Entries for kettch

Best product packaging ever [Best product packaging ever]

kettch — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:40:19 GMT

I hope more companies do this sort of thing. Screw the environment, this is just awesome from a convenience standpoint.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/03/hp-selling-laptop-in-messenger-bag-at-walmart/

in reply to Best product packaging ever

When good dialogs go bad [When good dialogs go bad]

kettch — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:24:39 GMT

This happened after I had logged into my desktop machine with Remote Desktop from my phone. I had changed the auto-hide setting before I left, otherwise you can't get to the taskbar from the WM RDP client. I left the dialog open, and this is what it looked like when I got back.

in reply to When good dialogs go bad

Anybody tried Opera for Windows Mobile? [Anybody tried Opera for Windows Mobile?]

kettch — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:38:33 GMT

I downloaded the trial and spent several days trying it out in various scenarios. I just thought I'd share my observations and thoughts compared to Pocket IE. These are purely subjective, unscientific, observations.

Better rendering
Faster rendering
Slower startup
Better scrolling performance on large pages
Worse overall usability

Compared to vanilla IE, the scrolling experience in Opera is much better. However, IE + TouchFlo on my Kaiser (HTC P4550) is a great combination. You get finger scrolling, and "flick" scrolling. The one that I just the most is to plant your finger and slide it to the edge of the screen. It will continue to scroll until you pick up your finger. Want to select text? Just switch to a fingernail or stylus. Both options are always available. With Opera, you only get one option at a time, and you have to dig into the settings to switch.

Also, the address bar in IE actually shows enough of the address to be useful. Opera packs too many buttons on and doesn't show enough of the URL. I use full screen a lot. Opera doesn't have a true full screen mode. You can't hide the tool/address bar, and it's much thicker than the IE one. Who would have thought that a version of IE would end up being better at minimalism.

I also had trouble getting used to the way "back" is handled. In IE it's click the left softkey once to show the UI, and again to go back with the UI switching back to full screen. In Opera it's click the left softkey once to show the UI, then again to open the Action menu, then press up four times to get to back, and then click select. Maybe the UI will switch back to full screen, if it doesn't then you have to go to the view menu and toggle it off and back on.

I wanted to like Opera, I really did. In the end I went back to IE. IE on Windows Mobile has plenty of issues, but it turns out that my browsing habits are better served by the IE's UI.

Anyway, just some "I stayed up way too late" thoughts to start the weekend.

in reply to Anybody tried Opera for Windows Mobile?

Visual Studio + World of Warcraft [Visual Studio + World of Warcraft]

kettch — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:45:23 GMT

I just ran across this on MSN Video. Visual Studio Shell has rocks in.

I don't play WoW anymore, but that is freaking cool. It'll be interesting to see how many of the (wanna be) addon builders pick it up.

Edit: It's on CodePlex if you're ~~addicted~~ curious.

in reply to Visual Studio + World of Warcraft

Vista CD [Vista CD]

kettch — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:59:56 GMT

Does anybody know anything about this? It's pretty cool, I hadn't realized that the things were so hi res.

Who are these guys?

in reply to Vista CD

Key container permissions [Key container permissions]

kettch — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:09:07 GMT

I'm trying to make an asymmetric key available across all users of a machine.

Dim cp As New CspParameters()
cp.KeyContainerName = "testCon"
cp.Flags = CspProviderFlags.UseMachineKeyStore
Dim rsa As New RSACryptoServiceProvider(cp)
rsa.PersistKeyInCsp = False
rsa.Clear()
cp = New CspParameters()
cp.KeyContainerName = "testCon"
cp.Flags = CspProviderFlags.UseMachineKeyStore
rsa = New RSACryptoServiceProvider(cp)

First of all, is that the correct way to do it? This is what I was able to figure out from the oh-so-helpful documentation.

Second, if I run this from an admin account, and then run it from a limited account, I get an "Object already exists" error. I'm assuming that this is some kind of permissions issue? So much for storing things in the all users application data. What can I do to make it so any user across the machine can access this key container?

in reply to Key container permissions

The "Mac Guy" is no more [The "Mac Guy" is no more]

kettch — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:38:13 GMT

Looks like Rory wasn't the only one who didn't like the ads. As it turns out, most people ended up liking the PC guy more.

No word on if they will keep the same format for the commercials and just replace him with somebody who doesn't come off as a self important egotistical metrosexual trend following* jerk, or just come up with a compeletely new idea.

* ©2006 Jamie

EDIT: Be sure to read the critique from earlier this year by Seth Stevenson that they have linked in the article. It sort of pulls together everything I've thought about while watching the ads.

in reply to The "Mac Guy" is no more

More Vista Packaging info [More Vista Packaging info]

kettch — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 05:58:28 GMT

Here is some more info on the vista box. It shows how the box opens, and what the cd looks like. Pretty cool stuff.

EDIT: I like how you can actually read the label. :D

in reply to More Vista Packaging info

Vista + Office packaging (never mind, Jamie wins) [Vista + Office packaging (never mind, Jamie wins)]

kettch — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 03:58:28 GMT

I don't know if anybody else saw this, but here is the packaging for Office 2007 and Vista. I like it, it's more than just a box.

It looks like whoever was speculating a while ago about the meaning of the installer icon in Vista was right.

EDIT: D'oh, Jamie beat me to it. :P

in reply to Vista + Office packaging (never mind, Jamie wins)

Manual updates for shudder Windows Me [Manual updates for shudder Windows Me]

kettch — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:36:36 GMT

I have to support a laptop that has WinMe on it, and it doesn't have any networking ability. Does anybody know if it's possible to manually download whatever the last updates were so that I can put them on a cd?

If not, I think that this thing is going to suffer a catastrophic hard drive failure. "It's a good thing I had it, the hard drive failed right after I copied all of the files off...No, I don't know where that rubber mallet came from, maybe maintenance left it."

in reply to Manual updates for *shudder* Windows Me

Re: Lovely Rust [Re: Lovely Rust]

kettch — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:58:31 GMT

How are you posting shoob? I didn't know that they let you have computers in the nuthouse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5279428.stm

in reply to Re: Lovely Rust

Extensible Database Schema [Extensible Database Schema]

kettch — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 07:39:44 GMT

I'm working on a project that is going to need some parts of the database schema to be extensible, as in being able to add/remove fields on the fly. I've kicked around some ideas, but I wanted to see if anybody here had any experience with this sort of thing. Or some references would be great too.

Obviously this has been done before in CRM and other products, but I don't really need that level of complexity.

Thanks

in reply to Extensible Database Schema

Printing EMF [Printing EMF]

kettch — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:34:14 GMT

I am pulling reports from Reporting Services in EMF format. My question is, how do I print them? I've not found any documentation on this, and what I have found is not working.

I currently have this event to handle printing:

Private Sub reportDoc_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles reportDoc.PrintPage

Dim pageImage As New System.Drawing.Imaging.Metafile(reportStreams(currentPageIndex))

e.Graphics.DrawImage(pageImage, e.PageBounds)

currentPageIndex += 1

e.HasMorePages = (currentPageIndex < reportStreams.Count)

End Sub

However, the event always ends up getting run exactly one more time than there are pages, causing the reportstreams collection to hit an index out of range exception. The reportstreams Generic.List is typed with MemoryStreams and each item in the list contains one page of the report. I've confirmed that all of the pages are there by just saving the files to a folder, and everything is there. This behavior occurs whether I call printdocument.print, or view it in the print preview control.

I'm probably screwing this up royally, so any pointers or relavent documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

in reply to Printing EMF