Rendition Protocol

Crabmeat Cream Sauce

2011-12-26T10:34:00.003-05:00

We made this with lobster ravioli for a special occasion. The original recipe was for about one pound of pasta and in parentheses I've added my changes 3 pounds.2 ounces of unsalted butter (6 ounces for 3 lbs.)1 tablespoon of chopped shallots (1 large bulb for 3 lbs.)4 ounces of chunk crabmeat (8 ounces for 3 lbs.)2 ounces of Cognac (I substituted Grand Marnier because I had it on hand and used

Peach Cobbler in a Cast Iron Skillet

2011-12-26T10:21:00.004-05:00

This is insanely good, especially if you like cast-iron cooking.6 tablespoons of unsalted butter1 cup of sugar1 cup of flour2 teaspoons of baking powder1/4 teaspoon of salt1 cup + 1 tablespoon of whole milk1 can of sliced peaches with their liquid (I have been substituting 1 jar of Trader Joe's peach halves, minus 2 halves, with about half the liquid in the jar)Pre-heat the oven to 350 with a 10"

Testing Geolocation Locally with Chrome and URIs with file://

2011-11-07T20:29:00.004-05:00

If you need to test geolocation in Chrome using local files -- where your URL is going to start with file:// -- you need to throw a switch when you start Chrome. --allow-file-access-from-filesIf you're a Launchy user like me, you can do this by starting to type Chrome, hitting Tab, then pasting in that switch.This issue is documented and tracked here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/

VirtualBox on Mac OS X Lion Running Windows XP and Accessing a USB Drive

2011-11-06T22:39:00.003-05:00

File this one under "odd."While running VirtualBox 4.1.4 on Mac OS X Lion as the host and Windows XP 3 as the guest, I was having some trouble getting my Western Digital Elements external hard drive recognized on the guest. The external was formatted for Windows and all my data was added from a Windows machine, so I could read it from the Mac, but I couldn't write to it. The Mac would recognize

Moving Thunderbird from a PC to a Mac

2011-10-28T08:41:00.003-05:00

This was pure awesome sauce when I heard I could do it.I had been using Thunderbird on a PC for about two years before needing to move over to a Mac, OS X Lion, to be specific. Thankfully, you can move your Thunderbird profile from a PC to a Mac with hardly any fuss at all.1) Open up a terminal window. You should be in your user directory by default. If not, get there. The user Library directory

Testing for an empty sequence in XQuery

2011-10-20T07:31:00.004-05:00

In an XQuery code base I was maintaining recently, all external variables were strongly typed as strings (declare variable $input as xs:string external;). This saved some time and lines of code since we always knew the type of those variables and the code would fail fast if they were not strings.Unfortunately, the writers of the calling code decided it was too hard to make sure an empty string

Freeware and Shareware Tools

2011-08-01T02:28:00.004-05:00

I'll always forget about some of these tools primarily because I don't use all of them all of the time.ASP.NET / Visual Studio-relatedAnkhCastle WindsorCruiseControl.NETELMAHEnterprise LibraryFxCopGhostDocLog4NetNAntNArrangeNCoverNHibernateNuGetNUnitPowerCommandsProductivity Power ToolsReflectorReSharperSandcastleStyleCopTestDriven.NETBitKinexCLRProfilerColorPicDAEMON Tools Lite (mounting CDs)

Beware Old Posts

2011-06-14T15:41:00.003-05:00

I noticed that many of my older posts are woefully out of date. I added a little JavaScript snippet to warn you about that. There's probably a more elegant way to do this, but it'll work for now.var message = " STOP! This is an old post. Are you sure it's still relevant?";var currentDate = new Date();var thisYear =

XQuery Katas

2011-05-12T11:50:00.001-05:00

After having several MarkLogic projects back-to-back, I haven't had a new one in far too long. So, to practice my XQuery in the hopes of having a new one soon, I've started a collection of XQuery katas.The intent of these is less TDD and more brushing up on XQuery, but I'm also interested in testing my functions. To that end you'll see I have my tests built using:Visual StudioNUnitSaxon HEMeager,

Getting Capabilities from WURFL in ASP.NET

2011-05-12T11:40:00.001-05:00

This is one of those things that took me a little too much time to find the first time around.I'm using WURFL with 51Degrees for mobile device detection in an ASP.NET MVC application. I needed to also detect whether the device using the app is a tablet or not. WUFL has the "is_tablet" capability defined, but this is not a default property on the Browser object.So how do you get at the value for

Tequila

2011-03-16T19:19:00.006-05:00

I'm on a quest for a tequila that is as smooth to drink as Grand Marnier.paQuí Silvera : Surprisingly, this is a bit easier to drink than Herradura Añejo. It simply has a little less bite. I expected that I would like an añejo more.Herradura Añejo : It's not quite smooth sipping, but very good with a small piece of ice.Patrón Silver : Not sure what all the fuss is about here. They're clearly

Launchy, Remote Desktop, Dual Monitors, and Windows 7

2011-03-16T14:57:00.005-05:00

I've come to love Launchy -- to the point where I get irritated when it's not installed on a machine I might be working on temporarily.Unfortunately, when I setup my new machine, I suddenly could not trigger Launchy while using my preferred remote desktop application, visionapp Remote Desktop. I'm not sure if it was my new dual-monitor configuration or Windows 7, but every time I hit Alt+Space it

Reading List Now On Bitbucket

2011-02-25T19:07:00.002-05:00

I've noticed a number of developers making their reading lists public, so I've decided to stop writing mini blog posts about what I'm reading here and just make the whole list public over on Bitbucket.

Study Plan: February, 2011

2011-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

I was finally able to finish C# in Depth! I do admit to reading the final couple of chapters on 4.0 quickly, but at least I know what they cover when I need the concepts.Before I started Clean Code I found a title from Wrox, Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns. Although I've read O'Reilly's Head First Design Patterns, I still don't feel like I have a great grasp on some of the fundamental

Study Plan: January, 2011

2011-01-08T11:24:00.003-05:00

I finished The Art of Agile Development as planned in December. The key for me there will be to selectively apply what I can. It's unlikely that we would be able to use this development style completely for a few different reasons: we're all remote, we often work solo on projects because we're such a small group, and communication outside the group ... is improving.I'm fairly annoyed with myself

Study Plan: December, 2010

2010-12-03T10:37:00.000-05:00

Well, my November study plan did not go as I hoped. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I had a hard time finishing up Learning JavaScript and I'm still not done with The Art of Agile Development. The latter I've been trying to read quickly (for reasons I'll explain at a later date), but I consistently find myself slowing down with it. I don't know whether to say that's frustrating or not -- I

Writing Unit Tests Makes Me Feel Stupid

2010-11-24T10:35:00.000-05:00

Writing unit tests makes me feel stupid.Allow me to explain.I'm not talking about full-blown TDD, but simply about a beginner trying to write some tests in order to make sure code is working as expected in as many cases as possible. What I almost invariably run up against is my own questionable design choices that usually boil down to three issues: lots of dependencies, needing non-trivial data

Regex Matches in C#

2010-11-19T17:49:00.002-05:00

static void Main(string[] args){ string sample = "Swedish field marshal ... fact that Gustav II father the Thirty Years' War"; Regex r = new Regex(@"JS_DisplayEntry$(\d*?)$", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase); MatchCollection collection = r.Matches(sample); foreach (Match m in collection) { Console.WriteLine(m.Groups[1].Value); } Console.ReadLine();}

XSL Embedded Resources, xsl:include, Saxon HE, and You

2010-11-18T12:30:00.008-05:00

I wanted to:Set my XSL files in my .NET console application to be embedded resources so they wouldn't be so easy to tinker withUse xsl:include to modularize some XSL where appropriatePass a parameter into one of the XSL filesUse Saxon for its XSL 2.0 supportAt first, before I needed xsl:include, the code worked absolutely fine. The problem I ran into is apparently related to where the .NET

Meatballs

2010-11-14T17:16:00.003-05:00

Preheat the oven to 350.~1 lb of mixed ground beef, sausage, and veal OR 1/3 lb of each.1 egg1 clove of garlic1 cup of dried breadcrumbs1/4 cup of olive oil1/4 cup of waterSalt and pepper to your tasteParsley or oregano to your tasteMix it all together. Make balls about the size of a baseball. Place them on a baking sheet.Bake for about 40-45 minutes.

Study Plan: November, 2010

2010-11-11T10:35:00.001-05:00

Here's the planned reading list for November and what I hope to get out of each title. I usually like to read one code-focused and one non-code-focused at the same time.Learning JavaScript: I've used JavaScript for years, but always in bits and pieces. I decided to go a little deeper into it because it's a different language from my primary one (C#) and because I can use it immediately in my

Obstacles & Bootstrapping

2010-11-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

ObstaclesThe biggest obstacles in my way on this road are time and distractions. They're similar, but definitely not one in the same, and it's easy to let them interfere with my goals.TimeThis one's pretty simple. There's just not enough time in the day to learn everything I want to know about. More to the point, there's just enough time in the day to learn just enough to do my job, and I think

The Long Road

2010-11-07T10:32:00.001-05:00

Some days I hesitate even to call myself a software apprentice, but that's the best way to describe me.I've been involved with software, web development in particular, since 1999. I started out as a guy who kept volunteering for technical tasks with a publishing company working on CD-ROM products. First it was image manipulation in PhotoShop. Then it was tools like Folio to import data for

Stop All Visual Studio Web Applications From Starting When Debugging

2010-10-12T10:17:00.002-05:00

If you have a Visual Studio solution with more than one web application project, when you start the debugger you'll likely find that all the web applications will start their own ASP.NET Development Server instance. I wanted to stop that because I didn't need them all to start and I wanted to keep the system resources. Select the web application project. Go to the properties tab. Find the "

Storing a Directory Path with a Space and Using it in PowerShell

2010-09-13T19:58:00.003-05:00

Step 1: Store the path in a variable like so$7Zip = "C:\Program Files (x86)\7za.exe"Step 2: Wrap the reference in the double quotes and precede with the call operator like soForEach-Object { &"$7Zip" a ($_.fullname -replace "txt", "zip") $_.fullname }Step 3: Complain silently in your head about the time you wasted trying to figure that out.

Find a Column in Your Database by Name

2010-07-30T19:47:00.002-05:00

SELECT t.name AS table_name,SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id) AS schema_name,c.name AS column_nameFROM sys.tables AS tINNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_IDWHERE c.name LIKE '%isTextbook%'ORDER BY schema_name, table_name;Props to SQL Authority.

Convert HTML Stored in SQL Server as varbinary to Text

2010-07-23T09:04:00.002-05:00

I have a wonderfully exciting legacy database I'm handling and it contains a varbinary(MAX) field with HTML. For debugging purposes, every once in awhile I need to dig in and review what's stored there. Here's how I do that:SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX), mainText) AS htmlString FROM entry WHERE entryid = 1380915

A Little URL Rewriting with Managed Fusion Rewriter

2010-06-24T15:50:00.005-05:00

I'm stuck on IIS 6 for now and I needed to do a bunch of URL rewriting. No one wants to spend money these days, so we didn't spring for the Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite product. I have a lot of legacy URLs to handle, but we won't keep them in place for more than a year and by that time we'll likely be on IIS 7 with its own rewriting tools.I went with the Managed Fusion Rewriter tool both for its

New Phrase: Smells Like Mountain Oysters To Me

2010-06-11T17:26:00.007-05:00

I suggest the casual usage of a new phrase: smells like mountain oysters to me.What does it mean? Roughly, it means someone's trying to make you look like an fool, possibly in front of others, but definitely for their own gain. It could also simply mean someone's trying to feed you a line of bullshit.Would you eat a bull's testicles? Neither would I, but that's what mountain oysters are. The

Fiddler, Localhost, and Visual Studio

2010-04-28T18:13:00.003-05:00

When you're running a site through Visual Studio's internal web server, Fiddler doesn't pick up the traffic. The help documentation gives a few tips for working around this problem, but the one that worked for me I found on Loren Halvorson's blog: add a dot [.] after localhost and before the port colon. http://localhost.:2951/Props to Loren.

XQuery Link-Love

2010-04-13T20:46:00.003-05:00

Hi there.I recently received some link-love from Pete Aven (Twitter, Blog) for some XQuery and MarkLogic Server posts I have here. The posts are kind of out-dated at this point, but I leave them up in case they help someone out. When I was just starting out, this kind of information was invaluable to me so I'm just trying to pay it forward.I'm currently on a big SQL Server based project and my

TinyGet and URL Parameters

2010-04-09T13:34:00.002-05:00

TinyGet is still a tool I use for some quick and dirty load testing, but I never needed to pass it URL parameters before. Simply adding an amerpsand was failing. The trick is escape it with the ^ character.tinyget -srv:mydomain.com -uri:/Search/Results?q=food^&pIndex=5 -loop:10Thanks to the folks on the IIS forums for their help!

Quick Console App to Ping a Server

2010-03-10T18:51:00.004-05:00

This is based mostly off of something in the Microsoft documentation. It's just a quick hack to let me know when a remote server comes back up.static void Main(string[] args){ Ping pingSender = new Ping(); PingOptions options = new PingOptions(); // Create a buffer of 32 bytes of data to be transmitted. string data = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"; byte[] buffer =

Center the Effing Div

2010-02-25T20:06:00.003-05:00

.image { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 415px; /* fix the width while we're at it */ text-align: center; /* and we'll center the caption as well */}

Backup / Export Your Google Site

2009-10-08T14:38:00.002-05:00

Judging from this thread, the inability to easily backup/export a Google Site has been a problem for awhile. Thankfully there's a tool on Google Code you can use to grab a local copy. The tool is pretty simple, but the documentation is not entirely clear. Here's what I did for my simple site, which is private:Host: sites.google.comDomain: [leave blank]Webspace: [the last part of domain name path

MVC Storefront Collected Links

2009-09-27T10:41:00.005-05:00

There are videos and posts out there about the MVC Storefront sample application for ASP.NET MVC 1.0, but they're scattered around a bit.This list will mix the original posts from Rob Conery's blog, Weke Road, and the ASP.NET MVC video collection and some Rob's related posts.ASP.NET MVC: Introducing The MVC Storefront Series [video]ASP.NET MVC: MVC Storefront, Part 2 – Repository Pattern [video]

Unique Attribute Values Across Multiple Documents using XQuery

2009-07-31T14:51:00.002-05:00

It's a little slow, but here's one way to get a list of all the unique attribute values across multiple XML documents using XQuery. let $raw-values := for $book in collection("abc")/(gbook|set)[@type='oeb'] return element { "book" } { for $value in distinct-values($book//node()/@class) return element { "class" } { $value } }for $item in distinct-values($raw-values//class

MarkLogic XCC Layer File Open Errors

2009-07-10T10:42:00.004-05:00

If you have library modules you're importing, the query may work fine in cq, but if you try to use the same query via the XCC layer you may get "File Open Error" messages.One cause of this for me was the pathing in the import statement. cq seems to handle a relative path while XCC cannot, at least in MarkLogic 4.1.I needed to change from...import module namespace my = "http://blah.com" at "

MarkLogic, cq and Namespaces

2009-07-06T20:49:00.003-05:00

If you import an XQuery library in cq and declare the namespace, cq gets fussy if you then try to declare your own functions. I know there are clear reasons for this, but here's what I do so I can use my own functions during testing.xquery version "1.0-ml";import module namespace search = "http://marklogic.com/appservices/search" at "/MarkLogic/appservices/search/search.xqy";declare namespace

Saxon, Command Line, C#, and XSL 2.0

2009-07-04T18:31:00.006-05:00

I've been using Xalan/Xerces for command line XSL transformations for years, but I've been moving farther away from Java over the years, so I wanted something .NET compatible and I wanted something XSL 2.0 compatible. I finally switched to Saxon.I normally use the standard XML objects in my ASP.NET apps, but I'll switch to Xalan command line tools when I need the "write" extension. I can do the

Find Duplicate IDs in a Table with SQL

2009-06-09T13:10:00.003-05:00

This is a simple way to find all the rows that have duplicate IDs / values in a table.SELECT entryid, Count(entryid) AS ecount FROM filelocation GROUP BY entryidHAVING (Count(entryid) > 1) -- This runs after the aggregate count() function

Getting Unique XML Element Values with XSL 1.0

2009-05-07T19:06:00.006-05:00

Today I needed to munge some dirty XML data. I still haven't taught myself XSL/XPath 2.0 yet, so I was limited to XSL 1.0 for now. The data I had looked like this, only much, much worse.Value 1|Value 2Value 1|Value 2Value 1|Value 2Time Value 1Time Value 1Time Value 1Value 3|Value 4<

Centering a div

2009-05-03T13:33:00.002-05:00

This approach will center a

in a scenario where you want to have the body of your page centered on the screen, but leave the text left aligned.body{ text-align: center; align: center;} #container{ text-align: left; margin: 0 auto;}align:center / margin: 0 auto are for IE/FF.

See Unencrypted DTSRun Commands

2009-04-04T13:34:00.005-05:00

If you come across encrypted DTSRun commands, here's a way to decrypt them.Drop down to the command prompt and paste in the full DTSRun string:C:\>DTSRun /~ZThisWouldBeYourBigUglyDTSRunCommandString /!X /!C Everything after C:\> is directly from the Job's Command text box. You have to add /!X and /!C to the end. Hit Enter to run it and the results then end up in your "paste" buffer, so you can

T-SQL SPROC to Re-Create a Full Text Catalog

2009-04-04T13:19:00.005-05:00

I cannot claim any ownership over this code. It's a colleague's, but it's so handy that I have to document it somewhere.This will create an SPROC to re-create a full text catalog, which of course can then be tied to a Job.CREATE PROCEDURE p_RecreateFT_Articles AS ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Articles] WITH NOCHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [PK_Articles] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [Article_ID] ) ON [PRIMARY] IF

T-SQL INSERT From One Table Into Another

2009-03-31T20:30:00.002-05:00

This is just a simple example of doing an INSERT INTO one table from another, with a hard-coded value thrown into the mix.INSERT INTO ProductSubjects (ID, ProductID, SubjectID)SELECT NEWID(), '52EB01B6-B768-4F9B-8F60-1A695A13D945', Subjects.ID FROM Subjects

T-SQL SELECT Using CASE and String Concatenation

2009-03-31T20:25:00.003-05:00

Here I'm selecting the ID field followed by a concatenation of 3 different subject fields, depending on whether or not the fields are NULL.SELECT ID, CASE WHEN Subject2 IS NULL THEN Subject1 WHEN Subject2 IS NOT NULL AND Subject3 IS NULL THEN Subject1 + ' : ' + Subject2 ELSE Subject1 + ' : ' + Subject2 + ' : ' + Subject3 END AS TheSubjectFROM SubjectsORDER BY TheSubject

Seeing Hourly Traffic with Google Analytics

2009-03-28T17:36:00.002-05:00

Here's how to create a report in Google Analytics that will give you an hourly traffic report for your site.Go to Custom ReportingClick "Creat new custom report"Open the "Site Usage" section on the left and drag Pageviews (or anything else you're looking for) over to one of the blue metric sections on the rightOpen the "Visitors" section on the left and drag "Hour of the day" to the green

Highlight a DIV Element onClick

2009-02-08T14:03:00.007-05:00

This is just a quick script to highlight a DIV element when a user clicks on an enclosed link. It's a little small/silly, but I've had more than request for something like this come in.Highlight

Row one HIGHLIGHT

Using PDFBox in C#

2009-01-19T17:37:00.003-05:00

Last week I was trying to extract text from PDF files in an automated fashion. After some searching I found a CodeProject.com article describing how to use PDFBox in C#. As of this writing, the DLLs needed for the C# version are only in the old SourceForge version, which seems to be behind the Apache Incubator current version in Java.For the SourceForge version, I created a console application,

Optimum WiFi on Metro-North's New Haven Line

2009-01-18T13:18:00.003-05:00

I'm on the Metro-North New Haven line quite a bit these days. I thought having access to Optimum WiFi would be a boon, but that hasn't been the case. In nearly all cases, you have to be right on the platform of each station to get access, which is of little use on the train itself.Here are some other general notes:If you allow automatic connections, the network will connect by itself at each

You'll Get the Idea

2009-01-17T13:22:00.002-05:00

I'll refine this over time.CCI Mini-Mag HP HV (36 grain): Very inconsistent report, but no jams.Federal Game Shok HV (40 grain): Clean and consistent. No jams.Remington Yellow Jacket HP (33 grain): Clean and consistent. No jams.Remington 22 Thunderbolt (40 grain): ?Winchester Super X Power Point HP (40 grain): ?

Thanksgiving, 2008

2008-11-26T12:57:00.004-05:00

As we come to Thanksgiving, here are some things I'm thankful for this year.My wife, children, and I had another year of good health.The country managed to get through the election without another legal fiasco.I found a new job (rather, a new job found me) relatively quickly after being laid off.We made the decision to not buy a new car or commit to major home renovations mere months before being

Loading XML into eXist Using XQuery and the Sandbox

2008-11-24T08:11:00.005-05:00

This past weekend I was tinkering with the eXist XML database. The installation went fine and some of their sample queries ran fine. My next step was to load some of my content into it.Rather than use their web interface or desktop client, I wanted to load the documents using XQuery through their sandbox application. I thought this would be quick and easy and would allow me to compare some

Exporting XML Files from Textml

2008-11-21T10:29:00.003-05:00

I had a case where documents were being created and stored dynamically in Textml Server by an application, but we wanted the physical files exported. I had a ContentServer class already in place for selecting all documents in a collection and for selecting a document by file name, which would make this easier. This was going nowhere near a production server, so reusing what I had to get this done

Weird Bug While Porting Textml Server Code from JSP to ASP.NET

2008-11-18T20:36:00.005-05:00

This morning I was porting an old search results page accessing Textml Server from JSP to ASP.NET. One feature implemented there is search within results. We execute this by storing the original query in the session and then, when a user asks to search within results, we pull it out and re-run it so the second query can reference the first. We have a line like this in the JSP page...

Logins Fail after SQL Server Restore

2008-11-11T21:10:00.001-05:00

After doing a SQL Server db restore, logins can be a problem. This script will re-sync the passwords.EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix','UserOne', null, 'pwd1'EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix','UserTwo', null, 'pwd2'EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix','UserThree', null, 'pwd3'To find these users.EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Report', null, null, null

Add XQuery Support to UltraEdit

2008-10-08T12:51:00.004-05:00

Leave it to the team that works on UltraEdit to make adding XQuery support easy.Here's a tutorial on adding a language.Here's the XQuery wordfile they provide.Done in about 15 seconds. Nice.

Stop a Long-Running Query in MarkLogic Server

2008-09-28T19:40:00.004-05:00

If you're like me, every once in awhile you'll be working on a query in cq, you'll do something stupid in XQuery, run the query, and it will run forever. MarkLogic Server has built-in timeouts, but you can stop a long-running query rather than waiting. Here's how you can do it using the default admin console in 3.2.In the left-hand column, click on Groups.Click on DefaultClick on App

The Last Game at old Yankee Stadium

2008-09-28T08:53:00.014-05:00

I was at the last game at the old Yankee Stadium last Sunday, September 21 with my father. I'm not going to get sentimental. There's a tremendous amount of history in that stadium, but the physical structure was due to be replaced. Here are some things I'll enjoy remembering about the last game:During the pregame ceremonies, Yogi Berra standing behind home plate, looking very small and frail,

Creating or Updating an htpasswd File

2008-09-15T19:07:00.003-05:00

Don't laugh.I do this maybe twice a year.To create a new htpasswd file:Using the command line / terminal, go to the directory you want to protect then type:user$ htpasswd -c .htpasswd YourUsernameType the password twiceThe tool you're using is htpasswd. The -c switch is the instruction to create a new file. The file name will be .htpasswd. Note that in most systems, a file that starts with a .

New XQuery Component for SyntaxHighlighter

2008-09-11T19:02:00.003-05:00

I created an XQuery component for Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighlighter, which you see in use with my XQuery snippets on this blog.I've asked Alex to add it to the download package, but you can also download it from my site.

Add Syntax Highlighting to Your Blogger Blog

2008-09-09T20:52:00.002-05:00

Here are a couple of good links to help you add syntax highlighting to your Blogger blog.The source in Google's code base.A "Yet Another Coding Blog" article.An alternate blog post in case one goes dark.

Atari 400 and My First Dose of FAIL

2008-08-18T20:18:00.008-05:00

I'm not sure what made me think about this now, but I was just daydreaming and thought about my very first programming experience.I had gotten an Atari 400 (may have been XL?) as a kid and it came with a BASIC cartridge and this binder full of programs you could write. I remember looking at them and thinking it was cool that if I type these odd looking lines that didn't make sense to me, the

Read in a String of XML to an XPathDocument in ASP.NET

2008-07-03T21:13:00.004-05:00

Had a string representation of an XML file today that needed to be read into an XPathDocument object.// results was the string XML file representationStringReader sReader = new StringReader(results); XmlReader xReader = new XmlTextReader(sReader);XPathDocument myXpathDocument = new XPathDocument(xReader);

Saving an XPathDocument or XmlDocument to a File in ASP.NET

2008-06-24T20:19:00.005-05:00

Today I was working on a class that was returning an XPathDocument representation of an XML document and I needed to save it to a file. I switched the class to return an XmlDocument ... and the reason for that should be obvious from the two code samples below.Here's how I saved an XPathDocument to an XML file:// myItems[0] is from a generic List listXPathDocument document =

Load an XML File from the File System into Textml with ASP.NET

2008-06-23T18:39:00.004-05:00

I'm building an internal application that needs to load an XML file from the file system into a specific repository path in Textml Server. Here's the method I used within a ContentServer class I created.The references to various this properties are set in the same class where I get the values from a configuration file for the staging and production servers.public bool Publish(string fileUri){

Using the ASP.NET AdRotator Control for Text-Only Ads

2008-06-17T21:16:00.007-05:00

Here's a pathetic little hack to leverage the ASP.NET AdRotator control to generate text-only ads.In your ASPX page:In your code-behind page:public void AdRotator1_

Getting Server and Other HTTP Information in a Class in an ASP.NET App

2008-06-15T18:53:00.000-05:00

Another tidbit I can never remember when I need it. You're working on an ASP.NET website and you have a class that needs to access the Request or Response information, for example. Use HttpContext.Current as in the sample below._name = HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"];

Removing Noise Words from a String with XQuery

2008-06-11T23:20:00.006-05:00

MarkLogic doesn't offer a way to do stop words (a/k/a suppression lists a/k/a noise words) by default for various reasons -- and I didn't want to block them from being used in searches -- but I was asked to remove them from consideration when using hit highlighting. Here's the code I used to remove a fixed set of noise words from a user's search string.define variable $NOISE_WORDS as xs:string*{

Controlling Which Button Fires When the User Hits Enter in ASP.NET Web Apps

2008-05-14T19:26:00.003-05:00

If you need to control which button fires when a user hits Enter on the keyboard in an ASP.NET web application, there are two simple ways to do this.On an ASPX page with no MasterPage and only one Button control to worry about, set the DefaultButton property of the form tag to the ID of the Button. Nice and simple.In my specific situation, I had a MasterPage and 3 different buttons, 1 for quick

Get a List of Embedded Resource Names Within a .NET Application

2008-05-09T21:22:00.004-05:00

I have a .NET Windows application and I wanted to embed an XSL file into it permanently and then reference it in code. Embedding it is just a quick setting change, but figuring out how to reference it stumped me. Here's how you can loop through all your embedded resources and see how you should reference them.Assembly myAssemblyList = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();string[] myResources =

Using an Enum Instead of "Magic Values" in an ASP.NET Website

2008-05-09T20:58:00.003-05:00

I have a nasty habit of using "magic values" in some complex web pages in ASP.NET sites ... you know, passing type=document or type=legal or type=address in the URL string and then having the page react to it. I've grown to dislike it because it can be a pain to debug on a complex page and I always have to remember the values I'm expecting. I'm experimenting with using a enum instead. Here's

Accessing XML Elements with Namespaces using the ASP.NET XPathNavigator

2008-05-09T20:42:00.003-05:00

If you need to access XML elements that have a namespace associated with them using the XPathNavigator object, here's how you can create an XmlNamespaceManager and use it. This is part of a bit of code where I was processing an RSS post.StringBuilder myString = new StringBuilder();XPathDocument myDoc = new XPathDocument(myDocumentUri);XPathNavigator myNav = myDoc.CreateNavigator();

NATO Phonetic Alphabet

2008-05-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

Letter Phonetic EquivalentA AlphaB BravoC CharlieD DeltaE EchoF FoxtrotG GolfH HotelI IndiaJ JulietK KiloL LimaM MikeN NovemberO OscarP PapaQ QuebecR RomeoS SierraT TangoU UniformV VictorW WhiskeyX X-rayY YankeeZ

Creating a Summary from a MarkLogic Search Result

2008-04-15T18:41:00.007-05:00

It's called a summary, or a snippet, or context. It's the string beneath each search result that shows you some words around your search term(s) in the document that was returned.There's a good one in lib-search if you're using it. I'm not ... yet. At first I tried to use just the relevant functions, but it wasn't doing quite what I wanted and it seemed pretty heavy, especially returning 25

LibraryThing's JSON API

2008-04-15T18:25:00.003-05:00

This morning I was tinkering with LibraryThing's JSON API just to demonstrate a proof of concept to some people internally. I used FireBug to take a look at what the service was actually returning. Here's the bare-bones script. LibraryThing Tests

This is an example of information we can get from LibraryThing.

Christmas on

Setting and Getting Documet Quality in MarkLogic Server

2008-03-28T18:16:00.010-05:00

I had a request to influence the score of documents returned by searches based on the year of publication. Since a year isn't used as part of most searches, it seemed like the best approach was to set the document quality to the pub year. Then I could use that value in the scoring calculations. Take a look at the Developer's Guide for how do do that.Here's how I looped through all the

Bad CodepointIterator::_next Error from MarkLogic Server

2008-03-17T19:22:00.003-05:00

Getting a "Bad CodepointIterator::_next" error from a query in MarkLogic? Check you configuration at the app server level. We were seeing this error on our production instance, but not our development instance. In our ASP.NET app (through XCC) we would see a generic message, but when we ran the query in cq we saw the more specific version. After a wasted day or so trying to track down the

Basic Information on MarkLogic Collections

2008-03-16T08:25:00.007-05:00

I wanted to get some quick information about all of my collections, starting with a list of names and how many documents were in each. This isn't rocket science, but I'll add to this post as the query expands.(: Set "collection lexicon" to true in the index definition. :)let $collections := cts:collections() return{for $collection in $collectionsreturn <

Hiding the Finish Button on an ASP.NET Wizard Control

2008-03-12T19:00:00.003-05:00

This is a Class 1 stupid hack. I think it's one of those things where there probably is an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it yet. On an ASP.NET Wizard control, I wanted to hide the Finish button. Here's one way.myWizard.FinishCompleteButtonType = ButtonType.Link;myWizard.FinishCompleteButtonText = String.Empty;myWizard.FinishCompleteButtonStyle.CssClass = "";

Save to Word in ASP.NET

2008-03-12T18:42:00.003-05:00

I was looking around for a code snippet to allow a user to save / export a print version of a web page to a Word file on the fly. This didn't need to be complex at all, but everything I found was either overwrought or would result in a Word document that displayed HTML tagging.Here's an oversimplified method that works. You can build this up as needed. NOTE: Be sure to eliminate the extra space

Save an ASP.NET TreeView Control to an XML File

2008-03-01T21:50:00.004-05:00

Here are two methods to help you take a TreeView web control and save / export / serialize it to a file. Add these two statements to the top of the file:using System.Xml;using System.Text;These two methods take the TreeView and recursively loop through all the TreeNode controls.///

/// Recurses through a TreeView web control exports the results/// to an XML file nested to match the

Apache-Style Web Application Security (Almost) in ASP.NET with Web.config

2008-02-22T14:50:00.012-05:00

I say "almost" because if it really was Apache-style, it would be easy. But this is Windows we're talking about, so it isn't.What I wanted to do was pretty simple: launch a web app with anonymous access except for one directory to contain administrative controls, which I wanted to protect with the standard Login control and values stored in Web.config file.For the Web.config settings, what I saw

Free Information Retrieval Book Available

2008-02-06T21:35:00.000-05:00

Introduction to Information Retrieval published by Cambridge University Press is available free online. Many thanks to the authors for this. They say it will remain free after the book is published. I may grab a copy of the PDFs...just in case.Just reading the introduction makes me wish I paid more attention in math. I wonder if there are any math textbooks available on USENET? ;-)

The Time Stamp of Your IIS Logs is Not Wrong

2008-02-02T16:40:00.000-05:00

Looking at your IIS server logs and wondering why the time stamp doesn't seem to reflect the actual server time? If you have IIS set to write the logs in W3C extended log file format, the date is always in GMT. Microsoft does have a knowledge base article on this.Here's a GMT conversion chart for the United States.

