Simon Hughes

www.lizigns.com

2012-01-27T11:38:00.001Z

Just finished a new website for a friend called lizigns.com
I played with three CMS systems: Joomla, concrete5 and finally settled on WordPress CMS system.

Overall I spent about 13 hours on the website, 6 of which were sorting out the photo's and correcting them as they were poor quality. Liz didn't use flash, so the camera correctly exposed the view through the window, but left the curtains in the dark.

I'm pleased with the result. It looks fresh and has all the meta tags Liz wanted. Plus is quick and snappy to use.

My views on the CMS systems I tried:

Jooma has good customisation of templates, and a very good admin side of things, but its actually quite slow in use.
Concrete5 is excellent in everyway, apart from one major stumble. You can't modify any of the template colours in the admin panel. I couldn't find the right template I wanted, so I ditched it.
WordPress. Good admin panel, so I was confident Liz could use it to edit her pages after I handed it over. And it has lots and lots of free template and plugins (like a gallery) to choose from.

Microsoft's 'Roslyn' compiler as a service project

2011-07-20T10:29:00.000+01:00

Microsoft plans to share more information on its "Roslyn" compiler-as-a-service (CaaS) project during its annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit this week.

Roslyn, at a high level, is Microsoft's vehicle for "taking .Net to the cloud." Microsoft's stated goal with Roslyn is to "build a compiler architecture that is amenable to use as a foundation for modern tools."

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/…

You can do all sorts of fancy tricks with the compiler pipeline, like automatic parallelization for example.

I forsee compiler add-in companies sprouting up all over the place now. Development teams will have to agree on what add-ins to use, possibly even the ordering of the add-ins, so that the exe's match. Build-servers will have to include this technology, unless you can config the compiler+addins outside of FinalBuilder.
Overall I see this is as a good thing, a bit like Firefox+add-ins. But I fear there will be only a few real gems, and a ton of dross out there

How to stop Skype crashing upon startup

2011-06-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

Open a command prompt and run the following:

c:

cd\users

del shared.xml /s

Now you can run skype without it crashing.

Setting the PowerShell execution policy - the trap

2011-05-17T15:49:00.000+01:00

I was recently pulling my hair out trying to run a powerShell script in VisualStudio. I kept getting the error: "File SomeScript.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details."

So I ran the script:
powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned

Tried a gain, and still it fails! Only until I spoke to my developer collegue Damian Powell did he say you actually have to run that command for both x86 and x64 powershells.

So I ran:
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned

Hey presto! All works. Thanks Damian!

Service Broker sys.transmission_queue clean up

2011-03-14T22:28:00.004Z

If you’re developing a Service Broker application and you misspell your services, forget to create a master key, or do any of the many things that result in your messages not being delivered, then your transmission queue will fill up.
Due to the nature of service broker, errors don't occur at the client but rather your messages go in to Service Brokers sys.transmission_queue and are then subsequently processed. If they fail, they stay in the queue. Some errors can be resolved, i.e. missing services. However, others can't, or are just plain difficult. I.e. You've misspelt something, or not used the correct security.
To clear your transmission queue you need to end the conversations, this is a handy little script for doing this. Be aware this ends ALL conversations in the queue and so should NEVER be used on a production system.

To see how many messages are in your transmission queue, use this

SELECT COUNT(1) FROM sys.transmission_queue

On my system i7, DB on Raid10, Log on Raid1, the following clears messages at approximately 20000/second.

How to dump your Skype database to a text file for easy searching

2011-01-18T11:59:00.002Z

I had a problem recently trying to search the Skype instant messeage history. Searching for a historical chat can be done in Skype by pressing CTRL-F, but only if you know the person(s) that were involved on that chat. You cannot search the chat history globally.

The solution is to dump out the skype database into a TXT file for easy searching with notepad.

Download SQLite command shell at http://www.sqlite.org/download.html. (I downloaded http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-shell-win32-x86-3070400.zip)
Extract sqllite3.exe to a place on your path, or somewhere you can run it easily from.
Open a DOS command prompt.
Change the folder to C:\Users\[pc user name]\AppData\Roaming\Skype\[skype user name]
There you should find main.db database.
Type the following (in bold):

sqlite3 main.db
sqlite> .output c:\skype_chat.txt
sqlite> .dump
sqlite> .quit

You can now start Notepad and open file c:\skype_chat.txt to search through.

How to create a Gource graphical repository movie

2011-01-05T20:05:00.001Z

Download Gource from https://code.google.com/p/gource/ extract to C:\gource-0.28.win32
Download FFMPEG from http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffmpeg extract to c:\ffmpeg

If using SVN also download the following:

svn-gource.py from https://code.google.com/p/gource/wiki/SVN extract to c:\python31
Python from http://www.python.org/download/ I used v3.1.3. extract to c:\python31

In a DOS command prompt type:

c:
cd C:\Data Files\Projects (Use your own SVN repository location)
svn log -r {2011-01-01}:{2010-01-01} --verbose --xml > c:\code-trunk.log
cd C:\gource-0.28.win32
The follow is only required if using SVN: c:\python31\python svn-gource.py --filter-dirs c:\code-trunk.log > c:\code-trunk-gource.log
gource --log-format custom c:\code-trunk-gource.log -1600x1040 --date-format "%d %B %y" --seconds-per-day 0.5 -a 0.1 --highlight-all-users --stop-at-end --disable-progress --output-ppm-stream c:\code-trunk.ppm --camera-mode overview --bloom-intensity 0.1 --output-framerate 25 --max-files 2000 --hide filenames,mouse -i 20
cd c:\ffmpeg\bin
ffmpeg -y -b 9000K -r 25 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i c:\code-trunk.ppm -vcodec mpeg1video -s 1600x1040 c:\code-trunk.mpg
ffmpeg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -i C:\some-cool-music.mp3 -i c:\code-trunk.mpg c:\code-trunk-audio.mpg

The last step is optional, it adds an audio music to your gource video.
In step 3 above, if you remove the -r {2011-01-01}:{2010-01-01} it will export your whole repository. I just wanted last years.

Enjoy.

SQL Server MAXDOP and parallelism

2010-12-20T13:12:00.001Z

At our company, we have a 4 core blade running SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.
This is a very, very busy SQL Server and is running on HP EVA hardware, so the I/O is not an issue.
We have over 50 warehouses all running SQL Server 2008 and replicating data to/from this primary database.
This database is also used by our website, webservices and import/export applications. The only thing this database does not serve is our SSRS reports, which are hosted on another blade.

What is an issue, however, are the CPU's. They were very busy. To help with this we can play around with two settings on SQL Server:

MAXDOP (Max degree of parallelism)
Cost threshold for parallelism

Our DBA and I had a few discussions around this recently. Read plenty of articles on it, such as Adam Machanic

On a normal system, leaving these settings alone are fine, but on a very very busy system you need to change them.

MAXDOP=1. What this does is to always use 1 core for the query.
MAXDOP=0, Cost = 20. This will use 1 core for simple queries, and for complex queries (cost > 20) will be allowed to use parallel queries.

What we found is setting MAXDOP = 1 is optimal.

This is because running complex queries faster made the replication suffer. By using MAXDOP=1 we save CPU time by not having to join up parallel queries at the end. Save time by stopping the "thread thrashing" that can occur on many queries all running in parallel.

Because the SQL box is very busy fielding many queries at once, using MAXDOP=1still utilises all cores due to running 4 or more queries at the same time.
Also replication is a lot happier now.

Index Analysis

2010-10-11T12:22:00.000+01:00

Some nice articles by Jason Strate on index analysis, page splits, etc.Check them out at:

Return of Index Analysis - Part 1
Return of Index Analysis - Part 2
An Index on Indexing #TSQL2sDay Read the black-ops articles.

Lifeguard

2010-09-07T20:29:00.003+01:00

I just found my very first commercial software I wrote in Z80 assembler. It's called lifeguard and can be found here.
Its basically an unlimited lives finder for the ZX Spectrum and ran on the Multiface hardware. Romantic Robot made the multiface and distributed it for me. They used to pay me a commssion on a monthly basis.
I still remember the algorithm for finding lives, grenades, timers, etc.

Good times.

Pex and Moles

2010-06-15T23:24:00.006+01:00

Pex and Moles are Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools extension that help Unit Testing .NET applications.

Pex automatically generates test suites with high code coverage. Right from the Visual Studio code editor, Pex finds interesting input-output values of your methods, which you can save as a small test suite with high code coverage. Microsoft Pex is a Visual Studio add-in for testing .NET Framework applications.Moles allows to replace any .NET method with a delegate.
Moles supports unit testing by providing isolation by way of detours and stubs. The Moles framework is provided with Pex, or can be installed by itself as a Microsoft Visual Studio add-in.

Microsoft Moles helps with writing unit tests, but what remains is the tedious task of writing the specific unit tests that exhaustively exercise and validate the logic of the code-under-test. Microsoft Pex can help you in understanding the input/output behavior of your code, finding inputs that cause the code-under-test to crash, and exploring parameterized unit tests to check whether your code implements the desired functionality for all inputs.
When you run Microsoft Pex on your .NET code, Pex generates test cases by analyzing the code-under-test. For every statement in the code, Pex will eventually try to create a test input that will reach that statement. Pex will do a case analysis for every conditional branch in the code—for example, if statements, assertions, and all operations that can throw exceptions.
The result appears as a table that shows each test attempted by Pex. Each line in the table shows the input and the resulting output or exceptions generated by the method for the specific input.

This is great, automatic unit test generation and complete code coverage!
You can download it here

Ok been using for a while and my verdict is: Pex rocks!
I can't believe I've never known about it until now!
Pex generates MSTests or NUnit tests. MSTests are default, but if your project already has NUnit tests, it will use those.
Here is a video you should watch.
Pex first records your codes responses, and generates ASSERTS, so in future, these can be used as regression tests. It achieves 100% code coverage by analysing your code, and cleverly generating tests. Very impressive.

Pex generates edge cases, and every combination of null and empty strings to each parameter, etc, which is not what you'd like to see pollute your nice and clean nUnit tests. Plus, those would take forever to make. So by having your hand crafted nUnit tests and Pex generated MSTests separate its best of both worlds.
Resharper will also happily run both nUnit and MSTests in your solution together and gives you the green/red lights as normal.
In a couple of hours, Pex has so far generated over 1100 lines of MSTest C# code for me. And I didn't have to write a line of code (apart from me having to fix my C# code when Pex found a fault with it).
I like it very much as it allows me to concentrate on building nUnit tests and not mind-numbing combinatorial parameter checking :-)

Automated buildsUsing FinalBuilder or CruiseControl to automate your builds and run your tests? In order to have the generated tests execute on a machine that does not have Pex installed, you can check in into your depot the following assemblies:

Microsoft.Pex.Framework.dll
Microsoft.ExtendedReflection.dll

Here is a picture of Pex in action:

Scott Hanselman - The Best Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools, Power Commands and Extensions

2010-06-11T09:46:00.002+01:00

Scott Hanselman - The Best Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools, Power Commands and Extensions

My favourites are:

Lots of others, so go check em out.

