Computer James - A Space for All Things .NET

My former manager read last months blog; found out I needed training in how to give a logo a transparent background; sent me an email explaining how to do it; and now Grenada Village has a better look and feel.
Here’s how:
- Downloaded IrfanView.
- Load the graphic.
- Save As…
- Specify JPG
- Click on background
- Specify Transparent.

Reorganised home page and master page so that Search Widget and Login Widget are both Web Parts in the right pane.
Implemented Top 5 News Items (as per Grenada Village Online).
Reduced size of logo.
Looks much better.

Wellington SQL Server Users Group

Handed over Fiona’s Membership Secretary role.
Still to hand over my Treasurer’s role.

We had Clive Trott come to show us Virtualisation, Unattended Installs and the Resource Governor.

Wellington Dot Net Users Group

We had Mark Clearwater from Intergen come to show us XAML, to the UI and Beyond.
The Silverlight Group had Andrew Tokeley from Xero come and show them Making a Great Silverlight Installations experience.

Developer News

Training

Complete Conference Session Schedule Now Online!
The virtual Microsoft Certified Career Conference is almost here, and it will be packed with valuable information you won’t want to miss! Join highly respected leaders in the industry for technical and career development sessions and network with other professionals during and after the event. Check out the Conference Schedule and Register today. Microsoft Certified Professionals can use the code MCP50 for a 50 percent discount.
Add the MCT & Educator Virtual Summit to Your Calendar
MCTs and registered academic educators can join us for the MCT & Educator Virtual Summit—a complimentary readiness event on November 17. To make sure you do not miss this event, add it to your Outlook calendar.
Certification/Exams - Save up to 20 Percent on Microsoft Certification Exam Packs with Second Shots
Get the certification you need to keep your career on track. Find guidance on the training you’ll need, chart your training course, and save up to 20 percent when you purchase Microsoft Certification Packs of two to five exams.
Training - MOC/Courseware/Exams/Clinics - New Microsoft Official Courses Mean New OneNote Trainer Packs
Eight new OneNote trainer packs are available—bringing the total number to 40. All are available at the MCT Download Center. Check them out today!
New IT Fundamentals Course for Windows Server 2008/R2
Microsoft Learning is proud to announce the release of Course 6420B: Fundamentals of Windows Server 2008. This five-day course covers the fundamental concepts and skills of server administration, Active Directory, networking, and security of Windows Server 2008 servers (including Windows Server 2008 R2) for students who are new to IT.

Study News

As per last month, I finished studying Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Communication Foundation. I booked my MCTS exam 70-503 for Tuesday 9 November at Auldhouse. I failed. Now I’m doing the Skill Port on-line training (freebie offering via Telecom). Will re-sit in the new year.

What I have learned from this experience

WCF is tricky, real tricky to get right. And by virtue of its very nature, debugging it is hard, real hard. For example, I had a real-life example to code. I had a successful Web Service running inside an existing web site. So I thought, “here’s a perfect candidate to switch over to WCF.” Wrong. I tried and failed for 3 days:

First, I discovered that because the DEV & PROD servers are Windows Server 2003 and not 2008, that therefore I can’t use WsHttpBinding but have to use BasicHttpBinding.
Then I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decipher what combination of binding and address (HTTPS was not available to me) was giving me the really unhelpful “Service actively refused connection” error message.
Turned out that I had altered my DEV code some time back from System.Oracle.Client to Oracle.Data.Client and the DEV server didn’t have the correct Oracle client installed. Nowhere did WCF tell me this.

I will keep trying. I will succeed. My success has merely been delayed.

Telecom News

Project Marley

It’s no secret that a strategic decision has been made to bring in-house as much IT work as possible. This was caused by a number of factors, not least because of the government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative will probably force structural separation of the Chorus business off from the rest of Telecom. This will mean the requirement for some IT resources to be split off separately to Chorus.

So, Project Marley is all about offering those HP staff who work exclusively on the Telecom account, to come over to permanent Telecom jobs. This will be done sensitively, I have no doubt. It doesn’t directly impact my small team, but what it does impact is that the appetite for increased permanent head count means my manager can now hire just about as many .NET developers as he would like. So any of my Geek friends, if you’re reading this and desiring a change, let me know and I’ll see if I can arrange you an interview!

Situations Vacant

Lots

See my paragraph above.

