January 2006 - Posts
This is here so I don't have to look it up all the time. When using VM's, multiple PCs, etc. It's nice to have a logon background that gives you some information about what the machine is, userid, password, etc.
So, to do it:
1. Create a bitmap and save to the local hard drive (I chose c:\background.bmp)....;
2. Update registry with the following:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"Wallpaper"="C:\\Background.bmp"
"TileWallpaper"="0"
"ConvertedWallpaper"="C:\\Background.bmp"
More stuff on my back. I'm convinced my Ortho is putting me through a barrage of tests, some painful, to test my will!!!
Last Thursday I had a Discogram done (http://www.spine-health.com/topics/diag/diag08.html).
This is an unpleasant test where they intentionally inflict pain on the patient in order to identify which discs are the real culprit. Although under a light anesthesia, you need to be awake and responsive in order to give feedback on the pain.
Basically, they stick a catheter into the disc, then inject a dye, look at it on an X-Ray machine, and create pressure "in" the disc. If the pain occurs, then it's clear that disc is a problem from creating pressure on nerves.
Well, I had 4 of them on Thursday. Needless to say, thankfully, he prescribed some Vicodin for the pain afterwards. I can say thank you for that pain killing.
All fun stuff!!!! On my way to what looks like a Fusion of possibly 3 vertebrates.
http://mockupscreens.com/
I can't say how "BAD" Visio is at creating mockup screens for UI requirements and storyboarding. I'd say HTML is another approach, but having a tool to faciliate the capture, organization, and versioning of the UI mockups and storyboards would make life just that much easier.
Here's a tool that focuses soley on that part of the "fun". This can be used in ANY type of process, waterfall, Xp, etc. It's all about capturing the story and what users really want.
MockupScreens' purpose is rapid screen prototyping. So what does it do? With MockupScreens you quickly and easily create screen mockups of your application, while the coding hasn't even started yet.
MockupScreens main design goals are ease of use and productivity.
Ease of use
You just start MockupScreens and get to work. Interface is as intuitive and straight-forward as It could be. Every action can be done via keyboard shortcuts, which are consistent throughout the application. Each screen has context sensitive help, explaining in status bar the use of any action or element at all times. Screen elements and their parts are automaticaly resized and aligned to let the user focus on his goal instead of GUI design.
Productivity
With little or no experience you can draw 5 screens in 10 minutes! Each action can be invoked via keayboard. More advanced features don't clutter the interface. In addition to common screen elements (buttons, fields, lists, etc) there are "productivity" elements which you use to add and arange multiple elements at once (e.g. textfield with label, etc). Creating new screens from existing ones.
Approach
You create screens, add screen elements (buttons, text fields, grids, etc) and populate them (specify texts or data for complex elements). Screens are organized in scenarios. You then export a single screen or whole scenario to images you can use. Mockups purposefully avoid the possibility to be mistaken for the real application screens. Being "mockups", the screen elements are much simpler than screen elements from various GUI designers.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7CECD652-FC04-4EF8-A28A-25C5006677D8&displaylang=en
Not that I'm a big supporter of converting crap-to-crap, just interesting to see they've updated the VS2003 converter.
http://www.waterfall2006.com/
After years of being disparaged by some in the software development community, the waterfall process is back with a vengeance. You've always known a good waterfall-based process is the right way to develop software projects. Come to the Waterfall 2006 conference and see how a sequential development process can benefit your next project. Learn how slow, deliberate handoffs (with signatures!) between groups can slow the rate of change on any project so that development teams have more time to spend on anticipating user needs through big, upfront design.
I hope you can all make it on April 1, 2006....
Through the numerous CTP's of WinFX, sometimes project and item templates get a bit screwed up. You can correct this if you see some old (say "Indigo Services") in your "New Project Dialogs".
The key is undersanding a few things how the templates are managed. There's a directory:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates
This directory contains all the Project Templates. There's a similar one for ItemTemplates.
However, this isn't used when running Visual Studio 2005. Instead, the objects in the following directory are:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplatesCache
Thing is, how do you "fix" what's in the cache? You can't do it manually.
So, one thing that I've been doing is cleaning up my templates in \ProjectTemplates and \ItemTemplates.
Then using the following command to "regenerate" the cache items - so far has worked great - just be sure to backup your environment settings first:
devenve.exe /Setup
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32187993-4736-4A06-97C7-1282B67E3137&displaylang=en
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/897696
COM+ Hotfix for the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Brief Description
Adds support for the WS-AtomicTransaction protocol to MSDTC and support for the Windows Communication Foundation COM+ Integration feature.
Overview
This QFE package adds support for the WS-AtomicTransaction protocol to MSDTC and support for the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) COM+ Integration feature.
When this package is installed WCF applications will be able to use the WS-AtomicTransaction protocol. Additionally, COM+ applications can be exposed as services using the WCF COM+ Integration feature.
