The Hoju Saram

Your not bald until google says so.

2008-08-18T21:19:00.002+10:00

Origami Friends

2008-07-02T16:52:00.002+10:00

I can say much yet.. Except watch this space.. Origami Friends is coming and it is one of the craziest ideas I have had for a while.

Update 04.07.2008 :: I have a logo..

Gartner Application Development, Integration & Web Services Summit

2008-07-02T16:45:00.004+10:00

Just got back from the Gartner Application Development, Integration & Web Services Summit in Sydney... Pretty interesting but not for the reasons I had thought. The main focus was on Business Process Management and Service Orientated Architecture. Interesting enough, but the two "side" topics of the conference I found more interesting. These were "Generation Y" and "Cloud Computing" and how both of these are going to have a significant impact on the entire IT industry.

It was very apparent from the conference that IT has a significant problem with resources over the coming years. I had to be one of the youngest people at the conference, and I am pretty sure there was noone there under 28.

It may be that we need "Cloud Computing" because there isn't going to be anyone to do the work anyway, as there are no young people coming in and a whole lot of old people going out.

As per usual there were the usual gartner buzz words and hype, but all up it was a very well rounded and valuable conference.

Amazon Web Service play

2008-07-02T16:38:00.003+10:00

I had a bit of spare time last week so I did a bit of playing with amazons web services to download album art and track details of albums.

Thought I would share the helper I wrote for the amazon service to do this, in case anyone else is trying something like this with other services.

My WebDisk Client

2008-06-12T20:37:00.004+10:00

After a long long break from coding the webdav stuff, I have got around to doing something again. After building the SQL backend WEBDAV server I realised the limitations of windows as a webdav client and webdav as a protocol. So I have decided to start building a new server and client based on a new protocol. You can see from the screen shots that I have got the PROPFIND equivalant already working along with some nice code to automatically detect and build the associated icon for the file type.

From this client/server I am going to implement all of the standard file operations(like WEBDAV), versioning, check-in/check-out and Access Control. I will also be implementing a launcher so you can launch the the client directly from a browser.

More pics to come as I work through the development, but will probably be slow as I am finding it hard lately to find any spare time.

My house in Townsville is on the market

2008-06-11T22:59:00.002+10:00

I am not particularly happy with the pictures. So I am hoping to get the real estate to update the photos soon.

35 OCTAGONAL KELSO

오예스

2008-06-11T22:49:00.003+10:00

My kids and I are currently addicted to 오예스. In english this is "Oh Yes". They are a sponge cake biscuit. They are amazingly cheap in brisbane, where you can get a pack of 20 for $5. They are about the size of a wagon wheel.

Anyway, while eating one the other day I discovered a beatiful bit of konglish written on the packet that I thought I would share

You know that sweet things make smile.
We love to see you smile with your people
So just taste this cake.

Life Updates

2008-05-31T22:11:00.002+10:00

The last month or so has been crazy. I have sold more software and everyone wants "special" features added so I have been not been sleeping much due to my workload. But thankfully that is over now.

Around my workplace has become little seoul so I spend my lunch time eating korea food like 어징어덥밥 (spicy squid with rice). Here are my other updates

I am current addicted to 칠성사이다
Little princess has started walking.
Work is going well
My house in Townsville is on the market and I am looking for a house in shorncliffe, sandgate or brighton.
I am thinking of enrolling in a korean language course at griffith uni next year.
I am currently working on a C# project in my spare time (not that I have much) building a client for my webdav server to allow it to support all of the things XP/Vista does not.

사랑방선물 - Love room gift ??

2008-04-28T21:44:00.002+10:00

A new korean supermarket has just opened around the corner from my work. While browsing its aisles to day I came across this candy. I had to buy it because if you literally translate 사랑방선물 it says "Love room gift". Which in english is pretty funny for a packet of candy balls.

I assume however it doesn't actually mean that, but I can find any other meaning for it. Any koreans out there who can give me a hand??

Proud Father

2008-03-29T21:48:00.003+10:00

Usually I wouldn't do this but given the photos it is impossible not to be a proud dad. These are two great picture of my kids in there traditional korean dress. 한복 (E:HanBok)

Zazzle

2008-03-05T22:59:00.012+10:00

I am current making my zazzle products public so other can buy them

http://www.zazzle.com/hojusaram/products

If you want your own korean product leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

If your name is taku..

2008-03-05T22:40:00.002+10:00

.. And you are looking for a birthday present for your wife, who happens to live in Oz. Then you should probably go http://www.zazzle.com/tokki_shirt-235309297825258245 and order this shirt in a size that fits her .

**GRIN :)

2 new shirt designs

2008-03-03T22:14:00.003+10:00

I have created two new shirts.. The orange one says "Cool (or stylish) Australian" and the grey one says "Mountain rabbit" which explained here

Once I have them I will be interested to see the response..

Tried to go korean food shopping

2008-02-28T07:21:00.003+10:00

Here is my list... It seems it is hard to find most of this stuff in brisbane. I can find substitute products, but I will keep trying to find the genuine items.

1.돌아온 왕꿈틀이

2. 몽고 순 간장

3. 한일 본고장 가쓰오 생우동

4.오리온 고래밥(볶음)

5.오리온 고소미

6.롯데 꼬깔콘 고소한 맛

7. 롯데 꼬깔콘 군옥수수맛

8..오리온 초코파이

9.롯데 자일리톨 껌

10.송학 비빔쫄면 460g
11.오뚜기 마요네즈

12.오뚜기 참기름

13. 롯데 레쓰비 캔 커피 마일드

No.8 is chocopie. Yum !! (Which I can find)

It turns out it has it's very own website.. http://www.chocopie.co.kr/

Space 김치

2008-02-26T21:25:00.004+10:00

Proving once again that South Korea is now a economic powerhouse. The government has invested( wasted??) millions in getting kimchi into space ready for the very first South Korea first astronaut.

Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would not put off non-Korean astronauts with its pungency.

Read full story

Another step towards wireless video kiosks

2008-02-25T21:55:00.003+10:00

I noticed this article this morning.

One potential use of the wireless transceiver chip has owners of handheld media devices being able to step up to a shopping centre kiosk and download high-definition files of movies and TV shows in the blink of an eye.

Seems like it won't be too long before this become a reality. I've talked about this idea before here and here.

It will be a happy day when I can go to the local train station and get a hot coffee in a can and a HD-Movie Bundle from the vending machine.

ADAM setup for AD .net memebership provider

2008-02-08T21:15:00.000+10:00

I have been working on a project lately called RAI. I am not going to talk about it here, but basically it is an external facing and internal facing application for one of the organisations I provide IT services for. For the external client we decided to use ADAM for the authentication source, so I started to have a look at using ADAM and the AD membership provider. Well lets just say that was 5 days I will never get back. So just in case you are ever in a situation where you need to get the AD membership provider to work with ADAM these are the step to installing ADAM so it is setup ready for you.

ADAM can be downloaded from Microsoft at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9688F8B9-1034-4EF6-A3E5-2A2A57B5C8E4&displaylang=en#filelist

The following steps are required to install ADAM for use with the Active Directory .Net membership provider.

1. Run the ADAM installer.
2. Select “unique instance” , press next
3. Set the instance name to your project name in this case I am using “RAI” , press next
4. Set the LDAP port to 50000 and the SSL port to 50001 ,press next
5. Select “Yes, Create an application directory partition” and set the partition name to “O=[projectname]” , again in this case I use RAI press next.
6. Accept default or select a suitable place for the files , press next
7. Choose default for Service Account Selection
8. Choose "Currently logged on account" for ADAM Adminstrators
9. Import "MS-InetOrgPerson", "MS-User" and "MS-Userproxy"
10. Click next to complete the install
The ADAM instance for RAI will now be installed on the application server. It must now be configured.

11. Open "ADAM ADSI Edit" from the ADAM program group in your start menu
12. Select "Action->Connect to..."
13. For name use your projectname
14. Alter the correct portnumber in the Port textbox (50000)
15. Change to “Well-Known naming context” and select “Schema” and then press OK

16. Right click on the schema item and select new object. From the class menu select “AttributeSchema”.
17. Create the following 5 new attribute schema entries

cn: PwdQuestion
OMSyntax: 64
lDAPDisplayName: PwdQuestion
isSingleValued: TRUE
AttributeSyntax: 2.5.5.12
AttributeID: 1.2.840.113556.1.6.1.1.6221

cn: PwdAnswer
OMSyntax: 64
lDAPDisplayName: PwdAnswer
isSingleValued: TRUE
AttributeSyntax: 2.5.5.12
AttributeID: 1.2.840.113556.1.6.1.1.6222

cn: FailedPwdCount
OMSyntax: 2
lDAPDisplayName: FailedPwdCount
isSingleValued: TRUE
AttributeSyntax: 2.5.5.9
AttributeID: 1.2.840.113556.1.6.1.1.6223

cn: FailedPwdAnswerTime
OMSyntax: 65
lDAPDisplayName: FailedPwdAnswerTime
isSingleValued: TRUE
AttributeSyntax: 2.5.5.16
AttributeID: 1.2.840.113556.1.6.1.1.6224

cn: FailedPwdLockOutTime
OMSyntax: 65
lDAPDisplayName: FailedPwdLockOutTime
isSingleValued: TRUE
AttributeSyntax: 2.5.5.16
AttributeID: 1.2.840.113556.1.6.1.1.6225

18. Close the "ADAM ADSIedit" program
19. The user schema object in the ADAM instance needs to be modified to support the additional attributes created in step 17. This needs to be done via the mmc ADAM snap-in. To create an MMC file for the ADAM Schema snap-in
20. From the taskbar Click Start, click Run, type mmc /a, and then click OK.
21. On the File menu, click Add/Remove Snap-in, and then click Add.
22. In Available Standalone Snap-ins, click ADAM Schema, click Add, click Close, and then click OK.

