Tag: Technology Page 8 of 11

Cropper and TinyPic

On October 3, 2005

By now you may have heard about Cropper by Brian Scott (I’ve even mentioned it before). It’s a nifty screen capture utility that I originally found linked from Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools list. I’ve used it a few times, and it’s pretty cool. You can optionally choose to create thumbnails of each screen capture.

Well, Patrick Altman is a self-proclaimed Cropper fan, and he has written a nice little plugin for it. His plugin will take a standard Cropper screen capture in PNG format and upload it to TinyPic. Then it places the URL of the image into the clipboard for easy pasting into blogs, etc. You should try it! (Note: This image was added using this method.)

One important thing to note, though: Patrick’s plugin is compiled against a previous Cropper BETA. I had to use Reflector to disassemble it and recompile it. I didn’t have to change anything — just a recompile. If you don’t want to go through that hassle (or don’t know how), send me a quick note and I’ll forward you my recompiled version. I don’t want to post it here because it’s not my code to post, but until Patrick has a chance to update it, or tell me to stop, I’ll share.

I do also have a couple suggestions for Patrick (which I sent him via e-mail earlier today):

Right now, if Cropper is configured to create a thumbnail image, that image does not get uploaded to TinyPic. That would be a nice feature.
Because I really love my clipboard, I have found that I might use the Cropper -> TinyPic option, and then copy some other text before I paste the TinyPic URL someplace meaningful. So I have suggested that he consider some type of log file.

But don’t let those two things keep you from trying this out. I know I’ll be using it for a while.

Update: Patrick Altman has e-mailed me and said that he doesn’t use this plugin anymore, and that he has no plans to update it. He said that I should feel free to update my decompiled version and redistribute it. Well, I don’t exactly have a lot of spare time right now myself (more on this later…), but now I feel comfortable posting my updated DLL. So here it is. It works with Cropper 1.6. If anyone wants to make updates to it, knock yourself out — just let me know if you come up with something useful. 🙂

Firefox Security

By Scott

On September 16, 2005

In Uncategorized

Have you seen this article? So as this type of thing becomes more of a trend, are people finally going to realize that Firefox is only as secure as it is because its security flaws have yet to be exploited?

Now, I don’t have a single problem with Firefox or people that use it. I even occasionally use it myself. But security by (or because of) obscurity isn’t really security at all, now, is it?

Weird Cookie Issue

By Scott

On September 7, 2005

In Uncategorized

At work, I’m working on a web app that allows both “users” and “admins” to login. I’m using ASP.NET’s (1.1) built-in support for the “Remember Me” cookie. Until now, I’ve been working pretty exclusively on functionality for one or the other (user or admin), so, to save time, I would log in and check the box.

Now, I find myself needing to switch between user screens and admin screens as I test my code. So I figured I’d use Firefox to test admin changes and IE to test user changes. That way I could still use the “Remember Me” functionality to save time.

Well, the weird thing is that IE and Firefox seem to be sharing cookies. When I login as user in IE, I am a user in FF, and if I log out in FF, I am logged out in IE.

Has it always been this way? Are they really sharing cookies? Or am I missing something?

Code Generator 1.1

By Scott

On August 22, 2005

In Uncategorized

If you’ve read the blog for a while, you might have seen my previous posts about a code generator I wrote.

As I’ve used it for a couple months, I’ve decided that I have a lot (LOT) of changes I want to make to it. I’m not quite a genius yet (like all of the people at the Q# launch), but I’ve learned a ton since I first started writing this.

However, as things go, I haven’t had time to really re-engineer it. It’s hard to take time to fix something that works, even though it doesn’t work as well as it could or should. (Can I get an “Amen”?!) So, in the meantime, I’ve just fixed a few bugs and made a few enhancements. Most noticably, there is a progress bar at the bottom of the window now.

So anyway, for what it’s worth, here is the updated version. Use it at your own risk, blah blah blah.

To see a “real” code generator, check out Codus by Sean McCormack from Adapdev Technologies. Adapdev has a few good tools that have been released to the development community. On a (sort of) related note, Sean will be speaking to the WI .NET Users Group on September 13 about Automated Testing for .NET. You can register at the UG site.

TechEd DVDs

By Scott

On August 17, 2005

In Uncategorized

I got my Tech·Ed DVDs today. It includes seven discs:

4 of presentation slide decks and audio
IT Showcase (lots of case studies, etc.)
SQL Server 2005 Readiness Kit
Microsoft Office System Tips & Tricks Plus

Plus it has the keynotes and all of the manuals for the Hands On Labs.

I’ve got a lot of learning to do…

Ditching Google AdSense

By Scott

On August 15, 2005

In Uncategorized

So the Google AdSense thing wasn’t working for me, and I’m not referring to the fact that I only made 60 cents. OK, so maybe it has a little to do with that, but the real reason is that the ads were totally out of context. 99% of the ads that were displayed were about “blog”. The other 1% was about tsunami relief.

Both, I’m sure, are fine topics, but are not relevant to my content like they “were supposed to be”. I e-mailed Google about this a few times to find out what could be done. My third e-mail got no response at all. The two responses before that were (paraphrased):

I need to wait for indexing by the AdSense crawler.
I need to use full sentences and paragraphs about specific topics.

