Re: Blazor popularity and use

[Grant Maw via ozdotnet]

:" If ease of development was our primary concern we would all be building
Microsoft Access apps. "

You cannot be serious. "Ease of development" and "MS Access" do not belong
in the same sentence.

On Fri, 8 Sept 2023 at 14:13, David Connors via ozdotnet <
ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Sept 2023 at 13:44, Dr Greg Low  wrote:
>
>> Yep, we talk about browsers like there’s consistency there. There still
>> isn’t. And it’s a huge hit on productivity. I see so much lost effort
>> trying to align pixels across different browsers, different versions of
>> browsers, etc. It’s just silly.
>>
>>
>>
>> I remember being on a web app project. I was doing the data bits, and
>> there were 10 devs doing the web parts.
>>
>>
>>
>> After 6 months, I looked at what the other 10 had produced and knew I
>> could have built that myself in a winform app in a fortnight, by myself.
>>
>
> This is probably more down to approach. If they were building from scratch
> by themselves, then I agree, productivity will be terrible; however on the
> flip side, you have to remember that 80+% of the cost of software is after
> the code is written and in the support phase. For our internal apps, we use
> a commercial off the shelf theme and a couple of other components and stick
> with those. The consistency of UI layout, responsiveness across form
> factors etc is all done very cost effectively by using something like:
> https://angular-material.fusetheme.com/dashboards/project - best $700
> you'll ever spend.
>
> If ease of development was our primary concern we would all be building
> Microsoft Access apps.
>
> --
> ozdotnet mailing list
> To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/
-- 
ozdotnet mailing list 
To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/ 

Re: Blazor popularity and use

[Grant Maw via ozdotnet]

Yes, using it in a large project. Not hiring right now afaik though

On Fri, 8 Sept 2023, 11:17 am Tom Rutter via ozdotnet, <
ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote:

> Is anyone here actively using Blazor on a decent sized project? I used it
> for a while on my last contract but am unable to find new work anywhere
> that uses Blazor, not a single one!
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Tom
> --
> ozdotnet mailing list
> To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/
-- 
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To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/ 

Re: [OT] VPN

[Grant Maw]

I use ProtonVPN. They are very good and price is reasonable.

Recommended.

G

On 23/3/23 09:45, Tom P via ozdotnet wrote:

Hi folks

Any current recommendations for a VPN provider? I procrastinated on 
this but would like to get one now after some privacy updates by my 
ISP that I interpret as bad news.


NordVPN still ok? Any new recommendations?

Cheers
Tom

On Thu, 14 Oct 2021 at 23:40, Grant Castner  
wrote:


I have been using NordVPN for a couple of years now with no issues

Dr Grant Castner
BCom(Hons) LLB(Hons) PhD
0458 770 749
http://twitter.com/grantcastner
https://au.linkedin.com/in/grantcastner

*From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com
 on behalf of Tom P

*Sent:* Thursday, October 14, 2021 7:53:09 PM
*To:* ozDotNet 
*Subject:* Re: [OT] VPN
Is the speed ok with Proton? Reviews indicate speed is not as good
as Nord for example.


On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 at 19:30, Grant Maw  wrote:

Using Proton. Paid version. Very happy with it, works on
Linux, PC and my Android tablet.

Has never let me down, has plenty of endpoints etc

On 13/10/21 4:41 pm, Tom P wrote:

Hi folks

What VPN provider are some of you using at home and are happy
with? There are many and mixed reviews. ExpressVPN, Nord… etc.

Cheers
Tom


-- 
Thanks

Tom


-- 
Thanks

Tom

--
Thanks
Tom

Re: [OT] VPN

[Grant Maw]

Using Proton. Paid version. Very happy with it, works on Linux, PC and 
my Android tablet.


Has never let me down, has plenty of endpoints etc

On 13/10/21 4:41 pm, Tom P wrote:

Hi folks

What VPN provider are some of you using at home and are happy with? 
There are many and mixed reviews. ExpressVPN, Nord… etc.


Cheers
Tom
--
Thanks
Tom

Re: [OT] Windows 365 - The Verge

[Grant Maw]

It might prove useful for the business market, although the intermittent 
reliability of NBN uptime, availability, and speed is a serious 
obstacle, depending on your location. Cost would be another factor, I 
tend to buy high spec machines and replace them every 3-4 years or so. 
The cost of setting up something of similar spec in the AWS cloud right 
now is not cheap.


It's horses for courses I think. For my personal computing needs I'll 
stick with the metal box.


G

On 16/7/21 11:34 am, Greg Keogh wrote:
TGIF -- A colleague forwarded this link to me: Microsoft puts PCs in 
the cloud with Windows 365 - The Verge 
 




This is coincidentally what I commented on last week. I hadn't heard 
of this initiative before, but it looks like an initial step towards 
my dream of offloading most of the hardware I own and manage into hosting.



It's offered to businesses first. I read that your client-side 
connection is via any modern web browser and my heart sank (how can a 
dumb damn web browser emulate a useful Windows desktop experience?), 
but then it says a Remote Desktop connection can be used as well, 
thank heavens.



I'd love to try it, but the first worries that pop out of my head are 
/speed/, /privacy/ and /cost/. If the cost can compete with buying and 
owning a developer's metal box + power + cables + maintenance time + 
etc, then it could be attractive, especially in offices and schools. 
Has anyone seen Windows 365 or know more about it?



/Greg K/

Avalonia and MS DI Container

[Grant Maw]

Morning all

Wondering if anyone has successfully integrated 
Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection into an Avalonia project?


I've found some doco of sorts here : 
https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/blob/main/src/Splat.Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection/README.md


but it keeps throwing errors at runtime. I've spent a good deal of time 
on this and am on the verge of giving up and finding another way, but if 
anyone has managed to get this working and would care to share a bit of 
code, I'd be grateful.


Many thanks

Re: IVR for spam calls

[Grant Maw]

Perfect. Thanks Greg.

On Thu, 2 Jul 2020 at 15:24,  wrote:

> I know this was one of them:
> https://www.engadget.com/2005-09-12-the-telecrapper-2000.html
>
>
>
> This version used Asterisk:
> https://soundbytes.org/forums/topic/my-version-of-the-telecrapper-2000/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sqldownunder.com%2F=02%7C01%7Csspahelp%40microsoft.com%7C1f0ea4d6b97e4d897f3708d666d1e890%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636809449091516274=SLHeEGAMmWUY5YIwcC4oAPYr%2F9RIZdi4MNASsdzwX2I%3D=0>
>  |http://greglow.me
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgreglow.me%2F=02%7C01%7Csspahelp%40microsoft.com%7C1f0ea4d6b97e4d897f3708d666d1e890%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636809449091526278=IU8tnAITCjBxWafi3A9XpO9lF3PIwZJ8ad3t36lnxvs%3D=0>
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com  *On
> Behalf Of *Grant Maw
> *Sent:* Thursday, 2 July 2020 3:17 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* OT : IVR for spam calls
>
>
>
> Hi All
>
>
>
> Long term members of this list may remember this. Quite a few years ago,
> someone mentioned here that they had developed some sort of IVR to which
> they would forward all spam callers. The IVR was such that the automated
> responses could keep a spammer tied up for ages, wasting their time until
> they hung up in frustration.
>
> Was wondering if that person is still around, and if they would be
> prepared to share the code.
>
>
>
> Cheers!
>

OT : IVR for spam calls

[Grant Maw]

Hi All

Long term members of this list may remember this. Quite a few years ago,
someone mentioned here that they had developed some sort of IVR to which
they would forward all spam callers. The IVR was such that the automated
responses could keep a spammer tied up for ages, wasting their time until
they hung up in frustration.

Was wondering if that person is still around, and if they would be prepared
to share the code.

Cheers!

Re: [OT] Impact of covid19 on devs

[Grant Maw]

I had one client who cut their billable time with me by 75% (fitness
industry), and another who will probably do much the same later this month
(agriculture sector). Both want to return to normal as soon as they can, so
the overall impact will hopefully be minimal.

On Mon, 1 Jun. 2020, 12:29 pm Tom Rutter,  wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I’m curious to hear how these lockdowns and such have affected the dev
> market. Any thoughts and experiences to share?
>
>

Re: [OT] C++ directions

[Grant Maw]

I would need a very good reason to choose C++ to write a new project today,
a reason like needing to be close to the metal or needing very fine-grained
control over performance, memory usage, and other resources. So things like
writing a new OS, device drivers, high end computer games and other
graphics-intensive scenarios possibly. But for me that is never, all my
work is LOB stuff.

.Net core more than satisfies all my current (and foreseeable)
requirements, and takes care of all the internal plumbing for me. I can't
imagine a scenario where I would need something other than c# or f# for the
sort of work I do.


On Fri, 20 Mar 2020 at 15:28, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> Folks, It's quiet in here because I suppose you're all in lockdown
> guarding your mountains of bog-roll. I've got a TGIF contribution...
>
> A colleague was discussing how to write the most transportable C++ code
> possible and sent links to C++ 17 features
> 
> and C++ 20 upcoming.  These
> articles quite shocked and angered me. I wrote C++ for 10 years until about
> 2003 (when .NET mercifully replaced it my LOB style work). I quite enjoyed
> C++ at the time, but after looking at those articles I'm quite angry that
> C++ has become one of the worst victims of feature-creep I have ever seen.
> It's like the C++ steering committee are suffering from an inferiority
> complex and have fought back by adding every feature of every other modern
> language into it. It's an insane jumble of the old low-level C-like
> language with bits of LINQ, C#, Rust and Haskell. The syntax of the std::
> libraries is so cryptic it looks like a maths puzzle.
>
> Just what category of language has C++ become? What is it supposed to be
> best at? Why would I pick C++ to write a LOB app? What does Bjarne think
> about all this?
>
> There must be a huge number of developers globally using C++, but what are
> they doing with it that requires such a bloated and complex language? I
> haven't met a C++ developer in the last 15 years that can answer that
> question.
>
> *Greg K*
>

Re:

[Grant Maw]

I thought all credit cards use the Mod10 (Kuhn) algorithm. I seem to
remember it being a safeguard against data entry errors back in the day,
so this is possibly a hangover from those days.

We never validate card numbers.  We pass the card data to the processing
gateway and let their APIs handle all that stuff. Less code for us to
maintain.

On Wed, 18 Dec. 2019, 3:33 pm Preet Sangha,  wrote:

> Hi Ed,
>
> Thanks for that. We are an large enterprise platform doing thousands of
> transactions via gateways - CC info is normally flowing through our code
> except in the most secure of ways - we are PCI compliant. However to be
> extra careful I'm trying to remove anything that looks like a known CC
> shape from logging. It's to prevent issues in case someone inadvertently
> stores CC in fields that they shouldn't. Yes there education but sometimes
> mistakes happen.
>
> regards,
> Preet, in Auckland NZ
>
>
>
> On Wed, 18 Dec 2019 at 16:57,  wrote:
>
>> Hi Preet,
>>
>>
>>
>> I don’t know of any libraries that handle this, but I do have a question
>> for you.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why are you validating credit card info?
>>
>>
>>
>> I ask this because if you are validating card info then you are
>> handling/processing card info. Any business handling credit card
>> information should have PCI-DSS compliance.
>>
>>
>>
>> Personally, I find it is much easier to use external providers (eway,
>> paypal et al) to handle the whole payment process, meaning your code never
>> needs to touch a credit card number and you never have to worry about
>> compliance, *security etc.
>>
>>
>>
>> Just a another random thought, YMMV.
>>
>>
>>
>> *Security of the card information
>>
>>
>>
>> Ed.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com  *On
>> Behalf Of *Preet Sangha
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, 18 December 2019 2:41 PM
>> *To:* ozDotNet 
>> *Subject:*
>>
>>
>>
>> Would anyone know of any credit card validation/detection or similar
>> libraries that we may be able incorporate into our .net framework code
>> (preferably in nuget form) in order to eliminate our own hand coded regexs
>>  please?
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards Preet
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: [OT] Fines Victoria crisis deepens

[Grant Maw]

It's not just Victoria. The QLD government IT projects 9ver recent years
have also been rolled gold catastrophes

On Wed, 23 Oct. 2019, 11:24 am Greg Keogh,  wrote:

> Interesting front page article in The Age newspaper today
> 
> about a Victorian government IT disaster. IT disasters are routine (I'm
> sure we've all caused a few!) but it's interesting that they actually name
> the software as VIEW from a company called Civica. The article is a bit
> vague about what's actually wrong, it just says "[it] doesn't work", "the
> system was absolute chaos" and systems are not "talking to" their
> computers. Does anyone have inside gossip about what really happened?
>
> There was another vast IT disaster a few years ago related to the
> education system I think, where dodgy contracts were being awarded to
> mates, and I think the loss ran into the hundreds of millions. That story
> vanished from the news and I never found out what happened.
>
> *Greg K*
>

Re: Linux for .NET Core testing

[Grant Maw]

I use Kubuntu. Debian based, with no installation hassles around dr8vers
and such.


On Mon, 7 Oct. 2019, 7:26 pm Greg Keogh,  wrote:

> Folks, I want to get some experience deploying .NET Core apps to Linux,
> but the classic question is … which distro? I haven't looked at this
> subject for several years so I went to https://distrowatch.com/ for an
> update and I was quite shocked to find over 100 flavours listed with 11 on
> the "Major Distributions" page. I don't want to start a Linux war, but I
> would like to ask which distro(s) are best to give me realistic practise in
> the contemporary business world.
>
> I see that if you provision an Azure VM you get a choice of Ubuntu, Red
> Hat, SUSE, CentOS and Debian.
>
> I was extra shocked to read the interesting and jumbled history of some of
> the distros, many of which started as hobby projects by students and
> devotees. It looks like a self-indulgent mess (just like JS frameworks). I
> also see the dream of having a unified "installation" distribution system
> has dissolved, as has any hope of a consistent shell. This lack of
> coordination must surely have killed any chance Linux once had of being
> popular with the general public.
>
> *Greg K*
>

Re: JSON deserialize

[Grant Maw]

Not sure if this helps anyone, and it is not a silver bullet, but with
versioning conflicts I tend to handle them in the config file under the
 tag :




  

This usually takes care of any versioning issues I have as a result of
adding 3rd party libraries or Nuget packages.

On Wed, 24 Jul 2019 at 14:33, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> > it's worth noting that NewtonSoft Json.NET will NOT be installed by
> default as of .Net Core 3.0:
>
> I was preparing an invoice to send to James Newton-King to charge him for
> the countless hair-tearing hours of my life wasted trying to get rid of
> version conflict errors in my builds. So many wildly different versions of
> the library have become glued to so many components and libraries that he's
> effectively created a gigantic maths puzzle. And why does he keep updating
> the major and minor version numbers when (as far as I can tell) the
> commonly used part of the API doesn't change? I've seen other complaints
> that he's not following a sensible versioning strategy.
>
> I was also pleased to read several weeks ago in the Core release blogs
> that Microsoft will provide a leaner faster Json processing library, and
> hopefully they won't keep churning out new versions like confetti. Good
> riddance to Newtonsoft and yet another external dependency.
>
> *Greg K*
>
>>

Re: NUC

[Grant Maw]

Thanks for the info.