23. To connect to your ADAM instance through ADAM Schema, in the console tree, right-click ADAM Schema, click Change ADAM Server, and then complete the dialog box as follows

24. Click OK
25. In the left hand pane double click the “classes” folder to view the list of schema classes
26. Scroll down to “user” the user object and right click on it. Select properties and then select the attributes tab.

Add the five attributes create in step 21. cn: PwdQuestion , PwdAnswer, FailedPwdCount, FailedPwdAnswerTime, FailedPwdLockOutTime

27. Click OK and close the mmc console. The schema changes are complete. You must restart the ADAM service before you continue.
28. Open the windows services control panel from administrative tools and restart the ADAM service.

29. Close the services control panel.
30. Open the ADSI Edit tool again. Right Click on the [projectname] connection and select “settings”. Change the connection node to "Distinguished name" and enter “O=RAI”
31. Click "Ok"
32. Right-click the "O=RAI"-folder and select "New" and "Object..". Choose "organizationalUnit" and name it "Users", click next and then click finish.
33. Right-click the new "OU=Users"-folder and select "New" and "Object...". Select "user" and give the user the name "ADAMAdmin", click next and then click finish.
34. Right-click the "CN=ADAMAdmin" -account and choose "Reset password". Enter a password you will remember
35. Double-click the "CN=ADAMAdmin"-user and set the "msDS-UserAccountDisabled" to False , click ok and close the properties box.
36. Go to the "CN=Roles"-folder and double-click the "Administrators"-account. Locate the "member" attribute and double-click it. Choose "Add ADAM-account" and enter the distinguished name of your newly created user (CN=ADAMAdmin,OU=Users,O=RAI). Click the Ok-buttons to close the editor.
37. Right-click the root of the Connection in the left hand pane. Select “Settings” from the menu.

Change to “Well-Known naming context” and select “Configuration” and then press OK.
38. Navigate to CN=Directory Service,CN=Windows NT,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,CN={GUID of the ADAM}.
39. Right-click CN=Directory Service and select Properties.
40. Double-click the dSHeuristics attribute.
41. Set the value to 0000000001001 and click OK.
42. Click OK to the CN=Directory Service properties box.
43. The ADAM configuration is now complete.

You will obviously need to setup your application web.config to use this ADAM instance. Have a look at http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/sys/web/security/ActiveDirectoryMembershipProviderClass.aspx and http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998360.aspx for this information.

Long time no blog again !!

2008-02-08T21:00:00.000+10:00

Well I have not blogged for a long long time. So here is a dot point update of what has been happening.

Went on leave from work for 8 weeks

Went to Japan for about 4 days , saw taku and toki's family and went back to tokyo disney, my son got to see asimo up really really close so he was very happy. ( the pic is asimo at his home base )

Went to korea for 2 weeks to pickup my daughter. Met up with heaps of friends and ate so much traditional korea food I almost exploded. I did however get to eat buffer fish for the first time so that was great

Came home and sat around for a few weeks with my new extended family

Went back to work.

Adoption law in Queensland means that I can't leave OZ for a year, so I won't be going anywhere to exciting until 2009. Although if I can rangle it I want to be back in FIJI for christmas.

Long time no blog !! Welcome to BrisneyLand

2007-11-23T22:48:00.000+10:00

Well it has been literally months since I had the chance to blog. So here is the updates, I started 8 weeks holiday today, which is why I finally have sometime to get around to doing this.

My family has moved to Brisbane and are really enjoying the change in scenery. Am I am now working in the CBD with a nice view of the brisbane river. The city is absolutely booming, there are 3 high rise buildings going up around my building including the vision which has just begun.

I am catching the train from ferny grove to brisbane central for work, and it is really nice to live somewhere with public transport. Everyone in brisbane whinges that the trains are slow and never on time, but I have come from somewhere with no public transport so in my opinion the train is awesome.

I am leaving for south korea on tuesday to pick up Juni. We have has an amazing response from friends in australia and korea, as well as old exchange students. So we have about 10,000 people to see while we are in korea and have has a heap of offers to show us around. We are flying in to Pusan, a day trip to Ulsan, travel to Daegu and Daejeon and then to Seoul on the 7th of Dec. So hopefully we will be seeing Juni for the first time at Eastern on the 8th of December.

We are returning to oz on Dec 14th, I spent last night putting juni's cot together to remind myself how much I hate building furniture. My son is very excited to meet his sister and I am looking forward to 2 months without work and having a baby in the house again.

Since I have arrived in brisbane my work has been going well, I have been working on creating a standardised multi-application security framework, so that all of our applications can share the same security management system.

My business is also been going very well with a number of my client currently expanding their user base and require more licenses and customisation of my software. At last count I have about 2500 users of my software with a number of client installs over 500 users at a single site. One of my clients has signalled that they are looking at adding another 1500 users by the end of the financial year which means I could potential have a single site with 2000 users.

So all-in-all everything is going well. I hope to get some more time to do some blogging while I am on leave so please keep having a look every now and then.

We have a name...

2007-09-28T22:03:00.000+10:00

We recieved the documentation for Joo Eun, the other day. In korean her name is 주은 . My korean friends tell me it is a very pretty korean name. Lots of Korean names have their corresponding Chinese letters and the meaning is depended on the Chinese letters. The most popular Chinese letters matched for “주은” is “主恩” and it means “the Royal benevolence (favors)” or “the grace of God”.

We have always believed that it is important to try keep all or part of you childs name if you have a intercountry-adopted child. Some parents adhere to this and some do not. The second part of “주은” name 은 is actually quite hard to say for an English speaking person. ( It actually doesn't sound anything like how I would read "Eun").

So the advice we have received from a korean friends is as follows:

Korean people usually put an extra sound “ee” at the end of a person’s name when the name finishes with a consonant”. In the same way, “Joo Eun” is
generally called or indicated as “Joo Eun” + “ee” (주은이). But the sounds
are connected and it actually sounds like “Joo Unnie" (주으니)”. If this is said faster, it will sound like “쥬니” (Junie or Junee).

In terms of that, I can gaurantee “쥬니” (Junie) sounds good and no problem
at all in Korean perspective. “주니” (Joonie) can be another candidate, and the
name is specially popular by many Koreans for their English nickname, especially
when their original Korean name finishes with a sound “준(Jun)”.

So after some consideration we have decided the name Joonie 주니 is the correct one for our little princess.

A Little Korean Princess

2007-09-20T21:09:00.000+10:00

A while ago I blogged that the korean intercountry adoption had re-opened again. Well today I found out first hand. I am now the proud father of Kim juen.( Although I will have to wait for the paperwork with korean writing on it to verify the name). It has been a long wait, but all worth it now!!. I hope to be in Korea for December to meet her first hand and bring her back to Australia.

Language versus concepts teaching at universities

2007-09-17T21:07:00.000+10:00

Last night I has a bit of a party for my 33rd birthday. One of my friends whom came over is a IT lecturer at the local university. During the evening he asked me my opinion of whether they should teach C# in first year. He said that some of the local industry had been asking about it and he was wondering what the university should do about it.

I remember a couple of days ago on slashdot there was a discussion about programmers/coder versus software engineers, which is very relevant to this question.

I believe the question is whether not universities should teach you how to program in a certain language OR teach you the fundamentals of computing so you can teach yourself how to build computer systems ( in any language/environment). I personally prefer the later approach, because in most cases the languages you learn at university are probably not going to be the langauges you end up programming in anyway, ( l learnt fortran, pascal and c at uni ) and I believe it is much better to teach the fundamentals of computing, compilers, operating systems , databases , networking and if you are going to teach specific programming languages then leave it till the last year so that students already have the fundamentals in place, and also the languages are more as relevant as possible.

It is a big problem in Australia, because in an environment where young people can get a job in a mine driving a truck down a hole for $120000/year, there is alot of pressure to try and attract people to university. This puts pressure on universities to try and make their first year courses as "sexy" as possible. The problem with this approach is that you inevitably end up dumbing- down the course work to attract more people and teach only the most "exciting" concepts. This in-turn leads to less of the "boring" fundamentals which means graduates learn less of the things that will actually make them good system builders in the future, and have less of an understanding of computing as a whole. The end result is that noone bothers to go to university because they see the academic level of the graduates, and what they are learning and cannot see the value in it. If university degrees end up being .net ( or java ) courseware why would anyone bother.

I think that the IT industry has already suffered through alot of this, and I personally believe the best software engineers I know are people who have had experience in many areas of computing ( admin, network support , database admins ) as well as business skills.

Say goodbye to take home DVDs.

2007-09-17T21:00:00.000+10:00

I mentioned taking memory sticks to video stores in one of my previous posts . Well it looks like it might be becoming a reality in Australia.

Video Ezy CIO Steve Hogben designed the new video delivery system, which
works by customers going into a store to download movies onto a portable storage
device and then loading these on to a special set-top box at home.

I guess that means it won't be long before you can get a take-home movie from a vending machine at a train station or shopping centre. There is no detail as to how they are going to control the copying of the movie, the file format/quality, or if the movie will expire after a certain time ( to force you to return to the shop to renew it).

33 arrives with bang... literally

2007-09-17T20:55:00.001+10:00

I had been 33 for 8 hours and 36 minutes... Then BANG... My old pulsar was an inch shorter than it used to be. Rear ended at a traffic light.

Lucky it wasn't my new Captiva or it would have got ugly. The car is still ok, but the rear door doesn't close properly. Hopefully my insurance company will write it off and I can pick up a 5 year old toyota echo/yaris for my commuter car in Brisbane.

I don't think anything happened to me, but I guess I will wait for the morning to see if I got any whip lash.

hit storm from nowhere

2007-09-14T21:32:00.000+10:00

From wednesday this week http://yourtimesheets.com got a sudden massive hit increase. The problem is that none of the hits contain a referrer so I have no way of finding out where they are all coming from... It is very strange to have that many hits without referrers, especially when the hits are from all different locations... Oh well a mystery of the internet.

In Brisbane for the 26th

2007-09-14T21:22:00.000+10:00

I will be starting work in Brisbane on the 26th of September. So far I know where I am working ( 80 albert st ), but I haven't found a house yet. That will be the job for the first weekend.

I will be working on the top floor of the building with a great view over the botanical gardens to the river.

Garmin nüvi 260

2007-09-14T21:10:00.000+10:00

I mentioned before that it is my birthday soon, well this sunday actually. My mother sent me some money and told me to get a gps for my new captiva. I took her advice and got a
Garmin nüvi 260 for $490.

First impressions.. Awesome... I had it out of the box, connected to satellites , had my home added to favourites, and had a nice english lady telling me to "take the 2nd exit on the roundabout" in under 5 minutes. When you think about what goes in to gettting one of these things to work , including more than a few geo-stationary sattelittes, the price is really amazing.

I know every parent says this....

2007-09-07T19:13:00.000+10:00

But.. My son is a genius.

He is only 3. Yesterday he said to me, "Dad I'll make you a chatterbox". He then got a square piece of paper and made one of these.

Genius !!!.. I was totally blown away.

Actually I have to thank Toki for teaching him.

Barcode SS in Blue.

2007-09-04T19:01:00.000+10:00

Well after much hinting on my blog someone finally got a Barcode SS for my impending birthday. Thanks Dad.

33 this year, hard to believe actually, my mental age swings between 8 and 80 depending on the day. At least it is easy to remember.

Today I was flicking through a magazine and saw an advert for the watch. It is the new a funky thing for fathers day (supposedly ??). The advert obviously worked because the website that was advertising them has sold out

Korean T-shirts find target audience

2007-09-04T18:58:00.000+10:00

A couple of weeks ago there was the Townsville cultural festival .

It turns out that Townsville has a sister city in Korea ( Suwon ) and to celebrate the friendship Suwon sent a group of traditional dancers and performers to Townsville. While at the cultural festival I decide to wear my Korea shirt. While I was there a large number of Korean teenagers came up to me and told me they liked my shirt and asked where they could buy one. This has made me think it is time for a new batch with a new design. Time to start thinking about it….

I heard a new word today.

2007-09-04T18:57:00.000+10:00

Technopreneurs .. I like it and will endeavour to use it more in conversation.

I put my $500 deposit down today

2007-08-24T23:30:00.000+10:00

Yippee !! Can't wait for that sweet smell of 7 new leather seats..

See more at the Captiva mini site . I'm getting the LX 7 seater diesel in Black.

.Net SQL Backend storage with Activex Uploader

2007-08-24T21:20:00.000+10:00

Firstly : This solution uses an ActiveX control , so it is targetted at Intranet Applications for SOEs where IE is the standard browser.

In my previous post I talked about implementing the domino inotes activex uploader to talk to an asp .net application that could store the uploaded files in a sql database, well here is the C# vs2005 solution.

I am sure there are other activex file uploaders out there that provide similar (probably better) functionality but I knew how this one worked from previous work I had done with it in Domino using a java servlet to receive the files.

Basically in this solution I re-coded the servlet as a Httpmodule that read the request inputstream and processed the data coming from the activex control. The activex control thinks it is talking to a Domino Server, so the code is based around getting the functionality out of the control while tricking it into thinking it is being used with a Domino Backend. In fact the backend is the .net application which stores the uploaded files into the sql database.

The setup is as usually for my solutions. Just create a new sql database on your sql server/msde and run the DBSetup.sql code against it. Then edit the web.config so the connection string matches your database. Once that is done compile and run. The cab file that contains the activex control is in the project.

The inotes ActiveX control provides the following features:

Drag and drop functionality from windows explorer/desktop
File upload status bar
Multiple file upload and deletions
Each file upload uses an individual HTTP POST so upload limit is per file
Windows explorer look and feel.
Client side caching

Happy coding.

Activex fileupload revisit in .net

2007-08-20T22:09:00.000+10:00

I have had a middle school korean exchange student staying at my home for the last couple of months. He uses the korean community site naver 네이버 . While he was composing an e-mail the other day I noticed that there was a activex fileupload on the "compose" page which looked quite similar to the IBM/Lotus file upload control that is available for inotes. It also has the same feature set ( drag and drop, local file caching, file upload status, etc ).

On inspection on my computer after he had logged-off I discovered that the activex control had the details as above. The feature set is almost exactly the same as the IBM control and lead me to think there was some code sharing or something of that nature between IBM and this company ?? The control itself is obviously unnoticed by most as a search on google returns nothing of interest

Anyway recently I have been trying to find a nice browser based file manager for .net and after trolling through thousands of pages about how to do this sort of thing in .net have come to the conclusion that there really is no replacement of activex in the .net world so I shouldn't bother trying to replace this functionality I should just embrace it.

So since I already have a servlet version of the server component of the IBM upload control I thought I would try and whip up one in .net and of course give it backend DB storage. I will post my working source in the next couple of days. I will base the project on the work I have already done here and here.

You know your old when....

2007-08-20T22:04:00.000+10:00

You think it is exciting enough to tell the world that you have tickets to see The Police in concert.

The Police - Tue 22 Jan 2008 7:00PM - Suncorp Stadium

Hoping for a few Sting songs thrown in at the end.. But not hopeful, as I am sure one of the agreements to get all of the band back together was that none of them had to hear "Russians" or "work the black seam" during the world tour.

Off to Brisbane

2007-08-16T21:59:00.000+10:00

I went to Brisbane on monday for a job interview and now have been told that I have the job. So it looks like I will be packing up in Townsville and moving to Brisbane. The new job is working on our corporate .net framework as opposed to application development. I am looking forward to the challenge, our corporate framework is pretty good but there is still lots to do. I also want to do a lot of work with code generation so that we can automate the code building application parts from the database level up.

Currently we use mygeneration to do our stored proc, DLC and BLC auto-generation, but I would like to get our framework and code-gen to a stage where it can support creating up to the presentation layer with working 2-way binding all via code generation. It is going to be a lot of work but I think it is achievable. We are currently trying to get our framework adopted as the whole of government one, so hopefully I can be of use in getting that done.

Anyway I have to wait for the "official" word on my job and then it will be time to pack-up the house and make the move. So a busy month ahead I think.

Tokyo Flash - Pimp

2007-08-16T21:50:00.000+10:00

My favorite watch web site Tokyoflash has just release a new range of nerd watches.. And some of them are beautiful .. I think my favourite is the Pimpin aint easy SS but then again I don't think anything beats the Barcode SS with blue leds.

Korean Inter-country adoptions have begun again.

2007-08-01T22:07:00.000+10:00

This morning we were contacted by the Queensland Government adoption agency asking for a follow up assessment because our file has been in Korea for so long. They also said that there have been 4 new allocations to Australia recently, so it looks like the Inter-country adoptions are underway again. This is not so good news for Korea as it suggests that their internal push for local adoptions has not been as good as expected. But for those prospective adoptive parents this is some nice news.

Our file has been in South Korea for our second adoption application since March 2006, which is already 8 months longer than our first adoption.

This is probably only funny to a westerner who can read hangul

2007-08-01T22:05:00.000+10:00

This is a sign I saw in Christchurch for a korean hairdresser. The sign is attempting to say “City Hair” . The problem is they are using hangul but trying to say english words. But if you read 시티 헤어 in korea it actually sounds like “Shitty hair”.

The actually word for city in korean is도시( R: doshi ) and hair dresser/beauty salon is미용사(R: Me-yong-sa)

New Zealand – the land of beauty and people who say “wee” a lot

2007-08-01T21:52:00.000+10:00

Just spent 2 weeks in New Zealand, we only did the south of the south island as we have been to NZ twice before. We did a loop from Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Queenstown, Wanaka back to Christchurch. The highlight for me was the driving between Queenstown back to Christchurch through the mountains. You can really see why lords of the rings was shot there, the scenery is just magnificient.

Things I most liked about NZ:

Scenery
Good pubs
Abundance of Black pudding
People say “wee” instead of little/small (well at least south of Dunedin)

Here are few shots of the adventure:

why you don't ride your bike on the tram lines in christchurch

a very friendly seal at penguin place near dunedin
a yellow eyed penguin at penguin place
the view back to Queenstown from coronet peak skiing area
The beast itself..

Oh and the camera was excellent. I only managed to fill 1.5 GB of the 4GB card , but that stilll gave me about 45 minutes of movie and lots of photos. So $300 well spent.

New Camera and New Zealand

2007-07-13T16:07:00.000+10:00

Off to New Zealand next week for a couple of weeks holiday.. Can't wait. Supposedy it is the coldest winter they have had for 40 year, so I am expecting lots and lots of snow.

Got myself a new camera for the trip. A casio exilim hi-zoom. 7x Optical zoom, 7.2 mega pixel nice video recording. I got a new 4GB SD card for it as well. If I stick in on video mode it says I have 3hours and 1 minute of recording time. So that is pretty damn nice. I will see how it performs in the extreme cold next week.

Here is the route we probably will be taking in our britz vans.

We have got a 4 berth elite, a little house on wheels.

C# Webdav server with SQL Backend Source Code

2007-06-26T19:38:00.000+10:00

The C# visual studio 2005 source code for this project is here

I finally got around to getting all of the source code for the webdav server I developed in C# with a SQL backend, I have talked a bit about this previously , but only now have had the time to but it all together so others can download and use/update the code.

The main reason I wrote this code was to provide a "network share" interface to some of my .net applications. I thought it would be very useful to have a framework in place where I could trigger some form of event when someone saved a word file or updated a speadsheet. Because all of the files are stored in a database under the control of the .net application creating this sort of thing is relatively trivial. I have used this to automatically process excel data into a database when someone saves a file to a particular folder for example. (You could also do this via e-mail using this, but that is a different idea). You could also use this to provide per-user content for a single file.

This server is purely for use with Windows Explorer and Microsoft office, so I have not implemented alot of the webdav stuff that isn't implemented by these products. ( this includes webdav-versioning , proppatch etc ), and I can't garauntee it will work with any other webdav clients. Basically this server implementation provides the minimal functionality required to allow MS office and Windows explorer to work.

I have implemented this project to provide 2 interfaces to the virtual filesystem ( provided by an sql database) . A standard web-front end and also the webdav interface. This means that if you connect to the server via a standard web browser you can view the virtual filesystem via a standard web page.

But if connect to the server via a webdav client connection then you get the webdav experience. Which allows you to create , edit, delete , copy , move , rename lock and unlock files and create, rename and delete folders.

There are a number of ways to get a connection to a webdav server as a network share. These include adding a "network place" from "my network places". The easiest way to get connected via webdav is to open the root url url for the application in IE and tick the "Open as web folder" option.

To setup the server you need to do the following steps and also I recommend visiting http://www.zorched.net/category/webdav/ for lots of helps on configuring webdav for .net

Download the code and open in vs 2005 ( link at top of this post)
Create a new blank database on your sql server
run the create.sql code from the database project against the new database to create the required tables, stored procs and data to support the virtual filesystem
Edit the web.config of the web application project (hojuwebdisk.web) and adjust the database connection string of the "webdav" connection to suit your environment.

As this is a webdav server you will also need to adjust the IIS setting for the website so that it knows how to handles the additional HTTP methods that webdav supports (LOCK, UNLOCK,PROPFIND,MKCOL etc ). Basically because we want .net to intercept all the calls (because we are redirecting all queries to our database not the filesystem) we need to adjust the application extension mapping so all extensions on all VERBs map to the asp IIS handler.

To do this you need to open the application properties of your website from the IIS console and then click the configure button. You then need to remove all of the application extensions and then create a new one for all extensions (.*) for all verbs that executes the .net isapi handler.

A good article explaining the ins-and-outs of this is available here

Once you have completed this setup you should be able to see the webdav server through a webdav connection, and therefore be able to add files and away you go..

I have to give credit to another project for helping me out with this one. The database and database interface stuff was all me, but a lot of the webdav implementation code I got from the webdav server project on sourceforge . If you are looking at developing your own webdav server or extending this code I totally recommend you check out that project. There project uses alot of events and delegates, where as I went with a single interface handler to simplify the code.

If you need any help, or want to add feedback then please do so. Microsoft office and windows have a number of wonderful webdav quirks, which you may need to get around depending on your environment and setup. A good place to start for a list of these is here

So good luck..

Looks like there is two new iphone models

2007-06-22T19:33:00.000+10:00

If only I had found this picture for 1st April.

Picture for Taku

2007-06-22T15:44:00.000+10:00

This one is for Taku.. Near the end of episode 14 of heroes is a little bit of super nerd work.

The number plate on hiro's dads car reads NCC-1701. This is in fact the id number for the original starship enterprise in star trek.

George Takei, who played Sulu on the original Star Trek also plays Hiro's father, Kaito.

Also I think Kaito is definitely *******. Ooh you haven't watched episode 23 yet so I can't talk about that.

Holden Captiva LX diesel 7 seater

2007-06-14T21:14:00.000+10:00

I have been looking around for a new car recently... My wife and I seemed to have agreed on a Holden Captiva LX diesel 7 seater. It just annoys me that holden don't offer a dvd pack in their accessories list.. This is supposed to be a family transporter after all.

You can spec out your own lx here

too busy...

2007-06-14T21:11:00.000+10:00

The end of financial year is killing me.. I have so much work to do for my own business and at work I can't find time to blog anything.

Hopefully things will ease up later in the month and I can get back to updating...

More on Domino -> SharePoint migration tool

2007-06-01T15:25:00.000+10:00

I am currently writing a C# .net windows form application to migrate IBM domino (notes) data to MS Sharepoint. This is for document libraries only, as sharepoint doesn’t do forms like notes does.(required InfoPath and a whole heap of fiddling)

So basically this is a tool that allows me to do the following:

Select a domino document library
Select a sharepoint document list
Choose fields in the documents in the Notes database and pair them to meta-data fields in the Sharepoint List
Pull the rich-text body( including embedded images and attachments ) out of notes and convert it to a word document.
Translate the Notes Fields -> Sharepoint fields
Save the word document and its meta data to the Sharepoint list.

By automating this process it means that I can simply point the tool at each domino document library database , then map its fields to a sharepoint list and press a button to migrate all of the data. This will give me one word document in the sharepoint list for each notes document in the document library.

The underlying functionality on the domino side is the agent I have talked about early I use this to produce the xml/binary and html that is used by the .net app to gather and translate the domino data. On the sharepoint side I am using a mix of SOAP and FrontPage RPC calls to the sharepoint server to get the List schemas and then place the documents and meta data into the Lists.

I should have some nice screenshots sometime next week of it all in action

Surface computing coffee table

2007-06-01T15:17:00.000+10:00

Well I am pretty sure this is an attempted re-hash of an idea I saw about 2 years ago, but even so it is still very cool. A finger driven coffee table computer allows you to send and manipulate data between devices that are resting on it. Although the product itself may have a short and not so useful lifespan. I do think the ease-of-use visualisation that this device has is worth a lot. One of the problems with software development is when you have to communicate technical ideas and business processes with a group of non-technical customers. The ability to build models of data or business processes and then have a multiple customers at once be able to see, reach out, touch and manipulate them would be very helpful indeed.

And the trekkies have got to love it.

Arstechnica has some more in-depth info

Domino -> Sharepoint Conversion Tool

2007-05-29T20:59:00.000+10:00

Since over the last 6 months or so I have been doing alot of development work migrating Domino Applications to .net I have also been looking at sharepoint. I think I am now at the stage where I can put together a domino -> sharepoint mapping tool and migrator. I am going to spend the next few weeks at work doing some development. So I will post something when I have some source code to share.

I have also finished the C# webdav server with SQL backend. It supports all of the common WebDAV methods and allows me to save , copy, rename, lock files and create folders from windows exploerer and MS Office, all of this with a MS SQL backend , not the filesystem.

The code is not at a stage where I can publish it here. But if you find this page and are interested in getting some code snippets or help with your implementation, then leave a comments.

I realised after writing the webdav server that MS Office does not support enough of webdav to make it useful compared to sharepoint. (i,e version control doesn't integrate properly). So I am now moving my approach from webdav=> sharepoint to leverage the integration.

Holy Crap ... I'm addicted to heroes.

2007-05-29T20:48:00.000+10:00

So I got my new dvix duke box. I instantly downloaded all 23 episodes of heroes, and over the last 3 days my wife and I have watched 17 of them.. I seriously cannot get enough of this show.. I will talk later about how good the dukebox is but right now I have to go and watch more.. Only 5 to go until I have caught up with the US. I am going to go out on a limb and says this is the best tv series I have ever watched..

CTR - the dodgiest health test in the world

2007-05-16T20:35:00.000+10:00

Recently I have had to re-submit a full health check for my latest adoption. It has been over 5 years since I did my last one and the adoption agency requires that you have a full medical check up every five years to stay on the register.

Part of the health check is a chest x-ray ( I am not going to go into the arguments against chest x-rays here but lets just say my doctor agrees that they are the worst idea ever) . So I went down to my local X-ray clinic and got a chest X-ray. The radiologists report said that I had cardiomegaly . Freaking out about this I checked the net and found that this meant that I had an enlarged heart ( this sounds bad ). The basic diagnosis for this is something called "Cardiothorasic Ratio"(CTR) which basic means that ratio of the width of your heart compared to the width of your chest. If it is over 50% then you are supposedly in trouble. So I start to panic , given that the usual diagnosis for cardiomegaly is something wrong with your heart valves or vascular system. So I ring me doctor to make an urgent appointment. The appointment goes something like this:

Me: Hi, yeah I got that chest x-ray you gave me the referral for. The report says I have cardiomegaly. What usually causes that.

Doc: Mmm. High blood pressure.. But you don't have that. Did you breathe in ??

Me: Breath in ?? What do you mean??

Doc: Well the CTR is a measurement of the width of your lungs compared to your heart. If you don't breathe in when you get an x-ray then its total rubbish.

Me: wtf? So this whole cardiomegaly thing is based on whether I bothered to breathe in when the x-ray was taken.

Doc: Yeah !! So did you breathe in ??

Me: No

Doc: Well you better get back to the x-ray place and do it again.

Me: AAAHHH!!!!

So if you every have to get a chest x-ray , make sure you breathe in until your blue in the face to save yourself alot of worry.

New Bendy Screen = Magazine on a stick

2007-05-15T13:04:00.000+10:00

I always thought that it would be long before you were taking your memory stick to the video store instead of taking away dvds. ( I bought a 1Gb SD Card the other day for $A18 so it can't be far away). Well now it looks like we might be taking that same memory stick to the newsagency to get our magazines and newspapers, and then reading them on our nice new bendy screens.

Sth Korea's LG has developed the world's first A4-sized colour electronic-paper -- a paper-thin and bendable viewing panel.

The e-paper -- which measures 14.1 inches (35.9 centimetres) across its diagonal
and is just 300 micrometres (0.3 millimetres) thin -- can display up to 4,096
colours, the world's second largest liquid crystal display maker said in a
statement. It is designed to be energy-efficient, only using power when the
image changes on the display, it said. "This represents the next generation in
display technology," Chung In-Jae, chief technology officer and executive vice
president, said in the statement. The new display product's potential
applications "are incredible and will allow our customers to create new products
that are not only convenient to use but also save natural resources," he added.
LG Philips said it developed the world's first 10.1-inch flexible
black-and-white e-paper in October 2005 and a 14.1-inch follow-up -- which
matches the most common copy size -- in May 2006.

Divico Tvix C-2000u

2007-05-10T21:58:00.000+10:00

Today I order one of these. I have wanted one for a while, since I saw it at one of my friends houses. He got his direct from korea, but I found out that Harvey Norman was a distributor so I got them to order one for me.

It is basically a usb drive with a bit of extra logic that allows it to plug directly into an AV device (tv, plasma, projector etc ). And as it uses a 120Gb-160GB 2.5" drive it is ultra portable. (About the size of a cigarette packet ). So you plug it into your pc, copy the divx/dvd files you want to watch and then take it to your ( or friends) tv/movie room and use it as if it was a set-top dvd box. You can also get a car adaptor for it so you can use it to run the movies in your car.

If your looking for something with more grunt they also have a wireless networkable dvd jukebox with hd-record ability. sweet !!

어린이 날

2007-05-05T15:35:00.000+10:00

Today is korean children's day 어린이 날 ( R: oe-rin-ee nal) .

Basically on this day, all parents cooked delicious food for the kids or had a party with all the family or go on a picnic or something like that.

Usually , there would be presents for the kids and it is a holiday in korea. It was officially was adopted by the government in 1973, and became a public holiday in 1975.

Gecko feet robot.

2007-05-03T21:02:00.000+10:00

Looks like robots are finally catching up with gravity defying lizards...

Researchers have created a robot that can run up a wall as smooth as glass
and onto the ceiling at a rate of six centimeters a second. The robot currently
uses a dry elastomer adhesive, but the research group is testing a new
geckolike, ultrasticky fiber on its feet that should make it up to five times
stickier.

Although if stickiness of the feet translate to speed then 5*6cm/s = 30cm/s, and I can tell you the geckos at my house can easily do 2m/s when a cat is chasing them.

I suggest they stick one of these in the room and see how fast it goes !

Toyota's new mini

2007-05-03T20:59:00.000+10:00

It's called the Endo... Don't know much about it , but it looks a bit like the suzuki swift.. If it was cheap I'd buy it. Good for a little car to drive to work and/or to the train station.

Cash Cow of the Universe

2007-04-30T21:53:00.000+10:00

Microsoft recently announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion.
In other words, Microsoft’s daily net income is about $55 million.
That’s $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours, or $2.291 Million an hour or $38195 a minute.
In comparison microsofts profit is 8 times the world wide income (yes income, not profit) of McDonalds. You can see the MS Office and Windows are the biggest cash cows in the universe.
Hell I am happy when I receive a royalty cheque for $20. I am not sure those stories about being under "pressure from competition", seem that true now.

WebDAV “MyDrive” idea

2007-04-27T15:09:00.000+10:00

Something that is “hot right now” is off-site drives over the internet. An example of a company that are coming on-line with this is Jungle Disk .

Since I now have a working webdav server with an sql backend, I was thinking of using it to create a project to provide a similar service. Obviously I won’t be hosting this anywhere as I don’t have the money to set-up a massive data-centre, but it would be good to see what I could come up with and share the project source with the world. I am going to name this project “MyWebDrive” the basic idea is this.

A user comes to the MyWebDrive website and creates an account , this creates this user an “area”. The user is sent an e-mail with the instructions for how to connect to their “area” via WebDav. Once they have their webdav drive connected they can then copy files create folders etc in their “area”.

This provides the “off-site drive” part.

Also via the web site the user can mange the access to each folder in their “Area”. They can do this by creating their own “friends” in their area, and then setting the access level these “friends” have to each folder. “Friends” can then be sent an e-mail inviting them to connect via webdav to the “area” so they can share the “WebDrive”

This provided the “sharing” part.

At this stage I am not going to be creating my own client for this I will be relying on windows explorer and the Mac OS to provide connectivity. Windows explorer doesn’t support https for WebDAV so this won’t exactly be a secure application, but as a first try that is fine.

I think I will put together two version. One for internal use (“friends” can only be added from Active Directory) , and one for external user ( “friends” can be created in the system). The second version will allow me to have a bit of a play with .Net membership providers which I haven’t worked with before.

The .net components I need to do for the system are:

SQL Backended Webdav Server ( already have this, but I want to create a cut down version and the sourceforge framework is a little too bloated for my liking )
SQL based Access control , I already have this from my previous examples
SQL based membership provider. This is new.
The website itself to allow people to create accounts, manage their “areas” , send e-mail etc.

Adventures in WebDAV

2007-04-27T15:00:00.000+10:00

I have been developing a C# .net WebDAV Server with a backend SQL database for a bit. I have all of the file system functionality ( copy , move, rename, delete make folders etc ) working as well as LOCK support. This all works great. I am now tyring to get some of the MS office features working and have hit a bit of a stumbling block.

If I load a word document from my WebDAV server and then select file->Properties then Word fires a webdav PROPFIND request back to my server and displays an “OK” dialog that says “Verifying Web Properties”.

The PROPFIND request that is sent to my server looks like this

[a:propfind xmlns:a=”DAV:” xmlns:b=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes”]
[a:prop xmlns:c=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”]
[c:save-profile-form-location /]
[/a:prop]
[/a:propfind]

The problem is that I have no idea what save-profile-form-location is supposed to be and a search on google returns a huge 6 documents. So I guess noone else know what this means either ??

I have tried various replies from my server in the format

[D:multistatus xmlns:b=”urn:uuid:c2f41010-65b3-11d1-a29f-00aa00c14882″ xmlns:c=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” xmlns:D=”DAV:”]
[D:response]
[D:href]test.doc[/D:href]
[D:propstat]
[D:status]HTTP/1.1 200 OK[/D:status]
[D:prop]
[c:save-profile-form-location]/WDClient/profile.doc[/c:save-profile-form-location]
[/D:prop]
[/D:propstat]
[/D:response]
[/D:multistatus]

Using all sorts of values and data , but this is all ignored by word. So I am a bit stuck. I may try to arrange a support call to Microsoft about this. It would be nice if I could get word to read some properies from my webdav server. So I will do some more searching on this one.

Smart toilet doors

2007-04-24T19:51:00.000+10:00

It has come to my attention that in this day and age, it should be an international crime not to supply reading/viewing material in toilets.

I believe there is definitely a market for "smart" integrated televisions (lcd) in toilet doors. ( Hey pimp my ride once put on in a mud flap !)

I know in japan there is a huge market for "smart" toilet seats. I believe there is a market for "smart" doors as well.

Imagine the door that can detect that you are having a "problem" and starts running quick 15 second ads of high fibre muesli.. Targeted advertising gold.

“Special” Mos burger guaranteed for Taku.

2007-04-23T12:22:00.000+10:00

Taku will definitely be first in line for the “special” Mos burger now.

With his new 250bhp Rx-8. Uni to Mos in under 2 minutes.

Happy driving Taku, hope you like my little bit of photoshop.

Suit me up !!

2007-04-23T12:19:00.000+10:00

Become super human for ¥70,000 a month

Well maybe you won’t be lifting a train, but 40kg per arm is nice, I can only do a 22kg dumb-bell, so this will surely make me look better in the gym ?? No ??

HAL is originally developed to help elderly or disabled people walk around
with their own legs and HAL-3 achieved the primary goal in 2000.

In 2005, the latest model HAL-5 was given upper body limbs as well as
weight saving and more compact POWER units, longer life battery and much smaller
control unit and spectacularly designed outer shells.

HAL is a robot suit which can expand and improve physical capabilities of
human being. By wearing HAL-5 and you can hold up to 40 kg load by arms and can
increase the maximum weight of leg press from 100 kg to 180 kg.

I can't wait for the "after-market" kits you can get for this..

Glosoli's birthday present

2007-04-23T12:14:00.000+10:00

I think I just found glosili’s birthday present . A beautiful representation of "nerd" meets "gambler".

On a long lonely night on a train bound for nowhere....

Gotcha Day

2007-04-18T13:05:00.000+10:00

It is my sons’ "Gotcha Day" on April 22. These days, most adoptive families celebrate the day their child was adopted Families vary in what they call it: Gotcha Day, Adoption Day, Family Day, Adoption Anniversary Day. Depending on the family the day selected for this day is different, it might be the first time the family met, the day you went to court, the day your child got home, or the day the adoption was finalized. In our case we chose the day that we returned to Australia for the first time with our son. We actually first saw met about 10 days earlier. On this day we usually get together with friends and watch the home video of when we first met our son and have a bit of a party. Sort of like a second birthday party.

We usually give presents on this day and this year his 이모 got him an amazing present which he got a few days early. It is a K-Kam and although he is only 3 ½ he is already producing some nice movies.

In Dev: C# WebDAV Server with SQL Backend

2007-04-18T12:54:00.000+10:00

The work I am doing on building a WebDAV Server with SQL Backend is progressing well. I found a .net web dav server framework at sourceforge , which provides much of the plumbing for the WebDAV server. Their implementation is for a server that uses the file system for storage, I want to use an sql database so that DAV properties can be used inside other .net applications.

One of the problems with the filesystem based implementation, is that the properties of each file (including the custom properties) are binary serialised to a file. This means that they are not easily searched and/or retrieved by external system, so I definitely want to move this to a SQL database.

I am now at the stage where I have created the SQL database and have written the data and business layers, to replace the filesystem layer with an SQL Layer. This means that from windows explorer I can now map a web drive to my C# app and it will display data in the SQL database as if it is a WebDAV fileshare. I can copy, move , rename, delete the files and folders, and also open and save to/from the app to windows applications. This all works great. I still have to do a bit of work to get locking, custom properties and some of the MS Office specific stuff happening but it is looking promising.

The screen shot above shows an explorer window of the WebDAV share. All of the files and folders that are visible are in fact records in an sql table.

I have also written a small app called “Web Folder Mapper” to allow me to create WebDAV shortcuts. The source for this is downloaded here. This is very helpful because it allows you to create a shortcut and then you can simply drag files to this shortcut and then will be stored on the WebDAV server. The screen shot of the mapper tool is below, with the corresponding shortcut that was build on my desktop.

I will release the server source code as soon as I get the rest of the implementation working. I will also be sending it to the admin of the sourceforge framework project, as they have asked for code from anyone who uses the framework to create an implementation.

Small 무궁화꽃 time lapse.

2007-04-17T22:39:00.000+10:00

Click on the image to see animation

I have talked about the korean nation flower before. And for some time I have wanted to try and get a time lapse of it changing color. Well over the last couple of days I managed to setup a small area in my office to take photos of a couple of flowers changing color. I tried to remember to take a photo every hour or so, but I forgot alot, and as I don't own a tripod the camera moved around a little. The flowers were also picked they were quite as happy as I would have like them to be, but the experiment worked ok, and you get a good idea of what happens. (Click on the image to see the animation)

Which Watch??

2007-04-16T13:17:00.000+10:00

Previously I posted about the Barcode SS by tokyo time evolution well in the search for items for this years birthday list I came across the DT1 by Fusion .. Hmmm Decisions , Decisions

Cool Toy - Splash Rocket

2007-04-15T20:45:00.000+10:00

My son and I played with this really cool toy today. You attach the base to your hose and it allows you to fire a cone shaped rocket into the air. If you regulate the water pressure well you can get the cone to hover in the air ( as my photo's show ). A really great toy.

Wii or Gym ... Hmmm

2007-04-09T22:55:00.000+10:00

This article says it all

I have to say they left out Wii boxing though. One round of that and I am dead..

For my birthday I would like an alien in a jar

2007-04-09T22:48:00.000+10:00

Ok, I can't read japanese so , I will have to guess exactly what this is about. Maybe Tox or Tax can help me out here.. But this is cool, what is sweeter than a alien in a jar for your desk at work..

￥2.800 seems cheap !!

Webdav server in .net.

2007-04-04T13:34:00.000+10:00

I am going to be doing some work on a .net webdav server over the next few weeks. It has come to my attention that extending some of the .net workflow applications I have worked on with webdav would be a nice feature; and being able to map a network drive directly into your sql based file store would be a great feature.

I blogged some updates when I have something to show.

Shots of new wrx.

2007-04-04T13:28:00.000+10:00

I am not a great Subaru wrx fan, I am far more an Mitsubishi Evo lover. And now I have seen the new one of both of these cars I can say that I have picked the right one.

These are some pics of the new wrx. Like the old one when it first came out I assume there will be huge controversy in the subaru community about this.

I do think the Subaru have “borrowed” some looks from Mitsubishi in the front, and those side lines look very like a bmw 120.

I also found this link for 2008 wrx sti and I have to say it looks like a mazda 3 mps.

A shot of the 2008 Evo is here for comparison

Glosoli caught in Google paper

2007-04-04T13:25:00.000+10:00

I am not going to mention who got caught by the google paper april fools joke , but his blog is here . He tells me that he thought it was real because he thought it sounded useful.

Now I wonder if he ordered their new home networking kit

I think this type of post needs a new term "Flogging", flame blogging. I expect comments on this one.

Week began with tsunami

2007-04-04T13:20:00.000+10:00

Well I guess anyone reading this who lives in the pacific rim knows that there was a tsunami warning on Monday. I came into work and sat down and then heard what I thought was a Cyclone warning on the radio. ( They use the same siren noise for all emergency announcements it seems). Having lived in a place that has cyclones threatening the coast line every year I am quite used to cyclone warning, but I am fairly sure this is the first tsunami warning I have ever been aware of.

You can see the massive wave that generated by the tsunami on the east coast of Australia at this link.

The original tsunami broadcast is below:

IDQ20003
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Queensland

Transmitters serving the coastal area east coast are REQUESTED TO USE THE
STANDARD EMERGENCY WARNING SIGNAL BEFORE BROADCASTING THIS MESSAGE

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
QUEENSLAND TSUNAMI WARNING
Issued at 9:17am on Monday the 2nd of April 2007

For people in coastal areas of Queensland.

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST

TSUNAMI BULLETIN

TSUNAMI THREAT TO EASTERN AUSTRALIA and Willis and Barrier Reef
Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii
has detected an undersea earthquake near Solomon Islands and has issued a
Tsunami Bulletin.

The earthquake has also been detected by Geoscience Australia.

AN EARTHQUAKE OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 6:40 am EST 02 APR 2007
COORDINATES - 8.6 SOUTH 157.2 EAST
LOCATION - SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAGNITUDE - 8.1

Based on the magnitude and location of the earthquake,
tsunami could start affecting these locations at the following local
time:

Cooktown from 0931am 02/04/2007
Cairns from 0949am
Brisbane 1033am
Gladstone 1139am
Mackay 1144am

Climb the Slope of Enlightment and fall into the Trough of Disillusionment

2007-03-28T12:43:00.000+10:00

I have been lamenting recently about the uselessness of management at my workplace. I guess like many workplaces we are going through that cycle of clean up after everyone realised that it may actually be a good idea after all to get someone who knows how to turn on a pc to manage IT. (Remember participative management anyone ??)

Anyways .. As my workgroup is moving office we have been cleaning up old paper work and books , and while doing this we stumbled across this little gem ( along with a design manual for Lotus Notes 3.0, but that is another story ). I think this graph sums up the “content free-ism” of my management team in the last 7 years. Thankfully this is now getting better..

You have got to appreciate the genius of this though.. “Trough of Dissillusionment” , “Slope of Enlightment”.. Pure pointy head gold.

Korean Keyboard Overlay.

2007-03-28T12:39:00.000+10:00

I am trying to improve the speed of my Korean typing and have finally got around to getting some korean overlay stickers.

The pic at the top shows the keyboard placement. I have to say that the Korean keyboard seems far more intuitive than the English one. On the Korean keyboard all the vowels and double vowels are on one side in nice groupings, and all the consonants and double consonants are on the other. For some reason this seems much faster to pick up than the English “keys all over the place”(qwerty) keyboard.

More T-Shirt Ideas

2007-03-14T13:02:00.000+10:00

I have been thinking of more t-shirt ideas lately, It has been some time since I did my first shirt. Here are some more ideas:

Australian themed ones:

Have you ever been to Australia ?
호주에 가 본 적이있어요 ?

Cool Aussie !!
멋진 호주 사람

Drinking related:

I hate to drink alone !!
나혼자서 술마시기를 싫어해요

Is there anyone who wants to drink beer ?
막주 마시고 싶은 사람 있어요 ?

Korean related:

Its difficult to learn Korean , isn’t it ?
한극말 배우기 어렵지요 ?

Korean-only joke, maybe not sure if it translates, asking where Mr kim lives in korea is funny as every third person is called Mr Kim.

Where is Mr kims house ?
김 선생님의 집이 어디에 있어요?

A nice message:

Even though I am old I am young at heart.
나는 나이는 많아도 마음은 젊어요

Humour about the shirt itself:

Is it ok if I wear this t-shirt today ?
오늘 이 티셔츠을 입어도 좋아요? or
오늘 이 티셔츠을 입어도 괜잖아요?

And I am trying to think of some reverse Konglish ones , something that doesn’t belong on a shirt :

Don’t forget to wash your hands:

이지 말고 손을 씻으세요 !

If anyone else has some ideas, then leave a comment and I will translate for you.

Well done Leslie

2007-03-13T15:20:00.000+10:00

My wife's cousin just won the Doug Moran Portrait Prize with a nice prize money of $100K. Well done leslie. Amazing work !! and a great picture... I guess I should ask for one of your "not so good" pictures for my birthday.

Korean Adoptee becomes adoptive parent

2007-03-13T15:16:00.000+10:00

In case people have not realised yet, I am an adoptive parent, I have a son from South Korea, and I am currently on the waiting list to adopt a second child, and expect to travel to Korea within the next few months. The reason I started learning the Korean language was due to the fact that I knew that I was going to be a adoptive parent of a Korean Child.

Lately the South Korean International adoption program has gone through some internal changes, with the South Korean government attempting to internalise adoption in Korea. To do this they have been offering monetary incentives for people in Korea to adopt children. Hopefully this will be successful, and is a step in the right direction.

Anyway.. while I was looking at eastern social welfare service website, ( this is the social welfare service that I adopted my son from) , I noticed an article on their bulletin board about a lady who was adopted herself ( to America ) and has now come back to Korea to adopt a baby herself.. I personally had never heard of anyone doing this so this was very interesting.

Link to Article

If you cannot read korean then you can see the translation.. But as you can see it is a good laugh ( google korean->english will be in beta for a lot longer yet)

…. Some points of interest are:

The baby’s name is 성민 soengmin

백 씨는 1976년 여름 부산에서 태어났다. 하지만 가난했던 그의 부모는 그를 동방사회복지회로 보냈다. 백 씨는 이듬해 4월 미국으로 입양됐다.

The lady ( Mrs Park ) was born in summer 1976 in pusan. But her parents were poor, she was sent to ESWS , she was then adopted to America at 4 months.

괴물

2007-03-06T22:18:00.000+10:00

괴물 (R:Goehmul) "Monster" is the lastest korean movie I have watched. It was a huge success at the korean box office and unlike nearly every other korean movie in this genre was a raging success in korea.

The thing I really love about korean ( and for that matter japanese horror ) is that they are not afraid to kill off main characters and that even includes the children, and even when finally the "evil things" are dead, it still seems like everything sucks for the "good guys"..

I thought the special effects in this movie were not as good as I would expect from a blockbuster, in some scene I thought I was looking at a Dr Who special effect. But having said that it is still a good watch. I give it 3 kimchis out of 5.

For a movie overview in english you can check out hanbooks

I have released http://www.yourformbuilder.com

2007-02-28T00:29:00.000+10:00

After a few weeks of spare-time dev I have now released http://yourformbuilder.com/ into the wild. It is not 100% tested yet, but I have had enough of working on it so out it goes.

It provides a single html file download that lets people design their own validating web forms via an easy to use drag & drop interface. They can then save a "run-time"(published) version of this form which they can send to people to fill in. No servers required.