OK, the first one I could understand. I didn’t realize at first that AdSense uses a different index than the regular Google index.

The second suggestion, though, was a little frustrating, for a couple reasons. First, I know I’m not a hardcore tech writer, where all I write about is code, but the majority of my posts were, in some way, about technology and development. Second, I’m not writing term papers or essays, and in most cases, long paragraphs don’t “make sense”. Also, as far as I can tell, I nearly always use compelte sentences.

In addition to describing my above reasoning, in each of my three e-mails, I asked (or suggested) if there was a way to “tag” my content. For example, I could surround my content with something like this:

<div rel=”adsensecontent”>…</div>

Well, my third e-mail has been unanswered for 10 days now, so today I decided to ditch Google AdSense. It’s not that I expect them to change their technology based on my suggestion, but I suggested/asked about something like that in each of the three e-mails, and that part was ignored each time. It wasn’t working for me, maybe it will for you. I’m not the only one, though. Julie Lerman blogged about a similar issue.

Anyway, in place of AdSense, I’ve decided to post jobs from karmaONE, a service for referring people to open positions. You can read all about it here on their site. The service is currently in BETA, and, as you can see, most of the jobs are currently located in the San Francisco area. If you are a recruiter in the Wisconsin area, check out karmaONE — you can help to make this list more relevant. I might end up getting some money, but you’ll end up with a good candidate.

In the end, though, as much as I’d like extra money for doing pratcially nothing, I decided that I’d rather my “practically nothing” at least possibly help someone find a job.

For those that care, I’m actually using OpenGUI’s Feed2JS service to display these links. What can I say — I’m too lazy to write my own RSS display module for CommunityServer.

Casey’s /CameraFlow App

By Scott

On August 15, 2005

In Uncategorized

Have you seen the new app that casey (or “the lower cased one”, as OS likes to call him) wrote? Remember the old wooden labyrinth game? The one where you had to twist the knobs to tilt the deck so the little silver ball would roll through the maze without falling in the holes?

He wrote that for the TabletPC (in C# with managed Direct3D). But it’s not just a game controlled by mouse or keyboard (although you can use the mouse). The meat of the story is that the “board” is controlled by camera tracking, so if you have a camera connected to your Tablet, you can play the game by actually, physically tilting your Tablet. Just like the real game…

I saw the app while it was in development, but haven’t seen the finished product yet. Maybe sometime this week? Or this weekend?

I think it’s pretty cool — he even got Scobleized. If I had a TabletPC and a camera, I’d probably be playing it all the time. I haven’t seen my “real” labyrinth game in several years, so I’ve had withdrawls, you know.

Maybe for version 2.0 he’ll add the ability to control it with some sort of knobs?

casey also presented on Tablet and speech technologies at our June WI .NET Users Group meeting. He’s posted slides and code for those who are interested. The code for the Labyrinth game will be available soon.

Perfmon Tips (via Coding Horror)

By Scott

On August 12, 2005

In Uncategorized

I found this on Coding Horror today while browsing. Thankfully, MS has a wizard to recommend relevant counters, because “using perfmon is like trying to sip from a fire hose“. There’s a “helpful” image in the post showing a graph of the MS recommended counters. That makes it so much easier…

SlickRun

By Scott

On July 29, 2005

In Uncategorized

The other day I started using SlickRun. It was in Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools List. I’d seen it a while back, but finally downloaded and installed it the other day. Here’s a screenshot:

In short, I like it a lot when I remember to use it (which is spotty, but getting more frequent). I have it set to show on Win-Q (the default) at the location of my mouse cursor (not default). You can run commands there as if it was the command window or Start->Run, but you can also create “MagicWords” to be shortcuts to other programs (with or without parameters). For example, if I type Win-Q then “mor” (for morning), my e-mail, my RSS reader, and iTunes all open.

The best thing about it: it’s free! 🙂 Long live the keyboard!

Comments Have Been Restored

By Scott

On July 11, 2005

In Uncategorized

Well, after being down for about a week, comments are now re-enabled on my blog.

I posted to the CS Forums about this issue to try to get some help, but no one ever responded. So I decided to ask someone I know that works for Telligent — Dan Bartels. I sent Dan a short e-mail, pointing to my forum question, and he responded right away (within ~30 minutes).

He made a simple suggestion to temporarily switch to the default blog skin and see if comments would work. The comments did work! My problem stemmed from the fact that I was using a customized version of a skin that came in the 1.0x CS distribution. Based on his suggestion, when I got home I poked around for about 10 minutes and got it working. In case anyone else has a similar problem, here is my simple solution.

In the /Themes/Blogs/_Your_Theme_/Skin-EntryPostCommentContainer.ascx, add this line:

<Blog:EntryComments runat = “Server” ID =”comments” />

For example, my file now looks like this:

<%@ Control Language=”C#” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”Blog” Namespace=”CommunityServer.Blogs.Controls” Assembly=”CommunityServer.Blogs” %>
<%@ Import Namespace=”CommunityServer.Components” %>
<Blog:EntryView runat = “Server” ID = “Entry” />
<Blog:EntryComments runat = “Server” ID =”comments” />
<Blog:CommentForm runat = “Server” ID =”form” />

You could also just copy this file from /Themes/Blogs/default/, but you would lose any other changes you may have done to the file.

Thanks for the tip, Dan!!