General

MSDN Low Bandwidth View

Richard Rousseau — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:00:02 GMT

Jon Galloway posted an article describing a way to view low bandwidth optimized MSDN pages by modifying the URL.

Try it out...

Simply take the URL - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.aspx

And add "(loband)" just before the ".aspx" - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object(loband).aspx

The "loband" page provides a link near the top you can use to switch back to full fat version.

Also check Jon's site for a bookmarklet he wrote which you can use to switch this functionality on or off at any time.

This option will be very useful when my laptop's cellular connection has a bad signal (like when on the train). I imagine this will also be helpful to all those smart phone browsers out there. Any smart phone owners care to try it out?

Check out his comments section. The Product Unit Manager for MSDN responded with some insight into what they're doing. It sounds like they might change the way the "loband" option is specified. I was wondering why they didn't just make it a query string item, but I'll bet they've already got some serious url rewriting going on.

CodeApalooza

Richard Rousseau — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:53:07 GMT

Magenic is sponsoring a developer event called CodeApalooza. It's Saturday, September 6th 2008. Lots of great sessions and speakers. They will be Data Layer, SharePoint, Development Process, and User Experience tracks. I know I'm going to have trouble deciding between similarly scheduled sessions. For full details and signup info, check out the CodeApalooza site!

Trackback Madness...

Richard Rousseau — Sat, 05 May 2007 01:08:39 GMT

I want to turn this blog into a respectable place for my technical thoughts. Step 1 of that initiative - Get rid of all the trackback spam.

A "clean" sampling of my trackbacks.

Almost all of my old posts have a few hundred spam trackback links. It's absolutely ridiculous. Dasblog has a referral blacklist feature that I'm looking into. Unfortunately, their documentation is a little out of date. It refers to an older blacklisting feature called "Moveable Type Blacklist". I believe 1.7 was the last version this feature was available (I'm running 1.9).

Some light googling gave me some direction on how to enable and configure it. It's a keyword based filter that will send 404's if a site that matches one of your specified keywords tries to refer back to you. Making up the keyword list should be fun.

Omar Shahine's WebLog

In the meantime, I created a PowerShell script to remove all trackbacks from my content files. I'll post that when I get home tonight. But until I get the blacklist feature figured out, I'll be leaving trackbacks turned off.

Google Reader or Bloglines...

Richard Rousseau — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 07:59:03 GMT

An email from fellow blogger and brother-in-law Eric prompted me to checkout Google Reader for reading and managing all the blogs I subscribe to. After importing all 154 of my feeds, I sat back with a cup of coffee and started reading. I dug it...quite a bit. Google Reader has the usual google UI goodness. The seamless updating of different browser elements that's so shiny and Web 2.0-y.

I haven't played with the tagging yet, and I'm not sure what "Shared Items" are, but Google Reader has one killer piece of functionality that has already converted me...It only marks items you've actually read as "read". Bloglines is terrible about this. As soon as you click on a folder in bloglines, it assumes you've read all the posts within. It's a real pain to have to update items as "Keep New" individually in Bloglines. It's a backwards way of processing things. Google Reader updates each item as read once you've scrolled past it.

Because of this feature alone, I'm switching to Google Reader.

Virtual PC 2004 Issue...

Richard Rousseau — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 04:34:41 GMT

I use virtual envionrments fairly regularly at work. I mainly use them for app debugging in a clean environment, permissions testing, and automated deployment testing.

I have a Virtual PC 2004 setup with my base OS installed on it's own virtual hard drive. I create a new differencing vhd on top of that when I need a fresh environment to work in. This has worked very well for me until today.

I created a new differencing vhd and booted into it. Everything was fine until I tried to login. I received the following message box...

Windows cannot connect to the domain, either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable, or because your computer account was not found. Please try again later.

At first I thought that my domain wouldn't let me logon because I had a bunch of updates to install. After letting the vm run for 20 minutes I restarted it, installing all the updates it downloaded. (On a side note, I didn't know windows would download updates even when you're not logged in.). Even after that, no luck.

Google to the rescue...An old newsgroup post hinted that it might be because my (virtual) computer already existed on the domain. The solution, login as the local admin, take the computer off the domain and put it back on. Success!

I'm posting this in hopes the answer will be more accessible to future generations of googlers.

Office 2007 OneNote...

Richard Rousseau — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:21:21 GMT

So I'm a pretty big fan of organization programs. I currently use Natara Bonsai, which is a pretty sophisticated outlining program. It syncs up nicely with my Treo 650 and the mobile client has the full functionality of the windows client. I use it for organizing projects at work and at home. It fits well with the Getting Things Done system that I've been using for the past year (Thanks again Kenny!). More on Bonsai and GTD later.

Before I used Bonsai I was a huge Microsoft OneNote fan (this was back in the Office 2003 days). It was the first org app that really caught my attention and I quickly fell in love with it's ease of use. I like it's freeform nature. You could click on an area within and start typing. It allowed for organized lists, tables, imported images. It integrated nicely with the other Office apps. You could create emails/tasks/appointmens from any of your OneNote outlines. The tasks would remain synced with Outlook. You could also import any Outlook Notes directly into OneNote. I used this particular feature to take notes on my old Samsung i700, then import them into OneNote for further processing.