INETA News

A summary of Significant Dot Net User Group Chatter

None - The hamster finally died.
Linked-In had this:
- Scott Guthrie Talks Shop VII
- Developing testable web parts for SharePoint by Richard Fennel

PASS News

A summary of Significant SQL Server User Group Chatter

Ditto to the above.
Linked-In had this:
- Top 10 Secrets of a SQL Server Expert
- SQL Server Security Concerns

Events Schedule

In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to Geeks. I’m available for bookings.

Date	Event	Venue	Speaker
1-Dec-2010	LINQ to Async: An Introduction to the Reactive Extensions	Xero, Wellington	Ivan Towlson
2-Dec-2010	SilverLight Firestarter	Redmond or Online	Lots
11-Dec-2010	SharePoint Saturday	Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology	Lots
12-Dec-2010	VEX Robotics Scrimmage	Hutt Valley High School	N/A
15-Dec-2010	MonoTouch and MonoDroid	Xero, Wellington	Nic Wise
12-13 Feb 2011	VEX Robotics Regional Competitions	St Peter’s College, Palmerston Northq	N/A
April 2011	ALM Conference	Wellington	Various

Humour

Web Designers vs. Web Developers

An infographic of the differences between them.

Geek Post Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 8

2010-09-09T20:45:00.001-07:00

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 8

August 2010

Hippolite Musings

Tena Koutou Katoa,

In August, I:

Discussed Team Foundation Server option for my Telecom team with Microsoft Consulting;
Failed (twice) to install my sister’s wireless modem;
Went skiing with Tane (son) and Duncan & Jamie Cowan at Whakapapa Ski Field;
Assisted (successfully) two friends with their home PC issues (no, I’m not taking bookings);
Received Fire Warden training;
Participated with Hamish (son) at Vex Robotics Scrimmage; and
Was recognized at work for my excellent attitude.

Blessings,
James

Community Development

I’ve made a decision to go on Sabbatical next year;
This means a rest;
This means resigning from several committees at the end of this year;
Therefore, I have nothing further to report about this topic at this time.

Implemented a new paradigm (not a major paradigm shift, just implementation of one which works for me):
A page has:

a DropDownList which lets the user move from record to record;
a FormView to edit existing and/or insert new master records;
Several buttons to choose from various child tables;
An UpdatePanel which is aware of the above buttons;
A ContentTemplate which consists of a MultiView;
Several Views, one for each child table;
Each View consists of an HTML table;
Each table consists of:

a header row;
an insert row consisting of:

a DropDownList of all possible related records;
a button for adding the selected value to the child table (the UpdatePanel is also aware of these buttons);

a display row consisting of:

a GridView consisting of:

No header row (because already displayed in the HTML table);
The child record; and
A delete button

The nice thing is the add button and delete button work together to give sufficient functionality (with AJAX niceness) that the page responds like a Windows app instead of a Web app.
Nicely sized so the HTML table and GridView look like they belong together;
Both the Add and Delete buttons are LinkButtons so they look like they belong together;
The Show Child buttons are not LinkButtons, so they are nicely differentiated.
The Child ObjectDataSource is linked (via ControlParameters) to the insert row DropDownList and Master DropDownList to auto-populate the Insert method. No code behind required, other than the Add button invoking the Insert method.
The Show Child buttons must not only show the relevant View, but also rebind the relevant GridView. If you don’t, when you change Master record, the hidden Child tables are not refreshed!

Wellington SQL Server Users Group

Nothing new to report at this time.

We had Brent McCracken from KiwiBank come and tell us about Erwin and PowerDesigner data modelling tools.

Wellington Dot Net Users Group

Kevin Daly came and told us about Windows Phone 7 Development with Silverlight.
Dave Fellows (www.greenbutton.net) came and told us Advanced Azure Techniques.

Developer News

Study News

Again, not much has changed from last month.

Still working my way through MCTS Exam 70-503 – Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Communication Foundation.

Up to chapter 11.

A funny thing happened. This book is taking me so long to get through, that my VM Windows Activation period expired and I had to reset it all back to zero.

Telecom News

Have you got TiVo yet?

Situations Vacant

Senior Technology Consultant

Description

You're the expert

It's a great feeling to be valued for your expert knowledge and advice. Customers and colleagues alike look to you to show them the way. Join our Consulting and Design team and get the recognition you deserve.

Your customers look to you to match high quality technical knowledge to their business drivers to create valuable technology solutions. Be the most trusted of advisors as you consult on the issues that matter to them. Work at a variety of levels, from presenting whitepapers to the nitty gritty of technical designing.

