Sarkie's Site

Generic USB Driver Windows 7

2011-12-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

If you are having issues with finding a driver for a USB Drive, here's a trick.

Go to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\usbstor.inf_
and get the latest directory, copy the contents to
C:\Windows\Inf

Reinsert your USB stick, it should detect it now and install it.

dotless Configuration Options

2011-10-31T04:35:00.000-07:00

Unless my googling is failing me, I can't find any documentation on the dotless configuration for Web.Config, so I've gone through the code, I think I understand the different options

minifyCss

true or false
Minifies the CSS output

cache

true or false
Caches the CSS after being created

true or false
if true, this uses http specifc options, must be set when using on the web, Response.Cache, Request.QueryString for parameters, Server.MapPath for mapping, puts the Log Messages in the Response
if false, uses in memory cache, uses console logger, uses paramaters from the console,

info, debug, warn, error, default

optimization

0-n
Optimizes the output...

source

How dotless reads the files of interface IFileReader, its the type usually FileReader but can be VirtualFileReader which uses HostingEnvironment.VirtualPathProvider

logger

Can be set but then gets overidden by the "web" boolean, there are AspNetTraceLogger (HttpContext.Trace.Write), aspResponseLogger (Response.Write as Css), ConsoleLogger (Console.Write), DiagnosticsLogger (Debug.WriteLine) and NullLogger (Swallows).

  <dotless minifyCss="false" cache="false" web="true" log="debug"
           optimization="10" 
           logger="dotless.Core.Loggers.AspNetTraceLogger" />

Greasemonkey Script to Remove Facebook in Facebook plus more

2011-09-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple script to remove the right hand column on Facebook, which has Facebook-in-Facebook, adverts and crap, also Greasemonkey is easy.


// ==UserScript==
// @name           Remove Facebook Right Column
// @namespace      http://sarkies.blogspot.com
// @description    Remove all the pointeless stuff in the right column, the ad's, the facebook-in-facebook, and duplicated events
// @include        http://*.facebook.com/*
// @include        https://*.facebook.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

var rightColumn = document.getElementById('rightCol');

if(rightColumn) {
 rightColumn.parentNode.removeChild(rightColumn);
}

Download

Download the script or copy and save it as rightCol.user.js and drag and drop it in to Chrome and/or Firefox (if you have Greasemonkey enabled) go to Facebook. Rejoice.

Duke Nukem Forever Stutter work-a-round

2011-07-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

When playing the game on my PC, it was stuttering like hell, thought it was to-do with not being optimized, since I have a dual screen, I ran task manager in the other monitor. This showed Steam.exe was using 30% of my CPU regardless.

The work-a-round I propose till its fixed will mean no Achievements whilst playing, so its up to you!

Right click Duke Nukem Forever, turn off "Enable Steam Community In Game"

Run the game

Alt-Tab out of the game

Set Steam.exe affinity to one core and set its priority to low via Task Manager.

Kill GameOverLayUI.exe if its running

Play the game and if its still stuttering set DukeNukemForever.exe to the other affinity.

Getting Hexxeh's Chromium Builds Network working

2011-05-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

If you're trying to get ChromiumOS working on Virtual box, you'll need these network settings.

It took me a while, since its the last in the list!!

Bridge Adapter

Adapter Type: Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net)

Should give you Ethernet in the login screen now?

Its a bit slow for me though....

Sys is undefined error

2011-01-07T03:43:00.000-08:00

Having tried every single way of fixing this error, I came across and two part fix.

Add that to your Web.Config

and

Disable and Renable,

Use HTTP 1.1

Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections

In your Internet Explorer Options.

Western Union Scam! Another one.

2010-11-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

Firslty, the scam.

"Don't send me money, just send it someone else, friend or family and show me proof you can afford to buy the product / rent the room etc, show me proof using a photocopy of the receipt"

How the scam works?

Western Union, don't need any proof of you or the recipient to take the money, ridiculous if you ask me!

