Janus Pienaar

Beware of KuduClub.com

2007-01-10T12:54:13Z

Just a quick note to all your Expats out there.

For those of you who don't know KuduClub. KuduClub provides access to South African TV and Radio shows over the internet. Which is a great idea and works pretty cool.

But, as always there is a catch to all of this. Obviously a subscription is required to view these shows, which is fine. But please watch out when subscribing, you might think that you only subscribe for 4, 6 or 12 months but this is actually a recurring payment.

I might have missed this, but nowhere on the subscription page it stated that this will be a recurring payment and it puts the user under the impression that this will be a once off payment.

Just a heads up for all you lovely people out there;)

TomTom One

2006-11-14T12:00:00Z

I finally managed to get my hands on the TomTom One last week. This is so cool. Being relatively new to the UK, this is definitly a must have.

The TomTom One is basicly the entry level device in TomTom's satnav range. But it has most of the functionality of the others in the range. My version came with all maps for United Kingdom and North Ireland on a seperate SD memory card.

Now, I don't have any excuse to sit at home on weekends - let the exploring begin.

[EDIT] After writing this I had alot of people asking where they can buy the TomTom in South Africa. Unfortunately TomTom doesn't sell their products in SA.I think that Garmin do sell maps for South Africa, so it might be usefull to check out their site.

Implementing caching in ASP.NET 2.0

2006-11-01T18:37:54Z

I'm in the process of adding some caching functionality to my ASP.NET 2.0 project, but can't decide which route to take when it comes to the caching mechanisms to use.

The 2 mechanisms that stand out at the moment are:

1. System.Web.Caching - Seems straight forward and easy to implement.
2. Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching - Looks a bit more complex but with added functionality. I like the idea of a CacheManager.

And then there is the issue to sync across several web farms.

What would be the best way to implement concurrency between server?

These are the 2 possibles i'm playing with at the moment:

1. When something changes on an object, you could set a flag in the Database and check this flag everytime the object is requested from cache.
2. Send a HTTPWebRequest to all servers in a web farm requesting them to update their cache.

Any ideas? Any recommendations? Best practices?

If anybody has some experienced with working on one or perhaps both mechanisms, I would love to hear from you.

Line Rider

2006-10-27T15:17:00Z

Check out this game/toy. It is a flash based game called Line Rider and is really addictive.

I'm still a bit of a beginner, but should get my first back-flip in a couple of minutes.

What happens when your screensaver is on?

2006-09-07T19:09:19Z

Have a look here.

What an eye opener;)

Playstation 3 Delayed until March 2007

2006-09-07T15:52:00Z

Most of already know that is has been delayed. And it gives me no option than to go out and buy a Xbox 360.

I really, really hoped that I didn't have to resort to such extremely measures, but that's life.

Thanks Sony for messing up real good.

I was a big supporter of PS 2 but this leaves me (and thousands in Europe and Africa) absolutely no choice.

New Posts available in the UK

2006-03-23T13:25:00Z

Here are some new posts available at the company I work for in the UK.

No need to worry about Work Permits, they will sponsor everything you need.

Send an email to janus.pienaar[at]gmail.com or leave a comment if you are interested.

Technical Project Managers x 3

Project Managers with significant expertise of planning, estimation and tracking iterative software development. Experience should cover hands on software development with Java and J2EE, architecture experience using J2EE and Web Services, full project life cycle, unified process or similar iterative software development methods, requirements analysis using UML and use cases, Object Oriented Analysis and Design using UML. You must be willing to work anywhere in the UK, on projects, with typical durations of 3-12 months of overall management of technical project(s). You must have 6-10 years experience as a Project Manager, a strong overview of UML, RUP or Agile, with technical focus in the Java, OO, EJB, XML technologies areas as well as managed at least 2 Java projects with a team of 4 to 5 technical people. Functional expertise should also cover high level detail planning, creating required artefacts, responsibility for the full life cycle from task approval, to definition to final customer acceptance; managing multiproduct technical projects in a sensitive, strategic, developmental environment

Agile Mentors x 2, SC3 level and Team Leaders x 3,SC2 level

Agile Java J2EE Technical Architect and Agile Mentor required to work for a leading software development company in London, specialising in Agile and Iterative software development. You will have at least 2 years experience in leading Java J2EE or .NET projects using the Agile approach, test driven development and complete responsibility for all project stages from inception through to construction and delivery. As an Agile Mentor for client projects, you would be providing hands on expertise and guidance to enable the successful delivery of their projects. Agile process definition, processes, planning and running Agile workshops, Requirements and Modelling workshops will be a major requirement of this role.

