Scotty Wakefield

Get Public Key for SN Assembly

2012-01-27T05:05:00.000+11:00

I am putting this here so it's easy for me to find.

Scenario - testing an assembly that is SN'd. You need to set InternalsVisibleTo. You get a compilation error:

Strong-name signed assemblies must specify a public key in their InternalsVisibleTo declarations.

Note that this is the public key, not the public key token.

Follow the instructions that Jeremy Clark provides, but instead of:

-T $(TargetPath)

use:

-Tp $(TargetPath)

to get not just the public key token but also the public key as well.

Then you can have something like

[assembly: System.Runtime.CompilerServices.InternalsVisibleTo("Assembly.Name, PublicKey=00240_blah_blah_long_key_value_a4")]

Handy Resources for Formatting Code in Blogger

2012-01-22T11:31:00.001+11:00

Here are some handy place to go if you want to get code formatting set up in Blogger.

If you just want to copy in code, push a button and get some text to paste into your blog then try
http://formatmysourcecode.blogspot.com/

If on the other hand you want to get something working for the longer term then try SyntaxHighlighter
http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/
which is explained by Crafty
http://www.craftyfella.com/2010/01/syntax-highlighting-with-blogger-engine.html

Notable Omissions from Adroid Tablet Apps

2012-01-22T11:01:00.000+11:00

I have the joy of owning a shiny new ASUS Transformer Prime and have had some time now to use the apps for a reasonable amount of time. So, I have compiled a list of popular apps that I use that are not yet optimised for tablet layout (10in layout anyways).

Facebook (surprising)
Facebook Messenger
Skype
Google+ (more surprising)
Google+ Messenger
Kindle (I want a 2 page view please)
LinkedIn
Google Docs (which generally sucks on Android)

When I say they are not optimised I mean that they don't come anything close to how Evernote, Gmail (and Email - they both look exactly the same) and Calendar apps have used the available space in an intuitive and efficient way.

Source Library

2012-01-21T05:14:00.001+11:00

Following on from Scott Hanselman's icon goodness I thought it would be worthwhile discussing Windows 7 Libraries briefly. (PS: Scott's icons download has gone..)

Win7 Libraries allow you to map several disparate folders under a common banner. I create myself a Source Library so that I can then include C:\Code as well as "C:\Users\MyUserName\Documents\Visual Studio 2010" and any other project specific locations I require quick access to.

All good, but... you don't want the standard icon and you don't want one of the existing icons (Documents, Music ...). So I have followed the manual technique described by How-To Geek which took all of 5min:

Create yourself a new Library called Source
Start, run
```
%appdata%\microsoft\windows\libraries
```
Send Source to notepad (or notepad++) or drag and drop onto notepad.

Add the following line to your config.

<iconReference>"c:\program 10.0\common7\ide\devenv.exe",1</iconReference>

Save the file and check it, if all good you will have a nice VS themed Source Library, if not, check the path to devenv.exe.

SharePoint Feature Request - Drag email attachment to document list

2012-01-18T01:20:00.001+11:00

I have a new SharePoint feature request..

This new feature request can be added to my other feature request for decent wiki engine (I totally recommend that you steer well clear of the built in SharePoint wiki and use a third party wiki engine).

The feature request is to be able to drag an email attachment from outlook and drop it into the web UI of a SharePoint document list. Even if it only worked in IE, that would be a good start.

OliveTree BibleReader Running on ICS

2012-01-17T09:00:00.001+11:00

Here is a screenshot of OliveTree's BibleReader running on an ICS tablet which shows off the sort of cross referencing that is possible with this powerful reference and study tool. I found switching from OliveTree to Evernote for taking notes works quite well. There is a small delay in the ICS OS whilst you switch (or Alt-Tab using a hardware keyboard) but it is not prohibitively slow.

Apologies, this is the default resolution that the Android Blogger client uploads images:

Proper view:

LIDNUG Highlights

2012-01-17T08:50:00.002+11:00

I rarely (to my own shame) tune in to the LIDNUG group meetings. Now I will admit that it is actually quite easy just to read the transcript and pick out the important bits from that - my usual plan of attack. But it was nice to be able to take some time out of work and family life tonight to listen in. And.. could it really have been my boss on the attendees list?? Will have to double check back at work tomorrow.

Well, the highlight for me was learning that knockout.js is going to be completely adopted by Microsoft in ASP.NET 4.5. Yep. Great for ole blighty to show some innovation in the js area as well. Hats off to Steve Sanderson.

