Archive on David Cumps

Nancy + Static Content + OWIN + SystemWeb

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve just started working with Nancy to create a new site. It’s going to be hosted on IIS and I decided to try and take the OWIN approach. When I got to the part of managing static content I ran into some problems, mainly not getting it to work. Read on for the solution!

GPG in Outlook 2007 - OutlookGnuPG

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

A long time ago, I used PGP for signing my email, but I stopped using it. Probably because I didn’t quite get the concept yet, but that has changed now. Today I switched to GPG for signing my mail and files, with all the required files running from my memory stick. One thing bothered me however, no Outlook 2007 support at all. There are some plugins around for older Outlook versions, but that didn’t quite work out.

HOWTO: Set up NTP on Windows Vista

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

By default, Windows Vista synchronizes once every 7 days with time.windows.com along with every other user out there. Let’s change this to sync every half day with several NTP servers to get a more reliable time. First of all go to the NTP Pool Project and browse to the page of your country, I’ll use the Belgium NTP Pool as an example.

HOWTO: Setup IPv6 Tunnel on Windows Vista

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

I used to have an IPv6 tunnel on my old machine, but since I moved to a new desktop I didn’t get around to setting it up again. That’s gonna change today. First of all, why would you want it? Well, here’s a start, as well as the fact that it’s geeky and lets you learn more about IPv6.

HOWTO: Installing Subversion on ReadyNas NV+

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

A little side-track from the Continuous Integration Build Server series, but still related as it’ll be part of my CI infrastructure.

Building a Continuous Integration Build Server

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

After my previous series of post about Design Patterns, I’m planning to tackle a new subject over the course of the following articles. We’ll have a look at how to build a Continuous Integration Build Server from scratch.

Upgrading Subversion

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Right after I posted my previous post I noticed the Svn 1-Click Setup is running hopelessly behind in SVN versions. Their default download link is still using SVN 1.3.2 and the latest link on the download page is only at 1.4.2, and both also have an old TortoiseSVN.

Moved Old Posts

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve finally gotten around to moving all of my old blog posts to my current blogging home.

WoW - Multiboxing 101 - Introduction

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

When looking back at my World of Warcraft experience, I came to the conclusion that when added up, I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years already. I’ve even participated in the very first beta ;)

Modified MVC AccountController for Preview 5

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

I just downloaded the ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 bits from Codeplex and started on my first experiment.

C# World Of Warcraft Armory Library 0.1

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Since I started playing World of Warcraft again, I’ve taken a bit more of a developer approach to it this time, and after founding a little casual guild, I decided to create a site for it.

Exam 70-536 - Searching, Modifying, and Encoding Text

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Chapter three finished, Searching, Modifying, and Encoding Text.

Implementing globalization, drawing, and text manipulation functionality in a .NET Framework application

Exam 70-536 - Framework Fundamentals

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

The book I’m reading to prepare myself is Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation

Exam 70-536 - Input/Output

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Finished another chapter in my book, Input/Output, which deals with the following:

Starting Exam 70-536 Study

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Taking a little break right now, got a bit of a burn out, lack of sleep might have something to do with it :)

Design Patterns - Proxy Pattern

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Welcome back for another episode in the pattern series! This will also be the last article about Design Patterns, since I’ve finished reading the Head First Design Patterns book :)

Design Patterns - State Pattern

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

It’s been a while again, but it’s time for another pattern. Today we’ll look at the State Pattern.

Design Patterns - Composite Pattern

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

It’s been a little while again. I blame myself for installing World Of Warcraft again, too addictive. Anyway, time for the Composite Pattern. This is one I’m having a little trouble with to describe clearly.

Design Patterns - Iterator Pattern

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Time for the next part in our series, the Iterator Pattern.

Added OpenSearch!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Thanks to Scott Hanselman’s post about Adding OpenSearch to your website and getting in the Browser’s Search Box, I’ve also added the OpenSearch ability to this blog.

Design Patterns - Template Method Pattern

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Time for yet another pattern, the Template Method Pattern. Have a look at all the other patterns in the series as well.

Wanted: Friends!

