The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2011

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#swisscom hotel #internet #fail: breaks Google Mail, lousy internet rates, for EUR 18 per day!

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/09

See the images below.

This is what Swisscom hotel internet gets you when you pay them EUR 18 per day.

Swisscom internet has a transparent http proxy that is not so transparent: it breaks Google Mail.

Actually it is low-speed internet; for like EUR 40 a month, I get way more speed at home, with the plus that it always works and always is “high” speed.
Swisscom hotel internet could reach 6 megabit downstream (but it doesn’t), also the upstream is lousy:

What you actually obtain is more like 2 megabit, not 6 megabit.
That download at home takes like 20 minutes at 10 megabit ADSL speed.

This is what they promise (click on the image to enlarge):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Internet, Power User | 2 Comments »

Gif Stopper – Chrome Web Store

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/09

Quote:

Gif Stopper will stop animated gif images with using the escape key.

We all love animated gifs but some times they are too distracting, that’s with Gif Stopper comes in. Hit the escape key and the image stops. Most browsers have this build-in and now Google Chrome has it also.

Most importantly: it WORKS with Google+ Plus!!

–jeroen

via: Gif Stopper – Chrome Web Store.

Posted in Chrome, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

ModelMaker Code Explorer 9.1.0 available for Delphi XE2

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/08

ModelMaker Code Explorer 9.1.0 was released yesterday which supports Rad Studio / Delphi XE2.

Highly recommended for building and refactoring Delphi applications!

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Cleanup: IntelliTrace Log ( .iTrace ) files and Visual Studio 2010 SP 1

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/08

While cleaning up my system, I found a while bunch of .iTrace files in “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft Visual Studio\10.0\TraceDebugging” on a Windows XP system at a client that yet has to upgrade to newer Windows versions that store them under “C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft Visual Studio\10.0\TraceDebugging”.

Contrary to what IntelliTrace iTrace files and IntelliTrace Log ( .iTrace ) files and Visual Studio 2010 SP 1– Some Hidden Stuff « Abhijit’s World of .NET explains, these files are not always automatically removed.

And they are big, since Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate will automatically generate them.

So it is important to once in a while cleanup the “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft Visual Studio\10.0\TraceDebugging” directory manually.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »

WebSphere MQ Client 5.3 and 7.0

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/07

After having worked earlier with other Message Queuing systems like AS/400 Data Queues, MSMQ, Apache ActiveMQ and Oracle AQ, I recently was involved using IBM WebSphere MQ. WebSphere MQ Clients are available for free on many platforms. The project involved using WebSphere MQ Client 5.3 and will most likely upgrade to 7.0, so here are some download links that help during the process of preparing for the upgrade:

One of the reasons for being at least at V6.0, is that it allows you to specify credentials during a MQCONNX call and using MQCNO_VERSION_5 which enables the use of the SecurityParams (a demo is here) of the MQCNO structure. There is much more to diff, so hopefully more on that later.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, Software Development, WebSphere MQ | 5 Comments »

EmbarcaderoTechNet’s Channel – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/06

EmbarcaderoTechNet published a couple of interesting videos on YouTube covering Delphi XE2 including FireMonkey HD/3D, FireMonkey xPlatform, VCL Styles and more.

All of them short (couple of minutes each) studio work with good video and audio quality (they default to 360p, but most are available in 720p HD, some just in 480p).

–jeroen

Via: EmbarcaderoTechNet’s Channel – YouTube.

Posted in Delphi, Development, FireMonkey, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Unbelievable: Dutch Government made Microsoft agree to keep Microsoft customers vulnerable to fake digital certificates from DigiNotar by postponing Windows Updates for Dutch users. #fail

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/06

English translation of the link title below: Dutch Government forces Microsoft to delay Windows Update.

Google Translate of the linked article.

Why? Because it will give the Dutch Government more time to install certificates of which fake copies can exist because of the DigiNotar hack back in July 2011 and the resulting issuance of fraudulent certificates.

This is a big #fail for the Dutch Government.

What the Dutch Government should have done:

Allow people and companies some slack filling in their electronic correspondence with the government (i.e. Tac Forms, filing of legal documents, etc) until the Dutch Government has installed their new (and now hopefully secure) certificates.
By postponing due dates, they can ensure safe  communication, now they can’t.

