May 2004 - Posts - Ruari (Chuck's) Mind
in

dotnet.org.za

South African .NET Developer Portal

Ruari (Chuck's) Mind

Life.. whats that?

May 2004 - Posts

  • Warhammer

    Well well in the preparation for the LAN Party, we invited the Warhammer guys to join us, so in order to find out what their game was about, I dragged my camera and toddled over to where they were playing today, I must admit it looks really cool, and I got to test me skills at taking miniature photography, got some real nice shots of some cool models. For those joining us at the LAN Party, I’ve posted a gallery of a few characters you can expect to see around at the LAN, enjoy.

    http://dotnet.org.za/ruari/gallery/264.aspx

     

    Posted May 30 2004, 10:17 PM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • Lan Party Preperation

    Today I started the preparations for the LAN party we are hosting in the 19th. Phase one, collapse the porta pool to make way for the Jumping castle. No need to panic a real pool is getting build outside the courtyard. Yikes I only hope we can resurrect the lawn in time either that or I'll just transplant some, I don't see any need to panic. see the progress pics here, I'll be posting as we go. http://dotnet.org.za/ruari/gallery/263.aspx

  • Sentech Launches in CT

    Sentech / UniNet. almost sound like a shakespear play.... To be or not to be.... Now I guess it boils down to service as to who I get to install, both the offerings are pretty close, let's see how this pans out.

    Posted May 28 2004, 03:32 PM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • SADeveloper Sports for June

    Wow, worked out the final June calender last night and SADeveloper is really taking over here, Wow
    I think June is going to be a blur for some of us, Nation wide we are having 10 pin bowling events, open whiteboard sessions, and more.

    In Cape Town a few other activities will be helping consume any free time we have, let me see:
    8 & 9th June from 6pm is 10 Pin Bowling, sponsored by Microsoft (Thanks Guys.. we gonna whip butts)
    10th June An unplugged diner (Sorry invite only)
    14th June from 2pm at Microsofts office is the open Whiteboard, I'll be there.(Problem is, it looks like I have two presentations planned for that day as well.
    17th June 7pm we hosting a Buddy workshop,we gonna have to limit this to max 8 people. Oh the topic Reporting services again (by popular demand
    19th June All day is the Big LAN party that everyone is raving about online, this is taking some planning.
    21st June I have a workshop,Yip you right do to do with Yukon.
    Oops almost forgot must fit in an SADeveloper meeting somewhere, probably on the 25th June

    Yip that should keep me out of trouble.

    Posted May 28 2004, 11:06 AM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • Dang Firewall

    Don't get me wrong, I believe in Firewalls, to the point that my home PC's don't go online without one. But dang I get frustrated every time I do that “Critical update” my entire little LAN at home gets shut off from the world. Currently I use Zone Alarm, which is a really nice firewall, but once again I have to figure out what's gone wrong, it blocks all traffic in and out the LAN, All settings have not changed, and the only help I get is “try restarting the firewall” Grrrrr the price you pay to be safe.

    Posted May 26 2004, 02:32 PM by ruari with 7 comment(s)
    Filed under:
  • PropertyDescriptorCollection funny (No Joke)

    I picked up on a post on SADeveloper where people are getting an exception thrown that says:
    “An unhandled exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' occurred in system.dll
    Additional information: Source array was not long enough. Check srcIndex and length, and the array's lower bounds.
    at System.Array.Copy(Array sourceArray, Int32 sourceIndex, Array destinationArray, Int32 destinationIndex, Int32 length) “

    when using the Remove

    method in the PropertyDescriptorCollection class. I decided to try figure it out and I must admit there are some funny issues here, this is what I have uncovered so far, will have to dig a bit deeper on this one:

    Firstly here is a simple console app as a test case:

    using System;

    using System.ComponentModel;

     

    namespace colltest

    {

          /// <summary>

          /// Summary description for Class1.