Still use the VM in the cloud but wanting something local for other things.
These units looks like they are super-flexible, small and easy to move etc

On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 15:28, Stephen Price 
wrote:

> I have the skull canyon nuc which is a beast, but the fans are quite loud
> even when you out it in quiet mode. M.2 drives and powerful cpu.
> There is a newer model which has an AMD GPU on board but I am not sure if
> it's any quieter. Probably not.
>
> There are some fanless models too which would be super quiet but tend to
> be lower specs. I had one die recently. Well it shuts down if it gets too
> hot so in hindsight I wonder if fans would have prevented an untimely death.
>
> Also have a couple of these in my wife's office as desktop pcs and they
> are great. Low cost and don't take up any deskspace, and lots of monitor
> options, most can have multiple screens.
>
> Did the VM in the cloud option not suit?
>
> cheers,
> Stephen
>
>
>
> From: Grant Maw
> Sent: Thursday, 9 May, 10:53
> Subject: NUC
> To: ozDotNet
>
>
> It's time for a new dev PC. Someone drew my attention to Intel's NUC
> recently, and was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative
> experiences with these?
>
>
> https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/boards-kits/nuc/mini-pcs/business.html
>
> Thanks
>
>
>

NUC

[Grant Maw]

It's time for a new dev PC. Someone drew my attention to Intel's NUC
recently, and was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative
experiences with these?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/boards-kits/nuc/mini-pcs/business.html

Thanks

Re: [OT] New job

[Grant Maw]

We have been doing WebForms since the start. When done properly there's
nothing wrong with it and I prefer it over MVC if I'm honest.

On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 12:47, Arjang Assadi  wrote:

> There is nothing wrong with webforms , been doing MVC for past 4 years ,
> but there are times where webforns approach was cleaner than having php
> like code mixed in views would have been handled by just a simple repeater.
>
> Would do webforns without hesitation , probably bring back some tricks
> from MVC world with me .
>
> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 12:42 pm Grant Maw  wrote:
>
>> Good to know that someone else is doing WebForms work. Have been feeling
>> a bit out in the cold recently :)
>>
>> Fraser Coast QLD is a nice spot as well. My "office" is literally in the
>> middle of our acreage property, it's very quiet and all I can see outside
>> are trees, birds and roos. Perfect for programming :)
>>
>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 12:00, Steven Parish 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Newcastle is sound better all the time - we're looking for .Net - C# -
>>> Web Forms
>>>
>>> Kind Regards,
>>>
>>> Steven Parish
>>> *Managing Director*
>>>
>>> BusinessCraft Pty Ltd | www.businesscraft.com.au | M: 0417 688 599| T:02
>>> 4965  | Level 1, 418-422 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW
>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=418-422+Hunter+Street,+Newcastle,+NSW=gmail=g>
>>> 2300
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 11:33, Tom P  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Well that explains a few things
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Tom
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 10:47, Tom Rutter  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Back to the original question, sorry nothing here.
>>>>>
>>>>> Melbs market is quite tough at the moment. Not many positions for
>>>>> straight .NET devs (my sister in law is in recruitment). Many agency
>>>>> advertisements on Seek are actually not even for real positions, more to
>>>>> fill up their databases with prospects.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 08:38, Greg Low  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Further north is even more awesomeness. Sapphire Beach (just north of
>>>>>> Coffs) has fibre to the premises as well as awesome beaches, nearby
>>>>>> rainforests, mountains, etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Greg
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dr Greg Low
>>>>>> SQL Down Under Pty Ltd
>>>>>> Mobile: +61419201410 Office: 1300775775
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com on behalf of DotNet Dude <
>>>>>> adotnetd...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> *Sent:* Thursday, May 9, 2019 6:09 am
>>>>>> *To:* ozDotNet
>>>>>> *Subject:* Re: [OT] New job
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here we go again with someone from Newcastle bragging how awesome
>>>>>> Newcastle is... Yes, we know it’s awesome. Stop rubbing it in.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 19:21, Steven Parish <
>>>>>> ste...@businesscraft.com.au> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Tom,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Any chance you're interested in moving to Newcastle? Its a great
>>>>>>> place to live - great surf beaches, close to the vineyards :)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Steven Parish
>>>>>>> *Managing Director*
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> BusinessCraft Pty Ltd | www.businesscraft.com.au | M: 0417 688 599| T:02
>>>>>>> 4965  | Level 1, 418-422 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW
>>>>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=418-422+Hunter+Street,+Newcastle,+NSW=gmail=g>
>>>>>>> 2300
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 14:29, Tom P  wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi folks
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Anyone’s Melbourne based workplace looking for a .NET developer?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>>>> Tom
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Thanks
>>>>>>>> Tom
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Tom
>>>>
>>>

Re: [OT] New job

[Grant Maw]

Good to know that someone else is doing WebForms work. Have been feeling a
bit out in the cold recently :)

Fraser Coast QLD is a nice spot as well. My "office" is literally in the
middle of our acreage property, it's very quiet and all I can see outside
are trees, birds and roos. Perfect for programming :)

On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 12:00, Steven Parish 
wrote:

> Newcastle is sound better all the time - we're looking for .Net - C# - Web
> Forms
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Steven Parish
> *Managing Director*
>
> BusinessCraft Pty Ltd | www.businesscraft.com.au | M: 0417 688 599| T:02
> 4965  | Level 1, 418-422 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW 2300
>
>
> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 11:33, Tom P  wrote:
>
>> Well that explains a few things
>>
>> Cheers
>> Tom
>>
>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 10:47, Tom Rutter  wrote:
>>
>>> Back to the original question, sorry nothing here.
>>>
>>> Melbs market is quite tough at the moment. Not many positions for
>>> straight .NET devs (my sister in law is in recruitment). Many agency
>>> advertisements on Seek are actually not even for real positions, more to
>>> fill up their databases with prospects.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 9 May 2019 at 08:38, Greg Low  wrote:
>>>
 Further north is even more awesomeness. Sapphire Beach (just north of
 Coffs) has fibre to the premises as well as awesome beaches, nearby
 rainforests, mountains, etc.

 Regards,

 Greg

 Dr Greg Low
 SQL Down Under Pty Ltd
 Mobile: +61419201410 Office: 1300775775

 --
 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com on behalf of DotNet Dude <
 adotnetd...@gmail.com>
 *Sent:* Thursday, May 9, 2019 6:09 am
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] New job

 Here we go again with someone from Newcastle bragging how awesome
 Newcastle is... Yes, we know it’s awesome. Stop rubbing it in.

 On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 19:21, Steven Parish 
 wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> Any chance you're interested in moving to Newcastle? Its a great place
> to live - great surf beaches, close to the vineyards :)
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Steven Parish
> *Managing Director*
>
> BusinessCraft Pty Ltd | www.businesscraft.com.au | M: 0417 688 599| T:02
> 4965  | Level 1, 418-422 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW
> 
> 2300
>
>
> On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 14:29, Tom P  wrote:
>
>> Hi folks
>>
>> Anyone’s Melbourne based workplace looking for a .NET developer?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Tom
>>
> --
>> Thanks
>> Tom
>>
> --
>> Thanks
>> Tom
>>
>

Re: Web Assembly and CSHTML

[Grant Maw]

Thanks Nick - will take a look at this one as well.

On 20 March 2018 at 11:21, Nick Randolph <n...@builttoroam.com> wrote:

> You can also check out https://github.com/praeclarum/
> Ooui/wiki/Xamarin.Forms-with-Web-Assembly
>
>
>
> *Nick Randolph* | *Built to Roam Pty Ltd* | Co-Founder, Technical Lead | +61
> 412 413 425 <+61%20412%20413%20425>
> | The information contained in this email is confidential. If you are not
> the intended recipient, you may not disclose or use the information in this
> email in any way. Built to Roam Pty Ltd does not guarantee the integrity of
> any emails or attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the
> author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Built to Roam Pty
> Ltd.
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com <ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com> *On
> Behalf Of *Eddie de Bear
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 20 March 2018 12:16 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>
> *Subject:* RE: Web Assembly and CSHTML
>
>
>
> Hi Grant,
>
>
>
> A slightly different approach, but if your looking for C#/WebAssembly with
> no javascript, there is this project on github https://github.com/aspnet/
> Blazor. This is an experimental UI Framework using C# and WebAssembly..
> It looks fairly promising, but it’s still a long way off yet.
>
>
>
> Ed.
>
>
>
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
> Windows 10
>
>
>
> *From: *Grant Maw <grant@gmail.com>
> *Sent: *Tuesday, 20 March 2018 12:10 PM
> *To: *ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>
> *Subject: *Web Assembly and CSHTML
>
>
>
> Folks
>
> I remember seeing a post on here some time back about tech choices for
> creating a browser based product.I am one of those still lamenting the
> tragic demise of Silverlight and who looks upon the stinking morass that is
> the Javascript "eco-system" with inconsolable horror, so I was pleased to
> see this earlier today :
>
> http://cshtml5.com
>
> ... and more in particular, this forum thread, where they talk about how
> they are dealing with the emerging Web Assembly technology :
>
> http://forums.cshtml5.com/viewtopic.php?f=2=8185
>
> The basic version is free, so I'm thinking about giving this a look but
> before I dive in, has anyone had any experience using this?
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Grant
>
>
>

Re: Web Assembly and CSHTML

[Grant Maw]

Thanks Eddie

Yeah I saw Blazor the other day as well and I am following it closely.

I get the feeling (rightly or wrongly) that Web Assembly is the direction
the industry seems to be taking with a number of groups starting to develop
tools and frameworks around it.

On 20 March 2018 at 11:16, Eddie de Bear <eddie.deb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Grant,
>
>
>
> A slightly different approach, but if your looking for C#/WebAssembly with
> no javascript, there is this project on github https://github.com/aspnet/
> Blazor. This is an experimental UI Framework using C# and WebAssembly..
> It looks fairly promising, but it’s still a long way off yet.
>
>
>
> Ed.
>
>
>
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
> Windows 10
>
>
>
> *From: *Grant Maw <grant@gmail.com>
> *Sent: *Tuesday, 20 March 2018 12:10 PM
> *To: *ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>
> *Subject: *Web Assembly and CSHTML
>
>
>
> Folks
>
> I remember seeing a post on here some time back about tech choices for
> creating a browser based product.I am one of those still lamenting the
> tragic demise of Silverlight and who looks upon the stinking morass that is
> the Javascript "eco-system" with inconsolable horror, so I was pleased to
> see this earlier today :
>
> http://cshtml5.com
>
> ... and more in particular, this forum thread, where they talk about how
> they are dealing with the emerging Web Assembly technology :
>
> http://forums.cshtml5.com/viewtopic.php?f=2=8185
>
> The basic version is free, so I'm thinking about giving this a look but
> before I dive in, has anyone had any experience using this?
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Grant
>
>
>

Web Assembly and CSHTML

[Grant Maw]

Folks

I remember seeing a post on here some time back about tech choices for
creating a browser based product.I am one of those still lamenting the
tragic demise of Silverlight and who looks upon the stinking morass that is
the Javascript "eco-system" with inconsolable horror, so I was pleased to
see this earlier today :

http://cshtml5.com

... and more in particular, this forum thread, where they talk about how
they are dealing with the emerging Web Assembly technology :

http://forums.cshtml5.com/viewtopic.php?f=2=8185

The basic version is free, so I'm thinking about giving this a look but
before I dive in, has anyone had any experience using this?


Cheers

Grant

Re: [OT] Big Windows 10 update

[Grant Maw]

Never thought I'd ever see myself switching to Linux but I have to say that
I'm starting to look very, very hard at it, for all the reasons that Mike
and the Gregs have outlined above. I just wonder if I REALLY need to learn
a new OS at my age ... life is too short :)

On 12 December 2017 at 15:15, Stephen Price 
wrote:

> Haha. Yep, time for people to switch over to Linux.
>
> Dotnet core runs there just fine, what's holding you back? Surely it's not
> driver support or anything right?
>
> Kids theses days... Want everything now now now, and then when they get
> it, they cry. Bit like wanting to go to the shops, and then having to be
> dragged there crying. ;)
>
> Welcome to the future. Let's hope you like it because you can't go back in
> time (yet)
>
> On 12 Dec. 2017 12:42 pm, mike smith  wrote:
>
> Makes you wish there was an os you could compile with what you wanted in
> it. Oh wait there is
>
>
> On 12 Dec. 2017 15:29, "Greg Low"  wrote:
>
> I’ve had the last two updates break mobile device configuration as well.
>
>
>
> Can’t say I love the random, forced breaking of my machine every few
> months. As a policy, I think it’s pretty questionable.
>
>
>
> Mind you, ask me what I think about iOS 11…
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775 <1300%20775%20775>) office | +61 419201410
> <0419%20201%20410> mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 <%2803%29%208676%204913> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com |http://greglow.me
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@ozdot
> net.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Keogh
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 12 December 2017 3:23 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* [OT] Big Windows 10 update
>
>
>
> Folks, I didn't know it was coming, but I accepted a big Windows 10 update
> last night. An unfamiliar large blue notification tray window warned me it
> was a major update that would take a while. So I went and talked to the
> cats while it updated.
>
>
>
> Well, this is a big update. User profiles seem to be recreated on first
> login. Wallpaper went black. All The crappy Universal apps I removed came
> back, including new ones like "Mixed Reality" that you can't get rid of,
> even using PowerShell as real Admin. All file-open dialogs changed size.
> The Start menu was full of dozens of repeated "NoUIEntryPoints-DesignMode"
> items and other app menus that were never seen before. Registry adjustments
> to take stupid nodes out of the Windows Explorer tree were undone. New
> icons appeared in the tray by default (but could be hidden). And other
> little things as well... I spent over an hour trying to clean all the
> "garbage" out again.
>
>
>
> Overall, I'm quite pissed off. Every major Windows update seems to take
> more and more control away from me, and I'm being told what I should use
> and like (I can use a Mac if want that!).
>
>
>
> So just a warning.
>
>
>
> *Greg K*
>
>
>

Re: Entity Framework - the lay of the land

[Grant Maw]

Sorry for the late reply, only just seen this thread. As Stephen Price said
back in September, I have been using CodeSmith to generate my stored procs
and DAL for well over a decade. Our templates have changed as language
improvements and new product features have come along, but the underlying
principles and methodology remain the same.

We generate the boilerplate code which is based on patterns we've used and
updated over many years, and which have proven themselves repeatedly on
projects of all different sizes. These produce stored procs  and the
associated C# objects that are simple, predictable, easy to follow, and
fast. This code just does simple CRUD operations, nothing more. It can then
put all the code inside generated .sln and .csproj files, writes some basic
tests for the work it's done, and so once you've designed your schema you
can have a ready to go VS project in just a few minutes. For web apps,
we've written templated asp.net pages as well (so I guess we had our own
"scaffolding" long before the term became popular), which we constantly
update as technology evolves. We don't need to wait for EF to catch up with
the latest developments in SQL Server, for example, we just roll our own.
If we get it wrong, we can easily change it.

All this provides us with the skeleton of an app, allowing us to
concentrate our efforts into we then modifying the parts of it that need
changing to suit the requirements of the particular job at hand. Typically
our generated object design is a close match to the table designs, and this
doesn't work in all scenarios, so changes are necessary for this and a
variety of other reasons depending on the task at hand (this is the
"effort" side of the equation that David refers to above).

I've looked at EF, and a few other ORMs, and I have not found a single
solitary advantage to changing, other than to become one of the cool kids
using the latest whatzit technology. I prefer to concentrate on building
things rather than learning new technologies that offer me no benefit,
which can be a nightmare to debug, and which can be taken away at any time.
What will happen if MS does to EF what they did to Silverlight, for
example? What's going to happen to all those folks who invested heavily in
Telerik's now-discontinued ORM?

My take on all this is that you need to find a data access method that you
are comfortable with, either home grown, or open source, and stick to it. I
know it's not as simple as that when you have an employer who demands that
you know such and such tech, but that's our experience.