Other highlights include:

ASP.NET 4.5 web forms will be HTML5 friendly.
Lots of good news around websockets support... man, that is some serious hax0r stuff there. (how long till that gets blocked somehow by stateful HTTP inspection - like SPI)
Web API is going to be the big thing to enable all sorts of app types to be able to use ASP.NET server side .. um .. services. It will include a new HttpRequest and HttpResponse that do not require any mocking for unit testing.

Off to an in person community event tomorrow night, NxtGen in Birmingham. Looking forward to having some more community involvement again.

Transformer Prime has Delete Key

2012-01-13T19:34:00.001+11:00

I discovered last night that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime actually does have a [Delete] key after all...

[Shift]+[Backspace] = [Delete]

Also of note for people still thinking about the purchase in UK, the package here comes with a keyboard doc that is in UK format, not US keyboard format.

Update: you can use some of the gmail keyboard shortcuts in ICS if you have the Transformer keyboard attached. Noyce.

Android ICS Browser

2012-01-12T21:09:00.000+11:00

I think the Android ICS Browser is actually the start of Chrome on Android. Since when have browsers had a "New incognito tab" option in the tools menu? Chrome favourites also synchronised nicely

The next big jump will be the ability to configure proxy settings. Apparently you can configure the settings if you break open a terminal emulator onto the underlying Linux OS.

Reading out the ICS Browser userAgent settings:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.3; en-gb; Transformer Prime TF201 Build/IML74K)
AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.30

The equivalent from Chrome on Win7:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64)
AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.75 Safari/535.7

ICS on transformer prime uk

2012-01-11T22:53:00.001+11:00

As soon as I had wifi connected the prime grabbed the ICS update.

Prime time

2012-01-11T20:59:00.001+11:00

My transformer prime has arrived!

cannot create a row of size 8061 ...

2011-11-15T03:35:00.001+11:00

Had this error when updating a table to set a column of xml type from null to not null. The table has existing data. (SQL 2005)

Solution:
Rebuild the index on the offending table.
Run the script again and it works.

svn:mergeinfo

2011-11-14T23:26:00.001+11:00

When you get a load of folders appearing in your svn commit, when you never touched them... check the modifications. Looks like SVN is trying to update the svn:mergeinfo property on that folder. What should happen is this property is only set at a root folder level (e.g. trunk, branches/abc), which it probably is in the folder you are merging from.

I'm not sure on what caused the mergeinfo property to be set in the first place on the sub-folders, but you have 2 options to resolve the issue.
1. delete the branch and start again
2. remove the svn:mergeinfo property from the subfolders - this also is marked as a revision which you will need to commit.

As you can see, option 1 is easiest if you have an elaborate sub-folder structure, but there is an alternative if you want it.

Update: fixed in SVN 1.7.

Chromebook

2011-09-09T00:30:00.000+10:00

Chromebooks are looking quite good. I spend 90% of the time in a browser. Although it is still going to be an Android tablet for me, for now (I definitely like the Eee Pad Transformer).

Update: despite getting budget clearance for the Eee Pad I still haven't taken the plunge, Samsung Series 9 would be my ultimate machine except for the very high price tag.

Update: Eee Pad Transformer (Optimus) Prime is coming out soon and looks "the business"! - follow the link to the ZTOP site at the bottom.

And... if, when, Chrome supports Android, then I can even do dev on the transformer (if I ever wanted to??) using CodeRun's cool Browser based IDE.

Update: I've taken the plunge with the Transformer Prime. Now I just need an Optimus Prime sticker for it.

Apple vs Samsung

2011-09-09T00:26:00.002+10:00

Have you not made a phone that looks and works just like an iPhone?Well... you can use it with your left hand and it doesn't hang up, and you can use Flash. Multi-tasking, copy and paste... =====Now you know which side of the fence I sit.

New theme for Gmail

2011-07-08T00:43:00.002+10:00

Official Gmail Blog: A preview of Gmail’s new look: "Posted by Jason Cornwell, User Experience Designer We get a lot of great feedback about how Gmail helps you be more efficient, keep in to..."

===

I am finding it a little difficult to look at since there is now so much white and nothing to really contrast the side navs (e.g. labels down the left side) from the rest of the view other than a thin (1.5pt?) line.

Was it snuck (sneaked) into the same update? The actions menu now scrolls with you down the page. This works with the old themes as well (I like "Shiny" for it's low profile appearance - good for the office)

On the + side of things

2011-07-07T19:45:00.003+10:00

Will Google+ last, or will it suffer the same fate as Google Wave and Google Buzz?

I quite like each of the Google offerings, but they have come to market too slowly (crazy talk when in reference to Google) compared to the expansion FB has seen.