Secondly, a list of scammers I'm picking up along the way, I'll be adding to it:

anzy84@hotmail.com / Anzia Scott

timmsproperty@gmail.com / Sherwood Tim

amoo9989@hotmail.com / Amoo Raymond

aidataube@yahoo.de / Aida Taube

Phone numbers

070 2404 4128

07045 766243

07045 734145

contact you, they are scammers. The more people who can the address, the better.

If in doubt, never use Western Union and use TinEye.com for reverse picture search.

Can't download Chrome behind a Corporate Network?

2010-10-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

There seems to be an issue with the Chrome installers:

ChromeSetup.exe

and

ChromeStandaloneSetup.exe

The only one I found to work was the ones from FileHippo:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/

There was a way to download straight from Google but it doesn't seem to work anymore, unless I'm doing it wrong.

The filename should be

chrome_installer.exe

HTC Desire SPP 2.1 Issues

2010-07-30T02:32:00.001-07:00

If you have an HTC Desire and you are having issues with your Bluetooth code, such as:

Service Discovery doesn't work or flaky
Can't see Misc devices, i.e. those with a Bluetooth device type of Headset, Phone or Comp
If you have issues communicating via SPP (Serial Port Profile)
Just plain not working

You will need to upgrade the ROM on the phone, these may all be fixed with HTC Desire 2.2 update which out "today", but if not its the bluez bluetooth code that has been fixed.

The only ROM that fully supports all of this is the http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ ROM, I've tried all ROMS this one is the only one that works correctly, but its based on the Nexus One ROM, so you won't have Sense, but if someone updates the ROMs with the latest BlueZ stuff, it *should* work.

OpenSource ftw?

I had similar issues when developing for a J2ME app on my old K800i, but what could I do?

Finding Bluetooth Service Address on Windows

2010-07-30T01:17:00.000-07:00

If you have connected to a device, but want to write code to discover it, you need to know the service address/guid of the bluetooth device, in order to talk to it.

On Windows if you navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\BTHENUM\

You will see the devices connected and then in HardwareID you will see the value at the end for SPP it is usually.

BTHENUM\{00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb}

Could not create the driver from NHibernate.Driver.SqlServerCeDriver

2010-07-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

Using Fluent NHibernate and MsSqlCeConfiguration, I wanted to use an SQL Compact DB for my Database by changing the FluentConfiguration but I started getting the errors from the InnerException.

"Could not create the driver from NHibernate.Driver.SqlServerCeDriver"

The fix is simples,

You need to add a reference to

"System.Data.SqlServerCe"

Located in

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition\v3.5\Desktop\System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll"

If you don't have it, you'll need to install it from.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/compact-downloads.aspx

Once you've added it you need to set the

"Copy Local" to true.

Then you should be good to go.

Failed object initialization (ISupportInitialize.EndInit). Error on Windows XP

2010-07-07T02:39:00.000-07:00

Failed object initialization (ISupportInitialize.EndInit). Method not found: 'System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(System.Delegate, System.Object[])'

If you get this error, looking at the MSDN page for the method call

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc190824(VS.90).aspx

It says at the bottom:

Version Information
.NET Framework
Supported in: 3.5 SP1, 3.0 SP2

The computer was running 3.5 vanilla, install the update and you'll be good to go.

Bit of Hex Education

2010-06-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

So I've started my Virtua Tennis Savegame editor, so in order to follow, I need to teach you about hex. So firstly, the easy stuff.

If you want to get properly confused, go to the Wiki Page but here's a nicer one:

http://www.itnewb.com/v/Introduction-to-Hexadecimal-or-Base-16-Number-System

Hex is base 16, i.e. numbers go from 1-16, we usually deal with base 10, (since that's the number of fingers we have), but hex is from 0 to 15, inclusive, so we get our 16.

Also instead of having 10 to 15, we have A-F, (aside, why A-F, why not A-Z and we get even more numbers?).

So therefore, lets take 29 in denary

Binary = 11101

Hex = 1D

So easier to store and easier to read, if that was just denary, the most we could store is 100 values from 00-99, in hex, we can store 00-FF which is 256 values.

Next thing to know is Endianness, so Big endian and Little Endian and Most Significant and Least Significant bit.

In a big endian systems, the most significant bit is the furthest to the right, go back to our 29 in binary.

