Latest postings for The Lounge

Second Opinion About New Article Needed

Richard Andrew x64 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:39:00 GMT

Could someone take a look at the new article by "Xomega Team" and help me decide if it's just an advertisement in disguise?

I'd like to be fair, but I'm skeptical.

Introducing Xomega for XML Object Modeling and Code Generation[^]

Sitting close and working

N a v a n e e t h — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:29:00 GMT

I joined with my new company[^] and finished the first two days. Got a brand new Dell Latitude E6500[^] laptop and a nice bag with company's logo. Everything went fine so far. The one thing which I am not comfortable yet is the seating. All people sit close together without any cubicles[^]. I found it hard to work (may be I am used with the cubicles).

Do you enjoy such seating?

Best wishes,
Navaneeth

Silverlight Fun Badge !

Quartz. — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:28:00 GMT

Hey guys
I created a simple fun badge for Silverlight , let me know what you guys think ?

http://silverlightfun.com/2009/11/silverlight-fun-badge-is-here.html[^]

Omit Needless Words - Strunk, William, Jr.

Vista Gadget Book: Creating Vista Gadgets using HTML, CSS, & JavaScript. Sample chapter here Selling Your Gadget

I did not know Avenged Sevenfold were as good as this

Lloyd Atkinson©☺ — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Just listening to Avenged Sevenfold - Second Heartbeat.

I Love it!!

If everything was not true, would it be not true that everything is not true? So by saying everything is not true, you are automatically denying that everything is not true.

Useful links:

Creating a bootable CD with several operating systems on.

Why Dell suck today

LabVIEWstuff — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:55:00 GMT

My partner desperately needs a new laptop so she can set up her petfood business after being made redundant. She actually likes the Dell Latitude I use for work so we head on over to the Dell UK website and see an Inspiron 15 with 4 GB of RAM for a very reasonable £349 all-inclusive.

So far, so good. Add a bit extra disk-space, click through on most of the options, head to checkout, hand over the debit card details and et viola! success - your machine is being built and will be dispatched on the 3rd November.

< sits and waits >

Nov 4th comes and goes . . . no Dell.

Nov 5th comes . . no Dell - decide to check email.

email from Dell: your order has been cancelled.

THAT's IT! No reason, no explanation, no alternative being offered not even an apology - this is dire customer service and I'd warn anyone considering buying one for Christmas NOT to risk it - your order could be cancelled in just the same way!

Suddenly going to the local PC shop / PC-World and just saying 'that one please' seems a lot more appealing.

Dell suck!!!!! Did I mention that already?

Andy B

Looking For Video Software

Roger Wright — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:48:00 GMT

A while back I posted about video cameras for my company to buy. We settled on the Canon Vixia HF20, and it's an excellent unit - perfect for our needs. One problem though; the Pixela software that ships with it is useless.

It does a nice job of editing and assembling clips, and will burn a DVD or BlueRay disk, but that's all it does. There is no way to create a file in some format that is universally readable, like WMP or AVI. We did manage (one of our employees, but not me) figure out a way to save a MPG file, but we haven't found anything that can view it except on a machine with the Pixela software installed. Even the latest download of Windows Media Player is unable to recognize and play the MPG file.

Is there a good, preferably free program that can convert the native Canon files to other formats that can be emailed, posted on the web, etc? The files saved in the library by the existing software have the extension .MTS if that's a help.

Thanks!

"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"

Looks like a really big banana?

Steve Mayfield — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Ford introduces inflatable seat belts [^]

Steve
_________________
I C(++) therefore I am

What did he say?

Steve Mayfield — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:34:00 GMT

Crying Baby translator - there's an app for that [^]

Steve
_________________
I C(++) therefore I am

JOTD

SimulationofSai — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Leaving a party late, two guys compare notes. "I can never fool my wife", the first one says. "I turn off the engine, coast into the garage, tiptoe upstairs, change in the bathroom. But she always hears me, wakes up and yells at me for being late".
"You should do what I do", says the second one. "I roar into the garage, slam the doors, stomp up the stairs and start kissing my wife. And you know what? She pretends to be asleep".

SG
Aham Brahmasmi!

Thats it, I'm off!

Dalek Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:39:00 GMT

Beer, curry and poker!

Everybody have a great weekend.

So Long Suckers!

------------------------------------

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. Stephen J Gould

Flippin' problems

ian dennis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:46:00 GMT

For the last few weeks we have been having problems with an overnight automated procedure. We need to be able to turn off a vendor's service that interacts with one of our main databases before the db goes down for maintenance (about 12:30 am) and turn the service back on again after the db is back up (approx 3:30 am).

So we created a couple of batch files that uses the -stop and -start switches on the service manager app to stop and start the service, and ran those two batch files from Windows Task Scheduler. From early last year until October 9th this year, the service was stopped and started without problem, but since then we've seen all sorts of problems.

Typically the start command is given, but never notifies completion, so the batch file never ends, so the Task Scheduler task times out. The service doesn't start properly, so the clients start work at 5am, find that the application isn't running and get the HelpDesk guys to reboot the application server.

The problems seemed to start about the time a new anti-virus was installed, so the first thing we did was to uninstall that. We still had the same problems. So next we disabled the Task Scheduler tasks and someone runs the service manager app to stop and start the service manually. The stop happens between 3:30 pm and midnight and the start between 4am and 5am.

For the last two days the application has been running when the clients log on. (I realize that two days is too small a sample to base any results on, but I'm quietly confident).

I've noticed something interesting. When I was checking the server's system and application event logs, I saw that the service had been started at odd hours ... even I had apparently started it on one occasion, even although I had no recollection of doing it. After digging further, I found that if you run the application administration tool when the service is not running, it automatically starts the service!!! It would have been nice if that had been documented!

This is mostly a rant but, seeing as the problem seems to point to the Windows Task Scheduler, have any of you had problems using the Windows Task Scheduler? Are you aware of any automatic updates to it around 10/9/2009?

My Oops moment of the day

Dalek Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Chap complains he cannot save to a shared folder on the network.

I go look, and the OS can see the folder, I can go in an click on a file and open it under excel, save it etc.
I go back to excel and create a new spreadsheet and try to save to the network folder, and no luck, there is no sign of it.

OK, Thinking time.

Do a "Repair Network" and still it doesn't work.

Ok, I say carry on for now I will get back to you after I think some more.

He phones me up and says that it works in Word, but not Excel.

This is worrying, there cannot be a fault like that.

Inspiration!

"Turn off Excel and go back in." say I

"Oh, it works now!" says he.

Of course it does, I repaired the link but didn't re-establish it in Excel, so it was using the previous broken crappiness.

I sat back, happy in the knowledge of a job well done.

Memo to self, REBOOT OFT SOLVES MANY OF LIFE'S LITTLE PROBLEMS!

Why website designers suck today.

OriginalGriff — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:48:00 GMT

Put on your sunglasses (or preferably welding mask) and take a quick look here[^].
Make sure it's quick though, you wouldn't want to stay long!

No idea if it is KSS or Work Safe, I didn't wait for the whole thing to load...

No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

This message is made of fully recyclable Zeros and Ones

Don't you just hate it

Jörgen Sigvardsson — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:19:00 GMT

when you go ahead using some technology X for the so called cross platform environment .NET, only to find out that technology X isn't supported on some older operating systems? I suppose it's in the MSDN docs, but it's frustrating once you've made an effort, only to find your app fail when you do platform testing.

Luckily I had a bag of old tricks up my sleeve. In my case, X is CNG (Crypto API Next Generation) that isn't supported in Windows XP. Luckily I had some old "legacy" CAPI code from another project that I could quickly adapt to my needs.

40 more minutes and I'm out of here. Have a nice weekend everyone!

--
Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit

VS 2010 beta 2

Rajesh R Subramanian — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:09:00 GMT

Is it just me or the IDE is really, really slow?

