Tech http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/category/24.aspx Computer related topics en-US Luc lucas @ hardbarger . com Subtext Version 1.9.4.78 Last PingPoet Blog Post http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2007/01/22/29977.aspx This is my last blog post as VBGuru. I've switched to blogger now. If you are still interested in what I have to say from time to time, please update your feed readers: <a href="http://hardbarger.blogspot.com">http://hardbarger.blogspot.com</a><br /><br />PingPoet has been good to me (thanks <a title="Scott's Blog" href="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow">Scott</a>). I'm just consolidating, that's all. :)<br /><img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29977.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2007/01/22/29977.aspx Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:04:14 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2007/01/22/29977.aspx#feedback 20 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29977.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29977.aspx CodeMash... I'll be there! http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/12/28/29976.aspx <p> <a href="http://www.codemash.org">CodeMash</a> is coming next month (January 18th &amp; 19th) and I'll be there. Data Dynamics is actually sponsoring the event. We were trying to get a spot to speak at the event, but there were lots of other speakers with a hell of a lot more clout that myself (ie. <a title="Scott's Blog" href="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow">Scott</a> Guthrie, Bill Wagner, Josh Holmes, etc...). As it turns out, we'll simply be exhibiting at the event, but I do hope to attend 1 or 2 <a href="http://www.codemash.org/SessionList.aspx">sessions</a> if possible.</p> <p>If you are able to attend, please stop by our booth. We have a whole new line of products and many people don't even know about them yet. We've demoed the products at TechEd, Tulsa TechFest , and DevConnections so far, but it's been pretty hush-hush outside of those events. We haven't made mention of this new line of products on our website or even in our marketing campaigns. When we do... you'll know though. Once the "cat is out of the bag" I (personally) plan to do a lot of blogging about them with tips, tricks, and all that good stuff. We've even talked about a Data Dynamics Community Blog to allow us to interact more with our customers, but it's just an idea right now. Feel free to send me an email if you are interested in finding out more information about these products or think a Data Dynamics community blog would be a good idea (lucas at datadynamics dot com). Otherwise, if you do come to <a href="http://www.codemash.org">CodeMash</a>, stop by the Data Dynamics booth and talk to me "mono e mono" or "chicka e mono"... I'd love to give you a personalized demo of what we've been (secretly) working on. ;)</p> <p>The coolest part about this whole "<a href="http://www.codemash.org">CodeMash</a> thing" (for me anyway) is that I'm taking the family up with me. I can't wait!! The event is being held at the <a href="http://www.kalahariresort.com/hub/">Kalahari Resort</a> in <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sandusky,+OH">Sandusky, Ohio</a>... it's an indoor water park. Anybody with kids knows that this easily qualifies me for a "Dad of the Year" award with my girls. We are going up a day before the event and plan to stay a couple of extra days after the event. The goal is to relax and kick back for a couple of days with time off of the farm to not worry about <em>anything</em>.</p> <p>Jen and I have some friends up around this area too, so if we run out of things to do at Kalahari, we could always go visit our friends from college. It's a shame that <a href="http://www.cedarpoint.com">CedarPoint</a> won't be open; that place kicks butt. The only times I've ever been to Sandusky are to go to CedarPoint... I didn't even know that there were other things to <em>do</em> in Sandusky to be honest. :)</p> <p>Lastly, I gotta throw out some marketing stuff because it will give me a chance to win a Zune (<a href="http://www.codemash.org/Blog4ZuneContest.aspx">details</a>). Here goes:<br /><a href="http://www.codemash.org/"><img src="http://www.codemash.org/includes/images/bloggerbadge.gif" alt="CodeMash – I'll be there!" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.codemash.org/" rel="tag">CodeMash</a></p><img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29976.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/12/28/29976.aspx Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:22:47 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/12/28/29976.aspx#feedback 1 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29976.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29976.aspx Horrible IIS Bug http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/11/01/29973.aspx Today I was trying to run an ASP.NET 2.0 application. And (as we all know) IIS requires us to change our 'Default Web Site' to point to the "Local Path" directory where localhost will run (my rants on this useless process might be found in a future blog post). :) Anyway, once I remapped my local directory to it's new location, I tried to hit the site: <span style="font-style: italic;">http://localhost/lucscoolproject</span> and, after ASP.NET 2.0 finished compiling whatever it is ASP.NET 2.0 compiles, I got this "extremely descriptive and helpful" error message: <br /> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span></span> <h2><em><em>App_GlobalResources/' maps to a directory outside this application</em></em></h2> </div> WHAT!? I did my famous <a href="http://www.google.com" title="The ultimate search engine">Google</a> search using the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22App_GlobalResources%2F'+maps+to+a+directory+outside+this+application%22">entire string</a> and found the answer right away. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">IIS bombs when the 'Local Path' on the "Home Directory Tab" has a trailing \.</span> <br /> <br /> I was using:<br /> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;" /><span style="font-weight: bold;">c:\dev\testprojects\web\</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></div> and changed it to:<br /> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">c:\dev\testprojects\web &lt;--- notice no trailing \ character</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /> </span></div> Vioala! It worked!<br /> <br /> How could a simple trailing "\" at the end of my Local path warrant such a nasty error message? C'mon Team! :)<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29973.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/11/01/29973.aspx Thu, 02 Nov 2006 05:12:06 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/11/01/29973.aspx#feedback 17 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29973.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29973.aspx White and Nerdy http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/30/29972.aspx <p>This is my new theme song!!</p> <embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=1384277706451157121&amp;hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed><img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29972.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/30/29972.aspx Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:54:25 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/30/29972.aspx#feedback 159 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29972.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29972.aspx Here is my XNA blog post http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/27/29878.aspx I've been hearing a lot about <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+xna">XNA</a>. If you are a tech blogger, you have probably noticed as well. I didn't quite understand all the hype at first, but now it's starting to catch my attention... deficit disor... I'm thirsty. Anyway, I'm seeing what all the hype is about <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/">now</a> and decided to write my very own post about XNA. This way, someone might find my dorky blog if they do a feed search for XNA. Let me know if this was you. :)<br /> <br /> Today I was doing my blog role and ran across a really <a href="http://www.alanphipps.com/VisualBasicdotNET-XNA.html">cool post</a> with oodles of useful code to get someone up and running with XNA using Visual Basic 2005. I must admit that when using .NET, I prefer using C#. Outside of .NET however, I'm a hard core VB junky at heart (hence the <a href="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/vbguru">VBGuru</a> blog name (nice little self pingback there)). There are tons of C# samples using XNA as well. I remember seeing a whole bunch of them a couple of weeks ago when it was first announced, but didn't feel like digging through old feeds to find them before posting this. Just do a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=xna+c%23+%2Bsamples">google search</a> if you are interested... they're out there!<br /> <br /> I do plan to get into this sometime and tinker around with it. I've always wanted to be a game developer and now with XNA, it sets the "standards" (damn MS) for developing games in .NET. I just need to find some free time between workin, farmin, daddin, bloggin, and livin. Maybe tomorrow. :)<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29878.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/27/29878.aspx Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:30:52 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/27/29878.aspx#feedback 20 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29878.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29878.aspx Multithreaded Map Reduce Implementation http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/20/29412.aspx <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html">Map Reduce</a> is a very cool concept. If you have never heard of it or never took the time to really figure out how it works, I highly recommend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce">doing so now</a>. I remember reading about it when <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html">Joel mentioned it</a> on his blog. When I first realized how it all worked, I must admit there was some confusion as to when and why I would ever use this. I now see the power of it and can think of many situations where I could use this. It really is an ingenious concept.<br /> <br /> I was catching up on my blog role today and ran across <a href="http://software.ericsink.com">Eric Sink</a>'s <a href="http://software.ericsink.com/entries/multicore_map.html">multithreaded approach</a> to this problem. The scariest part about the whole thing is that I downloaded his code and actually <em>understand</em> every line of code. If you would have shown me this code 6 months ago, I would have laughed in your face. It's amazing how fast you learn new concepts and not even realize it when working in the computer field. I love my <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">job</span> <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">hobby</span> passion. :)<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29412.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/20/29412.aspx Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:29:45 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/20/29412.aspx#feedback 20 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29412.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29412.aspx .NET Rocks! http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/14/29030.aspx <img width="300" height="225" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.hardbarger.com/lucnjen/images/dotnetrocks2.jpg" />Today was a good day. Ok, today was a <span style="font-style: italic;">GREAT </span>day! You'll have to excuse me if I'm start rambling on about hmump traughwre phla vie chee shafla chum chum. About 20 minutes ago I was interviewed by Carl Franklin and Richard Cambell!!! Yes, that's right, the one and only <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/">.NET Rocks!