obligatory blog

Visual Studio coexistence - avec COM

2011-03-25T14:44:00.003+11:00

Sorry, another boring one about info that's not easily available on the internet.

Added an extra version of Visual Studio recently and my COM-based ruby tool-kit for talking to Visual Studio (so I never need to use the (yuch) IDE) started popping the wrong version.

The link below has mixed solutions - most other internet references describe the "Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector" which is registered for .sln files, which should detect the correc version or otherwise ask the user to choose. However this doesn't seem to apply to opening a solution via COM by "connecting" to it.

The "top" solution on the link below is probably a bit hacky for general use - Version Selector seems more sensible, however Version Selector doesn't work for COM object lookup.

So to summarise - choose your default by writing the registry value at:

HKLM\Software\Microsft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\devenv.exe

With thanks to the posters at: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/vssetup/thread/568e32af-d724-4ac6-8e8f-72181c4320b3

Does anyone know the word for,...

2010-01-08T22:37:00.003+11:00

You can say things like "back when I was single,..." or "when I was a bachelor,...". But what's the word for before you had a baby?

The best I can come up with is "back when I was free,..."

My day at work

2009-11-24T23:41:00.002+11:00

"Uh, Karl,... It says here we don't get to keep Poland or Czechoslovakia. I'm starting to think this whole surrender thing mightn't have worked out as well for us as we'd hoped,..."

Ahhhh,,... MS Word Sanity

2009-08-12T21:54:00.004+10:00

It had never occurred to me before, but to bypass the hideous annoyance of word pasting the reformatting for everything you paste simply:

Create a macro that does "paste unformatted"
Assign it to Ctrl-V

Couldn't be simpler.


Sub PasteUnformatted()
    Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdFormatPlainText)
End Sub

Home sweet home

2009-07-27T14:16:00.004+10:00

Within one hour of hitting Brunswick I've had an El Mirage coffee, a Sydney Rd vietnamese pork roll, hit the second-hand bookshop* and am sipping a coffee at Brunetti.

*Sadly closed today as they are moving from their old fire-damaged labyrinth to some new shmancier digs.

Make a realistic wish

2009-06-13T23:52:00.002+10:00

Sometimes people need to be reminded that for the cost of a trip to Disneyland or meeting a celebrity or sport-star (say $10,000) instead you could sponsor 20 underprivileged children for a year (eg: Plan @ $43/month), or maybe help an indigenous community in northern Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS36ZuCW-7c

A decade

2009-05-19T00:03:00.001+10:00

To my wife, mother of my child, my best friend, my closest family, my life.

My love.

Rockin' the suburbs

2009-05-02T14:49:00.001+10:00

Saturday afternoon relaxing. "What's that sound?"

Oh, yeah. A lawnmower. We aren't in Brunswick anymore.

Apropos

2009-04-29T20:49:00.001+10:00

Maya has a baby toy from a brand called 'nuby'.

In case no-one else says it.

2009-04-29T20:43:00.001+10:00

"Even pratts are 'top blokes' after death"

To lose something you don't have

2009-04-12T20:48:00.001+10:00

Awwww,... Such a sorry sound to hear Maya with her cold. She sounds like someone who's lost their voice with laryngitis, but she doesn't have a voice to lose yet!

Maya's Superpower

2009-02-21T19:31:00.001+11:00

#2 We drove all the way down Eastlink, over the 1001 speed-humps of Yarra Council (including the bizarre speed-hump on top of a speed-hump) past our old Taylor Street place and she didn't wake, but she wakes up when we go over the tiny 'driveway' bump at the entrance to our street!

To coin a phrase

2009-02-07T11:56:00.001+11:00

To describe the little chunky bits from when the baby vomits I propose the term "Chucky Cheese".

Maya's Superpower

2008-11-23T22:52:00.002+11:00

#1 - I can freely walk anywhere in the room, and she is quiet, calm, relaxed. Her eyes are closed, face against my chest. Yet get within on step from the bassinette and, bing, the body goes rigid then jerks and suddenly she's all action!