Error Rendering Control with ASP.NET WizardStep and Accordion Controls

2008-01-26T21:29:00.000-05:00

If you're using the .NET Framework 2.0 with Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, you may run into odd errors when you use the Wizard control and you try to embed an Accordion control inside a WizardStep. When I did this, it was all in the ASPX code view and the code-behind file. The page and the project built cleanly and the run-time tests were fine, as well. But when another developer

Modify an XML Fragment Retrieved by MarkLogic Server

2008-01-24T21:58:00.001-05:00

Last week I was experimenting with a scenario where I wanted to retrieve a section of a larger XML document from MarkLogic Server, but modify it before passing it up to the web application layer (we're using MarkLogic -> XCC -> ASP.NET). This XQuery sample recurses through all of the element and text nodes, modifies what's needed, and passes the rest back unchanged. In the end we decided on a

My New Kakadu

2008-01-21T16:17:00.000-05:00

About two weeks ago I was packing up my stuff and getting ready to leave work when I noticed something stunk. It was my 6-year-old black Eddie Bauer shoulder bag and it was not pleasant.I had a little Christmas cash in my pocket, so I shopped around a little. After looking at bags from Timbuk2, Chrome, Manhattan Portage and many others I decided that a) they're all over-priced and b) they're

XQuery Support in MarkLogic Server

2008-01-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

It's a buried a little deep, but here's how to find out which version of the XQuery spec your version of MarkLogic supports.Got to http://developer.marklogic.com/ and find the documentation. Find the release notes. Find the section called "Compatibility with XQuery Drafts."Here's the information for 3.2.This release implements the XQuery language, functions and operators specified in the May 02

Vista Downgrade

2008-01-04T22:03:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a computer with Microsoft Vista. Had. After several months of trying to live with it, I decided to downgrade to XP Pro. I want the OS to stay out of the way and just work and perform reasonably. Is that really so much to ask?Getting all the drivers straight was a bit of a pain, but the machine is back up and running now. All I have to say is ...

Get a Random Item from an Array in ASP.NET

2008-01-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick and easy way to get a random item from an array in ASP.NET.string[] myImages = { "/images/one.gif", "/images/two.gif", "/images/three.gif" };string randomItem = myImages[ new Random().Next( 0, my.GetLength(0) ) ];

"The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted" Using ASP.NET AJAX

2008-01-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

When you're using ASP.NET AJAX and the user accesses your site using Firefox, the user may see an error message that says "The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted." This seems to be caused by Firefox's methods for saving session information in its cache. There are a couple of ways to make sure this doesn't happen, depending on how extensive you want to disable the

TinyMCE, ASP.NET AJAX, and Auto-Save

2007-12-22T22:13:00.001-05:00

I'm working on a ASP.NET web app that will allow administration of a new product feature and some of that content can be several paragraphs long. I'm using TinyMCE for those longer pieces and the ASP.NET AJAX Timer control to auto-save the form.What I noticed is that any field connected to TinyMCE wouldn't be saved on auto-save, but would be saved just fine with a full Save button click and

Textml vs. MarkLogic, Part 2

2007-12-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

I had a very good conversation yesterday with John Kreisa the Director of Product Marketing for Mark Logic where we talked about the differences between Textml and MarkLogic Server -- the issues I raised in a previous post, plus a few others. One of the other topics that I forgot to mention there and is a huge plus for MarkLogic is the ability to influence relevancy ranking.The best part of this

ASP.NET TreeNode, Parent of the Selected Node, and RenderPreText

2007-12-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

I bumped into something interesting today while working on a TreeView control to be used to represent a book's table of contents on a website. The control had 3 levels: the root, the chapter level, and each major section within each chapter, which we call the "a-head level." If the user is viewing a piece of content from the a-head level, I was asked to NOT expand the chapter level TreeNode, to

Visual Studio 2005 Spell Check Now Available

2007-12-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for this for awhile now. There's finally a good spell check tool for Visual Studio 2005 (and 2008) available.

Fennel and Pepper Biscuits

2007-12-15T17:01:00.000-05:00

I love these things.Proof some yeast for 5-10 minutes.1 cup warm water2 tablespoons olive oil1/4 teaspoon sugar1 packet of yeastPut together in a large bowl:5 cups of all-purpose flour1 1/4 tablespoons salt1 tablespoon fennel1 tablespoon black pepper (or to taste)1/2 cup olive oilproofed yeast from aboveKnead/mix together with a little warm water as needed. When done, let the dough rest for 20-

Set an ASP.NET TreeView Node to Expand and not PostBack

2007-12-11T20:23:00.000-05:00

A classic small snippet of code that I use infrequently and takes me too long to find when I need it. Here's how to set an ASP.NET TreeView Node to expand and not PostBack when clicked.tvNode.SelectAction = TreeNodeSelectAction.Expand;

URL Rewriting in ASP.NET with No Code

2007-12-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

http://urlrewriter.net/ provides a great little tool for URL rewriting in ASP.NET. I used this on a site where SEO was of particular concern. The best part was that it required no code.Instead of mydomain.com/reader/Default.aspx?id=12345&type=book I could enable links like mydomain.com/reader/Default.aspx/12345/book.Here's how I enabled this using Web.config: <