          /// </summary>

          class Class1

          {

                private string mtest;

                public string test

                {

                      get

                      {

                            return mtest;

                      }

                      set

                      {

                            mtest = value;

                      }

                }

     

     

                private string mtest2;

                public string test2

                {

                      get

                      {

                            return mtest2;

                      }

                      set

                      {

                            mtest2 = value;

                      }

                }

     

     

     

                /// <summary>

                /// The main entry point for the application.

                /// </summary>

                [STAThread]

                static void Main(string[] args)

                {

                      Class1 myObj = new Class1();

     

                      PropertyDescriptorCollection PDC = new PropertyDescriptorCollection(null);

                      PDC.Add(TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(myObj)["test"]);

                      PDC.Add(TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(myObj)["test2"]);

                      PropertyDescriptor pd1 = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(myObj)["test"];

                      PDC.Remove(pd1);

                }

          }

    }

    Ok back to the problem at hand:

    Now if you try remove the Descriptor "test" then you will experience the above mentioned error.

    Put two Descriptors into your collection and remove the second one “test2“, it works, however this is interesting, break and look at the collection before and after the remove:(look at the "count" and "properties.Length" properties)

    before: both have a value of 2
    after: count is 1 and properites.Length is still 2.

    I think there is some footwork in the way this collection operates. and yip the removing of position 0 is a problem from what I can see.

    It looks like the Remove only flags the "relevant -1" Descriptor, but how I'm not sure yet. I will do some more digging.

    Posted May 25 2004, 08:48 PM by ruari with 2 comment(s)
    Filed under:
  • Gates Pushes 'Power to the People' Message

    Check this out (thanks Iwan for the link), way to go Bill. I must admit in SA we have just witnessed a similar thing with the way we implemented SADeveloper, it's amazing how the developers have grown in the last year, I think if you ask any of them they will agree that the developers space has improved a lot. I love to see this sort of thing, I forwarded this link to managment, now we just got to educate SA CEO's.

    Article

  • Early night (Sad Life of a Geek)

    It had to happen some time, last night when I got home I came to the conclusion that I was exhausted (Something Developers don't often admit to themselves). Remembering the days of pre geekhood I decided to check me mail, switch my PC “OFF”. Then the plan was to have a nice soaking bubble bath (as advertised on the bottle “To soak your stress away”). A glass of wine, and then to settle down in bed with a good book until you fall asleep.

    Yip that was the plan, I checked the mail, enjoyed the bath, swapped the wine for a beer, and read a good book until I fell asleep. What’s so sad about that? My lovely wife pointed it out. I fail to see the problem in the picture though. Apparently “Writing Secure Code by Howard and LeBlanc” does not fit the above scenario, I thought it was a good book.

    Geeks Rule!!!

     

    Posted May 21 2004, 08:16 AM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • Coincidence (I'm sure)

    I was send the pic below this morning (the dude that sent it claims innocence). So what makes it strange, well a few things.
    1. At the company I contract to my nickname is “Guru”... (Don't ask).
    2. About a month ago I posted my new “Life Motto” to SADeveloper. http://www.sadeveloper.net/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4921 (look for post 11738)
    3. I head up SADeveloper.Net Cape Town.

    So why do I mention these things?
     
    1. See the title on the pic.
    2. See the text.
    3. See the blue writing at the bottom.

    Coincidence (Riiight)

     

    Posted May 19 2004, 01:39 PM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • Spam Sham

    Sigh, I admire the efforts Venders like Microsoft are putting into their mail products to assist us against spam, between these efforts and the help of a neat little package called mailwasher ( http://www.mailwasher.net/ ) I am keeping my head above water. I'm not sure who is worse, Spammers of Virus writers.

    The only little snag with all these antispam packages are the blacklist's, I have found that a few friends addresses have ended up there and I miss out on mail, but considering I get on average of between 150 and 250 emails per day on my home account ,(which I only get to in the evenings at the moment - this will change) of which 30 - 60 are spam (It's amazing how they come up with so many bogus email addresses).