But, with the rise and rise of Android phones, is there a competitive advantage to be had?

Update: It is now almost 6 months on and it seems Google+ is standing the test of time quite nicely. The circles idea is great for being able to segregate what you say to whom.

FYI

2011-07-07T19:41:00.000+10:00

"I've FYI'd it to you"

[Ctrl]+[FYI]

it's for life h@x0rs

Using Virtual Machine Connection

2011-06-23T23:31:00.000+10:00

This is a very handy way to have things set up, blogging it for my own reference as much as anything.

Using Virtual Machine Connection (stand alone) - Virtual PC Guy's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Use Datasheet view in 64-bit Office 2010 - SharePoint Server - Office.com

2011-05-17T19:55:00.000+10:00

Use Datasheet view in 64-bit Office 2010 - SharePoint Server - Office.com

I have just been stung with this one. At least there is a solution-ish. Don't use a 64-bit browser and .. make sure you have all office suite products installed before installing the 2007 office system driver.

Secure Metadata in WCF

2009-06-29T21:30:00.002+10:00

I've set up a service to be hosted in IIS using wsHttpBinding and want the mex endpoint to be secure as well. I got the following error:

Security settings for this service require 'Anonymous' Authentication but it is not enabled for the IIS application that hosts this service.

There is no way I can have anonymous access enabled in IIS so what do you do?

Short answer: don't use mexHttpsBinding (or mexHttpBinding for that matter).

I've already got a wsHttpBinding and associated binding configuration, so I've just modified the existing mex endpoint.

From:


<endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpsBinding" name="mexHttps"
     contract="IMetadataExchange" />

To:


<endpoint address="mex" binding="wsHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="wsSecureBinding" name="mexHttps" contract="IMetadataExchange" />

This assumes you already have a bindingConfiguration called wsSecureBinding.

Convert VS2005 to VS2008 changes xml namespace of typed dataset

2009-06-12T20:59:00.000+10:00

A warning for anyone who is converting a solution from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008 - the conversion wizard may change the xml namespace of your strongly typed datasets.

I've just had a scenario where an upgraded project failed to perform the typedDS.ReadXml() method. The xml fragment to be loaded had the namespace specified and hence since the ds namespace was changed no longer loaded the xml. This resulted in an empty dataset. After some digging I found that the namespace in the typedDS.Designer.cs file had been changed as part of the conversion.

Cheers.

Payment Required

2008-12-19T00:38:00.002+11:00

Living in the UK still provides a few surprises even after being here for 18mths now. I'm used to have to pay for parking... everywhere you go, but I wasn't prepared when I had to pay to pump up the tyres of my car. I went to a different garage since I refused to be charged. There also you had to pay. I asked a taxi driver who had just finished using the pump if there was anywhere that you didn't have to pay. Nope, you pay everywhere. Wow. It was only 20p, but it all adds up.

100km of dirt for charity

2008-06-25T00:47:00.002+10:00

A few weeks ago I did a 100K mountain bike ride. It was a great challenge (took me about 7 hours) & I enjoyed it. So much so I've decided to do another one. But this time I'm going to raise some money for charity. My chosen charity is HOPE worldwide. Would you like to sponsor me? Please do. I'll be doing the ride on the 6th July in Wales. It’s a tough course and worth the effort to raise money for a charity. 2800m total climbing (about the same as going up and down Snowdon three times in a day).

HOPE worldwide are an international charity who I've fundraised for before in Australia. Over here in the UK they do work with the homeless and drug addicts. The homeless project is called 2-step. And it's a very simple, basically HOPE finds homeless people who want to get off the streets (believe me, not all do, which does seem a little bizarre to me, but that's what some choose) & then finds them a place to live, puts up the deposit and gets them started with the basics - clothes, linen, food etc, whatever they need. HOPE pays the rent and helps them to claim the benefits they're entitled to. The UK does have a great welfare system, but unfortunately it is dependent on having an address, and so once you're homeless it can be a very difficult cycle to get out of. Once in accommodation, these people can then make the necessary claims, get work etc, and so become self sufficient.

The charity website is at http://hopeworldwide.org.uk/ if you're interested have a look and you'll see some info about the other work that is carried out in the UK.

Please sponsor me, it is a worthwhile cause and I'll be riding very hard!

I have set up a justgiving webpage where you can sponsor me http://www.justgiving.com/scottwakefield

SharePoint 2007 Wiki Features (not)

2008-05-03T00:39:00.000+10:00

GrabBag<T>: SharePoint 2007 Wiki - not a fan

The other great news is that iframes are not supported in SharePoint 2007 Wikis. I had the cheek to put an iframe of a TWiki page into a SharePoint wiki page (using the HTML view). It stripped out the iframe tags (and left behind the alt text).

