Paul Hammond's Blog

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

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Just found this over on ScottGu’s blog – the App Offline feature:

Basically, if you place a file with this name [ed: app_offline.htm] in the root of a web application directory, ASP.NET 2.0 will shut-down the application, unload the application domain from the server, and stop processing any new incoming requests for that application.  ASP.NET will also then respond to all requests for dynamic pages in the application by sending back the content of the app_offline.htm file (for example: you might want to have a “site under construction” or “down for maintenance” message).

 

This provides a convenient way to take down your application while you are making big changes or copying in lots of new page functionality (and you want to avoid the annoying problem of people hitting and activating your site in the middle of a content update).  It can also be a useful way to immediately unlock and unload a SQL Express or Access database whose .mdf or .mdb data files are residing in the /app_data directory.

 

Once you remove the app_offline.htm file, the next request into the application will cause ASP.NET to load the application and app-domain again, and life will continue along as normal.

 

This is a really nice feature – very useful for putting revisions of a site live.  This way you can diable the site temporarily and simply trust the ASP.NET engine to “do the right thing”.  Deleting (or renaming) the file once you are finished results in ASP.NET beginning to serve your site again.

Ever taken what you thought was that perfect “family photo” only to develop it (or download it to your computer) to find Granny is grimacing, Uncle Joe looks like he has indigestion, baby Alice is looking the other way, your sister looks asleep or your mum looks wild eyed on some hallucinogenic drug?

For me, the idea behind the family group shot is almost always spoiled by the physical effect produced.  You want to capture that happy moment for all to treasure, to try and relay to the viewer the joy of the occasion.  Instead you get one (or maybe more!) scenes of sleeping, farting, spaced out grimacing.

Maybe you take 5 or 8 shots; surely Granny is getting close to a smile in ONE of them.  Baby Alice decides to grace you with her smile on a couple of pictures, but not the same ones as when Granny found her grin.  Mum and sister both sort their eyes out for the last picture, but fail on the rest.

That leaves you with EIGHT shots that all fail dismally to convey the core atmosphere you were trying to capture in the first place – a glorious record of the happy occasion.

Enter Microsoft Research’s “Group Shot”.

This software lets you take a number of “similar” photo’s, and later on select the best parts of each to merge into that single perfect shot.  You can highlight Granny’s smile, baby’s face, Mum and sister’s eyes, all in different versions of the shot.  Then the software will pull together a great faimly portrait you can be proud of.

Obviously I am only listing the one obvious use for this software, I am sure there are many more scenarios where this would be pretty useful.

I tried out an earlier internal copy of this and was quite impressed.  In a later post I will try and pull out some of my own photo’s and give an example of the results this software will produce.

A while ago, some of the guys in one of the UK Developer and Platform group here at Microsoft started putting together “MSDN Nuggets” – short videos (under 10 minutes) that demonstrate some new feature or technology.  This is a great idea, and is a very convenient way of getting an overview of technologies, especially when finding time for in depth research and reading is limited.  There is nothing like a hands-on demo to really aid learning.

Sadly, I fell behind with my watching – it was hard to figure out what I had seen and what was new etc, and I had to remember to download the videos locally so I could watch on the train.

However, I just stumbled across a post from Mike Taulty about the MSDN Nugget Viewer he has written (Mike is one of the guys who presents the nuggets).  This is very cool; it allows for both online and offline viewing, and keeps a track of what you have watched.  Highly recommended.  It is also written in .Net 2.0 and uses ClickOnce installation… 

There is also an MSDN Nuggets gadget for Windows Live which is nice.

So I have had my TD-12 for a few weeks now, and I have been playing quite a lot.  It is really very weird playing so much again, as I haven’t played in many years.  I am finding that I get some pretty bad aches in muscles that are long since overdue a work out!

I am still so impressed with the quality of the drums, and the extent that you can achieve a “live” sound from electronics.

I recorded some random stuff the other night – just me sitting at the set playing whatever came to mind while warming up – and thought I would share it so people can see just how good it sounds.

Excuse the playing, it is a few years too rusty for my liking.

Random Drum Stuff 1 – 0:19 – 312kb
Random Drum Stuff 2 – 0:19 – 317kb
Random Drum Stuff 3 – 1:23 – 1,315kb
Random Drum Stuff 4 – 0:26 – 416kb

This guy is a genius!  He has succeeded in making a large sum of money in a very short time, with one of the simplest ideas I have ever seen.

Edited from his FAQ page:

The idea is simple: to try and make $1m (US) by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each. Hence, "The Million Dollar Homepage".

So, everyone is welcome to buy my pixels, which are available in 100-pixel 'blocks' (each measuring 10x10 pixels). You will see the homepage is divided into 10,000 of these 100-pixel blocks (hence there are 1,000,000 pixels in total). The reason for selling them in 100-pixel blocks is because anything smaller would be too small to display anything meaningful.

As it currently stands, he has sold 999,000 of the pixels, making himself a tidy $999,000.  The final 1,000 pixels are currently on Ebay and the price stands at $160,109.09 as of 13:50GMT today.  There is still over a day of the auction left.

Check out the page at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com.

Recently, my sister visited us, bringing my niece (Georgia, 10) and nephew (Max, 6) with her.  At some point during the day, Georgia and my daughter Niamh (who is almost 6) spent a little time playing girlie games on the computer.  I didn’t think much of it, other than how nicely they played together, printing things out, doing virtual makeovers and generally having a good time.

A few days after our guests left, Niamh came to me and asked if she could play “that dressing up game on the computer where you put clothes on the celebrity cardboard cutouts”.  I told her that I was sorry, but I didn’t really know what that was or where on the computer it could be found.

She replied “Come on Daddy, it’s easy.  Just go on to Google and type dress up celebrities”.

Now, that is not the sort of thing I expected my almost-6 year old daughter to say!  Don’t they grow up fast?  Of course, being a Microsoft employee, I had to spend the next 10 minutes explaining why “we don’t GOOGLE honey, we use MSN Search for all of our internet information needs”. 

It sounds like moving on to Kids Programming Language is not too far away.  Like father, like daughter.  *grin*

NOTE: I cannot recall exactly what the search term she said was, so I am using artistic license.  If I do remember, I will post it here for all you other dad’s with daughters… 

I’m not the only one who loves my new V-Drums…