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Today I’m going to tell you a little story about me. I think of myself as your typical description of a geek.

Design Patterns - Facade Pattern

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Time for another, simple, design pattern. The Facade Pattern. I’m going to need a break soon, getting a bit burned out, which never is a good thing.

Wordpress 2.6 Upgrade - Fix Missing Categories

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Apparently I’m not the only one having problems with the categories after a Wordpress 2.6 upgrade. So, time to give something back to the Wordpress community, some screenshots on how I fixed it.

Design Patterns - Adapter Pattern

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

We’ve seen quite a few patterns so far, and I’m glad so many people like them. They turned out to be the most popular posts I’ve ever written when it comes to development. Thanks! :)

Design Patterns - Command Pattern

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

What’s a lonely geek to do late in the evening? Write about the Command Pattern of course…

Design Patterns - Generic Singleton Pattern

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

A little follow up from yesterday’s Singleton Pattern, where I asked for some help on how you would approach a generic singleton.

Wordpress 2.6 Upgrade - Categories Missing

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

A moment ago, I decided to upgrade to the latest Wordpress version, I was running a bit behind on 2.2.3 :) The upgrade went quite smooth, all my plugins still work. But suddenly all my categories became empty strings. And the /category/ urls didn’t work anymore either. After looking around a bit, I noticed my categories were stored in the wp_term_taxonomy table, with empty descriptions. Thankfully I had a backup and manually entered the descriptions for all of them.

Design Patterns - Singleton Pattern

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Today we’ll have a look at a well known pattern, the Singleton Pattern. Most people have already heard about this one.

Design Patterns - Abstract Factory Pattern

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Time to continue from yesterday’s Factory Method Pattern by exploring the Abstract Factory Pattern.

Design Patterns - Factory Method Pattern

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

I present you with the next pattern in our series, the Factory Method! It took a while to get it out due to a stay in the hospital. (All is fine now :p)

Design Patterns - Decorator Pattern

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Following up on the Observer/Event Pattern, it’s time for the third pattern, the Decorator Pattern.

Design Patterns - Observer/Event Pattern

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday I described the Observer Pattern and mentioned that the .NET CLR provides this functionality through events and delegates.

Design Patterns - Observer Pattern

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday we saw the Strategy Pattern. Today I want to talk about the Observer Pattern.

Design Patterns - Strategy Pattern

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

The first pattern I want to talk about is the Strategy pattern, which always reminds me about the Command & Conquer games so I’ll simply use it as an example :)

Long Absence - Design Patterns

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

It’s been a while again, real life issues managed to take over all time… But, I’m regaining ground and winning back some of it ;)

SQL Tips

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Various SQL oriented tips discovered during work, written down to remember them.

Obfuscation - Making Reverse Engineering Harder

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

In a previous article I have demonstrated how easy it is to decompile and reverse engineer .NET assemblies using Reflector and Reflexil. I’ve also shown that applying a strong name to your assembly does not protect your code from reverse engineering. So, what else is left?

Party Game Guitar Hero for PC

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Ever heard of the very popular game for the PlayStation 2, called Guitar Hero? Until recently, I only vaguely picked it up here and there, but not being a big PlayStation gamer, I never payed much attention. That is, until today. A friend of mine gave me a link to Frets On Fire, which claims to be the PC variant of Guitar Hero. Seeing it was free, I downloaded it and gave it a try, and I have to admit, it’s addictive!

Efficient Compound Index Usage

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Today I was made aware by Filip, a colleague of mine, about the importance of columns used in a where clause with a compound index. I decided to investigate this a bit more in detail, with proper profiling and comparisons on a large data set.

String Concatenation vs Memory Allocation

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Over the years, plenty has been written about .net String vs. StringBuilder - concatenation performance Concatenating Strings Efficiently, lots of comparisons between String.Concat and StringBuilder. Today I decided to do some of my own research into the subject and contribute to the knowledge already out there. More specifically, I’ll be taking a look at the memory usage for various concatenation methods and compiler optimizations used to generate the IL.

Code Signing as Reverse Engineering Protection

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

In my last post I spoke about reverse engineering .NET assemblies upon which Gregory asked how to protect his code against it.