Words I didn't use before I was a parent

2008-11-05T23:16:00.000+11:00

#2 - Grump, grumpy, grumpy-bum

Words I didn't use before I was a parent

2008-11-05T23:10:00.001+11:00

#1 - Poppet

There's a little poo on her nappy

2008-11-01T21:36:00.001+11:00

And a little Tigger, and sometimes a little Piglet and Eeyore,...

Surely the irony of having pooh on a nappy wasn't lost on the nappy manufacturers,...

'Baby legs'

2008-10-29T22:46:00.000+11:00

I've just put Maya down to sleep, but as I stand nearby in case she's not going to settle I find I'm still rocking and swaying. My sea-legs acting up again.

I'm feeling lucky

2008-10-27T22:04:00.004+11:00

I can't find a place to make this available - so I'm doing it here. Since I don't have any hosting that lets me control the <header> and <link> tags I can't make this automatically appear in your Firefox search-box just by visiting this page.

Instead you can copy the code here into your profile directory as described in the header.

Once you're done you should have a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search in your search-bar. So if you can't remember if the ruby doc site is rubydoc.com or ruby-doc.org, just do - Ctrl-K, "rubydoc", <enter>, done.


<-- Dump this in <profile_dir>/searchplugins/i_m_feeling_lucky.xml -->
<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>I'm feeling lucky</ShortName>
<Description>Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABQAAAAUCAYAAACNiR0NAAAABGdBTUEAAAAAiyVgTQAAACBjSFJNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACg5rWnAAAEHUlEQVR4nGJgIA1YAnGfqhH%2FaigbAwAEEAYSluRYldVq%2Fd%2FKV%2BI%2FkLsKSSrMOVD7%2F4K9uf%2BX3Qj8zyfMehybfoAAwkBqxvzH97%2FP%2Fb%2FzXez%2FhjXG%2F%2BW1eJ4AhWVCsvT%2BX%2Fwy7f%2B5z%2F3%2F5162%2B28bBLZQBl0%2FQABhICEJ9uM73kb%2F3%2Fc%2B6%2F%2BiWw7%2FHcIkQRr7auc7%2Fz%2F7uef%2Fzrfx%2F5fcdfzfttUU5gMUrwMEEAyBbAoF4tXpLSb%2FT35q%2BX%2FkY%2Fn%2FxXcc%2F%2BdN0QZp%2FL%2Fqavz%2F4x%2Fr%2F299G%2Fp%2F7UvX%2F6ueuvyfdc7hf%2Bkco%2F%2FeqXIgNUUggwACCIQstUzFnzQu8P5%2F4EPu%2F%2FOfJ4Lxrnfx%2F1c8cv4%2F8YgV2MC979P%2BH%2F1Y8X%2FzW%2F%2F%2F69%2B4%2F9%2F0xvf%2FjnfR%2F3e%2BTgYGjRlIDSiiGAACCIRCC6brAsMs7v%2FhD6VgTbvfp%2Fzf8MYTbqCVnzjQxWVgCze88fq%2F%2FrXb%2F3VAvOqJ2%2F%2BpJ63%2FW%2FqI%2FYd5HSCAwEhJn%2B%2F%2F4ttO%2F5fed%2Fq%2F6pnL%2FzUvXP%2Bvfu7yf8Vj5%2F8zz9n%2B79vm%2Bf%2FUpzaga5L%2BL3%2Fo9H%2FZAydwcEw9Zf0%2FrVMDJTUABBA8SRg4Cv9vWm%2Fyf%2Fppm%2F%2BzL9r%2Bn3ne9v%2BCGw7%2F177w%2BH%2FsY%2B3%2F%2FS%2FK%2F085Yf2%2Fd7%2FF%2F74Dlv%2B7dpn%2FT2pV%2F88jyPoE2SCAAEJGlrxCrKt0rAX%2F69oK%2FdexEfzfvs30%2F9bXEf93vIkDuzRvqs5%2FPTshkIueQMOsDz3pAAQQioFAXKxmwv%2FE0lcMGG6S%2F6fuDAPGeBPQwJj%2F86%2Fb%2F58FdHXlPMv%2FKc36%2F238Zf5bQMIOxbsAAQQ3LLPFCpjOeoERU%2FL%2FADBhH%2FlQBk53oLBb9zTg%2F8onLv%2B3vA4BRloVEFf%2BP%2Fgh%2F%2F%2Fm10H%2Fcydr%2FxcQZTsOcylAAIGRiBTXE5Bh5z9P%2BL%2F%2FQw44iex9n%2FF%2Fx9u4%2F0vvuvyffNwajFc9dQUnle1AvO1tODDp%2BIEjrmyB%2Fn%2Bo9xkAAgjsutQmo%2F%2BbHib%2BX%2FPIHxzDG954AJOGBzjW%2B4EREJSn8F8ZmBLWv%2FIGGhjzfyMw6ax95QqO7YU3HcCRBUuHAAEERvwibMdzJmqDJUCGrAcauOa56%2F9ZF%2Bz%2Bp3aAkwUktwBzB8iFoES95J7j%2FwmHLP83rjP%2B7xYnAzcQIIBQsp%2BRs8jxSUet%2Fm95G%2FR%2F9ROP%2FyC2poUAzMDj%2BdN0gIb5%2F1%2F30hNome3%2FsBIlsDg024HDECCAMAwF5UuQK5bf9f7fsd0MlM5gBhYBvf1kAdCLK584g10PSl7oBgAEEAYy9RB9svKhB7g0cYmWhmUpmJcsg%2FIVwC4HJW5QmkXXDxBAGAgYnn26wMTLJwTOAbCYewLFDFALVkNxEbp%2BgAAiFhFX3AMBQIABAKoYTFWVpxJlAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&amp;client=firefox&amp;hl={moz:locale}&amp;q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <Param name="btnI" value="I'm Feeling Lucky"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.com/firefox</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

I just tripled my output

2008-10-26T21:13:00.003+11:00

You probably know this but in GMail you can set up keyboard shortcuts for operating without the mouse. And I always forget which keys are mapped to what (for the more obscure things). I then found out you can bring up key help at any time by hitting '?' (hint, not while you're writing an email - that would just put a ? in :-)

Ok, not that interesting, but if you hit '?' in Google Reader you get an equivalent help overlay. Give it a try - I get about 300 new articles a day and using the shortcuts allows me to get through the ones that don't interest me to the gold in seconds.

Eg scan all the Age newspaper articles for the interesting headlines in about 20 seconds.
j,j,j, (skip over some articles),
m (ooh, i'll read that later)
j,j,... (keep skimming)

Enjoy

6th-photo challenge

2008-10-26T20:47:00.004+11:00

Trinity Beach

2008-08-07T00:08:00.006+10:00

StreetView has just been added for Australia in google-maps and google-earth

http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-16.783952,145.700474&spn=0.002748,0.005418&z=18&layer=c&cbll=-16.785287,145.699728&panoid=_12blQIzTSP2C3p39jXbzw&cbp=1,0,,0,5

This is where Tanya and I spent the start of our Winter.

Suffer in ya jocks!

Flash audio in Hardy Heron

2008-06-14T15:35:00.002+10:00

Grr,... Adobe Flash gives no audio when using default installation in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

You need to install the package 'libflashsupport' - ala:

sudo aptitude install libflashsupport

Apparently part of the problems with the move to Pulse Audio. More details at.

http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2008/03/playing-music-not-getting-sound-in.html

The Right Stuff

2008-05-02T23:46:00.000+10:00

How can I be becoming a father, when I just cut my mouth licking a knife!

I don't rock!

2007-12-26T19:46:00.001+11:00

Tanya got me Guitar Hero III for wii for chrissie!

