Category: Development

  • Problem with Firefox 3.5.2 and Facebook

    After upgrading to Firefox 3.5.2, I’ve been having trouble with Facebook – certain pages would take ages to load (if load at all) The photos page was a particular problem. At first, I thought the problem could of been with Facebook – some of their AJAX user interface getting carried away or something, however I…

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  • Eco-Disc Stuck In Slot Loading Drive

    AVG kindly provided us with an Eco-Disc of their software – so we began installing it on one of our Dell XPS laptops – with a slot loading drive. Everything worked fine, until it came to eject it – or at least try to! Because the CD’s are so thin, there isn’t enough thickness for…

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  • JoeBlogs – Typo in dummy URL fixed

    I’ve recently had a few comments that the JoeBlogs wrapper wasn’t working – and they were getting an “invalid response” or more specifically “Response XML not valid XML-RPC – missing methodResponse element.” It seems that I had a typo in my comments in JoeBlogs.TestHarness/Program.cs on line 15: //typically http://www.yourdomain.com/xmlprc.php (if your wordpress blog is installed…

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  • Yahoo Term Extractor API Discontinued

    A couple of days ago Yahoo announced two of its search services will be discontinued on August 31st 2009. Annoyingly, one of those is the Term Extraction API Which means my Windows Live Writer Auto Tag Generator plug-in will simply cease to work. Important Announcement: The Term Extraction Web Search service will be discontinued on…

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  • Reverse GeoCoding with Google API and C#

    I needed to write a function to get a set of co-ordinates from an address, supplied as a string. Using the Google API, I came up with this: First, I created a struct, to represent the lat and lon co-ordinates: public struct Coordinate { private double _latitude; private double _longitude; public Coordinate(double latitude, double longitude)…

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  • NTLM / Windows Authentication with Firefox

    Firefox, my browser of choice, doesn’t support NTLM “out of the box” What that means is, if you visit a site on your domain (for example http://intranet) that you should have access to, you’re presented with a username and password box. Visit the same site in IE, and it lets you straight through, based on…

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  • Could not load file or assembly ‘ChilkatDotNet2’ or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.

    Whilst setting up an application to run on my local machine (running Vista 64bit) I encountered this error: Could not load file or assembly ‘ChilkatDotNet2’ or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.   Obviously, the application uses ChilKat components, but it would seem that the…

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  • Removing a previous version of Windows

    If you have installed a newer version of Windows Vista (for example 64 bit instead of 32 bit), and didn’t format your HD first (like I just did) it simply installs the new version, over the top of the old version. The old version will continue to take up space (around 4gb in my case)…

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  • Windows 7 – Sticky Notes

    This is a sticky note!   This is something I will use all the time! Windows 7 has a feature called “Sticky Notes” – basically, these little notes are like post it notes – they stick to your desktop! You can change the colour, resize, move them around etc… So simple, yet so useful!

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  • How to get Messenger to run in the TaskBar in Windows 7

    After installing the Windows 7 RC, I installed the latest Windows Live Messenger. After using it, it appears that it does not run in the task bar, as it used to in Vista! This is pretty annoying, as I only keep it open to use now and again. There is a way around this however……

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  • Windows Azure Pricing Announced

    Microsoft has finally released their pricing model for the forthcoming Windows Azure Windows Azure: Compute = $0.12 / hour Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB SQL Azure: Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99…

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  • Using JoeBlogs -metaWeblog API Wrapper

    Step 1 Download the latest release of JoeBlogs from Codeplex (Click the Downloads tab, and select the latest download) Step 2 Unzip the contents of the downloaded zip file. (I usually copy DLLs I am going to use into a “lib” folder at the root of my solution) Step 3 Add a reference to BOTH…

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  • Why Are Interfaces Useful?

    Interfaces, usually prefixed by “I” are useful in software engineering, for a number of reasons. Primarily, they allow you to create “pluggable” code. By this, I mean that your code is easier to manage, easier to maintain, easier to change the way certain parts of your application work, without changing the entire way it works.…

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  • Specify XML-RPC Endpoints at Run Time With CookComputing XMLRPC.net

    A common question when using Cook Computing XML RPC.net to talk to blogs etc… is how to specify a blog / endpoint at runtime? Most of the examples seem to specify the details in an attribute… not much use if you’re trying to develop a wrapper. To enable me to create JoeBlogs, I made use…

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  • Auto Tag Generator Plug-In for Windows Live Writer

    Auto Tag Generator is a plug in for Windows Live Writer that enables tags to be generated from a block of text (or the whole of the post) Download: Project can be downloaded from Codeplex here Usage: To generate tags, simply highlight all of the text (or a relevant section) and press “Inert Auto Generated…

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  • Missing Files from DotNetNuke 4.9.4 Starter Kit causing error

    I downloaded the latest release of the Dot Net Nuke Starter Kit (Version 4.9.4  released on 23rd June 2009) I followed the instructions to install the Visual Studio templates etc… as found here They are a little outdated, but the same process still applies. Upon installing it, loading a new website, I selected the DotNetNuke…

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  • Location of Visual Studio Templates Directory

    The location of the Visual Studio Templates Directory (when installed on Vista) is as follows: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Visual Studio <version>\Templates Replace <user> with your username <version> with the version of VS (in my case its 2008) so my path is: C:\Users\ABrown\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates

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  • Open Source Social Network

    I’ve just stumbled across this Open Source Social Network, that runs on Ruby On Rails http://lovdbyless.com/ I’ll be sure to download this and have a play with it sometime soon!

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  • Heart, music, diamonds and other cool symbols on Facebook and other things

    Ever wondered how to get those cool little symbols in wall posts, status updates, messages etc… on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…? This kind of thing: ☼ ☻☺ ♪ ♫ ♥ Well…. you can either copy them off this page, or use the key sequence next to them: To get these to work: You will need…

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  • iPhone replacing “Xx” with “Fx” – FIXED In OS 3.0

    At last! The “feature” that replaced Xx with Fx has been fixed in OS 3.0! Another thing I have noticed is with “lol” – Before the OS 3.0 update, if I typed lol, it would change it to UPPERCASE. Now, however, it leaves it as i typed it.

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  • Show line numbers in Visual Studio 2008

    I recently reset my settings in Visual Studio which, irritatingly, made my line numbers disappear. To re-instate the line numbers, there is a simple process: Click: Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages > General On the right, under Display section, check Line numbers (see below) Click Ok.

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  • Reset IDE settings in Visual Studio 2008

    I recently acquired a PC at my new job where there was an existing installation of Visual Studio. This was fine, however it was set up for a VB.net developer. Whilst I do use VB.net, I didn’t want my VS set up this way. I wanted to re-instate that lovely screen you see when you…

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  • Use Notepad2 instead of original Notepad in Windows Vista

    Notepad2 is my favourite text editor. Eventually, I’ll get round to writing a post all about it. Until then, you can read the Wikipedia page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad2 You can download Notepad2 from http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html Step 1) Find c:\windows\notepad.exe and c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe (use Windows Explorer) Change the owner of both files to “Administrators” In case you are unsure……

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  • iPhone – No folder management support for Exchange

    One big thing for me with regards to the iPhone Microsoft Exchange integration is the inability to create and manage folders. I am one of those people that religiously file emails away once dealt with – for example, I have an "eBay" folder, with "buying" and "selling" sub folders for all the emails relating to…

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