Entries for SlackmasterK

How to get started in Freelancing? [How to get started in Freelancing?]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:47:39 GMT

I've always wanted to get into freelance software/web development, but two things have stopped me thus far:

1. I suck at marketing. Seriously, I'm comically bad at it.

2. The big freelancer sites seem to be bogged down with overseas types who are willing to work for $25 a day. This is a serious number.

So how can one get into the freelance sector, or something like it, and still maintain a respectable amount of income?

in reply to How to get started in Freelancing?

Code Monkey [Code Monkey]

SlackmasterK — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:27:47 GMT

For those who haven't seen it yet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfQgCVxgD1E&feature=related

in reply to Code Monkey

Office 2010 Done by 10/22/09? [Office 2010 Done by 10/22/09?]

SlackmasterK — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:53:49 GMT

It sounds like an ad-supported Office will ship with Windows 7. Does this mean it'll be done on 10/22 and shipping soon?

in reply to Office 2010 Done by 10/22/09?

W00t, new stuff! [W00t, new stuff!]

SlackmasterK — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:19:44 GMT

I finally broke down and bought a 150GB Velociraptor for my server. I installed it this afternoon.

That server hadn't had a reinstall in 3.5 years. The Windows install survived four motherboards, three CPUs, a move to x64, a move to dual core, a move to quad core, and a switch from AMD to Intel architecture. Of course it also had several drives, etc, come and go in that time. Truly a testament to the flexibility of Windows when it comes to hardware changes.

As a Beta tester for Windows Vista, Microsoft was nice enough to give me a free copy of Vista RTM and Server 2008 RTM. However, they didn't give me a key for Server 2008 until they gave me a free technet subscription for 12-18 hours. Activation successful.

Thanks go out to the teams that made Windows such a stable platform, and to whoever screwed up and sold Technets for $0.

in reply to W00t, new stuff!

Where's my .csproj file? [Where's my .csproj file?]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:59:47 GMT

Sometimes an ASP.NET website has a .csproj file, sometimes it doesn't. Can anyone 'splain why?

in reply to Where's my .csproj file?

WinSAT starts spontaneously [WinSAT starts spontaneously]

SlackmasterK — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:07:03 GMT

So I'm sitting here working on a project and watching a video when Aero goes into unglassy mode... huh? So I look at my task manager and see WinSAT running... But I don't see it... It's in session zero... Killing it restores my glass... Why would this happen with no notice or events?

in reply to WinSAT starts spontaneously

OMG, Free TechNet Subscriptions! [OMG, Free TechNet Subscriptions!]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:57:06 GMT

http://bit.ly/a2xl8

in reply to OMG, Free TechNet Subscriptions!

Site rewrite feedback request [Site rewrite feedback request]

SlackmasterK — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:00:36 GMT

Forgive me if this sounds like spam.

I've been working on another blog engine rewrite, as is the custom when I get bored. To that end, I'm looking for feedback from my peer group as to functionality, UX, and the feature set. If you choose to take a look, please take into consideration (1) How the blog engine compares to common ones in use (Wordpress, etc); (2) How the engine compares to its predecessor, which I've received numerous complaints about, mostly on C9 :) and (3): I'm a Developer, not a Designer. Be honest, but don't be cruel.

For those of you who have always had problems linking to my sites, relax; I've unblocked all those IPs that I had 403'd. I think my spam deterrent system is alot better now.

Therein and henceforth, I provide linkage:
MV5 (Old engine)
MV6 (New engine)

Also, I'm using the same Live ID Application ID as the old one. Therefore if you decide to log in, you'll then have to paste the URL ( http://www.zi255.com/dev/ ) directly into your address bar after login. Sorry, this goes away when MV6 goes live on the root. Note this workaround may not work with Firefox.

in reply to Site rewrite feedback request

Map mouse to keys, OR send WinKey [Map mouse to keys, OR send WinKey]

SlackmasterK — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:48:58 GMT

The objective: Make LWIN-(MouseScrollUp) map to LWIN-(+), and down to -. Therefore, WinKey-Mousewheel will zoom in and out on the Windows Magnifier. Globally, like a Windows shortcut.

I'm looking for a way to do this. ANY way. I've looked into writing software to listen for the event and send the input, but SendKeys can't send a WinKey.

I've looked into an Accessibility utility, but I don't see one.

I've looked into automation/macro software, but they don't seem to be driven by key-mouse combinations.

Help?

in reply to Map mouse to keys, OR send WinKey

New site, looking for feedback [New site, looking for feedback]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:16:38 GMT

I've been working on a pet project site designed for Multi-Monitor Enthusiasts and am looking for some feedback from my peer group. Anyone care to take a look and let me know what you think? Thanks in advance to those who do.

Obviously there's not a whole lot there yet; but the Gallery system is in place and I'd like to see what people think of the UI.

The site will have a forum, which I've been too lazy to implement thus far. But the nice thing about personal projects is there are no deadlines.

Also, if anyone can point me to a CAPTCHA that works with AJAX and doesn't mind living in a panel whose visible="false", or some effective way to put an ASP FileUpload control into an UpdatePanel, that would be awesome.

in reply to New site, looking for feedback

Mouseless games? [Mouseless games?]

SlackmasterK — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:02:04 GMT

You may recall my entry in the desktop thread in which I posted links to me playing video and Need for Speed: Undercover stretched across six screens via the Magnifier in Windows 7 (Thanks again, accessibility people!). I am now looking for more fun games that work well without a mouse.

The games must be mouseless because mousing around in magnified mode pans the desktop, which I don't want to do. Exceptions for games that lock the mouse in windowed mode. Any suggestions?

in reply to Mouseless games?

Creating an Assembly Manifest with just the DLL [Creating an Assembly Manifest with just the DLL]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:56:59 GMT

Greetings.

I have a DLL I wish to register with my GAC, but Gacutil is telling me it needs the assembly manifest:

Failure adding assembly to the cache: The module was expected to contain an as
sembly manifest.

Is there a way to create/build/fake one? All I have is the DLL.

The file is msvcr100.dll. I'll tell you why if it works :)

in reply to Creating an Assembly Manifest with just the DLL

C#: WebBrowser.Navigated Only Fires when I MessageBox.Show(); [C#: WebBrowser.Navigated Only Fires when I MessageBox.Show();]

SlackmasterK — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:06:48 GMT

I have a WebBrowser control which is being instantiated dynamically from a background STA thread because the parent thread is a BackgroundWorker and has lots of other things to do.

The problem is that the Navigated event never fires, unless I pop a MessageBox.Show() in the method that told it to .Navigate(). I shall explain:

ThreadStart ts = new ThreadStart(GetLandingPageContent_ChildThread); 
Thread t = new Thread(ts); 
t.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); 
t.Name = "Mailbox Processor"; 
t.Start(); 




protected void GetLandingPageContent_ChildThread() {  
 WebBrowser wb = new WebBrowser();  
 wb.Navigated += new WebBrowserNavigatedEventHandler(wb_Navigated);  
 wb.Navigate(_url);  
 MessageBox.Show("W00t"); 
} 

protected void wb_Navigated(object sender, WebBrowserNavigatedEventArgs e) {  
 WebBrowser wb = (WebBrowser)sender; // Breakpoint  
 HtmlDocument hDoc = wb.Document; 
}

This works fine; but the messagebox will get in the way since this is an automation app. When I remove the MessageBox.Show(), the WebBrowser.Navigated event never fires. I've tried supplanting this line with a Thread.Sleep(), and by suspending the parent thread.

Why does it do this? How can I fix it?

Notes:

Once I get this out of the way, I intend to Suspend the parent thread while the WebBrowser is doing its job and find some way of passing the resulting HTML back to the parent thread so it can continue with further logic.

If someone can provide me with a way to fetch the content of a web page, fill out some data, and return the content of the page on the other side of the submit button, all against a webserver that doesn't support POST verbs nor passing data via QueryString, I'll also accept that answer as this whole exercise will have been unneccessary.

WebClient and HTTP POST methods both fail because the server doesn't HTTP 405 support this method. WebClient also didn't work via GET when given a payload.

CreateHandle() on the Parent thread (backgroundworker) caused an "Unknown software error" and VS crashed. WebBrowser doesn't have a Createhandle(), but it has a CreateControl(), which supposedly forces a handle to be created. That did nothing.

in reply to C#: WebBrowser.Navigated Only Fires when I MessageBox.Show();

C#/Winform: Enter data into HTML page, submit form [C#/Winform: Enter data into HTML page, submit form]

SlackmasterK — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:50:53 GMT

I have a Winform with a BackgroundWorker. The BackgroundWorker, among other things, has to make an HTTP call to a page, fill out some data, submit the form, and retrieve the HTML that comes back after "clicking" the submit button. I've run into a number of roadblocks while doing this:

1. Can't POST the data because the target webserver doesn't 405 support that method.
2. Can't use a WebClient.UploadValues, again, because the webserver doesn't support POST. Can't use UploadValues with verb type GET because I get the error "System.Net.ProtocolViolationException: Cannot send a content-body with this verb-type."
3. Can't use a WebBrowser control because BackgroundWorkers suck at COM Interop and an exception is thrown that says it must be in a STA thread (Single-Threaded Apartment)
4. Can't run another seperate thread because the BW has to sit and wait for the result before it can continue (Can't, or at least I don't know a way to do this that won't crash)
5. Can't change the ApartmentState of the thread because it's a BackgroundWorker and it throws if told to go to STA mode.

This requirement (call page, log in, return result at landing page) is only a tiny piece of what this background thread actually does... In fact it's one part of about 20 different things that have to be done on this thread.

The app entrypoint is already tagged with the [STAThread] attribute.

What else can I do to resolve this?

in reply to C#/Winform: Enter data into HTML page, submit form

404'd Images cause endless progressbar [404'd Images cause endless progressbar]

SlackmasterK — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:06:28 GMT

RJ's thread: http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/440406-Whats-your-desktop-look-like/
first post

When clicking on the image, which is 404'd, the loading progressbar never times out and goes away, and there is no button or other way to cancel it; the whole page must be refreshed.

in reply to 404'd Images cause endless progressbar

Windows Live & AJAX: Handling Logout [Windows Live & AJAX: Handling Logout]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:15:23 GMT

I've integrated the Windows Live SDK into a prototype for my blog rewrite. Unfortunately, it's not handling the Logout calls correctly. According to the SDK Documentation, I should be able to accomplish a Logout with the following code:

HttpCookie loginCookie = new HttpCookie("webauthtoken"); loginCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(-10); Response.Cookies.Add("webauthtoken"); Response.Redirect("default.aspx"); Response.End();

Unfortunately, Response.Redirect and Response.End don't work when your ASP.NET application also happens to be running AJAX. As a result, the Windows Live logout page reports it was unable to log out of the website. I have verified this code is being run.

Further, the "clearcookie" function call has similar problems, as it wants to return a GIF for some odd reason:

HttpCookie loginCookie = new HttpCookie("webauthtoken");
loginCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(-10);
Response.Cookies.Add("webauthtoken");

string type;
byte[] content;
wll.GetClearCookieResponse(out type, out content);
Response.ContentType = type;
Response.OutputStream.Write(content, 0, content.Length);

Response.End();

How can I accomplish this correctly without sacrificing the AJAX functionality?

in reply to Windows Live & AJAX: Handling Logout

Vista x64 and Product Keys [Vista x64 and Product Keys]

SlackmasterK — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:34:34 GMT

Okay, so I was part of the Vista/Longhorn beta on Microsoft Connect. They gave me a key and the x86 and x64 Ultimate ISO's. I've been thinking of throwing x64 on my main rig; will I be able to install with the same key or will I need a new one?

in reply to Vista x64 and Product Keys

Search Engine Rank Finder (SERF)

SlackmasterK — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:08:21 GMT

Have you ever wondered to yourself... "Self, I wonder where I'm ranking on Google for Vista SP1 Redistributable"? Then you Google it and find your site in the results? Then you feel proud if you showed up on page 1? I do that... So today I sat down and wrote it for a blog rewrite I'm working on. You can get the full rundown on it here.

Basically you give it a search term and a domain, pick a search engine, and it tells you where you appear within the engine's search results. So if you're #1 on Google for something, it'll tell you and give you a link to that Google results page.

Sure, there are some improvements that could be made; but it was quick, dirty, and effective.

Consolas and ASCII 179 (│) [Consolas and ASCII 179 (│)]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:30:05 GMT

Has anyone ever noticed this... If a string within Visual Studio contains some high ASCII characters, and your text editor is set to Consolas, the string will appear in some derivation of another font... See below.

The string doesn't change format until this character is put within it. If I remove it, it looks right again. Can anyone comment?

in reply to Consolas and ASCII 179 (│)

Firefox and Element Positioning [Firefox and Element Positioning]

SlackmasterK — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:16:26 GMT

The following markup positions a table in the center of the page in IE. In Firefox, the table is positioned as it would be without positioning styles; about 5px in from the left side. Can anyone tell me why?

Note that I would normally move the styles to a .css file, but this is just a prototype.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title>Blog rewrite prototype 1</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div style="background-image: url(images/fade_blue_white.jpg); background-repeat: repeat-y; width: 50px; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; z-index: 0; height: 100%;"></div>
<div style="background-image: url(images/fade_white_blue.jpg); background-repeat: repeat-y; width: 50px; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; z-index: 0; height: 100%;"></div>
<div style="width: 98%; text-align: center; top: 0px; position: absolute;">
<table style="padding: 0px; height: 100%; width: 740px; text-align: left; z-index:1; background-color: #ffffff;">
<tr>
<td>
<img src="images/banner1.jpg" originalAttribute="src" originalPath=""images/banner1.jpg"" originalAttribute="src" originalPath=""images/banner1.jpg"" originalAttribute="src" originalPath=""images/banner1.jpg"" alt="banner image" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify;">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut bibendum lectus vulputate(...)
<br />
<br />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Note that I didn't add the stuff below; it was the C9 editor:
<img src="images/banner1.jpg" originalAttribute="src" originalPath=""images/banner1.jpg"">

in reply to Firefox and Element Positioning

SMTP: Message Refused [SMTP: Message Refused]

SlackmasterK — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:40:56 GMT

Subtext: BattleBot is a Windows Service that maintains my blog's database, deals with incoming attacks, and sends me a daily report in an E-mail.

Two days ago, I noticed that BattleBot hadn't sent me my daily report. There was some troubleshooting (Click for details on that process) and at this point I don't know why it's failing to send this E-mail. The log entry (with exception) reads as follows:

07/16/2008 10:30:04 |      0 | Mail Error: System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: Transaction failed. The server response was: Message refused.
   at System.Net.Mail.DataStopCommand.CheckResponse(SmtpStatusCode statusCode, String serverResponse)
   at System.Net.Mail.DataStopCommand.Send(SmtpConnection conn)
   at System.Net.Mail.SmtpConnection.OnClose(Object sender, EventArgs args)
   at System.Net.ClosableStream.Close()
   at System.Net.Mail.MailWriter.Close()
   at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message)
   at MV4.misc.SendMail(String to, String subject, String body, LogAdapter la)

The interesting part is that BattleBot also sends out E-mails to interested parties when a new Entry is posted. Those E-mails are going through fine; only the Daily Reports are being refused by GoDaddy. The working messages are sent with the same from and to addresses (That is, the Daily Report goes to one of the aforementioned "interested parties), the message is sent from the same Service on the same server on the same IP. The domains of the from and to fields even resolve to the same IP as the SMTP client (BattleBot).

GoDaddy blamed Comcast. Comcast blamed Godaddy. I verified this occurs on my DSL as well, so I called GoDaddy on their bull. They responded with "We can't support that"; despite the fact that their server is refusing delivery. Since I can't exactly fly out there and troubleshoot secureserver.net's SMTP servers, can someone here help me out? Why is this happening?

in reply to SMTP: Message Refused

DIV Formatting loss [DIV Formatting loss]

SlackmasterK — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:56:38 GMT

CSS in general seems to be disabled (Possibly due to the W00terz incident). Would it be possible to add some basic formatting such as padding, background-color, etc? I don't know if the [quote] system has been replaced with something useful, so I've been trying to use divs. Unfortunately, my formatting gets lost in the process, so there's no way to tell the quoted text from the actual content of the reply.

Being able to quote manually in this manner is important for inline quotes (i.e. responding to one para at a time) and for quoting articles, other sites, etc.

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Trackbacks: xxx [Trackbacks: xxx]

SlackmasterK — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:53:48 GMT

I was idly browsing through the "View Source", looking for a rel="trackback" or an rdf tag; I didn't find any but I did locate this:

<div class="info">
Comments: 0 | Views: 12
</div>

I enterpret this as meaning "C9 doesn't support trackbacks, but we plan to". Is this accurate?

in reply to Trackbacks: xxx

C#, ASP.NET: Trouble with Pingback Client [C#, ASP.NET: Trouble with Pingback Client]

SlackmasterK — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:10:36 GMT

I've been working on a Pingback client for my blog. Most of the XML-RPC posts I've sent have come back with a fault. I've sent one successfully (By 'Successfully', I mean where I also see it actually show up in the comments.. Sorry; that test was on this thread), but due to moderation time I have no clue what string I actually sent to the Pingback server. Maybe the C9 admins record that and could send it back to me? :)   I've tried different variations of HtmlEncoding, escaping, etc.

Here are some examples of FAILED requests and the responses I've gotten:

Pingback URL:
    http://channel9.msdn.com/413392/pingback.aspx

Method Call:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodCall>   <methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>   <params>    <param>     <value><string>http://www.zi255.com/?Req=Post&PID=496</string></value>    </param>    <param>     <value><string>http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/TechOff/413392-IIS-ASPNET-Allowing-HTTP-POST/</string></value>    </param>   </params> </methodCall>

Response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <methodResponse>    <fault>      <value>        <struct>          <member>            <name>faultCode</name>            <value>              <int>0</int>            </value>          </member>          <member>            <name>faultString</name>            <value>              <string>EntryID is invalid or missing</string>            </value>          </member>        </struct>      </value>    </fault> </methodResponse>

Pingback URL:
http://home.officesnapshots.com/xmlrpc.php

Method Call:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodCall>   <methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>   <params>    <param>     <value><string>http://www.zi255.com/?Req=Post&PID=421</string></value>    </param>    <param>     <value><string>http://home.officesnapshots.com/</string></value>    </param>   </params> </methodCall>

Response:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodResponse>   <fault>     <value>       <struct>         <member>           <name>faultCode</name>           <value><int>33</int></value>         </member>         <member>           <name>faultString</name>           <value><string>The specified target URL cannot be used as a target. It either doesn't exist, or it is not a pingback-enabled resource.</string></value>         </member>       </struct>     </value>   </fault> </methodResponse>

Pingback URL:
http://chris.pirillo.com/xmlrpc.php

Method Call:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodCall>   <methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>   <params>    <param>     <value><string>http://www.zi255.com/?Req=Post&PID=499</string></value>    </param>    <param>     <value><string>http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/06/09/have-you-ever-been-to-a-lan-party/</string></value>    </param>   </params> </methodCall>

Response:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodResponse>   <params>     <param>       <value>         <string>Pingback from http://www.zi255.com/?Req=Post&amp;PID=499 to http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/06/09/have-you-ever-been-to-a-lan-party/ registered. Keep the web talking! :-)</string>       </value>     </param>   </params> </methodResponse>

Pingback URL:
http://scobleizer.com/xmlrpc.php

Method call:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodCall>   <methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>   <params>    <param>     <value><string>http://www.zi255.com/?Req=Post&PID=197</string></value>    </param>    <param>     <value><string>http://www.scobleizer.com</string></value>    </param>   </params> </methodCall>

Response:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <methodResponse>   <fault>     <value>       <struct>         <member>           <name>faultCode</name>           <value><int>33</int></value>         </member>         <member>           <name>faultString</name>           <value><string>The specified target URL cannot be used as a target. It either doesn't exist, or it is not a pingback-enabled resource.</string></value>         </member>       </struct>     </value>   </fault> </methodResponse>

in reply to C#, ASP.NET: Trouble with Pingback Client

IIS, ASP.NET - Allowing HTTP POST [IIS, ASP.NET - Allowing HTTP POST]

SlackmasterK — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:10:12 GMT

I have a code-behind that looks like this:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(Request.InputStream);
String xmlData = reader.ReadToEnd();
Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
Response.Write("Pinging back: " + xmlData);
Response.ContentEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
Response.Flush();
Response.End();
Response.Close();
Response.Write("This should not be sent"); }

It works locally, but when I put it on an IIS Server, all incoming calls return a 405: Method Not Allowed. How do I configure this application or IIS to allow HTTP POSTs?

It's just an asp.net project; not a web service.

in reply to IIS, ASP.NET - Allowing HTTP POST