Defragmenting SQL Server 2008+ using ALTER INDEX

2010-05-16T01:15:00.002+01:00

In SQL 2009 DBCC INDEXDEFRAG will no longer work as Microsoft have removed the command. You need to user ALTER INDEX instead:

CREATE PROCEDURE sjh_defragment_indexes_2008

    @maxfrag FLOAT

AS

/* Simon Hughes 15 May 2010

For SQL 2008+

This stored procedure checks index fragmentation in a database and defragments

indexes whose fragmentation fall above a specified threshold: @maxfrag

Must be run in the database to be defragmented.

exec sjh_defragment_indexes_2008 5

*/

SET NOCOUNT ON

SET XACT_ABORT ON

-- Write start time for information purposes

PRINT 'Started defragmenting at: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE())

-- Check fragmentation

DECLARE @execstr NVARCHAR(255)

DECLARE lcsr CURSOR local fast_forward READ_ONLY FOR

    SELECT  'ALTER INDEX [' + i.name + '] ON [' + so.name + '] REORGANIZE;' AS execstr

    FROM    sys.sysobjects AS so

            INNER JOIN sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID('bybox'), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') AS phystat

            INNER JOIN sys.indexes AS i

                ON i.object_id = phystat.object_id

                   AND i.index_id = phystat.index_id

                ON so.name = OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id)

    WHERE   (i.name IS NOT NULL)

            AND (so.type = 'U')

            AND (phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent > @maxfrag)

OPEN lcsr

FETCH NEXT FROM lcsr INTO @execstr

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN

    EXEC sp_executesql @execstr

    FETCH NEXT FROM lcsr INTO @execstr

END

CLOSE lcsr

DEALLOCATE lcsr

-- Report on finish time for information purposes

PRINT 'Finished defragmenting at: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE())

GO

Download code here.

How to turn off auto-shrink on all your databases

2010-05-16T00:38:00.000+01:00

Shrinking a database is bad. Why? Well its because it causes massive index fragmentation. (You can read about it here).

DECLARE @Base SYSNAME

DECLARE database_cursor CURSOR FOR

    SELECT  QUOTENAME(name) AS Base

    FROM    master..sysdatabases

    WHERE   DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'Status') = 'ONLINE'

            AND DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'IsAutoShrink') = 1

OPEN database_cursor

FETCH NEXT FROM database_cursor INTO @Base

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN

    EXEC ('ALTER DATABASE ' + @BASE + ' SET AUTO_SHRINK OFF')

    FETCH NEXT FROM database_cursor INTO @Base

END

CLOSE database_cursor

DEALLOCATE database_cursor

Defragmenting SQL Server 2005 and 2008 using dynamic management views

2010-05-16T00:18:00.004+01:00

You can read all about SQL defragmentation here by Satya Jayanty. The bottom line - defragmentation is bad. It causes high CPU load and poor SQL performance. Shrinking your database causes massive index fragmentation. You can read about that here, therefore you should always turn off auto-shrink (I also have a script for that here).

For SQL 2000 you must use DBCC SHOWCONTIG. You can use the SQL given here.

However, for SQL Server 2005 onwards, there is a better way using the dynamic management view sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats introduced in SQL 2005.

Note: In SQL 2009 this proc is not going to work because Microsoft are going to remove DBCC INDEXDEFRAG from the next version of Microsoft SQL Server (read 2009), you need to user ALTER INDEX instead, as shown in my next blog entry.

SELECT  OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id) AS TableName,

        i.name AS TableIndexName,

        phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent,

        phystat.fragment_count

FROM    sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID('your_database_name'), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') phystat

        INNER JOIN sys.indexes i

            ON i.object_id = phystat.object_id AND i.index_id = phystat.index_id

WHERE   phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent > 10

ORDER BY phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent DESC

Building that into a stored proc to execute every so often to defrag gives us:

CREATE PROCEDURE sjh_defragment_indexes

    @maxfrag FLOAT

AS

/* Simon Hughes 15 May 2010

For SQL 2005+ only

This stored procedure checks index fragmentation in a database and defragments

indexes whose fragmentation fall above a specified threshold: @maxfrag

Must be run in the database to be defragmented.

Please change 'your_database_name' to be the name of your database

exec sjh_defragment_indexes 5.0

*/

SET NOCOUNT ON

SET XACT_ABORT ON

-- Check this is not being run in a system database

IF DB_NAME() IN ('master', 'msdb', 'model', 'tempdb')

BEGIN

    PRINT 'This procedure should not be run in system databases.'

    RETURN

END

-- Check fragmentation

SELECT  OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id) AS TableName,

        i.name AS TableIndexName,

        phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent,

        phystat.fragment_count,

        'DBCC INDEXDEFRAG (0, [' + OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id) + '], ' + i.name + ') WITH NO_INFOMSGS' AS execstr

INTO    [#frag]

FROM    sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID('your_database_name'), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') phystat

        INNER JOIN sys.indexes i

            ON i.object_id = phystat.object_id

               AND i.index_id = phystat.index_id

WHERE   i.name IS NOT NULL

        AND phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent > @maxfrag

ORDER BY phystat.avg_fragmentation_in_percent DESC

SELECT * FROM [#frag]

-- Write start time for information purposes

PRINT 'Started defragmenting at: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE())

-- Begin defrag

DECLARE @execstr NVARCHAR(1024)

DECLARE cc CURSOR FAST_FORWARD FOR

    SELECT execstr FROM [#frag]

OPEN cc

FETCH NEXT FROM cc INTO @execstr

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN

    EXEC sp_executesql @execstr

    FETCH NEXT FROM cc INTO @execstr

END

-- Close and deallocate the cursor

CLOSE cc

DEALLOCATE cc

-- Report on finish time for information purposes

PRINT 'Finished defragmenting at: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE())

-- Delete the temporary table

DROP TABLE [#frag]

GO

Download code here.

Generating Insert Statements

2010-05-14T10:10:00.001+01:00

Quite a good article by Oleg Netchaev on how to automatically generate INSERT statements for a given table.
The SQL for this is available here.

If you only want a small subset generated, then have a look at the SSMS Tools Pack which is free.

Microsoft Hyper-V vs VMware ESXi

2010-05-07T11:37:00.001+01:00

Full credit for this article goes to Jonathan Payne, who works as one of our esteemed DBAs. Unfortunately he has no blog, so here it is:

What has been going on?
Over the past week we have been testing and comparing VMware’s ESXi virtualisation product with Microsoft’s Hyper-V. This has come about because our existing virtualisation infrastructure, which is built on VMware’s WMware Server, has not been performing as expected and has been have a real impact on our services. The servers V1, V2 and BuildServer are all virtual machines running in this environment on the physical server Virtual1 and we have had problems with VMware Server where it just couldn’t seem to allocate enough CPU resources to run the VMs correctly when there was at least 60% of CPU capacity not being used.

