Help!

What am I doing wrong??? CommunityServer issue...

Blog Author — Wed, 18 May 2005 01:11:40 GMT

I do intend to post this in the CommunityServer forums; just want to check I’m not being really dumb . Ok, this CS installation is at OrcsWeb so I have the default (System->Configuration) timezone set to -7…my user timezone (for myself) is set to GMT…problem is that my posts are taking 7 hours to appear…so my own timezone is ignored…anyone encountered this issue??? (Oh, I’ve set the time on this post to now-7 hours so it appears straight away…)

[HELP] Question on Windows Server 2003 Wildcard Mapping and VS.NET

Blog Author — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 18:06:00 GMT

Here’s what I’m doing – I have a wildcard map set on my IIS 6 server to allow me to do “/” path mapping through my ASP.NET HttpHandler – problem is that VS.NET can no longer open the web project at that address…anyone any idea why?
UPDATE: Looks like it has to do with Front Page Server Extension stuff...sooner that goes away the better (roll on VS.NET 2005!). Anyway, to get around this I used the instructions here which basically tell you how to avoid the nasty FPSE stuff and run Web Projects like a normal class library (which also makes them load faster as a nice side effect!)

One of those days...now I can't even install a bit of software!

Blog Author — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:18:00 GMT

So I’m trying to install the Avalon November CTP Preview using the MSI downloaded from here – after passing the inquisition (using a virtual PC for testing stuff – I don’t generally register them as they have lifetimes < 30 days) I have downloaded it, twice, run it and it hangs as the start screen. MSIEXEC.exe however is busy hoovering up memory (400MB+) …tried disablign my virus scanner, running on my main machine (which has 1GB ram, just more foor for the MSIEXEC troll), same result. Any ideas???

Grr...stupid crappy source formatting...and a challenge for all!

Blog Author — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 06:30:00 GMT

Typical, I had a method all sorted which let me past code into Dreamweaver in a nice formatted way not perfect but ...now the stupid thing has stopped working...hmm...OK, here's what I need - anyone have a method to do this? I need a tool or some other way to past code straight into Dreamweaver which meets these criteria:

Fixed Stylesheet - so not dozens of <p> or <font> tags.
Does not use <pre> tag - this is important, pre just sucks for page flow
Dynamically converts 'tab' code indents to   tags
Makes 'clean' HTML - so no dodgy namespaces etc.

I've tried Roy Osherove's Macro - suffers from using the whole MS word stuff - so plain awful HTML, I can't believe there's not a really elegant solution for doing this - well, not one that I can find. My real ideal would be some sort of button which lets me just copy source into the clipboard - click the button - anywhere you paste it now uses the ultra-clean HTML - no auto-sensing (which has currently messed up for me), nothing, just pure HTML... Any ideas anyone???

Right...gonna get back to this...and a request for assistance!

Blog Author — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 04:50:00 GMT

As I've been posting a bit recently,I've been having some problems with my DNS (entirely of my own making I should point out). Anyway, so these DNS problems have led me to do a bit of thinking about this here site - conclusion, I've been very lazy about posting stuff / looking after you my loyal reader (there is one of you right...hellooooo) - so I'm going to try and be a bit more proactive rather than reactive.
Right, so plan is that I start writing mini-articles, at least one every two days on items as varied as repeaters to compression to using interfaces, all sorts of stuff - here's where you come in. Problem is I am no writer, so anything I'm going to write is likely to be a bit on the pants side ;facts and coding wise it should be fine - I do that for a living - but I am no writer and English is not my first language (I'm Scottish :-)). So, I'm going to expose my inadequacies to the world and I want you, my reader to help me out by pointing out where the problems are.
My solemn vow is: I will post an article, as complete as I can make it on methods of Nesting Data List controls along with some tips and tricks thereon no later than 9pm GMT on 18/03/2004...

UPDATE: OK, for what it's worth the first part of the article is now up here - constructive comments appreciated...stupid comments ignored - and may lead to violent reprisals (kidding!)

.NET and Locked Files...

Blog Author — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 05:54:00 GMT

OK, can anyone explain why I can't check explicitly if I can lock a file before reading from it (i.e., check that no-one else is locking the file before trying to read from it). I'm using the marvellous FileSystemWatcher to wait for files being created in a directory before triggering a job - fine but there doesn't seem to be any easy way to check is a file is 'readable' before starting to read... Right now my way of doing this task is to attempt to read - and place a Read lock - on the file using the FileStream and catch the error it throws when the file is locked by another process...like so...but this really doesn't feel right. I balk at the idea of using exceptions (which are also REALLY slow) for this kind of task...why doesn't FileStream.CanRead check for locks BEFORE opening the file???

        private static int m_ReadAttempts = 0;
        private string  ReadFileFromDisk(string filePath)
        {
            try
            {
                if(!File.Exists(filePath))
                {
                    MessageBox.Show("Sorry, but the file specified " + Environment.NewLine + filePath + Environment.NewLine + "Cannot be found");
                    return string.Empty;
                }
            using(FileStream fs = new FileStream(filePath,FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read,FileShare.Read))
                {
                        using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fs)) 
                        {
                            string tmpStr = sr.ReadToEnd();
                            sr.Close();
                            m_ReadAttempts =0;
                            return tmpStr;
                        }
                
                }        
            }
            catch(IOException ex)
            {
                    if(m_ReadAttempts < 10)
                {
                    Thread.Sleep(500);
                    m_ReadAttempts++;
                    return ReadFileFromDisk(filePath);
                }
                else
                {
                    throw ex;
                }
            }
        }

Puzzled by memory usage...

Blog Author — Thu, 13 Nov 2003 06:34:00 GMT

I have this command line app, when running in a 'normal' command window, it uses a fair whack of memory (around 60mb), but the second I minimize to taskbar, the memory usage drops to around 10mb....anyone any ideas why???

UPDATE: Apparently this has to do with 'Working Set size", it's generally nothing to get concerned over...there's a pretty good discussion here on pretty much the same topic...

Hmm...spoke too soon...

Blog Author — Mon, 08 Sep 2003 06:55:00 GMT

The saga continues, I can recieve mail OK, but I can't send it from my server; now, it works from the smtp local server on my main machine so I don't think it's a Firewall thing - I'm very confused! So if anyone has any idea why,please let me know!

Windows Server 2003 Bug in the SMTP administration tool

Blog Author — Mon, 08 Sep 2003 05:08:00 GMT

This one drove me nuts for a while, I have an smtp server running on my server, but occasionally, the SMTP administration snapin would disappear for no particular reason. This is needless to say VERY annoying - as there's not other effective way to administer SMTP and the snapin doesn't appear in the normal list. Well, forget where I found the solution but here's the fix - just run this command - regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\smtpsnap.dll and you'll magically see it's back!