Virtual People & lonelygirl15

I saw this Wikipedia page about one of the most popular virtual people, lonelygirl15 on Myspace.com

Pretty interesting concepts behind this. The creation of "virtual celebrities" that actually represent (much like "real" celebrities) the work of hundreds or possibly thousands of content creators and marketeers.

I must admit I am most intrigued by this concept. Where will this go in the future I wonder?

Fuzzy Logic and Other Math Help

My brother found this great site on the subject of fuzzy logic and computer programming. It has one a high quality treatment of the general concepts as well as great examples and of course some tutorial on how to apply and understand fuzzy logic solutions to everyday problems.

The actual software is call the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox and is a collection of useful functions for MATLAB, however the general information like overview and foundations provide terrific introduction material for anyone interested in Fuzzy Logic.

Guidance Automation Extensions(GAX), NDepend, CLR Analytics, Oh My!!!

I've been a busy guy today, running all over the net reading about various stuff.  One of the more interesting things I saw today was Guidance Automation Extensions . 

 

The "GAX" as it is called is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 (IDE) that allows architects (framework developers) to author rich, integrated user experiences for (programming) reusable (code) assets including frameworks, components and patterns. The resulting Guidance Packages are composed of templates (code snippets), wizards (automated guides) and recipes (live howtos), which help developers build (code) solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance (framework best practices.)

 

Another amazing piece of software, this time, more general for any CLR project, is the NDepend and Code Query Language (CQL).  The NDepend product, which was free in its initial version, leverages the amazing DOM-based CQL suite to analyze and map CLR/.Net libraries, applications, assemblies and modules. 

 

NDepend provides a rapid prototyping and visualization engine for coming to a greater understanding of the complexities, relationships and makups of your CLR applications.

COM+ Object .Net Cleanup / Dispose

I found a blog entry on the DotNetJunkies site about Dispose the COM+ objects in managed apps that I found very helpful with a resource management issue I was facing today.  My particular problem was that the database connections created inside my unmanaged COM+ application were not being released when the .Net managed application (written in C#) invoked them.

What is P3P, W3C Privacy Policy Summary

What is P3P?

• Participating Web sites answer a set of multiple-choice questions creating a summary of the site's privacy practices, which can then be interpreted and displayed by P3P-enabled browsers. 
• When you use a P3P-enabled browser to visit a site participating in P3P, the browser automatically reads the site's P3P summary comparing the site's privacy practices to the privacy preferences you've set. The browser might display an alert or block transmission of certain data, such as cookies, if a Web site's practices differ from your preferences.
  

Here is the deployment guide for P3P from W3C.  This covers the development of the technical P3P, the human readable P3P and some technical details about how the code-level implementation of P3P is executed.

Here is the "how-to establish P3P at your site" document from the W3C.  This covers writing ( or generating) the policy, tools to assist with the generation and some details about what types of information must be defined by the "business" before they can be placed into a formalized privacy policy.

Perl Design Patterns, Examples & Explainations

I ran across this somewhat old, but very good, O'Reilly Perl Design Pattern's article that covers Iterators, Decorators, Singletons and Fly-weights.

CLR Runtime Assembly Loading in .Net

The CLR does not first look in the application's private bin directory.

 

Before the CLR can load an assembly, it must be able to find it. To do this, the CLR makes use of the Assembly Resolver to find the physical assembly and then pass it to the assembly binding mechanism.  After binding the application can use the types defined in the assembly.

The Assembly Resolver resolves for assemblies from different sources in the following order:

1. The GAC, for a native image of the assembly
2. The GAC, for a non-native image of the assembly
3. CodeBase location, if one was defined
4. AppBase directory, otherwise known as the private bin directory
5. Any sub directories as specified in the probing paths, if defined in the application config file

As you can see, the application's private bin directory is #4 , not #1 location. Assemblies in the GAC are system-wide assemblies and therefore take precedence over everything else (assuming versions and other criteria match.)

Command Completion For Windows 2003 Server

Here is a useful link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base page that shows how to enable Command Line Completion for Windows 2003 directly using "regedit.exe".

svnmerge - Subversion merge tracking tool

If you are tracking merges manual in Subversion (SVN) you need to automate merge tracking with svnmerge.

 

Check out this excellent tool at:

 

http://www.dellroad.org/svnmerge/index

 

- Cory

Windows Logon Types, Event Logs & an Explaination

If you have any questions about WindowsNT logon types, checkout this page.

 

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Logon-Types.html

 

These are often used in the context of the .Net CLR or the Windows Event log.  Good reference material if you find yourself wondering what type of login "8" is.

 

Send you a $1 PayPal payment if you comment on this with the answer for "What is logon type '8'?"

 

I am making this offer to prove a point -- no one reads this blog.

Make Any HTML Form Print Friendly With JavaScript

 

The following code snipet loops over all the form elements looking for "text" form inputs and converts them into wrapping DIV tags.  This browser-based transformation makes printable confirmation pages easy to generate on the server using the same HTML form generation techniques that are used to display the data in an edit-ready format.

