A good example is a post I wrote a couple of years ago.

What’s funny is that Rob even commented on the post. But unfortunately he missed the point. Rob is a classic “Ready, Fire, AIM!” type of person.

Case in point, I recently purchased a 12 month Tekpub subscription. (Tekpub is an online technical education resource).

Now a 12 month subscription for a little under $300 is good value. It’s competitors are either Youtube videos or companies like Plural Sight.

Last week, Rob posted this tweet:
.

Awesome! So why did I pay full price?

But that’s ok, Rob’s a good bloke! So I pinged him, asked if I could get a 29% extension, sent my Order Number (twice), followed him up…

And then? Well not much!

I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe he has updated my subscription? Maybe he hasn’t. Funny thing is that Tekpub doesn’t show when your subscription ends, just when you signed up.

I’ll keep you posted…

Standard case + power supply. I also added a 2TB hard drive + a Blueray writer.

Total damage: $800

Originally I installed Windows 7 Home Premium but had a few driver problems.

So I started again with Windows 7 Home Premium N and no problems.

How does it rate next to Jeffs’?
Jeff managed a 5.1 – but I agree, take out the Aero desktop support and you have a 5.8 machine!

Interesting, Jeff got me all inspired when he started to talk about power consumption. He has been writing about this for sometime now. When I tested this machine, it was just under 40 watts.

I have no idea how Jeff pulled off 22 watts, but he did say that he recycled old parts from a previous build.

I’m not too worried since a) this machine will be either in stand-by or turned off when not in use and b) a low power consumption device is going to increase the cost significantly.

For well under $AUD1,000 I’m only annoyed I didn’t do this sooner!

I came across this little gem. It’s a talk by Mike Rowe, from the Dirty Jobs show.

I won’t steal his thunder, just watch:

I’ve been trying different version control systems for sometime now and I just couldn’t get git on Windows to work.

I was constantly getting:
$ git fetch “https://some.website.com”
error: error setting certificate verify locations:
CAfile: /bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt
CApath: none
while accessing https://some.website.com/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

I found the solution here.

1. Open Notepad with Administrator privileges
2. Open the file gitconfig. For me, this was in the folder:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\etc
3. The line “sslCAinfo = /bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt” is using relative references.  Change this to “sslCAinfo = C:/Program Files (x86)/Git/bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt”

Too easy!

On Windows Server 2008 things are a little different.  I found this post on Scott Forsyth’s blog:

This doesn’t work in Windows Server 2008 anymore.  The change is ever so slight.  In Windows Server 2003 the tool was tsadmin.exe, so typing ‘tsadmin’ was all that was required to start the tool.  Now, in Windows Server 2008, this has been moved to a MMC snap-in and is called tsadmin.msc (plus tsadmin.dll is used silently).

So to fix this, click Start / Run / type tsadmin.msc [enter] and you’re good to go!

To use the Entity Framework with Mysql on VS2010 you need to download the mysql .net connector.

Download 6.3.2 (beta) and install!

Too easy!

• A great jquery overview
• A walkthrough on migrating to Git
• A review of their Git migration and beginner mistakes
• An Online Version of the book ‘Pro Git‘
• Surviving Behavior Interview questions
• Using Git locally and pushing to TFS

He is also coming to Sydney to present at Web Camps.

I really like his style.  While he is pro Microsoft, Scott has a good way of seperating himself from the drama.

Anyway, in his podcast he discusses the difficulty of going out for dinner when he is a strange town.

So Scott, to make your visit to Sydney, or if you find yourself in Sydney and with Diabetes here is what you should do:

• This year, Web Camps will be at The Powerhouse museum which is in Ultimo,
• It is an easy 10 minute walk, South East from the Sydney CBD.  (You could catch the Mono Rail or Light Rail but it is tacky and only tourist use it.)
• That part of sydney is near the Uni and lots of Youth Hostels.  So Subway is going to be open at all hours.  (I’ve seen Subway at George St at 1:00am).

I’ve mapped all the Subway Restaurants in the area.  (More information is on the Subway website)

Enjoy!

Then, follow these steps to install a self signed ssl certificate.

I was surprised how easy it is.  It worked for me!

Enjoy!

Below are the steps required to get the Entity Framework on VS 2010 to talk to MYSQL.

First step is to install the .net Connector.  I had to use v6.3.1 (alpha).

I tried this with 6.1.3, 6.1.4, 6.2.4 or 6.3.0 but none of them worked.  (For some reason they kept ignoring vs 2010)

Still, 6.3.1 gave me the message:  ”Setup wizard ended prematurely because of an error” message and it quit.

The workaround is to rename your config folder C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\Config to Configxxx fixed this.  See this link for more information

Happy days!

[UPDATE] 6.2.3 is now under general release.  This still doesn’t work for VS2010.  As @Marcus mentions below, 6.3.2 is in beta and I can confirm this does work!  (It also doesn’t have “Setup wizard ended” error.)

But getting mysql to place nicely isn’t so straight forward.   To get mysql running on .net 3.5 or 4.0 I had to do the following:

1.  Install the mysql .net connector
2.  Add the MySQL Data Provider line in the DbProviderFactories to your machine.config file:

<system.data>
    <DbProviderFactories>
        <add name="MySQL Data Provider" invariant="MySql.Data.MySqlClient" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL" type="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlClientFactory, MySql.Data, Version=6.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d"/>

    </DbProviderFactories>
</system.data>

This Stack Overflow question helped

Good luck!

I’ve finally found an example of how to group by multiple values using LINQ:
IList doc_infos = new List();

doc_infos.Add(new doc_info { region = "UK", price = 100, currency = "US" });
doc_infos.Add(new doc_info { region = "US", price = 100, currency = "US" });

var docs = doc_infos.GroupBy(x => new { x.price, x.currency })
.Select(group => new { d = group.Key, Count = group.Count() });

For more examples, have a look here.

mysql Table ” is marked as crashed and should be repaired

The solution was easy enough. Go to the directory of the database, type:
myisamchk *.MYI -s
This will check all tables. For those that need to be fixed:
myisamchk -r tbl_name

Source: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisam-repair.html

Also this link went into a little more detail on why it happened and what you can do to minimse it happening again:
http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-fix-mysql-database-myisam-innodb-1634.html

Rock on!

I recently had an annoying experience on Stackoverflow.  Specifically, it was in regard to an Access Question.

I won’t bore you with the details.  The short version is that a Mr. David W. Fenton has some very strong feelings as to what a Competent Developer should or should not do.

I can respect his passion for his job, but I have little time for someone so one eyed.  I’ll save my response for another day.  Let’s just say that his definition of “user friendly”, “mission critical”, “application off line” is WAY different to mine.

He down voted my answer, which surprised me to say the least.

So is David W Fenton a troll?  Based on Seth’s observations:

1. trolls will always be trolling

At the time of writing, his Stackoverflow profile says that he has down voted a surprising 266 times (with only 203 up votes)

2. critics rarely create

He has asked 0 questions and it seems his greatest claim to fame is several MS Access 2003 “applications” (Access 2003???)  If David is creating, I don’t know what it is…

3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls

I couldn’t see a blog on his website or much more information.  His twitter stream is just a mindless rant of fart jokes and Irritable Bowel Syndrome comments

4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

Well Seth, that is the hardest one!

Rock on!

I read this on Rick Seagle’s Blog

How weird?  This must be Design By Committee.

Apparently, hosting your own Windows 7 Party is normal, but you need to be shown how…

Have a look: