Thursday, March 13, 2008
For our builds, we like to review what files may still may be checked out by the team, and sometimes mandate that all files be checked in. However, try as I might, I was unable to find a way to see what files were checked out by any user. If anyone can enlighten me on how to accomplish this using Team Explorer or another UI tool, please let me know.
To resolve my need, I did come up with a way to view this list using the TF.EXE command-line application.
The following is a command-line command that will show list all of the checked out files in the specified TFS project:
- C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\tf.exe status $/myProject /user:* /recursive /login:myDomain\mjordan,password
You can put this as a menu command in Visual Studio by doing the following:
- Select from the menu: "Tools / External Tools ..."
- In the "External Tools" dialog, click the "Add" button.
- Enter a title that will show up in the Tools menu (ie. "Show myProject Checkouts")
- Enter "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\tf.exe" for the command
- Enter "status $/myProject /user:* /recursive /login:myDomain\mjordan," for the arguments. Notice that I left off the password; you will enter that at execution time.
- Make sure that the "Use Output Window" checkbox is checked.
- Make sure that the "Prompt for Arguments" checkbox is checked.
- Click OK to save.
- You will now find your new command in the Tools menu.
- When you execute it, a dialog will appear showing the preset arguments; just add your password at the end and hit Enter on the keyboard.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
I know many elect to dump their tax preparation to an accountant, or favor the better known tax preparation software applications such as TurboTax, etc. I have used a free one for the past 6+ years called TaxACT, which you can download to your PC and run.
http://www.taxact.com/
They have several versions based on your tax needs; our family has used the free version as our taxes are not complex (ie. stocks, investing, etc.).
While using the free version, you will be prompted to upgrade to the Deluxe version at several points throughout the wizard entry, based on life events, tax evaluation needs, or more complex requirements. But bypassing those prompts will still allow you to use the free version. There is not charge to e-file, either.
If you want to file a state return, you can pay an additional fee for that, which includes e-filing.
BTW... I am in now way connected with the company... just a happy user of the product.
Even though the Michigan and Federal governments have fillable PDF forms available for download, although you cannot save those forms using Adobe's reader. I don't know about others, but I'm not about to go through hours of filling in forms and not be able to save them.
I have used a tool called CutePDF Form Filler for the last several tax seasons that will allow you to do a "save as" on a filled PDF form (the regular "save" is disabled as part of the evaluation) so that you can save your filled form to open later.
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/Filler.asp
I'm not sure how long the evaluation lasts after you install... it seems that I invariably restage my machine at least once a year anyway, so that's never been an issue for me.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Download: http://www.markjordan.org/Downloads/WindowsUtilities/dvControllerOpenSourceFreeware.aspx
The holidays are here and gone, and the video camera is being used more so than any time throughout the year. More video tapes are being used up, and subsequently being piled up on my desk at home. And my wife has been bugging me to transform them to DVD so that we can watch them during our family nights.
I had the week off immediately following Thanksgiving, and decided that one of my goals was to finalize a procedure for getting my videos to DVD. I know there are applications out there that will simply copy the video verbatim to a DVD, but there were some effects I wanted to incorporate as well.
My requirements for the final DVD writing procedure:
- I wanted the date and time stamped/burned into the video for 5 seconds whenever a new scene started (ie. whenever the record button was pressed on the camera to start a new video segment); after 5 seconds, I wanted the date and time stamp to disappear... until the next new scene.
- I wanted to have each scene fade in and out at the beginning and ending, respectively.
- The final DVD should have a menu so that when the DVD is inserted, the menu initially displays showing a thumbnail and information regarding the date of the video.
- I wanted most of this automated such that I would put a DVD into the DVD burner, put the tape into the camera that was connected to my computer (rewound already or not), run an application on my computer, and walk away. A few hours later, I would return to find my DVD written, the tape in the camera rewound to the beginning.
- Within the automation, also create ReplayTV compatible videos and upload them to the appropriate server folder so that they can be played at will by anyone in my family in the living room.
- In the future, I also hope to automate the creation of Pocket PC compatible videos that I can download to my PDA.
As part of the automation, I looked long and hard for a Windows application that could capture the video from my MiniDV camera from a Windows batch file. Unfortunately, I could not find one fitting these requirements.
- Must be able to rewind the camera, and wait for the rewind to complete.
- Must be able to start playing the camera, and wait for a video signal to start recording.
- Must be able to record to the hard drive in AVI Type-1 or Type-2 video.
The Birth of dvController.exe
Of course, out of any frustratingly fruitless search for the perfect software application, I wrote my own. Thus, the birth of dvController.
Here's the help listing of the dvController.exe Windows console application that I wrote in C#:
Name
DVController.exe
Synopsis
DVController.exe [options] [[queryActions] | [controlActions]]
Description
Program to control a digital video source, and optionally capture the
video to an AVI Type 1 file.
Command Line Argument Categories
options
These can change default settings in the application. For instance,
you can specify the device name that is to be controlled; otherwise,
the first video-type device will be used.
queryActions
These can return information regarding the environment. For instance,
a list of names of the available devices on the system. Another
example could be display the current mode (ie. stop, rewind, play,
etc.) of the video source (future).
controlActions
These arguments will control the video source in the order specified.
For instance, if the arguments were '--rewindAndWait --capture
"c:\video.avi" --rewind', the camera would first rewind to the
beginning, then capture the video to a file, and then rewind the
camera again.
Command Line Arguments
Category: Control
-r, --rewindAndWait
Rewind the video source, waiting for the rewind to complete.
-0, --rewind
Rewind the video source; do not wait for the rewind to complete.
-c, --capture
Capture video from the video source, and output it to this
filename.
Category: Option
-d, --device
Specifies the name of the device to use for the video source; if
not specified, then the first one found will be used.
Category: Query
-l, --listDevices
List the devices that are available for video sources; use one of
these names as an argument to specify from which video source
to perform an action. If this argument is present, all other
arguments will be ignored.
|
This application will allow one to view the available video devices that are connected to the computer (ie. "dvcontroller.exe -l"). It will also allow you to capture video from a specified device, or control the device in other ways such as rewinding. See the above help output's "controlActions" section for an example.
This application utilizes the DirectShow.Net library from http://directshownet.sourceforge.net/. Because my code utilizes some of the Public Domain code that was distributed with the library's samples, I am likewise release this application as Open Source via Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) (reference http://opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html).
I am also utilizing another open source library called C# Command-line Option Parser from http://csharpoptparse.sourceforge.net. This library uses an attribute decoration pattern on the class properties to indicate which properties map to command-line arguments, and hydrates the properties at runtime. I did have to modify the code a little bit to see my command-line argruments ordered from the command-line. I submitted a feature request to the author for this (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1857693&group_id=127912&atid=709994).
The application currently only captures in type-1 AVI, but there is a commented chunk of code that will do the type-2 AVI capture; I just haven't had the time to uncomment it and have the application switch to capturing in that format based on a command line argument.
The Future
Here are some enhancements that I could do in the future:
- Push into a library for use in a presentation pattern; hence, a console application can use it, or a Windows application.
- Add other controlling features such as fast forward, play, pause, record, etc.
- Command-line arguments to indicate degree of verbosity for feedback from the application.
- Directed feedback to standard output vs. standard error output.
- Add command-line argument for switching between AVI type-1 vs. type-2.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Update 10/9/2007: An update has been issued by Microsoft... http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/10/09/calculation-issue-update-fix-available.aspx.
I came across this article today... http://www.appscout.com/2007/09/microsoft_to_swat_excel_bug.php. Apparently there are some expressions that will evaluate incorrectly in excel.
Try one: Put "=77.1*850" into an Excel cell, and click off of the cell. Note the result of 100,000 when it should be 65,535.
Microsoft is apparently on it, and getting a fix out. Could be good news for all of those people who have a real salary of $65,535 (or bad news now that they need to pay back some money)?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
A couple of projects ago, I was working with MOSS and its Business Data Catalog feature. We needed to produce a BDC application definition file based on a supplemental SQL database, and since we already were using our NuSoft Framework to generate the business/data layer, I thought I'd create a CodeSmith template that would also execute with it to generate the BDC file.
Here are the links to download the template, and also an XML sample file that was generated for that project:
- An example BDC Application Definition file that was generated for the project:
- The BDC Application Definition File CodeSmith template:
There was an IDE-type of a tool recently released from Microsoft that eases the pane of creating this application definition file, so I'm not sure if this script will be as beneficial now. That's primarily the reason for making it public; if someone else finds it beneficial, that's great for them.
Some notes and caveats regarding this script:
- Very pre-alpha... there are sure to be some bugs in it.
- It runs on my box 8^P, for the project with which I was using it.
- Only table fields and associations (ie. relationships) are generated. The BDC XML schema has much more that could be included; however, right now it only has what is needed for the current project that spawned it.
- The database that we linked it to had a surrogate identity key for ALL tables, including the many-to-many relation tables. Hence, I did not figure out how to do the associations in the file based on composite primary keys (yet).
- I did this for SQL Server only... not Oracle or anything else.
Despite the above disclaimers, this could be very useful for others, and a good minimal start for someone that wants to take it and add more capability.
I've been waiting for someone to create a plugin for Windows Live Writer that would allow attachments to be seemlessly added to a post (I'd do it myself, but I'm already involved in many dev projects... I wish I had more time). I found one today that utilizes the Windows Live Sky Drive.
The SkyDrive Attachment Plugin was posted to Windows Live Gallery of Extensions at the end of August. Is puts a shortcut in the right task pane of Windows Live Writer:
Here's a couple of attachment inserts that I'm going to do on a successive post:
Here's a video showing it being used: SkyDrive attachment plugin for WLW test
The source code appears to be included in the Windows Live Writer Plugins CodePlex project, too.
Looks rather snazzy I'd say.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Vault comes with its own diff/merge tool, called DiffMerge, which happens to now be open source on sourceforge and downloaded for general use from http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/downloads.html.
However, I have used WinMerge, also open source from sourceforge, for many years. You can setup Vault to use the diff/merge tool of your choice by going into the settings.
To change it for WinMerge, goto Tools/Options in the menu, and select the "Diff/Merge" panel...
I referenced another blog post from Jon Galloway that indicated what the values should be on this form:
- Diff Arguments: /dl "%LEFT_LABEL%" /dr "%RIGHT_LABEL%" "%LEFT_PATH%" "%RIGHT_PATH%"
- Merge Arguments: /dl "%WORKING_LABEL%" /dr "%OTHER_LABEL%" "%WORKING_PATH%" "%OTHER_PATH%" "%DEST_PATH%"
This could be done for any diff/merge you like to use if you know the appropriate command line arguments.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
By default, the vault software considers project, solution, and other container-type files to be "binary". As such, it will not do a textual compare or merge. The latter is really a challenge when branching a solution as we've done recently, and attempting to merge the changes (ie. we added files into a project) back into the trunk. Vault will not do a merge.
We all know that these files are "textual" in nature... they are XML files. We can get vault to treat them as such by adding the appropriate file extensions into the appropriate setting in your projects administration on the vault server.
First, you'll need vault admin privileges, and you need to run the vault admin tool. In the "Repository Options" pane, update the mergeable file types field with the subject file type extensions.
I added the following:
- .csproj
- .rptproj
- .dwproj
- .asproj
- .dtproj
- .vdproj
- .csdproj
- .vbdproj
I had our internal Vault Administrator, Kim W., do this for me... merges work beautifully now.
References:
It's amazing the things you find by accident... you can add a smiley face character in your email in Outlook by typing the ":" (colon) and ")" (right-parenthesis) characters together (like ":)"). When you do so, Outlook will replace it with a smiley face, like you see below:
I never knew this until I accidentally typed these 2 characters in sequence.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
A team member experienced this on his machine in Internet Explorer 7 today... he was trying to access a secured site (ie. https://) that was generated on the server for a QA environment; thus, it was not issued by a trusted certificate authority. Here's what he was seeing:
When I go to the same site, I see the following:
Try This Fix
In IE7, go to Tools / Options / Advanced tab... disable the "Check for server certificate revocation" option.
Your mileage may vary; I had a colleague to recreate this on his machine, but he was still able to click through the page, even though he had this option enabled.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Benjamin Day Consulting has a v2.0 product out (commercial) that allows access of TFS from Windows Explorer (explorer.exe).
- Picture taken from the website.
http://www.benday.com/DisplayWebPage.aspx?itemId=43
Monday, August 06, 2007
Need stock photography for your web or other development projects?
I am currently in the process of helping a friend put together a web site to promote her newly published book, and was looking for some royalty- and fee-free stock photography to utilize. Here's a few sites from which you can download royalty- and fee-free images. I have looked over the terms of use licenses at these sites, and the photos are eligible for use on personal and/or commercial sites (of course, you should confirm this yourself as I am not a lawyer):
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
I told you to ignore this... quit reading 8^).
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace WindowsApplication1
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
}
}
I told you to ignore this... quit reading 8^).
1: using System;
2: using System.Collections.Generic;
3: using System.ComponentModel;
4: using System.Data;
5: using System.Drawing;
6: using System.Text;
7: using System.Windows.Forms;
8:
9: namespace WindowsApplication1
10: { 11: public partial class Form1 : Form
12: { 13: public Form1()
14: { 15: InitializeComponent();
16: }
17: }
18: }
I've been using a new utility for Pocket PC that allows me to use my mouse on my PC to perform activities on the Pocket PC... I can either view the Pocket PC screen in a window on my laptop and perform actions there (see screen shot below), or if you minimize the window, you can move the mouse to the edge of the laptop screen to see it appear on the Pocket PC itself... kind of like you would do with an external monitor hooked up. It automatically runs when ActiveSync connects to the Pocket PC, too.
Very nice utility. And when I found a bug (there wasn't a way to double-click on something), I logged a message to the author and he had it fixed within in a couple of days.
Here's a screen shot of the Pocket PC showing up in a window on my computer:
If I click in the window, its just as if I were touching it with my finger.
More info at http://www.mtux.com/.
A new utility has been release from the the Sysinternals developers at Microsoft call Active Directory Explorer. This should come in handy for those working with AD.
More info at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/adexplorer.mspx.
Friday, June 08, 2007
I can't tell you how many times I've sent an email that promised an attachment, but I forgot to actually attach it. I found some code on the Internet and customized it to help me do this in the future.
This code a module that you can add in the Macro functionality of Outlook. Just before the message is sent, it will look in the subject and body of the message for the substrings "attach" and "enclos", and if found and an attachment is not present, will prompt the user to continue.
Here's the code with install instructions in the comments:
' AssureAttachment Module -- Make sure attachment exists in email if "attach" or "enclos" is in the subject or body.
'
' Instructions for installation:
' 1. In Outlook, goto "Tools > Macros > Visual Basic Editor".
' 2. In the "Modules" folder, import or paste this module, naming is "AssureAttachment".
' 3. Add the following code to the ThisOutlookSession module... if the method exists, then just add lines within the method as specified below:
' Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
' If (Not Cancel) Then
' ' Make sure attachment exists in email if "attach" or "enclos" is in the subject or body.
' Call AssureAttachment.AssureAttachment(Item, Cancel)
' End If
' End Sub
' 4. Test it... try creating a new email and sending it when the subject and/or body have "attach" or "enclos" anywhere in the text.
Public Sub AssureAttachment(ByRef Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
If Item.Class <> olMail Then Exit Sub
If Item.Attachments.Count > 0 Then Exit Sub
If Not SearchForAttachWords(Item.subject & ":" & Item.Body) Then Exit Sub
If Not UserWantsToSendAnyway Then
Cancel = True
End If
End Sub
Private Function SearchForAttachWords(ByVal s As String) As Boolean
Dim v As Variant
For Each v In Array("attach", "enclos")
If InStr(1, s, v, vbTextCompare) <> 0 Then
SearchForAttachWords = True
Exit Function
End If
Next
End Function
Private Function UserWantsToSendAnyway() As Boolean
If MsgBox("It appears you may have forgotten to specify an attachment." _
& vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
"Would you like to send this anyway?", _
vbQuestion + vbYesNo) _
= vbYes Then
UserWantsToSendAnyway = True
End If
End Function
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Windows Live Writer is now available for download... making this post with it right now. As you can see by the screen shot, it has a new look and feel:
One of the fixes that I've been waiting for is to set the defaults properties for pasted images... before, you couldn't change that when an image was pasted, it automatically set the border to be something other than "none" or "inherit from weblog", which made the image within the post blurry. You can view more information about the old issue here: http://will.hughesfamily.net.au/20070305/livewriter-needs-fixing/.
