North North West

I Write Like...

2010-07-13T11:08:29Z

I write like
Isaac Asimov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Win.

Things I miss...

2010-02-25T16:17:34Z

You know, I think what I miss about working with C is that you can do things like:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
  unsigned int my_int = 0x8080;
  unsigned char* my_byte1 = (unsigned char*)&my_int;
  unsigned char* my_byte2 = (unsigned char*)&my_int + 1;

  printf("&my_int = %p\n", &my_int);
  printf("&my_byte1 = %p\n", my_byte1);
  printf("&my_byte2 = %p\n", my_byte2);

  printf("my_int = %d\n", my_int); // 32796
  printf("my_byte1 = %d\n", *my_byte1); // 128
  printf("my_byte2 = %d\n", *my_byte2); // 128

  unsigned int result = *my_byte1 + *my_byte2;

  printf("result = %d\n", result); // 256

  exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

I miss C's somewhat flexible approach to types.

Games For Windows Live Subscription Annoyance

2009-11-08T08:15:50Z

So, I'm trying to get my X-Box Live subscription renewed (well, it's actually Games For Windows Live, but you know), however I have a slight issue:

It won't let me redeem a code to renew my subscription because I have a payment method in decline.
The payment method is in decline because the card it's trying to use no longer exists.
It won't let me remove the card because it's configured to use it to auto-renew.
It won't let me change auto-renew to redeem a code because the payment method is in decline...

Oh and I can't e-mail them to bitch about this because it would be an account query and I have to phone them. People who know me will know how well I get along with phoning people.

Microsoft, you excel at fucking up.

Abstract and generic base forms in Visual Studio.

2009-09-24T13:37:41Z

OK, the inability of Visual Studio's form designer to deal with abstract base forms is a known thing and there is a work around involving TypeDescriptionProvider. However what I currently want to do is have an abstract base form that is also generic; there doesn't seem to be a work around for this.

This is highly annoying because it makes designing child forms really awkward and right now would involve more effort than I can actually be bothered to make. I mean I could make the problem go away by doing it wrong and using "object", instead of using generics to make it all lovely and verifiable at compile/development time, but damn it, using generics is the right way to do it.

The main reason this fucking annoys me so much is Microsoft actually know about the damn problem. It's been there since at least Visual Studio 2003 .NET (in the abstract form, the generic problem is obviously not in 2003), as far as I know and it's still there in Visual Studio 2010. The bug is, if you report it, just closed as "won't fix" with fluff about concentrating on security related bugs. Well fuck that, I want the designer to work properly with perfectly valid fucking code.

The code produced, if you do go to the trouble of manually writing the code to populate the derived form with your controls, works fine. It's just the form designer can't handle it because of the way it uses reflection to create an instance of the base class and then calls the InitializeComponent() method to actually fill it. That, I suspect, is why Microsoft won't fix it. It would involve a complete change in the way that the form designer functions. At least that's my supposition.

.NET Annoyances

2009-08-12T12:53:07Z

From the MSDN docs on the "DefaultValuesNeeded" event in DataGridView:

In data bound mode [...] When the user enters the row for new records, a new row is created in the data source before the DefaultValuesNeeded event occurs. When you populate the DataGridViewRowEventArgs.Row property in your event handler, the values are added directly to the data source.

If you're me this means you assume that DataGridViewRowEventArgs.Row.DataBoundItem would be set to the newly instantiated object created for the data source. Apparently it's not. Which is annoying.

Idle updates

2009-06-10T07:54:44Z

Working from home today and Thursday, instead of Thursday and Friday, because of the industrial action on the tube. Part of me wishes they could make it a 72 hour strike, just so my Friday routine isn't getting screwed up.

Or I would be if I could actually VPN in to the office; the DSL line the VPN is forwarded on seems to be foobar again. Although I can use GoToMyPC to get in to my workstation, it can't open any connections outbound. Don't seem to be able to get in to the router's web interface either, which isn't helpful. I need a body in the office to reset it.

Reflection Voodoo

2009-06-09T12:02:21Z

I wrote this method to get round having to do app.Run(scriptName, Type.Empty, Type.Empty, Type.Empty, Type.Empty, Type.Empty, Type.Empty, Type.Empty...) with "Type.Empty" in upto 30 times.

   1:          /// <summary>

   2:          /// Voodoo wrapper method to negate the need to call Application.Run() with

   3:          /// 31 parameters in order to execute a macro.

   4:          /// </summary>

   5:          /// <param name="app">An Excel Application COM object.</param>

   6:          /// <param name="macroName">The name of the macro to run.</param>

   7:          /// <param name="args">The parameters taken by the macro.</param>

   8:          private static void RunMacro(_Application app, string macroName, params object[] args)

   9:          {

  10:              if (app == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("app");

  11:              if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(macroName)) throw new ArgumentNullException("macroName");

12:

  13:              // Array of objects to hold the 31 parameters.

  14:              object[] myArgs = new object[31];

15:

  16:              // First parameter is always the name of the macro.