16 8 4 2 1
1 1 1 0 1

So in this instance, the most significant bit is the bit in the 16's column and least significant bit is the 1's column. This is how everyone learns binary.

The Virtua Tennis Savegame is stored in LSB, so therefore in this case it'd be.

1 2 4 8 16
1 0 1 1 1

So once we figure out the values, you'll need to swap the values backwards in order to make the change, but since we are doing it in hex it'll be like this.

Hex = 0A 01

Big Endian = 0A 01 = 2561
Little Endian = 01 0A = 266

The reason I think it's stored in Little Endian is because the PC Port, was just emulated, from the Dreamcast version which runs in Little Endian.

http://www.netbsd.org/ports/dreamcast/faq.html#endian

So there's my Hex Education, I'm sure I'm missing stuff. This is just a tasty for when we start hacking the file.

Fixing N95 8GB keypad and save yourself money!

2010-06-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Problem: My N95 8GB keypad stopped working and just broke into pieces, cost for some one to fix it, £30-£40.

I'm a cheap bloke, so I decided to fix it, this is how I did it!

Firstly, I looked for a new case this is called "housing", so ebay time.

Ebay search for N95 8GB

It took about 3 weeks for the delivery and it was about £3.50 and from Hong Kong! (How do they make money?) I bought a White one to make it look sexy.

It should come with the Torx 4/5/6 tools, for you to dismantle your phone, i.e. the for the screws that look like stars.

This is probably the best video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc33lBQzVy8

I just did it myself, I then found I needed to get a new membrane for £8

Ebay search for N95 8GB Membrane

I then replaced it, so for under £15 I managed to fix my keypad, get a new case and learn how my phone goes together.

This post is shorter but it took me a while to find what I needed and get replacements and keep my phone working till I get my HTC Desire!!

Getting HTC Desire working with ADB

2010-06-16T03:06:00.001-07:00

Got an HTC Desire, I tried installing the Drivers with the Android SDK, it wouldn't work, I first had to enable USB Debugging.

Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB Debugging

Plugging it in, it wanted to install ADB (Android Debug Bridge)I first tried updating the .inf file


;HTC Desire
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87
%CompositeAdbInterface%  = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C87&MI_01

This made it install. Yay!
But, running adb devices in the tools folder of the SDK showed it wasn't working.

I then looked on HTC Site for Drivers and found the HTC Sync here:http://www.htc.com/www/support.aspx

Downloaded installed it and then removed the Device and added it again.
adb devices then showed it and Eclipse then saw it.
Yay!

Bitmap Serialize

2010-06-04T04:36:00.000-07:00

So I've been tasked to fix a database full of pictures that weren't displayed, no matter what I tried, the Image (Stored as a byte array) was always invalid.

So I thought I'll save the file and see if I can get an image fixer on it, I just used a FileStream opened it and wrote to it


var fileStream = new FileStream("output.dat", System.IO.FileMode.Create);
fileStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
fileStream.Close();

Upon opening the file, I was expected to see something beginning with "Exif" or "JPG" or something, but what I saw was even better.


System.Drawing, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a

A, ha!! The actual Bitmap object was being saved, not the actual Image, therefore I put together a bit of code to get me the Image and put it back as the Image for my code to work correctly. In this case, I could fix it, but if I couldn't I'd have to have a bit of a legacy converter for it.


public static Bitmap BitmapObjectToBitmap(byte[] data)
{
  using (var ms = new MemoryStream(data))
  {
     var bf = new BinaryFormatter();
     Bitmap bitmap = (Bitmap)bf.Deserialize(ms);
     return bitmap;
  }
}

Then the working code for the Image to Byte Array



 public static byte[] ImageToByteArray(Image image, ImageFormat format)
{
 using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
 {
  
  var bm = new Bitmap(image);
  bm.Save(ms, format);
  return ms.ToArray();
  
 }
}

Comments welcome!!

Transfer Data between two SQL Server's

2010-06-04T03:50:00.001-07:00

Everyone probably knows this, but hey ho.