Interested in working in the United Kingdom?

2006-03-10T16:30:00Z

This is the opportunity all of you have been waiting for.

The company I work for in the UK, is currenly recruiting and they would like to bring some SA skills to the UK.

If your application is successfull they will sponsor you Work Permit and help with relocation.

If you would like more detail regarding this please email me at janus.pienaar@gmail.com.

GetNextControl() method in .NET

2005-05-13T10:01:00Z

O Boy, how something so simple can turn out to be...well...not so simple.

Am I having a blonde day or what the hell is going on here?? I've created a custom control with some Dropdown boxes and Textbox on it. Very basic.

When the user selects an item in the Dropdown...the text in the textbox next to the dropdown must be changed. In order the get to the Textbox I used GetNextControl() method.

My code was as follows: On the Combo's SelectionChanged event

private void comboProducts_SelectionChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

SupplierProductArtifactControl control = (SupplierProductArtifactControl)sender;

Control controlNext = this.GetNextControl(control , true);

controlNext .Text = “Some Text“;

}

Well, in this case the GetNextControl() method did NOT select the next control.

The controlNext was still the combobox.

But changing the line :

Control controlNext = this.GetNextControl(control , true);

Control controlNext = this.GetNextControl(ActiveControl , true);

Made the difference and it worked.

Now what is the difference between “control” in first example and “ActiveControl” in second?

Microsoft.Win32.SystemEvents Class

2005-04-13T08:42:00Z

Most of you might have known this for some time now, but this is my first time working with it.

This is so cool and could be very usefull in the future. The SysemEvents class basicly provides a set of global system events to it's callers. You can find a list of SystemEvents Members here.

"System events are things such as shutdown notifications and changes to user preferences. When a system event is raised calls back the corresponding delegate from a different thread. Therefore, you should make the call thread-safe. If you need to call a system event that is not exposed as a member of this class, you can use the InvokeOnEventsThread method.

Note Do not perform time-consuming processing in a system event notification because it might prevent other applications from functioning."

GMail diskspace grew to 2056mb over the weekend.

2005-04-04T07:40:00Z

Well, after reading Kevin's post on Gmail giving away more storage space, I checked it out myself and yes, my storage has doubled over the weekend.

Guess, this wasn't just an April Fool's joke afterall.

Buying a BlackBerry

2005-03-25T11:30:00Z

Check this out before buying a BlackBerry.

“Accessing this e-mail from a BlackBerry device will only be possible if the company that they work for has adopted a strategy to allow the use of BlackBerry in their organisation and has deployed the BlackBerry business enterprise server (BES), which can have high cost implications for a corporate company not only in software charges but hardware and administration as well.

Strange Problem with .chm files

2005-03-09T15:44:00Z

I'm in the process of documenting our project with the help of NDoc, but had some problems building the documentation. It kept on saying that it can't open the .chm file for compilation.

At first I though that this is a problem with NDoc but couldn't find helpfull info on the Net. Later on I discovered that for some reason I can't open ANY .chm files on my PC.

Don't know how it happened but here is a solution:

Re-register the hhctrl.ocx with regsvr32.

eg. regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx

Nerd Score

2005-01-06T13:13:00Z

Speed up Firefox

2005-01-05T13:51:00Z

For those of you who used Firefox and would like to speed it up a bit.

forevergeek.com has a useful guide on speeding up firefox for broadband users. basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

Go here for some more information.

Please read here before attempting this