November 2012
1 post
2 tags
January 2012
3 posts
Look what ReSharper just taught me
You can rewrite:
var result = object.Where(m => m.Id == id).FirstOrDefault()
as
var result = object.FirstOrDefault(m => m.Id == id);
Thank you ReSharper
1 tag
Anonymous asked: if i ask a question, where does it go and how do i see the answer? is this powered by a magic 8 ball?
December 2011
1 post
2 tags
Why using test coverage as a metric is stupid
Adding a useless test to increase test coverage check.
[TestMethod]
[ExpectedException(typeof(NotImplementedException))]
public void AddUsersToRolesTest()
{
Roles.AddUsersToRoles(new string[] { }, new string[] { });
}
November 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Easter eggs jQuery plugin
I decided that a project I was working in needed more monsters so I created a quick jQuery plugin to add them, have fun.
//Change image
//<div data-swapcss-value='url("imageurl.png")'>
//Full options
//<div data-swapcss-property='background-color' data-swapcss-value='red' data-swapcss-count="3">
var swapCssConfig = {}
var swapCssConfig.currentCount = 0;
(function ($) {
...
October 2011
4 posts
1 tag
The perils of message placement
Today I entered a contest to win a windows phone I filled in the form and clicked send the form cleared and nothing happerned, or so I thought.
I scrolled down a little and there was a success message, It goes to show if you place a ajax message in the wrong place it can lead to confusion. If the message was above the submit button it would of been fine.
Shrinking Twitter Bootstrap
I really like the Twitter bootstrap but there is one small problem the css file has a bunch of styles that I never used and is slowing down the page load.
Luckly the the people at twitter use less so its pretty easy to customise the css to only include what you want.
For my new iPad Kids game site I wanted to use the reset and the layout and nothing else. To do this:
Download the source from...
3 tags
My Typography Cheat Sheet
I know very little about web design and typography in fact most it is from one presentation, so here is my typography cheat sheet.
My Typography Cheat Sheet
Line height of 1.3-2.0 ems
Column width: 2 alphabets
Body text: 16px
2-3 typefaces, maximum
Sans-serif (ex. Helvetica) for titles
Serif (ex. Georgia) for body text
Some Links
Typography for Lawyers
Web Typography
Designing for the...
4 tags
Markdown and Javascript
When I created my demo site I wanted to use markdown for all the text so that I can have the same text in github as when the site is displayed. After searching the internet io found showdown but there was a problem it is not very well maintained. There however is an offshoot that the guys at stackoverflow are using called pagedown.
Notice: There is a jQuery plugin I created the details on how to...
September 2011
4 posts
Tumblr Custom Domain DNS Redundancy
Recently Tumblr the DNS server used to host the tumblr custom domains went down and with it all custom tumblr blogs with custom domains, This blog be hosted as such went down with them I was annoyed.
I decided it was time to set up some redundancy I turned to Google and found these servers:
72.32.231.8
50.22.53.155
50.22.53.157
174.121.66.230
174.121.98.156
Just...
2 tags
Turn off Server Shutdown message
One of the most annoying things about using Windows Server as a developement box is the fact that you always need select the shutdown reason when ever you want to reboot. I posted this some time ago on my old blog, but i have found myself using it twice this week so I thought it would be a good time to repost it.
Click Start, Run, and then enter gpedit.msc. Click OK.
The Group Policy Object...
4 tags
Why pay for hosting?
Free Hosting
I don’t like to pay for stuff on the internet this also goes for hosting. Recently I wanted to put up some demo javascript so I figured it was time to find some free hosting.
I turned to google again to try and find an answer. There were a lot of of sites offering free hosting but most of them were crap, I did however find two options thar seemed pretty good, they were:
...
4 tags
Working with the Twitter Bootstrap modal
Twitter Bootstrap Modal
I have been playing with the Twitter Bootstrap but one thing seemed to be missing, there is no javascript libraries to do the fancy stuff like modals and drop downs. After a little looking around I found the people who made the twitter bootstrap are actually creating a bunch of javascript to do all the fancy stuff.
But there are two problems:
To use the JS you need to...
August 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Some times Ants are cool! →
3 tags
Another book for my reading list. →
Ok my game is using Cocos 2D to build my game and now there is a book sweet. I will be buying this very soon.