I needed some data from one of my tables in one server to be inserted into another, here is the simplez SQL to do it.


insert into Server1.Database.dbo.Table(Col1,Col2,Col3)
select Col1,Col2,Col3
from Server2.Database.dbo.Table

Edit:
thanks to @duncansmart just a bit more info, I'm running on 2008 R2, on previous systems you may need to run


Execute sp_addlinkedserver Server1

To link in the other Server

Facebook Privacy Checks

2010-05-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of Facebook Privacy scanners I've found.

1.) Save Face by Untangle is an automated script that will go through your settings and disable them.

http://www3.untangle.com/saveface

All you have to do is drag it on to your Bookmark toolbar for later.

2.) Reclaim Privacy, which is a scanner which gives you a breakdown on which settings / info you are leaking to the internet, as 1.) you just need to drag the bookmark on to your bookmarks toolbar.

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Now you should log in to Facebook and click number 1, it will automatically go through your settings. (Easier to turn on Info then turn it off in my books)

Now click number 2, then update any settings it tells you to. Some I leave public, such as "find me via search" and "send me a message" set to everyone.

Now once you've done that we have another link to click.

3.) Profile Watch, this will scan your profile as an external person could and will show you info you are still showing the world.

http://www.profilewatch.org

4.) Honourable mention is an Application, so this shows you what your Apps can see about you and send to people.

Privacy Check

http://www.rabidgremlin.com/fbprivacy/

Hopefully this helps everyone!

InvalidateRequerySuggested on GUI Thread

2010-05-19T14:21:00.001-07:00

I've been having issues where buttons weren't getting enabled on my WPF application, only by clicking the form would they work.

I found that I need to force the refresh using CommandManager.InvalidateRequerySuggested but that didn't work, the reason being I wasn't on the GUI Thread, I was on another thread, so here is my little helper class to do it.


 public static void RaiseInvalidateRequerySuggested()
 {
      Dispatcher dispatcher = null;

      if (Application.Current != null)
       {
          dispatcher = Application.Current.Dispatcher;
        }

       if (dispatcher != null && !dispatcher.CheckAccess())
        {
         dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal,(Action)CommandManager.InvalidateRequerySuggested);
         }
 }

This tries to get the application, then gets the dispatcher for the application, makes sure you have access, and then dispatches the Invalidate to that thread.

bingo.

Dieting for Programmer

2010-05-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

Right,

I've decided to do a post on dieting, not exactly technical but very much of the, "Healthy body, Healthy mind" manta, so my history, I used to be nearly 16 stone so I'm not from the "always been thin, eat what you like" bunch of twats most diet people are.

So here is my diet plan / life plan thing.

Firstly, we need to work out our BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) basically the amount of calories you'd burn by sitting still all day.

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

So I'm going to take me as an example, I'd probably over weight currently due to being on a bulk, long story my figures.

Age: 24
Weight : 13 stone, 1 pounds
Height: 6 foot, 2 inches.

(Hint: 14 pounds in a stone for all you cool metric kids)

( 13 * 14) + 1 = 169 lbs

my BMR = 1895.47

Now we use Harris Benedict Equation to work out our calories

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

Since we're programmers, * 1.2

My calories for a day should be 2274.564

Now, in order to lose weight, we need to create a deficit, so the recommended number I feel is 500 calories, anything more, your body thinks its being starved and will hold onto your fat and not let go. It think its in a field starving and needs to keep you warm till you find an animal to eat.

So our Dave's Daily Diet Allowance is.... ~~1774.564~~(we're going to round it up for ease of use.) 1800 calories.

Now if you get any good food you'll see your RDA (recommended daily allowance) of what to eat, the average man is 2500 calories and each woman is 2000 calories. so if I stuck to it, I'd be putting weight on if I sat around doing nothing all day.

Type	Male	Female
Calories	2500	2000
Protein	55g	45g
Carbs	300g	230g
Of those carbs sugar	120g	90g
Fat	95g	70g
of that fat, Saturate	30g	20g
Fibre	24g	24g

So here are your RDA off the side off a Cornflakes packet! :), so here we have our aim, since you are probably eating more than your need you need to try and curb a little bit off this list too. So just try and keep within your boundaries and just count calories for now.

