber) on Wednesday (Feb 10, 2010). Even better, my dad (and you) can take advantage of the go-live license to deploy code into a production environment. If you are a subscriber, download now. More detail over on Jason Zanders blog. P.S. If you are a UK developer interested in Azure head over to http://ukazure.ning.com...
Putting my last attempt at creating a business on the shelf... Passed to second round of grant funding but ultimately did not receive grant. We were looking to submit GHS for the first round of federal grants being offered for HIT Regional Extension Centers. Bio.... Green Health Solutions Inc. (GHS) a non-profit, minority owned Health Care Information Technology Company, will support President Obama's goal of strengthening the quality, affordability and security of the United States health care system...
There are a few applications that I’m playing with in Windows Azure that are reliant on MySql for various reason. For example, I’m working with a group that is doing Joomla development and it’s completely dependent on MySql. Mostly this is due to using MySql native drivers rather than using a database independent layer such as ADO.NET in .NET or PDO in PHP or leveraging database specific features that are only found in MySql. Regardless of the reason, for me to run these applications in Windows Azure,...
This will be a very short post (read below for explanation) with a few upcoming big events that are happening. SPTechCon This coming Wednesday through Friday I will be attending SPTechCon. SPTechCon is a SharePoint conference put on by BZ Media being held in San Francisco. This is the second year for the conference, my first for attending. I was lucky enough to win a free ticket through some connections at COSPUG and able to convince my company to pick up most of the expenses for the trip. The reason...
In this Issue: Fons Sonnemans, Mark Monster, Karl Shifflett, Einar Ingebrigtsen(2), Jeremy Likness, Emil Stoychev, Andrew Veresov, Sergey Barskiy(2), and Tim Heuer. Shoutout: Karl Shifflett announced Karl Now Using Vimeo for Videos... check it out, thank Karl, and create an acount. From SilverlightCream.com: Keyboard selection on Silverlight ListBox and ComboBox Fons Sonnemans explains and provides a behavior that allows keyboard selection on a ListBox or ComboBox. MeXperience – Step 3 – Architecture,...
Recently, we built a new two-node Exchange 2003 Cluster. Both servers run AMD processors. After building the Exchange Cluster, we ran the Microsoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer tool. We noticed several Domain controller server response time and Global catalog server response time critical issues listed in the Best Practices Report. After reading the following Microsoft Exchange Server Analyzer articles, we started troubleshooting the reported critical issues. Round-trip times to Active Directory...
Creating Batch Files in 2010! How Exciting! (sarcasm) I have been asked to complete a task that requires the good ole batch file. I remember the dos days of editing autoexec.bat to optimize the amount of memory for Doom. Oh, my how the editors have changed. From the "edit myfile.bat" using the windows editor to notepad to Notepad2. One of the most exciting things about using Notepad2 is the syntax highlighting for batch files. Now, keywords like "GOTO", variables, pause, comments and many more are...
I'm actually somewhat amazed that there are only 16 downloads (or so CodePlex says) for the 1.0 release of AutoFixture. I had heard about it a while ago, but due to lack of time didn't actually get a chance to try it out until today. Please, PLEASE don't make the same mistake in delaying getting and using it for as long as I did, because frankly, it rocks. I won't go into details on what AutoFixure is, except say that it will help you write better, cleaner unit-tests and also because I wouldn't do...
Upgrading to a 3 monitor developer workstation. I have recently decided to move to a 3 monitors solution for increased productivity/multi-tasking. Below is the specs: 19" Dell (left) - Technical documentation and email. 24" ASUS (middle) - VS2008 or my current project. 19" Dell (right) - Various Virtual Machines. I am using a GeForce 6200 and integrated graphics to pull off the three monitors. If I would of had my choice then I would have purchased a motherboard that supported 2 pci-e slots and went...