On 17 September 2016 at 11:52, Stephen Price <step...@lythixdesigns.com>
wrote:

> Awesome thread guys.
>
>
> Just to throw in some of my comments and views.
>
>
> For Greg Low: Partly jokingly, I thought you would have loved the use of
> EF. From a business perspective, no shortage of projects you can fly into
> at the last moment, and save the damsel in distress. Wave your trusty SQL
> cape, collect big pay check and fly off to the next project needing saving.
>
>
> Myself, being a developer, love being able to code linq style against the
> EF database context and not have to break out the SQL. I've always told
> myself my T-SQL is a weak point, but this week I could arguably discredit
> my opinion on myself. I had some code that generated a magic number on the
> end of a number in C#. Realised I needed to run it from another codebase
> which shares the database so chose to write the same function in t-sql. It
> worked but I doubted myself too much (ie will it work under all
> conditions?). Got another guy to code review it and he said it looked fine.
> I ended up simplifying it and then discovered that the EF reverse code gen
> tool we are using (which generates our EF code from the database) doesn't
> gen EF code for SQL Functions.
>
> So now I realise as I type this that we are using a tool to generate
> (some) EF code from our database so that EF can generate our database.
> Poised to disappear up my own recursive arse any moment here!
>
> My usual way of optimising EF is to use dtos.  Be as explicit as possible
> when querying for what I want. Not ideal, but this conversation thread has
> taken me back to when I was working with Grant Maw (hi Grant! Hes on
> holidays In Hawaii right now so probably not reading along) where he uses
> CodeSmith to magically gen his boilerplate ADO.net layers from his
> databases. He's probably still enjoying his stubborn refusal to use an ORM
> as we speak.
>
> New and shiney is not always the best thing down the track.
>
> It's opened my eyes. Perhaps time to renew my CodeSmith and see how far
> their out of the box templates have come.
>
> As David pointed out good work requires effort. We are craftsmen. We need
> to find the balance between doing good work with our too

Re: Database sampling for testing and demo

[Grant Maw]

There used to be some data generation tools in Visual Studio some years
back. These were dropped after VS2010 IIRC. A shame, because they were very
useful for exactly this sort of thing.

On 19 November 2015 at 16:44, DotNet Dude  wrote:

> We used to write scripts to do this manually back in the day.
> Someone just said there may be a tool from redgate also.
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Stuart Kinnear 
> wrote:
>
>> When testing an application that uses a database it is desirable to test
>> it with data similar to production in volume or structure.
>>
>> Our client's databases are getting large and also it would be useful to
>> munge it according to a set of formulas eg. swap people's names against a
>> master source of name entries, change values according to some formula.
>>
>> I've come across a product called Jailer (
>> http://jailer.sourceforge.net/home.htm)  which promises to extract data,
>> and ApexSQL have a product called SQL test data generator (
>> http://www.apexsql.com/sql_tools_generate.aspx). Haven't as yet tried
>> them.
>>
>> I was wondering what others are doing in this area.  I'm after a product
>> that is fuss free and doesn't take a rocket scientist to set up and
>> maintain.
>>
>> --
>>
>> -
>> Stuart Kinnear
>> Mobile: 040 704 5686.   Office: 03 9589 6502
>>
>> SK Pro-Active! Pty Ltd
>> acn. 81 072 778 262
>> PO Box 6082 Cromer, Vic 3193. Australia
>>
>> Business software developers.
>> SQL Server, Visual Basic, C# , Asp.Net, Microsoft Office.
>>
>> -
>>
>
>

Re: [OT] SSL testing

[Grant Maw]

For those interested, I've run that script on my Windows 2008 R2 box, it
worked without a hitch and took me from an F to a C. I then manually added
TLS 1.2, rebooted and now I am at a B. A few more bits to do and we'll get
an A.

[image: Inline images 1]

On 4 November 2015 at 12:45, Paul Glavich 
wrote:

> I have run that script on our staging and production servers. Works well.
>
>
>
> Take a registry backup prior. Run it. If issues, then restore.
>
>
>
>
>
> -  Glav
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
> ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Keogh
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 3 November 2015 12:00 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] SSL testing
>
>
>
> *"An F grade is unacceptably bad, definitely something he needs to get
> sorted. Hold the web developer / company accountable for that."*
>
>
>
> I could barely sleep last night knowing that I'd flunked with an F. The
> trouble is, I don't know who to blame (I am the *developer* and the
> *company*!!). My web server is a pretty vanilla Win2008R2 install and I
> got the cert from Comodo 6 months ago. I sort of expected that regular
> Windows Updates would be fixing this sort of thing, or perhaps I'd get some
> sort of security alert somehow. Why are out-of-the-box servers falling
> behind best security practises?
>
>
>
> I want my server to get an A, but the script I mentioned before worries me
> and I'd prefer some specific and trustworthy instructions from somewhere
> like TechNet, a KB or MSDN to tell me exactly what to do.
>
>
>
> *Greg K*
>

Re: [OT] Office 365

[Grant Maw]

I with Ken on this - if the bell is starting to toll for Sharepoint, what
alternatives are being used?

I've never liked Sharepoint, it always seemed to me to be an ugly, bloated,
cumbersome thing to use, so I for one won't weep if it's nearing the end of
its life, but there must be some alternative that is filling the void,
shouldn't there?

On 3 November 2015 at 09:58, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士)  wrote:

> There really is quite a shift going on.
>
>
>
> For years, every time we asked for enhancements to the portals in SQL
> Server Reporting Services, etc. the response was that “we already have a
> portal business and it’s called SharePoint”. Now all the SQL Server
> directions are away from SharePoint, back to native implementations.
>
>
>
> Even most of my SharePoint friends are mostly pushing SharePoint Online
> now.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
> ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken Schaefer
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 3 November 2015 10:30 AM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* RE: [OT] Office 365
>
>
>
> Of course. But the “who uses SharePoint?” question kinda implies that
> SharePoint’s been superseded in all areas that it does (document storage,
> workflow, calendaring, collaboration etc.). So, I’m not asking for a ERP
> system, or a CRM or something that people might have shoe-horned into
> SharePoint before. But just looking at SharePoint’s core functionality
> (document lists, Office integration, AD integration etc.), is there
> anything that people are flocking to now that is, arguably, superior to the
> way SharePoint works (whether it be scalability, ease of use,
> extensibility, 3rd party add-in support, whatever)
>
>
>
> I realise this is a bit vague, but I’ve only just started on this, so I
> haven’t yet compiled a list of requirements yet.
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
> mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ] *On
> Behalf Of *Michael Ridland
> *Sent:* Monday, 2 November 2015 2:25 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Office 365
>
>
>
>
>
> Wouldn't this all depend on your requirements?
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
> *Michael Ridland | Technical Director | Xamarin MVP*
>
> XAM Consulting - Mobile Technology Specialists
>
> www.xam-consulting.com
>
> Blog: www.michaelridland.com
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Ken Schaefer  wrote:
>
> Serious question – I have to look at this at work right now. We have
> SharePoint, but if there’s alternatives out there that people recommend
> (for a corporate environment), then I’d be keen to look into them
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
> ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *DotNet Dude
> *Sent:* Monday, 2 November 2015 12:57 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Office 365
>
>
>
> Damn I've been busted u... lotus notes
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Ken Schaefer 
> wrote:
>
> What alternatives would you recommend?
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
> ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *DotNet Dude
> *Sent:* Sunday, 1 November 2015 7:04 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Office 365
>
>
>
> People still use sharepoint? Lol
>
> On Sunday, 1 November 2015, Stephen Price 
> wrote:
>
> Actually did some more reading and it looks like the business version
> gives you access to Lync (for business), Sharepoint and I think
> collaborative office editing. As well as the Home stuff. All of which I am
> not using so don't need. I think Office 365 Home is the way to go for me
> right now.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 1 Nov 2015 at 15:32 DotNet Dude  wrote:
>
> >From what I've heard (which is very little)
>
> the business version gives you more control in the "dashboard" to
> customise stuff. I also don't think you're meant to use non-business
> versions for commercial use, whatever that means. 
>
>
> On Sunday, 1 November 2015, Stephen Price 
> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
>
>
> I know a few here use Office 365 (from previous threads) and was wondering
> if anyone is using the Office 365 Business? Trying to work out what it
> gives you and so far it looks exactly the same as the Home version except
> its more expensive. Perhaps business support is the extra?
>
>
>
> I'm currently using the freebie given to me via my msdn account and its
> great. Its called Office 365 Developer Subscription. Its not documented
> anywhere that that is, but it says I'm using Office 365 Personal except I
> have +1 install (2 total) when compared with the real Office 365 Personal
> product.
>
> I have a few more machines than 

Re: [OT] Cable IP address

[Grant Maw]

It's been a long time since I've been on Cable, but from memory this is
correct. You can (or used to be able to) pay a smidge extra for a static IP
though.

On 28 October 2015 at 16:11, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> Folks, I had a Telstra cable modem installed this morning, but I haven't
> switched over to it yet because I don't know how it allocates IP addresses.
> I will have to update my DNS records to point the world to my home server.
> Web searches hint that the IP only changes if the modem is disconnected for
> "an extended period of time". Some hint that this period is days. Some
> people hint that the IP is "sticky" and will rarely change in practise. Can
> anyone confirm that this is actually the cable IP behaviour?
>
> *Greg K*
>

Re: [OT] New laptop

[Grant Maw]

I recently bought an Alienware 15 with Win 8.1 Pro pre-installed.

It upgraded to Win 10 without a hitch and has been working perfectly ever
since. It's even faster than it was under 8.1, which seems like a distant
memory now.

On 25 August 2015 at 20:01, Tom Rutter therut...@gmail.com wrote:

 Anyone here got a new win 10 laptop lately? Recommendations?

 Cheers

Re: [OT] Chairs for home office

[Grant Maw]

I use an Aeron char. No complaints, can sit in it all day. I'm a tad on the
larger side so I bought a size C. For most I'd recommend a size B. They're
great though, good investment.

On 30 July 2015 at 12:53, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

 My favourite is laying down. Asleep is when I'm at my most creative, but
 my coding style slips a bit when I'm asleep so it's a trade off.

 On Wed, 29 Jul 2015 at 18:26 Bec C bec.usern...@gmail.com wrote:

 Feelings aside I highly recommend both sitting and standing (alternate).
 It really helped me. Add in a few basic stretches every hour and it will
 help you down the road


 On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Dave Walker rangitat...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Jorke feels very strongly about this.

 On 29 July 2015 at 22:15, Bec C bec.usern...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Jorke Odolphi jo...@jorke.net wrote:

 I’ve been using a herman miller setu at home for the past month –
 cannot recommend it enough. No arm rests, set height and slides (on a
 wooden floor) - amazing chair – I’ve done a couple of 16 hour days, I 
 would
 usually be physically tired and sore etc – totally gone.

 don’t listen to idiots that may tell you to use a stand up desk, when
 you have to do real work invest in a really good chair for your health – 
 it
 has a 12 year warranty.

 Idiots? That's harsh


 http://livingedge.com.au/shop/226-setu-chair.html



 From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com on behalf of Dave Walker
 Reply-To: ozDotNet
 Date: Wednesday, 29 July 2015 4:41 pm
 To: ozDotNet
 Subject: [OT] Chairs for home office

 Hi all,

 back working in a home office and my chair is giving me conniptions.
 I've been looking into investing into one that's going to last me a long
 time.

 In previous companies I've used Aerons and they are awesome though
 really expensive. I've heard recently good things about the Steelcase
 Leap http://www.steelcase.com/products/office-chairs/leap/ as well
 so was wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions?

 Cheers,
 Dave

Amusing story

[Grant Maw]

Guys

Not really a .net specific post, but I thought I'd share anyway.

I'm working on a database at the moment that is used to record heart rates
and other biometric data in high intensity exercise scenarios.

We're working with an offshore company, creating what is essentially a copy
of part of their existing database, with modifications to suit our
particular requirements. The guy at the other end said he would give me a
database diagram together with a dump of the relevant data into Excel so
that I could see how it all hangs together.

First off, he tried to shoehorn the data from about 20 different SQL tables
into a single spreadsheet. Not a workbook with multiple sheets, a single
sheet.

I could probably live with that, except he grabbed the wrong data before he
sent it to me. Instead of heart rate and respiratory data, I got a set of
tables that provided links to porn sites and sex videos, handbag sales,
pharmaceuticals, products made from Canadian geese, hair loss tonics,
gambling sites, horse racing, Viagra and Cialis, and a variety of other
things.

It was clearly a data set that is used as the basis for a spam sending
application. Talk about busted!

I should be pissed off with them for wasting my time, but I'm laughing too
hard. Needless to say I'll not be taking anything they say seriously from
now on!

Cheers

Grant

Re: Azure and security trust

[Grant Maw]

It may not be the state of play right now, but I suspect that in the not
too distant future, it will be *compulsory* to store data in Azure, AWS or
their like, because of the reasons that Greg L mentions above. They'll
simply be able to do a better job at securing the data than overworked
in-house IT departments that are expected to deliver the world with a
budget that wouldn't buy an atlas.

I have several clients whose data involves healthcare information for
clients. It is all stored on the Amazon cloud and the client has had no
issues with this whatsoever (in one case, we are expanding their cloud
infrastructure).

If the government wants to look at your data, there's nothing much you can
do to stop them irrespective of where it's hosted. They'll either come in
through the front door (via something like a court order), or the back door
(using a guy wearing a dark coloured hat), but they'll get at it one way or
another.

On 25 February 2015 at 13:28, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, I have a demo SQL database in Azure and it's working nicely, but
 now we have to consider how to get it into production use. My demo DB
 doesn't contain any real names and addresses, but the live DB will have
 information about hospital patients, and you can imagine how confidential
 that is! I'm told they will demand the DB be stored on hospital managed
 servers, which is a damn nuisance in reality as I'm sure many of you know
 how tedious it can be trying to break through walls of bureaucracy around
 IT departments in places like hospitals and the government.

 This opens up the whole issues of trust and the cloud. Since the Snowden
 revelations, I don't know how anyone with confidential data can trust cloud
 storage. Even I don't trust it and all of my backups in Rackspace and Azure
 blobs are pkzipc AES encrypted. So how on earth could a hospital be
 convinced that cloud store is an attractive option?

 I just remembered that Amazon has a special area that is certified secure
 so they can get government contracts. I haven't seen anything like that in
 Azure. Despite that, it doesn't make me feel much better, as we now know
 the NSA was intercepting hardware and bugging it, and coercing huge telcos
 to put splitters in the backbones, and using secret FISA orders to threaten
 other even huger companies to secretly hand over their records. So who the
 hell can trust anyone in the cloud?!

 Is anyone dealing in this sort of cloud/trust business at the moment?
 What's the state of play? is there any hope? Am I just paranoid? (who's
 monitoring this email?)

 *Greg K*

Re: Azure and security trust

[Grant Maw]

Sorry, to clarify - when I say compulsory I mean that clients will most
likely demand it, not compulsory from a legal standpoint :)

On 25 February 2015 at 20:18, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 It may not be the state of play right now, but I suspect that in the not
 too distant future, it will be *compulsory* to store data in Azure, AWS or
 their like, because of the reasons that Greg L mentions above. They'll
 simply be able to do a better job at securing the data than overworked
 in-house IT departments that are expected to deliver the world with a
 budget that wouldn't buy an atlas.

 I have several clients whose data involves healthcare information for
 clients. It is all stored on the Amazon cloud and the client has had no
 issues with this whatsoever (in one case, we are expanding their cloud
 infrastructure).

 If the government wants to look at your data, there's nothing much you can
 do to stop them irrespective of where it's hosted. They'll either come in
 through the front door (via something like a court order), or the back door
 (using a guy wearing a dark coloured hat), but they'll get at it one way or
 another.

 On 25 February 2015 at 13:28, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, I have a demo SQL database in Azure and it's working nicely, but
 now we have to consider how to get it into production use. My demo DB
 doesn't contain any real names and addresses, but the live DB will have
 information about hospital patients, and you can imagine how confidential
 that is! I'm told they will demand the DB be stored on hospital managed
 servers, which is a damn nuisance in reality as I'm sure many of you know
 how tedious it can be trying to break through walls of bureaucracy around
 IT departments in places like hospitals and the government.