</a> hosts!! I'm still on cloud 9 about the whole ordeal. <br /> <br /> Needless to say, I'm an avid listener to the show and love hearing about all the cool things in the nerd-world. It's so cool to hear then say "<a href="http://www.datadynamics.com">Data Dynamics</a>" when they shout out to their sponsors because I know that <span style="font-style: italic;">so </span>many people listen to the podcast. We have lots of people come up to our booth and say they've heard of us on .NET Rocks! and thank us for sponsoring them. I can't wait until Monday's episode and hear Carl introduce ME!! Wow! So cool...<br /> <br /> Every now and then Carl will come up to our booth at a tech show and catch up with us on what's new. It has always been on a "nerd to nerd" basis and very informal. He talks up our products and I talk up his show. I had never imagined I would be getting interviewed on his show. Well tonight <a title="" href="http://www.misterdotnet.com/blog">James</a> and I were leaving the VIP dinner after <a href="http://www.tulsatechfest.com">TechFest</a> and as we were walking out, Richard came up to us and asked if they could interview us... I was floored!<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Update: </span>The pictures are in and blog has been updated. Thanks for the "camera phone proof" <a title="" href="http://www.misterdotnet.com/blog">James</a>! :)<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Update: </span>I looked on .NET Rocks! site and see that the TechFest episode won't be available for download until November 21st. All this waiting is killing me!<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/29030.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/14/29030.aspx Sun, 15 Oct 2006 05:42:45 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/14/29030.aspx#feedback 13 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/29030.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/29030.aspx Google Code Search http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/05/28428.aspx This should be a very handy search utility once I figure out the trick to using it: <a href="http://www.google.com/codesearch">http://www.google.com/codesearch</a><br /> <br /> I haven't really had much luck with it yet becuase I'm not sure what to search for. Typically when I run into a problem, I just press F1, read up on a topic and tinker with it. I was talking with <a href="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow" title="Scott's Blog">Scott</a> today on a certain <a href="http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;q=aggregate+auto+datatype+null+lang%3Ac%23&amp;btnG=Search">aggregation issue in c#</a> and i found a couple of "potential" links that might help find a solution to the problem. Who knows, worth a try. :)<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/28428.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/05/28428.aspx Thu, 05 Oct 2006 08:47:30 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/05/28428.aspx#feedback 5 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/28428.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/28428.aspx Tulsa TechFest 2006 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/03/28409.aspx <a href="http://www.datadynamics.com">Data Dynamics</a> will be speaking at <a href="http://www.tulsatechfest.com/">Tulsa TechFest 2006</a> on Saturday, October 14th. <a href="http://www.misterdotnet.com/blog" title="">James</a> and I are going to be demonstrating some of the cool new features in ActiveReports for .NET 3.0. Here is our little blurb about what we'll be talking about:<br /> <br /> <div style="margin-left: 40px; font-style: italic;"><span class="Normal"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://tulsatechfest.com/Default.aspx?tabid=89">Creating Professional Reports in No Time Using ActiveReports for .NET 3.0</a><br /> ActiveReports for .NET 3.0 allows you to create professional reports with very little effort. Come join us and learn how to leverage the power of a true object oriented reporting solution as we demonstrate useful features that will interest both the hard core coders and the business analysts. This one hour session will outline the benefits of a robust, event driven reporting library and illustrate how an easy-to-use designer can make you look like a pro.<br /> </span></div> <br /> If you are going to be attending the event, stop by our booth and talk "nerdy" to us.<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/28409.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/03/28409.aspx Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:52:51 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/10/03/28409.aspx#feedback http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/28409.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/28409.aspx Xaml PivotTable http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/09/30/28175.aspx Going through my blog role today and found a <a href="http://wpf.netfx3.com/files/folders/controls/entry5672.aspx">cool link</a> to a PivotTable written in WPF. It has a whole slew of unit tests setup and looks to be pretty cool. I have to install some things before I can get it working, but I look forward to tearing into it...<img src="http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/aggbug/28175.aspx" width="1" height="1" /> Luc http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/09/30/28175.aspx Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:52:46 GMT http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/archive/2006/09/30/28175.aspx#feedback 2 http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/comments/commentRss/28175.aspx http://blogs.pingpoet.com/VBGuru/services/trackbacks/28175.aspx