While this system worked, if you wanted to be completely mobile it had one serious shortcoming. There wasn't a mobile client. It was a one way street. Take the notes on the mobile, import and organize in OneNote, and they were stuck there. No syncing back up with the mobile. I know you could use the tasks feature of Outlook for this (OneNote Task -> Outlook Task -> Mobile Task), but I was really stretching the boundaries with all the projects and tasks I was trying to keep organized all at once. This was the main reason I switched back to Palm and Bonsai.

Fastforward to the present. My boss has been raving about OneNote that comes with Office 2007. I just did a little googling and found that not only did Microsoft release a mobile client for OneNote 2003, but they have full mobile integration with OneNote 2007. Some other new features include OCR for any images you take and include with an outline (say with your mobile's camera), internal linking between outlines, and multi-user editing capabilities. It sounds like they've taken some good ideas from wikis.

Needless to say, I'm very interested. The only problem is that I don't have an up to date windows mobile platform (pocketpc or smartphone). This is probably a good thing since I really like my Natara Bonsai (and don't have the $$$ to get a new phone). It's just that I sometimes get stuck in Bonsai's rigid hierarchical nature (more on that soon).

If anyone out there is using OneNote 2007 (with or without it's mobile capabilities) I'd be very interested to hear from you.

Extra: It also looks like they've provided an API for OneNote 2007. This wasn't the case with OneNote 2003 (or maybe I didn't look hard enough).

Edit: The wikipedia article is pretty informative.

Blog Update...

Richard Rousseau — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:53:39 GMT

As some of you may already know, I am converting this blog into a purely technical site. While some of my current subscribers will find this of interest, others will not. Fear not! I have started up a personal blog site at www.rousseaufamily.net. Feel free to continue to subscribe to www.richardrousseau.com for my thoughts on technology and software development. But if you just want to keep up with the latest happenings in my life please point your rss subscriptions to www.rousseaufamily.net all future personal related entries.

Edit: While I will be removing all non-techie sites from my Blogroll for this site, you have all been added to my Blogroll on www.rousseaufamily.net.

Small Business Development Process

Richard Rousseau — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:30:26 GMT

6/8/2006 - Thursday

Meeting

Boss: When do you think this project will be done?

Me: (Reviews Calendar) Next Wednesday.

Boss: Cool.

6/12/2006 - Monday

Morning

Boss: Are we still on track for that project?

Me: Yup.

Later That Morning I discover the power had been out all weekend. Numerous cleanup operations commenced destroying the rest of my day.

Evening

Me: Crap! The project is now 8 hours behind.

6/13/2006 - Tuesday

Morning

Me: Ha ha! I'll leave early and get a head start!

Traffic: No you won't.

Late Morning

Me: I think I'll complain about this on my blog.

Got Power?

Richard Rousseau — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:25:28 GMT

So when I arrived at work this morning I noticed that my computer had been restarted. After a quick brain scan I reassured myself that I had saved all my work from the last night. I logged in and checked my computer's even log. System came back up at 6:30, but no activity from about 11pm till then. I decide to check on the servers...

Domain Controllers (check, check)
Database (check)
Citrix (check)
Web Server...

Our web server wasn't responding. No biggie, I grab my keys and walk down to the server room to cycle it. As I approached the server room I noticed an unusually loud fan noise. I unlock the room and step into a sauna. By now I'm wondering what servers have been fried. I check the AC controls (our server room has it's own AC unit on the roof) and they read 99 degrees. I turn them off then back on. Nothing. Ok, time to call the boss. After getting the office park's phone number from the boss I give them a call. Apparently ComEd blew something and the entire office park (5 buildings) was in the dark from midnight to around 6:30. They are currently going building to building checking the breakers to make sure everything is back up. About 10 minutes after that conversation the head engineer stops by the office. I've met this guy before when all of the personal heaters we run in our office were causing circuits to trip. He told me that he'd have someone reset our AC unit on the roof and that should cool things off.

As of right now we still do not have AC in the server room. I borrowed a fan from another employee's office and I'm blowing cool air into the room. It's lowered the temp from about 99 to 94.

An interesting start to a Friday.

Edit - Apparently when I email a blog post it doesn't preserve the formatting.

85 Minutes...

Richard Rousseau — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:58:45 GMT

That was my commute time this morning. On the best of days it's 30 minutes, on average 45. However I will use this opportunity to plug www.traffic.com. I setup their service, which is free, about 3 weeks ago and they have been far more accurate than WBBM or the overhead road signs (those overhead signs are worthless if you ask me). You can set up different routes on traffic.com and have them email you reports at different times. My basic setup is HomeToWork and WorkToHome which I have emailed to me at 8am and 5pm respectively. Check it out if you're a commuting commando like me.