April 2004 - Posts - Ruari (Chuck's) Mind
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Ruari (Chuck's) Mind

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April 2004 - Posts

  • Time Sync

    Horror's, I came to deploy a web service (for testing) in a clients environment today (oops yesterday), and it failed “msg time expired” (something like that). Ok so that got me, it only took a few milliseconds, and in debug I would let it sit for a minute or so and it never gave me this.

    After a bit of searching through the code, my little voice said to look at the other server, Eeeeek it was a year out. Correct time zone, just a year out. I am shocked at how many large concerns don't have time sync software enabled in their environments. Heck we were deploying Tardus some 5 years ago in process engineering in factories were we automated machinery, (And IT thinks its more advanced than process). This was an eye opener for me.

    I think all companies that run a LAN, WAN ect should have time synchronization across its machine, at least the servers / mainframes, but I'd say all machines, and it's easy, not expensive and not taxing on the network, but the benefits are huge.

    I need that drink now.

    Posted Apr 30 2004, 12:23 AM by ruari with no comments
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  • Late Night (Another day another late night)

    Whidbey Whidbey, playing with the C# enhancements, lovely stuff, just a few things I'm looking forward to using:

    Generics,
    Partial Types
    anonymous methods
    Iterators

    To mention a few.
    Then there is all the IDE enhancements like Change Tracking (already starting to feel lost without this neat feature)

    The advancements to DataTips sounds cool (have not seen them in action), I believe they will now handle complex types. :-) . And the list keeps going on, but this is all I'll try cover in the hotlab tomorrow, Mark wants to look at some ADO stuff and other IDE enhancements, and we haven’t even started on the ASP.NET side yet, that looks even more exciting, (although I nervous to look there, as I might not be able to use VS2003 afterwards hehe).

     

    Posted Apr 29 2004, 10:29 PM by ruari with no comments
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  • Late Night again

    This seems to be happening more and more these days, tinkering the night away at the PC's keyboard (I think I totally understand why Simons site is called Brokenkeyboards).

    Tomorrow the SADeveloper meeting CT is on Whidbey, and although Software Futures is hosting this one (There SF some marketing for you) I am doing part of it (I do this to myself all the time), so It was “Play Whidbey Whidbey“ last night.

    Luckily for me I'm only concentrating on advancements at a programming level (not GUI, Mark is handling that), but I still don't know how I'm gonna show all the neat new stuff in 30 minutes. (it's not so much getting content these days, as how to get through all the content), Man this stuff has become extensive, and they packing more and more new features per release. (Just look at Yukon).

    I'm starting to feel (only briefly) sorry for training houses, how do they expect to ever get to a level where they can train top level developers. I think mentor-training looks like possibly the way forward. Who knows?

     

    Posted Apr 29 2004, 11:38 AM by ruari with no comments
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  • DevDays 2004

    I will be there in Cape Town, Along with the SADeveloper Table :-) . Guess it's time to start rounding up the table manning crowd again, Fortunatly we have a good group of developers at SADeveloper. Think I'll go organise some prizes as give aways, Hmmm. As usual this will be a lot of fun.
    Posted Apr 28 2004, 02:40 PM by ruari with no comments
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  • Sigh

    We went to Rodulf's place for a bit of Halo and a braai, What a lovely day, but for some reason my mind seems to want to drift through my past tonight, so I dug up a few old backup CD's to remember where I've come from:

    Thought I'd post a bit of embedded code from days gone by, of little use now, but it made me a living once. It was from a piece of hardware I designed to handle Modbus communication between a sensor and a PC, this snipped did Byte translating, 51 programmers might smile at it: How things have changed for me.

