Michael Flanakin's Web Log

159 Posts | 268 Comments

flanakin #Windows8: Less talking, more doing http://t.co/CxDAPsLGv2 #ad #ipad #poorsiri about 1 day ago

flanakin I liked a @YouTube video http://t.co/6RwI7fgaWu Windows 8: Less talking, more doing about 1 day ago

flanakin @dgsdelicatessen out of curiosity, what does "DGS" stand for? about 3 days ago

flanakin @The10thLetterIs let me know... I'm down #crossfit about 12 days ago

flanakin I liked a @YouTube video http://t.co/pWsBtby84Q Windows Phone Surface-N about 12 days ago

flanakin did I mention I effing love my #WindowsPhone? I love hitting the start screen and watching tiles flip to show what just happened about 14 days ago

flanakin I was just told I look like Justin Timberlake... while I appreciate the compliment, I don't quite see it about 15 days ago

flanakin RT @maryjofoley: @saraford I didn't realize till now you are at MS again! Nice to see one of the good ones come back! :) about 21 days ago

flanakin @bmatusz congrats on the screenplay... good luck! about 22 days ago

flanakin just saw a "homeless" person talking on a cell phone :-S about 22 days ago

This weblog is no longer being maintained. For the latest, check out www.michaelflanakin.com!

Michael Flanakin's Web Log Comments and complaints on software and technology in general

Jan 06

UpdateVersion 1.3 Available for Download (...finally)

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I was finally able to get UpdateVersion 1.3 available to the public. If anyone does any work on it, please let me know. I thought about setting up a project for it, but there haven't been any big feature requests, so I decided against it. Hope you all find it useful! Update (4/4/2008): Switched to new link on CodePlex ......

Posted On Wednesday, January 18, 2006 10:49 AM .NET , Development

May 06

Google Brings AJAX to Java

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As Google announced, they will be releasing Google Web Toolkit to support building AJAX-ian web applications with Java. I just wish it were available for .NET as well. Not that I don't have faith in Microsoft's Atlas, but I would like to see and play with Google's approach ......

Posted On Wednesday, May 17, 2006 4:50 AM Development

May 06

Sage: Firefox RSS Reader

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span.flanakin_code { color:#00f; font-face:monospace; font-size:.85em; font-weight:bold; } pre.flanakin_code { color:#00f; font-face:monospace; font-size:.9em; } I just started playing around with the Sage RSS reader for Firefox. I like it. If you check the site, there are a list of styles you can use for the reader. I think the Midautumn style is by ......

Posted On Wednesday, May 3, 2006 6:47 AM

Mar 06

Web TV???

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Earlier this month, Tom Yager wrote an article discussing the future of internet-based TV channels. At first, I was excited to hear about it as I thought about the advantages and then started to twist my mind around the concept of running cable thru the web in a pure digital format, which would also make all TV channels available online for viewing ......

Posted On Monday, March 27, 2006 11:30 AM

Feb 06

Simon Guest Leads The Architecture Journal

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The Architecture Journal just reached it's sixth edition. Fantastic! I've anticipated each edition and welcomed the dedication Microsoft has started to focus on architecture, design patterns, and best practices. That's one area where Microsoft development organizations have fallen short. The lack of guidance has stifled the community's growth a lot, ......

Posted On Monday, February 27, 2006 4:37 AM

Feb 06

TortoiseSVN Word 12 Diff/Merge

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The diff/merge built into TSvn causes an error in Word 12: The requested member of the collection does not exist. There's a simple fix, tho. First, open the diff and merge scripts that TSvn runs in a text editor (Diff-Scripts\diff-doc.js and Diff-Scripts\merge-doc.js in the TSvn install directory, which is by default C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN). Scroll ......

Posted On Monday, February 13, 2006 6:13 AM

Feb 06

Upgrading DNN 3.1 to 3.2.2

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Mainly for my own benefit, I've accomplished a diff between DNN 3.1 and 3.2.2. View my blog post for details.

Posted On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 6:30 AM

Jan 06

File Properties in Word 12

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I have to do a lot of documentation for systems I work on. Because of this, anything I can do to save time with templates and auto-updated fields helps. I use file properties in Word (File > Properties) to set things like product name, acronym, and version, among others. When I first started playing with Office 12, I needed to update something and just ......

Posted On Tuesday, January 24, 2006 10:35 AM

Aug 04

Versioning with NAnt

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Download UpdateVersion I've been looking at NAnt pretty hard lately. The biggest problem that I've had so far is creating and updating version numbers. NAntContrib has a <version> task that will read in and update a version number specified in a text file, but that doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for. NAnt 0.85 is supposed to come with ......

Posted On Monday, August 16, 2004 2:04 AM

Jan 06

First (and Second) Webcast

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Well, I actually participated in my first webcast yesterday. Brian Scarbeau invited me to join in on his 3rd DotNetNuke webcast on custom module development to help by answer questions and filling in as needed. It went quite well and I plan on also participating in his 5th webcast on skinning. Should be interesting! If you're interested in DNN skinning, ......

Posted On Wednesday, January 18, 2006 9:52 AM

Jan 06

Office 12: First Impressions

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Well, I just installed the initial pre-release version of Office 12. I remember reading something online about it a while back and I was kind of scared of it. I do a lot of documentation support for the projects I work on, so I frequent Office a lot. The new toolbar-focused user experience just didn't set well in the back of my mind. After opening it ......

