Technical

Google Maps not working in FF3

I installed FireFox 3 on their launch day.  It seemed ever since then Google Maps would not work in FIreFox for me.  It would just hang, "Loading...".

Well it turns out it wasn't FF3 but in fact a Skype number highlighting add-on that was the culprit.  I uninstalled the Skype add-on and voila, Google Maps work again!

The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070020)

All of my websites on IIS7 were stopped.  Whenever I tried to start any of them I would get the exception:

 "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070020)"

After doing some googleing I found that it was a problem with Skype.  When it iwas loading on boot up it was taking port 80 before IIS could.

So I just quit Skype freeing up port 80.  This allowed me to start my websites in IIS.  I then restarted Skype which was smart enough to take a different port since 80 was already taken.

Hopefully this helps someone else. 

 

Skype

Today I decided to get a land line.  After too many dropped calls and complaints of cutting out I decided it was time.

I called Charter and got everything lined up.

Chatting with @scaleovenstove he suggested I try Skype out.  It's free so I figured it couldn't hurt.  We both downloaded the client and gave it a shot.

He called me up first on my cell phone.  I couldn't even tell he was on anything different than a normal phone.

I then called him skype to skype.  We talked for about 20 minutes and the sound was great.  It was really easy to use and since he had a webcam I could even see him.  The only thing I had to do was turn my IM sounds off, he could here them going off.

It all worked great though and I think I am going to go with them instead.  Now I am going to look into getting a Skpe enabled phone that runs over wifi.  I'll post details later.

What does your office look like?

A cool site Where We Do What We Do, takes photo submissions of peoples work place.  Here's my office.

 I wish mine looked like this.
 

Firefox 3

FireFox 3 is coming out next month in June.  They're going to have a "Download Day" to try and set a record for the most downloads in one day.  I encourage everyone to take part in this.  Or, at least start using this browser especially if you are currently using IE6.  For the love of God, upgrade to anything better than IE6!

 

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ 

Import .csv users file into Community Server 2007

Today I had to import an existing file of users into a new Community Server 2007 application.  At first thought I thought it would be simple to just use the import/export wizard in Management Studio.  However after looking into it further I realized it wasn't quite that simple.  There are about 6 tables that are affected when adding a new user.

 What I ended up doing is writing a little import method to do this.  A couple things to prep CS2007 before I could execute the method:

• Make sure all the roles that you are importing have been added
• Make sure that the password requirements are going to be met by all the passwords in your csv.  I ran into an issue where some users didn't have the default required minimum password length.  This is found in the web.config minRequiredPasswordLength in the Member section.
• I placed the .csv file in the web root, here I knew aspnet would have rights to access the file.

After that I was ready to run the method.  Since I am not really familiar with CS2007 I just added the method in the ~/Themes/default/Common/Master.Master file.  I added the Page_Load () and called my import() method inside this.  I knew as soon as the page was loaded the method would be called here.  Originally I tried creating a small console app to do this, but it just wasn't working.  It was missing a bunch of things from the web.config and CS dlls so I just figured why fight it. It's a one time thing I'll just throw it in the page and get it over with. Just Remember to remove all this after the users have been imported. 

The fields in the .csv file were:  FirstName,LastName,Username,Password,Email,Role,Territory,State

Now those fields don't match up exactly in the CS database schema.  I ended up moving FirstName and LastName into commonName and Territory and State into location.  You can see all the properties that exist by looking into Profile section in the web.config.

One other thing I found out is that when creating a user you have set 4 properties.  username, password, email, and IsAnonymous = false. 

 

 

Thanks to the following sites that help me create this:
http://mishler.net/2006/04/07/How+To+Import+Existing+AspNet+Membership+Data+Into+CommunityServer.aspx
http://www.igloocoder.com/archive/2007/08/22/1290.aspx
http://communityserver.org/forums/t/485629.aspx
http://communityserver.org/forums/p/490538/592779.aspx#592779

Let the challenge begin!

Our team is all set up for the F1 Web Challenge.  Well there wasn't much set up for us.  We pretty much opened our laptops and we were ready to go.  David our designer had to quick get Visual Studio 2008 installed, we got the credentials all squared away for MySql and we are ready to go.  Yeah, every other team here has a couple of desktops, dual monitors,  I think most people just brought their office.  We look pretty lame, but hey, that's ok.  We'll spend our time developing while the other teams are tripping over all their hardware.  We still don't know the non-profit we'll be working with....  Oh it now begins....  Updates later.