 

 

 

var replaced = 0;    
var reDigit = /^\s*\d*\s*$/;
for (var i=0; i < this.document.forms[0].elements.length; i++) {
     if( document.forms[0].elements[i].type == "text" ) {
          var text = this.document.forms[0].elements[i].value;
          if( text == "" ) {
               var newP = document.createElement("p");
               newP.style.fontFamily = "Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif";
               newP.style.fontSize = ".90em";
               var txtNode = document.createTextNode("--");
               newP.appendChild(txtNode);
               document.getElementById(document.forms [0].elements[i].id).parentElement.appendChild(newP);
               document.getElementById(document.forms[0].elements[i].id).style.display='none';
          } else {
               var newP = document.createElement ("div");
               newP.style.fontFamily = "Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif";
               newP.style.fontSize = ".90em";

               if( this.document.forms[0].elements[i].value.search(reDigit) == -1 ) {
                    newP.style.border = "solid black 1px";
                    newP.style.width = "179px";
                    newP.style.padding = "2px";
                }
               var txtNode = document.createTextNode(text);
               newP.appendChild(txtNode);
               document.getElementById(document.forms[0].elements[i].id).parentElement.appendChild(newP);
               document.getElementById (document.forms[0].elements[i].id).style.display='none';
          }
    }

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I've had some feedback about my growing appreciation of .Net development and Visual Studio.  I must admit, it is true -- I am growing to really enjoy .Net development.

 

The Good

• .Net lets you catch a lot of errors at compile time
• The FCL is an amazing collection of utilities.  Spend a lot less time considering alternatives and researching available software modules (CPAN.)
• The .Net debugging tools and package analysis tools are great when you're in "debugging" mode
• The Visual Studio IDE has a vast number of extremely useful third-party plug-ins that can really speed up development
• Generic .Net features such as "region" and XML Comments greatly increase organization and documentation efficiency within large implementations

The Bad

• .Net makes you wait for a compile before you can test most changes.  This results in much slower development vs. dynamic languages, especially if the required compile gets Ugly (see below) and you have to reboot.
• .Net, under Windows, is tightly coupled with the OS.  This results in a lot of confusion and non-.Net (OS specific) knowledge is required for many complex implementations
• The tools development companies that partner with Microsoft to produce VS.Net plug-ins ignore a lot of open-source/industry-standard solutions, opting instead to support Microsoft-centric technologies and approaches (SCM integration, for example)
• The ASP.Net web development environment contains many foriegn (to the classic web developer) concepts.  This is the result of .Net's attempt to unify the programming model for Win32 and Web application development.  While this decreases the learning curve for developers already familiar with one, it increases and complicates the learning curve for non-.Net developers.  This because a problem when people unfamiliar with ASP.Net perform page and widget design (Human Factors Engineering team) from the perspective of form-post based applications without considering the various complexities of translating concepts to ASP.Net pages and user controls.
• Visual Studio tries to be all things for all people.  It includes a database designer, an image editor, an XML editor, a CSS editor, a WYSIWYG XHTML editor and countless other edit modes and supported file formats.  While this is useful, the overall quality of each mode suffers.  For example, the XML editor does not provide a "pretty print" feature for XML files that are not human readable (indented) and the CSS editor has limited support for anything but CSS 1.1

The Ugly

• .Net on Windows involves a lot of file lock related reboots, DLL versioning nightmares and Visual Studio Crashes
• I am considerable more skilled with XHTML than the Visual Studio designer in 2003.  VS.Net messes up my HTML constantly and I spend an inordinate amount of time fixing it.  I have found ways to introduce "errors" into my XHTML so that the Visual Studio designer won't load them, but that results in further slow-downs because without the designer no auto-vivification of server-side controls occurs.
• My "development environment", Visual Studio 2003, SQL Server, IE and Visual Studio 6.0sp6 consumes about 1G of RAM while under heavy (debugging) use.  This is an excessive amount of system resources!

Formatting Date Output in C# with System.DateTime

Here is great page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemglobalizationdatetimeformatinfoclasstopic.asp

The quick and dirty is, pass the following strings to DateTime.ToString( ); to get these outputs

d 1/3/2002
M/d/yyyy (ShortDatePattern)

D Thursday, January 03, 2002
dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy (LongDatePattern)

f Thursday, January 03, 2002 12:00 AM

F Thursday, January 03, 2002 12:00:00 AM
dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy h:mm:ss tt (FullDateTimePattern)

g 1/3/2002 12:00 AM

G 1/3/2002 12:00:00 AM

m January 03
MMMM dd (MonthDayPattern)

M January 03
MMMM dd (MonthDayPattern)

r Thu, 03 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT
ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH':'mm':'ss 'GMT' (RFC1123Pattern)

R Thu, 03 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT
ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH':'mm':'ss 'GMT' (RFC1123Pattern)

s 2002-01-03T00:00:00
yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss (SortableDateTimePattern)

t 12:00 AM
h:mm tt (ShortTimePattern)

T 12:00:00 AM
h:mm:ss tt (LongTimePattern)

u 2002-01-03 00:00:00Z
yyyy'-'MM'-'dd HH':'mm':'ss'Z' (UniversalSortableDateTimePattern)

U Thursday, January 03, 2002 8:00:00 AM

y January, 2002
MMMM, yyyy (YearMonthPattern)

Y January, 2002
MMMM, yyyy (YearMonthPattern)

.Net 1.1 and System.Math.Round -- Banker's Round and .5

The provided Math.Round function implements "bankers rounding", which rounds to the nearest even number when a number ends in .5

 

This means that both 1.5 and 2.5 round to 2.  This is not what most e-commmerce and real-world implementations need.  Here is a "normal" or "US round" function.