Reverse Engineering with Reflector and Reflexil

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve always been a big fan of Reflector, allowing me to have a look in assemblies to learn new things, debug in case of problems and provide useful information when creating bug reports. Combined with the Reflexil Add-in it’s now easy to also modify assemblies yourself.

Open-Source Disk Encryption

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Are you concerned about the confidentiality of your files? Take a look at TrueCrypt, a great tool to create encrypted volumes.

Booting for Lazy People – Wake On LAN

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Wake Up!

Not you… The computer!

Just had some fun enabling Wake On LAN on one of my computers. A great technology for the lazy people among us, you simply sit in your chair and realize you need to access some other computer in your house, but sadly enough it isn’t powered on. The fit among us might simply walk to the machine and boot it, but I’d rather open up some program, hit a button and with some magic the machine starts up. Funnily enough, the keyword behind all of this is appropriately named a ‘Magic Packet‘, waking up the dead from their sleep.

Temporary Break - Request for Subjects

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

After 21 days of posting something daily, I need a little break, for several reasons:

Explorer Bug, Long Path, damaged directories

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Long ago, I found something strange in Windows Explorer, which I wanted to retry on Vista today.

The Selfish Side of Social Bookmarking

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Social bookmarking, one of the Web 2.0 hypes, allows you to share links with each other. This great video from Common Craft very clearly explains what social bookmarking is all about.

Daemon Tools - The Disk Image Emulator

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Ever wanted to install something but couldn’t be bothered to burn it to a disc first? Like the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 discs for example. Daemon Tools is the answer!

Using PowerShell, Writing and Debugging Cmdlets

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

The prompt is dead, long live the prompt! That’s the feeling PowerShell should give you, the new command line shell from Microsoft. Today, I’ll try to determine exactly what the Power part in PowerShell stands for.

Writing an Outlook Add-in

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday I talked about personalizing Outlook Today to make it look more sexy. One of the things I had on my Outlook Today, was my picture with a direct link to my contact details. This link looked like this:

Personalizing Outlook Today

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Do you find Outlook Today too boring? I do! Let’s have a look at how we can transform it into something more visually appealing, something like this: (click the image for a full view)

Different Actions - Same Result

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Long ago, I had a chat with someone about the fact that there are too many different ways in Photoshop to do the same thing. He believed this was a bad thing, while I didn’t find anything wrong with it. Having thought about this afterwards, I have formed my opinion about it, with arguments.

Free TV Guide - GUIDE+

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Recently, I bought a new DVD player/recorder with an internal hard disk. One of the nice features I discovered when playing with it is a free tv guide! GUIDE+ shows me all programs on the major television channels in my region and allows me to easily select them for recording with one press of a button.

Some Downtime

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

The blog experienced a bit of downtime today due to a software problem. When bringing everything back up, things seemed worse however. My personal wiki kept serving me blank pages, and this blog kept saying it wasn’t installed.

The Bits & Bytes Religion

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Time for some Monday morning fun… These days we got so many religions, why not add another one? I give you the Bits & Bytes Religion!

Sync FLAC Library with iPod

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday I explained how you could manage your iPod through Windows Explorer. Having this ability opens up more powerful ways of managing your iPod. One of these ways for example is the ability to automatically sync your master archive stored on your computer, with your iPod. In my case it’s stored in FLAC format to retain all it’s quality, since FLAC is a lossless format.

Manage iPod through Windows Explorer

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Do you own an iPod? Are you tired of using iTunes? If you answered positive to both questions, read on! reTune is your solution.

Listen to High Quality Music

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

You’re an audiophile, and you wish to listen to music in the highest possible quality, but on the other hand, you don’t have that much disk space at your disposal to store everything as wave files. What are you to do?

allTunes/Mp3Sparks/AllOfMp3 Business model

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Everyone knows them, the controversial Russian-based online music store.

This won’t be another post questioning the legality of the company, there are plenty of those around. What I do want to have a look at however, is it’s technological business model and compare it to the mainstream alternative. I created a dummy user at Mp3Sparks, and started looking at the technical implementation.

