October 2006 - Posts
From about the age I was 17, I decided that I didn't like how I looked clean-shaven. So I grew a goatee. I much preferred it over smooth skin. It had to shaved off when I was at school - I want to private school where one of the rules was that the guys
Read More...
When using "Geoff Appleby" HowManyOfMe.com There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name? When using "Geoffrey Appleby" HowManyOfMe.com There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?
Read More...
I wanted to do a little change to some code I'd written for CS yesterday. For both the Gaptcha control and my in-line file uploader I'm uploading a file and saving somewhere within the current user's blog. I've been constructing the save locations (and
Read More...
Hmm..I think I'm on a bit of a musical bent today - first EverClear and now BodyCount :) Yesterday I wrote about how GreatNews won over Newzie (which caused Mitch to go back to using Squeet - I'm not sure how that logic path works, but it does - not to
Read More...
No, that's an EverClear song. So much for the Melbourne Geek Dinner I was going to organise, is what I meant to say. I've been in Melbourne for 4 weeks, as part of an 8 week job I was assigned to. Plenty of time to get things sorted out, right? There
Read More...
This post is my list of features/bugs/etc for the next version of Gaptcha. There's no guarantee that everything I mention in this list will make it to the next version, but this is my central point for listing any thoughts. This post will be updated as
Read More...
Two days ago I wrote about how I was trialling two different newsreaders - GreatNews and Newzie. I know it's already been two days, but there's already a clear winner between the two :) I haven't opened Newzie in the last day. I really did try to be fair,
Read More...
Note to self: When you get sick of seeing your error list after a build showing squillions of warnings about 'missing XML comment for publicly visible missing on type...' set 'Suppress Specific Warnings' to these codes : 1591,1592,1573,1571,1570,1572.
Read More...
Recently I mentioned that I was giving Outlook 2007 a go as my RSS reader . The result? It's been less than a full week, and I say HELL NO! Some people might like it, but for me all it does really slow outlook down (I know my wife is having no troubles,
Read More...
Version 1.0 of the Gaptcha Control is now ready for public consumption (should anyone want it :) Download it here . Sadly, to add Gaptcha to your site it's not just a simple matter of just dropping an assembly in your bin folder - there's a few different
Read More...
As I get around to taking a lot of different pictures of myself for the Gaptcha control, I've decided to also occasionally include photos of other members of my family. Now, while I can recognise and identify members of my family, I'm certainly not expecting
Read More...
This is quite neat. When the non-RTM builds of IE7 were floating around, you had the opportunity to write your own search providers for your website (or other sites) if you couldn't find one already. I went through the effort of writing one (ok, so it
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! I've been working on getting the source for Gaptcha all cleaned up and ready fro release, as well writing an article on how to patch it into your CS codebase. My plan was to get it done last Friday night - and then
Read More...
Damn - I forgot that the new TV season started in the states a few weeks back. I've been off in Melbourne so long that I forgot all about it. I've been keeping up to date with SG-1 and Atlantis, but the current seasons have been airing for a while now,
Read More...
I'm more lady than my wife is ! You Are 36% Lady You tend to make up your rules of etiquette, throwing all conventions aside. And while you try to be a lady (sometimes), your behavior is often quite shocking. Are You A Lady?
Read More...
Hot on the heels of my wife doing it *, I've decided to give Outlook 2007 a go as my RSS reader. After spending so long with bloglines, I'm now always on the same computer constantly, so I don't have to keep multiple machines in sync anymore. I've started
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! I mentioned yesterday how I'm not especially great at ASP.net . Well the update I did last night to Gaptcha proved it :) I added the 'Get more pictures' link to the Gaptcha control, but it only worked if you
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! I've now got timeouts working. Currently for this blog, the selected set of pictures you must click on to successfully submit a comment will expire 10 minutes after the page loads. This means that if you take a long
Read More...
While writing my Gaptcha control, I wrote a few drafts along the way of how it would work. It's funny the way things progress. I like to think I have a pretty good knowledge of HTML, DHTML, and the HTTP protocol (which when you've got the three covered
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! Tonight I made a couple of little mods to my Gaptcha control. First, I stopped just base64 encoding the names of the images that needed to be selected in the form. It was extremely easy to crack :) It now encrypts the
Read More...
When I wrote the code for my Gaptcha control , I made one pretty silly mistake. I was developing against a SQL2005 database, but CrankyGoblin itself uses SQL2000. So when I had a SQL statement like this: select top @someParam col1, col2 from someTable
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! Well, I was up until 1am this morning getting it polished enough, and then I had to wait until morning for some tech support on some SQL that I wrote (damnit, I used SQL2005 syntax for one proc when I should have remembered
Read More...
Update2: The source is now live ! Update: It's now live! Thanks for the support everyone :) It's working! It's all working and there's only a couple of tiny issues left to fix! That is, it's working on my local machine :) While developing,
Read More...
I had an awful night's sleep last night, followed up with a crappy morning. I'm not sure what caused it, but I hope it doesn't happen again :) This morning was crappy because I discovered as I was getting dressed that I left my belt in Canberra. I spent
Read More...