Posted On Tuesday, January 10, 2006 12:53 PM

Nov 05

DNN and the Lovely "Multiple controls with the same ID" Error

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After having this problem several times and continually forgetting the fix, I figured I'd go ahead and make a post about it. Hopefully, it'll save someone time in the future. Let me know if you have a different fix. Symptoms When you browse to a DNN page after adding a new module to the page, you receive an error message that is similar to the following: ......

Posted On Friday, November 25, 2005 10:58 AM

Jan 06

Generating Empty Alternate Text for asp:Image Controls

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As I'm sure you already know, one of the accessibility standards Section 508 covers is specifying alternate text for all images. Not a big deal, right? Well, what about images that are purely used for formatting, such as spacers? Well, just give it an empty string: <img src="spacer.gif" alt="" />. Ok, still not a big deal. Unfortunately, the Image ......

Posted On Friday, January 6, 2006 7:45 AM

Jan 06

DotNetNuke Image Module Project

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Well, I've been very busy over the past few months. Project after project at home and work. Well, I definitely made sure to get my all-important playtime at home, too, of course. I guess it's all a good thing, tho. I just haven't had too much time for new posts. I do have news, tho. I was just added to the DNN Image Module Project last week. I just ......

Posted On Thursday, January 5, 2006 8:58 AM

Dec 05

Shelving in Subversion

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Ever since I first saw shelving in the new version of Visual Source Safe, I've been somewhat enthralled by it. The first thing I did was figure out how I could do that with Subversion. I started typing an email to the Svn mailing list and then I realized how simple it was to do already. All you need to do is use branches. Here's how to do it with TortoiseSVN... ......

Posted On Friday, December 2, 2005 8:52 AM

Nov 05

TortoiseSVN Firefox Extension

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There's a new Firefox extension in town. I like the idea, but don't really plan on using it myself. When I access my repositories, I always do so from the working copy. I do know that this would be useful for users who don't need local copies of a repository, but would be able to benefit from some of the TSVN features. It'll be interesting to see how ......

Posted On Monday, November 28, 2005 5:07 AM

Nov 05

New Asp.net Site Layout in Firefox

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Has anyone noticed how ridiculously slow the Asp.net site is with Firefox? Is it just my settings? I can't stand it!!! I hope this is fixed. I haven't seen anything about others having this same problem, but its aggravating the hell outta me.

Posted On Friday, November 25, 2005 5:31 AM

Nov 05

I (heart) Google Analytics

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I absolutely love Google Analytics! Sure, it's not anything new on the site metrics front. It's all data you can get from just about any tool. This comes with Google's overwhelming ease of use, tho. That, combined with the fact that it's free - how could you not like it!? Try it out, if you have a site. All you have to do is add a two javascript calls ......

Posted On Wednesday, November 16, 2005 8:23 AM

Nov 05

Oracle 10g Express Edition

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Looks like Oracle's reaching. All I really have to say is, "'Express Edition,' huh? Gee, I wonder where they got that idea." Either way, this will probably be an impact to other databases. The only thing against it is going to be the same problem the current editions have: their unnecessary complexity ......

Posted On Tuesday, November 1, 2005 5:04 AM

Oct 05

VSZ File Parameters

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I'm working on a couple Visual Studio project wizards and have been looking all over the place for a list of VSZ parameters. Well, I finally found the list here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/l... Just figured I'd post it here in case anyone else was looking for it or I needed it again in the ......

Posted On Thursday, October 27, 2005 5:52 AM

Sep 05

Now THIS is cool...

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I saw this and just thought it was pretty cool. I'm sure most of you've seen it; but for those who haven't, an Italian programmer found the remains of an ancient villa while looking around his home town. I believe this is the correct map. Funny thing is, it's about 3000 feet from a non-imaged area (well, for now, anyway). Luca Mori, the programmer who ......

Posted On Monday, September 19, 2005 4:38 AM

Sep 05

VB Angst

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Ya know, I'm not trying to start any holy wars or anything, but I keep getting aggravated with some VB code I have to maintain. First off, my biggest complaint is the way VB handles imports. A lot are assumed, but some aren't. I've even seen the same code transition to another machine and have it not work. I don't really know the rules behind it, but ......

Posted On Thursday, September 15, 2005 8:22 AM

Aug 05

Windows Authentication with Subversion on Windows

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Man, oh, man! Setting this thing up was a pain in the arse. It took up most of my day! Anyway, hopefully, I can save someone else the heardache. Here's the setup: client - Windows XP, server - Windows Server 2003 running Subversion 1.2.1 and Apache 2.0.54. Within the Apache httpd.conf file, the following modules must be setup in order: # Windows authentication ......

Posted On Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:56 AM

Aug 05

It's about time, AOL!

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I about did a back flip after reading this article about AOL being fined for bad customer service practices. I've always hated AOL for stupid things like this. Not that I'll like them any more, but I'm glad to see something being done about it. Or, at least them being fined for it, anyway ......

Posted On Thursday, August 25, 2005 5:45 AM

Aug 05

TortoiseSVN and Word Docs

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I was pleasently surprised when I noticed that TortoiseSVN supported diffs in Word documents. I've made a number of changes to a requirements document over the past week or so and wanted to get an idea of the scope of changes before committing them, so I figured, 'What the hell! Let's try a diff.' I didn't honestly think it'd work as desired. I guess ......

Posted On Friday, August 19, 2005 10:40 AM