Visual Studio 2008 and PHP Coloring

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Visual Studio is a great editor! But when editing other file formats I miss the coloring.

Using DebugView and C#

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

DebugView is a very nice tool from Microsoft (by SysInternals), which allows you to see debug output from the kernel or Win32, local and remote!

About Me!

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Let me start by introducing myself on this fresh blog..

Moved Site - United Domain

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

After 3 years of blogging on weblogs.asp.net, I’ve taken the big decision of moving out.

Search File Contents

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0200

When using the Windows Search functionality, you can search for words inside files. By default this doesn’t seem to work for .sql or .php files however.

WebDD 2007 Is Over

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Hello there!

The day is finally over. After being up from 5 o’ clock this morning, I arrived back home at 1 o’ clock this night.

Visiting WebDD - Reading

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Today I got a letter from Microsoft UK personally confirming my registration for the WebDD event for next weekend.

Virtual PC Differencing Disks Hierarchy

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

A long time ago, I talked about Differencing Disks in Virtual PC.

Fixing Virtual PC Keyboard Lockup

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

Lately I hear about a lot of people using VPC that their keyboard suddenly stops working inside VPC.

What happened on August 27, 2001?

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

Internet Explorer 6 was officially released.

What just happened? After 5 years, we got a new version of IE.

Changed Job - Financial Architects

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

Well, what have I done during the last year? First of all, I graduated from school with highest distinction and got a job as a webdeveloper, creating ASP.NET sites. Actually, I helped to come up with and create a rather generic cms-like framework that is being used for all future sites, cutting back on development time when administration sections have to be made, and when a lot of re-occurring things have to be implemented in a site. That’s about the only vague description I can give, since it’s “top secret” ;)

Starting DirectX Adventures

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

This week I started playing around with Managed DirectX (MDX) and it’s a really fun thing. I attempted it a couple of times a long time ago, but never quite understood it, but now I have a good feeling about it, a sense of order and structure has shown itself in DirectX code.

Extracting stored procedure content via SQL

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0200

Some nifty SQL statements I made last week:

Firstly, listing all databases on a server.

Return from a long absence

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0200

After not having blogged for about a year on this site, I decided to play with the new Community Server 2.0 on weblogs.asp.net once ;)

Blizzard Screws Up - World Of Warcraft

Sat, 07 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

I strongly advise everbody NOT to buy World Of Warcraft!

Pocket PC

Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

On the client-side, a Pocket PC application was used. Since this has no guaranteed connectivity, some additional techniques had to be used to improve the end-user experience.

SqlCe

Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Instead of making a webservice call each time certain data was needed, the data was stored in the SqlCe database on the Pocket PC, to retrieve when needed. This allowed quickly displaying data after having retrieved it once, while still giving the possibility to retrieve the latest data, and update the local cache with it as well.

Data Layer - SqlServer

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

After having implemented a data layer in the Data project, it was time to make a real data implementation. A Sql Server 2000 implementation was the default data source, located in the Data.SqlServer project.

A day in Paris - Visual Gaming Finals

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday I got invited by Microsoft France to Paris, to the Wax Club, to see the French Visual Gaming Finals.

Changing Pocket PC Language

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Pocket PC I recently received was completely in French, so I figured ‘I’ll just change this to English’.

Data Layer

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Any application using data benefits from having a separate data layer. This enables the administrator to select which data source to use. It also makes your application have an advantage, making it easier to sell.

Presentation: eID in .NET

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday I gave a presentation about eID in .NET, if somebody is interested I have uploaded the presentation together with some sample code to my personal website: Cumps.be

XP SP2 using Alternate Data Streams for Security Warnings

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

A while ago I blogged about <a href="/archive/2005-01-04-blogcast-alternate-data-streams/"">Alternate Data Streams and how they are hidden from the users.

Configuration

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

To configure the solution, Enterprise Library was used. This contained a Configuration Application Block which allowed defining various configuration sources externally from the application. This approach gave to ability to switch from XML configuration files to a database without having to change anything in the code. Because of this, it was also possible to distribute the application, and let an administrator choose where it should read the configuration from. An additional advantage of using the application block was the ability to automatically detect when the configuration had changed and retrieve the new values.