 This opens up the whole issues of trust and the cloud. Since the
 Snowden revelations, I don't know how anyone with confidential data can
 trust cloud storage. Even I don't trust it and all of my backups in
 Rackspace and Azure blobs are pkzipc AES encrypted. So how on earth could a
 hospital be convinced that cloud store is an attractive option?

 I just remembered that Amazon has a special area that is certified secure
 so they can get government contracts. I haven't seen anything like that in
 Azure. Despite that, it doesn't make me feel much better, as we now know
 the NSA was intercepting hardware and bugging it, and coercing huge telcos
 to put splitters in the backbones, and using secret FISA orders to threaten
 other even huger companies to secretly hand over their records. So who the
 hell can trust anyone in the cloud?!

 Is anyone dealing in this sort of cloud/trust business at the moment?
 What's the state of play? is there any hope? Am I just paranoid? (who's
 monitoring this email?)

 *Greg K*

Re: Generating a CRUD UI

[Grant Maw]

I've been using Codesmith Generator for years. Its fast and simple, and can
do pretty much anything you care to throw at it.

On 6 November 2014 11:28, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, I have a SQL Server Express 2008 database with about 20 tables with
 neat relationships and I'd like to have a desktop utility to maintain the
 tables. I just want to list, edit, create and delete rows. A few years ago
 I was faced with a similar situation and I used T4 templates to spit out
 WPF controls, dialogs, grids and code behinds, which worked great (and I'm
 still using the app). Rather than do that sort of thing again I thought it
 was worth asking for suggestions about new tools or techniques that might
 make a cruddy UI over some tables.

 *Greg K*

Re: Code Mechanical Keyboards

[Grant Maw]

I use a CODE keyboard (Cherry MX green) and absolutely love it.It's got the
numeric keypad, backlight etc. . This will be a keyboard for life.

I also have a wireless mechanical keyboard but it was forever draining
batteries. I have (wired) mechanical keyboards on every computer in my
house (I work from home), and going back to the cheaper keyboards is no
longer an option as they all feel so horrible to use.

On 24 October 2014 12:34, osjasonrobe...@gmail.com wrote:

  Anyone used/using one of these (or similar keyboard)?

 http://codekeyboards.com/

 Jason Roberts
 Journeyman Software Developer

 Twitter: @robertsjason
 Blog: http://DontCodeTired.com
 Pluralsight Courses: http://bit.ly/psjasonroberts

 ===
 I welcome VSRE emails. Learn more at http://vsre.info/
 ===

Re: PDF and .doc generators for websites

[Grant Maw]

I've been using ABCPDF for years in a Webforms environment. It's worked
very well, it's fast and does everything we need it to do.

On 22 October 2014 13:43, Greg Low (低格雷格) g...@greglow.com wrote:

  Hi Folks,



 Anyone got strong opinions on particular PDF and .doc generators for use
 with MVC ?



 Regards,



 Greg



 Dr Greg Low



 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
 fax

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

Re: [OT] Password hash cracking

[Grant Maw]

Or, just use Schneier's Password Safe program and let it generate all your
passwords for you. I've been using it for years and I swear by it. I have
hundreds of passwords stored in it's files and they're all long and very
complex.

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/


On 22 March 2014 16:08, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, in Bruce Schneier's latest 
 newsletterhttps://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1403.htmlthere is a section 
 at the end where he discusses the vulnerability of
 passwords. One of the links is to this interesting and frightening article:


 http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/

 The hashes in this cracking test were made with plain old MD5, but even
 ignoring that, it's a sobering reminder of the progress in guessing and
 cracking hashed passwords. I was surprised to learn that salting the hashes
 doesn't offer much defence. I was amazed that they were using GPUs for
 hashing and a graph shows that they're faster than CPUs ... is that
 possible? After this I think the lessons are:

 * Schneier suggests you make passwords out of pieces of words and
 sentences to avoid predictable formats.
 * Use a more recent and computationally intensive hasher.
 * Don't let anyone steal your hashes.
 * Don't store the whole hash (I learned in Russinovich's book that 
 msv1_0http://dll.paretologic.com/detail.php/msv1_0.dll
 only stores half a user's hash in the registry).

 *Greg K*

Re: [OT] Password hash cracking

[Grant Maw]

Ian

I use Password Safe on Windows 8 but not on a phone, and you are right they
don't seem interested in a WP8 version. Sorry, I've not seen any
comparisons between PWSafe and others. I've been using PWSafe since its
very early versions and never bothered looking elsewhere.

G


On 24 March 2014 11:23, ILT (O) il.tho...@outlook.com wrote:

 Grant, re Password Safe (etc) - I was using RoboForm on $9.95 a year and
 they have just released a version for Windows Phone 8, but I have let it
 lapse. I would rather back up my pw database to OneDrive than have RoboForm
 manage it at their site, for some reason.

 Have you see any comparison of Password Safe with RoboForm?

 It seems the Password Safe Sourceforge dev project isn't interested in a
 WP8 version. I would like to use the same application across the different
 platforms.
 --

 Ian Thomas
 Victoria Park, Western Australia

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Monday, March 24, 2014 8:08 AM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Password hash cracking



 Or, just use Schneier's Password Safe program and let it generate all your
 passwords for you. I've been using it for years and I swear by it. I have
 hundreds of passwords stored in it's files and they're all long and very
 complex.

 http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/



 On 22 March 2014 16:08, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, in Bruce Schneier's latest 
 newsletterhttps://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1403.htmlthere is a section 
 at the end where he discusses the vulnerability of
 passwords. One of the links is to this interesting and frightening article:




 http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/



 The hashes in this cracking test were made with plain old MD5, but even
 ignoring that, it's a sobering reminder of the progress in guessing and
 cracking hashed passwords. I was surprised to learn that salting the hashes
 doesn't offer much defence. I was amazed that they were using GPUs for
 hashing and a graph shows that they're faster than CPUs ... is that
 possible? After this I think the lessons are:



 * Schneier suggests you make passwords out of pieces of words and
 sentences to avoid predictable formats.

 * Use a more recent and computationally intensive hasher.

 * Don't let anyone steal your hashes.

 * Don't store the whole hash (I learned in Russinovich's book that 
 msv1_0http://dll.paretologic.com/detail.php/msv1_0.dll
 only stores half a user's hash in the registry).



 *Greg K*

Re: visual studio online

[Grant Maw]

They'll need a Microsoft ID at a minimum. Not sure about the other ...


On 18 March 2014 14:37, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

 Hey all,

 Just wondering if anyone has added a project manager to tfs online? I just
 want to add a program owner to the project so they can get some project
 visibility, log bugs etc. Won't be coding.
 Will they be able to do that via their email address without msdn?

 The only people I've added in the past have had their own visual studio
 account so not sure if you can just invite someone via email and they can
 sign up?

 will try it out but just thought someone might have already done it.

 cheers,
 Stephen

Re: [OT] FTP diagnosis

[Grant Maw]

I gave up on IIS FTP ages ago. Gazillions of settings in unpredictable
places make it a security nightmare apart from anything else. Suggest you
use FileZilla server. It's quick and easy to install and use.


On 12 March 2014 15:48, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Didn't we go through all of these in October last year?


 No, it was all reversed back then. An app was trying to talk to the
 outside world, and it turned out the author of the C++ code was not
 familiar with PASV and once he flipped that on in code everything worked. I
 wasted days on testing with ftp.exe not realising that it didn't support
 PASV mode.

 Today I just want to get a vanilla IIS FTP site working.

 Greg K

Re: Favicons

[Grant Maw]

Wow. That is amazing. Thanks for the link!


On 27 February 2014 19:02, Andrew Coates (DPE AUSTRALIA) 
andrew.coa...@microsoft.com wrote:

  There's always
 http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Browser/IconEditor/Default.html as well
 - online icon editor/creator.



 Cheers



 Andrew Coates, ME, MCPD, MCSD MCTS, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft, 1
 Epping Road, NORTH RYDE NSW 2113
 Ph: +61 (2) 9870 2719 * Mob +61 (416) 134 993 * Fax: +61 (2) 9870 2400 *
 http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat

 *Sent from the **new Office* http://office.com/preview



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* Thursday, 27 February 2014 7:52 PM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Favicons



 IcoFX Looks like the ticket. Thanks, will check it out. :)



 On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Geoff Appleby geoff.appl...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  +1 IcoFX. Haven't needed to use it in a couple of years but it's simple
 but powerful.



 On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Joseph Cooney joseph.coo...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Iconfx or icofx (can't quite recall the name) was open source until
 recently and there are free versions still around. I think the gimp can
 make windows icons too.

 Joseph

 On Feb 27, 2014 4:55 PM, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com
 wrote:

  Ok thanks. New can of worms. ;)



 It seems to be working (on a different computer atm) but when I dragged it
 to the taskbar (how you can pin a website) it shows a large version of the
 default one. I think I need to add those multiple sizes to the ico. If I
 edit my current one in VS it shows the small one but not alternate sizes
 (like how the default one does...)



 Which leads me to a new question, what's the best (easiest/cheapest) way
 to import images into an ico file. Any freebie ICO editors about? I don't
 fancy doing it by hand in Visual Studio. Hmm I wonder if VS has an import
 image in its editor? Not looked before...



 On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com
 wrote:

  From memory, if IE fails to find a favicon.ico file in the past, it
 doesn't ask for one again (basically, why generate another request that
 will result in a 404?) Not sure what the timeout period is, but if you
 bookmark the site/add to favourites, it makes another request for
 favicon.ico.



 Cheers

 Ken



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* Thursday, 27 February 2014 3:19 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Favicons



 Oh ok...

 I cleared the cache. I could see it with Chrome but not IE. Not sure
 what's up with that. Cached somewhere as you say but clearing the cache vis
 F12 dev tool menu didn't seem to help. Maybe need to close browser entirely.



 I added the route then took it out... so not sure if your screenshot was
 with or without. I think I'll add it back in and do some more testing.



 Looking with fiddler, it's not that its failing to download/find the
 favicon.ico file, it looks more like the browser isn't even asking for it.
 (IE11)



 thanks for the help.





 On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Fredericks, Chris 
 chris.frederi...@hp.com wrote:

  It may be local to you, a cached page somewhere.  The icon is showing in
 IE11 on my desktop and in IE8 and Chrome 33.0 on my laptop:













 --

 Geoff Appleby


 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/geoff.appleby



inline: image001.png

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

Greg and Greg : +100 to your sentiments.
David Kean : does this answer your question?


On 12 February 2014 16:54, Greg Harris g...@harrisconsultinggroup.comwrote:

 I do not think this was directed at me but here goes...


 Start rant


 @#$%^ing Microsoft has #$%^ed me and the community on Silverlight, I
 spent a few years 100% focused on Silverlight at a significant cost in time
 and money, all now just wasted!


 Today, I have a client that would 100% fit a Silverlight solution for
 their line of business (LOB) application, but they are not willing to take
 on Silverlight because of Microsoft's end of life perspective on the tool.


 I would agree that it may not be the right cross platform tool for all
 mobile devices, but I see no reason why MS cannot make a commitment to
 future releases and ongoing support on Windows, Mac, Windows Phone and
 Android.


 I would not do the next version of Angry Birds with Silverlight, but I
 would do most LOB apps with Silverlight.


 Microsoft, you have made me angry, you have made my client's angry, you
 have lost credibility, I do not trust you!  Probably more fool me for ever
 trusting you!


 Microsoft, you could start to gain some credibility back by restoring
 Silverlight to its rightful place as the tool of choice for client side
 development in LOB apps with a commitment to maintain and support it for 20
 years into the future.


 End rant


 Regards

 Greg Harris


 On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Greg? Where are you?
 This is your cue.


 Ah! What! I'm awake ... I saw Silverlight mentioned as dead and
 abandoned. Guess what I've been doing all day today .. expanding a large
 Silverlight 5 app. We have no alternative, we've spent years developing the
 app and it's in use by some gigantic companies internationally.

 What the hell else can we do? Seriously! Discussion here last year
 pointed out that HTML5 is the only alternative to delivering rich apps on
 the browser desktop, but it groans under stress and I was warned that it
 just can't show attractive interactive charts of the type available with
 the ComponentOne SL libraries.

 Also, I have subscribed to MSDN Magazine (MSJ as it was) since 1993 and I
 agree that it is generally uninteresting these days because it's mostly
 about JavaScript, Stores, Azure, Windows RT and Windows 8 (the latest
 groovy stuff you're talking about). I find I flip through new issues and
 chuck them aside. I like academic articles, but Petzold's and McCaffrey's
 articles are so abstract they're in the twilight zone.

 My day to day development experience is consistently as infuriating and
 unpredictable as ever. Projects won't build, IIS goes haywire with code
 500s, versions clash, dependencies are all over the shop, kits don't work,
 samples are simplistic, designers crash, I'm coding XAML UIs by hand, I
 have to learn WiX, I have to run VS2013 and VS2012 side by side due to COM
 problems, my VS2013 is diseased, and so on. I get up in the morning and the
 things that worked the night before are all on the fritz. Sometimes I miss
 punch cards.

 However, I don't want to fuel the jovial atmosphere of impending doom
 that pervades this forum ;-)

 Greg

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

Here's 
somethinghttp://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2014/02/11/satya-nadellas-to-do-list.aspxfrom
VS Magazine's website that might be of interest. The article
arrogantly lays out a laundry list of things for the new CEO to look at.
Unlikely he'll ever see this or take any notice of it, but it demonstrates
the level of dissatisfaction that I and others are trying to articulate.

This paragraph is number 1 on the list.

*1. Patch things up with developers. Let's be clear: killing Silverlight
was hugely damaging to relations between developers and Microsoft. Today,
Windows 8 development makes .NET developers feel less at-home than they
once did, and side loading line-of-business apps is hard and expensive. Not
only does Microsoft need to get its developer stack solidified, it needs
more transparency around .NET, including an explicit roadmap going out
several years. Killing Silverlight and deemphasizing WPF made developers
very insecure. Microsoft need to take extraordinary confidence-building
measures to make them feel safe and loyal again.*




On 12 February 2014 21:21, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Greg and Greg : +100 to your sentiments.
 David Kean : does this answer your question?


 On 12 February 2014 16:54, Greg Harris g...@harrisconsultinggroup.comwrote:

 I do not think this was directed at me but here goes...


 Start rant


 @#$%^ing Microsoft has #$%^ed me and the community on Silverlight, I
 spent a few years 100% focused on Silverlight at a significant cost in time
 and money, all now just wasted!


 Today, I have a client that would 100% fit a Silverlight solution for
 their line of business (LOB) application, but they are not willing to take
 on Silverlight because of Microsoft's end of life perspective on the tool.


 I would agree that it may not be the right cross platform tool for all
 mobile devices, but I see no reason why MS cannot make a commitment to
 future releases and ongoing support on Windows, Mac, Windows Phone and
 Android.


 I would not do the next version of Angry Birds with Silverlight, but I
 would do most LOB apps with Silverlight.


 Microsoft, you have made me angry, you have made my client's angry, you
 have lost credibility, I do not trust you!  Probably more fool me for ever
 trusting you!


 Microsoft, you could start to gain some credibility back by restoring
 Silverlight to its rightful place as the tool of choice for client side
 development in LOB apps with a commitment to maintain and support it for 20
 years into the future.


 End rant


 Regards

 Greg Harris


 On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Greg? Where are you?
 This is your cue.


 Ah! What! I'm awake ... I saw Silverlight mentioned as dead and
 abandoned. Guess what I've been doing all day today .. expanding a large
 Silverlight 5 app. We have no alternative, we've spent years developing the
 app and it's in use by some gigantic companies internationally.

