Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/11
Just got bitten by Wrong time zone using Chrome on Mac:
Chrome does not pick up on time zone changes until a new tab is opened or the browser restarted.
Actually, it requires a browser restart, as below is the difference between a new Chrome tab and running on jsc on the console: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Chrome, Development, Google, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/11
Now I have these aliases in my ~/.bash_profile:
alias jsc='/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/jsc'
alias JavaScript='/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/jsc'
Now I can use the WebKit jsc from the console.
Thanks User microspino – Stack Overflow for this answer: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Apple, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/11
I’m not sure how to categorize this yet, so it is both under Power User and Development/Software Development.
A long while ago (somewhere mid 2013), the official Dilbert RSS feeds got disabled.
More precisely: initially they pointed each entry in the RSS feed to an antey specific landing page that made you click through the Dilbert.com site to browse for the comic strip. Which is understandable as they want to show you more ads than the RSS feed would.
Later they screwed up those landing pages page so you could not get to the Dilbert site any more, nor see those ads. You get to see only this:
Dilbert will be back soon! We are updating the site for you and will be back shortly. In the meantime, how about laughing at a comic or two on our sister site?
Which makes it a no-loss for Dilbert to re-create an RSS feed, as that will make you see the comics, enhancing at least the Dilbert brand value.
Of course you can go through http://www.dilbert.com/fast manually, but that is outside my feed aggregator realm. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development | Tagged: Dilbert | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/11
The bug tracker for Chromecast / Google Cast is at Issues – google-cast-sdk – Google Cast SDK – Google Project Hosting.
–jeroen
via: google-cast-sdk – Google Cast SDK – Google Project Hosting.
Posted in Chromecast, Development, Google, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/11
The DBNull type is a very special type in .NET. It represents null values in databases, which are slightly different than null values in .NET.
The biggest confusion that people have with it is that it won’t convert to anything. Which means that you see a lot of questions like “System.InvalidCastException: Conversion from type ‘DBNull’ to type” “is not valid”.
You’d think the full name would be System.Data.DBNull, it is actually named System.DBNull. The reason is that various other functionality of the System namespace depend on it, for instance the System.Convert class.
DBNull was already present in .NET 1.x, so it predates nullable types that were introduced in C# 2 / .NET 2.
A null value on the database side will result in a DBNull instance.
If you want to explicitly pass a null value to a database, you use a DBNull.Value, which is a singleton.
There is a very interestin question/answer series on StackOverflow about this: via .net – What is the point of DBNull? – Stack Overflow.
There are a few good arguments both for and against DBNull.
But the baseline is that DBNull predates the introduction in the .NET framework of genuine nullable types. Both their behaviour is slightly different, so DBNull had to stay.
Which means you have to deal with it every now and then.
A bit more background on the invalid casts.
It is thrown like this:
throw new InvalidCastException(Environment.GetResourceString("InvalidCast_DBNull"));
from
Convert.DefaultToType();
which is called from the DBNull method
object IConvertible.ToType(Type type, IFormatProvider provider);
All other IConvertible methods are implementated like
bool IConvertible.ToBoolean(IFormatProvider provider) { throw new InvalidCastException(Environment.GetResourceString("InvalidCast_FromDBNull")); }
So these all throw the same exception:
bool IConvertible.ToBoolean(IFormatProvider provider); byte IConvertible.ToByte(IFormatProvider provider); char IConvertible.ToChar(IFormatProvider provider); DateTime IConvertible.ToDateTime(IFormatProvider provider); decimal IConvertible.ToDecimal(IFormatProvider provider); double IConvertible.ToDouble(IFormatProvider provider); short IConvertible.ToInt16(IFormatProvider provider); int IConvertible.ToInt32(IFormatProvider provider); long IConvertible.ToInt64(IFormatProvider provider); sbyte IConvertible.ToSByte(IFormatProvider provider); float IConvertible.ToSingle(IFormatProvider provider); ushort IConvertible.ToUInt16(IFormatProvider provider); uint IConvertible.ToUInt32(IFormatProvider provider); ulong IConvertible.ToUInt64(IFormatProvider provider);
–jeroen
via:
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/09
Over the years, Google Play Services has started to play a much bigger role, arguably more important than the Android version (also making it impossible to fork Android: Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable. | Ars Technica).
This shows again with the publication of the new Google cast SDK with public Chromecast support release last weak (I think the SDK name being broader than Googlecast means there will be much more to come in the feature).