Having a strong BA is one of the greatest deficiencies that I've seen throughout the years on all the projects. The breakdown in what users need and what get's delivered usually rests with having a good interpreter. With XP, I still think having a "translator" that can converse close to the nomenclature of the business people, even drawing pictures, then turn around and provide the technical team with the "goods" is one of the most undervalued needs. Can't say how many times the BA is left out of the project picture.
http://www.iiba.com/default.cfm
Welcome to the International Institute of Business Analysis
The IIBA is an international not-for-profit professional association for Business Analysis professionals.
The IIBA vision is to be the leading world-wide professional association that develops and maintains standards for the practice of business analysis and for the certification of practitioners.
Great post and supporting adapter implementation on using System.Transactions with SQL 2000.
http://blogs.msdn.com/florinlazar/archive/2005/09/29/475546.aspx
If you really care about speed, you will notice that the performance decreases compared to when transactions are not used. If you do a little bit of investigation, you will notice that in fact a MSDTC distributed transaction is created and used when the code is executed (you can see this using Component Services snap-in). But why?
If you run the same code against Microsoft SQL Server 2005, the performance doesn't decrease when compared to a similar code that doesn't use transactions. Good, but you might not have SQL Server 2005 (yet). So, what can you do?
http://biztalkia.blogspot.com/2006/01/biztalk-host-manager-2004.html#links
Some features:
- It monitors background service state change of host instances (not by default, use options to enable) .
- It works for Biztalk 2004 and 2006.
An article I wrote got posted on DotNetJunkies. Problem is, I sent a "draft" to them. They posted it without even telling me!!! I'm trying to get it changed.
Http.sys in WinXP SP2: What It Means with Windows Communication Foundation
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/Tutorial/99DD7042-532D-4DB4-8625-1CD8BF422D64.dcik
Tune in to .NET Unwrapped, the webcast series focused on real-world developer solutions for the financial services industry. Hear from the Microsoft financial services team as well as experts who have deployed technologies and systems at some of the largest financial institutions. Learn how to:
- Exchange information and functionality between disparate systems and platforms
- Migrate from COM and WinDNA to .NET
- Implement best practices for J2EE and .NET interoperability
- Integrate for mature messaging systems
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdndotnetunwrapped.mspx
taking in alot of Webcasts while awaiting them to open up my spine...
Seems there's some nuances with the VS 2005 Debugger that if you're doing any sort of multi-threaded applications you'll run into some issues with the debugger.
Basically, one example is if you have a BackgroundWorker object and all the methods are local to the class that launches the BGW, BGW just fails and stops working altogether in the debugger.
There is a way to "fix" it but it requires turning off a great feature - frickin pain in the ass if you ask me.
For background, see the post here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=147707&SiteID=1
The correction is turn off the feature under "Options, Debugging, Enable property evaluation and other implicit function calls".
I haven't tried it, but there's a sub option under it that others have reported you just need to turn it off, that options is labelled: "Call ToString() on objects in variables windows (C# only)" -- gee, perhaps this is a C# issue only? Wouldn't know - I hate VB.NET so much, I can't get myself to launch the IDE in VB mode and try it.....
Fun working with CTP's, Beta's, etc. Things never go as mooth with RTM bits (seems lots of RTM lack of smoothness too).
With the WinFX bits, there's been a bunch of issues getting all the dependancies installed correctly. One last "work-around" is to install the individual bits one by one instead of running the master Windows SDK installer (Windows SDK now contains all the content for WinFX).
That command was:
E:\Setup>msiexec /package WinSDK-x86.msi /quiet /lv c:\out.log
I posted that command on the forums here: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/showpost.aspx?postid=194332&siteid=1&PageID=0
So, that command get's you through the installation of the SDK, and in the end, get's you up and running with the WinFX RTC, VS Extensions, and developing with WinFX (WCF). That's all I need right now.
However, it doesn't fix 2 problems:
1. Still missing some bits - MSH, Dexplorer, etc. that come with the master install of the the SDK.
2. SDK Installer team still can't get it right unless we send logs.
So, this was posted by the SDK Installer team and I hope we can all help them out with our installation logs.:
================================================
The install failure (top text): I have no info, because I don't have a log.
a. We need to get SDKSetup.exe logs from these folks if they want us to attempt to diagnose the problem. I've fixed logging considerably since Dec CTP WRT logging, so that may not help us entirely. Procedure...
1. cmd > SDKSetup.exe -l*v, and go through setup through failure.
2. Type %TEMP%\SDKSetupLog.txt>%TEMP%\SDKSetupLogAnsi.txt
3. Email SDKSetupLogAnsi.txt to us.
b. Please tell them that running WinFXSDK-x86.msi directly via msiexec.exe bypasses the install of DExplore, MSH, NetFXCF and WinDBG (etc). If they want to be clever, they can run all the MSIs (appropriate for their platform) in turn, using a command line like, "msiexec.exe -i windbg-x86.msi -l*v windbg.log ADDLOCAL=ALL" to determine which one fails on their system.
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