“Follow your bliss.” – Joseph Campbell

MSDN Redesign

Kevin McFarlane — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:35:00 GMT

I don't know whether this has been discussed yet but what do you all think of the look and feel of the new design?

Many who posted at Soma's blog moaned about it (you can never satisfy everyone can you) but personally I like it. It's attractive and easy to read. I don't know yet whether it's any better in terms of finding what you want but I never really searched from within MSDN anyway. I usually just arrive at it via a generic Google search or from links from elsewhere.

As discussed in the "MSDN Views" thread below the light weight views make loading the pages more pleasant, though I had already switched to the lightweight beta that was running before the revamp.

Kevin

ADSL2+

Michael Martin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:27:00 GMT

My ISP finally got around to cutting me over today from my ADSL 1.5 Mb/s service. Too bad it took 6 weeks from my application and it wasn't a churn either, been with them 4.5 years and just changed to a fster service.

Currently getting 10.14 Mb/s down and 0.85 Mb/s up, but the distance from phone point to modem is about 6 metres and I'm pretty sure I have used a 10 metre cable for the connection with the extra 4 metresrolled up in a corner of the room hidden behind something. I will be moving the modem to the other side off the room tomorrow and then running Cat5e or Cat6 around the room to the switch.

Didn't get to the kids Little Athletics tonight until after 20:00 from work, my son then didn't finish until 21:30, had the obligatory feed from the barbie and finally got home around 22:00. Chased the kids into the shower and had a look to see if the upgrade had taken place. Checked my Static IP and it hadn't changed. The bastards hadn't done the upgrade I thought as they had told me my IP Address would change, it didn't. So then I go to Speed Test[^] and notice I'm getting around 5.14 Mb/s, not bad but I thought I could get better by installing my new ADSL2+ filters on the phones.

The phone on the wall in the kitchen is a fiddly bastard as the new filter is longer than the old one and the cables I had in place were just long enough to plug into the old filter. So off to find phone cable, RJ12's and my crimping tool. Finally get that done and I'm into the room with the othere phone and the modem. I had bought 2 straight through filters as I had a splitter on the phone port the modem attached too. No I didn't once I got home and had a look. I know I used to have one there, but took it off and put it in a safe place when I moved everything last time and put a splitter filter much closer to the modem and phone on the other side of the room. Can't find the safe place now.

So behind the desk I go in a place barely big enough for a hamster lett alone me at 1.88m tall. Unplug the splitter/filter from the phone line and line to the modem (leaving the phone into the old filter and now disconnected from the outside world until I recable later this morning) andd plug in the new ADSL2+ filter. Can anyone see what I did here?

So back up to the desk and on to test how fast it is now. Can't get to f***ing Google, what is going on? I'm into my modem configuation tinkering about in case the disconnection from the phone line stuffed the connection because I was still set to ADSL and not ADSL2+ in the modem. All looks good and I'm changing all sorts of things and restarting the modem. I'm throwing chairs, kicking the cat and swearing my head off. What the f*** is going on.

Then it hits me, I have a phone filter connected between the phone point and the modem. Fuckwit. Took it out, put in a joiner and all is good.

Later this morning when I shorten the phone line from the phone point to the modem to about 0.5m from 10m and remove the cable connector, I wonder how fast my connection will be.

Where does all the really good porn hide now that I can download it all at a decent rate now?

Michael Martin
Australia

"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004

On no account let this woman drive

Dalek Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:12:00 GMT

See Here[^]

950 attempts to pass driving test.

If she is that bad that she scrapes through after all this time, she ought to be automatically refused to sit again.

Now she will inflict mayhem!

browsing cp from the droid

Mark Nischalke — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:51:00 GMT

Looks good. Nice clear text, easy scrolling and zoom

I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt

Trains and tracks

Franc Morales — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:46:00 GMT

A simple time waster online game for those into trains and tracks:

http://www.addictinggames.com/trains.html[^]

Have fun and then return it to the world by smiling to kin and foe.