Significant experience in an ICT vendor environment is a given. Your knowledge of Microsoft networking, virtualization, thin client and storage technologies and ideally Citrix is robust. Equally important as your superior technical design and delivery skills, is your ability to relate technical solutions to business outcomes. You have excellent communication and written skills plus a strong customer focus. Your experience with infrastructure strategic planning and technical evaluation is impressive.

Providing a breadth of services unparalleled in the New Zealand market, Gen-i is NZ's ICT market leader. This Wellington-based role sits within our high-performing Consulting and Design team. We help organisations generate greater value from their IT spend by offering innovative solutions for the issues important to them.

Be valued for your expertise. Apply today.

Training News

The MCT Community Portal is Live—Make the Most of It!

Matthew Roche, Senior Program Manager

For years, Microsoft Certified Trainers have been asking for a wiki—an online repository of living documents where MCTs can share and maintain information about the MCT program, Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC), and other topics of interest to themselves and their fellow trainers. Now Microsoft Learning has delivered the MCT Community Portal, with forums, file libraries, and wikis to take MCT collaboration to the next level.

On August 2, 2010, Microsoft Learning rolled out the MCT Community Portal website, which includes:

Discussion and Q&A forums to replace the private MCT newsgroups, which retire on September 1.
Discussion and Q&A forums for each MOC course, so it’s easy to find information about the courses you’re teaching.
File and media libraries for uploading videos and documents to share with your fellow MCTs.
Wikis for sharing tips and tricks, personal error logs, etc., about MOC courses, Microsoft products and technologies, and more.
Site-wide tags and search, so finding what you’re looking for is easier than ever.

Now the tools you’ve been asking for are in your hands. What will you do with them?

INETA News

A summary of Significant Dot Net User Group Chatter

Business/Work/Visitor Visa? (14 replies)
JavaScript magic for combining and compressing and more (14 replies)
Anyone here using MonoTouch? (21 replies)
ASP.NET Video Hosting Providers (34 replies)
ASP.NET MVC > HandleErrorAttribute will not return ViewResult (7 replies)

PASS News

A summary of Significant SQL Server User Group Chatter

DateTime2 (6 replies)
Standby database 2005 to 2008 (3 replies)
CodeCamp 2010
How to increase font size in SSMS (12 replies)

Events Schedule

In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to Geeks. I’m available for bookings.

Date	Event	Venue	Speaker
6-Sep-2010	WHEN Committee Meeting	Hippolite Residence	Fiona
13-Sep-2010	Grenada Village Committee Association Meeting	Grenada Village Community Hall	Bruce Patterson
16-Sep-2010	Trainer Readiness Sessions	Online	Dunno
22-Sep-2010	Windows Phone 7 Workshop	Microsoft Wellington	Ryan Tarak
22-Sep-2010	Tech-Ed Express Roadshow	Microsoft Wellington	Ryan Tarak
23-Sep-2010	Final-Year Project Demonstrations	VUW Engineering & Computer Science Depts	Lots
8-11 Nov 2010	PASS Summit 2010	Seattle, Washington, USA	Lots
April 2011	ALM Conference	Wellington	Various

Humour

THE BLONDE MORTICIAN

A man who'd just died is delivered to a local mortuary wearing an expensive, expertly tailored black suit.The female blonde mortician asks the deceased's wife how she would like the body dressed. She points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing.The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the Blonde mortician a blank check and says, 'I don't care what it costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.'

The woman returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly...

She says to the mortician, 'Whatever this cost, I'm very satisfied.. You did an excellent job and I'm very grateful. How much did you spend?'To her astonishment, the blonde mortician presents her with the blank check.'There's no charge,' she says.

'No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue suit!' she says.

'Honestly, ma'am,' the blonde says, 'it cost nothing. You see, a deceased gentleman of about your husband's size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice.'

'So I just switched the heads.'

Geek Post Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 7

2010-08-01T18:53:00.001-07:00

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 7

July 2010

Hippolite Musings

Tena Koutou Katoa,

In July, I:

Added the new GST rate (effective 1-Oct) to a major pricing database;
Farewelled a long-term contractor;
Took back ownership of all his project work;
Progressed a major data conversion project;
Secured major funding for my team (sufficient for a new full-time equivalent) through negotiating a Maintenance Support Work Packet internally with other Telecom business units;
Attended the Internet Industry Awards 2010 at Parliament;

Blessings,
James

Community Development

The Association has been involved in a legal dispute over the proposed use of newly cleared land in our area. This is heading to a show-down. A public meeting will be called soon. I can’t say too much more than that.
Stay tuned. Keep an eye on late-breaking news on the website link above. It should all come out by next month.