While I love playing it it goes to show that:

I'm monodextrous
I lack rhythm
I have zero hand-eye co-ordination

But none of that stops me playing until the world feels like its moving upward when I look away from the screen. (anyone who's ever played it for an hour or two will know what I mean)

Thunderbird Exchange IMAP Workaround

2007-12-04T15:07:00.001+11:00

Just wanted to document somewhere the workaround for corrupted
attachments from Exchange IMAP servers.

Details are at:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92111

Go to Tools->Options or Edit->Preferences
Go to 'Advanced' Tab
Click 'Config Editor' button
Enter 'mail.server.server' as the filter
Browse through your servers until you find the one that is your Exchange
IMAP server. eg in my case it was 'server3'
Right-click in the table and add 'New->Boolean'
Enter the name mail.server.server<number>.fetch_by_chunks, and set it to
'false' (eg i have mail.server.server3.fetch_by_chunks=false).

Done

Best,... Concert,... Everrrr

2007-11-27T21:15:00.000+11:00

Ok, I wasn't going to post about this given that Tanya already had, but it really was the most phenomenal concert. Take a look at these pics. There's only three of them, but the sound, the complexity of the music is just amazing. Its all done on either guitar, bass, drums, or piano, base, drums, but with all the pedals and foldbacks, and they way Matt's fingers move, its some of the most amazing music you'll ever hear. I still can't believe that the amazingly complex sounds cycling non-stop on my mp3 player (see here for proof - the weekly and overall stats especially) comes from out of just three guys, one of whom is a drummer!

And since we've seen it a few people we've mentioned it to have asked "who's Muse?". So right, now, go to sanity.com.au and buy their three previous albums for $9.99 each. The best $30 you will ever spend (well, on music). Trust me.

Anti-Business

2007-11-02T00:25:00.000+11:00

Everywhere I go I see the '70% of Labour front-bench are unionists' ads. Um, hello, its the Labour party.

What fascinates me is that the way the government is portraying it we should all be scared of the unions because,... um,..., because, well,... just because. Maybe something about militant unions 20 years ago. Its a scare campaign without a boogeyman.

Ah, but they do try a bit. 'Anti-business'. I'm sure a bunch of people see unions as evil (militant, obstructionist) and business as good (progressive, employment), but they probably wouldn't vote labour. And i'm sure a bunch of people see the unions as good (defend the little guy, anti-IR laws) and business as bad (greed, fat cats), but they probably wouldn't vote liberal.

Surely most people are ambivalent to both sides - unions do some good work, but get over aggressive and hold more power than they deserve - but, then business answers to money rather than people or best-interest of the country, even though we all need jobs and pay. It just seems like a rather pointless exercise to spend all this advertising on an ideological battle thats not shared by most of the swing-voting population.

Bring on Nov 24th so I don't have to wait for my disappointment.

Culture of fear

2007-07-02T10:45:00.001+10:00

This morning on Alexandra Ave, while stopped at the Smith Street traffic lights I saw in my rear-view mirror an ambulance trying to get through traffic stopped at the lights on the street before. People in the Ambo's lane were scattering to let it through until it got to the second car from the lights. They guy at the front wasn't moving, so the second guy couldn't get out of the way.

The way I see it there were three possible reasons for why:
(1) The guy didn't notice the big ambulance with flashing lights and sirens;
(2) The guy did notice it but chose maliciously not to get out of the way;
(3) The guy did notice but didn't want to go through the red-light-camera and have to somehow convince the powers that be that he did it for a good reason.

I know what I think is most likely.

has_many, :through (captain obvious)

2007-07-01T21:48:00.000+10:00

You know how you would create a database to model a multiple relationship especially where each object is independent. eg Objects X and Y are modelled in tables X and Y, and the relationship between them is modelled by a table containing (key(X), key(Y)). So how to do this in Rails?

