Section: Blogs
Mar 9, 2005 1 min.
I wrote a couple of articles on BITS in the past (creating a wrapper, then background copying, then digital grandma) but it was all about downloading files. Starting with BITS 1.5, you can also upload files… is that topic of interest to folks? Just FYI, you need web server support to make this work, as detailed here.
I need to implement an automated exception report system… it’s about time!
Mar 9, 2005 1 min.
I use the Exception Handling Block from PAG, so exceptions anywhere in my application generate a nice (full of data) XML file for me to use after the fact to track down the problem… but that file gets written to the user’s local machine… so I have to ask folks to send it to me via email. What I need to implement is some system to upload those reports to me either automatically or on-demand….
Odd things are happening with my TV signal…
Mar 5, 2005 2 min.
I’ve recently unhooked my Tivo… I picked up a Media Center Extender (the HP one) and that was the final step to moving all of our television watching to MCE 2005. We love it and we record tons of shows. Extender works wonderfully, better than the XBox extender because there is no stupid DVD to put in to watch TV and it is a lot quieter. Everything looks great, except for the occasional thing on some of the lower channels (5 and 6).
Converting from an Integer to an IntPtr
Mar 4, 2005 1 min.
A friend of mine at work just asked me this VB question, and it is an interesting one to me because it isn’t as simple as it seems… How do I cast from Integer to IntPtr? In the end, I never really found an answer to that question, but I found out how to create a new IntPtr from an existing Integer and that seems close enough. You see, CType doesn’t work because there isn’t a defined conversion between the two types, and DirectCast only works with object references not value types like IntPtr.
Mar 3, 2005 1 min.
No idea what we’ve caught, but everyone in my family is sick…. and it has lasted for three days so far. Fever, shivering, sniffling, coughing, ugh… This was the first year that we all got flu shots and I’ll tell you, we have never been sick so often 🙂 Of course, it is also Connor’s first year in pre-school, so that could be a more likely cause… all those germ-buckets playing together can really spread a cold around.
Still 2 to go for the flat screen :)
Mar 3, 2005 1 min.
Sign-ups seem to have plateaued, I posted that I had 2 left for the free flat screen site on February 16th, and I’m still at the same point. What I do have though, is about 15 “yellows” which means a person signed up but never completed an offer… everyone starts out yellow before going to “green” and becoming a valid referral counting towards the number you need, so all those yellows can lead to a false sense of accomplishment :).
Interesting quote from an essay on body image
Mar 1, 2005 2 min.
I was searching the web for details on how best to take all the various body measurements that is a standard part of any personal training program, when my search brought me to this essay. Girls are indoctrinated at a very young age that Barbie is how a woman is supposed to look (i.e. no fat anywhere on your body, but huge breasts). NOTE: If Barbie were life-size, she would stand 5’9” and weigh 110 lb.
Just pulled down the CS 1.0 source… now to start working on a migration plan
Feb 27, 2005 1 min.
Currently I’m running .Text .94 + a bunch of private modifications and some version of CS:Forums + a bunch of private modifications… so now that CS 1.0’s source is out, I want to incorporate my mods into the combined package and then migrate my data and get my site up and running on the new stuff. As cool as that is, and while I’m sure it has excellent tools/scripts for upgrading, I’m not looking forward to it.
This may seem odd… but people kept asking for it, so here you go…
Feb 27, 2005 1 min.
On the various programming forums I read, a common question is “how can I find out the IP address of my router”… for whatever reason (and there certainly are a few reasons that I can think of) people were really looking for their IP address on the Internet. In general, the solution was to hit one of a few publically available sites out there that display your IP when you view their web pages and then scrape the IP address back out of the HTML.
Received my first book from Zooba.com today…
Feb 25, 2005 2 min.
If you sign up for one of the sites created by Gratis (free flat screens, free ipods, free handbags, etc…) then one of the available offers is Zooba.com, and I have to say it is one of the best offers I’ve tried. Basically, if you are someone who likes to read then you probably won’t mind the ‘requirement’ to complete this offer. You sign up for a membership with Zooba, which costs around $10 a month and for that fee you get one hardcover book each month with no shipping costs.