CodeCanvas .Net

Its never the company, but the person

2007-11-04T13:58:30-06:00:00

It's been more than 5 years since I got my first pay check, I just took the time to think though the experience I have gone through, the people I have met and the totally unexpected twists that have popped in my life over this past years. To the most part it has been very useful and interesting journey, if not anything just for the amount of knowledge that has been acquired is still worth it. I guess I am contempt and thankful in the way I had chosen and what the life has offered.

But, walking through the old memory lane and revisiting all the question that I had before 5 years, I think I have a very definitive answer for one question:

What will make me continue in a company of my work? Is it the company name / package / location or job title?

I thought I would get an answer for that within maybe 1 or 2 years, but I guess as usual my schedule estimate was bit off :). Well, about the question; in my personal opinion it is neither the company name or package or location or even the job title, but it the one person who represent the company to you. It maybe your immediate supervisor / manager, your department head, or technical advisor or the CEO. The only difference it makes to me if I continue in a company is determined by if I have a person who represents my company to me in a admirable way.

Tell me about your criteria to continue in a company?

Originally posted at vijay's personal blog

BlogEngine.Net 1.1 Released

2007-07-16T12:51:17-05:00:00

Originally posted at my personal blog

BlogEngine.Net 1.1 has been released. It's quite amazing how fast these guys have churned out the new release.

With my recent experiences in porting, chewing, and digesting dotnet projects, I kind of think that coding for Dotnet Framework V2.0 from scratch is lot easier than porting a complex system and maybe that is one of the few reasons for the quicker releases of the product (of course having an active development community and passionate project lead helps a lot).

Anyhoo, these guys are doing a fantastic job and I am planning to move to BlogEngine.NET after evaluating it out. Good going guys!

Well started with SubText (was done in framework 1.1), then moved to Wordpress (good community but had trouble with MySQL connection), then to DasBlog (still in V1.1) now finally to BlogEngine.NET (finally v2 product with source code, yipee). People! Man evolved from monkey! Any doubts there? :)

Time to decide on a laptop

2007-06-08T13:24:08-05:00:00

Too many option spoils the child! Well, I don't know about you, but that is the case with me recently. I had been looking to getting a good laptop for myself, and was torn between option of choosing a PC or Mac. My area of considerations where that I was mainly developing in .NET platform (and still continue to do so, but not in a large scale) but currently mainly working on a variant of SUSE Enterprise Edition on IBM BG/L and I am very much interested in getting a Mac just for the fact that it will be a new experience for me and the uber geek coolness it has.

In case I was going for a Mac, I was planning for a MacBook Pro (17") which comes to around USD 2500. So, I tried locating and similar priced PC laptop which would give me an excuse to decide on its favor instead of the Mac, I checked the Qosimo series for this task. But as of now I have not seen anything solid on the PC side. If I get a Mac, I will have the option to run Mac OS X, Windows XP Professional (nope, I do not have any inclination to use vista. Not even if it comes preloaded with my laptop) and as well as Linux. But in case I buy a PC laptop, I would be able to use only Windows and Linux.

In the meantime the favor / advantages of buying a Mac has been steadily increasing over this past 2 months. First, the news about the next version of Parallels promises near native hardware speed for windows applications and the latest news about VMWare Fusion is hard to ignore.

I am planning to decide on the laptop maximum by end of next month end, and so far now MacBook Pro seems to be the way to go!

Originally posted at Vijay's personal blog

Job opening for .Net Developers in UAE

2007-06-04T15:42:14-05:00:00

Hi, We have an opening for 'Entry Level .Net Developer' at Abu Dhabi (1 or 2 years experience) and also another good opportunity at a friends company in Dubai (3+ years experience). Interested candidates do get in touch with me at the earliest possible!

Have a great day

Powerpoint and the art (pain) of exporting slides

2007-04-03T18:31:00-05:00:00

I was recently working on an option to present our company profile PowerPoint file on the web, it has quite a lot of pictures and videos in them. At first I used the normal PowerPoint -> Save As web site option and was not satisfied with the kind of output I received. So, I thought I could as well develop an framework for putting up the powerpoint slides to the website as I am doing it quite often.

To accomplish the task I planned to export all the slides as images, then scale them and optimize them for the web and then maybe put up an xml file to provide the order in which they are displayed and the name / description stuff. But as soon as I saved the slides into images I had a surprise the images which were of high quality were displayed in the following manner:

I don't know why that happens, after experimenting with few more options I found a workaround for the issue. Save the presentation into PDF and then from the save the pages as image. This method somehow manages to scale the images down to the slides dimension without disorting it. Below is the result of the image saved using the latest method:

I will post the code for the framework I am working on my blog shortly after I finish it.

