Amaryllis 2

This is the second flower stalk that my amaryllis plant grew this year. This one only produced three flowers and was leaning to the side so I propped it up on the railing between the living room and the kitchen.


Amaryllis stalk 2 

Revert to Saved

Revert to Saved: "Most other word processors and layout programs put a Revert to Saved command right on the File menu. This allows for a quick return to the last saved version of a file. This hack shows you how to add this feature in Word"

Amaryllis

Here's a picture of my amaryllis plant. I took this picture a few weeks ago of the first flower stalk of 2005. Currently stalk number two is about to flower. I'll probably post some pictures of that one after it opens since this experiment in photo blogging seems to have worked out well.


Amaryllis 

Greasemonkey

mozdev.org - greasemonkey: "Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ('user scripts') to any webpage to change it's behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a webpage's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a webpage's design or interaction."

Miscellaneous Symbols

Miscellaneous Symbols - Test for Unicode support in Web browsers: The Miscellaneous Symbols page from Alan Wood's Unicode Resources - Test for Unicode support in Web browsers.

Regular Expressions Site

This site on regular expressions looks like it could be useful and has a fairly cool site design.
Regular-Expressions.info - Regex Tutorial, Examples and Reference - Regexp Patterns

JavaScript Shell

JavaScript Shell: "A command-line interface for JavaScript and DOM."

20 Questions to a Better Personality

Here's an interesting personality test I found via Whole Wheat Blogger

My results were:

Wackiness: 10/100
Rationality: 72/100
Constructiveness: 40/100
Leadership: 34/100

You are a SRDF--Sober Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a Fountain of Knowledge.

You are cool, analytical, intelligent and completely unfunny. Sometimes you slice through conversation with a cutting observation that causes silence and sidelong glances. You make a strong and lasting impression on everyone you meet, the quality of which depends more on their personality than yours.

You may feel persecuted, as you can become a target for fun. Still, you are focused enough on your work and secure enough in your abilities not to worry overly.

You are productive and invaluable to those you work for. You are loyal, steadfast, and conscientious. Your grooming is impeccable. You are in good shape.

You are kind of a tool, but you get things done. You are probably a week away from snapping.

Addendum, 2004/07/19: this fits me 99%, there is a slight inaccuracy however. We are not necessarily completely unfunny. If we have a sense of humor (I do) it surfaces on the occasion with well-timed, completely dry, very sarcastic, wit. - Chase

Of the 84172 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.5 % are this type.

A List Apart

A List Apart : "A List Apart Magazine explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on techniques and benefits of designing with web standards."

Huygens Pictures of Titan

Here's some links to pictures of Saturn's moon Titan from the Huygens probe:

ESA - Cassini-Huygens

NASA - Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn

Update: The Onion has a list of Huygens discoveries.

More Character Entity Info

The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)

A Simple Character Entity Chart : evolt.org, Code

A Simple Character Entity Chart : evolt.org, Code: "Character entity references in HTML 4"

The IFRAME+SSL Problem

One of the common causes of the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" message is the IFRAME+SSL problem.

If you're using SSL and have an IFRAME without an SRC attribute, the frame will start out displaying a nonsecure blank page which causes the warning. To get rid of the message you need to supply your IFRAME tags with SRC attributes that display secure content from your site.

If you don't know ahead of time what page the frame should display, just make a file that contains an empty html page and use that.

<iframe src="empty.htm"/>

Google Suggest Dissected

Here'a an interesting analysis of the Google Suggest javascript code - Google Suggest Dissected...

Curbside Limb Pick Up

Here's a link to the curbside tree limb pickup info for Overland Park.
Curbside Limb Pick Up

NPQ

New Perspectives Quarterly - "Cutting-edge debate on current affairs"

Picasa: Free Photo Software From Google

Picasa: Automated Digital Photo Organizers, Picture Software, Instant Photo Albums, Sharing, Printing

Hiding the Image Toolbar in IE

Hiding the Image Toolbar in IE:

You can make your page not display the image toolbar on an image-by-image basis by adding GALLERYIMG="no" to the <IMG> tag, as shown in the following code example:

<IMG SRC="mypicture.jpg" HEIGHT="100px" WIDTH="100px" GALLERYIMG="no">

Or you can disable the display of the image toolbar for an entire Web page by setting the HTTP-EQUIV and CONTENT attributes of the META element. Set HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" and CONTENT="no". Just put the following code in the HEAD section of your page, and IE doesn't display the image toolbar for any image in the page.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no">

XPath Visualizer

The XPath Visualizer Version 1.4: "This is a full blown Visual XPath Interpreter for the evaluation of any XPath expression and visual presentation of the resulting nodeset or scalar value."