I’m stuck on adding functionality which will enable me to display photos (not hard) and insert photos (not hard) and add photos to an existing record (finding it difficult to do this in a GridView).
I’ve also been asked to remove functionality for “security” reasons. Bah humbug.
I also don’t listen to the users (my wife) carefully enough (apparently) and misdiagnosed a function and have to re-do it. Grrrr

        <Columns>
            <asp:BoundField HeaderText="Name" DataField="Name" />
            <asp:BoundField HeaderText="Birthday" DataField="BirthDate" DataFormatString="{0:d}" />
            <asp:BoundField HeaderText="Mobile" DataField="Mobile" />
            <asp:BoundField HeaderText="Comments" DataField="Comments" />
            <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Photo">
                <ItemTemplate>
                    <asp:Image ID="PhotoImage" runat="server" ImageUrl='<%# Bind("imgFile") %>' Width="100" />
                </ItemTemplate>
                <EditItemTemplate>
                    <asp:FileUpload ID="fileUpload1" runat="server" />
                </EditItemTemplate>
            </asp:TemplateField>
        </Columns>

Wellington SQL Server Users Group

I’m manually editing PHP in Visual Studio without the use of a PHP editor.

Managed to reduce the size of the email which is sent from the Application Form, by eliminating the fields that aren’t actually used.

Managed to find the magic Headers which turn a Plain Text email into HTML.

Instead of tabs between field name and value, now I’m outputting a table. Much tidier.

                        function FindVal($fieldName, $varName)
                        {
                            if(isset($_POST[$varName]))
                            {
                                $varValue = $_POST[$varName];
                                if($varValue!="")
                                    return "<tr><td>$fieldName</td><td>$varValue</td></tr>\n";
                                else
                                    return "";
                            }
                            else
                                return "";
                        }

                        $from            = $HTTP_POST_VARS['EmailAddress'];
                        $headers        = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
                        $headers        .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
                        $headers        .= "From: $from"."\r\n";

We had Chandima Kulathilake from Knowledge Cue Ltd come and tell us about SharePoint 2010 Databases – What are they and why are they required?

Wellington Dot Net Users Group

Bevan Arps from Reserve Bank came and told us about Build Automation with NAnt.

Kirk Jackson (Xero) and Graeme Neilson (Aura Software Security) came and told us Tales from the Crypt0

Bohdan Szymanik from KiwiBank came and told us about F# in Action

Developer News

SSMS Add-In

This http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/ may be of use. Martin particularly likes the window connection colouring, search in grid results and generate insert statements.

Study News

Not much has changed from last month.

Still working my way through MCTS Exam 70-503 – Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Communication Foundation.

Up to chapter 8.

Very slow going. Lab examples suck. Even with a Virtual Machine with exactly the right environment, the labs fail. Security is soooo hard to get right.

Telecom News

As alluded to in my opening paragraph, the financial year ended in June, and a new one commenced. A round of budgetary begging occurred. I contributed. My team won some well-earned dosh.

This probably means I’ll be doing more support work (officially) and less new developments, which is probably for the best in the current environment. Nobody knows about Physical Separation, so investment in new development work (especially across business units) will have to slow down.

This is all speculation, but hopefully interesting speculation.

Microsoft News

A summary of significant Microsoft chatter:

Not going to Tech-Ed next month (sniff). Not my turn.

Reading about the Model-View-ViewModel (MSDN Magazine, March 2009 & July 2010). I need to be doing this stuff, in order to separate code from implementation and improve testing.

Not coding F#, but still straddling C# and VB.NET.

I was an Imagine Cup mentor last year, but as all the meetings were held in Auckland, there didn’t seem a point to re-sign up for it this year.

Windows 7 Dev? Not on my radar.

IE9? Telecom only just upgraded to IE7!

Situations Vacant

Analyst Developer .NET

Make it happen

Work with industry leading technology, tools, and methodologies and let your talents shine. Join a productive team that provides both development and support for some of Telecom's core applications. You'll own enhancements to the functionality of the existing application, plus have the benefit of experienced developers to mentor your progression through your career milestones!

Work with customised technologies, in a dynamic and collaborative team environment, where your actions have a direct impact on what happens in the wider business. Support and enhance the application as you troubleshoot, overcome incidents and diagnose issues. Get involved in projects as you take a concept from brief to reality, actioning enhancements.

You've gained credible commercial .NET development and coding experience in a large scale environment. You're hungry to continue learning and build on your qualifications. Technically savvy with HTML, SQL and Sharepoint, you're known for commitment as you take ownership of the issue until it's been efficiently resolved while keeping all who are impacted up to date.