SAF v2 is now freely available to download from CodePlex @ http://saf.codeplex.com Major points worth noting in this release : - Loads more actions to help you automatically configure SharePoint. - Downloadable examples and documentation explaining how to run every Action. - Run actions from an MSBuild project and pass properties. - Run actions from a SharePoint Feature and pass properties. - Run actions from StsAdm and pass properties. - Support for Dynamic Properties - allowing you to pass values...
Yes it has been over a month and half since I last posted but, I have been really busy. First trying to find a job, study for certification, create Web sites and the holidays. Then after that more studying, taking more classes (Network+ and Security+), looking for work, two job fairs, create more Web site (currently 7), maintained the Web sites and certification test. I mean some days I didn’t even want to look at my computers (the 2nd one is mostly for my group and Web sites work.). Plus I am trying...
Here is an old trick to get vertical scroll bars for a GridView. I find this handy when the end users do not want paging but they also do not want to have a page load a GridView that is a mile long either. The code below shows placing your GridView inside a Panel. The Panel is where the scroll bar option is set. I used “Auto” in the example, this way the scroll bar will only appear if the amount of rows in the GridView exceeds the height set. The trick lies in placing both controls inside a single...
In the post about the solving of the Euler problem 13, I was using an older version of F#, to fix the code, replace the 'N' with an 'I'. So for example, the bigNums collection looks like this: let bigNums = [37107287533902102798797998220837590246510135740250I; 46376937677490009712648124896970078050417018260538I; ... 53503534226472524250874054075591789781264330331690I] And the 'AddNums' method is now: let rec AddNums n = if n < 0 then 0I else AddNums (n-1) + bigNums.[n] No biggies... (Apologies...
[In the UK? Why not join http://ukazure.ning.com] Awareness of the existence of the Windows Azure Platform TCO and ROI Calculator remains pretty low based on some conversations I have had lately at events. It is available in both online and offline versions and aims to help measure the potential savings of product development or migration to the Windows Azure Platform. Lets take a quick example of a brand new car insurance site (Based on my depth work with… car insurance sites!). In brief: We will...
Paulo's blog mentioned about this MSDN magazine article on Windows Mobile Gestures by Marcus Perryman. The article explains about gestures, the design considerations that went in while implementing it, the physics engine and a few tips and tricks. And don't miss the two part series, Let's talk about Touch, by Marcus Perryman, its a good read too. Links Going Places - Gesture Magic Let's talk about Touch - Part I Let's talk about Touch - Part II...
What is Trac and why would you want it? I have already documented in a previous blog how I restored my Trac backup from hosted-projects.com (see http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2010/02/02/137766.aspx) but given I also mentioned my use of Trac in a recent presentation at the .NET developers conference, DDD8, (see http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2010/01/30/137718.aspx) I thought it only proper to document how to install both SubVersion and Trac from scratch on a new Windows system....
[Advert: Interested in Azure? Based in the UK? Be amongst friends -> http://ukazure.ning.com/] I just stumbled upon some work by my US colleagues and CodeProject to create a competition around deploying applications on the Windows Azure Platform. Looks to me like it is open to UK developers – hence I would encourage you to have a shot at winning and bringing the prizes back to Blighty. Give Windows® Azure a try in February and you could win an HP TouchSmart laptop (approximately $1000 USD value)...
There was a thread last year on the SSAS MSDN forum SSAS 2008 -- Why is metadata so slow??? in relation to slow metadata queries on a cube with 250+ measure groups. The good news is that despite the fact that the SSAS team has largely been focussed on PowerPivot for the SQL Server 2008 R2 release, they have also tried to address a few of the customer pain points in SSAS. Below is part of a recent response to this thread from Akshai Mirchandani from the SSAS development team: "As an update to this...
[Advert: Interested in Azure? Based in the UK? Be amongst friends -> http://ukazure.ning.com/] [Check out my other QandAs] A common question I get is “Do I get charged compute hours for every role type in my service?” The short answer is “Yes you do”. Now for the longer answer… Every role type is created as at least one Virtual Machine instance on the Windows Azure Platform – more if you have instance count > 1 for a role. In this hosted service example I have 2 WebRoles and 3 WorkerRoles with...