What are we comparing?
We have investigated the use of ESXi or Hyper-V to provide the virtualisation environment. These are both type 1 hypervisors, which means that hardware resources are presented directly to the VMs. So a 1 core VM is presented with 1 physical CPU core with nothing in-between. Okay, it isn’t as simple as that, but you get the idea. For devices such as network adapters, there is more intervention involved and this is where the biggest differences beween ESXi and Hyper-V occur. Hyper-V uses the installed windows drivers, which are easy to update. ESXi creates its own environment and can only talk to the physical devices that it has pre-installed drivers for. This is why the hardware compatibility list is very important for ESXi, whereas it isn’t so important for Hyper-V as the Windows drivers are used. In this case, our HP hardware is supported by ESXi, so there is no problem there.
We set up ESXi and Hyper-V environments to run on Virtual2 so that we could install test and compare the solutions.

How will changing to a type 1 hypervisor help?
The VMs will get more resources, which should help the performance bottlenecks that we are experiencing.
The testing of both environments highlighted some of the pros and cons of using the technologies. Although the performance testing was limited, as it is difficult to create an environment containing multiple test VMs, we compared the test VM build server performances to the current production build server performance running under VMware Server.

So what were the test results?
Both ESXi and Hyper-V show performance improvements over VMware Server. The build server tests show that a software build will complete in half the time on the ESXi and Hyper-V versions of the VM when compared to the VMware Server VM. So we are expecting tangible performance improvements by moving to ESXi or Hyper-V.

Cut to the chase - Hyper-V or ESXi?
Hyper-V.

What benefits does Hyper-V provide?
Hyper-V provides a number of benefits. It is a familiar technology within the company with a number of people having experience with older Microsoft virtualisation technologies, such as virtual PC and Virtual Server as well as experience with Hyper-V itself. Hyper-V is currently used to provide the SQL Server Reporting Server solution on two nodes.
Using Hyper-V gives us the ability to use the Windows Server Datacenter licence that we have. This license covers any virtual machine that is run on a server where the host OS is the datacenter edition and means that we can create any number of VMs with any Windows OS to run on the hosts without any licensing issues.
Combined with the clustering features of Windows Server 2008 R2, we can cluster the virtual machine hosts to provide a high availability environment that would protect us from a hardware failure. This would fail over any VMs that were running on a host that failed to another host.
Another feature of clustering the virtualisation hosts is that we can use a feature called Live Migration. This feature allows us to move virtual machines between hosts with no interruption of service. This would be very useful for moving VMs between hosts to balance loads across hosts and also to be able to move VMs if maintenance is required on a host without any downtime.

Why not ESXi?
A major drawback of ESXi is that we are not very familiar with VMware software. It does things in an unfamiliar way, so there is a learning curve involved with maintaining the host server and managing VMs. To use ESXi would also introduce a licensing problem for our VM OSes. Currently the VM OS licenses are covered by the Windows Server Datacenter license that is used as the host OS on Virtual1. If we used ESXi, this license could no longer be used because the Datacenter OS would not be being used as the host OS. We would have to purchase additional OS licenses to cover the VMs.

Is ESXi all bad?
No, not at all. It seems to perform quite well, it has better monitoring tools than Hyper-V and it provides the ability to over allocate resources, so you can have a higher density of VMs on a server. vSphere Client is the tool used to maintain ESXi and this tool seems quite comprehensive, although it took a bit of getting used to.

So why have we changed our minds about going for VMware over Hyper-V?
We talked to Vohkus about virtualisation, and were seduced by the idea of a virtual cloud in which to run and manage our servers, with the ability to move VMs around to balance the load on the host servers. The Windows Server 2008 version of Hyper-V couldn’t provide that level of functionality and so it appeared that VMware was the way to achieve this dream. However, it turns out that the improvements in Hyper-V offered by the R2 version of the product do provide this functionality and more than that, it provides it without any further investment. To provide this with ESXi and vSphere would need a further investment in OS licenses and the vSphere license costs.
ESXi is considered best of breed in terms of features with VMware having many years of experience in this field, but Hyper-V is playing catch-up and it appears to be very close behind now.
As Hyper-V suits our requirements with no further investment, it has been decided to go with Hyper-V.

Okay, so will Hyper-V really provide everything without any further investment?
Umm, actually no. Yes we can provide a high availability environment and everything with what we have got, but we don’t have a way to perform live backups of VMs and there is no automated way to manage the VMs. Microsoft’s System Center will provide the management tool to manage the backing up and restoring VMs and provide the facility to automatically spread VMs across hosts to manage workloads on the host servers. There is a new version of System Center coming out at the end of the month and we’ll be investing in a copy.

What now?
So, that’s it. Windows Server 2008 R2 Core will be installed on Virtual2 and it will be set up as a single node cluster with Hyper-V. There will be a phased migration of VMs from Virtual1 to Virtual2 and once all the VMs have been migrated, Virtual1 will be re-built as an R2 Core server and joined to the cluster. We can then distribute the existing VMs across the cluster and add the servers that we are missing at the moment.

Disabling script debugging in VS 2008 + IE8

2010-04-19T14:44:00.000+01:00

If you experience terrible performance and constant refreshing of a Script Documents node when using the Visual Studio Debugger, follow the instructions here

Work around:

This work around requires the Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to be installed. So if you don't have these tools installed, you can download them from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C22D6A7B-546F-4407-8EF6-D60C8EE221ED&displaylang=en). If this is not an option for you, there is some alternative work arounds at the bottom of this blog post.
Right click on your project and open up project properties
Go to the 'Start Options' sheet, and click the 'Silverlight' button at the bottom of the screen. Because the debugger cannot debug both Silverlight code and Script code at the same time, this will disable Script debugging and therefore avoid the problem.