AKA XPath Visualiser

The writings of Charles Darwin on the web

The writings of Charles Darwin on the web: "The most complete collection of Darwin's work ever published- with original page numbers, illustrations etc."

Sysinternals Freeware

Sysinternals Freeware: "The Sysinternals web site provides you with advanced utilities, technical information, and source code related to Windows NT/2000/XP/2K3 and Windows 9x, Windows Me internals"

MONSTER ATTACK!!!

MONSTER ATTACK!!!

And here's the monster attack page and a monster attack bookmarklet.

Update: Unfortunately his site's been suspended. To bad as it was a pretty cool effect.

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

This was pretty cool looking.

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System: "S5 is a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With one file, you can run a complete slide show and have a printer-friendly version as well."

Group Policy Editor

To get to the Windows Group Policy Editor, run gpedit.msc

September .NET User Group

I went to the September .NET User Group meeting on Tuesday. They announced that Microsoft has changed its mind and all the new XML stuff they talked about last time is cancelled. It may become available as a SourceForge project.

The talk was on Test Driven Development, which I thought seemed somewhat impractical.

I discovered Dan Mannes, one of the new employees at work, also attends these user group meetings. I'd thought he looked familiar.

August .NET Users Group Meeting

The topic for this month's Kansas City .NET User Group meeting was "Introduction to System.Xml and Web Services" and the presenter was Microsoft MVP in XML, Jeff Julian. He's the creator of the .NET Book Club and hosts the blogging system Geekswithblogs.net.

Some highlights (Microsoft propaganda?) from the meeting. I forgot my notebook so they're from memory.

• Microsoft is deprecating XSLT in favor of XQuery. System.Xml.Xsl is going to be marked as obsolete in .NET 2.0 and will return warning messages when its used.
• XmlDocument and the XML DOM are also being deprecated in favor of improved XML streaming techniques that will allow editing not just appending to the end of the stream.
• SAX is bad because its Java and its old. (See what I mean about the propaganda?)
  
• He demonstrated using XmlDocument, XPathNavigator, XmlReader, XmlWriter, and used a web service to demonstrate XML serialization.

I ran into former co-workers Galen and Derrick Vidacak at the meeting and had a good time talking to Derrick for a while after the meeting.

Retrieving Stored Proc Info

Here's an article about retrieving information about stored procedures in SQL Server.
HOW TO: Retrieve information of Stored Procedure in SQL Server

Tools and controls

Here's a list of some tools and controls

Lookout Search Addin For Outlook

Microsoft bought Lookout and has released their addin as a free download.

Download details: Lookout V1.2: "Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email from directly within Outlook - in seconds..."

IISReset Utility

IISReset Utility: "One of the most significant reliability improvements in IIS 5.0 and Windows 2000 Server is the reliable restart feature (IISReset) of IIS 5.0. It allows an administrator to restart Web services without rebooting the computer from a command line. This article discusses the IISReset utility, its options, & how to use the command line version of the tool."

Have you "met Dr. Thip"?

The Saturnian moons that will be observed by the Cassini probe are:

Mimas [MY-mass]
Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus]
Tethys [TEE-this]
Dione [dy-OH-nee]
Rhea [REE-a]
Titan [TY-tun]
Hyperion [hi-PEER-ee-en]
Iapetus [eye-AP-i-tus]
Phoebe [FEE-bee]

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products

Microsoft has some .NET 2.0 development tools at MSDN Lab that have gone to beta and can be freely downloaded. They include "Visual C# 2005 Express", "Visual Web Developer
2005 Express", and "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition".

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products

Here's a couple of links with some more info:
Whidbey Beta 1 Ships
Visual Studio 2005 Express Products (Includes a link to MSDN Express that didn't seem to be with the other express products)

Paint.NET

Paint.NET: "Paint.NET is a senior design project aided by a mentor at Microsoft. It is a paint program designed entirely by students and written using Microsoft's .NET Framework. The program makes it easier to create and edit photos. It maintains some of the best features of the original MS-Paint application and includes new, powerful tools. Such new tools include a history storage for undos and redos, and powerful multi-layering which is often seen only in high-quality, expensive photo-applications. This product was engineered with the latest in graphics and coding technology such as the new C# language from Microsoft, and the GDI+ graphics libraries. These programming frameworks allowed for the creation of a speedy, responsive application with an amazing array of graphic capabilities."

