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Jayson's Blog

  • Surreal Streams -- A Low Key Blend

    This week’s Surreal Streams mix will be a blend of some of my favorite low key/get in the groove tracks, with tunes from the following artists:

    These guys are some of my all time favorites; I’ve queued up 363 tracks and like always I’m hitting the shuffle button…there are some truly amazing tunes on this playlist.

    The stream is at http://jaysonknight.com:8000/listen.pls.  Enjoy.

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  • List of Google Services

    I was actually in the process of compiling my own list of Google’s ever growing portfolio of services, but it looks like there’s already a list out there.  Well done.
  • Looking for Some Definitive SQLCMD.EXE Resources

    Does anyone know of a good hard core SQLCMD (not the ADO.Net object, the OSQL replacement that ships with SQL Server 2005) reference?  The SQL Books Online documentation for this new tool is terrible, and Google isn’t turning up much more than basic primers.  I’m looking for a hard core top to bottom detailed article (either online or print is fine) discussing the usage of it given my disdain for the new Management Studio (MS) I griped about earlier.

    What little I have done with SQLCMD thusfar has been great; it’s a nice replacement for OSQL (quite a bit easier to use), and the performance is leaps and bounds beyond MS as it uses the native .Net SqlClient OleDb provider instead of ODBC.  I’m just surprised at the lack of information out in the wild on this tool.

    Here’s a nice (very high level) comparison of SQLCMD vs OSQL.  I’m definitely sold on it, I just need information people!

  • Remotely Configure ASP.NET 2.0 Applications

    I posted earlier about how to remotely administer an IIS 6.0 machine from Windows XP, which works great until you need to remotely configure an ASP.NET 2.0 application (from the ASP.NET tab that’s added by the installer).  One of the great things about IIS 6.0 is that we now have a gui front end to most of the <processModel> elements from the old 1.x machine.config file via application pools; now with ASP.NET 2.0 we have a gui front end for most of the elements in web.config…but it doesn’t really do much good if you either have to RDP into the remote machine, or go physically sit at the terminal to get any of that done (from a remote machine the “edit configuration” button is grayed out).

    So after a little research/trial and error, I discovered a simple switch you can throw to enable remote configuration of your ASP.NET 2.0 applications:

    • Navigate to your .Net 2.0.x installation folder in your command shell of choice.
    • Run aspnet_regiis -i -enable (note that this will in effect issue an iisreset during the process, so take care on production machines not to do this at peak hours).

    Voila…you can now remotely configure your 2.0 apps.  This may be old news to some, but it’s definitely news to me and simplifies remote configuration as you don’t have to RDP into the box itself.

  • New MSDN Magazine Column -- CLR Inside Out

    I just received this month’s MSDN magazine in the mail and was thrilled to see a new column making its debut:  CLR Inside Out (which according to the Editor’s Notes will be a regular monthly installment).  What really struck me is that this month’s CLR hit on a topic that I posted about a few months ago…the pifalls of using exceptions to regulate control of flow in an application; of course we all know the ramifications of this, but it was nice nonetheless to see someone from the BCL team mention it as well.

    Overall, this month’s edition was one of the better one’s I’ve read recently as it touches on quite a bit of new material.  I’m looking forward to reading future CLR column installments.

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  • Comedian Richard Pryor Dies at 65

    CNN.com - Comedian Richard Pryor dies at 65 - Dec 10, 2005.

    Pryor, who had been ill with multiple sclerosis, died at Encino Hospital near Los Angeles, at 7:58 a.m. PT. Jennifer Lee Pryor tried to revive him before paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital, she said.

    Ground breaking doesn’t even begin to describe Pryor’s contributions to the comedy world…he basically invented/popularized his style of comedy (which Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock both followed up on quite well)…for his style of comedy, he was definitely the best and will probably remain so for quite some time.  I know what I’ll be watching on TV tonight.  Rest in peace.

  • Performancing for Firefox Extension

    The good folks over at Performancing have released what looks to be a very promising Firefox extension:  Performancing for Firefox.  I haven’t been able to get much functionality out of it yet using the MetaWeblog API (which is what Community Server uses) account settings, but apparently it’s working for other account types.  Regardless, it looks very promising, so here’s hoping they get the MetaWeblog stuff cleaned up.  I dare say it could even replace my beloved BlogJet if all the kinks get ironed out.
  • About Jayson

    After two years of blogging, I finally got around to adding an “about me” page…I’m pretty terrible at introducing myself, but you can view it here.
  • Community Server 2.0 Beta 2 -- Available Now

    As promised, Community Server 2.0 beta 2 was released into the wild today (about an hour ago actually)…you can follow the discussion over on this thread if you’d like (please post feedback there).  The two most notable features of this release is that the legacy settings page has been pulled from the suite completely (replaced by the control panel piece), and also the addition of an MSI installer package for super quick setup (it literally takes about 2 minutes).  There is a small bug in the installer which will cause it to fail:  You cannot use a period (.) in the database name (even if you surround the name in brackets [ ])…other than that it runs flawlessly and supports remote database installation (the site itself is installed on your local machine).

    All in all, this is the biggest release yet for the CS team…huge congratulations to them; I know there were many a late night spent getting this release out of the door on time.  Way to go guys!

    You can download the newest MSI installer based release from here.  If you prefer the web based installer, you can find that release here.

  • Digitally Imported Channel Chooser Utility

    I got sick of going to Digitally Imported’s slow as hell website to find music to listen to, so I wrote a Windows application that pretty much mimics their site without all the ads/nonsense…if this is something you think you’d find useful, feel free to download it from here (requires .Net 2.0, which can be downloaded from here if you don’t already have it installed).

    The application itself is just a simple wrapper around the publicly available DI.fm XML playlist (which is updated in real time), and the app refreshes itself every 5 minutes (you can also manually refresh it if you’d like).  It can also be minimized to the systray if you need it out of your way.  Feature-wise, it’s still incomplete as there is quite a bit of stuff I want to add to it…but the core stuff is all there.

    Architecturally speaking, the application is very simple:  To my (limited) knowledge of WinForms, there isn’t a repeater control, so I had to roll my own logic to mimic one (quite easy to do actually).  As far as consuming the XML playlist, I just suck it into a strongly typed dataset and just query for the data I need via the DS’s API and set control’s text properties accordingly.  All string/image resources are compiled into the .exe itself just to keep it simple, though pretty much everything is generated on the fly dynamically (magic strings == bad as we all know).  Enjoy.

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