VHD disk images being read while VirtualPC is not running?

2010-03-12T12:11:00.000Z

I setup a Virtual PC recently and noticed my hard disks were very busy lately. My VirtualPC is not on, but checking what files were being accessed (Task Manager --> Performance --> Resource monitor) I noticed that the VHD virtual disk image was being read a lot. Which is really odd as it's not in use.

The solution was to disble the service "Superfetch". Hey presto, all is quiet again.

Superfetch was trying to keep my system running fast by pre-loading the VHD into memory. Madness.

I've had superfetch turned off all day, and my hard disks's have never been so quiet.

Wonderful.

Now, if only there was a way to exclude folders from superfetch...
Having a Google around there's no exclusion list, however, there is a way to refine what's going on via the registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Modify the EnablePrefetcher key to one of the following settings:

Disable Caching: 0
Cache Applications Only: 1
Cache Boot Files Only: 2
Cache Everything (default): 3

Experiment with this key to see if caching applications or boot files rather than everything still provides enough of a performance boost without getting bogged down.

HOWTO: Compress Virtual PC virtual hard disks (.VHDs)

2010-03-11T22:03:00.004Z

If you use Virtual PC 2007 you know that the virtual hard drive files (.VHDs) can grow to extremely large sizes. The .VHD files dynamically expand when software is installed in the .VHD. After installation, the original setup files are deleted and no longer take up space in the .VHD. However the .VHD does not correspondingly dynamically shrink in size. Once a .VHD file expands - it doesn't shrink.

EXAMPLE: If the installation of a product uses 500MB to expand its setup files and only really consumes 200MB in the "C:\Program Files\" directory, the .VHD file expands accordingly. When the 500MB of setup files are subsequently deleted after installation has completed, the .VHD file doesn't shrink afterwards.

That is wasted host storage.

So the question is:
How do I shrink the size of a .VHD when I know it's inflated unnecessarily?

Here's how to do it:

Clear out the machine of filler
Install ccleaner from http://ccleaner.com which deletes all temporary files from the Windows installation, Internet Explorer cache, Recycle Bin, and any number of other "garbage"/"temp" directories in the Virtual PC.
Disable hibernation
Go into Power options in Control Panel and disable hiberation to get rid of the large hybernation file.
Capture the Virtual Disk Precompactor .ISO In the menu of Virtual PC windows for your machine, capture the Virtual Disk Precompactor .ISO file which is located at:
x32: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions\Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso
x64: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions\Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso
Run the Precompactor
Go to My Computer and double click on the mounted disk. It will begin to run the precompactor software which will essentially zero out all the free space on the disk, making it available for elimination from the file by the Virtual Disk Wizard, which we will use later. This process may take upwards of 15 minutes depending on the size of the VHD file.
Shutdown the Virtual PC
Run the Virtual PC - Virtual Disk Wizard
From the Virtual PC console, click File --> Virtual Disk Wizard and "Edit an existing virtual disk" It will ask you to identify the .VHD file to reduce in size - select it.
Compact the .VHD
Select the "Compact" option then select "Replacing the original file". This again will take a while.

When this process finishes, you should have a .VHD file with a much smaller size.

The other final thing you can do is on your host PC, right-click and compress the folder:
C:\Users\Public\Downloads\My Virtual Machines

As an example:

Before compression: The size of my 8Gb VHD file (windows xp 32bit) was reported as only taking 3Gb physical space due to folder compression.
After compression: After following the steps above, the VHD file was 3.5Gb and was reported as taking 2.6Gb physical space due to folder compression.

SSMS handy short cut keys

2009-12-22T11:18:00.004Z

In Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, its handy to have some short cut keys to do common tasks.

One handy one I always use is to "select top 100 * from " as I like to highlight a table name and press CTRL+4 to get the top 100 rows instantly.

To set this up, go to Tools->Options->Keyboard. And type "select top 100 * from " without the quotes and making sure you add a space after the from. Very important to leave a space at the end.

Highlight a table and press Ctrl+4 and the top 100 rows will be shown.
SSMS will run your command and append the highlighted text. If your table is called USERS, it would run "select top 100 * from USERS". If you forgot to leave a space at the end, it would try and run "select top 100 * fromUSERS" which won't work.

table-values functions. Make sure you write them as inline.

2009-12-01T11:58:00.007Z

Here is a multi-line statement (slow):

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnSomeReport
(
@someParam INT,
@field_company_id INT = NULL
)
RETURNS @result TABLE
(
[field_company_name] VARCHAR(255),
[engineer] VARCHAR(100),
[sku] VARCHAR(30)
)
AS
BEGIN
INSERT INTO @result
(
[field_company_name],
[engineer],
[sku]
)
SELECT field_company_name, engineer, sku
FROM ...
WHERE ID > someParam
AND (@field_company_id IS NULL
 OR field_company_id = @field_company_id)

RETURN
END
GO

Now as an inline statement (fast)

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnSomeReport
(
@someParam INT,
@field_company_id INT = NULL
)
RETURNS TABLE AS
RETURN
(
SELECT field_company_name, engineer, sku
FROM ...
WHERE ID > someParam
AND (@field_company_id IS NULL
    OR field_company_id = @field_company_id)
)
GO

Right then whats going on and what the hell is all the fuss about anyway?
The query optimizer expands the function as if it was a macro, and generates the plan as if you had provided the expanded query. Thus, there is no performance cost for packaging a SELECT statement into a table-valued function. For this reason, when you want to reuse a stored procedure that consists of a single SELECT statement, rewriting it into an inline UDF is without doubt the best choice. (Or instead of rewriting it, move the SELECT into a UDF, and rewrite the existing procedure as a wrapper on the function, so that the client is unaffected.)

Why is the multi-line function bad?
A multi-statement function has a body that can have as many statements as you like. You need to declare a return table, and you insert the data to return into that table.