July 2011
2 posts
5 tags
No sound on avi for PS3 = Solved (using a mac)
Every so often you go to watch a movie on your PS3 and there is no sound this has been an annoyance for some time for me. The way to fix it is to convert the movie to another sound format that the PS3 can play. As I have a mac it is a pain to convert it but thanks to gizmodo I now have a simple way.
Download and Install Media Converter it’s free.
Open Media Converter and select...
3 tags
June 2011
7 posts
2 tags
A chapter a day....
As part of my iOS game goal I have to learn objective-c, I have a book to read and learn objective-c but it has a lot of chapters in it I worked out today that if i wanted to complete my goal I will need to complete(read and do exercises) a chapter a day.
So I am on it each day after I have completed a chapter I will put the work on github.
3 tags
My Detailed Plan
Ok its time for my detailed plan, broken into 5 parts here is the summary(I will keep the details secret)
Submit Idea to bright ideas - 22 June 2011
Learn objective-c (Read book and Build motivational App) - 31 July 2011
Build Prototype
Get graphics and add paid content
Release app to App store (register company and domain)
The first one is done now for part 2.
4 tags
So it was you all along Telstra Clear (80029564...
I have been having a lot of trouble with the PSN store and downloading games over 2GB(they stop at 14% on the install) this has cost me a lot bandwidth(at least 80GB) trying to figure it out.
I have rang sony they baimed Telstra Clear.
I rang Telstra Clear they blaimed Sony and me.
I have searched the internet and tried everything that I could find and its still not working.
When on the...
3 tags
Time to get going
I have been wanting to write an iOS game for some time not but as with life things always seem to get in the way and I keep putting it off off. I decided to do the inconceivable for me and read a self help book to try and find some tips on how to motivate myself.
After looking on the internet for something that was not crap (I am looking at you “The Secret”) and based on actual...
4 tags
jQuery a Quick Start
I “volunteered” to do a developer session/presentation on jQuery for work I made the slides on Slide Rocket and showed the examples the javascript using Cloud9 IDE.
If anyone is interested or wants to steal it and get some brownie points where they work, the slides are here and examples are hosted on my github repo called jQueryExample.
Update: The links seem to be a little...
3 tags
Chapter One Complete
I have just completed Chapter 1 of iPhone Programming - The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, I also fixed a bug that would occur when you clicked “Show Answer” before clicking “Show Question”.
To try and work how this whole Coco thing I have been reading Cocoa Design Patterns on the train, it is a really good read and I can see it becoming in handy for my day job doing C#...
May 2011
10 posts
3 tags
I have found a better book →
I have found a better book to get a handle of iPhone and Objective-C development very soon I will be the iPhone master, ma ha ha ha.
Next: Read the book and do the first exercise.
3 tags
Finally a good Objective-C cheat sheet →
After trying to work out how to do collision detection I realised that I had a little problem. I am not very good at Objective-C so I went to the library and got a book a very shameful book. The book is a little too basic for my liking but it did have a link to this handy cheat sheet.
Next: Build a basic non-game iPhone app to improve my objective-c skills.
“I think it’s more important to be your own man than be successful”
– Christopher Eccleston
4 tags
Dealing with Gits
Ok, I have set up a git repository on github and added the Cocos2D tutorial project, I was also found a nice git client that is currently free call Gitti.
Next: Look into collision detection.
Update: My objective-c skills are not good enough to do collision detection yet so I am going to work on learning objective-c.
New Next: Learn more about Objective-c.
4 tags
4 tags
Starting iOS Development
For a while now I have been trying to build a iPhone Game I tried doing it in html5 and failed. So I decided to go native found the library that Angry Birds is built with and figured if it was good enought for them its good enough for me.
Next: Do the tutorial.
Update: Turns out I was wrong about Angry Birds but it looks pretty good so I will keep using it.
Is it wrong I want this? →
1 tag
3 tags
Why God Why
<rant>
I found the following code in an project that should not be named:
$("#lettersTable").load('URL', {key:document.getElementById('key').value});
No you should not use document.getElementById in jQuery! not having to use document.getElementById is the whole point of jQuery.