  17:              myArgs[0] = macroName;

18:

  19:              // Copy the supplied parameters to the parameter list.

  20:              args.CopyTo(myArgs, 1);

21:

  22:              // Fill the reamining slots with Type.Missing

  23:              for (int i = args.Length + 1; i < 31; i++)

  24:                  myArgs[i] = Type.Missing;

25:

  26:              // Get reflection info for the Run method.

  27:              MethodInfo info = app.GetType().GetMethod("Run");

28:

  29:              // Invoke the Run() method on the supplied Application instance using the

  30:              // parameter list we just built.

  31:              info.Invoke(app, myArgs);

  32:          }

And I have since fixed some of the edge case issues (like what happens if you pass more than 30 optional parameters).

Maldon Election Results

2009-06-05T13:43:22Z

Candidate	Political Party	Votes Received	%	Elected?	Majority
Channer, Penny	Conservative	2359	41.63	Yes	1179
Mead, Brian Harold	Independent	1180	20.83	No	N/A
Crowther, Christopher John	Liberal Democrat	621	10.96	No	N/A
Carden, Janet Marilyn	Green Party	600	10.59	No	N/A
Bentley, Michael John Charles	Labour	515	9.09	No	N/A
Blain, Len	British National Party	391	6.9	No	N/A

I'm quite happy with that result. And for those of you who don't know, that's me in third place.

Unhelpful Exceptions...

2009-06-04T11:11:49Z


Method 'get_DbConnection' in type 'RHD.Database.DatabaseObjects.PackageBound.Course' 
from assembly 'RHD.Database.DatabaseObjects, Version=2.0.1.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' 
does not have an implementation.

The main reason this exception is unhelpful is because there is an implementation for get_DbConnection (as you might have guessed from the name, it's actually the magic property method for the getter) in the ActiveRecord class, but for some reason it can't see this.

I suspect this might be something to do with Course being derived from BaseCourse, which is an abstract class derived from ActiveRecord, itself an abstract. BaseCourse also implements ICourse.

ActiveRecord is doing a partial implementation of IActiveRecord; it's implementing the dirty flag and db connection properties. The commit and delete methods are implemented as abstract and left for child classes to implement.

Solved: OK, apparently it was to do with platforms. For some reason my soltuion had reverted to building for "Any CPU" rather than "x86" (I'm on a 64-bit system, so often building for "Any CPU" won't work, becuase of assembly foobar).

Royal Gunpowder Mills

2009-05-31T11:42:36Z

I've uploaded some photos from the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey to my flickr account.

Star Wars Day + Bank Holiday == Win

2009-05-04T10:54:29Z

Although I should probably do something besides watch Star Wars all day...

Unhelpful error messages...

2009-05-01T11:51:51Z

I wish I knew what this actually meant. Google isn't terrible helpful.

Faulting application windows test service.exe, version 1.0.0.0, stamp 49fac422, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4062, stamp 46264680, debug? 0, fault address 0x0000bee7.

What's annoying is this is just a simple Windows Service I threw together so we could test something. All it does is do a directory listing on a remote server ushing SFTP every 30 seconds until you shut it down. I've tested it on my workstation and it works. It just won't run on the server.

I have this sneaking feeling it's either to do with registered assemblies or .NET code permissions...

Memories

2009-04-30T22:07:29Z

Just watched tonight's episode of Cold Case on Sky 1. The line "my mother was creole" made me think of someone, now I'm just feeling maudlin. Sometimes I wish the past would stay there.

BloodRayne 2

2009-04-29T20:57:46Z

I just watched BloodRayne 2. The only way I can describe it is this: BloodRayne, compared to BloodRayne 2, is a work of sublime genius.

Technical ponderence

2009-04-29T05:22:03Z

I'm in the middle of rewriting one of the apps at work that downloads "stuff" from a central store, partly so next time someone decides we need to change what protocol is used to access the storage site, I can just write a new module to implement it (this time we've gone from FTP to SFTP).

If any of you have worked with the FtpWebRequest class in .NET you'll know it can do connection caching, so it if finds an existing connection for the requested server, port and username combination it will re-use it. You'll probably also have found that it sucks, because once a connection is in error it's pretty much impossible to recover from it (at least I found it was).

I wouldn't mind implementing some form of connection caching myself; these connections are going to be re-used repeatedly, the system - by default - checks every 5 mnutes to see if there's something new on the remote server, so there doesn't seem much point in tearing down and recreating an SSH connetions every 5 minutes.

The thing is, I would rather not push requests in to a stack to be processed, I'd rather it looked for an availabe connection that wasn't already in use or created a new one if such a connection wasn't available; it's possible to peek at the site contents while a download is running, so you'd need two open sessions.

What I'm currently pondering is how to implement allocation and deallocation of connections, right now it's just adding a reference to the connection to a list to say that it's in use and when the calling method has finished with the connection it was handed it has to call Release(...) to tell the ConnectionManager that it's no longer using it. I'm not really fond of that approach, it's as bad as having to remember to do free() after a malloc() in C. Most of the time you do, but sometimes you'll forget and on a long running system it's going to bit you in the arse eventually (this is a windows service that just runs all the time).