(Edit: since posting the above, I learned that Agentschap NL has given their customers a week more time to supply digital documents).

What users of Microsoft software should do:

For at least a week, don’t use the (embedded) Microsoft Internet Explorer to communicate with the Dutch government, but use an alternative browser and disable the DigiNotar root certificates on your system.

Use the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or Apple Safari *and* disable the DigiNotar root certificates.
This post explains how to disable the DigiNotar certificates on OS X.
This post explains how to disable the DigiNotar certificates on Windows.

Keep an eye on the DigiNotar post by Joshua Long as he updates it frequently.

Note that on Windows there is s truckload of software that embeds Microsoft Internet Explorer, so you should try to block the iexplore.exe process whenever possible.

–jeroen

Via: Overheid dwingt bij Microsoft vertraagde Windows Update af | Pro | Tweakers.net Nieuws.

Posted in LifeHacker, Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Entity Framework: simple solution for cryptic error message “System.NotSupportedException: Unable to create a constant value of type ‘System.Object'”

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/06

The drawback of using ORM layers is that often the error messages are very cryptic, and it takes some getting used to in order to find the (often deceptively) simple solution.

This case was an Entity Framework wrapper around a SQL Server database where the primary and foreign keys were all GUIDs, and some of the foreign keys were optional.

So the generated model has a mixed use of Guid? and Guid data types.

Below is the full stack trace, but here is the exception class and message:

System.NotSupportedException: Unable to create a constant value of type ‘System.Object’. Only primitive types (‘such as Int32, String, and Guid’) are supported in this context.

The exception is caused by a piece of code like this:

        public static long CountChildren(ParentEntity parentEntity)
        {
            using (EntitiesObjectContext objectContext = new EntitiesObjectContext())
            {
                Guid? parentId = parentEntity.ID;

                if (null == parentId)
                    throw new ArgumentNullException("parentEntity.Id");

                IQueryable<ChildEntity> ChildEntitys =
                    from content in objectContext.ChildEntity
                    where content.ParentID.Equals(parentId)
                    select content;

                long result = ChildEntitys.Count(); // BOOM!

                return result;
            }
        }

The stack trace at the end of this post contains a truckload of ExpressionConverter lines. Since the LINQ expression contained only one WHERE clause, the mentioning of the list of primitive types in the message (Int32, String, and Guid) made me change the code into the one below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, .NET ORM, C#, Development, EF Entity Framework, Software Development | 5 Comments »

Rad Studio XE2 demos up at SourceForge.net: Repository – [radstudiodemos] Index of /branches/RadStudio_XE2

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/05

Note to Self:

A few days ago, the Rad Studio XE2 demos became available at sourceforge.net: SourceForge.net Repository – [radstudiodemos] Index of /branches/RadStudio_XE2.

You can get them by SVN as well: http://sourceforge.net/projects/radstudiodemos/develop

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

#fail of #Sennheiser CX 250 and CX 150 in-ear #earphones when using while running: over time they sound less and less loud, switching to #DealExtreme

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/05

I found out the hard way that Sennheiser CX 250 and Sennheiser CX 150 in-ear earphones are not up to using while running with my 4th generation iPod Shuffle

After about 2-3 months, one or both the earbuds start to sound less and less loud.

My first one (a CX 250) started to develop this only on my right earbud. Being practically monoaural (due to chronically inflammation from age 0 to about 20, my left ear has a loss of about 55-60 dB), I could just use the other earbud. A while later, the other earbud started to degrade as well.

The nice thing about Sennheiser is that they deliver rubber eartips of difference sizes. Because my left ear has a larger ear canal (caused by treatment surgery of the inflammation), that is nice: it keeps the ‘unused’ earbud from dangling around while running.

So I bought a CX 150 just to make sure the problems with the CX 250 were an exception (the initial sound of them is much the same, : after a few months it started having the same trouble, but now on both ears.
They are cheaper too (starting from about EUR 20 in stead of about EUR 30).

No more Sennheiser for me: I spent like EUR 50 for 6 month of usage.

Right now I’m trying a bunch of earphones from Dealextreme. My first one is the SKU 33239. It costs like EUR 2 including shipping, has a great sound, but the cable is a tad long (over 1 meter) for running. My iPod Shuffle is clipped to the neckline of my running shirt, a short cable comes in very handy.

I’ll post more on this when I know how long these last.

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | 1 Comment »

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