 What the hell else can we do? Seriously! Discussion here last year
 pointed out that HTML5 is the only alternative to delivering rich apps on
 the browser desktop, but it groans under stress and I was warned that it
 just can't show attractive interactive charts of the type available with
 the ComponentOne SL libraries.

 Also, I have subscribed to MSDN Magazine (MSJ as it was) since 1993 and
 I agree that it is generally uninteresting these days because it's mostly
 about JavaScript, Stores, Azure, Windows RT and Windows 8 (the latest
 groovy stuff you're talking about). I find I flip through new issues and
 chuck them aside. I like academic articles, but Petzold's and McCaffrey's
 articles are so abstract they're in the twilight zone.

 My day to day development experience is consistently as infuriating and
 unpredictable as ever. Projects won't build, IIS goes haywire with code
 500s, versions clash, dependencies are all over the shop, kits don't work,
 samples are simplistic, designers crash, I'm coding XAML UIs by hand, I
 have to learn WiX, I have to run VS2013 and VS2012 side by side due to COM
 problems, my VS2013 is diseased, and so on. I get up in the morning and the
 things that worked the night before are all on the fritz. Sometimes I miss
 punch cards.

 However, I don't want to fuel the jovial atmosphere of impending doom
 that pervades this forum ;-)

 Greg

Re: [OT] Favourite Coding Album

[Grant Maw]

I put in Steve Ballmer's classic debut album Developers, Developers,
Developers.


On 13 February 2014 13:17, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Works for me


 Yeah me too, I put in Gustav Mahler, Symphonies 1-10 boxed set, but the
 question was biased, because it doesn't make me feel like a coding deity,
 they're just so arduously long, repetitive and tortuous that it makes
 perfect company for my daily coding experience.. In fact, if anyone knows
 of an album that actually turns you into a coding deity then please let the
 group know -- *Greg*

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

Thanks all for the responses. Ran a test yesterday and it failed due to a
one file in our project which it kept getting stuck on, trying over and
over again to process this file but it kept on failing.

I removed this file from the project (it was non-essential and we can
re-add it again later if we need to), and tried again. This time it ran
through without errors and told me that it had finished, after about 10
seconds! Needless to say that nothing was transferred.

It seems I have more reading to do on this. But yes, I am also a bit
mystified at why they don't make it easier to migrate to the cloud
environment. Surely that would have to have been one of these first things
they considered. Wouldn't it?




On 12 February 2014 05:31, Paul Glavich subscripti...@theglavs.com wrote:

 We moved from a 3rd party hosted full TFS instance to TFS Online however
 we only use the work items, not source control(I prefer mercurial/git).



 It was a little painfull as we had used some customisation to
 fields/templates.



 However, it was **mostly** ok (if a little time consuming). I just got
 the entire backlog into Excel. Did the same the TFS online, copy common
 fields from one excel sheet to another, publish to TFS online. This got us
 an easy 80-85% there. Other stuff was customised or had some other
 weirdness we had to look into but not too bad. We kept the old instance
 going while we did some sanity checks and ensured all was ok.



 BTW, TFSOnline is great. Love the web interface and use it instead of the
 VS integration.



 -  Glav



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* 11 February 2014 6:57 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Migrating TFS



 Grant,

 I did a migration from a one TFS server to another and it was a horrible
 experience. I don't recall the tool I used but I had the added complication
 of using a different Template on the destination server and it was trying
 to migrate loads of mismatching fields. The source control was ok and
 history seemed to work. The work items were sketchy with lots not migrated.
 We ended up keeping the old TFS server about in read only for reference.



 Good job going to the cloud, I use Visual Studio online for my own stuff
 and its brilliant. Shame they don't make it easier to migrate into.



 cheers,

 Stephen

 p.s. if you need help with it let me know ;)



 On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks Anthony. We're not worried about work items, just source code and
 history at this point, including branches. The TFS Integration Platform is
 beavering away as I write this (trying it out on a test copy of the
 project), telling me that 176 of 335 change groups have been migrated.

 I guess I'll just let it run and see where it lands me.



 On 11 February 2014 15:40, Anthony Borton antho...@enhancealm.com.au
 wrote:

 Hi Grant,



 I moved a client with around 35 team projects from an on-premises TFS up
 to Visual Studio Online using the TFS Integration Platform. I was pretty
 lucky in that they only needed the source to go up and didn't have work
 items to work about. The process was quite a bit more time consuming than I
 had planned and it was a seemingly never-ending exercise in massaging
 settings to get the source (with history) from each TP up to the cloud. A
 future TFS 2013 update should include a feature to help move data from VSO
 down to TFS but I haven't heard if there is anything there to help go the
 other way.



 Cheers



 Anthony Borton

 Senior ALM Trainer/Consultant

 Visual Studio ALM MVP

 Enhance ALM Pty Ltd



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Tuesday, 11 February 2014 3:07 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Migrating TFS



 Hi All

 Has anyone moved from on-premises TFS to visual studio online? We have a
 large solution, including branches, that needs to be pushed into the cloud
 as soon as possible and I'd love to hear any war stories before I start.

 I'm thinking about using the tool at http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/.

 Cheers

 Grant

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

Update : the TFS Integration tool has proven to be completely useless. It
just doesn't do what it says on the tin, not in this case anyway. Even when
I could get it sort of working it kept throwing inexplicable exceptions.

I'm migrating the current cut of the source code manually and recreating my
branches. We'll lose our history, but better that than wasting days on end
fighting with these 2nd rate tools.

If Visual Studio itself wasn't the best IDE out there, we would migrate
away to other platforms I think. Developer support in general just isn't
good enough within Microsoft any longer, and unless you are working with
the latest shiny new thing they don't seem to care.


On 12 February 2014 09:18, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks all for the responses. Ran a test yesterday and it failed due to a
 one file in our project which it kept getting stuck on, trying over and
 over again to process this file but it kept on failing.

 I removed this file from the project (it was non-essential and we can
 re-add it again later if we need to), and tried again. This time it ran
 through without errors and told me that it had finished, after about 10
 seconds! Needless to say that nothing was transferred.

 It seems I have more reading to do on this. But yes, I am also a bit
 mystified at why they don't make it easier to migrate to the cloud
 environment. Surely that would have to have been one of these first things
 they considered. Wouldn't it?




 On 12 February 2014 05:31, Paul Glavich subscripti...@theglavs.comwrote:

 We moved from a 3rd party hosted full TFS instance to TFS Online however
 we only use the work items, not source control(I prefer mercurial/git).



 It was a little painfull as we had used some customisation to
 fields/templates.



 However, it was **mostly** ok (if a little time consuming). I just got
 the entire backlog into Excel. Did the same the TFS online, copy common
 fields from one excel sheet to another, publish to TFS online. This got us
 an easy 80-85% there. Other stuff was customised or had some other
 weirdness we had to look into but not too bad. We kept the old instance
 going while we did some sanity checks and ensured all was ok.



 BTW, TFSOnline is great. Love the web interface and use it instead of the
 VS integration.



 -  Glav



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* 11 February 2014 6:57 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Migrating TFS



 Grant,

 I did a migration from a one TFS server to another and it was a horrible
 experience. I don't recall the tool I used but I had the added complication
 of using a different Template on the destination server and it was trying
 to migrate loads of mismatching fields. The source control was ok and
 history seemed to work. The work items were sketchy with lots not migrated.
 We ended up keeping the old TFS server about in read only for reference.



 Good job going to the cloud, I use Visual Studio online for my own stuff
 and its brilliant. Shame they don't make it easier to migrate into.



 cheers,

 Stephen

 p.s. if you need help with it let me know ;)



 On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks Anthony. We're not worried about work items, just source code and
 history at this point, including branches. The TFS Integration Platform is
 beavering away as I write this (trying it out on a test copy of the
 project), telling me that 176 of 335 change groups have been migrated.

 I guess I'll just let it run and see where it lands me.



 On 11 February 2014 15:40, Anthony Borton antho...@enhancealm.com.au
 wrote:

 Hi Grant,



 I moved a client with around 35 team projects from an on-premises TFS up
 to Visual Studio Online using the TFS Integration Platform. I was pretty
 lucky in that they only needed the source to go up and didn't have work
 items to work about. The process was quite a bit more time consuming than I
 had planned and it was a seemingly never-ending exercise in massaging
 settings to get the source (with history) from each TP up to the cloud. A
 future TFS 2013 update should include a feature to help move data from VSO
 down to TFS but I haven't heard if there is anything there to help go the
 other way.



 Cheers



 Anthony Borton

 Senior ALM Trainer/Consultant

 Visual Studio ALM MVP

 Enhance ALM Pty Ltd



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Tuesday, 11 February 2014 3:07 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Migrating TFS



 Hi All

 Has anyone moved from on-premises TFS to visual studio online? We have a
 large solution, including branches, that needs to be pushed into the cloud
 as soon as possible and I'd love to hear any war stories before I start.

 I'm thinking about using the tool at http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/.

 Cheers

 Grant

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

...and it's not just this one instance. What they did with Silverlight was
a disgrace and cost a lot of developers dearly in terms of credibility with
customers and clients. I will personally never trust a Microsoft roadmap
again.

Apart from that, we're seeing crazy release schedules, useful features
being removed from new versions of products (and no explanation as to why),
and half finished products (like this TFS Integration tool and the early
incarnations of Azure to name just two examples) being put out there as a
result. MSDN magazine is a waste of time unless you are working with the
flavour of the month technologies and TechEd has become a thinly veiled
exercise in marketing.

It was not always thus. I do remember a time when dev support was second to
none, but not any longer. A lot of experienced talent has moved onto other
platforms now and we are all poorer for it.

I know that things move quickly but MS is big enough to walk AND chew gum
at the same time, so developing new things at the same time as providing
quality support for existing tech (which includes provision of adequate
tooling) shouldn't be as difficult as it appears to be.

I hope the new CEO understands these things.

Anyway, end of rant. I have to go and continue fighting with Visual Studio


On 12 February 2014 14:50, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

 Unfortunately, I agree.

 I do see some work done on things like ASP.Net (in an MVC focused world).
 It would be nice if they did focus on the old stuff as much as the new but
 I guess they have to balance things. No point in supporting old things that
 no one uses any more.
 Software moves so fast, they invent things faster than anyone can learn
 it. The bleeding edge hurts, always having to solve problems no one has hit
 before. The old stuff is boring and has been done to death.
 That said its the boring stuff that makes up 80% of the code so you can't
 ignore it.

 Microsoft, if you are listening, you have some damaged reputation that
 needs repairing. Do you even code? (hehe. I was going to write do you even
 lift?)

 They need to speak with Greg K, I'm sure he has a few things to say about
 the matter. ;)



 On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Update : the TFS Integration tool has proven to be completely useless. It
 just doesn't do what it says on the tin, not in this case anyway. Even when
 I could get it sort of working it kept throwing inexplicable exceptions.

 I'm migrating the current cut of the source code manually and recreating
 my branches. We'll lose our history, but better that than wasting days on
 end fighting with these 2nd rate tools.

 If Visual Studio itself wasn't the best IDE out there, we would migrate
 away to other platforms I think. Developer support in general just isn't
 good enough within Microsoft any longer, and unless you are working with
 the latest shiny new thing they don't seem to care.


 On 12 February 2014 09:18, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks all for the responses. Ran a test yesterday and it failed due to
 a one file in our project which it kept getting stuck on, trying over and
 over again to process this file but it kept on failing.

 I removed this file from the project (it was non-essential and we can
 re-add it again later if we need to), and tried again. This time it ran
 through without errors and told me that it had finished, after about 10
 seconds! Needless to say that nothing was transferred.

 It seems I have more reading to do on this. But yes, I am also a bit
 mystified at why they don't make it easier to migrate to the cloud
 environment. Surely that would have to have been one of these first things
 they considered. Wouldn't it?




 On 12 February 2014 05:31, Paul Glavich subscripti...@theglavs.comwrote:

 We moved from a 3rd party hosted full TFS instance to TFS Online
 however we only use the work items, not source control(I prefer
 mercurial/git).



 It was a little painfull as we had used some customisation to
 fields/templates.



 However, it was **mostly** ok (if a little time consuming). I just got
 the entire backlog into Excel. Did the same the TFS online, copy common
 fields from one excel sheet to another, publish to TFS online. This got us
 an easy 80-85% there. Other stuff was customised or had some other
 weirdness we had to look into but not too bad. We kept the old instance
 going while we did some sanity checks and ensured all was ok.



 BTW, TFSOnline is great. Love the web interface and use it instead of
 the VS integration.



 -  Glav



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* 11 February 2014 6:57 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Migrating TFS



 Grant,

 I did a migration from a one TFS server to another and it was a
 horrible experience. I don't recall the tool I used but I had the added
 complication of using a different Template

Re: Migrating TFS

[Grant Maw]

Thanks Anthony. We're not worried about work items, just source code and
history at this point, including branches. The TFS Integration Platform is
beavering away as I write this (trying it out on a test copy of the
project), telling me that 176 of 335 change groups have been migrated.

I guess I'll just let it run and see where it lands me.


On 11 February 2014 15:40, Anthony Borton antho...@enhancealm.com.auwrote:

  Hi Grant,



 I moved a client with around 35 team projects from an on-premises TFS up
 to Visual Studio Online using the TFS Integration Platform. I was pretty
 lucky in that they only needed the source to go up and didn't have work
 items to work about. The process was quite a bit more time consuming than I
 had planned and it was a seemingly never-ending exercise in massaging
 settings to get the source (with history) from each TP up to the cloud. A
 future TFS 2013 update should include a feature to help move data from VSO
 down to TFS but I haven't heard if there is anything there to help go the
 other way.



 Cheers



 Anthony Borton

 Senior ALM Trainer/Consultant

 Visual Studio ALM MVP

 Enhance ALM Pty Ltd



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Tuesday, 11 February 2014 3:07 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Migrating TFS



 Hi All

 Has anyone moved from on-premises TFS to visual studio online? We have a
 large solution, including branches, that needs to be pushed into the cloud
 as soon as possible and I'd love to hear any war stories before I start.

 I'm thinking about using the tool at http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/.

 Cheers

 Grant

Re: [OT] Email forwarding

[Grant Maw]

+1 to AWS Route 53. Gives us everything we need, and very cheap.


On 29 November 2013 13:07, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Thanks chaps for plenty of ideas to investigate.

 I just received a reply from IntaServe who have hosted our domain names
 (not DNS records) for several years, they offered me a cPanel facility
 where I can manage my DNS records if I move over to them. The whole deal is
 a bit confusing so I might ring them. It would be nice to have *everything*
 in one place.

 Greg K


 On 29 November 2013 11:05, Andrew McGrath andrew.mcgr...@workslink.com.au
  wrote:

 xname.org is free (donations accepted too) - have been using them for
 years for many domains without any issues.

 Andrew

 --
 *From*: Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com
 *Sent*: Friday, November 29, 2013 9:48 AM
 *To*: ozDotNet ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com
 *Subject*: RE: [OT] Email forwarding

  GoDaddy provide free DNS hosting for domains registered with them

 ZoneEdit is another provider I use (but only for a couple of domains)



 Cheers

 Ken



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Keogh
 *Sent:* Friday, 29 November 2013 10:22 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* [OT] Email forwarding



 Hello Friday Folks,



 For more than 10 years I've had some DNS records maintained by DynDns.
 Some are free and some are $30/year because they later removed the free
 service. I just received an email from their sales to tell me that if I
 want MX wildcard forwarding of email from my five domains it will cost
 $49.95 per domain per year. Pardon me, but isn't that a lot for such a
 piddling little facility?!



 Is anyone here using someone else for DNS that has a better and more
 reasonable deal? Searches reveal some companies that do hosting
 and forwarding for free (like 
 https://www.namecheap.com/https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/546),
 but I find that hard to believe and would rather stick to someone reputable
 for a modest cost.



 Greg K

Re: Protecting video content

[Grant Maw]

Thanks for the very helpful responses guys.

We're using own own IIS streaming media server at the moment, but we are
not wedded to that by any means.

Using NT ACLs won't work in our scenario because there are various
different subscriber levels, subscribers that are partnered with other
subscribers for exclusive content and so forth - too many arbitrary rules
that are constantly changing. Our own custom handler seems to be the
logical way to handle these, and we knew we'd need to be able to handle
byte-range requests, but it's good to hear someone else confirm that.

We'll also look at the Vimeo Pro offering, which seems like it could also
do the job quite well - although we'll use a lot more storage than 20GB per
month.

Grant


On 26 November 2013 08:14, Adrian Halid adrian.ha...@itvision.com.auwrote:

 “IIS streaming media server”



 Are you hosting the video or using a 3rd party such as Vimeo or You Tube?



 I have used Vimeo Pro membership $199 per year and they allow you to embed
 video and restrict it by domain names so that they are not visible on
 vimeo.com or any other site that tries to view/embed it.



 I have then created web pages that restrict access to content based on the
 Vimeo video id.

 A user will login with forms based authentication and we restrict access
 to the video content they are allowed to view.



 Note: Vimeo allows you to remove any Vimeo logo’s and replace them with
 your company logo.







 *Regards*



 *Adrian Halid*





 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Monday, 25 November 2013 2:47 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Protecting video content



 All

 I'm trying to find the most optimal way of protecting video content in an
 asp.net app. We have an app that displays video from an IIS streaming
 media server *that is separate from our main web server*. Some of the
 video is publicly available, some of it is subscriber content. There are
 different levels of subscriber (so higher levels get more video than lower
 levels). We want to be able to protect the subscriber content somehow.

 All video is going to be linked to via a HTML 5 video / tag. We want to
 stop subscribers from copying the URL of subscriber content from the page
 source and sharing it around over the internet.

 I thought about writing a HTTP Handler that intercepts the requests and
 deals with authorisation. This would take the form of something like 
 http://mysite.com/getvideo.ashx?ID=xx;. If they're not authenticated
 and authorised it would bounce them to some sort of not authorised page.
 This would stop link theft, but I am not sure if we'd get the benefits of
 the streaming media server by doing this.

 Would love to hear your thoughts if you've been down this road.

 Cheers

 Grant

Protecting video content

[Grant Maw]

All

I'm trying to find the most optimal way of protecting video content in an
asp.net app. We have an app that displays video from an IIS streaming media
server *that is separate from our main web server*. Some of the video is
publicly available, some of it is subscriber content. There are different
levels of subscriber (so higher levels get more video than lower levels).
We want to be able to protect the subscriber content somehow.

All video is going to be linked to via a HTML 5 video / tag. We want to
stop subscribers from copying the URL of subscriber content from the page
source and sharing it around over the internet.

I thought about writing a HTTP Handler that intercepts the requests and
deals with authorisation. This would take the form of something like 
http://mysite.com/getvideo.ashx?ID=xx;. If they're not authenticated
and authorised it would bounce them to some sort of not authorised page.
This would stop link theft, but I am not sure if we'd get the benefits of
the streaming media server by doing this.

Would love to hear your thoughts if you've been down this road.

Cheers

Grant

Re: NBN Petition

[Grant Maw]

Just to be clear - my previous comment was not about the merits or
otherwise of a FTTP NBN, nor was it about the legitimacy of petitioning.

Petitioning is legitimate, obviously. I was commenting on whether or not
this petition reflects the will of the electorate and whether it will make
any difference to policy anyway. It doesn't (there are too few
respondents), and it won't.

The coalition went to the election with a clear policy based on the FTTN
model. For better or worse, they got elected, and that's what they're going
to implement. That's not going to change. Do I wish they would implement a
FTTP NBN? Of course I do. Are they going to? No.

Whether you like it or not, you have to work within the country's political
system. It's not perfect, but it's the best we've been able to achieve so
far. Forcing the govt to listen to the will of the people as issues arise
simply isn't practical, but hey, if you want to change the system so that
the government makes decisions using alternative methods (irrespective of
whether they are made of straw) then I wish you the best of luck in your
political career.


On 5 November 2013 14:02, David Burstin david.burs...@gmail.com wrote:


 On 05/11/2013 2:10 PM, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:
 
  I find your version of democracy very entertaining.
 
  Well the only alternative that I can see is getting people to vote on
 every single issue. Is that what you are advocating?

 I imagine that if you think about it you will find that there are many
 other alternatives, not just the strawman you presented. One that is quite
 close to the reality is that as issues arise, the government is forced to
 listen to the will of the people and at least reexamine its policies. Fear
 of losing marginal seats has this effect. So, how do the people make
 themselves heard? Signing petitions is one legitimate way.

Re: [OT] FTP client problems

[Grant Maw]

Just a side-comment - maybe we're luddites here, but we use FTP all the
time to get things from A to B. Every single day. I know it's old, but it's
still useful.


On 18 October 2013 09:46, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 You do need a higher end firewall though.


 I didn't want to confuse matters previously, but now things have calmed
 down I can add that the offending server is actually inside an Amazon AWS
 server instance. I turned off the Windows firewall ages ago, but Amazon
 have their own Security Group feature where you say which
 inbound/outbound ports are open. I'm not sure why they have such a meta
 firewall as it just confuses things for customers. It turns out that this
 feature was irrelevant to our problem anyway.

 The other good news is that the chap writing the Borland C++ code found a
 passive switch which lets his ftp operations work perfectly. I'm still
 going to urge him over to http instead.

 Greg K

Re: In praise of T4 code generation

[Grant Maw]

I gave up on T4 in frustration a long time ago. We use CodeSmith - we find
it easy to use and quick to get things done. Having read this, might look
at T4 again now and see if it's improved.


On 12 October 2013 18:14, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, A few years ago I wrote (or rewrote) a quite large WPF Desktop app,
 it's my hobby app like a lot of us have. It maintains RDB tables of the
 music, books, video, etc in the household. This app was started in Access
 2.0 back in 1992 and I think it's gone through at least 6 generations of
 rewrites since then due to the ever-changing languages, platforms, kits and
 frameworks. The last incarnation of the app took several months of spare
 time to get into a good working condition, but by the time it was nearly
 finished it was obsolete.

 A few months ago I started a new rewrite using the latest Entity
 Framework, lots of WPF binding and recent groovy techniques and tools. 14
 underlying tables are editable, and by some unimaginable effort in previous
 years I managed to hand code (with lots of copy and paste) grids and
 dialogs for all of the tables, all similar but slightly different.

 In the latest rewrite I just couldn't face migrating or writing 14 sets of
 grids and editors again, so I decided to use T4 templates to generate it
 all. I'm really happy with the results and this post is basically just a
 reminder that in my opinion, good old fashioned code generation still has a
 place in the modern world.

 I composed an XML document describing the attributes of every table and
 field and then used TT files to generate the grid xaml, grid code, dialog
 xaml, dialog code, ICommand definitions and handlers, controllers, and
 validation. It's a slog to get the infrastructure started, but once it's
 going it just spits out reliable working code like confetti. As you make
 improvements in the templates it's most gratifying to see the benefits
 magnified out over the generated code.

 I find the T4 Toolkit a bit fiddly to use and generate multiple files, so
 I found this:

 https://github.com/damieng/DamienGKit

 I'm impressed by this concise and convenient utility that helps you spit
 out multiple files from a single template.

 Greg K

MSDN mag

[Grant Maw]

I got my MSDN magazine in the post today and it's all about Windows Phone.
July's edition was the same.

I get the whole thing about their marketing and the stiff competition in
the phone market but I wonder if they realise that there are still some of
us working in the database space, the asp.net space, the Dynamics space etc
who couldn't give two knobs of billy goat sh*t about Windows phone.

I can't remember that last time I found a useful article about SQL server
or Dynamics CRM in this magazine.

MSDN mag was once something I read cover to cover. Now, I glance at the
front page, maybe read the editorial, then throw it into a drawer never to
be looked at again.

Am I the only one?

OT-ish New Microsoft CEO

[Grant Maw]

You've all probably seen this but here it is anyway :
https://www.facebook.com/hanselmanformsftceo

Re: Options for exposing TFS to customers and/or ticketing system

[Grant Maw]

We have looked at this from the perspective of rolling our own. The idea
was to write an ASP.NET app that provided a way for our customers to come
in and log feature requests, report bugs and so forth via some interface
that we would create, and have the work items logged directly into TFS. We
also needed the ability for customers to see the status of any work items
that they have logged previously.

What stopped us was the licensing - MS licensing told me that we would need
a TFS license for every customer. That policy effectively pulled the
shutters on the project so now we do it manually.


On 7 August 2013 13:05, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.com wrote:

 We are now big enough to require a ticketing system to manage customer
 requests/tasks.

 Internally (8 of us) we use cloud TFS (visualstudio.com) and Office 365
 so a cloud based solution suits us better then us having to manage it. In
 fact our whole infrastructure is slowly migrating to azure anyway.

 One of our customers has mentioned that another vendor as opened their
 internal TFS to them so the solution might be as simple as that.

 However I thought I'd get some outside wise heads to comment on what they
 might be doing or would recommend or perhaps not recommend. Before I head
 down the road of evaluating systems.

 The main requirements are:

 1. Avoiding duplication of data entry
 2. Integration with VS2012 is a big 'would like' but not a show stopper as
 we're to hapy to continue using TFS as our main entry point.
 3. Prefer to pay someone else to manage it within reason

 We (people and clients) are world wide so local Asia/Pacific hosting etc.
 is not a necessity in the slightest.


 What do you guys do?
 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland

Re: Options for exposing TFS to customers and/or ticketing system

[Grant Maw]

The response I had from MS licensing was dated 30 May this year. I am not
aware that anything has changed. If it has changed then I would love to
know as we would resurrect this project.


On 20 August 2013 09:16, David Kean david.k...@microsoft.com wrote:

  Grant, do you know if this is still true?

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Monday, August 19, 2013 4:00 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Options for exposing TFS to customers and/or ticketing
 system

 ** **

 We have looked at this from the perspective of rolling our own. The idea
 was to write an ASP.NET app that provided a way for our customers to come
 in and log feature requests, report bugs and so forth via some interface
 that we would create, and have the work items logged directly into TFS. We
 also needed the ability for customers to see the status of any work items
 that they have logged previously. 

  

 What stopped us was the licensing - MS licensing told me that we would
 need a TFS license for every customer. That policy effectively pulled the
 shutters on the project so now we do it manually.

 ** **

 On 7 August 2013 13:05, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.com wrote:

 We are now big enough to require a ticketing system to manage customer
 requests/tasks.

 ** **

 Internally (8 of us) we use cloud TFS (visualstudio.com) and Office 365
 so a cloud based solution suits us better then us having to manage it. In
 fact our whole infrastructure is slowly migrating to azure anyway.

 ** **

 One of our customers has mentioned that another vendor as opened their
 internal TFS to them so the solution might be as simple as that. 

 ** **

 However I thought I'd get some outside wise heads to comment on what they
 might be doing or would recommend or perhaps not recommend. Before I head
 down the road of evaluating systems.

 ** **

 The main requirements are:

 ** **

 1. Avoiding duplication of data entry

 2. Integration with VS2012 is a big 'would like' but not a show stopper as
 we're to hapy to continue using TFS as our main entry point.

 3. Prefer to pay someone else to manage it within reason

 ** **

 We (people and clients) are world wide so local Asia/Pacific hosting etc.
 is not a necessity in the slightest. 

 ** **

 ** **

 What do you guys do?

 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland 

  ** **

Re: [OT] Developer keyboard

[Grant Maw]

Greg

Currently using the 7G


On 15 August 2013 14:11, Greg Low (Old POP Address) g...@greglow.comwrote:

 Hi Grant,

 ** **

 Which SteelSeries ones do you like?

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Thursday, 15 August 2013 2:00 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Developer keyboard

 ** **

 You really ought to try a mechanical keyboard. They are more expensive but
 they are solid, well built, and will last you a lifetime if you look after
 them. My (non-touch) typing has improved by a factor of 2, and I was pretty
 fast before this. Look at Armor for a wireless one or SteelSeries for a
 wired one.

 ** **

 On 15 August 2013 13:51, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.com wrote:*
 ***

 Do not accept that the ergonomic keyboard will make your life easier. I
 used one for well over a year before I realised I hated it. its too big,
 its inconvenient. when debugging step out is a pain in the neck as I'm used
 to using my left hand alone to do this (Shift-11) as my right hand is on
 the mouse so i can inspect variables or whatever I need to do when
 debugging.

 ** **

 I'm back on a compact keyboard - works for me.


 http://www.dhgate.com/product/new-dell-mini-1012-series-uk-black-keyboard/143650991.html?utm_source=plautm_medium=GMCutm_campaign=wisshenutm_term=143650991f=bm%7c143650991%7c104006-Keyboards-Mice-Input%7cGMC%7cAdwords%7cpla%7cwisshen%7cAU%7c104006007-LaptopReplacementKeyboards%7cc%7cgclid=CIvSya7F_rgCFcYipQodXjoAkA
 

 ** **

 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi David,

 ** **

 I'm a big fan of keyboards and I've tested heaps and heaps of them and I
 always go back to the ergonomic ones from Microsoft.

 I know you don't like them but I think they are very very good and once
 you get used you'll never want to go back.

 ** **

 I'm currently using the Microsoft Natural 400 

 http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/natural-ergonomic-keyboard-4000*
 ***

 ** **

 I have one at home and one at work and they rock. The split angle is small
 enough to allow easy use with one hand in the rare moments that I need to
 use a single hand and keep a hand on the mouse.

 The older ergonomic ones were having a higher angle making them impossible
 to use with one hand.

 I also looked at that new Manta Ray and I think I'll buy one. I like that
 the keypad is separate and I love the long delete key (my previous keyboard
 had that long delete and I enjoyed it.

 ** **

 To make my life easier I always remap most of VS commands that I
 frequently use to use only the left hand with no need to use the right hand.
 

 - Alt+1 - Build Selected Project

 - Alt+2 - Find References (Resharper)

 - Alt+W - Highlight References

 - Alt+Q - Goto Definition

 and few more so you can keep a hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard :)
 

 ** **

 I think no keyboard shortcut should ever need two hands.

 Whoever came up with the Ctrl+Shift+F12 shortcut and Ctrl+Shift+B?

 Have you tried to press Ctrl+Shift+B with one hand? My hand hurts just
 looking a the keyboard to try to figure out how to press that.

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:08 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:***
 *

 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 12:04 PM, David Richards 
 ausdot...@davidsuniverse.com wrote:

 A bit off topic and a bit on topic.  I've been in the market for a good
 developer keyboard for a while but never seem to find anything I like.  I
 was just wondering if others on this list had found a decent keyboard.

 ** **

 A few qualifying points:

 ** **

 I don't want a number pad or at least I don't want one on the right of the
 keyboard.  Not that I have anything against them, I just want my mouse to
 be closer.  I've tested this using a cheap (and crappy) laptop like
 keyboard and there is a noticeable difference in comfort.  I can just as
 easily by a separate number pad keyboard to position elsewhere.

 ** **

 ** **

 Or not at all.  If you touchtype, they are almost unused.  Funny I didn't
 realise this, I just picked up my somewhat used KB and held it to reflect
 light.   Right.  The numeric KB is still matte, the main KB numbers are
 shiny with wear.