    {$M 0 0}
    unit giogen10;

    interface
    const
      test : array[0..7] of byte = (1,2,4,8,$10,$20,$40,$80);

    var
      temp : string[4];

    function byte_to_str(inb,len : byte) : string[8];
    function Hexbyte(W : byte) : String[3];
    function buff_string(instr: string[20]; num : byte) : string[20];
    function TestBit(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : boolean;
    function TwoToOne(b1,b2 :byte) : byte;
    function BitON(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : byte;
    function BitOFF(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : byte;                                                         

    implementation


    function BitON(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : byte;
    begin
      BitON := byte_on or test[bit_number];
    end;

    function BitOFF(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : byte;
    begin           
      BitOFF := byte_on and ($FF-test[bit_number]);
    end;


    function byte_to_str(inb,len : byte) : string[8];
    var                
       loop,leni : byte;
       txtemp : string[8];
    begin
       str(inb,txtemp);  
       leni := length(txtemp);
       if leni < len then
         for loop := (leni+1) to len do
          txtemp := '0' + txtemp;
       byte_to_str := txtemp;
    end;


    function buff_string(instr: string; num : byte) : string[20];
    var
       len,dud : byte;
    begin
       len :=  length(instr);
       if len < num then
          for dud := (len+1) to num do
            instr := instr + ' ';
       buff_string := instr;
    end;

    function TestBit(bit_number : byte; byte_on : byte) : boolean;
    begin           
      Testbit := false;
      if byte_on and (test[bit_number]) > 0 then
        Testbit := true;
    end;

    function TwoToOne(b1,b2 :byte) : byte;
    var byteval : byte;
    Begin
       Case B1  Of
       $30 :  ByteVal := 0;
       $31 :  ByteVal := 16;
       $32 :  ByteVal := 32;
       $33 :  ByteVal := 48;
       $34 :  ByteVal := 64;
       $35 :  ByteVal := 80;
       $36 :  ByteVal := 96;
       $37 :  ByteVal := 112;
       $38 :  ByteVal := 128;
       $39 :  ByteVal := 144;
       $41 :  ByteVal := 160;
       $42 :  ByteVal := 176;
       $43 :  ByteVal := 192;
       $44 :  ByteVal := 208;
       $45 :  ByteVal := 224;
       $46 :  ByteVal := 240;
       End;
       Case B2  Of
       $30 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 0;
       $31 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 1;
       $32 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 2;
       $33 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 3;
       $34 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 4;
       $35 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 5;
       $36 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 6;
       $37 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 7;
       $38 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 8;
       $39 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 9;
       $41 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 10;
       $42 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 11;
       $43 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 12;
       $44 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 13;
       $45 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 14;
       $46 :  ByteVal := ByteVal + 15;
       End;
       twotoone := byteval;
    End;

    function Hexbyte(W : byte) : String[3];
    const
       HexDigits : ARRAY[0..15] OF Char = '0123456789ABCDEF';
    var Temp : String[3];
    begin
       Temp[0] := #2;
       Temp[1] := HexDigits[(W SHR 4) AND $F];
       Temp[2] := HexDigits[W AND $F];
       Hexbyte := Temp;
    end;


    function HexWord(W : byte) : String[4];
    const
       HexDigits : ARRAY[0..15] OF Char = '0123456789ABCDEF';
    var Temp : String[4];
    begin
       Temp[0] := #4;
       Temp[1] := HexDigits[(W SHR 8) AND $F];
       Temp[2] := HexDigits[(W SHR 4) AND $F];
       Temp[3] := HexDigits[W AND $F];
       HexWord := Temp;
    end;

     

    begin
    end.

    Posted Apr 27 2004, 09:27 PM by ruari with 2 comment(s)
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  • Starting out

    Ok Ok, kicking and screaming here I come. I have fought off this blogging for some time now, probably come up with every excuse why not to get involved, but here I am, thanks to our community (SADeveloper) and the offering of Scott, I am now blogging. So what do you talk about Hmm anything I suppose,

    Well what do you know, my wife has just shown me a comment in the Readers Digest (Yip you still get em) that is so true in a family, I quote “Fridge: a place where we allow food to age so that we don't have to throw it away while it's edible”. I think I'll use that as my next sig on SADeveloper.
    Posted Apr 26 2004, 09:26 PM by ruari with 7 comment(s)
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