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000

They've got a lot of useful utilities. Including:

Process Explorer v8.4
Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.

Autoruns v4.31
See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login. Autoruns also shows you the full list of Registry and file locations where applications can configure auto-start settings.

Add Support for "Set" Collections to .NET

Roy Osherove found another .NET Set implementation

Add Support for "Set" Collections to .NET: "One of the missing collection classes in .Net is one that's not as often used, but when you need it, boy, it's really missing, is the Set. You know - Set theory ('Group Theory') and all, including Intesect, join and so on.
I found this really nice Set implementation library with Source over on CodeProject :
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/sets.asp "

Virus Proofing

This will probably prove useful for my relatives.

A Simple Plan: "Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free"

System.Web.Mail FAQ

Complete FAQ for the System.Web.Mail namespace

NT Commands

This site has information on the Windows NT command line commands. They apply to Windows 2000 as well.

NT Commands

Next Day

This chunk of T-SQL code can find the next date that a certain day of the week occurs after the current date. The example finds the date of the next Thursday.

-- Get the next Thursday (in the formula we are using Monday = 1 so Thursday = 4)
SET @wanted_day = 4
SET @ap_date = DATEADD(d, (15 + @wanted_day - @@datefirst - DATEPART(dw, GETDATE())) % 7, GETDATE())

National Do Not Call Registry

National Do Not Call Registry I'm going to be using their complaint form a lot if those telemarketers don't stop calling.

Visual C# Developer Center: Frequently Asked Questions

Visual C# Developer Center: Frequently Asked Questions: "The C# team, along with members of the C# Community, are answering Frequently Asked Questions "

Sets

Microsoft's got an interesting article on sets that includes a C# class that handles sets similar to the way Pascal does.

Part 6: Efficiently Representing Sets

Kansas City Events

This page lets you search events occurring in the Kansas City area.
VisitKC.com - Official Travel and Tourism Site for Kansas City

Getting the absolute path in ASP.NET

This could be useful if I get to do any ASP.NET development again.

Getting the absolute path in ASP.NET: "Typically when we create ASP.NET applications, we are developing against a virtual directory. However, when we deploy our app to a production web server, it is likely set up as a web site. This can have an impact on href assignments when using absolute paths. In order for paths to be consistant between virtual directories and web sites, I created a helper method that will work in either environment. "

My Parents Visit

My parents came for a visit over the weekend.

While they were here I bought a grill and my Dad showed me how to use it to grill hamburgers. It was a bit more involved than I thought. I'm glad I waited to get one until someone who knew what he was doing was here.

While we were on our way to the GrassPad to try to buy some rhubarb plants (unfortunately they were sold out), my Mom noticed a sign for the Arboretum. So we stopped off there briefly on our way back. I think I now know where some of my stranger weeds are coming from.

Mom made a couple of delicious rhubarb pies using Grandma's recipe and some rhubarb she brought from South Dakota. That was what lead to the GrassPad trip as I was hoping I could start growing some rhubarb of my own.

The Sasser Worm

Here's Microsoft's page on the Sasser Worm. I've already had to help out a few friends and relatives who've had problems with this.

What You Should Know About the Sasser Worm and Its Variants

EasyThread - Quick and Easy Application Threading

A VS.NET 2003 add-in that makes multithreaded programming easier
EasyThread - Quick and Easy Application Threading

XmlNameTable: The Shiftstick of System.Xml

XmlNameTable: The Shiftstick of System.Xml: "The XmlNameTable enables object reference comparison rather than string value comparison and is useful in documents with many repeating known elements, attributes or namespaces which are automatically added to the XmlReaders XmlNameTable, a process called atomization. This allows you to then added your own names to the nametable and perform efficicent object comparisons rather than character by character string comparisons."

Transitions Between Pages

Transitions Between Pages

A list of the page transitions supported by IE.

Cancel a restart or shutdown

Cancel a restart or shutdown:

To cancel a restart or shutdown

1. Open Command Prompt.
   
2. Type: shutdown /a within the time-out period.

New Templates

The Great Blogger Relaunch includes a bunch of new blogger templates. I haven't decided if I'll switch to one yet or not.