The documentation on join-associations, ie has_many :through, has the following example, but its missing some obvious details for the Rails-newbie who knows DB stuff, but doesn't know Rails.

  class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :authorships
   has_many :books, :through => :authorships
 end

 class Authorship < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :author
   belongs_to :book
 end

What's missing is the background stuff, how to get here, and what the DB needs to look like for this to work. The belongs_to association implies that the table associated with the object (eg Authorship) contains a foreign-key for that object. In this case the table "authorships" must have columns with foreign-keys for book and author. In the normal rails setup this means two columns called book_id and author_id.

So to get this example going head to your rails directory and run:

  ./script/generate model Authorship
  ./script/generate model Book
  ./script/generate model Author

You now have (among other things) 3 files in db/migrations called nnn_create_authorships (and book and author). The skeleton is already in place to create the "authorships" table. It needs the two foreign keys, so add them:

...
    create_table :authorships do |t|
      t.column :author_id, :integer  # foreign key for author
      t.column :book_id,   :integer  # foreign key for book
    end
...

You can add any columns you want to the migration definitions for the other tables (names would be obvious) but bear in mind that there will (if you don't do anything special) be a hidden primary-key defined for each one as if you included the line:

  t.column :id, :integer

You don't need to add any external references to either the books or authors table.

To make these new tables take effect in the DB you use the db:migrate task. This allows you to move the databases between the different versions (this is the nnn_ prefix on the files in the db/migration directory). So use the command

  rake db:migrate

(you can choose any given version of your DB by appending VERSION=N to the line above - N corresponds to the nnn_prefix as above).

The belongs_to and has_many relationships are defined in app/models/authorship.rb (and author.rb, book.rb), so make them now. The has_many relationship in author will add a list called .books which hides all of the details of the join-relationship.

To see if any of this works its best to use the unit-tests for your model - eg with the example in test/units/author_test.rb. You should create fixtures for each model - these are sample data-sets that will be available for in your test-harnesses and development database, so go create some books, authors and authorships now. The generated fixtures will have the id: field, keep this, and remember you'll need this to fill in the authorship foreign-keys (book_id, author_id). Add values for the other fields (eg name of book,..).

To get our author_test working, and check the Author#books methods work we'll need the authorship and book data as well as author data. So add authorships and books to the fixtures list at the top of author_test.rb. If you don't do this you'll probably spend hours wondering why your tests fail, returning empty lists.

So create a quick test to verify everything is plumbed together properly, check that all of your test-data correctly fills out the lists as expected. Example test code:

# Test the books relationship works as expected using the test data defined in fixtures
def test_fixtures_books_relationship
  author = Authors.find(1)   # grab the author you defined with id: field of 1
  assert author  # ensure author was found

  assert_equals 2, author.books.length  # check the authorship connections
                                        # you defined in your fixtures
  book_names = ["Some book", "Another Book"]
  author.books.each do |book|
    assert book_names.find(book.name) # ensure that each of the books was 
                                      # one of the two expected
   end
end

Run your test using:

  rake test:units

Captain Obvious

2007-07-01T21:27:00.001+10:00

This is the first in a series of post on things that should probably be obvious, but for which the documentation on the web is useless if you don't know what you're doing. At least this way the answer should be somewhere on the web.

At the moment I'm playing with Ruby-on-rails a lot so most of the captain obvious stuff is going to be on that.

Ice?!?

2007-06-23T12:52:00.001+10:00

Ok blogs are for ranting, among other things so here goes.

Ad on TV for "Disney's Finding Nemo on Ice". A fun filled frolick for the family. Ok I understand that kids like Nemo, but what's the fascination with ice??? Its a fish, if it were on ice it would be in a display cabinet in the fish-department of a supermarket. I understand live action, all singing all dancing, spectacular shows for the kiddies, but I just can't come up with any explanation for the "on ice bit".

Ice doesn't even exist in Australia, outside of petrol stations and (later) eskys.

Oblogatory

2006-12-04T22:01:00.000+11:00

Everyone needs a blog today, and since I just got signed up for one for our upcoming Europe trip, it seemed now was the time for me to get a personal one.

Prediction (insert current date), next post sometime in September (year is your guess).