Time for the diet. I know from before we have 1800 calories to play with over the course of the day, time to split it, you should refine this to how you live, but you always must eat something at the times

Breakfast - 8am - 500 calories

Snack - 11am - 100 calories

Lunch - 1pm - 400 calories

Snack - 4pm - 100 calories

Dinner - 7pm - 600 calories

Snack - 11pm - 100 calories

Now that is my breakdown for my calories, I've give myself the most calories for my main meals, your main meal of the day is your breakfast. Skipping this is the worst mistake for your diet, it starts your metabolism kicks it into gear!

Now a sample diet

Porridge - Main stay of dieters, keeps you full for longer, since its a complex carb (takes a while to breakdown, simple carbs is sugar which takes minutes rather than hours

Apple + Skips

Chicken Salad with lots of trimmings or Soup and bread or jacket potato

Handful of nuts, Almonds are meant to be the best, full of protein

Lamb chop and lots of vegs and mash

Cottage Cheese and ryhvitta, cottage cheese is a slow releasing protein, so makes your metabolism work while you sleep

So that's a sample day, now all you have to do is tailor the diet to your calories, the foods you like and your lifestyle.

Keep a food diary for a week See how many calories and such you are eating, doesn't have to be 100% accurate, but gives you an idea where you are eating the worse!

If you feel you are snacking and want more food, increase your calories. This diet is meant to be one you're on for the rest of your life, not a quick fad one.

You are allowed one cheat meal a week make yourself feel bad when you eat it, thinking of the calories etc! But enjoy it, know that its bad for you etc.

Regarding food things I've learnt.

Anything with Hydrogenerate Fat avoid like the plage, seriously.

Eat protein!! It fills you up and your body works harder to digest it

Omega 3 1000mg capsules are amazing, ASDA sells them, eat at least 5 a day

When hungry drink a pint of water and wait 20 minutes, then see if you are hungry

Any exercise is better than none, don't over do it, or you'll get pissed off and stop

Don't let anyone say, "you look good as you are"

Weightwatchers meals are pretty nice!

So that's it, any comments would be grateful and I'll update the post if I need to!

Hope I haven't rambled too much!

GPS Degrees, Minutes, Seconds to Decimals C#

2010-05-17T02:55:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to connect to a device and get the GPS Data, I was using the library provided by Microsoft's Coding4Fun.
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2006/10/31/912287.aspx and written by Scott Hanselman... how can he be wrong!?

The issue I came across was the precision was out by quite a bit, so the parsing was incorrect, for my device. I'm not sure if NMEA standard is 100% standard, so I'm just posting this code here in case other people have issues.

ProcessGPRMC and ProcessGPGGA both need to be updated, I have created a method to do this.


private static double DDMMSSToDecimalDegrees(string data)
{
       var ddmmss = (Convert.ToDouble(data) / 100);

       var degrees = (int)ddmmss;

       var minutesseconds = ( (ddmmss - degrees) * 100 ) / 60.0;              

       return degrees + minutesseconds;

}

There is also the issue to do with North, Southern, Western and Eastern Hemisphere where the value has go to be negated. :)

So the update methods needs to look like this


public void ProcessGPGGA(string data)
  {
   try
   {


                string[] fields = Regex.Split(data, ",");

                //Time: Hour, Minute, Second
                //Time is Zulu
                GPGGA.Hour = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(0, 2));
                GPGGA.Minute = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(2, 2));
                GPGGA.Second = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(4, 2));

                //Latitude
          
                GPGGA.Latitude = DDMMSSToDecimalDegrees(fields[1]);

             
                if (fields[2] == "S")
                    GPGGA.LatitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.South;
                else
                    GPGGA.LatitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.North;


                if (GPGGA.LatitudeHemisphere == Cardinal.South)
                    GPGGA.Latitude = GPGGA.Latitude * -1;



                //Longitude
                
                GPGGA.Longitude = DDMMSSToDecimalDegrees(fields[3]);

               
                if (fields[4] == "W")
                    GPGGA.LongitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.West;
                else 
                    GPGGA.LongitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.East;



                if (GPGGA.LongitudeHemisphere == Cardinal.West)
                    GPGGA.Longitude = GPGGA.Longitude * -1;