  

 I would prefer the cursor keys and the other navigation keys to be in a
 reasonable location.  My crappy keyboard as some of these along the
 bottom.  It also sacrificed the right Control key in favour of a Scroll
 Lock key.  Who uses scroll lock any more?

 ** **

 ** **

 What does it even do?  

  

 I don't like those ergonomic keyboards that split the keyboard

Re: [OT] Developer keyboard

[Grant Maw]

You really ought to try a mechanical keyboard. They are more expensive but
they are solid, well built, and will last you a lifetime if you look after
them. My (non-touch) typing has improved by a factor of 2, and I was pretty
fast before this. Look at Armor for a wireless one or SteelSeries for a
wired one.


On 15 August 2013 13:51, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.com wrote:

 Do not accept that the ergonomic keyboard will make your life easier. I
 used one for well over a year before I realised I hated it. its too big,
 its inconvenient. when debugging step out is a pain in the neck as I'm used
 to using my left hand alone to do this (Shift-11) as my right hand is on
 the mouse so i can inspect variables or whatever I need to do when
 debugging.

 I'm back on a compact keyboard - works for me.

 http://www.dhgate.com/product/new-dell-mini-1012-series-uk-black-keyboard/143650991.html?utm_source=plautm_medium=GMCutm_campaign=wisshenutm_term=143650991f=bm%7c143650991%7c104006-Keyboards-Mice-Input%7cGMC%7cAdwords%7cpla%7cwisshen%7cAU%7c104006007-LaptopReplacementKeyboards%7cc%7cgclid=CIvSya7F_rgCFcYipQodXjoAkA


 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi David,

 I'm a big fan of keyboards and I've tested heaps and heaps of them and I
 always go back to the ergonomic ones from Microsoft.
 I know you don't like them but I think they are very very good and once
 you get used you'll never want to go back.

 I'm currently using the Microsoft Natural 400
 http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/natural-ergonomic-keyboard-4000

 I have one at home and one at work and they rock. The split angle is
 small enough to allow easy use with one hand in the rare moments that I
 need to use a single hand and keep a hand on the mouse.
 The older ergonomic ones were having a higher angle making them
 impossible to use with one hand.
 I also looked at that new Manta Ray and I think I'll buy one. I like that
 the keypad is separate and I love the long delete key (my previous keyboard
 had that long delete and I enjoyed it.

 To make my life easier I always remap most of VS commands that I
 frequently use to use only the left hand with no need to use the right hand.
 - Alt+1 - Build Selected Project
 - Alt+2 - Find References (Resharper)
 - Alt+W - Highlight References
 - Alt+Q - Goto Definition
 and few more so you can keep a hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard
 :)

 I think no keyboard shortcut should ever need two hands.
 Whoever came up with the Ctrl+Shift+F12 shortcut and Ctrl+Shift+B?
 Have you tried to press Ctrl+Shift+B with one hand? My hand hurts just
 looking a the keyboard to try to figure out how to press that.






 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:08 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 12:04 PM, David Richards 
 ausdot...@davidsuniverse.com wrote:

 A bit off topic and a bit on topic.  I've been in the market for a good
 developer keyboard for a while but never seem to find anything I like.  I
 was just wondering if others on this list had found a decent keyboard.

 A few qualifying points:

 I don't want a number pad or at least I don't want one on the right of
 the keyboard.  Not that I have anything against them, I just want my mouse
 to be closer.  I've tested this using a cheap (and crappy) laptop like
 keyboard and there is a noticeable difference in comfort.  I can just as
 easily by a separate number pad keyboard to position elsewhere.


 Or not at all.  If you touchtype, they are almost unused.  Funny I
 didn't realise this, I just picked up my somewhat used KB and held it to
 reflect light.   Right.  The numeric KB is still matte, the main KB numbers
 are shiny with wear.


 I would prefer the cursor keys and the other navigation keys to be in a
 reasonable location.  My crappy keyboard as some of these along the
 bottom.  It also sacrificed the right Control key in favour of a Scroll
 Lock key.  Who uses scroll lock any more?


 What does it even do?


  I don't like those ergonomic keyboards that split the keyboard to
 be comfortable for two hands.  I don't know about the rest of you but I
 spend at least as much time with one hand on the mouse and the other on the
 keyboard as I do with both hands on the keyboard.  So the ergonomic aspects
 are actually a hindrance when typing with one hand.


 Disagree.  Going back to flat KB's is a major pain now for me.


 I don't care about media buttons or any other specific use button.  I
 never user them.  They just make the keyboard bigger.  20% of the keys on
 my current keyboard will never be used.


 Agree, and get rid of the effing flock key and all the media shifts on
 the f keys.


  Obviously I want the keys to be comfortable to use 8 hours a day.


 Dude, at least 8.  You likely use a KB another 4-8 when you get home.


 The recently announce keyboard from microsoft is fairly close to what
 I'm looking for:


 

Re: (friday off topic) Fast hardware

[Grant Maw]

Another thing I have found that keeps me moving, albeit a lesser thing, is
a decent keyboard. Particularly for us older fellows (I am looking at you
Greg Keogh) who grew up on solid hardware instead of the flimsy plastic
rubbish that gets sold these days, a decent keyboard boosts productivity
off the wall. I just bought an Armour U9W wireless mechanical keyboard and
it is the *best* I have used since my Uni days. It's heavy (you could belt
nails in with it), feels great, is non-slip and has a range of over 20m. I
can't imagine why one would want to be typing from 20m away - it's a bit
like an art gallery in that respect (you never use it, but it's good to
know that it's there).

Cheers

G


On 12 July 2013 13:32, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

 Totally agree. I've taken work laptops and put my own SSD hard drive in
 them in the past (without asking for permission usually. They hire me
 trusting that I know what I'm doing, and I know that it will mean I won't
 be sitting about waiting for stuff to happen).
 I did some benchmarking on build times and found that I could do a build
 in about 5 to 10 minutes. The rest of the team were taking 15 minutes per
 build. Companies really need to wake up and realise a few hundred dollars
 will save them immeasurable volumes of wasted time. AND keep their staff
 happy. Arguably their best resource. So worth it.


 On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.comwrote:

 About 2 years ago I opted to purchase a laptop that was the fastest I
 could afford but not paying stupid money.

 My work these days is mostly heavy database work so every gram of
 performance helps. It has a Sandybridge I7 and 16G of Ram. The key thing
 that sold me this laptop was that it supports 2 x sata III hard
 drives.These I replaced with a RAID-0 pair of fast SSDs.

 Anyway the point of this email is not that I'm boasting but that I cannot
 ever imagine going back to working on slower hardware ever again. The
 experience of not waiting to rebooting the machine, opening apps like
 visual studio or rebooting virtual machines in mere seconds (in fact  I
 built a new Windows7 VM in about 6 minutes from scratch) .

 If I can recommend anything to fellow dev,s especially those that do the
 paid time consultancy, is that please don't cripple yourself with bad
 tools.

 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland

Re: IIS has no folders

[Grant Maw]

Thanks Greg.

We had tried that, no joy. Looks like a reinstall of the OS :(


On 25 February 2013 11:40, Greg Kennedy gkenne...@gmail.com wrote:

 I just had this Grant.
 Turned out it was because I wasn't part of the BUILTIN\Administrators
 group on the machine.

 HTH.
 Greg


 On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Katherine Moss katherine.m...@gordon.edu
  wrote:

  I can’t really offer much on this one, since I’ve never seen it before,
 but I’ll have to agree with the consensus that IIS isn’t installed.  Or it
 is partially installed is more like it.  

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Grant Maw
 *Sent:* Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:57 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: IIS has no folders

 ** **

 Thanks for the responses - we thought the same, and double checked all
 that. Will look at it again. Will post here if we work it out.

  

 Cheers

 ** **

 On 14 February 2013 12:40, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com
 wrote:

 It looks to me like IIS isn't installed.

 Check under control panel, programs, add windows features/components.
 Visual studio may be using IIS express or Cassini

 On Feb 14, 2013 10:01 AM, Grant Maw grant@gmail.com wrote:

 All

  

 Has anyone seen this behaviour before? We have no Application Pools
 folder or Sites folder in this IIS8 instance of IIS. 

  

 We know IIS is running because we can run websites that are auto-created
 by Visual Studio when loading up a project.

  

 Removed/reinstalled all the components etc, to no avail.

  

 I am posting here so that in 30 seconds I will work it out myself, but
 failing that, any thoughts on what's going on would be appreciated :)

  

 Thanks


 Grant

 ** **

Re: How to diagnose WCF 'NotFound'

[Grant Maw]

Ye I think this whole naked bear wrestling thing is a wonderful idea.
Perhaps @ the next TechEd or CodeCamp Greg could do something like this. I
for one would pay good money to see it :)


On 21 September 2011 10:52, Stephen Price step...@littlevoices.com wrote:

 Now I know what WCF really stands for. Wrestling Championship Federation.

 Have you seen my bear, Tibbers? :)


 On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 8:01 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Add a WCF error handler behaviour which changes the http return code to
 200 even if there is an error (on the server side).

 ** **

 I’ve seen a few samples where people do this trick. However, I would
 rather have a naked wrestling match with a rabid grizzly bear than write
 some WCF behaviour code.

 ** **

 I will bear (no pun intended) this technique in mind for the future, but
 for now the real fix is to use streaming.

 ** **

 Cheers,

 Greg

 ** **

 The browser sees the http 500 return code which WCF returns when an
 exception is thrown, which the browser gets before Silverlight, then all
 Silverlight sees is a http 404.

 ** **

 See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee844556(v=vs.95).aspx for
 more info on how to actually implement it. Although I have implemented using

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.dispatcher.ierrorhandler.aspxas
  I change specific exceptions into particular fault contracts globally
 (DomainException becomes DomainFault etc).

Re: Microsoft BUILD / Windows 8

[Grant Maw]

To get it working on VirtualBox (assuming you had the same unexpected
error that I got) you need to do this :
In the settings for your virtual box, motherboard tab, make sure you have
selected Enable IO APIC, then on the Processor tab, make sure Enable
PAE/NX is selected.

I have also read somewhere that people are having trouble getting the
networking to work properly. I didn't have this issue but the current wisdom
for this is to go into settings and on Network-Adapter1-Advanced choose the
generic (Intel PRO/1000 MT) network card.

Hope that helps

Grant

On 16 September 2011 14:19, Winston Pang winstonp...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ah, nice, thanks Ken, I was using virtual box, but it crapped itself. So I
 thought it  was across the board.


 On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.comwrote:

  Applications like VMWare Workstation will let you run 64bit VMs even if
 the host OS is 32bit

 ** **

 Cheers

 Ken

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Winston Pang
 *Sent:* Friday, 16 September 2011 10:58 AM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Microsoft BUILD / Windows 8

 ** **

 Man it totally sucks.

 ** **

 I wanted to install x64 on a VM but forgot that my current install of
 windows is 32bit, so it wont run the Windows 8 x64 version, which is the
 only version that has the VS2011 express dev tools, GAHHH

 ** **

 And that link requires MSDN subscription only.

 ** **

 ** **

 On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, David Kean david.k...@microsoft.com
 wrote:

 Please also play around with the developer tools, I’d suggest downloading
 the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview (
 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2011/09/14/announcing-visual-studio-11-developer-preview.aspx)
 over the Express edition.

  

 One thing you should be aware of is that we only have a certain amount of
 time to react to feedback before the Beta – so please, please tell us what
 you think.

  

 Although Windows 8 seems to be getting the most attention, if you use TFS,
 there’s a bunch of goodness in this release which I’ve been dogfooding for
 the past 6 months; Agile tools to manage stories and tasks, *My Work*which 
 is basically a Pending changes on steroids, and a new built-in Code
 Review tool.

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* Thursday, September 15, 2011 6:23 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Microsoft BUILD / Windows 8

  

 I installed it on my Asus eee slate last night. First attempt left me in
 an endless boot loop telling me there was a problem. Maybe it was because I
 installed it in a pub? Backed up hard drive and formatted it, installing
 from scratch. Went much better second time. 

  

 It makes my slate so much nicer to use. Windows 7 was not fantastic for
 touch input. Windows 8 makes it so much nicer. It gives my slate two modes
 of use, walk around the house, drive with finger mode (classic tablet) and
 then keyboard and mouse (bluetooth) to do any desktop stuff. 

  

 Really fast to shutdown and start up. Its like less than 5 seconds to get
 to the login screen. 

  

 Unfortunately my slate has an problem where it just powers off randomly.
 Hardware issue, it started doing it a week ago and is still doing it. need
 to send it back for repair :(

 On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 9:18 AM, William Luu will@gmail.com wrote:*
 ***

 Thanks David. 

  

 That's one of the better summaries I've read thus far.

  

 On 16 September 2011 01:12, David Burela david.bur...@gmail.com wrote:*
 ***

 I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussion around this on the mailing
 list yet.

  

 I've got some notes about the day 1  day 2 keynotes


 http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/build-keynote-day-1metro-experience-with-jupiter-xaml-and-html5js/
 


 http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/build-keynote-day-2windows-server-8-and-developer-tools/
 

  

 *Some quick thoughts:*

 *Development*

 The new functionality for the immersive apps is cool. The charms that
 allow you to share data between applications (edit an image in an image
 editor, then have another app directly upload it to twitter) is cool.

 User account syncing across desktops is also interesting. Syncing combined
 with the Credential locker allows a user to log in to an app on one
 computer (e.g. using Facebook or Google credentials to log in via the Azure
 ACS), the credentials are saved in the locker and synced to their other
 computers. So later if they pick up a tablet and launch the app, they will
 just be logged in straight away. and it only takes ~3 lines of code.

  

 *as a desktop*

 The new tile start screen is cool. and the new immersive apps in the metro
 themed style is cool

 However I am finding it 

Re: OT : Training Provider

[Grant Maw]

Technical.

On 16 June 2011 13:30, Dimaz Pramudya dimaz.pramu...@gmail.com wrote:
 Are you after the technical training or the end-user one?

 Sent from my Windows Phone 7

Re: Is it possible to override a class?

[Grant Maw]

Damn. And here I was looking forward to a good old fashioned Silky
style stoush for a Friday afternoon :)

On 29 April 2011 12:52, Noon Silk noonsli...@gmail.com wrote:
 Noon Silk,

 I've gathered you dislike Resharper from this post and previous posts.
 Are you using an alternative? (eg CodeRush)

 I think you have stuck yourself in a corner where you've said 'i don't
 like it' and wont go back on your position even if it can cure cancer.

 I would like to show you around it sometime. All the things that annoy
 you about it (code completion, brace insertion etc) can be disabled and
 then you can properly try it without it getting in the way

 I'm not trying to start a war so lets not go down that path; just a warm
 invitation if you choose.

 :) You make a very kind offer. I know it doesn't come across in email very 
 well
 but I was joking really. I might evaluate resharper one day, but at the moment
 I don't do enough programming to warrant it. Thank you though :)

 I promise, I won't make stupid jokes about R# here again without having 
 trialed
 it (recently, I used it years ago now) for myself.

 --
 Noon Silk

 http://dnoondt.wordpress.com/  (Noon Silk) | http://www.mirios.com.au:8081 

 Fancy a quantum lunch?
 http://www.mirios.com.au:8081/index.php?title=Quantum_Lunch

 Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy
 of being this signature.

Azure on Windows 7

[Grant Maw]

All

Just been through a bit of pain trying to install the Azure tools for VS2010
on a Windows 7 box. Posting what I found here in case anyone else needs to
do this.

rant
The web platform installer kept failing on my machine when I tried using it
(as is the recommended way) to install this update. It wanted multiple
reboots, kept rolling itself back, and would not tell me why it was failing.
The log files it generates are full of opaque, impenetrable and
ultimately meaningless gibberish and there is no event log or other entry
anywhere that I could find to explain what was going wrong. Microsoft
support were utterly useless - the support person could not get a grip on
what I was talking about, asking me irrelevant questions like what time did
this happen and what percentage of your application is down.