In this Wellington based role you'll join our Application Delivery team who work with both an operational and project focus to produce accurate and efficient code. We design, develop and implement quality business solutions to support Telecom's strategic business objectives

Want to work where it all happens? Apply today.

Senior Technology Consultant

You're the expert

Be valued for your expertise. Apply today.

Training News

A summary of Signification Microsoft Learning Chatter

July is an exciting month where Microsoft Learning just announced the brand new MTA Certification for academic students, New OneNote Trainer Packs that enable MCTs to prepare for courses and to take and share notes AND we are getting ready to launch a completely revised Courseware Library.

Microsoft is pleased to announce the launch of Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) 2010.

Review the planned MOS 2010 exams and get ready to certify for MOS 2010.

Keep your technical skills up to date with help from the latest training opportunity for SharePoint 2010. In this new training course on Channel 9, you’ll explore design considerations to keep in mind as you start creating SharePoint solutions targeting SharePoint 2010. Additional videos, labs, and code available to help you learn more about SharePoint testing, deployment, and security.

INETA News

A summary of Significant Dot Net User Group Chatter

Developer NetBook (6 replies)

.NET Express Edition & Commercial Software (10 replies)

Integrated EFTPOS (5 replies)

PASS News

A summary of Significant SQL Server User Group Chatter

DB Compare Tool (10 replies)

DB Script Extract Tool(13 replies)

MSSQL and Schemas (6 replies)

Events Schedule

In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to Geeks. I’m available for bookings.

Date	Event	Venue	Speaker
11-Aug-10	Windows Phone 7	Wellington .NET, Xero	Kevin Daly
25-Aug-10	Advanced Azure Techniques	Wellington .NET, Xero	Dave Fellows
29-Aug-10	Code Camp (TBA)	SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland	Lots
30-Aug-10 to 01-Sep-10	Microsoft TechEd 2010	SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland	Lots
8-11 Nov 2010	PASS Summit 2010	Seattle, Washington, USA	Lots
April 2011	ALM Conference	Wellington	Various

Humour

HOW TO PUT THE RIGHT PERSON IN THE RIGHT JOB

Put about 100 bricks in some particular order in a closed room with an open window. Then send 2-3 candidates into the room and close it from outside.

Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours, and then analyze the situation:

If they are counting and recounting the number of bricks - PUT THEM IN ACCOUNTS.

If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks - PUT THEM IN ENGINEERING.

If they are arranging the bricks in some other order - PUT THEM IN PLANNING.

If they are throwing the bricks at each other - PUT THEM IN OPERATIONS.

If they are sleeping - PUT THEM IN SECURITY.

If they have broken the bricks into pieces - PUT THEM IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

If they are sitting idle - PUT THEM IN THE HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENT.

If they have thrown the bricks out of the window - PUT THEM IN THE MATERIALS DEPARTMENT.

If they have already left for the day - PUT THEM IN MARKETING.

If they are talking to each other and not a single brick has moved - PUT THEM IN TOP MANAGEMENT !!!!

Geek Post Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 6

2010-06-30T02:40:00.001-07:00

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 6

June 2010

Hippolite Musings

Tena Koutou Katoa,

This month I managed to:

Code in PHP for the first time in years;
Protest the Emissions Trading Scheme;
Complete my annual performance evaluation;
Watch a World-Cup football game (my first ever);

I’ve got a new motto: Boycott ‘Carbon-Neutral’ as a meaningless marketing term.

Blessings,
James

Community Development

Simplified “Query Documents” page into “Search” page.
Reduced number of text boxes to fill in down to just one Search field (as per Google).
Modified business layer code to accommodate for one search term in multiple fields.

Learned how to include parentheses in SubSonic queries in the WHERE clause.

        public DAL.DocumentCollection GetData(

            string searchValue,

            string audience)

            _qry.From(DAL.Document.Schema);

            if (searchValue != null)

                _qry.WhereExpression(columns.DocumentName).ContainsString(searchValue);

                _qry.Or(columns.Author).ContainsString(searchValue);

                _qry.Or(columns.Purpose).ContainsString(searchValue);

                _qry.CloseExpression();

            else

                return null;

            if (audience != null) _qry.And(columns.Audience).ContainsString(audience);

            _qry.OrderDesc(columns.DateWritten);

            _ret.LoadAndCloseReader(_qry.ExecuteReader());

            return _ret;

As above