You use multi-statement functions as inline functions, but in difference to inline functions, they are not expanded in place, but instead it's like you would call a stored procedure in the middle of the query, and return the data in a temp table. This permits you to move more complex stored procedure into functions.

Compared to inline functions, multi-statement functions incur some overhead due to the return table. More important, though, is that if you use the function in a query, the optimizer will have no idea of what the function returns, and will make standard assumptions. Many times this is not a real issue, but particularly if the result is huge, it can be.

In most cases, you want to avoid the use of scalar UDFs in SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY and ORDER BY clauses. These will essentially force the optimizer to execute the function once for each row in the query, and depending on the complexity of the function, this could bring your system to its knees.

A view does not accept parameters. To restrict the rows returned by a view, you use a WHERE clause in the query that is accessing the view, not in the view itself. Table-valued functions, are more like parameterized views; in fact, they were called parameterized views during development, according to Hal Berenson.

Inline table-valued functions - These are better than scalar functions. Some will say they are preferential over stored procedures because they can easily be used in JOINs and regular SELECTs; some will say they are preferential over views because they can be parameterized. In this way, they behave just like Access parameterized views, with the added benefit that a query plan can be cached.

Other links:

PLINQO - Get it, use it, love it

2009-11-17T21:34:00.003Z

I've stumbled across a LINQ to SQL extension called PLINQO freely downloadable at http://plinqo.com/ and includes source code.

PLINQO is a set of CodeSmith templates that generates code for you around your LINQ to SQL DBML file. It generates Manager classes and Query classes automatically (it does this by looking at your primary keys, indexes and foreign key constraints).

You must buy CodeSmith, which is the template engine, but PLINQO is free.

Its actually quite amazing and saves you tons of time and energy creating boiler plate code. So glad I found it, now I want you to investigate it too. Go check out the video tutorials to see what I mean. Awesome.

Virtual Machine Key Combinations with Hyper-V

2009-11-12T12:52:00.003Z

Taken from here and kept for prosperity incase the information was ever lost. So all credit for the following information goes to Ben Armstrong.

Standard Windows Key combination	Virtual Machine Connection Key Combination	Explanation
CTRL + ALT + DEL	CTRL + ALT + END	Displays the Task Manager or Windows Security dialog box on Windows (or logs in).
ALT + TAB	ALT + PAGE UP	Switches between programs from left to right.
ALT + SHIFT + TAB	ALT + PAGE DOWN	Switches between programs from right to left.
ALT + ESC	ALT + INSERT	Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.
CTRL + ESC	ALT + HOME	Displays the Windows Start menu.
N/A	CTRL + ALT + PAUSE	Changes the Virtual Machine Connection window to / from full screen mode.
N/A	CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW	Releases mouse and keyboard focus from the Virtual Machine Connection window.

Some extra things to know about Virtual Machine Connection key combinations:

By default the standard Windows key combinations do not get sent to the virtual machine, unless you are in full screen mode. You can change this so that they are always sent to the virtual machine (if the Virtual Machine Connection has focus) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings... and then Keyboard and selecting the Use on the virtual machine option. I always enable this setting.

Note: CTRL + ALT + DEL will always go to the physical computer - so you need to use CTRL + ALT + END no matter what you select for a setting here.

You can change the release key combination (CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings... and then Release Key and selecting one of the options from the drop down (I usually change my release key combination to be CTRL + ALT + SHIFT as I find it easier to type).
If you use the Virtual Machine Connection under an existing Remote Desktop Connection (not recommended - but I do it all the time) the Remote Desktop Connection will grab all of these key combinations before the Virtual Machine Connection gets to see them (even the release key combination). To deal with this you will need to change the Hyper-V Server setting to allow Windows key combinations to go to the virtual machine, change the release key combination to something other than CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW, and use the toolbar button or Action menu of the Virtual Machine Connection to send CTRL + ALT + DEL to the virtual machine.

Execution of user code in the .NET Framework is disabled

2009-09-29T12:53:00.002+01:00

I was testing our new SQL Server 2008 enterprise cluster today and managed to get the following SqlException running a C# application:
"Execution of user code in the .NET Framework is disabled. Enable "clr enabled" configuration option.
The statement has been terminated."

The solution is to run the following:
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', '1' ;
go
RECONFIGURE ;
go
EXEC sp_configure 'clr enabled', '1'
go
RECONFIGURE ;
-- Turn advanced options back off
-- EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options' , '0';
GO

Web Deployment Tool 1.0 has shipped

2009-09-25T11:47:00.002+01:00

After 2 years of development and lots of customer feedback, the Web Deployment Tool has shipped the RTW of version 1.0

Click here to be taken to the IIS Blog.

Click here to be taken to the download site.

I love the Linq to REST capability

2009-07-24T15:33:00.004+01:00

All without changes to your C# code at all. Awsome.

Just watched Scott Hanselman's ADO.NET Data Services talk from NDC09. Rather good, so go watch.
Given that it (ADO.NET Data Services) is agnostic of EntityFramework, Ling2Sql, NHibernate, or MyHomeGrownOrm, seems like a good basis for implementing simple CRUD style services.

Looking at it I can see the appeal and its a good way to go. You could easily plug in a mock objects with test data pretending to be your database for NUnit testing your code with ease.

Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation

2009-01-10T22:58:00.005Z

Well, its well known that Windows Server 2008 is 11-19% faster than Vista, and its using the Vista kernel. There's a ton of articles and i'm not going to list them here.

But what I am going to show you is how to do it.

Quoting from Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Although using server versions of Windows as desktop/workstation versions over the years certainly isn’t new, the source of the latest drive to turn Windows Server 2008 into Windows Workstation Vista 2008 seems to have come from Microsoft employee Vijayshinva Karnure, in his blog “The Way I See It”.

Karnure works at Microsoft India, and in a blog entry called “Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS”, and in a follow up “Cont’d” posting, he outlined what Server 2008 users need to do to enable all the Vista-esque workstation goodness.

Another website called “Convert your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation!” offers a “Windows Server 2008 to Workstation Manual”.