This has wasted several hours of time this afternoon. I'm bloody
annoyed with MS at the moment - surely they can make this experience a lot
easier, particularly with a new product that they are trying to get the
community to accept. Getting up and running on the competing platforms is
simple and quick.
/rant

Anyway, after a bit of hunting I found this link :
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7a1089b6-4050-4307-86c4-9dadaa5ed018displaylang=en
which explains things much better. You need to ensure that your machine is
configured in control panel to enable .net framework 3.5 sp1. To do this
go into turn windows features on or off and you'll see Microsoft .net
framework 3.5.1 about halfway down the list of options). You also need to
have the IIS Management Console installed.

Stupid thing is that I had all this stuff turned on before I tried
installing the Azure Tools with the Web Platform installer, yet when I
checked in Control Panel later it was all turned off. The installer must
have switched all this stuff off for some reason and then not turned them
back on again afterwards.

The link above gives you version 1.3 of the Azure tools, or so it says when
you look at Help-About in Visual Studio. Trying to install the latest (1.4)
over the top of it does not work, as it says 1.4 is already installed, so
I'm still not sure what version I am running.

I hope this helps someone who has yet to go through this process .I'll post
more over the coming days as I start using these tools.

Cheers

Grant

Re: Raising property changed events

[Grant Maw]

Agree 100% with Stephen comments. For the amount of money and resources
Microsoft must put into MSDN it is crazy that you get better, more useable
results using a search engine written by their competitor, which often
points to other sites like StackOverflow or ExpertsExchange rather than
MSDN.

MSDN has the potential to be the absolute BEST developer resource out there
if they would only target the editorial effort more appropriately.
On 24 March 2011 09:38, Trevor Andrew tand...@tassoc.com.au wrote:

 David,



 I think that Stephen’s original rant was not that this was one example of a
 page documentation needing improvement, but that the entire style of the
 documentation is so minimal as to be close to useless.



 Unless I’m getting to the wrong bits, very little of the documentation I
 reach initially on MSDN is of any more use than confirming syntactic
 correctness and the most minimal explanation of the usage variation. And as
 Stephen pointed out, sometimes almost laughably obvious explanations of
 usage at that.



 My recollections of earlier versions were that they contained much more
 descriptive information, examples, guidance on the use of methods and the
 like. As stated below, it starts to look like Google gives broader
 information than MSDN does.



 Cheers,

 Trevor**



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *David Kean
 *Sent:* Thursday, 24 March 2011 2:17 AM
 *To:* djones...@gmail.com; ozDotNet

 *Subject:* RE: Raising property changed events



 If you come across pages where you think the docs need improvement, please
 use the Rating box in the top right. Given that there’s something like
 200,000+ pages on MSDN, the UE (doc guys) combine that with page views to
 focus on low rated, high viewed pages first.



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *djones...@gmail.com
 *Sent:* Wednesday, March 23, 2011 6:54 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Raising property changed events



 Imo. This has been the problem with msdn since the inception of .net.

 The last usable msdn was '98. Where you could find examples on all methods
 with related BUG: documents linked.

 The xml autodoc and java suffer from the same problem, the developers are
 there to write code and not provide examples.

 I haven't pressed F1 in visual studio since early 2001. It's a waste of
 time installing the docs as google will give you better and more concise
 information in half the time.

 .02c

 Davy

 When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I feel
 much the same way about xml
 --

 *From: *Stephen Price step...@littlevoices.com

 *Sender: *ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com

 *Date: *Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:48:10 +0800

 *To: *ozDotNetozdotnet@ozdotnet.com

 *ReplyTo: *ozDotNet ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com

 *Subject: *Re: Raising property changed events



 I was going to use this an opportunity to vent about the msdn documentation
 and then discovered that the page on this particular method is better than
 what I usually get on msdn docs.




 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.reflection.assembly.getexecutingassembly.aspx



 Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly Method



 Gets the assembly that contains the code that is currently executing.



 rant

 so does anyone else get frustrated with this kind of documentation? It's
 like finding comments in your code that say Gets the value from the
 property. yeah, I can see that from the code. Tell me something about why,
 or how to use it? 95% of the msdn doc pages have no examples. Typically,
 this particular one DOES but I'm sure thats because I wanted to rant about
 it and murphy's law was invoked. Most don't. Some explanations on what
 things actually do or why. Some examples. Please. We're guessing here and
 don't always have time or skills to crack open the dll with decompiler of
 the month and figure it out for ourselves.

 More examples please. Free standing, spelt out, working examples. Pretend
 we want to know how to use the methods. Give us an instruction manual.
 Please!!

 You'd make some happy people if you showed us how to use the framework.
 Throw some unit tests in there or something.

 /rant

 thanks,

 Stephen







 On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 1:06 PM, David Kean david.k...@microsoft.com
 wrote:

 Hmm, I'll check internally, but I'd be surprised if we give that guarantee.
 We're free to change our inlining policy at any time, in fact, we did just
 that in 3.5 SP1 x64 which broke a lot of customers who were relying on
 Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly() without explicitly turning off inlining for
 the method.

 Whether you can repro something now, is not a good indication of whether
 we'll continue to support in a future service pack or version - always check
  the docs. However, in saying that, the docs don't really make it clear that
 this might not work correctly in certain situations. In which 

Re: IE9 RTW

[Grant Maw]

Agreed. So far it looks to me like MS may finally have gotten it right.

On 15 March 2011 18:52, Stephen Liedig slie...@gmail.com wrote:

 Dispite all the negative comments so far on this list, I think IE9 is a
 huge improvement on previous versions, and its fast, faster than anything
 out there at the moment. But hey, that's just my opinion ;-)


 On 15 March 2011 03:48, David Burela david.bur...@gmail.com wrote:

 The final release Internet Explorer 9 is now available
 http://beautyoftheweb.com
 Go download it.

 Thoughts?
 I'm wondering if we'll start seeing smaller point releases (IE 9.5) as
 things get standardized. There has been a lot of talk about the release
 schedules of competing browsers (Firefox, Chrome).

 -David Burela

Re: string.Format and curly braces

[Grant Maw]

Does this help?

http://geekswithblogs.net/jonasb/archive/2007/03/05/108023.aspx

On 3 February 2011 15:42, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  Back to coding ... I diagnosed an app crash today caused by an argument
 to string.Format having curly braces inside it. I was doing something like 
 string.Format(Report
 title: {0}, title) where title was the string {Intention} and I'm told
 this is a perfectly acceptable title.



 We all know that you have to escape braces by doubling them in the
 arguments, but at what point in an app do you guard against this crash?
 Today it was way up in the UI, several months ago I had the same crash way
 down in a server logging method. The moderate sized app I'm working on today
 has 366 string.Format calls scattered all through it at different levels,
 some in a Silverlight app and some on the server side. How on earth do you
 globally guard all these calls without making a coding mess? I haven't found
 an obvious elegant solution yet. Has anyone else considered this problem?



 Sure I could wrap string.Format calls in an another function or create a
 string extension method that doubles braces in the arguments, but it seems
 clumsy.



 Greg

Re: Book recommendations - MVC and WCF : C#

[Grant Maw]

I've used WCF - Step by Step bu John Sharp (the MS Press book) to learn WCF.
Definitely worth a look for the learner. Lowy's Programming WCF Services
from O'Reilly is a good reference covering the more advanced topics as well.

Hope that helps!

On 21 December 2010 07:51, Glen Harvy g...@aquarius.com.au wrote:

 Hi,

 I'm looking to start using both MVC and WCF in C#.

 As I am a beginner in both these fields, can someone suggest a short list
 of books they would recommend I purchase.

 Thanks,

Re: ASP.NET 101 - How to prevent double-clicking on a submit button?

[Grant Maw]

We've always done it by using javascript, and disabling the button as you've
described.

HTH

Grant

On 30 July 2010 08:37, Dylan Tusler
dylan.tus...@sunshinecoast.qld.gov.auwrote:

 __
 [image: Sunshine Coast Regional Council]http://www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/

 We've got an Ajax-ified multi-page form and I want to prevent
 double-clicking on the final page's Submit button. My first thought is just
 to disable the button in its on_Click event handler. Is this a suitable
 approach?

 I've looked around a little, trying to see what is the best approach to
 prevent someone from clicking twice (or more) on a submit button, but there
 seems to be a wide variety of methods to choose from, many involving
 JavaScript, or css, and so on. None of them seem simple enough to risk
 experimenting with.

 Dylan Tusler



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Re: Web Permissions...

[Grant Maw]

You need to allow * to all the resources required by the page. If you have
a directory called CSS, you need
location path=css
system.web
authorizationallow users=*//authorization
/system.web
/location
or similar.

HTH

Grnat
On 15 July 2010 16:02, Anthony asale...@tpg.com.au wrote:

  I have asp.net website using forms authentication which works fine.



  I have one page(helpme.aspx)  i wish public access to without
 username/password.  I do this by



 Adding this to web.config

 location path= helpme.aspx

 system.web

 authorization

 allow
 users=*/

 /authorization

 /system.web

 /location





 Questionthis page relies on  css files and telerik controls which
 produce their own  links like  Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd...do i
 have to allow each individual reference file or is there an easier way?



 Is your website being 
 IntelliXperienced?http://www.intellixperience.com/signup.aspx
 regards
 Anthony (*12QWERNB*)

 Is your website being IntelliXperienced?

Re: OT USA Based Web Hosting provider required

[Grant Maw]

We use MAximum ASP. They are excellent.

On 7 July 2010 09:42, PhilB philb...@connexus.net.au wrote:

  Can anybody recommend a good USA hosting provider that is reliable and
 not too expensive?
 Must have a good bandwidth Internet connection.

 TIA Phil.

 Phil Best
 Strategy Map Balanced Scorecard System Architect

Re: KPI's for software developers

[Grant Maw]

It is very difficult to quantify programmer performance because no 2 jobs
and no 2 clients are the same. More code doesn't always mean better quality
code. Counting numbers of bugs is open to manipulation and a high number of
bugs is not always the developers fault. As a general guide if we look at
things like adherence to company standards and practices, client
satisfaction, and the number of avoidable errors, though there's nothing
formal in place.


On 25 June 2010 10:40, Richard Moore
richard.mo...@worldsmartretail.com.auwrote:

  Hi all



 Does anyone have any good useful key performance indicators (KPI) that
 measure a software developers performance?



 Kind regards





 *Richard Moore
 Analyst Programmer*

 [image: WSR-Signature.png]

 Ph: +61 7 3340 2500
 Fx: +61 7 3340 2550

 23 Hi-Tech Court, Eight Mile Plains, Qld 4113
 Locked Bag 38, Acacia Ridge, Qld 4110



image001.gif

Re: [OT] HealthSMART problems

[Grant Maw]

$360M makes QLD Health Payroll system debacle (which is based on
SAP/Workbrain) a baby at a mere $40M, and I echo Greg's sentiments about
doing it for half that price.

It'll never happen but I'd love to see a post-mortem (pun intended)
detailing what made this project such a catastrophe. Amongst other things,
they've had to get private security guards in to protect payroll staff from
lynching, according to the Courier Mail.



On 23 June 2010 11:22, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 with surgeons forced to compete with nursing staff and anaesthetists
 for access to computer terminals

 Remember computer terminals. We used to cue up for access to them back in
 the early 80s. I hope that sentence is not literally true.

 If only they'd used .NET ;-)

 Yeah, they spent $360,000,000 on the project, and I would done it for half
 that.

 Greg

Re: .NET Obfuscator Software..free!

[Grant Maw]

Interesting position. Your situation is obviously different to ours, but
when we write code for clients we always hand over the source code either at
the end of the job, or upon request. This is understood from the start. I
can't imagine doing it any other way.


On 3 June 2010 20:11, Anthony asale...@tpg.com.au wrote:

  I assume that if the client doesn’t ask for the code then i don’t give it
 out.  I would increase my fee if they want the code anyway



 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Michael Minutillo
 *Sent:* Thursday, 3 June 2010 3:07 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet

 *Subject:* Re: .NET Obfuscator Software..free!



 Well most clients I have dealt with in the past end up with the source
 code.



  After all, clients have been accepting obfuscated code since time
 immemorial already! (Well, at least since the 1980s.) That's what compiled
 code is! Unless you wanted to reverse engineer to assembly language, pretty
 much everything was obfuscated.



 In the form of a product that is true. But if that were the case I would
 expect the OP would have wanted to obfuscate the entire solution. As there
 is a single binary to be obfuscated (and it gets used a lot) it sounds more
 likely that it is being used in custom software that is developed for a
 single client. For the client:



 If they purchase a library then they get a support contract so if things go
 wrong they get fixed

 If they use an open source library then they get the code so they can fix
 issues or pass them on to someone to fix.

 If the developer hands them a library which is neither they could be in
 trouble.



 If you are selling a product with support then this is OK because you have
 an agreement with the client that you'll fix anything that goes wrong. If
 you were to have a falling out with the client over an invoice or something
 (it happens) then they effectively have a piece of software that only you
 (someone they no longer wish to do business with) can maintain.



 As a client I would consider that an unacceptable risk.



 On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Dylan Tusler 
 dylan.tus...@sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au wrote:

  That is potentially a pretty dangerous risk for a client to accept isn't
 it? Unless it contains some kind of proprietary algorithm or something I'm
 not sure it's a great idea.



 That's a pretty weird point of view.



 After all, clients have been accepting obfuscated code since time
 immemorial already! (Well, at least since the 1980s.) That's what compiled
 code is! Unless you wanted to reverse engineer to assembly language, pretty
 much everything was obfuscated.



 Dylan.






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 To find out more about the Sunshine Coast Council, visit your local council
 office at Caloundra, Maroochydore, Nambour or Tewantin. Or, if you prefer,
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 and not the views of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
 maile 3_1_0




 --
 Michael M. Minutillo
 Indiscriminate Information Sponge
 Blog: http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com

Re: Ignoring excpetions in catch

[Grant Maw]

Your example is a catch all which is bad practice.

The example in the MS article catches a specific exception. This is not the
same thing. There can be circumstances where you want to catch a specific
exception and do nothing about it.

On 1 June 2010 10:38, Arjang Assadi arjang.ass...@gmail.com wrote:

 I thought only the beginner programmers or programmers without any
 pride in their work or self discipline would write code like this:

 try
 {
  //some code goes here
 }
 catch
 {
  //No code here just business as usual, do nothing about the exceptions!
 }

 but maybe I am wrong, this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319465 was
 unexpected!
 in the code in the above link are there any reasons for
 1)Checking the type, or more generally first checking that at least
 the minimum requirements of an operations will be satisfied before
 using a sledge hammer?

 2)Using some other (better) code e.g. reflection etc. would be
 definitely more preferable to ignoring excpetion?

 3)Any other suggestions?

 Regards

 Arjang

This can't be right ...

[Grant Maw]

Stumbled on this today whilst looking for something else :

http://www.tfsnow.com/

Looks like a Readify site. Now take a look at the tesimonials. Surely
not.

Re: Cheapest way to get VS2010 Professional?

[Grant Maw]

*What is the *single* most exciting thing about it?*

For me, it's the stability. I've been using it since it came out and I've
not yet been able to make it crash. Previous versions would crash several
times per day for me.

Apart from that, the database tools are a big improvement over previous
versions.

This is, seriously, the BEST edition of VS that I have ever used. Lots of
little things all add up to make a great dev experience. Previous versions
were all like death by a thousand cuts because of all the little
annoyances. Most of these have been removed.

If you are able to, upgrade today. You'll thank yourself for it. If you can
add Resharper 5, even better.

Grant