Hotmail and Firefox

2008-04-17T18:30:00.003+10:00

I still use my old hotmail address for signing up to websites about the place, plus its still linked to my live ID/windows Passport. I usually sign into mail.live.com using IE but since IE had crashed and wouldn't work I opted to use Firefox. The reason I don't normally do this is when you view hotmail in Firefox it only shows the old layout. Well today I was pleasently surprised to find that the new hotmail layout now works in Firefox as well. This is great news. Now all I need is for Microsoft to allow Firefox users around all the different microsoft web sites and I'll never have to use IE again. :)

Scrum and Prince2: working together?

2008-04-09T02:33:00.004+10:00

At the London Scrum Gathering, in the OpenSpace, I started a discussion about Scrum and Prince2. This post is the results of that discussion.

Credits to Julian Harris and Nigel Baker who did a lot of the talking.

Ways to use Scrum and Prince2 together:

1. Royalty-free (i.e. no Prince)
Fairly self explanatory - don't use Prince2 at all. Using Scrum only, completely unimpeded by artefacts of Prince2, is the most efficient way of operating.

2. Barnacle / Anchor
Use Scrum but still use some of the "stabilisers" from Prince2 such as Risk Log, Issue Log, Highlight Reports. Helpful for organisations that are still new to Scrum and want some additional assurance. Using the stabilisers still comes at a cost though and these should be included as Sprint Backlog items to illustrate to the Product Owner how much effort they are costing.

3. Work Packet/Package
Scrum is only used for the delivery of a work package (i.e. a Prince2 work package). The work package may equate to one or many sprints, but Scrum is just used to execute the work package, the rest of the project management is done in the Prince2 method. It is also known as an "incremental death march", i.e. all your really doing is breaking up the different phases of the project into "increments", including an increment for design, but essentially still a detailed plan leading to a precise date that is likely to be inaccurate (more on precision and accuracy later).

4. Interface to Prince2
You are using Scrum internally but to outside organisations/departments you are providing a Prince2 wrapper, facade or interface. All an outside organisation will see is the Prince2 wrapper you are providing. Some people also call this "stealth mode" and it is a way that some organisations adopt Scrum from the bottom up (i.e. without management knowing about it).

The main difference between 3. and 4. is that 4. is actually using Scrum, with a bunch of other things that you have to do as well, whereas 3. is not even remotely Scrum. Methods 2. and 4. are similar, but method 2. uses much less of Prince2 than 4. Ideally as you mature as an agile team/organisation you will progress from 3./4. to 2. to 1.

Accuracy vs precision in project management
For a detailed explanation of accuracy vs precision there is a good write up of the target analogy on wikipedia. It relates to project management in that more controlled approaches, in particular gantt charts, are precise but most times quite inaccurate. Scrum on the other hand is more accurate since it is based on evidence (burn down) and history tends to repeat itself. So if it took a team 2 weeks to do 50 units of work, it will likely also take them another 2 weeks to do another 50 units of work.

Is there a place for Prince2?
Yes. Most definitely. Prince2 works quite well in controlled environments - well defined, lower complexity work. After all, the word PRINCE comes from PRojects IN Controlled Environments. For example moving an office from one building to another. Prince2 can scale down quite easily as well and is good for smaller teams or shorter time scales. If however there is a high level of complexity or an uncontrollable environment then you need a project management strategy that can cope with the complexity. Usually software development contains an amount of creativity in documenting the requirements and another amount for converting these requirements into working software. With 2 amounts of creativity and interpretation there is a huge amount of complexity - "I didn't mean it to do it like that, but rather this way instead".

The best analogy of Scrum is one I've heard from Martin Kearns about mountain hiking. Each peak is the end of a sprint or the start of a new sprint. From up on the peak you can see the other peaks and get an overall view of where you are going, you can see the next peak and get a good general plan on how to get there (product backlog planning/revising). During the sprint, i.e. through the valley, you can only see what is directly in front of you, but you can see in detail what action you should take. You can't see logs, boulders, crocodiles... that are blocking your way and that you will need to go around when on the peak, but you can when its right in front of you (adjusting sprint backlog items).Below is an interesting article on Agile and waterfall projects working together in the same organisation. It doesn't address the same issues in this blog but is still quite helpful.

http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/articles/moving-to-agile%3a-to-dos-for-your-pointy-haired-boss.html

Technorati : Agile, Prince2, Scrum

Difference between a Wiki and a Blog

2007-11-28T20:02:00.001+11:00

There seems to be quite a lot of confusion over what the main purpose for a wiki is compared to that of a blog. People are using blogs as wikis, and wikis as blogs. So I thought I'd illustrate with this post.

Of course the best place to get a good overview of what a wiki is, is, ... a wiki, not a blog. Note: I'm not giving you the definition here since this is a blog, the best place for that kind of permanent information is a wiki.

I am just alerting you about it here because this is my web-log, my diary (daily ramblings, reminders, etc). I am not telling you about it because, well, check what a blog is to find out. A newsgroup, or Usenet is a good analogy of a blog. For example, I certainly don't want to search through a newsgroup to find what my annual leave entitlements are, this kind of information is better placed in a wiki.

That isn't to say you have to follow strict rules. But you should take the time to think before just putting a heap of information on a blog, or wiki. Is it a point of view (blog), or is it guidance (wiki), information (wiki), or something in between (eg this post)?

A good rule of thumb - put information on a wiki and tell people about it in a blog.

What do you think?

Technorati : Blog, Difference, Wiki, wiki vs blog
Del.icio.us : Blog, Difference, Wiki, wiki vs blog

The Ajax Button

2007-08-21T06:16:00.001+10:00

I had to laugh today when a colleague at Asidua mentioned the Ajax button... F5 of course!

New blog - not

2006-09-13T09:42:00.000+10:00

I can't cope with having to upload images separately to blogger so I have opened a new live space: http://scottywakefield.spaces.live.com/

And I have also posted about using MS Project 2003 with TFS, the post I couldn't get onto blogger without heaps of fussing about.

Update: it turns out that I can live with having to upload images separately. but the final fix is to get my own domain name and then move my blog to wherever i want and not have to worry about the name change.

Installing MSSCCI while still using Visual Source Safe

2006-08-31T11:56:00.000+10:00

If you are thinking about installing MSSCCI to connect Visual Studio .NET 2003 to Team Foundation Server (TFS), great. But, beware of what it will do to your existing projects that are still in Visual Source Safe (VSS).

This is the error we got:
TF30076: The server name C:\SomeDir\VssProject, provided does not correspond to a server URI that can be found. Confirm that the server name is correct.

We just had this problem. To fix, have a look at this article from Microsoft. Even though the article describes using VS 2002, it works just fine with VS 2003.

Our setup now consists of:

VS 2005 connecting to TFS, works fine.

VS 2003 connecting to VSS, works fine.

VFP connecting to TFS (using MSSCCI), works fine.

Our aim is to migrate all existing .NET 1.1 apps from VSS to TFS but in the mean time we still need to use VSS. The VFP Devs on the other hand want to use TFS straight away.

From all this it looks like only VS 2002/2003 uses the registry as detailed in the article referenced above. Which means you still have complete control over which IDE uses which source provider. I imagine it will start to get more difficult when only half our .NET 1.x projects are migrated to TFS and the other half still in VSS, it doesn't look like there is any way to specify the source control provider on a per project basis. Still, at least we know now.

Of course the other option is just to "upgrade" the projects to .NET 2.0 and use VS 2005 (or use MSBee in VS 2005) at the same time as importing in TFS from VSS.

What the hell is a "Cabana"?

2006-08-03T14:07:00.000+10:00

This morning I was going through the schedule for Tech.Ed 2006 which I am lucky enough to be going to and came across a couple of "Cabana" sessions. I thought maybe I'd missed a couple of code names whilst out of action with a broken jaw. Nope, its not a code name. Nope, its not some kind of spanish sausage (bad mental images)...

Thom Robbins has the best definition I could find:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0131777/2004/08/03.html#a174

Hope that saves you some confusion.

Error connecting to TFS, TF31004

2006-07-03T16:31:00.000+10:00

If you have any of the following:
"The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted"
TFS AT IIS logs: 2148074244 2148074254
TFS AT Event Log: NtLmSsp 537
You tried connecting to the tfs using the url http://server:8080/services/v1.0/serverstatus.asmx and it still didn't work, but could connect when you telnet servername 8080...

Then try this:
on the client, run the following from the command prompt: control keymgr.dll
This will open "Stored User Names and Passwords" Dialog.
You should see an entry with the name of the tfs server, change the password to what ever it should be, or other settings as required, or just delete it completely and start over.
Click OK as many times as required to accept the changes.
Try to connect again... MAGIC!

Scenario that caused my problem: changed domain password today, i use a laptop that is not part of the domain. could no longer connect. was about to blow up at sys admins for changing "something??" on TFS AT when i tested from other machines that are on the domain, connected ok, no probs. had to be something on the client. i have changed my domain password several times with no probs, but could have been some strange combo like having vsts open on laptop, already connected, then change domain password while connect to domain server using mstsc... not sure, but this fix definitely works.

So glad I didn't have to rebuild as some others have.

Rebuilding your Team Foundation Server

2006-04-03T15:26:00.000+10:00

Before you do anything, make sure you make a note of what your reporting services encryption key password is. Otherwise you will have all sorts of headaches when trying to restore your TFS reporting databases (following the procedure).

Anyway... You CAN restore to the same server, as long as the MAC and IP stay the same. I can personally testify that it works. It is very good to know if you have to rebuild your Team Foundation Server for any reason. There are some catches to look out for that I discovered along the way though.

If you keep getting errors such as this:
Source: TFS Version Control
SqlException Details:
Exception Message: Cannot resolve collation conflict for column 5 in SELECT statement.
SQL Exception Procedure: prc_QueryConflicts
etc..

...then you have done what we did - use a different collation for the new install of SQL. Why did it happen for us? Our initial TFS was built on Windows Server 2003 regional settings of Australia. After we rebuilt it the region was not set (as part of the Windows Server 2003 setup), which means it defaults to US. Therefore when we followed the install guide for TFS and left the default collation for SQL, we infact selected a different collation to the original. So, we got the collation errors. I imagine that the stored procs must depend on the default server collation (as opposed to default database collation) since even though the database collation was still correct, it still didn't work.

We detached all the databases again (ie additionally to the reinstall) and changed the default server collation back to the "Australian" collation (ie the one that all the Tfs databases used from the original installation).

This also fixed another problem that was caused by the culture mismatch:
Source: TFS Warehouse
TF53010
Cube processing runtime error:
\r\nMicrosoft.AnalysisServices.OperationException: The member
'[3/29/2006]' was not found in the cube when the string,
[Date].[Date].[Date].[3/29/2006], was parsed.
The END SCOPE statement does not match the opening SCOPE statement.
MdxScript(Team System) (66, 1)
etc...

Login failed for user 'DOMAIN\tfsservice' - after reinstalling SQL Server (to change the default server collation) you need to add the
tfsservice user to Security/Logins for the server instance (ie not the database, it should still be there from before).

When we added the users we also set the default language to British English (as opposed to English - "which is US English").

I am very relieved to say that everything is now working correctly with no errors in the event log. All of our documents still work properly too, which is why we didn't want to change the server name (especially since I put in HEAPS of time on the project plan and didn't want to lose it).

Team System Experiences : Virtual Server

2006-03-28T21:14:00.000+11:00

If you don't have access to a test TFS server then its a must. Especially if you haven't yet had the chance to play with it. You can take advantage of undo disks too which is really handy. If you have enough space and I/O is quick then you can also make a base "install" virtual server and then copy from that base virtual server for each time you try something different.

With the virtual server or (test server) you can add as many process templates as you like, eg the new scrum template from conchango. And you can make as many customised templates as you like as well... a must for anyone seriously considering adopting Team System.

Once you are familiar with Team System and all the various components then you are ready to embark on your production installation. Make sure you install it exactly as directed in the accompanying help chm. Your production TFS is where you want to keep things as tidy and organised as possible. The only exception is that you might want a test project that you use for setting up your builds (eg you are trying to get a solution containing a web project to build on the build server).

TFS died, SQL not responding

2006-03-28T08:19:00.000+11:00

Our TFS died over the weekend.

SQL Server 2005 standard - wouldn't respond to anything. Could have been a hotfix we applied but we haven't been able to find anything on the net regarding known issues, I suspect its just some stupid combination of errors but we can't find out what. The eventlog doesn't have any real info other than a single error type. Trying to connect locally, even after reinstall of sql, (and remove hotfixes and then reinstall sql, and all other sorts of things) would always give the same error, "shared memory provider - no process at the other end of the pipe". All the info out there says to change the client protocol settings. We spent over 2 hours on that alone, trying and retrying every combination. Everything was working fine on Friday.

Really frustrating. Our project has lost all of Monday. Its Tue morning now and we have the task this morning of rebuilding the TFS from scratch and hoping it all comes up okay. That means its probably more likely to be 1.5 days lost.

If you are thinking about using TFS in a high demand environment (one where you cannot afford to lose a couple of days) then it might be worth investing in some load balancing and clustering. Or at least some kind of standby hardware that you can call upon at short notice.

I am reading through the TFS move types at the moment and also reviewing the installation guide.

By lunch time I hope to have all the team able to check things in again (and our client be able to access the portal!).

PS: the updates installed before the SQL problem were 912475, 913446 and 911927.

The latest - we have reformatted the server, reinstalled RC from scratch. Now going through the process of "moving" the existing data back onto the tfs server.

MVP in .NET

2006-03-25T02:13:00.000+11:00

Something that the .NET framework class lib could do better is have base classes for things that are different between win apps and web apps, eg list controls, event args.

We are attempting the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern for a project right now and the above hurdles have been the major ones so far. So we have had to create our own event args and List<SimpleListItem> that are not dependant on system.web.dll (using System.Web.UI.WebControls;). otherwise what is the point of decoupling from the view if you still have to reference system.web.dll in your presenter (eg when you use it in a win app)??

FCL people, is it possible to get this in future versions to avoid the work arounds?

PS, initially I thought the MVP pattern was to imitate your favourite Microsoft Valued Professional, so I got my hair cut off in an attempt to imitate Paul Glavich. It was only afterwards that I realised... it takes a long time to grow hair back. A lot longer than it takes for Glav to karate chop me for being so cheaky.

TFS, CCTray and emails

2006-03-25T02:00:00.000+11:00

What a week. Looking forward to a weekend with the family (and cars
on the road, spending sat night out of town).

We are using the Khushboo CI tool for continuous integration. It does
a great job at triggering builds when a check in occurs. The gap
though is notifying the development team of the build result. IMHO CI
isn't CI unless you have immediate feedback to the team. Its too easy
to throw something into source control and get caught up doing
something else - I do it all the time. Only to find that I forgot to
check in the changes to the unit tests or something like that.. you
get the point. In TFS you can set up an email alert whenever a build
completes (Team menu > project alerts > build finishes?), or you can
use the RSS tool that is out there somewhere (sorry, its late here, no
links for this post). The email one is just annoying after the 100th
email. RSS seems too delayed.

TFS needs something like the CCTray. Pre-TFS we used CCNET and found
it was fantastic. I know there is the VSTSPlugin, but it doesn't take
advantage of subscribing to the checkin event, so has to poll all the
time (eg each minute). I also no longer have a need for the web app
that comes with CCNET since all that info is in TFS. That is why we
are using CI. Its just that the emails are cluttering up my inbox. I
already have alerts for all the document folders and discussion forum
in the TFS team portal since our client is able to post questions and
documents there...

So, has anyone managed to accomplish this with TFS and CCTray? If not
then I am going to investigate further.

Have a good weekend.

Scotty.

VSTS feature of the day

2006-03-14T22:35:00.000+11:00

Not sure if you have realized but when you rename a class file it also
renames all references of the class. Also in Team Explorer you easily
rename files you have already uploaded to the portal (eg like when you name
project files with a date stamp only to realize you are using 2005 instead
of 2006), just right click it and click Rename. Too easy.

TFS Experiences

2006-03-12T15:59:00.000+11:00

At some point over the coming weeks I plan on writing about my TFS and VSTS experiences at Talman. Here are some of the things I will cover:

Having a virtual server to test everything.
Installation and licensing.
Choosing a process for your organization.
Continuous Integration, builds, web projects.
Project Management, what tool for what purpose.
Unit testing
Design patterns.

Feel free to ask any questions or request other topics/issues relevant to you.

Short hair

2006-03-12T15:51:00.000+11:00

I got a hair cut on Sat, I used to have long hair, I don't any longer.
My wife and 11mth old son are still adjusting. It will be
interesting to see the reaction on Monday at work.

MSBuild complete reference

2006-03-02T21:31:00.000+11:00

If you are having trouble finding the complete reference for MSBuild like I
was, then look no further than right here. It is for MSBuild as the NAnt site is for NAnt in terms of reference material. I always found the NAnt site to be really useful while trying to do things like exclude projects, copy files and so on. I haven't had a chance yet but will be attempting to exclude a web setup project from the team build for our tfs project.

New WSCF version

2006-02-28T08:42:00.000+11:00

There is a new version of WSCF available. I hope I win the comp :)

Testing Formats

2005-12-08T22:46:00.000+11:00

I'm trying to determine how easy it is to add code snippets in a decent format, so here goes and see how the style sheet handles it:

pre:


public static void ReadOut(string text)
{
    // read out the text
}

code:


public static void ReadOut(string text)
{
    // read out the text
}

from the preview it looks like pre wins (to be expected since it maintains the spaces.

(notes - couldn't tab while in the blogger editor - I imagine you can copy and paste them tho)

I did some searching and found a couple of promising tools but they require uploading of .net libraries, http://www.misterdotnet.com/blog/?page_id=360. It would be great if blogger had some code highlighting css libraries that everyone could use.