Logging

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

When developing an application itâ€™s possible to use debug mode to figure out why something is wrong, but when itâ€™s time to deploy the application something else has to be integrated. To solution to this is logging. Implementing good logging functionality will make the Operations people who have to deploy your application happy as well, because they can integrate it into existing monitoring systems.

eID

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Another thing I had to do was a feasibility study on eID. This means I had to look into this technology, research what the possible uses are, if they can be implemented and how they have to be implemented.

eID.Chat

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

To demonstrate the possible use of eID in Windows applications, I created a small client/server application. This application contains a central server, which listens on a certain port for possible clients. After a client connects, it has to authenticate with the userâ€™s eID card. The server then validates the certificate and checks if it is in the list of allowed users to connect.

Remoting Client-Side

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

After everything was done on the server-side of the Remoting implementation, inside the Windows Service, it was time to add the consumer side. In the case of this project, the consumer was an ASP.NET Webservice running on the same machine.

Remoting Server-Side

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

When the Windows Service was successfully running, a way had to be found to control it. There was a ServiceController class which allowed controlling a service and sending messages to it trough the ExecuteCommand method. This method was limited to sending integers without getting anything back. A better solution was to use Remoting to control the service.

Windows Services

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Normally, a windows service is used to provide a system service to other applications, such as an antivirus service for example. The best practice for a business application providing a service would be to create a Windows Forms application, which runs on the desktop of a server. A user would be used to login to the server, start the application, and lock the server. At which point the application would provide a service to other systems. This is because a business application normally isnâ€™t part of operating system infrastructure, while all windows services are.

Virtual PC - Differencing Disks

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100

During my internship I had to test against different kinds of products, and to be sure everything worked on a clean install of this product, I had to create multiple virtual PCâ€™s. One method of doing this was to create one clean Windows 2003 installation inside Virtual PC and copy this image to a new folder for every different server I needed. This was the method I started with, but one disadvantage was that it required a lot of disk space, as the base image already required 1.8 GB.

Asp.net 2.0 On Tour

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100

On March 2, 2005 the ASP.NET 2.0 On Tour came to Belgium, Brussels. This is an international tour, all about the latest Microsoft technology, featuring speakers such as David Platt and Dave Webster.

Blogging

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Blogs are a new communication medium, mainly used as a single-direction information channel. On a blog, the owner publishes new posts, which can be read and commented on by readers.

Virtual PC

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Another tool I had at my disposal was Microsoft Virtual PC. This is a product that enables you to run several operating systems inside your existing one, each one of them acting as a real PC.

NSurvey - MapPoint Integration

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

NSurvey provides charting reporting by default, but this could be enhanced by using the Country List control together with the added Belgian Regions. With this question in a survey, as a required question, every entry would have location information. Together with MapPoint a graphical overview could be made, showing additional information per country and region.

NSurvey - Pie Charts

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

NSurvey already provides general charts displaying the results, but it uses a bar chart and I had to output pie charts as well. So, I implemented them as well.

SharePoint

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

For the Microsoft Student Council, I decided to write a small database application that would keep track of the users their points. The council has access to a SharePoint site, so I decided to create a WebPart that would use existing user data and integrate nicely into the existing infrastructure.

NSurvey - Answer Types

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

By default NSurvey provides different kinds of answer types. These are for example Basic Field, Rich Field, Calendar Field, Email Field, Hidden Field, Password Field, Large Field and dropdown lists which use XML files as data source. NSurvey, however, also allows you to extend on these types to create new answer types, with specific functionality.

NSurvey - Belgian Regions

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

One of the standard controls of NSurvey is the Country List, which provides a dropdown list of countries. Belgium is one of these countries, but when you select Belgium, it doesnâ€™t display the possible regions for Belgium.

NSurvey - Matrix Questions

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

NSurvey supports matrix questions in its surveys. The only problem with this type of question was that in the reporting section of NSurvey, it listed each row of a matrix question as a possible selection, but it didnâ€™t include which matrix it belonged to. This leaded to a very confusing list, when you have several identical matrix questions which only differentiated in the main question asked.