Have a nice day.

Sequoia View : View Folder Size Visually

2007-04-02T13:25:00-05:00:00

After my recent laptop crash I had moved to my desktop for the development, since my desktop is equipped with more RAM and has Windows 2003 as the OS (instead of the XP in laptop) I comfortable in doing my development work on the desktop and continued staying on it.

Recently I saw that one of my hard disk is having only 200 odd Mb of free space and wanted to know what was chewing up the space. I was using a free tool in my laptop occasionally for accomplishing the same task, but I forgot the name of the software. After digging around a lot I found it, and name is SequoiaView.

I am writing this post just to keep myself reminded of the software if in case I need in the future.

Switching to dasBlog

2007-04-01T16:53:00-05:00:00

Hi all,

Due to the constraints / trouble I had because of my previous blogging platform, I am switching to dasBlog. I have not ported my old posts to this platform yet, will do so when I have some time.

Thanks for taking you time to visit and read my blog.

Opening for DotNet Dev with 2+ Yrs Exp (Web)

2006-09-21T15:40:00-05:00:00

Candidates who are looking for an opening at Abu Dhabi with 2+ yrs exp in Dot Net (Web) contact me at the earliest possible.

Moving primary posting - blog.vijay.name

2006-07-22T14:48:00-05:00:00

Hi GWB,

It has been a exciting 2 years of blogging here, GWB was the first technical blog I started and it has come a long way. Now since there are more than technical posts I am concentrating on that and also because of the flexibility that I require; I will be using my personal domain blog as the primary (http://blog.vijay.name) , I will sure be cross-posting my technical posts here at GWB so my current subscribers will still continue getting content.

Thanks Jeff for the initial help and oppurtunity. All the best for you guys.

Regards,

Vijay shankar ganesh K

MS on Vista Bittorrent Cease and Desist Letter

2006-07-04T08:25:00-05:00:00

Microsoft developers have posted information on windows vista blog mentioning the reason for taking down the windows vista torrent that was posted by Chris and Jake recently. I personally agree with the most of the comments users have posted there, people downloading beta are not inexperienced end users but rather experienced developers. With that demographic in mind they could have easily stated the hash for the actual vista ISO in order for the users to verify their downloaded copy. I guess this is a classic case of MS flexing the muscle at the wrong people and then trying to be innocent about their methods.

Google spreadsheets images

2006-06-11T07:46:00-05:00:00

Google spreadsheets images

The One with the Bad DataSet/XSD day

2006-05-21T11:50:00-05:00:00

Original post at my blog

As if usual problems arent complex enough my Visual Studio 2005 stopped displaying DataSet's that were designed and were working very recently. When I open my visual studio solution / project which already has an DataSet open I will get the following error dialog

[
Load DataSet Error
Failed to load dataset because of the following error:

Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: project
]

and the following error message

	One or more errors encountered while loading the designer. The errors are listed below. Some errors can be fixed by rebuilding your project, while others may require code changes.
Value cannot be null. Parameter name: project Hide
at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.GlobalConnectionService.Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.IGlobalConnectionService.GetConnections(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, Project project) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.GetConnectionFromAppSettings(String objectName, String propertyName) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.get_ConnectionStringObject() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DbSource.set_Connection(IDesignConnection value) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.SetConnectionProperty(Source source) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(DataSourceXmlTextReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(TextReader textReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceSerializationService.DeserializeToDataSource(String filePath, Object serializationData) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.LoadDataSource() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.Init(IServiceProvider provider, IVsHierarchy primaryHierarchy, UInt32 primaryItemId, Object primaryDocDataObject, UInt32 docCookie, IVsInvisibleEditor invisibleEditor, IDesignerHost host) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.EnsureInvisibleEditor(ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.GetDataSourceInternal(Object caller, ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceDesignerLoader.HandleLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager)

Occording to SOP, first I closed the dataset file (xsd) and tried opening it again in the editor, at which time I would get another error message in the following format:

[
Load DataSet Error
Failed to load dataset because of the following error:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object
]

and the following error message

	One or more errors encountered while loading the designer. The errors are listed below. Some errors can be fixed by rebuilding your project, while others may require code changes.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Hide
at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.GetRegisteredProviders() at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.ExpandProvider(String provider) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBUtilities.GetDataSource(String provider) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.Providers.OleDB.OleDBDataSourceSpecializer.DeriveDataSource(String connectionString) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.DataServices.DataProvider.DeriveDataSource(String connectionString) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.Data.ProviderManager.GetVsDataSource(String invariantName, String connectionString, Boolean encrypted) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.Data.ConnectionString..ctor(String providerName, String connectionString) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.AppSettingsHelper.GetConnectionsViaDataEnvironment(IDataEnvironment dataEnvironment) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.GlobalConnectionService.Microsoft.VSDesigner.VSDesignerPackage.IGlobalConnectionService.GetConnections(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, Project project) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.GetConnectionFromAppSettings(String objectName, String propertyName) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignConnection.get_ConnectionStringObject() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DbSource.set_Connection(IDesignConnection value) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.SetConnectionProperty(Source source) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(DataSourceXmlTextReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.DesignDataSource.ReadXmlSchema(TextReader textReader) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceSerializationService.DeserializeToDataSource(String filePath, Object serializationData) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.LoadDataSource() at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceDescriptor.Init(IServiceProvider provider, IVsHierarchy primaryHierarchy, UInt32 primaryItemId, Object primaryDocDataObject, UInt32 docCookie, IVsInvisibleEditor invisibleEditor, IDesignerHost host) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.EnsureInvisibleEditor(ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.ProjectDataSourceStorage.GetDataSourceInternal(Object caller, ProjectItem dsProjectItem, Boolean ensureWritable, Boolean createInvisibleEditor) at Microsoft.VSDesigner.DataSource.Designer.DataSourceDesignerLoader.HandleLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager)

On the quest to solve this headache I hit google and came up with the following pages which kind of had content related to the problem:

http://www.darrellhawley.com/2006/05/value-cannot-be-null-parameter-name.html - He was lucky to have the problem sorted out on the first step of SOP, but as you know our problems never are that easy to solve, are they? :)

http://www.kbalertz.com/kbNamed_894438/Describes.problem.that.occurs.Microsoft.Visual.Studio.When.open.project.that.contains.inherited.user.receive.error.aspx - Even though this page had a similar error message tackled, it was not the same as the current one.

Then finally hit on this forum post http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=133896&SiteID=1 it is quite long (4 pages), but was worth it. After a to and forth conversation which spanned 3 pages Stephen Provine had nailed the problem to a missing registry key value.

The culprit was Windows Live Safety Scanner - "Clean Up Scan", yup! the safety centre had cleaned out the unwanted registry keys, which is usually good for the system in most cases but this time it was not one of those "most" cases.

To fix the problem please follow the following steps:

To examine the registry:

1) Run regedit.exe;
2) Browse to the location "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F9AE8980-7E52-11d0-8964-00C04FD611D7}" in the tree;
3) If there is a child node in the tree called "ProgID", then you are indeed experiencing a different problem - let me know if this is the case.

Otherwise, follow these steps to modify the registry:

1) Right click the node and select "New > Key";
2) Enter "ProgID" as the name;
3) Go to the main window and double click "(Default)";
4) Enter the value "MSIDXS.1";

Now if you run Visual Studio, it should be working.

Hope this helps out a fellow developer who is on his way to becoming a hairless monk!

Update: Because of the use of tables and stylesheets the article was not showing up properly, now I have fixed them and updated the post, hopefully this works good.

Note for self : Attribute not recognized 'minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters'

2006-05-13T12:49:00-05:00:00

Change the minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters to minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters. Local MSDN document not up-to-date!

Finally! Microsoft Developer Conference in Dubai

2006-04-12T10:20:00-05:00:00

It has happened finally! Microsoft is conducting a two days conference in Dubai on 30th April and 1st May 2006, more info can be obtained from http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/UAE/developers/geeks/agenda.aspx

Any geek going from Abu Dhabi can get in touch with me so we can go together.

Happy coding!

Yahoo! wallet trouble continues...

2006-02-22T06:59:00-06:00:00

It was nice to get comments on my previous Yahoo! wallet troubles post, it shows that the trouble is not an isolated incident. What's more annoying? Yahoo's support really sucks and the problem is not fixed yet. As Jasmid Afshar has commented, the security key resetting option no longer works (it has already been 10 days as of this article's date since I submitted a request for key reset - tried 3 times in intervals of 2 days each time).

I guess it looks more like a empty publicity stunt from Yahoo! to advertise about low cost products which they are not ready to sell or Yahoo! wallet is not looking into making profit in the foreseeable future and they too want to have an online store since others are having one!

Thanks for Pearl Fox, Hab, Zach, Jay and Jasmid Afshar for their feedback.