Google Blogs

Google finally has an official blog.

But I'm probably going to keep reading the original unofficial google weblog as well.

Application Blocks Links

Useful URLs:
The article has links to information on:
Leveraging Application Blocks in Your Applications
Rapid Application Development with Visual Studio 2005
XML, XQuery, and CLR Integration in SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services

ASP.NET Uses Short Names When Loading DLLs

Odd behavior in ASP.NET

ASP.NET uses short names to determine what it loads from the bin directory. So don't give a file a name like MyLibrary.dll_bak because it might wind up with a short name like MYLIBR~1.DLL.

Bookmarklet to Zoom IE's Display By 200%

This post on asp.net had a method for tweaking the registry to add a Zoom 200% menu item to IE.

It gave me the idea of doing a bookmarklet that does the same thing with no registry editing required. Just right-click the link below and add it to your favorites.

Zoom 200%

VSTweak PowerToy

VSTweak PowerToy
A PowerToy for Visual Studio.NET, it has a MRU Lists Manager that allows you to clear recent files and projects.

It can be used as a fix for when Visual Studio.NET is slow in starting up.

.NET Users Group

I went to the April meeting of the local .NET users group tonight. It was held at Centriq University. I ran into Marlin, Richard, Galen, and Ovace who are some former co-workers of mine.

Highlights from the meeting:

• There's a new .NET Book Club.


• SQL Server Reporting Services lets you design reports in Visual Studio.NET 2003 and is free if you have an SQL Server license. It uses Report Definition Language, an XML-based schema for defining reports.


• The presenters recommended that we visit the MSDN XML Developer Center because XML development is changing radically and we'll probably have to rewrite all our XML code in the near future.


• The main presentation was a demonstration of Whidbey (Visual Studio.NET 2005) by Steve Loethen, the Microsoft Developer Evangelist for the MidAmerica District. It was pretty interesting although it was fairly similar to the demo I saw at DevDays. Whidbey has some very cool features that I'm looking forward to using. The Virtual PC software he was using also looked interesting although it seemed to be having some problems with XP service pack 2.

Icons from various interfaces

GUIdebook > Components

Eagle Sighting

While I was driving to work this morning, traffic was backed up at the Nall and 145th St. intersection. As I waited, I noticed what appeared to be an eagle sitting on a post that was part of a deck on the house at that intersection. I haven't been that close to an eagle in a long time. You forget how majestic they look. Someone from the house got a much closer look, he was actually standing on the porch looking at the eagle. The eagle swooped off the porch and soared up to the top of a telephone poll. Then traffic started moving again and I had to drive on.

Using JScript.NET And Eval For Dynamic Execution From C#

Using JScript.NET And Eval For Dynamic Execution From C#

Princeton 3D Model Search Engine

Princeton 3D Model Search Engine

You do three sketches of an object viewed from 3 different directions and it searches for 3D shapes that match the object you drew.

How do you convert a string into an enum?

How do you convert a string into an enum?

object Enum.Parse(System.Type enumType, string value, bool ignoreCase);

APOD: 2004 April 1 - April Fools Day More Intense On Mars

APOD: 2004 April 1 - April Fools Day More Intense On Mars: "gravity, the force that opposes comedy throughout the universe, is only about 3/8ths as strong on Mars' surface as it is on planet Earth. Also, a martian day, called a sol, lasts nearly 40 minutes longer than an earth day. "

Checking a string for null or empty string

Checking a string for null or empty string
Convert.ToString((object)stringVar) == “”

Visual Studio: Download Service Pack 6

Visual Studio: Download Service Pack 6

The Tao Of Programming

I read The Tao Of Programming once a long time ago. (In the pre-blogging era.) It just came up in a discussion at work so I figured I'd track it down and post it since its both funny and true.

This Microsoft support article had a solution to my problem of "Open in New Window" no longer working in IE.
281679 - You Cannot Open New Internet Explorer Window or Nothing Happens After You Click a Link
I got to it from this answer on the MVPS.org Internet Explorer site.

Skinnable MSN Messenger-like Popup

TaskbarNotifier: "a skinnable MSN Messenger-like popup in C#"

A Gathering of Planets

Starting March 22nd the 5 brightest planets should be visible in the evening sky at the same time.
A Gathering of Planets

Avatar Creator

The dookyweb site has a Flash avatar creator.

