The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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What you need on your Mac to develop for OS X or iOS using Delphi XE2

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/29

Just a few notes on things I told Delphi cross development students over the last nine months or so.

For Mac OS X apps:

  • The Platform Assistant Server that ships with Delphi XE2

For iOS apps:

Steps:

  1. Become a registered Apple Developer
  2. Download and install xCode 4 when you run on OS X 10.7 Lion or higher, or
    Download and install xCode 3 when you run on OS X 10.6 Leopard
  3. Download and install FreePascal 2.4.4
xCode includes the iOS SDK
Delphi uses the Delphi compatibility mode of FreePascal.

–jeroen

via: Developer Tools Overview – Apple Developer.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE2, Development, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 1 Comment »

Interesting: Electric Imp with Arduino (via: electric imp – developer kits)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/28

Electric Imp – that wants to power The Internet of Things using imps – is introducing some really interesting hardware, one of the devevelopment kits combining Arduino and Imp on one board:

Duino: Arduino, with Imp

Featuring an ATMEGA328 processor, this board is compatible with the Arduino Uno but instead of having a USB-serial port on it, it has an Imp socket. You can use a modified version of the Arduino IDE to update the ATMEGA code from anywhere in the world when an Imp is plugged in, and use simple serial commands in your Arduino programs to control other Imp devices.

The ATMEGA will operate standalone when no imp card is inserted.

Dimensions: 72mm x 54mm x 14mm

Power supply: USB Mini-B socket (5v) or 2.1mm barrel jack (7-12v)

Price: $20

Some must read links:

–jeroen

via: electric imp – developer kits.

Posted in Arduino, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, USB | 2 Comments »

How much USB power does a device use or provide? Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/28

Two quotes:

Apple peripheral devices may request more than 500 mA (Milliamps) at 5 V (Volts) from a port to function or to allow for faster charging. Such Apple peripheral devices include:

  • Apple MacBook Air SuperDrive (when connected to supported computers)
  • Aluminum Wired Keyboard*
  • iPod
  • iPhone
  • iPad

Open System Profiler to find more information about peripheral power requirements, or contact the manufacturer of your peripheral. For the most accurate information about power usage, make sure your device is connected directly to your Apple computer or display before opening System Profiler.

All this because of the iPad charging challenge.

–jeroen

via: Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB.

Posted in Apple, Gadget, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Happy Towel Day – Today is the 11th towel day in remembrance of a truly remarkable author.

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/25

Today is the 11th towel day in remembrance of a truly remarkable author.

–jeroen

PS: not sure if this is legal, but I just came across a H2G2 PDF.

Posted in Opinions | Leave a Comment »

Some on-line XPath testing tools that support namespaces and XPath functions

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/24

In the previous post, you saw some XPath to find the ProviderManifestToken attribute in an .edmx file.

Writing XPath queries can be quite consuming, so it is nice of you can test it somewhere on-line.

Out of the on-line XPath testers, these two worked best:

Both of them support namespaces, including these XPath functions: local-name and namespace-uri.

These failed:

If you have more on-line tools that work: please let me know!

Edit (20120524T0930):

Danny Thorpe tweeted an interesting comment:

@jpluimers If you’re compiling XPath support, make note of whether it’s XPATH 1.0 or 2.0. I think .NET only implements XPATH 1.0

Indeed, .NET only supports XPath 1.0, and worse, .NET 4 introduced a couple of issues with XSLT (see XPath and XSLT 2.0 for .NET? – Stack Overflow).

Luckily there are some goot XPath 2.0 libraries for .NET (see XPath 2.0 Libraries for .Net – Stack Overflow).

–jeroen

via: XPath tools on not-another-blog

Posted in Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XPath | Leave a Comment »

The ADO.NET Entity Framework and SQL Server 2000: the ProviderManifestToken attribute and selecting it with XPath

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/23

Yes. Dorothy. There are people using the ADO .NET Entity Framework with SQL Server 2000  in parallel of moving towards a more modern Microsoft SQL Server version.

Entity Framework is lovely for developing data-centric applications.

By default, Visual Studio 2010 will target SQL Server 2008 as a database. That is fine, but it is kind of invisible it does: there is no property or dialog where you can change this.

What you have to change in order to have the Entity Framework send SQL Server 2000 compatible queries is to:

  1. Right click your .edmx file
  2. Choose “Open with”
  3. Choose the “XML (text) editor”
  4. Find the  ProviderManifestToken attribute
  5. Change the value (usually from “2008”) into “2000”
  6. Save the .edmx file
  7. Build and run your application

A few caveats:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, .NET ORM, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, EF Entity Framework, Software Development, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 | Leave a Comment »

How do I disable the fault-tolerant heap? – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/22

Raymond Chen:

what if you don’t want the fault-tolerant heap? For example, during program development, you probably want to disable the fault-tolerant heap for your program: If the program is crashing, then it should crash so you can debug it!

–jeroen

via: How do I disable the fault-tolerant heap? – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Posted in Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Excel 2010/2007: Convert text to a table or vice versa (via: Word – Office.com)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/21

The introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007 and 2010 often makes me ask “why are things so complicated now, that were so easy until Office 2003”.

One of the things that were very close together in Word 2003, was converting text to and from tables: they were in adjecent menu items.

Not any more, as you can see in the Convert text to a table or vice versa  topic on the Microsoft site. There is even a Dummies article on this topic.

Summarized:

Convert text to a table

  1. Tab Insert,
  2. Group Tables,
  3. click Table,
  4. then click Convert Text to Table.

Of course the keyboard shortcuts are “easy” to remember: Alt, N, T, V

Convert a table to text

  1. When you have a (portion of a) table selected, you get a new contextual tab set called Table Tools.
  2. Tab Layout,
  3. Group  Data,
  4. click Convert to Text.

Of course the keyboard shortcuts are “easy” to remember: Alt, J,L, V

Word 2007/2010: Convert Table to Text

–jeroen

via: Convert text to a table or vice versa – Word – Office.com.
Naming of ribbon UI elementsNaming of ribbon UI elements

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

The end of the classic ThinkPad Keyboard layout (#Lenovo #Fail)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/18

(Thanks to a “Missed Post” problem on WordPress.com, this one didn’t get posted on the scheduled date. Sorry for any inconvenience)

First Lenovo did away with 1920×1200 screens. Now they done away with the ThinkPad keyboard layout.

Both were my compelling reasons for buying Lenovo.

In fact, they are now marked as forum.thinkpads.com • non-ThinkPad Lenovo Hardware.

New Lenovo X1 keyboard. No more ScrLk, Pause and local-menu keys, PrtScr key moved to impossible place. 6-key navigation split.

New Lenovo X1 keyboard. No more ScrLk, Pause and local-menu keys, PrtScr key moved to impossible place. 6-key navigation split.

–jeroen

PS: Anyone in The Netherlands who has a new ThinkPad W701 with 1920×1200 screen for sale?

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Missed Schedule, Power User, SocialMedia, WordPress | 2 Comments »

Mac keyboard shortcut to move things to the Trash – Mac Guides: command-backspace #mac #keyboard #shortcut

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/05/18

Some shortcuts on the Mac are difficult for me to remember. For instance the one to move something from the Finder to the Trash.

The guides on Trash at MacRumours.com to the rescue:

Deleting items

You delete files and folders by moving them to the Trash. You can:

Drag and drop a file on the trash icon in the dock

Control-click on a file and select “Move to Trash” from the menu

Select a file or files and use the keyboard shortcut: command-backspace

Select a file or files and choose “File > Move to Trash” from the menu bar

Notes:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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