Reasons why Server 2008 might be faster include the lack of DRM found in Vista, and the additional time (and incentive) Microsoft has had to get Server 2008 robust and fast, given the fact it is meant to be used in business environments which expect high-performance software and hardware.

Reveals some excellent must see/download links:

It can look like this: server 2008 aero screenshots
If your sitting on the fence and don't really know if you should use Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008. Read this. However, if your PC is old and slow, stick with XP. XP will always be faster than vista and server 2008 because it does less. Read Tomshardware Windows XP vs Vista benchmark guide. Its close on all counts apart from Open GL applications such as Maya, 3DS Max, Ensign, Lightscape where Vista is 90% slower due do its lack of OpenGL support.
There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it.

However, my glass is always half full and I'm forever optimistic. Can you honestly see large companies like Autodesk (owners of Maya and 3DS Max) sitting back idly while their applications run like a dog on Vista? I'm sure they're poking ATI and nVidia in the ribs as you read this.
Windows Server 2008 Workstation Converter. This program automatically converts your server 2008 into a workstation. Totally excellent and a must have.
If you don't want to use the above program, you can do it by hand by following this guide, or download the full PDF guide.
Another guide by Vijayshinva Karnure is here: Page1, Page2.

Are there any drawback to using a Server OS?
Yes, in fact.
Most things will work just fine, however some setups detect Windows Server 2008 as a server OS and may not install. Diskeeper for example, or any other software vendor with a workstation and server version of their product.
The compatibility mode does not have a Vista option, only XP/Windows 2003 and other legacy OS.

Blackberry 8800 video encoding - How to

2008-12-31T12:25:00.005Z

Download this free encoder: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
The download link is very hard to find, so its here

Use these settings:
Output container: AVI
Video Codec: DIVX
Audio Codec: mp3
Encoder: MEncoder

Video settings
Size: 320:176
Aspect: 16:9
Frame/sec: 12.5 (pal) 14.985 (NTSC)

Audio settings
Sampling freq: 22050
Channels: 2
Bitrate: 64
Audio stream: default

Enjoy!

A generic singleton - Part 2

2008-12-19T23:30:00.004Z

Here is the critique and why there is a better solution to the article: A generic singleton

Well, it isn't really singleton - since you can't control T, there can be as many T instances as you like.

The code does check for non-public constructors, which is good. However, this is a check which is only performed at execution time - there's no compile-time check, which is a strike against it. It also relies on having enough access to call the non-public constructor, which adds some limitations.

In addition, it doesn't prohibit internal constructors - so you can end up with non-singletons.

There is an excellent article on singletons at http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/singleton.html

Here are two proper implementations:

public sealed class Singleton

    static readonly Singleton instance = new Singleton();

    // Explicit static constructor to tell C# compiler

    // not to mark type as beforefieldinit

    static Singleton()

    Singleton()

    public static Singleton Instance

        get { return instance; }


Or simply:


public class Singleton

    private static Singleton _instance = new Singleton();

    private Singleton() {}

    public static Singleton Instance { get { return _instance; }}

Both of these classes removes the need for locking, as a static constructor is thread safe.

Surprising SQL speed increase - Part 2

2008-12-19T23:17:00.003Z

Part 1 is availble below

More generally speaking, you should never use a function on the LEFT side of a WHERE clause in a query. If you do, SQL won't use an index--it has to evaluate the function for every row of the table. The goal is to make sure that your where clause is "Sargable"

Some other examples:

Bad: Select ... WHERE isNull(FullName,'') = 'Ed Jones'
Fixed: Select ... WHERE ((FullName = 'Ed Jones') OR (FullName IS NULL))

Bad: Select ... WHERE SUBSTRING(DealerName,4) = 'Ford'
Fixed: Select ... WHERE DealerName Like 'Ford%'

 
Bad: Select ... WHERE DateDiff(mm,OrderDate,GetDate()) >= 30
Fixed: Select ... WHERE OrderDate < DateAdd(mm,-30,GetDate()) 

Bad: Select ... WHERE Year(OrderDate) = 2003
Fixed: Select ... WHERE OrderDate >= '2003-1-1' AND OrderDate < '2004-1-1'

2008-11-06T11:07:00.002Z

The 3 Minute Management Course

Lesson 1
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbour. Before she says a word, Bob says, "I'll give you £800 to drop that towel." After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob. After a few seconds, Bob hands her £800 and leaves.

The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, "Who was that?" "It was Bob the next door neighbour," she replies. "Great!" the husband says, "did he say anything about the £800 he owes me?"

Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure

Lesson 2
A priest offered a Nun a lift. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said, "Father, remember Psalm 129?" The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, "Father, remember Psalm 129?" The priest apologised "Sorry sister but the flesh is weak." Arriving at the convent, the nun went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, "Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory."

Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity

Lesson 3
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, "I'll give each of you just one wish." "Me first! Me first!" says the admin clerk. "I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world." Puff! She's gone.

"Me next! Me next!" says the sales rep. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life." Puff! He's gone.

"OK, you're up," the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, "I want those two back in the office after lunch."

Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 4
An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing?" The eagle answered: "Sure, why not." So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up

Lesson 5
A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."
"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. They're packed with nutrients." The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree. He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

Moral of the story: Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there

Lesson 6
A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate...
Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Moral of the story:

Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy
Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend
And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!

Surprising SQL speed increase

2008-10-03T16:46:00.002+01:00

I’ve just found out that the execution plan performance between the following two select statements are massively different:

select * from your_large_table
where LEFT(some_string_field, 4) = '2505'

select * from your_large_table
where some_string_field like '2505%'

The execution plans are 98% and 2% respectively. Bit of a difference in speed then.

There are lots of places in our SQL where we use LEFT(something, x) = 'string'
This should be replaced by the LIKE command for greater speed.

I actually found this out by checking the LINQ generated SQL against my hand crafted SQL. I assumed the LIKE command would be slower, but is in fact much much faster.