    //GPS Signal Quality
    GPGGA.GPSQuality = (GPSQuality)Convert.ToUInt32( fields[5] );

    //Satellites
    GPGGA.NumberOfSatellitesInUse = Convert.ToInt32(fields[6]);

    //HDOP
    GPGGA.HDOP = Convert.ToDouble( fields[7] );

    //Altitude
    GPGGA.Altitude = Convert.ToDouble(fields[8]);

    //increase message count
    GPGGA.Count ++;
   }
   catch(Exception e)
   {
                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Chaos in ProcessGPGGA! " + e.ToString());
            }
  }


public void ProcessGPRMC(string data)
  {
            string[] fields = Regex.Split(data, ",");


            //Time: Hour, Minute, Second
            //Time is Zulu
            GPRMC.Hour = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(0, 2));
            GPRMC.Minute = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(2, 2));
            GPRMC.Second = Convert.ToInt32(fields[0].Substring(4, 2));

            GPRMC.Day = Convert.ToInt32(fields[8].Substring(0, 2));
            GPRMC.Month = Convert.ToInt32(fields[8].Substring(2, 2));
            GPRMC.Year = Convert.ToInt32(fields[8].Substring(4, 2));

            GPRMC.DataValid = Convert.ToChar(fields[1]);

            //Latitude

            GPRMC.Latitude = DDMMSSToDecimalDegrees(fields[2]);


            if (fields[3] == "S")
                GPRMC.LatitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.South;
            else
                GPRMC.LatitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.North;


            if (GPRMC.LatitudeHemisphere == Cardinal.South)
                GPRMC.Latitude = GPRMC.Latitude * -1;



            //Longitude

            GPRMC.Longitude = DDMMSSToDecimalDegrees(fields[4]);


            if (fields[5] == "W")
                GPRMC.LongitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.West;
            else
                GPRMC.LongitudeHemisphere = Cardinal.East;



            if (GPRMC.LongitudeHemisphere == Cardinal.West)
                GPRMC.Longitude = GPRMC.Longitude * -1;



            GPRMC.GroundSpeed = Convert.ToDouble(fields[6]);

            //TODO: MagVar and Course
            GPRMC.Count++;
        }

That's it for now, I haven't implemented the rest of the project. I'll post all the updated code when I get somewhere, github maybe?

Get WhoIs Information from a domain name in C#

2010-05-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

I needed to get the WhoIs information for a domain using the simplest way possible.

I could have used a WebService such as WebServiceX.net's http://www.webservicex.net/whois.asmx

But I decided to just talk to the whois servers directly, all I needed to do was open a socket send a request and then read from the socket.

I used the list from http://www.nirsoft.net/whois_servers_list.html then wrote some code, here is an example of how I did it for anyone that needs the information.



using System;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.IO;


namespace WHOISConsole
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            string whoisServer = "whois.nic.uk";

            string domainName = "bbc.co.uk";

            Console.WriteLine(GetWHOIS(whoisServer,domainName));

            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        /// 
        /// Get the WHO IS Info for a domain name
        /// 

        /// The server to use, changes per domain
        /// Domain we are looking up
        /// 
        public static string GetWHOIS(string whoisServer, string domainName)
        {
            // Port 43 is standard
            using (var tcpClient = new TcpClient(whoisServer, 43))
            {
                // get the underlying stream
                using (var networkStream = tcpClient.GetStream())
                {
                    // we need to write to the stream
                    using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(networkStream))
                    {
                        // write the domain and a new line, CRLF
                        streamWriter.WriteLine(domainName);

                        // flush it to actually send it
                        streamWriter.Flush();
                    }

                    using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(networkStream))
                    {
                        // now read from the stream
                        return streamReader.ReadToEnd();
                    }
                    
                }
            }

        }
    }
}

Any comments please post below. Thanks.

Remote Desktop Sharing Files

2010-05-14T01:08:00.001-07:00

With remote desktop the way to share files is via the Local Resources tab, you can then select a drive.

This can be tiresome as you would have share a whole drive over the Internet / Network, the workaround I use, is to create a Mapped Drive to the folder I want to share.

I then share that mapped drive, this means I don't have to wait while all the data is sent, so it makes it very fast.

Not sure why MS can't just support single file send like VNC.

Edit: Thanks to smellyhippy from irc.freenode.net #c##, you can just use copy and paste, I was trying drag and drop.

I have also allowed anonymous comments. :)

Agent Killer - DirectX Game

2010-04-28T12:57:00.001-07:00

This is a game I made for my final year of Uni, I'm releasing it cos its hilarious! I'm going to fix the code, make it run with XNA and OpenGL I think.

Download

You'll need a decent card I think to get it running, it *should* work.

Have fun!

System.BadImageFormatException: is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700C1)

2010-04-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

Trying to run DirectX Managed on my Windows 7 x64, the .dlls are only for x86. Change the details in the Project\Build to fix it.

//TODO

2010-04-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

Well here is a list of things on my to do list, of things I'm planning on doing or looking at, I will be updating this as I complete them

Books to read

Art of Unit Testing

Applying DDD with .net

Code Complete 2

Pragmatic Programmer

Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Passionate Programmer

Mythical Man Month

Things to Do

TASM Series

Ruby for the C# Programmer Series
Dissecting Malware

Design Patterns Series

Dieting for Programmers!

Projects

~~Finish Website~~ sarkie.webhop.org -27-April-2010

~~Restart the blog~~-07-April-2010

WPF Auto Follow Friday

~~OpenRASTA site checker~~ devserver.webhop.org - 16/05/2010

Ruby CD System

Virtua Tennis Savegame Editor

DirectX Game, rebuild and update

XNA Breakout Game

OpenGL Breakout Game

Abstracted Game using DirectX, XNA and OpenGL

UnrealScript Mod

Source Engine MOD, USEMP

That's it for now, I'm sure I'm forgetting loads! But that's enough to start me with, anything else I'm missing?

Links, Precedence, Style-sheets, Oh my.

2010-04-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

So I am currently developing my site and I wanted links to be different to my overall colour scheme for links. I therefore added a page style sheet to change them, no matter what I did, the overall one would take precedence instead of the page one.


a:link, a:visited,a:hover, a:active
{
   
    text-decoration:underline;
    color:#FFFFFF;
}

So I wanted to change it to just white underlined, this was first too over kill, since it was changing links in the footer. I then made it class based


.projectList a:link
{
    text-decoration:underline;
    color:#FFFFFF;
}

This still did not work for some reason, firebug showed my Site.css was winning now. (odd)

Thanks to ye-old faithfull W3Schools
I found :link pseudo classes http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_pseudo_link.asp

This meant I could change it per link basis, (win) I now had.


a.downloadLink:visited
{
       color:#FFFFFF;
}

and my link

Download

Now it bloody works!! :)

XML to PDF using NFOP, C# .NET

2010-04-09T02:08:00.000-07:00

I was using this

http://www.codelathe.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/28/generate-pdf-from-cnet/

Don't download the 1.0 build version

Get the 2.0 version source

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nfop/files/nfop/nfop-v2.0.0/nfop_fw2-2.0.0.zip/download

and get the .dll out of the build dir, or you will get lots of manifest errors and such

Chrome User Agent

2010-04-08T09:14:00.001-07:00

Since I can't access my banking website with Chrome but I can with safari, this is how you change the User Agent easily

Make a .bat or .cmd file open with notepad and paste



start chrome --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.1"

WMV C# Meta Information Update Example

2010-04-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have recently downloaded all the www.dimecasts.net Videos, I then tried to play them on my Xbox, but they weren't in order, so made it quite hard to follow. I therefore created an App to edit the WMV titles, which the Xbox reads.

This code is "ok", I should really make the code into a wrapper library, but this is just a bit of a proof of concept really.

Firstly, you need to add the WMP.dll to the form using the Toolbox, which should appear as the Windows Media Player Control, it will then add two references

AxWMPLib
WMPLib

Then the main code for getting the Meta Data is


private string GetTitle(string filePath)
     {
         var mediaPlayer = new WindowsMediaPlayerClass();

         IWMPMedia mediaItem = mediaPlayer.add(filePath);

         return mediaItem.getItemInfo("Title");
      
     }

I got all the attribute names running code like this


for (int i=0; i<mediaitem.attributeCount; i++) {
Console.WriteLine(mediaitem.getAttributeName(i) + " = " +  mediaitem.getItemInfo(mediaitem.getAttributeName(i)) );
}

The code for setting it also very simple


private void SetTitle(string filePath, string title)
     {
         var mediaPlayer = new WindowsMediaPlayerClass();

         IWMPMedia mediaItem = mediaPlayer.add(filePath);

      
         mediaItem.setItemInfo("Title", title);
     }

Here is the source code:
http://sarkie.webhop.org/Files/WindowsMediaEditor.zip

wmp.dll self registration failed and missing .dlls from COM Toolbox Visual 2008

2010-04-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

I got this error trying to add the %WINDIR%\System32\WMP.dll to my toolbox.

This fix is simples

Don't run Visual 2008 (maybe 2005) as Administrator! :)

Famous?

2008-04-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

After having a number of emails with Jeff Atwood last year, I hinted about having a book of Programming Books which most programmers have, I think I coined it a "programming porn pile".

Today Jeff has added it to his blog, so therefore I am famous on the Internet Tubes.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001108.html

Internet Explorer 7 Problems

2007-12-30T05:36:00.000-08:00

If after some recent updates December-07 the following errors occur.

User Accounts is not accessible : MSHTA / Script Errors
You cannot access HTTPS sites
Others probably

If these are the case, redownload Internet Explorer 7 redistributions and uninstall the current version and do a fresh reinstall, then get the single update from Windows Update, everything should be fixed. :)

Sarkie

Graphics Problem

2006-06-29T15:38:00.001-07:00

This post of basically anyone having a problem with an XFX 6600GT and NForce Based motherboards.

I'll set the scene, I am beta testing the latest Nvidia Drivers for my newly purchased card to extra "ummph" out of it, and every time I click to load the new control panel it crashes, so I wait for a new beta and boom same error, so I think and I quote "FUCK THAT".

So I decided I'd remove all Nvidia crap, and then use DriverCleaner from www.guru3d.com to remove all crap, Platform drivers and graphics drivers.

I then go to www.nvidia.com and get the latest Nforce4 drivers even though mine is Nforce2 it supposedly uses a Unified Driver Architecture, so that all drivers support all revisions, so I installed that all works fine except it doesn't install the Network Adapter, no biggy I am using wireless. (This was a problem I knew of before and I had the driver if needed)

I then installed the latest beta drivers, restarted and checked the control panel click the button, BOOM death still, so I thought they must be dodgy so I removed them and used the latest WHQL signed drivers from www.nvidia.com so I thought back to where we are.

Played a few games, did stuff it was fine.

Then decided to upgrade my PowerStrip demo to the latest release, all fine.

Played a few games, fine.

Few days passed started playing King Kong and I got a few artefacts on screen, thought oops, ah well, a restart will be fine. Then it was ok, played CS:S like I do nearly everyday :S and I got artefacts, first thing I thought overheating, so I took my side panel off, still occurred. I loaded de_dust with HDR enabled and my fps is usually about 25 for that map, it was <10. So I got RivaTuner to check heat of card, ask a few people one including Rom from www.romsteady.net he said the heat was ok, but he had a similar problem relating to a dodgy power supply, I thought GREAT!!! I also couldnt play any Media files it would crash any media player I used or made it use 100% CPU

So I thought last try, try www.nvidia.com forums I registered and first sign a sticky http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=294 "Artefacts in all DX Games".
Yes, problem over! Opened up it said:

Please disable AGP Fastwrites in BIOS
Update motherboard BIOS and chipset driver.

and then it clicked why my Powerstrip didnt like my hardware, and such my platform drivers where wrong, related to my network.

So I uninstalled Nforce4 installed Nforce2 and then tested and everything worked, I also turned off AGP Fastwrites afterwards incase I stopped any future problems.

There we go.

Cheers Sarkie.