Netflix Review

I'm lovin' it.  The movie selection for streaming movies is huge and far more superior to MovieLink.  The quality is great, I haven't had any problems with the movies.  I signed up for a trial with unlimited "Instant" movies.  I think between Alison and me we've watched like 8 already. 

The selection is good for older movies, however if you want anything new you're not going to find it.  For that MovieLink is better.  A combination of both of these services though is great.  Since I have my computer hooked up to my entertainment center it really works out great. 

MovieLink.com Review

This is a site that lets you rent movies online.  I know Apple and Netflix are doing this now too, but here, there is no membership required.  It works pretty slick.  Find the movie you want to rent, add it to your shopping cart and checkout.  Once you purchase the rental you have a 24 hour period to view the movie.  You might ask how the manage that?  Well you have to download a desktop app in order to download and view movies.  The manager does integrate with Windows MCE nicely though.  I've watched a few movies off of the site and it has worked out great.  The only thing they need to work on is their selection, right now it is pretty limited, but hey, you don't have a subscription so you're not losing out on anything if they don't have what you want.  I'll have to review Netflix next.

 

PC will not boot up from CD!

I recently installed MS Vista again.  I first installed it about a year ago this time only to find hardly anything would work with my machine.  I figured after a year all the drivers and everything I needed would be out there.  Well, I should have checked before I actually tried installing Vista again.  Looks like my motherboard is just too old and my graphics card just isn't going to cut it even though it should.

 So I throw the XP Cd in and plan to rollback.  Everytime the "To boot from CD press any key.."  comes up I press every key but it still keeps booting up to Vista, wtf!

I think my problem is I am not pressing the "any" key, jk, lol.

Well turns out it was my USB keyboard wasn't working until after the OS boot up.  I had to dust off a PS/2 keyboard just to get XP back.  I guess that was all I had the last time I went through all this..  Oh yeah, I had a wireless keyboard last time and I know that was the problem before.  I should have remembered.  Looks like I need to document this for next time.
 

Twin Cities Code Camp 3 (Fall 2007)

I attended the 3rd Twin Cities Code Camp a few weeks ago.  I have been meaning to write a blog post about it ever since.

I thought it was a great day of code learning.  New Horizons really treated us well with breakfast, lunch and snacks.  First off, if you're thinking about going to the next one, go.  You can't beat a day of learning and food all for free, you can't afford NOT to go!

It was a full day of presentations, 20 presentations in all.  There were always 4 at the same time so you had the chance to attend 5 of them.

The first session I attended was "Simple Web Part Development" by Scott Yokiel.  It was a nice over view on different ways that you can write Web Parts for SharePoint.  I can see myself using what I learned here in the future.  The thing I took most out of the session was to look at Smart Part, a third party app that makes creating web parts really slick for SharePoint.

Second session I went to before lunch was "NBusiness: An Entity Oriented Programming Library" by Justin Chase.  Pretty amazing thing what Justin has came up with and put together here.  First of all he believes that you should model your class library not off of your db schema but "The Source of Truth" meta data.  He goes over this in-depth on his blog.
Basically this is another code generator for building your data access layer with a bit of a different way of where it is derived from.  He does a good job of explaining this at the link in the previous sentence.  I'd like to know where he finds the time to work full time and then create an entire new language and framework, E#, on the side.

After lunch I went to what was by far the most beneficial presentation to me,  "Utilizing the ASP.NET Adapter Architecture".  This was put on by Robert Boedigheimer.  He really had a good presentation.  It wasn't something that was really advanced, but what was great about it was he talked about simple things that I had never known about.  At my former employer the seo department wanted me to remove all the ViewState that was rendered in html completely or at least moved to the bottom of the page.  In the end I found a way but it really took a lot of busy work.  I had to create a base page that all the .aspx pages inherited from.  Fine, but when the site was first created it didn't inherit from one so I had to go through each page and update this.  With The Page LifeCycle Event Adapter I could have done this in about 5 lines of code in the .config file.  If only I had known that then.  He also talked about many other adapters that I could have used like one that can change how any controls are rendered.  My initial thought was, nice, I could use this to have all the controls rendered in div tags and css.  Good idea I thought until the next thing he talked about were the CSSControl Adapters!  Man I never knew about these.  You can be sure I will be using them in the future.  There have been many sites that I have developed entirely with div tags and css but then all the controls on the page would be rendered in html.  Finally a way to get away from that.  He was talking about how many people thing that this should be the default way of how the controls are rendered in .NET 3.5 but some believe that they can't change it now because so many people are used to how it is.  Scott Guthrie of course has a good blog post on how to use them along with the download link of where to get them.

The next two final sessions were ok, but nothing really worth mentioning.

To finish off the day they had some awesome door prizes.  I may have left empty handed, but I was full of new knowledge and I had a great time. Like I said before, if you can attend the one in the spring I highly recommend it.

Visual Studio 2005 Debug by attaching to process on Win 2003 Server

Here is how to debug by Attaching to a process... in Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Server 2003.

First go to Debug >  Attach to Process..

Then the process that you need to attach to is w3wp.exe.  I was used to attaching to the aspnet_wp.exe process, but that isn't the case on Windows Server 2003.

One thing I noticed is when I simply did this when ever there was a connection being made to the database I would encounter a  

EXECUTE permission denied on object 'sp_sdidebug', database 'master', owner 'dbo'.

exception.   To get around this I had to make sure when in the "Attach to Process" dialog that the Attach to: attribute is "Managed".  You can change this by clicking on the Select button next to it and choosing it.

I can now finally attach to a process when debugging on Windows 2003. 

 

Community Server Personal and Small Business editions no longer available.

It looks like what this site is running on, Community Server Personal Edition is no longer going to be available.  It just isn't making sense for Telligent.  If you read their announcement it sounds like Graffiti is what they will recommend to future users.  Graffiti is expected to launch early next year.  You can sign up right now to get on the list to become a Beta tester at: http://graffiticms.com/ .  I have been meaning to move off of Community Server for a while now, just another reason to.  I think I am going to redo this site in DotNetNuke just so I can see what all the hype is about.  New site to come soon, stay tuned.

 
Read Telligent's announcement here: http://communityserver.org/blogs/announcements/archive/2007/11/02/customer-support-announcement.aspx

 

JoshuaBehling.com

I finally launched the site I have been working on for the past month.  I think it turned out pretty nice.  It is for someone running for State Representative.  Everything you want to know about him you can find on his site :).   The entire site is all custom.  It's built with .NET and a SQL Server backend.  It is pretty nice for him, I made it so he can edit everything through and admin section.  Check the site out: http://www.joshuabehling.com

mdc 07

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Minnesota Developers Conference down in Bloomingtion.  I've been busy since then, but have been meaning to write a post on it, since it was worth it.

I thought the conference was great, it was put on by ilm service.
It started off with the keynote speaker, Craig Knighton from 3M.  He had some interesting things to say about 3M with the development with RFID tags.  He also displayed some cool things 3M is working on with WPF.  One cool thing he gave a quick into to was Microsoft's Surface. WOW, this is some awesome stuff that is just on the horizon.  Have you seen Minority Report?

 After the keynote we attended 4 different presentations.   There were 4 different ones so one had to choose which one they wanted to go to the most.  I wish I could have seen them all, but...  

The first presentation I went to was on LINQ, Language Integrated Query, put on by Doug Nelson.  This was in the .NET 3.0 track.  Very cool, I can definitely see myself using this in the future if not sooner.  Doug did a great job presenting this.  He had a good demonstration on how to use it.

I also attended another presentation by Doug on Silverlight formerly WPF/E.  I had heard a lot about Silverlight before going to this but never really saw it in use.  He put together a great presentation on how you can use this.

The other two presentations that I attended were on Ajax and WCF.   The Ajax presentation was good, however I knew most of it already.  The WCF, Windows Communication Foundation, presentation was pretty much inapplicable to me.  Currently I would have no reason to know this.  I skipped out about half way through and went over to the Expression Web Designer presentation where it was good, but again, I knew all of it.

So in in retrospect overall I thought the conference was good, the two presentations by Doug Nelson were great.  I just happened to be familiar with two presentations that I attended and one, well, I had no reason to attend it.

Anyways, one cool thing is they have all the presentations available for download at: http://mdc.ilmservice.com/download.aspx. If you weren't able to attend, I am sure you can still learn a lot by just checking out the downloads.

 I hope to attend it next year.