A generic singleton

2008-09-13T11:59:00.007+01:00

Taken from: http://andyclymer.blogspot.com/2008/02/true-generic-singleton.html
Changed by Simon Hughes 20th Feb 2008

using System;

using System.Reflection;

// Use like this

/*

public class Highlander : Singleton<Highlander>

    private Highlander()

        Console.WriteLine("There can be only one...");

*/

public class Singleton<T> where T : class

    private static T instance;

    private static object initLock = new object();

    public static T GetInstance()

        if (instance == null)

            CreateInstance();

        return instance;

    private static void CreateInstance()

        lock (initLock)

            if (instance == null)

                Type t = typeof(T);

                // Ensure there are no public constructors...

                ConstructorInfo[] ctors = t.GetConstructors();

                if (ctors.Length > 0)

                    throw new InvalidOperationException(String.Format("{0} has at
                    least one accesible ctor making it impossible to enforce
                    singleton behaviour", t.Name));

                // Create an instance via the private constructor

                instance = (T)Activator.CreateInstance(t, true);

BypassProxyOnLocal - a bug in .Net ?

2008-04-09T09:30:00.003+01:00

If you have a local proxy server on your computer (127.0.0.1) that you wish to use when doing FTP communications, all you need do is set BypassProxyOnLocal = false right?

There may be many important reasons for using a local proxy, such as caching and security etc.

Here's an example:

WebProxy proxy = new WebProxy("127.0.0.1", 3128);

proxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = true;
bool a = proxy.IsBypassed(new Uri("ftp://127.0.0.1:3128"));
bool b = proxy.IsBypassed(new Uri("ftp://127.0.0.1:21"));
// a=true, b=true (ok)

proxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = false;
bool c = proxy.IsBypassed(new Uri("ftp://127.0.0.1:3128"));
bool d = proxy.IsBypassed(new Uri("ftp://127.0.0.1:21"));
// c=true, d=true (???)

Why is the proxy being bypassed when I told it not to?
The local proxy is always bypassed when when the proxy is on a loopback address. Why?

Setting BypassProxyOnLocal to false should NOT bypass the proxy for local addresses. So let's see what MSDN Library has to say about IsBypassed method:

If BypassProxyOnLocal is true, requests to local Internet resources do not use
the proxy server. Local requests are identified by the lack of a period (.) in
the URI, as in http://webserver/, or access the local server, including
http://localhost, http://loopback, or http://127.0.0.1. When BypassProxyOnLocal
is false, all Internet requests are made through the proxy server.

Here is the WebProxy.IsBypassed source code:


public bool IsBypassed(Uri host)
{
    GlobalLog.Print("WebProxy#" + ValidationHelper.HashString(this) + "::IsBypassed() destination:" + ValidationHelper.ToString(host));

    if (host == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("host");
    }

    AutoWebProxyState autoWebProxyState;
    bool result = IsBypassedAuto(host, out autoWebProxyState);
    if (autoWebProxyState==AutoWebProxyState.ExecutionSuccess) {
        return result;
    }

    return IsBypassedManual(host);
}

private bool IsBypassedManual(Uri host) {
    if (host.IsLoopback) {
        return true; // bypass localhost from using a proxy.
    }
    return (_ProxyAddress==null && _ProxyHostAddresses==null)  (_BypassOnLocal && IsLocal(host))  IsMatchInBypassList(host)  IsLocalInProxyHash(host);
}

Design patterns

2008-02-05T22:14:00.000Z

I've recently been on a training course with http://www.developmentor.com/ it's called Code Smarter with Design Patterns in .NET and can strongly recommend it.
I simply love design patterns, and you should to :-)

GRC.COM by Steve Gibson

2008-01-28T09:31:00.001Z

https://www.grc.com/ is run by Steve Gibson. He has many great utilities and has a Security Now podcast. I can't recommend them strongly enough.

GRC "Perfect Passwords" Generator https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
Spinrite hard disc recovery and maintenance http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
SecurityNow podcast with Leo Laporte http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
ShieldsUP! https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
SecurAble http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

DHCP Client service causing my PC to go slow

2008-01-23T09:16:00.000Z

Recently I’ve noticed my laptop going quite slow. For example, using Windows explorer and clicking on a folder resulted in a 40 – 60 second wait for the folder to show its contents.
Well, I’ve worked out by stopping the ‘DHCP Client’ service my PC goes like lightening again. I'm also using Windows XP.

To fix, you need to delete all Printers that are offline, and remove all mapped network drives.

Why does the ‘DHCP Client’ affect windows explorer? I don’t know, but Microsoft if your reading this, please fix it.

What do I use to write software?

2008-01-22T10:08:00.001Z

I started off with Dbase III, then Borland Turbo C for about 5 years, then when Microsoft Visual Studio v1.0 came out, I moved to that.

I've been using Visual Studio ever since. Coding in C++ and have since moved to C# when that came into existance.

Do I use component? Yes.
Which ones then?

I've also used DevExpress reports, but they peg the CPU to 100% on the webservers when exporting an excel spreadsheet with a lot of data in them, and more often than not, cause a timeout on the ASPX page. So I don't like to use them anymore.

My essential toolkit consists of:

SVN - Subversion source control http://subversion.tigris.org/
Winrar http://www.rarlab.com/
Colour Schemer (web design) http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
SQL Prompt http://www.red-gate.com/
ANTS Profiler http://www.red-gate.com/
NUnit http://www.nunit.org/
Microsoft Visual Studio http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/default.aspx
Microsoft SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/sql/default.mspx
Microsoft Office http://office.microsoft.com/
Fiddler http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/
Expresso regex http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm
Hamachi VPN https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp
FinePrint http://www.fineprint.com/
All snap http://www.allsnap.org/
Taskbar shuffle http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm
Spinrite http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
ReSharper http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Recommended websites:

CodeProject http://www.codeproject.com/
MSDN http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx
SecurityNow http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
Sherman's Lagoon http://www.slagoon.com/cgi-bin/sviewer.pl