NSurvey - Microsoft Layout

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

As this application was going to collect feedback from Microsoft events, it had to look like it belonged to Microsoft, and it had to be designed professionally. To do this, I visited the Microsoft site, and saved the page to my dev pc. There I stripped all the content and created a template with two user controls, SiteHeader and SiteFooter.

NSurvey - Survey Overview

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The first thing I noticed is the small dropdown in the admin section listing all available surveys. This would become my starting point for users, a perfect place to choose the survey they want to take.

NSurvey

Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

For one of the projects I had to do, I had to create an online survey application, which would be used to gather feedback from Microsoft events. Up until then, feedback was collected by handing out a form and entering the data manually.

Reflector

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

One of the tools I had in my toolbox was Reflector. This tool is written by Lutz Roeder and allows you to examine a .NET assembly. Through the use of reflection it can display all namespaces, classes, methods, properties, events and fields in the dll.

Boxing/Unboxing In .NET

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

In the .NET Framework there is a feature called boxing, which goes hand in hand with unboxing. Boxing is an implicit conversion of a value-type to the object type. While this is a very nice feature when programming normal applications, this overhead becomes a big performance hit when working with algorithms that need to do lots of operations, such as path finding.

Imagine Cup

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Important note (to not get confused): The text below (and the future ones) is written in the past tense, because they are text that have to go into a book for school, which you have to write after your internship, giving info about what you did. But I’m writing it piece by piece, because otherwise it will be too much to remember, and a lot less detailed :)

A* Algorithm

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The A* algorithm works with two lists, an open-list and a closed-list. The open-list is the list of nodes to be checked, while the closed-list already has been checked. Each node also gets scored with F, G and H-scores.

Binary Heaps

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

A pathfinder has to be very fast, but when we take a look at the performance we notice that working with the open-list is the bottleneck.

Day One

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The first task I got during my internship was to manage a meeting of the Microsoft Student Council. This was also the start of my internship, the real thing from the beginning.

Internship at Microsoft

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

As some of you might now, I’ll be doing my internship at Microsoft.

DevDays 2005 Belgium - Day 1 - Full Report

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Alright, currently it’s a very busy time, but some people asked for more info about the previous DevDays 2005, so here is my attempt :)

DevDays 2005 Day 2 - Exams & Internship

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The Developer & IT Pro Days 2005 are over, as well are my exams.

DevDays 2005 Belgium - Day 1

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Day 1 of the DevDays 2005 Belgium passed.

What was the main focus?

Is a CAPTCHA test really the way to go?

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

CAPTCHA tests have become more and more popular. These visual confirmations needed to do some action, post a reply, register somewhere, … can now be seen a lot more then a year ago.

DevDays 2005 coming up, with me being there

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The Developer & IT Pro Days 2005 are coming up in a few days and I’ll be there.

Translated my CV-site

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

I finally finished translating my CV-site to English :)

All my projects I have done can now be found at **

Trying Microsoft Fingerprint Reader

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Today I got the chance to experiment with the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader and I love it!

BlogCast - Alternate Data Streams

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0100

Some time ago I saw something about Alternate Data Streams, but I can’t find the source anymore to give credit :(

Merry Christmas - Happy Newyear

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0100

It’s been a while ago since I posted something, it has been very busy over here, and now exams are coming up.

BENUG Test Driven Development Session - TestDriven.NET

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Today I went to a BENUG session about test driven development, and I finally got NUnitAddin to work ;)

Add IE Features - New keywords (yeah, the ones Firefox users are so proud of)

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Right, someone trying to convince me why Firefox is so much better than IE brought up the issue of being able to type “google searchterm” into his Adress bar and immediately being taken to the site.

Six Invites to the Most-Hyped-Mail-Service-Of-The-Year, aka GMail

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Ah, well, 11 blog posts on a day is fine as well :p

The Invisible Administrator

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Today something very weird happened and I doubt something this weird will ever happen again.

BENUG Hands-on workshop on TDD - Location Info