    Most of the rest is just for reading and about 10 need actioning, so I don't have time to sift through spam. If only we could persuade the virus dudes to write virus's that perform denial of service onto spammers only, we would get it right. (Then again virus's probably love spammers for pollination)

     

    Posted May 18 2004, 10:31 PM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • So that was Dev Days CT 2004

    Well I am sipping an ice cold beer, I and I think I deserve it. Devdays CT was a great success, the SADeveloper members really pulled in and gave a helping hand, there were some awesome speakers, Unfortunate I missed most of the talks, (Several meetings at Devdays kept me very busy), But chatting to the developers I got the feeling that this DevDays was just what they wanted, we had record turnout for Cape town, which is known for people not pitching.

    Microsoft really put in the effort for this event, A bit of a concern was that the content was very similar to that presented at the security seminar, but the demo's (which I saw) on Whidbey were very good, not to detailed though, but to get the idea of the new features I think it was well placed. I tend to prefer very technical talks, don't like L100 / L200, but the keynote was well targeted.

    As usual Ahmed managed to squeeze in VB.NET, but he was subtle about it, asked “who uses VB - Not many“, “who uses C# - most people“ , “Ok in that case Er here is a VB demo“ Good Ol Ahmed, VB will never die.

    Oh and the little surprise gift at the end for each delegate was a splendid touch (Have to admit I knew about it), Ok so it's markets SADevelopre.Net, which in my books is a good thing, I can't say much more on this until after all the other venues have had DevDays, but they have something to look forward to.

    I've captured some pictures for prosperity.. http://dotnet.org.za/ruari/gallery/242.aspx

     

  • SA got it!!

    We won it!! South Africa is going to host the FIFA soccer World cup 1020. For someone that does not follow sport much I have to admit I was “glued” to the radio. But I could not help myself, it's something I guess that touches all our lives, even the non sporty geeks, I have a lump in my throat now.. WELL DONE SOUTH AFRICA!!!!!!!

  • Buddy Training

    We held our first “Buddy training” workshop last night, the topic was Reporting Services, It's really amazing how many little tricks and funnies you learn at such an event, this is the kinda stuff you don't get in normal training courses, it's the real world stuff. Last night was held at Rudolf's house and although there were only a few of us, and we ended up playing UT2004 afterwards till all hours of the morning, I think we will all agree this is something we want to expand on.

    SoftSource have offered us the use of their training room (with 10 PC's) for future Buddy workshops, I think we will take them up on this offer. If this takes off, I think it can change the face of IT, and from what I can see developers want this sort of thing.

    Many thanks to Rudolf for setting up and hosting the first one, Looks like the suggestion on SADeveloper for the two of us to get together on this thing is as usual a brilliant one. (SADeveloper Rocks)

     

    Posted May 15 2004, 12:01 PM by ruari with 1 comment(s)
    Filed under:
  • Look at the time (again)

    What am I doing, Funny how it is when you get online the night just disappears, busy with stuff for DevDays, Found out today that we will be getting internet access  at the SADeveloper stand. (Way Cool). So it's organize PC's. Was meant to look at Reporting Services, we have a “Buddy Training Workshop” tomorrow (Friday) night, it's the first one, and if the concept looks feasible we will be having many more, I have even managed to secure a training room with 10 PC's for these workshops. (At no cost to SADeveloper members - Way Coool). So here is to making it work.

    Posted May 13 2004, 11:54 PM by ruari with no comments
    Filed under:
  • Wireless Wars

    Looks like its starting, wireless wars (SA edition). It’s important to note the SA edition, seen as communication wise we are a bit behind, we have a monopoly approach, (Rip the public off).

    Well UNI ( http://www.uninetwork.co.za/packages.html ) is cashing in on Sentech’s delay I see, Well if they can handle the throughput required for me to play my “Project Entropia” I might just give them a call. Bandwidth (actually throughput) is the biggest headache I have at the moment. I wonder if any other providers are jumping at the opportunity. Also I think I'll have to investigate classifying the Guesthouse (Yip I'm still negotiating on this) as a high spot, could be worth while.

    Posted May 13 2004, 12:02 PM by ruari with 2 comment(s)
    Filed under:
More Posts Next page »
Powered by Community Server (Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems