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June 2006 - Posts

What is with EULAs?

I'm installing another round of Microsoft updates, I for some stupid reason I decided to stop and read the EULA. Read More
posted Friday, June 30, 2006 9:48 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Forgive me blog, for I have sinned

It has been more than a week since my last blog post. How bad does that feel? I've got some sort of addiction now, and nobody's even reading this! Least, nobody I can think of. I really should check the stats.I have just about completed week 1 of my new Read More
posted Friday, June 30, 2006 9:02 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)

Taking an ASP.NET 2.0 application offline.

This is cool. I didn't know you could do this in ASP.NET. The short story is, if you drop a file named App_Offline.htm into the root of your application, IIS will refuse requests to your other pages and send back the contents of the App_Offline.htm file. Read More
posted Wednesday, June 21, 2006 10:02 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Tiny problem in the serial port solution

Just when you think you have it all covered. I was testing the solution to the serial port issue I wrote about a couple of days ago. When I ran the code, the CPU pegged at 100%. When I went back to the code it hit me like the proverbial metric ton of bricks. Read More
posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006 8:40 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Designing logos

381's logo blog is an excellent source of inspiration for any budding logo designers. Some of the logos on display have such subtle, but effective graphical devices that it sometimes takes a few minutes for them to sink in. It's these intangible things that make a good logo a great logo. Read More
posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006 10:12 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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A change is as good as a holiday

I've just accepted a position at a new employer. They're someone I've worked with several times in the past, so it's not a completely new job. Same industry, different end of the IT market. Read More
posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006 9:18 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Coding to interfaces

This from Jean-Paul Boodhoo's blog. Jean-Paul discuses the pros and cons of coding to interfaces. I sometimes find it difficult to know when to *stop* generating interfaces for classes. It's the age old question of abstract base class vs. interface. There's always at least one case where you could go either way. Read More
posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006 9:14 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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The solution...

I suppose I should've written this with the last post, but I completely forgot. The solution is quite simple, in the end, and quite obvious if you think about it. Read More
posted Friday, June 16, 2006 11:56 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Dead forest for the lock trees

I've just encountered my first numbskull deadlock condition, and it was all my fault. It's all to do with the SMS modem driver I'm writing. Read More
posted Friday, June 16, 2006 10:21 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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More icon loving

Just found a link to FamFamFam on Joel on Software. More fabulous icons to add to the icon list. You can never have too many icons. I'll post some icon use related UI tips soon, just to help all you other UI tragics like myself... Read More
posted Thursday, June 15, 2006 10:37 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Security disaster

Where I currently work, we are quite pedantic when it comes to security. Our industry demands it, and our ability to function as a business demands it. Anyway, we've just found out that one of our telephony providers had a back door to our network for the last two years. Read More
posted Thursday, June 15, 2006 2:09 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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WCF Examples

Over at IDesign, they've fired off a buch of downloads for WCF. Starting from the basics through to transactions and security. Run over there and grab them now. Read More
posted Thursday, June 15, 2006 2:06 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Continuing SerialPort madness...

In yesterdays post about the weird SerialPort behaviour, I showed you how I seemed to be getting double the response from the modem. There are definately two buffers involved, and it seems like one of them is not being cleaned out once it has been read by the other. I'm still not completely around the implementation of the buffers, however. Read More
posted Wednesday, June 14, 2006 1:48 PM by Geoff | 1 Comments
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SerialPort madness

What do you think this code would wind up putting in the result variable? Read More
posted Tuesday, June 13, 2006 3:11 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Axialis Iconworkshop 6.1 update

Now this is worth writing about. I just upgraded my version of Axialis Iconworkshop. They give free lifetime upgrades to registered users. Read More
posted Monday, June 12, 2006 10:44 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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ProxyTrace helper class

I forgot about this little ditty with the last post. This class will take a webservice endpoint instance, and set it up for use with an instance of ProxyTrace running on port 81. You can see where to alter this if it's a problem. Read More
posted Monday, June 12, 2006 9:49 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Debugging Webservices

I've been doing a bit of webservice development lately, and in the process I stumbled across ProxyTrace from PocketSoap. This is a very nifty free tool. All you have to do is set the proxy on your webservice call to an instance of ProxyTrace running on the same machine and you'll get a straight-forward trace of the back-and-forth between your consumer and the webservice. Read More
posted Monday, June 12, 2006 9:40 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Icon lovin'

If there's one thing a developer should have, it's a good collection of icons. I've got a folder with about 18.7 kajillion icons in it that I've collected over the years. I've tried all sorts of tools to create my own, but lacking any serious form of graphic design ability, I've had to settle for modifying the ones that came with my development environments. Read More
posted Monday, June 12, 2006 9:25 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Keeping track

One of the hardest things to get right about being a software developer is estimating the time it takes to develop and test a particular bit of functionality. There have litterally been hundreds of books and articles written on the almost as numerous number of techniques. Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 10:16 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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A nifty helper class

Here's something I cobbled together to mimic the Java ThreadLocal class. I wanted a nice way to wrap up the CallContext class, I call it "CallLocal". It provides typesafe access through generics, which saves a bit of typing (no pun intended). Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 9:53 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Timezone weirdness

Well, that's the key to the whole thing. The timezone settings are preventing me from having the posts show up with the correct date and time from my point of view. It's not really going to matter, but it's going to look like I'm posting at very weird times. Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 9:31 PM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Man, this blogging thing is hard

Whilst I'm becoming quite prolific, I'm not having much success. I've realised I'm a bonehead when it comes to the time on a post. I've set my regional time settings correctly, but posts are showing up stamped in another timezone. Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 5:09 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Lost my first entry

I just had my first blog post loss. I spent about half an hour typing in this wonderful entry on the musical aspect of my life, and when I posted it, it dissapeared.As they say in the Toyota adds, bugger. Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 5:01 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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Nervous first steps

Wow! At the same time I decide to start blogging, Robert Scoble leaves Microsoft. Coincidence?... Read More
posted Sunday, June 11, 2006 12:00 AM by Geoff | (Comments Off)
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