WordPress 3.1 is released
WordPress (the blogging system this site runs on) has been upgraded to version 3.1. There’s a lot of hoopla about it. There are claims that the dashboard and writing interface have received a lot of updates. Uh… I’m not seeing too much right now. Naturally, I’ll have to do more investigation. UPDATE: Well… here’s something new. When logged in but viewing the “user” version, I get a little menu bar across the top with nifty options for adding new pages and posts and stuff like that. T
read moreWindows Scheduled Task
We run lots of batch processes overnight. We do this to send emails, to generate reports, etc… We do all this via Windows Scheduled Tasks. It works great. Recently, I needed to add a new scheduled task. I went through the process of adding the task but when I tried to run it, it failed. The error message I got was “Could not start task“ What? I’m an admin on the box aren’t I? What’s going on here? Just in case, we set up a new user specifically to run the task. No luck. ARG. I did some...
read moreCould Apple’s App Store be monopolistic?
I was sitting here thinking. Today is release day for Apple’s App Store. It is for the Mac what iTunes is for music and what the AppStore is for iOS devices. I was sitting here wondering if iTunes was available in the App Store when it hit me. The App Store is actually part of the operating system. If you’ll notice, the App Store is now embedded in the Apple menu. Before, this menu entry said “Macintosh Software” or something like that. When you clicked on it, the OS would fire up your default browser and...
read moreSo weird…
I was trying to help my users out a little bit recently. When I picked up an error, I’d trap it, halt execution and notify them. As a nicety, I presented a “Click here to go back” link. It worked 99% of the time, but that 1% was killing me! At least I could reproduce the situation on demand. The link, as it was read like this… <a href="javascript:window.history.back();" id="hrefClickToGoBack">«« Click here to return to the previous page.</a> For that 1%, the...
read moreRelease Mode error message
We’re approaching delivery of the baby! In the next few months, we’ll be releasing our product. This is great news as it’s been a long time coming. As is the norm, we’ve been developing our product in Debug mode. While in Debug mode, Visual Studio will generate extra files to allow stepping through the code. This is a great thing for creating the initial code, but it’s not necessary for code that’s deployed to the world at large. When I switched Visual Studio over from Debug mode to Release mode, I...
read moreUnknown class “class name” in Interface Builder file.
Wow… just… wow. This took a long time to figure out. I was trying to create and use a custom UIButton in an iOS project. Everytime I tried it, the app would open and immediately close. Typical crash behavior. As is the norm, I opened the console. This is my first step in trying to figure out what the heck is going on. So after I opened the console, I built the application and ran it. That’s where I found it. The root cause of my error. Unknown class MATCGlossyButton in Interface Builder file. Hmmm…. what...
read moreKeybindings on the Mac
As you’ve probably gathered, I (proudly) consider myself a Mac guy. I have spent enough money on Apple products to allow El Jobso to get an extra cup of coffee every day for the rest of his life. I do a lot of work on my Macs. But I’ve been a Windows developer since… well, nearly forever. Habits are ingrained very deeply in people that do something all the time. Something like typing! Using text editors, code editors, blog writing software, word processors, email clients, and so on and so on. Since I’ve been...
read moreWindows 7 is better, but…
I’m a Mac guy at home, but professionally, I’m a Windows guy. I’ve been a .Net developer since 2000. Windows XP was pretty good. Vista stunk out loud. Windows 7 is good. Legitimately good. Don’t be fooled though. Even as good as it is, it still hurts when you haven’t saved recently and you get one of these… On the other hand, perhaps I should take it as a sign that God doesn’t want me working anymore today since it’s happend twice in 5...
read moreDisplaying Assembly Version Information
On a lot of my websites, I find it very useful to know exactly what version I’m working with. Not only the version number, but also whether or not it’s running in RELEASE or DEBUG mode. To accomplish this, it’s a fairly simple process. Just put a Label control on your webform and then set the text property of it. Here’s some sample code. Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load Dim strVersion As String =...
read moreSystem.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
Recently, we’ve had some fairly serious problems on our network. This has led to the admin staff removing our network profiles. It was an accident, but it still happend. The problem is now that the entire IT staff has to reconfigure our workstations. We’re using Visual Studio 2008 for our web applications. I finally got my code base updated via Subversion (no small feat) and tried to open a solution. I was presented with an error message stating: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException It appears this is caused by IIS not...
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