 

 

/// <summary>

/// Rounds the specified to round.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="toRound"> To round.</param>

/// <param name="digits"> The digits.</param>

/// <returns></returns>

namepsace MathUtils {

 public static decimal Round( decimal toRound, int digits ) {

   toRound *= (decimal )(Math.Pow(10d,(double)digits));

   if( toRound - Decimal.Truncate(toRound) >= .5m ) {

      toRound += 1;

   }

   toRound = Decimal.Truncate(toRound);

   toRound /= (decimal)( Math.Pow(10d,(double)digits));

   return toRound;

 }

}

How to Pretty-Print an XML Document with C#

Used this today XML formatting with C# web page.

Thought I'd post a link. I'ts about formatting, indenting XML output in C# or VB.Net.

Check it out!

ASP.Net

I have turned into a big fan of ASP.Net

Who would have guessed ?

Another Web Project Annoyance

YAWPA (Yet Another Web Project Annoyance)

- Visual Studio 2003
- IIS 6

When I have a solution in debug mode attached to aspnet_wp.exe and try to open another solution that uses a web project, the second instance of Visual Studio just freezes ... no warning, no error, nothing.

Really annoying!  I was just trying to open the other solution so I could check something in a non-web project for reference and got sucked into trying to figure out why it wouldn't load.  Took me a few minutes to figure it out but I've been coding for many hours now and my problem solving skills are starting to suffer I think.

PInvoke How-Tos!

Matt Tiemeyer found this site today while we were digging up some obscure PInvoke API documentation called PInvoke.net ... it's like a Wiki with everything you wanted to know about PInvoke and lots of sample code.  Very great resource ... added it to my bookmarks and you should too.

From the Site:

It's time to stop writing PInvoke signatures from scratch! Instead, copy and paste your way to productivity!

And this site has more than just signatures & type definitions. For example:

• Folks like you are sharing gotchas, tips, and samples specific to managed code. For example, check out why you shouldn't call CoInitializeSecurity from managed code.
• Alternative managed APIs are suggested as a replacement for using PInvoke in the first place.
• This site contains miscellaneous community resources that are helpful for being successful at unmanaged code interoperability. Feel free to add to these pages, too!

ASP.Net - Parser Error Message: Access is denied

Getting the semi-random error "Parser Error Message: Access is denied" in ASP.Net?

Read this knowledge base:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329065

This was on Slashdot

it's still interesting though ...

http://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&group=grc.news.feedback&item=60006

Easy Icons

It plagues us all ... how to get good web icons?

Try out IconBuffet's free icons!

Web Form Design

Java, ASP.Net or Perl ... it plagues us all...

How do we design good web forms?

Well, here is some help, finally!

- Cory

SwitchTower Development Tool

I have been working on a cluster-aware .Net/VB/C++/ASP.Net/COM+ deployment system similar in concept to SwitchTower.

Uninstalling Existing StrongName Keys with sn.exe Created By Other Users

When trying to a strongname in Windows XP with sn.exe -d, we got an "8013141C" error - "Failed  to install  key  pair  -- Object  already  exists.".  This was caused by having the same key installed under a different domain, domain user, or local user account.

The hack to fix this is:

1. Browse to  %SystemDrive%\Documents and  Settings\AllUsers\ApplicationData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys
2. Grant rights to Adminstrators, or whatever group you belong  to
3. Take Ownership of this folder (click Advanced under Security, and then click the Ownership tab at the top)
4. Apply the changes to the children ("Replate permission...")

Subversion and ASP.Net

ASP.Net and Subversion have a point of contention. ASP.Net does not like files that start with "." and Subversion uses folders called ".svn". A work-around for Subversion < 1.2.6 exists in the form of a "hacked" version of SVN.exe that uses "_svn" instead of ".svn". This same hack is provided as a special (unsupported) version of TortoiseSVN that also uses "_svn". However, if you use the TSVN hack, you cannot use the SVN.exe that comes with versions < 1.2.6.

When Subversion 1.3.0 is released, this will not be an issue:

See:

Subversion 1.3 Release Notes
and
ASP.Net Hack Notes

You can, in the mean-time, download a modified 1.2.x EXE from Jonathan Malek's blog or a modified 1.1.3 or 1.1.4 modified EXE from another entry.

I am currently using the 1.2.0 binary with the TortoiseSVN ASP.Net hack until SVN 1.3 is released.