<rant> I am currently in Sydney Australia attending some training and meeting my boss for the first time. I was having a fantastic time until my wife phoned to let me know that Vodafone had called to say that the bill was over some limit and that they would be cutting my phone off if I did not contact them to confirm. Now, I had done the right thing and told them I would be abroad and where I was going, but I had forgotten to add my wife to the account. Fair enough… So I called them and spoke...
A colleague just pointed me at something a little different. Ivar Jacobson International are delivering their first training using Visual Studio 2010 in Reading next month (March 18th and 19th, 2010). I found this particularly interesting because of some “history” I have with Ivar Jacobson. I hosted a dinner table with him at an evening event of a large Microsoft UK conference a few years back. It sticks in my mind as whilst Ivar was interesting to talk to, he was also pretty negative towards a lot...
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Ive eventually managed to get the "Monitoring BizTalk with HP Openview" whitepaper complete and submitted to Microsoft to go through the publishing process. Not sure how long this takes? Anyway it should be around soon Big thanks to Saravana Kumar (BizTalk 24/7) and Dave Gerrish (a great HP Openview Consultant) for their input, and to Elton Stoneman for reviewing it Cheers Mike...
Whenever I am working on a project that requires client-side coding, I immediately starting thinking in JQuery. There are other javascript frameworks out there, but so far I haven’t found one that allowed me to structure my client-side applications quite as cleanly as JQuery does. The only thing JQuery doesn’t support out-of-the-box is a decent templating system for emitting DOM elements. Typically you’d wind up building up large strings and passing them to a method like append, html, etc in order...
Ok so now we've reached the 2010 SharePoint version milestone, let's see how we got here: SharePoint last 3 major versions: 2003 -> 2007 -> 2010 (The year doesn't necessary correspond exactly to the year a SharePoint release was made) The light or free version: STS -> WSS -> SharePoint Foundation The paid server version: SPS -> MOSS -> SharePoint Server Version 2 or v2 (2003) of SharePoint often refers to STS, SPS ie. SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server Version...
1. Create your Windows Mobile Project 2. From Visual Studio, Right Click on your Solution > Add > New Project 3. Select Other Project Types > Setup and Deployment > Smart Device CAB Project 4. Name your Smart Device Cab Project accordingly 5. You will then have two projects in your solution 6. You now need to add the output from your application project to the CAB project 7. Right click on HelloWorldInstall > Add > Project Output 8. Select the Application Project and Primary Output...
I come from a C++ (and now C#) background. In both languages the index of the first item in a list is zero, so I like to stay consistent to that when working with other list (including blog post). In this series of blog post I'll be walking through different solutions for deployment scenarios for Windows Phones. This first solution is the "Hello World" of deployments. It will get your files copied to the programs folder and will create an icon in your start menu. I'll be ignoring all of the other...
I’ve been running around trying to find my place in the community not quite situated yet. This past Monday I attended a community social event where all the community leaders in the area got together and discussed upcoming plans for the year. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly interesting. I thought there would be a lot more people in attendance of this event. I always assumed this area had so many more people. That I would be this tiny itty bitty fish in a very large pond. It didn’t really feel...
This week and the following weeks I will be working through a ton of recursive functions to move a rather hefty page library into a Site Collection and subwebs. I figure while I am having some “fun” you guys will profit will a few of my scripts. For any of you out there who are interested in how to create a publishing page in a library here is a little sample code on how to copy items from the page content area and create a new page then replace a welcome page. Here is a small sample: PublishingSite...
One of my goals for the year was to speak at least three times this year and from the looks of things, it appears I’ll meet that goal in the first half of the year. This is what’s going on this year for me (subject to additions/changes): Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta 2.0 - http://rmtechtrifecta.pbworks.com/ Coders For Charities (C4C) - http://coders4charities.org/ Chicago Alt.NET May Meeting KC .NET UG July Meeting Kansas City Developer Conference (KCDC) Virtual Alt.NET Meetings Other Events Rocky...