</rant>
1 tag
Wellington Mobile Developers User Group
After coming back from Datacom code camp on the weekend I found out that Wellington does not have a Mobile Developers User Group(there was a Phone 7 one once but it didn’t take off).
After talking to my manager it looks like one will be starting soon at the Datacom Wellington offices watch this space.
Comment if you are interested.
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
4 tags
Tipfy and PyAMF Fixed
After playing finally getting PyAMF installed it was time to get it working with Tipfy but I still couldn’t get buildout to work correctly. On my Mac after playing a but of guess work I managed to get the buildout to work by doing the following:
defaults write com.apple.versioner.python Version 2.5
export VERSIONER_PYTHON_VERSION=2.5
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64"...
March 2011
1 post
4 tags
Pyamf Not Installing for Tipfy
I have spent the last three days trying to get Pyamf to work in tipfy to no avail, every time I try I got an error saying it could not compile.
AMF-0.6.1/distribute-0.6.14-py2.5.egg
WARNING: Could not build extension for 'temp.tmpla7hzZ.distribute-0.6.14.tests.shlib_test.hello', no source found
no previously-included directories found matching 'doc/build'
no previously-included directories found...
November 2010
1 post
3 tags
File storage in the cloud
I have been playing with google app engine for a while now mainly with Granite Data Services and Flex, recently I decided to see if I could store files in the datastore as blobs. I stared by searching on the web on how to save a file as a blob to the datastore after a bit of playing I managed to get it all working using JSP pages and the apache commons fileupload, using this little bit of...
July 2010
1 post
2 tags
NotImplementedError: Unable to find the Python PIL...
I have been playing with Google App engine on both mac and windows and in both cases when using images.resize I get the following error:
NotImplementedError: Unable to find the Python PIL library. Please view the SDK documentation for details about installing PIL on your system.
After using my friend Google I found the solution. For Mac OSX:
Open to Terminal by navigating to your Applications...
November 2009
1 post
2 tags
MonoTouch - Image View in Interface Builder
I have been playing with MonoTouch recently in an attempt to make a iPhone app. I was playing quite happily there just one problem. I couldn’t work out how to set the image for the “Image View” in Interface Builder I searched the internet for a few hours and still couldn’t find a thing. So it was time to start randomly clicking and compiling until it worked. Here is...
September 2009
1 post
2 tags
Flex - Button label truncation problem
I recently had trouble with Flex truncating the label on some but… It was a particularly aggravating affair, playing with the padding and the width which had no apparent effect. After hours of searching the net and finding nary a shred I discovered that there was a simple fix. Simply changing the label placement property of the button to ‘bottom’ had the desired effect...
July 2009
3 posts
3 tags
Free Flex IDE
Ok so flex is great but there is one small problem and thats the US$ 299 for the IDE from adobe. Yes there is a free trial available so you can at least spend 60 days trying the IDE but what happens after your 60 days are up and you still want to use flex but don’t have US $299 laying around to buy yourself the full version. With Flash Develop and a two little plugins you can. Installing...
Excel Reader Writer (excel not required)
Ok as promised here it is a very simple(1 days work) wrapper for reading and writing excel files using 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Component. Below is an example function that shows what the class library can do. Remember to include a reference to the library in you project.
public void CorichExcel()
{
string file = "C:/excel.xls";
string sheet = "";
try
{
...
Excel Sheet Names using ODBC
I recently needed to import data from excel into a c# application after doing some searching I found the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components there is a lot of good info on the net so I quickly got it up and running. There was only one problem nowhere I looked could I find out how to get the sheet names. I stared putting various stuff into a data grid until I cam up with the...
November 2008
1 post
Auto Redirect to Login in page on an ASP.NET...
I have been working on an ASP.NET website recently and I ran into a problem where if I automatically redirected to the login page I lost my styles. I found a solution tho and here it is:
<!-- allows access Styles and Images directories-->
<location path="Styles">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow users="?">
</allow></authorization>
...
April 2008
1 post
March 2008
2 posts
How I Fixed - SQL Server Error 310
I have just spent an hour trying to work out why my Sql Server Agent would not start. I kept getting this error message
SQLServerAgent could not be started (reason: Unable to connect
to server'(local)'; SQLServerAgent cannot start).
It was making me really angry when I realised what was wrong, I did not have the account for the Windows user the agent was running under in my database to. I...