Editing of existing blog properties is now using a properties dialog instead having to go thru the wizard every time:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
I learned something new today... Joel Ross enlightened me.
I used to have try... catch statements like the following:
try
{
...
}
catch(Exception exception)
{
}
The empty catch clause would continually cause build warnings, but I didn't care since I needed the exception variable to view the exception when in debug mode.
Well.. I didn't know that if you leave off the "(Exception exception)" part of the try...catch, you can still set a break point in the catch part of it, and view $exception in the immediate window. Nice.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Sometimes the software you install can be just too invasive, such as when Windows Desktop Search decides it will be better for me to see its own Search Band in Windows Explorer when I do a Ctrl-F.
How do I bring back the search that I had before?
In RegEdit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Desktop Search\DS and set "ShowStartSearchBand" to 0... and now I'm back to this:
Saturday, January 20, 2007
I took the kids sledding today... they have those plastic boat-type sleds. I used to wax the bottom of them with paraffin to keep the snow from sticking to it. But I tried something new today... a Teflon silicon spray. Works wonderfully. It purportedly also works great on snow blowers to keep the snow (slush?) from sticking and clogging the machine. Finally, I've heard people spraying it inside the lawn mower deck to prevent grass from clumping up.
By the way... it worked very well on the sleds. They glided through the snow quite beautifully.
Friday, October 27, 2006
In VS2003, I remember that if you had a solution in which you could place projects, you could see the full solution tree in the Solution Explorer pane.
In VS2005, however (by default), if you have a solution (ie. .sln file), it will not show up as the root of the solution in the Solution Explorer pane.
For instance, I created a blank solution in Visual Studio and can see the following in the Solution Explorer pane:
However, the moment I add a project, I see the following:
So where did my solution go?
Guess what... there's a new feature in the options... you need to enable the "Always show solution" option from the menu in "Tools / Options... / Project and Solutions / General", as shown below:
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Its weird how you can find features in software purely by accident. I've had my pocket PC since December of 2005; it has Windows Mobile 2003 SE on it.
the other day, while doing some stuff on it with my stylus, I found two navigation-type features that I didn't know were existent:
- To select multiple items in a list (ie. multiple tasks in the task list so that you can perform an operation on all of them) -- On Windows XP, we all know that we would click to select the first one, and then shift-click on the last one, with all getting selected, inclusive. On the pocket PC, hold the stylus down on the first one, then drag to the last one on the screen, and the lift the stylus. If you want to select additional ones after that, then page down, hold the stylus down on the last highlighted one (ie. the one from which you lifted the stylus), and drag to select additional ones. Repeat as often as necessary to select more on successive pages. Before I found out about this tip, I was trying to using the soft keyboard "shift" button... what a pain that was.
- To select all items in a list -- on the soft keyboard, do a ctrl-A... just like you would on Windows XP.
- To bring of the context menu of an item: Instead of using the stylus to press down and hold for the context menu to appear, highlighting one item in a list, such as an email, and press and hold the hard action button for the same response.
Summary
When setting up a VPC to use the wireless card as the network connection, it will work until the host system is rebooted, after which time the VPC will not be able to get an IP address.
Description
When I setup my VPC, I configured it to use the wireless card on the host system:
This worked fine for the rest of the day. However, when I rebooted my machine the next morning, this same configuration would boot on the guest VPC, but would not acquire an IP address.
Workaround
I actually have 2 workarounds... the first is simply to change the adapter in the VPC settings to be "Shared Networking (NAT)". If you go this route, you may need to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter as an adapter in the settings if you need network access to your host PC or other PC's on the network.
The second workaround requires the steps to be performed every time the host machine is rebooted:
- Before attempting to boot the guest VPC...
- Goto the "Control Panel / Network Connections" dialog, and show the properties of the wireless network card:
- Uncheck the "Virtual Machine Network Services" item in the list, and click the "OK" button.
- Re-show the the same properties dialog, re-enable the same item, and click the "OK" button.
- Boot the guest VPC.
I have no idea why this works, but it does. For the most part, I just use the "Shared Network (NAT)" adapter so I don't have to go thru this procedure every time I boot the host. I'm blogging about in case others need to know why the wireless adapter may not be working in the VPC.