For the past week, I’ve nearly came close to ripping my hair out over a “small” issue with one of my 5 SCSI harddrives in my Windows 7 x64 Ultimate Edition desktop – the D:\ drive. It’s the drive that I install and hold ALL my programs on (named Programs Drive). Last week, it started NOT installing new/updating programs. So I googled it… In my research, many people had problems with the hibernation feature that somehow didn’t let you access drives. Some mentioned the permissions to the drives wasn’t...
In Silverlight 3 and 4, it is possible to create a Silverlight application and to have the user install it on the desktop (aka Out Of the Browser OOB). This is a great way to offer a “light desktop” experience, where the application can be started from a shortcut on the desktop or the Start menu, but running on Silverlight so that you don’t need the full .NET framework, and can run it on PC and Mac as you like. You can even use the application when the PC is offline, which is not possible with an...
Well, it was my birthday on February 1st. Thanks for remembering. :) And what did I happen to find in my mailbox a few days later? Why yes, it was a birthday card. It was a great card from some of my SharePoint friends at the nudging of my good buddy Dan Usher (@usher) (Who also happens to have a birthday on Feb. 1st). Below is a scanned image of the card. I REALY hope this is not a premonition of the events to occur next week at SPTechCon in San Francisco. Thanks again to @janishall, @cwheeler76,...
Geekswithblogs Gets a Facelift
Celebrating the five year anniversary of the first post on Geekswithblogs, the GWB team has launched a new look and functionality for the community designed to help the community continue to grow and increase interaction amongst bloggers.
The new design offers bloggers and readers the ability to quickly check recent posts, popular posts, Twitter users from the community, community news, and featured bloggers.
The redesign also makes it easier for bloggers to find tutorials on how to get the most from their blogs, support information, and a community-wide tag cloud.
We hope that you will enjoy the new features and look. Here’s to another five years and to everyone that makes up Geekswithblogs!
GWB Goes to PDC ’08 – Let Us “Tag Your Top”
Geekswithblogs is proud to be a Silver Media Sponsor for the upcoming PDC ’08! This will be a great opportunity for face-to-face interaction with the developer community.
If you happen to be going to Los Angeles for the PDC, and we highly suggest you do, make sure to swing by the Geekswithblogs booth (#100) in the Expo Hall to say hi! We will have some amazing looking Geekswithblogs stickers hot off the press ready to “tag your top” – so bring your laptop by to take it from drab to fab!
GWB Podcasting from PDC ‘08
Make sure to look for fellow Geekswithbloggers Chris Williams and D’Arcy Lussier roaming around the floor. They will be playing the part of on-site GWB ambassadors and roving reporters; stop and chat with them!
We’d like to know what you think about the upcoming podcast. We are thinking of firing PodcastStudio.net (the official podcast of GWB) back up after the event and would like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
GWB and PDC ’08 – We’ll Make You Famous!
A major part of our display at our PDC booth is going to include a video featuring none other than the Geekswithblogs community members! We’re proud to have you as contributors to a large, healthy blogging community and want to give you some additional exposure.
Here’s what to do; record yourself saying “I’m a geek with a blog, and I…”. Simply fill in the rest with something interesting about yourself. It could be anything from what technology you love, what you like to do in your spare time, where you live, etc.
Examples include:
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I rock at ASP.NET.
- I'm a geek with a blog, and I support my development community by presenting at user groups.
- I'm a geek with a blog, and I love playing guitar.
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I volunteer to help the homeless.
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I chug energy drinks.
First 30 bloggers that send in a video with at least 5 statements get a ultra-stylish Geekswithblogs t-shirt with their blog URL on the back!
Stay tuned for FTP information for uploading your files!