Over the weekend (and a little before it) a few things have annoyed me. I thought I'd list them out, simply because I've got nothing else to do while sitting on the train traveling from the airport to my folks place. They're nothing big, but it passes
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! I've received some positive feedback on my thoughts on my new captcha control . While I've been given many suggestions, for now I think I'll just go with the simplest implementation possible, just so that I
Read More...
I needed this a while ago, and again today. It's time to blog it so I've got somewhere to look it up from :) If you ever need to get rows returned from SQL Server in a random order, something like this works a treat: SELECT * FROM Northwind..Orders ORDER
Read More...
(Yet another reason I like Canberra better than Melbourne :) This was my train ride home last night. Apparently yesterday got to about 37 degrees. It seems it doesn't matter how full the train is, there's always room for just one more. Not pleasant. :
Read More...
This one has been hitting a touch close to home as I've watched it happen over the last week. Tom Roberts , a Telstra employee and blogger on Telstra's public Now We Are Talking blog (a corporate blog that is allegedly 'honest'), was fired last week.
Read More...
I've figured it out. It's simple really :) At work I've been having to work in C#. And I've been playing with some CS code, which is also in C#. And I've noticed something. In VB, intellisense lists pop open as you type. It also happens in C#. On my laptop,
Read More...
MattyT had a great idea. While I'm in Melbourne, how does a geek dinner sound? So before I start planning, I need to know who's interested. Cmon, show of hands everyone! If you're in Melbourne (or going to be soon), are you in? I need numbers before I
Read More...
Update: The source is now live ! I never thought I'd do it, but the day has arrived. I'm starting to get enough blog spam, at a consistent rate, that I need to start thinking about prevention. But I hate captcha controls. They're all so hard
Read More...
I just had lunch with MattyT . Matty was probably one of the first ever subscribers to my blog - first to admit it anyway :) For a C++ person, he's a pretty nice guy. He certainly dresses a lot neater than a lot of C++ guys I could name. He obviously
Read More...
Blog spam is interesting. Sometimes it's an obvious swathe of links to things that most people don't even want. Sometimes a tiny bit of effort is expended to try to look more like a real comment (only tiny though). Sometimes they put a lot of effort in.
Read More...
Your Envy Quotient: 20% Envious? You? No way! You're happy with what you've got going on, and what someone else has doesn't change that. When people succeed, you are happy for them. You know you'll get yours eventually! How Much Envy Do You Have? [Now
Read More...
Remember to look into Winqual sometime. If it's usable for .net apps, then everyone should use it. Thanks for the tip, Daniel .
Read More...
It seems lately that Readify is appearing in a few different newspapers a lot. Last week there was something about Readify in the Australian , and this week we're in the Age . An excerpt: READIFY Senior consultant Mitch Denny "I can slice the My Folder
Read More...
I'm a lover of SOA - at least, to a degree. I don't like to jump on any bandwagon just because it's the cool thing right now. But I know at my last job I certainly went to a lot of effort to try to come up with a decent solution to our needs there. The
Read More...
When you're only 200 megs through a 2 and half gig download of Vista RC2, and there's only 12 minutes left. 3 meg a second! Wow.
Read More...
I got a new error message today, that I couldn't help but take a screenshot of. I was messing around with some code and wondered if it would work, so I hit F5 (as you do...hey, it's not as if I'm playing thermo-nuclear war or anything :) and it gave me
Read More...
Douglas Stockwell posed an interesting problem the other day . He wanted to know if there was a way to make a piece of code work without falling down to reflection. Personally, I can't see any way to do it without reflection, so I thought I'd post my
Read More...
I don't know what's going on today. The weather must be just right or something, but every time I leave my desk, when I come back and sit down when I touch my keyboard I get a zap from static electricity. Normally this wouldn't worry me, but what effect
Read More...
I know you all were getting impatient for more :P You Are 60% Intuitive Your intuition is often right, and you use it more than you may realize. Your gut feelings are usually a good guide, but you need more to go on when making a decision. You'll often
Read More...
Last night was a very bad night for watching TV, and I really didn't feel like doing any coding (shock horror!). I was also thinking it might be good to get completely caught up on sleep, so I went to bed early. I didn't plan on falling asleep
Read More...
I meant to blog this one last night, but my wife beat me to it . But that doesn't mean I'm not going to :) Cyanide & Happiness is an awesome online comic. It's all stick figures and it's all in the poorest taste imaginable. This one from yesterday
Read More...
While I'm staying at my parent's house, I had a look last night into what it would take to get my laptop online, while still allowing their PC to be online too. My first port of call was to check out their modem. My parents have cable internet (through
Read More...
I'm stuck in this crowded, too-hot-or-too-cold city for the next 6-8 weeks. I'm going home for the weekend, but Monday - Thursday nights are available. While I certainly don't want to live here permanently, I do want to take the chance to catchup with
Read More...
When I found out last week that I'd be working in Melbourne for 6 to 8 weeks, the first thing I did was work out my flights. For the first 2 weeks, I'm flying out of Canberra on Sunday evening, returning on Friday evening. Simple enough - yes? Not when
Read More...