It would be nice if I could use reflection to see if anything else is still holding a reference to the connection. Even that's not perfect, it's about as reliable as reference counting as a memory managment system, better than nothing though.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Dear Forum People

2009-04-29T04:59:38Z

Dear Forum People,

The written English language has punctuation and sentence structure for a reason, please use it.

If your post comprises a single block of text where a fullstop, comma or even capital letter are ne'er to be seen, I am not going to waste time trying to read it.

I know my own spelling, punctuation and grammar are sure to be far from perfect, but it is at least readable - I hope.

What Age Do You Act?

2009-04-03T07:53:28Z

You Act Like You Are 29 Years Old

You are a twenty-something at heart. You feel like an adult, and you're optimistic about life.
You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

You're still figuring out your place in the world and how you want your life to shape up.
The world is full of possibilities, and you can't wait to explore many of them.

What Age Do You Act?

Acting your age is no fun. Well, near enough my age; 2 years out.

Some of the questions I flit between two options, depending on what mood I'm in.

I need a rest

2009-03-10T06:35:11Z

I really need a holiday. My brain is fried and I just can't think any more; I'm not being melodramatic either, I genuinely just can't order my thoughts and think something through any more. Things that should be simple, aren't. Things that were simple, aren't.

I'm starting to think what I need to do is quit work and take a break, then try and find a new job. Which I can't afford to do.

The fact that I can't sleep properly doesn't help. I go to bed and wake up continuously througout the night. I'm just about feeling I could go to sleep properly when I have to get up. Or rather if I don't get up, I will go to sleep properly and then I won't wake up in time to go to work. Part of me has trouble caring about that. I might start listening to it soon.

Happy Birthday To...

2009-01-04T09:05:01Z

Happy birthday to random_c, who is now even older.

Hmm

2008-12-27T21:28:38Z

My brother and sister (and come to think of it my co-workers) keep calling me a farmer because I wear a Barbour coat and tend to where checked shirts. My mother has bought me a brown John Deere beanie hat. This is not going to help things much.

Star Trek Ship Meme

2008-11-06T13:27:18Z

Your result for Which Star Trek Ship Should You Command? Test...

Excelsior Class!

10% Flight_Control, 20% Tactical, 30% Science and 70% Command!

Congratulations! You have been assigned an Excelsior Class vessel! The tried and true workhorse of Starfleet, the Excelsior has actually been retired on several occasions, only to be brought back a few years later. Her classic lines and smooth melding of advanced sensors, command and control systems, and diplomatic amenities, makes the Excelsior a well-rounded ship indeed.

Take Which Star Trek Ship Should You Command? Test at HelloQuizzy

Star Wars: The Old Republic

2008-11-01T13:40:17Z

Gah. I am going to kill Bioware! The suspense of wanting to play Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to kill me! Damnit, I want it now!

Gurkha Justice Campaign

2008-10-25T15:21:36Z

Also, while I remember - if anyone here in the UK hasn't signed the Gurkha Justice Campaign petition, please consider doing so. The government's treatment of Gurkhas is frankly appalling and does us no credit.

Hardware and ramblings

2008-10-25T12:19:05Z

Finally got round to taking the sides off my E450 to find out why some of the drives don't show up in the system. I found that whilst it does have a full set of back planes - two eights and a four - and two adapters to drive the two eight port backplanes, one of the backplanes doesn't have cables between its adapter card. So I've ordered one.

All I have to do now is figure out why the E450 and A5200 can't or won't talk to each other. Oh and figure out if it's possible to fix the damn thing so that it can boot from DVD; when I last installed it it couldn't manage to install Solaris 10 from DVD, which I seem to recall finding had something to do with it having issues from booting from DVD (the standard E450 configuration had a CD, this one has the optional DVD drive instead).

Spent most of the morning doing all the washing up that was left in the kitchen - which has been piling during the week.

Parents got back from wherever it is they went for a week last night. Haven't seen them yet because they went to Cardiff at about 7am with my sister to look at the Uni or something. I have no idea which one mind you - whichever one does Sound Engineering type stuff.

Still trying to find work closer to home that won't drive me insane. The continual flow of jobs showing up in Cambridge is not making me happy; it is possible half of them are the same job, I haven't bothered looking at them to find out. The fact that most people want ASP.NET coders and not Windows Forms coders doesn't help. I think I need to learn ASP.NET, Silverlight and probably WPF and WCF. Silverlight and WPF both look very nice though.

Microsoft are apparently recruiting in Dublin. I would throw my CV at them but a) I have no chance of ever getting a job with Microsoft and b) it would mean moving to Dublin. I'm not saying Dublin isn't a nice place to live, I've never been there so I couldn't comment, but one of the main reasons I'm trying to find a new job is because I want to be closer to home.

Of course what I still really want to do is jack it all in and study archaeology, but there you go. Pipe dreams.

Whoo!

2008-10-22T05:05:59Z

I have only one thing to say, "squeeeee": LucasArts, EA BioWare Announce Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.