I am pretty happy with how it has gone... Especially the UI and the ease of use. The fact that it is all in a single html file and runs IE and firefox means that it is a pretty nice multi-os solution as well. I also like the feature that design->runtime->print time is all in one file.

I will post about some of the technologies and techniques I used in the future. But one of the highlights is the serialising and deserialising objects that let me make the "published" file 40k smaller than the design-time file that creates it.

Single HTML file form designer and reader

2007-02-21T21:44:00.000+10:00

Meetings Form in design mode ( took me 35 seconds from an empty page)

I haven't blogged much lately as I have been spending alot of my spare time working on a my latest idea. It is evolving slowly. Basically what I am attempting to create is a single html file that contains all of the code required to build and publish html forms via an easier to use UI , but without the need for a server. The idea is this.

You want some one to fill in a form, and you want to know that the form is going to be filled in properly. But you don't want to have to build a whole web site to do it or have people connect to some external site to fill in the form or pay some external site to host it. Usually you would put the form in Ms_Word or something like that but this doesn't easily allow for validating data and allows users to fiddle with the form design.

With the solution I am designing you open up a html file in your browser. You then select elements from a toolbar and place them on the form and can drag them around the form to place them where you want them. You then set the properties of them and one you are satisfied with the form you publish it. This creates a second copy of your form that you can send to others. ( When I say second copy I mean another file on your hard-disk not a post to a server ) . The second copy will be set to "run-time" mode, so when someone opens this file you will see a webform that validates according to the rules set at design time, and of course when the user saves it , it saves to their hard disk not to a web server. So they can then attach it to a mail message and send it back to you (as they would a word document).

I don't think I have explained this very well. But maybe some pictures will help. I currently almost finished the "design-time" components and I am at a stage where I can add form elements from the toolbox, set their properties, and have all the elements serialise and deserialise themselves ( this basically means that when I press "save" the file saves, and when I re-open the file all the elements properties are re-loaded correctly).

I have now have to work on what the user will see after the form has been published, but that is relatively easy, so I should have something ready for use within a week or 2. So watch http://yourformbuilder.com/ for some action.

Click on a element to set the properties (The select one is a time range form element)

The toolbox menu expanded.

Organisational Psychopaths

2007-02-21T21:21:00.000+10:00

A co-worker of mine at my office as started a small collection of books around the subject of "toxic" employeess etc. One of the books that I liked the best is called the pocket pschyo

Some gems from the book are:

Workplace psychopaths are individals who manipulate their way through life
and leave an indelible mark on both victim and society. They are cunning,
self-centred and ruthless, They make working life a living hell for many of us.
What motivates these individuals ?
They intimidate fellow workers
They Exhibit impulsive behaviour
The demonstrate a lack of remorse
They are gib and superficially charming.

Mary was amid-level manager in a firm. She could manipulate any situation,
no matter how bad, so that she ended up looking successful. She lied to both
colleagues and clients, but never took responsibility when her deception was
exposed.

She would simply turn on the charm and ingratiate herself with senior
management, laying the blame directly on someone else. Her mood swings were
completely unpredicatble, one minute she was nice and the next she would turn on
colleagues, causing many people in the organisation to fear her.

Perhaps what struck most of her colleaues most was her complete lack of
remorese or guilt when caught doing something wrong. Mary would do whatever it
took to look good at the expense of her colleagues.
Mary is an ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOPATH..

Maybe I am too ??? Great book good for a few laughs

Lastest Project

2007-02-13T14:09:00.000+10:00

I have just started a new project where I am developing a system that will combine some of the ideas from sites like www.wufoo.com and www.jotform.com with my ideas from www.yourtimesheets.com to create a fully self-contained html form builder that uses a single html file to design, publish and fill-out user designed html forms.

As I will be using the self-cloning techniques I used at www.yourtimesheets.com it will require no server. So imagine that I can send you a single html file containing everything you need. You can then create your own form just by adding form elements from a menu and then setting some properties. You then publish the form which will create a copy of your form that you can send to people to fill in. All of this from a single html file and no need for a server. This will fill the gap between pdf ( cannot fill in ) and word forms (end-user updateable design and no validation), should be easy to use and will only require a browser.

I will post more information when I get around to putting something together.

꽃 피는 봄이 오면

2007-02-13T14:03:00.000+10:00

Last night I watched “SpringTime” actually I think this a crappy translation, it should be “When the flower blooming spring comes”. The movie came out in 2004.

The movie overview is:

To trumpeter Hyeon-Woo, life seems to remain forever locked in winter. In
desperation, Hyeon-Woo signs up for a position teaching a children's wind
ensemble at a small junior high school in a distant Dogye village. Worn-out
instruments, tarnished trophies and frayed certificates testify to the poor
conditions of this ragtag group. This leads Hyeon-Woo, together with his
students, to take on a seemingly impossible challenge

SPRINGTIME is the revitalizing, moving tale of a trumpeter whose wounded soul gains a newfound hope after he starts teaching a wind ensemble in a children's school in a mountainous coalmining village. Beginning in the rains of autumn and continuing
to the first breezes of spring, this movie illustrates how a heart is gradually
healed as a part of the ongoing changes of life - as part of life, love and the
turning seasons.

The movie was a good mix of humour and sadness, with a lot of dry humour and also some heart felt moments, and once again proving that a great story makes up for lack of special effects everytime. It stars 최민식 who is probably one of the most famous Korean actors known outside of Korea, and 장신영 who in my opinion is one of the hottest Korean actresses.

I give it 4 kimchis out of 5. Oh and “Kenny J” even gets a mention.

Reflections on a sharepoint course.

2007-02-13T14:00:00.000+10:00

Last week I was in Brisbane on a MS SharePoint Course. I was there as a last minute stand-in , so was really there as an observer only. I now know why MS has changed the name so Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS). I would describe SharePoint as the Access of Collaboration. It is really very good at doing what it can do, the integration with office products is very good, the way you can publish meta-data about word documents is great, and I really like the data retrieval services integration between excel/access and SharePoint.

But the programmability of the product is far to limited, and for MS to even suggest that this is a competitive product with IBM Domino is quite a joke. Having said that if I was I an SMB and wanted to do some smart document sharing or maintain some shared lists of data, and didn’t have the skill sets to write code myself I would choose SharePoint as a solution. But like Access I think you would very quickly realise that extending any solution beyond something simple is going to bring a lot of pain.

I do however wonder why large enterprises with SQL server and .net experience would even purchase this product?? Maybe it comes in the bundle ??

Catastrophic Failure Errors

2007-02-07T10:51:00.000+10:00

Today in the sharepoint course I received a "Catastrophic Failure" error message.

I found this amusing as it seems a little extreme for a simple error message, and wondered what the error message severity chart must look like for sharepoint developers. Maybe I the next level is:

Error: A portal to hell seems to have opened around your server.

SharePoint Course

2007-02-06T16:13:00.000+10:00

I am in brisbane this week for a MS Sharepoint course. I have decided not to comment on this course until after it has finished, so far I am mildly impressed, but there still seem to be holes in functionality and no clear direction as to how sharepoint, .net 3.0 workflow services and InfoPath should be or could be used to create a "Real" enterprise system to rival IBM Domino in the workflow space.

Flooding !!

2007-02-01T09:37:00.000+10:00

Although there is level 4 water restrictions in Brisbane, and mostof Australia is still declared "Drought"... I don't have that problem where I live. In fact I have the exact opposite problem.

Above is my driveway as of this morning, but worse is the picture below of the road ( yes that is a road ) I usually take to work..

Now if I only had a really big pipe so I could see it to all those people in the South ??

.Net Domino and Exchange MailBox Reader over HTTP.

2007-02-01T09:21:00.000+10:00

I work for an organisation that provides IT services to many different and separate organisations. Some of these organisations use MS Exchange and some use IBM Domino for mail infrastructure. I have recently had to write an “inbox aware” .net application that can read and process inbox data, but I needed to do this independently of the underlying mail infrastructure, as it needed to run for all organisations.
I thought about simply using POP3 for this, but this has some limitations.

It isn’t running by default on any of the Domino or Exchange Servers.

It doesn’t support rich text.

It doesn’t support custom fields.

It usually isn’t allowed through firewalls.

Custom field support was quite important because many of Domino mailboxes have custom fields that we may need to process via our .net application.

I have created a small sample application demonstrating how I went about this. I implemented a small IMailConnector interface in .Net and then created two MailConnector Classes that matched this interface. The ExchangeMailConnector class uses WEBDAV (over http obviously) to read and process mail in an exchange mailbox. The DominoMailConnector connects to an agent in the mailbox over http and processes xml/html and binary data supplied by that agent. The agent is my own creation ( yes, I program in Lotusscript as well ) and needs to be placed in the design of the Domino mailbox database for the DominoMailConnector to work.

If you are going to test this sample, please do it on test mailboxes as the default behaviour of the connector classes is: read e-mails, place the data in SQL and then DELETE the original message. So don’t blame me if you runs this app and then your mailbox is empty, you have been warned. The reason for this behaviour is because the easiest way to make sure you only process a message once is to delete it after you have processed it. If you require a different behaviour then you will have to write your own code to determine if you have or haven’t processed an e-mail already.

The zipped vs C# 2005 sample application is here. It provides the following features:

Connections to both an Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino Mail box

Retrieves "from" , "subject","html message body" and attachments and embedded objects. (Fully Extendable)

Stores the retrieved mailbox data in SQL for easy access from .Net

Does not use POP, so is extendable to support custom fields in Both Domino & Exchange.

Uses HTTP for connections so can be used through web-only firewalls.

To setup the sample app you need to do the following:

Create a blank SQL database on your SQL server and then run the DBSetup.SQL file in the DBSetup folder of the solution against it. This will set up the tables and the stored procs to handle the storage of the e-mail data given by the connectors.

Once you have done this then you will need to adjust the web.config of the solution so the connectionstring of the “mailboxconnection” matches your SQL setup.

You next need to adjust the web.config to match your mailbox setup. If you are using a Exchange Server then you will need to set the MailBoxType Key to “Exchange” and set the other keys to match your mailbox server,username and password.

If you are using a Domino Server then you will need to set the MailBoxType to “Domino” and set the other keys to match the domino server,mail database location,domino userid and password.

If you are using Domino you will also need to copy the (dotNetDataViewer.xml) agent ( Found in the HojuRetriever.nsf database in the Domino Folder of the solution ) into the mail database you will be accessing. The agent needs to run with at least Designer access.

Once you have done this then you should be able to run the solution, press the “Get Mail” button to retrieve messages from the mailbox.

If you need a better understanding of some of the “plumbing” of this application then please leave a comment and I will endeavour to answer your questions.

Good Luck !!

Pic of Message View

Borat was lies -- Kazakhstan has the net.

2007-01-25T21:24:00.000+10:00

Today for the first time my blog has been receiving hits from Kazakhstan. I am not sure why, but it at least it proves borat wrong... On the other hand maybe it is Borat, he does work for the ministry of information.

말아톤 – Latest Korean Movie

2007-01-23T16:32:00.000+10:00

In keeping with my news year resolution, last week I watched 말아톤 (E:)Marathon. It is a story an Autistic boy/man and his mothers’ wish for him to run a Marathon.

말아톤 is a movie about disability, and about the lack of tolerance society has for
people who are different. Based on the true story of an autistic boy who
completed the Chuncheon Marathon four years ago, the film's protagonist is
20-year old Cho-won (played by Jo Seung-woo), who was diagnosed with autism at
the age of five. His mother, played by Kim Mi-Sook, is a major character in the
film, vividly illustrating the hardships experienced by families living with
autistic people.

The movie was brilliant and I recommended it to everyone , even if you cannot speak a word of korean, it is well worth it. Jo Seung-woo is brilliant and the dream sequences and conversations he has about zebras are wonderful and inspiring.

I give it 4 kimchis out of 5.

Update of Drag and Drop, Paging,Sorting,Filtering Gridview.

2007-01-23T16:22:00.000+10:00

The Drag and Drop, Paging,Sorting ,Filtering Gridview is one of the most popular pages on my blog (1000+ page impressions since it was put up ).

So given the interest I have decided to update it. I have now added the ability to filter date columns as well as text/number columns. A couple of additonal screen shots are on this post (others can be seen on the original post) and the source of the new vs2005 solution is available here.

You will again need to follow the same instructions to set it up as the previous version. These instructions are:

You need to create a new empty database on your SQL server and run the SQL code file that is in the DatabaseSetup folder of the solution this will:

Create a customer table

Create a stored procedure to query the customer table as required

Fill in the customer table with some test data.

You will then need to grant access to those SQL elements so that you can access them from your .net solution.

The solution file contains a single aspx page that holds a standard gridview and code that does all of the logic. The data is accessed from the database via DataClass. I have created an Interface called IpagingFilterDataSource that matches what is required if you want to write your own class to do the datahandling. This will obviously be required if you are going to extend this in anyway.

int GetDataSize();
int GetDataSize(string FilterField, string FilterVal);
int GetDataSize(string FilterField, DateTime SearchDateStart, DateTime SearchDateEnd);

DataSet GetPage(int Pagesize, int CurrPage, string SortCol, string SortDirection);
DataSet GetPage(int Pagesize, int CurrPage, string SortCol, string SortDirection, string FilterField, string FilterVal);
DataSet GetPage(int Pagesize, int CurrPage, string SortCol, string SortDirection, string FilterField, DateTime SearchDateStart, DateTime SearchDateEnd);

In this solution I put together a class MyCustomSQLPageFilterDataSource which supports the IpagingFilterDataSource and retrieves data from the customers table of the test database via a stored proc called up_Customers_list.

In the page_load event in the default.aspx.cs file there is a line

MyCustomSQLPageFilterDataSource MyDataSource = new MyCustomSQLPageFilterDataSource("SQLServer", "CustomerTestDatabaseName", "Uid", "passwd");

You will need to change this to suit your setup based on the database that you created and the userid and passwd for it.

The solution provides a page with a gridview that supports the following features:

Click on headers to sort columns

Drag & Drop headers to re-order columns, changes persist over pages.

Right click on Column headers and filter on entered values ( Version 2 now supports filtering dates in a selected Month)

Page through data and page size is adjustable in the URL (Count Parameter)

Exporting to excel and a highly experimental mail merge via word using the “client siding” techniques I have blogged about before.

The smell fuit (Durian) hits my local shops

2007-01-18T19:26:00.000+10:00

mmm... Durian

It is banned on the MRT ( Singapore Subway ) and it is without a doubt the smelliest fruit in the world. Many malaysia's describe it as "eating ice cream in the toliet". But I have tasted it myself and it is actually like "eating the toilet in the toilet".. Well I found it today at Woolworths.... I hope no one accidently cuts it open in the shop.

Lancer Evo .... Glad I am waiting

2007-01-16T19:41:00.000+10:00

I am now very glad I am going to South Korea in 2008. If I had stayed in OZ, then I would have been tempted to buy the 2006 lancer Evolution. Well now I have seen the pics of the 2008 version I am very very glad I am waiting until I get back from Korea.

The new one is a vast improvement on the style front. Check out the difference. The one below is the 2006 version .. The one at the top is the new one..

Tenacious D rocked…. And stayed at the same Hotel as me.

2007-01-15T16:19:00.000+10:00

Flew to Brisbane on the weekend to Tenacious D. Their concert was brilliant. I was going to upload some video to youtube, but I found that a couple of people with much better cameras than me had already done so. If you want to see the band in action just go to Youtube.com and search for “Tenacious D Brisbane”.

While I was in Brisbane I stayed overnight at the Stanford . I usually would not stay there as I think it is about $500/night but I got a great deal on wotif. On Sunday morning I went down to breakfast wearing my new Tenacious D t-shirt only to see Kyle eating his breakfast. He looked at me , then looked at my shirt and then sort of got a paniced look on his face. I left him alone though, I paid $65 to see him play music , not eat breakfast. I didn’t see Jack Black, but I assumed he was there. The newspaper said he was travelling with his whole family.

Later when I was checking-out the receptionist asked me if I went to the concert. I said I did and that I assumed that the Band was staying there as I saw Kyle in the breakfast room, She said “Oh no no” , while nodding.

Code for .Net File Uploader/Downloader with backend SQL storage.

2007-01-15T16:09:00.000+10:00

Probably one of the most popular controls that are talked about on web forums and available from third parties are file upload controls. I have found however there is a lack of information and code for people who want to manage those files once they get to the server.

Since I have recently been doing a lot of work with secure workflow in .Net I have needed to use this functionality, so I have created a sample project showing what I have done. The sample project performs the following functions:

Multiple file upload on the client (similar to gmail’s file upload facility)
Storage of uploaded files in SQL Server.
Display of existing uploaded files with associated icons and file size information.
Ability to add and remove file attachments from an existing record.
Download and display the uploaded files.

The zipped C# vs2005 solution can be downloaded here .

You will need to create a new SQL Database and run the sql code in the DBSetup Folder of the Project to create the required database tables and stored procs. You may also need to setup the security for these SQL elements depending on how you have your test environment setup. You will then need to adjust the AttachmentDatabase connection string in the web.config to match your settings.

I have used Typed Datasets through a Data Layer. I have included all of the DataSets and Data Link layer in the Web Project. Usually I would separate these out into their own projects, but for this sample I haven’t done that.

Some screen shots of it in action are below.

A record with various types of files attached.
Adding more files to an existing record.
A blank record.

Http Upload and send Attachments in .Net

2007-01-10T14:51:00.000+10:00

A while ago as part of a .net based web mail client I wrote some code to upload and then send files. This was in .Net 1.0 and there was no way to do this in-memory on the server. You had to do a temporary store->attach->send->delete.

This is was due to the fact that the Attachment class only worked with a file on disk. In 2.0 this has been updated so you can use an inputStream. So now attaching the uploaded files from a web page to a System.Net.Mail.MailMessage is as easy as:

public void AddUploadFilestoMessage(MailMessage msMessage)
{

System.Web.HttpFileCollection httpfiles = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Files;
Attachment mailAttachment;

if (httpfiles.Count != 0)
{
for (int iFile = 0; iFile < httpfiles.Count; iFile++)
{
System.Web.HttpPostedFile postedFile = httpfiles[iFile];

if (!(postedFile.FileName == ""))
{

String[] FileNameArr = postedFile.FileName.Split(@"\".ToCharArray());

mailAttachment = new Attachment(postedFile.InputStream, FileNameArr[FileNameArr.GetUpperBound(0)], postedFile.ContentType);
msMessage.Attachments.Add(mailAttachment);

}

}
}

}

Tenacious D this weekend

2007-01-09T19:26:00.000+10:00

I am off to brisbane this weekend to see Tenacious D ("the continous non-stop rockers" and "the greatest rock band in the world") in concert at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. I am so looking forward to it.. I will post some pics of my trip after I return..

My ever-loving wife gave this trip and tickets to me as a suprise Christmas present. She knows me so well.

Can't wait .... Yeah !!!!!!!!!

Wrap up of Domino -> .Net Application Conversion Techniques

2007-01-08T15:38:00.000+10:00

Well with the previous post I have finished all of the posts for converting Custom IBM “Domino” applications to a Microsoft Environment (.Net / SQL Server / Exchange).

An overview of these posts is below:

To get data out of Domino and into SQL I use a custom Domino Agent with some DXL tricks

To support the routing of mail including attachments into the .Net databases I use a .net data router that uses WEBDAV to read exchange mailboxes and stores the data in SQL

To support the workflow of binary attachments I implement a secure-webstore in .net

To support User Managable Role based access control I use an extended SQLRoleProvider that supports AD groups and a custom Access Control Page with AD Search Support.