The Tragedy of Marioland

I saw this on boingboing.net

Tragic, hilarious Marioland 8-bit Flash movies: "The tragedy of Marioland: a three-part Flash animation using pixel-cool graphics from 8-bit Mario games as characters in a screamingly funny movie about the tragic invasion of Marioland. The use of Marioland mood music is a masterstroke. Part 1 Link, Part 2 Link, Part 3 (via MeFi) "

Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts

Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts with the equivalent IE shortcuts as well.

Fesersoft - .Net

Fesersoft - .Net has got some useful .NET XSLT stuff, including a schema that enables Intellisense in Visual Sudio.NET for XSLT documents and examples of the different ways to do XSLT in .NET.

Debug JavaScript in ASP.NET Apps

Infragistics has got an article on using Visual Studio.NET to debug javascript apps.

Debug JavaScript in ASP.NET Apps

shadowbox

You can use CSS to put a shadow or any other image inside a textbox.

.shadowbox
{
background-image: url(../images/shadow.gif);
border: Solid 1px Black
}

OneClick Button

This site, MetaBuilders - Stuff I Did, has some interesting ASP.NET controls including a OneClick button that solves the common "user clicked the submit button more than once" problem.

Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online

Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online

sensitive light

This site - sensitive light - has a lot of interesting pictures.

Hyperlinked ECMA C# Language Specification

Hyperlinked ECMA C# Language Specification

What Video Game Character Am I?

What Video Game Character Am I?: "

I am Mario. I like to jump around, and would lead a fairly serene and aimless existence if it weren't for my friends always getting into trouble. I love to help out, even when it puts me at risk. I seem to make friends with people who just can't stay out of trouble. What Video Game Character Are You?

"

States I've Visited

When their server is up the image below shows the states I've visited in red.



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Asynchronous HttpWebRequest

Example of using threads and HttpWebRequest to asynchronously scan a collection of URLs. Asynchronous HttpWebRequest

And here's the author's correction to the original article:
Abort Worker Thread When App Exits

Managing Terminal Services Sessions Remotely

Managing Terminal Services Sessions Remotely Windows 2000 and up has two command-line tools called qwinsta and rwinsta that can query and reset remote sessions.

SnippetCompiler

SnippetCompiler lets you test small blocks of .NET code.

ProFont for Windows, for Macintosh, for Linux

ProFont for Windows, for Macintosh, for Linux

Joel on Software - The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Joel on Software - The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

SciScoop

This site list breaking science news stories and has links to other science sites.

SciScoop - Exploring Tomorrow

FreeTextBox

A free ASP.NET control written in C# implementing MSHTML in Internet Explorer.

FreeTextBox

Northern Hemisphere Aurora Map

Northern Hemisphere Enlarged View

Colorblind Web Page Filter

Here's a useful tool for making sure your website is accessible to people who see colors differently than the average person.

Colorblind Web Page Filter

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

This looks like it could be interesting.

Visual Basic Home: Creating Markup Text in Visual Basic .NET

Visual Basic Home: Creating Markup Text in Visual Basic .NET

A tool that will be useful if I ever post any more code.

Slashdot | Yet Another Critical Windows Flaw

Slashdot | Yet Another Critical Windows Flaw

Need to remember to turn off the Messenger service.

Visual Studio .NET Shortcut Key Guide

O'Reilly has posted Appendix C. Shortcut Key Guide from the book Mastering Visual Studio .NET.

There's also another copy of it here.

DotnetCoders - Guide to Regular Expressions

.NET Regular Expression Syntax

Microsoft Web Developer Accessories

Microsoft Web Developer Accessories

This has the "View Partial Source" tool that works with IE6.

306158 - INFO: Implementing Impersonation in an ASP.NET Application

306158 - INFO: Implementing Impersonation in an ASP.NET Application

329290 - HOW TO: Use the ASP.NET Utility to Encrypt Credentials and Session State Connection Strings

329290 - HOW TO: Use the ASP.NET Utility to Encrypt Credentials and Session State Connection Strings

Martian Moonrise

Valley of Fire Night Shots- by Wally Pacholka: "Mars and a spectacular Full Moon rises through Arch Rock in Nevada's 'Valley of Fire' State Park on September 10, 2003 at 8 PM. "

Cool Flash Stuff

This site has some interesting Flash applications, including Donkey Kong and 3D Tetris. Some of the apps make some cool music as well.

andre' michelle - made in germany