Though most current Android users are still at version 4.1.32 of the Google Play Services, Google is rolling out a 4.2.39 version to enable that SDK. After it has rolled out to enough devices, then the Play Services library version 15 part of the SDK will be released for Android as well (which will complement the existing support for the iOS and Chrome platforms).
The odd thing: it looks like *some* developers already have this SDK, as AllCast already has been updated and it does not work with Google Play Services 4.1.32, but it does work with Google Play Services version 4.2.39. Below I show you how I tested this, and how to manually upgrade your Android device to use Google Play Services 4.2.39. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Android, Android Devices, Chrome, Chromecast, Development, Google, iOS Development, Mobile Development, Nexus 4, Power User, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/09
Yesterday there was this interesting post from Jonas Bandi – Google+ – Blogged: Not happy with Agile, but why?.
The content of his post is the opposite the title suggests: most developers love Agile, but it often is highly incompatible of management in bigger companies.
Well balanced post, much worth reading it.
–jeroen
Posted in Agile, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/06
A while ago, I had this error when running an application on a hardened server:
Unhandled Exception:System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1). error CS2001: Source file 'C:\windows\TEMP\0hocq2nq.0.cs' could not be found error CS2008: No inputs specified at System.Xml.Serialization.Compiler.Compile(Assembly parent, String ns, XmlSerializerCompilerParameters xmlParameters, Evidence evidence) at System.Xml.Serialization.TempAssembly.GenerateAssembly(XmlMapping[] xmlMappings, Type[] types, String defaultNamespace, Evidence evidence, XmlSerializerCompilerParameters parameters, Assembly assembly, Hashtable assemblies) at System.Xml.Serialization.TempAssembly..ctor(XmlMapping[] xmlMappings, Type[] types, String defaultNamespace, String location, Evidence evidence) at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer..ctor(Type type, XmlAttributeOverrides overrides, Type[] extraTypes, XmlRootAttribute root, String defaultNamespace, String location, Evidence evidence) at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer..ctor(Type type, XmlAttributeOverrides overrides, Type[] extraTypes, XmlRootAttribute root, String defaultNamespace, String location) at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer..ctor(Type type, Type[] extraTypes)
Usually I’m not the first with strange errors, but searching for “Unhandled Exception:System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to generate a temporary class” didn’t get many results.
This was a program running from SSIS under a non-system domain account with very little access.
My first guess was the right now: the XmlSerializer wants to generate a temporary C# file, then compile it into a temporary assembly. Since it cannot generate the C# file because the account does not have access to %windir\TEMP%, the compiler cannot find the (not generated) C# file.
After a few tries, I searched for XmlSerializer without GenerateAssembly, where the first hit ended at Changing where XmlSerializer Outputs Temporary Assemblies – Scott Hanselman.
That post indicated I should try looking for tempFilesLocation in the XmlSerializer context.
That got me these posts: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/05
Looking for the pesky little differences between C# and VB.NET, I stumbled over this nice question by Micah Martin on default values for generics in VB.NET as compared to C#. Actually there were 3 questions, so I did a bit of post-editing:
How do I create the default for a generic in VB.NET? in C# I can call:
T variable = default(T);
- How do I do this in VB?
- If this just returns null (C#) or nothing (VB.NET) then what happens to value types?
- Is there a way to specify for a custom type what the default value is? For instance what if I want the default value to be the equivalent to calling a parameterless constructor on my class.
User Konrad Rudolph – Stack Overflow. promptly gave three answers:
Question 1:
Dim variable As T‘ or ‘Dim variable As T = Nothing‘ or ‘Dim variable As New T()Notice that the latter only works if you specifiy either theNewor theStructureconstraint for the generic type.Question 2:
For value types all members of the struct are “nulled” out, i.e. all reference type members are set to
null(Nothing) and all value types are in turn nulled out. And no, sincestringis a reference type, it does not result in""for strings as suggested in the other answer.Question 3:
No, there’s no way to specify this. There are some threads about this on Stack Overflow already, e.g. here. Jon has posted an excellent explanation why this is.
–jeroen
via: c# – Default value for generics – Stack Overflow.
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 7.0, VB.NET 7.1, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/04
I’m sure there are many organizations that only upgrade things until they absolutely have to (i.e. long after mainstream support has ended, often even after extended support has ended). This was from last year: upgrading away from SQL Server 2000 just before extended support ended. While migrating a bunch of applications we inherited from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008 R2, I came across an ORDER BY style that failed. The queries are generated by an kind of SQL generation layer, so not easy to change. the main questions were:
First two possible fixes, then the full stack overflow question I posted about the migration.
Aaron Bertrand very quickly posted two fixes, which I paraphrased and extended. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2008 R2 | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 