I tried using pre on the notify post but it seems the style sheet with the pre formatting is not backward compatible. Correction - its just the previewer that doesn't pick up the style sheet.

Here is the pre I am using currently:


pre, code {
  font-size: 100%;
  font-family: monospace;
  background-color: buttonface;
  border: 1px dashed gray;
}

pre {
  padding: 0px 5px 20px 5px;
  margin: 10px 5px 10px 15px;
  overflow: auto;
  width: 95%;
  behavior: url(pre.htc);
  line-height: 100%;
}

taken from http://evolt.jeffhowden.com/jeff/code/modified_pre_blocks/index.cfm

PowerMeter NotifyIcon

2004-06-03T13:18:00.000+10:00

Had a great time at the SDNUG meeting last night, pretty impressive stuff.

Anyway I thought I would mention a few things that I have found out over the
last week or 2. I have been trying to create an app that displays
percentage battery in the System Tray. "Already done" you say.. I don't
like way XP does it. I have to hover my pointer (mouse) over the icon to
get a percentage. The icon itself only has a couple of images: full, half,
empty. My battery was at 68% and the icon was still "full". That doesn't
help me at all.

So I started to roll my own. Only to find that there are a couple of
issues:
1. I would have to dynamically create the ico if I didn't want to create 100
different images (one for each percent).
2. The power info is in the Win API, involving PInvoke.
3. I only want a NotifyIcon, not a Windows Form as well.

Thankfully I found a solution for each of these hurdles:
1. The blood sweat and tears of bmp to ico conversion has been done already
by Joshua Flanagan
http://flimflan.com/blog
2. I managed to find the Win API info for Power Management:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/power/base/
getsystempowerstatus.asp
/getsystempowerstatus.asp>
3. There is a great example of how to create a WinForm app that doesn't
display the Form by Jessica Fosler
http://windowsforms.net/articles/notifyiconapplications.aspx

Putting it all together:
I have a WinForm App with a custom PowerMeterApplicationContext. In my
appContext I have a NotifyIcon and a Timer. When the timer elapses the
battery life percent is read via the Win API and converted to an icon.
NotifyIcon.Icon is updated. We all lived happily ever after.


private void iconTimer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
 SystemPowerStatus stat = new SystemPowerStatus();
 string str_BatteryLifePercent;

 try
 {
  PowerMeter.GetSystemPowerStatus(stat);
 }
 catch
 {
  str_BatteryLifePercent = "ER";
 }

 int int_BatteryLifePercent = stat.BatteryLifePercent;
 if (int_BatteryLifePercent == 100)
  str_BatteryLifePercent = ":)";
 else if (int_BatteryLifePercent > 100)
  str_BatteryLifePercent = ":(";
 else
  str_BatteryLifePercent = int_BatteryLifePercent.ToString();

 // Drawing the ico with the help of FlimFlan
 Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(16, 16, PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb);
 using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
 {
  g.FillEllipse(Brushes.Red, 0, 0, 16, 16);
  g.DrawString(str_BatteryLifePercent, iconFont, Brushes.White, 0, 1);
 }
  
 powermeterNotifyIcon.Icon =
FlimFlan.IconEncoder.Converter.BitmapToIcon(bmp);
}

And the PInvoke stuff.. Firstly the actuall DllImport to the
GetSystemPowerStatus function:


[DllImport("Kernel32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
public static extern bool GetSystemPowerStatus(
 [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)]
 WinAppPowerMeter.SystemPowerStatus status
 );

And finally the struct:


[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public class SystemPowerStatus
{
 public byte ACLineStatus;
 public byte BatteryFlag;
 public byte BatteryLifePercent;
 public byte Reserved1;
 public int BatteryFullLifeTime;
 public int BatteryLifeTime;
}

And that's all it took.

Have fun,
Scotty.

COB

2004-05-27T18:04:00.000+10:00

Finally time to head home.
A day of Configuration Management training, SLC3.. GSMS.. CMMI..
I will sleep well.

.. and then there was light ..

2004-05-27T10:03:00.000+10:00

Thought I had better get on the bandwagon... ie, get a blog going.

Nothing to say except that I have finally decided that it really is worthwhile getting the flu vaccination and that trying to buy a house can be very challenging. Still haven't found anywhere. Do you spend more than you can afford for somewhere you like or do you just settle for mediocre. And then there is work.

Had a great trip in Bali, Bali rocks. It is not full of terrorists. The Balinese are some of the nicest people in the world, but that won't stop them getting a good price from unsuspecting tourists that should know better. I have only been once and "saya cinta dari"!! (broken indo for I love the place).