I’ve been chasing problems with MSDTC today. We were trying to get one machines on a different domain to use MSDTC through COM+ to talk to a remote SQL Server on a different domain. Select / Read operations seemed to work fine but when it attempted to use an UPDATE method in a transaction, it… Continue reading Fixing MSDTC between two machines on different domains
Category: Comment
Google Contacts throws a gauntlet at Facebook?
Google have changed their terms of service on their Contacts API in a seemingly simple way, but with hopefully bigger consequences. It might force Facebook to open the doors on external access to the data we choose to store there.
Shutting down log4net repositories
Gibraltar Software provides a richer feedback experience if you’re used to using log4net; just remember to tidy up after yourself.
TDD, Visual Studio 2010 & BadImageFormatException
How to solve a BadImageFormatException when your Visual Studio 2010 solution has a console application and class libraries and you’re running on a 64-bit machine.
SUDS – Short URL Discovery Service
URL Shortening Services have been springing up all over the place since Twitter’s continued rise in popularity. The ability to use less characters to link to any webpage isn’t limited to short messaging platforms like SMS and Twitter. I’ve seen plenty of technical presentations include them to aid those taking notes not having to write… Continue reading SUDS – Short URL Discovery Service
Importing AVCHD movies to iMovie
At first, it appears that the AVCHD movie files that certain cameras use are difficult to import into iMovie without some sort of conversion software. Ignore all that, you can do it all with Disk Utility and your Mac without spending a dime/penny/whatever your local unit of currency is. Start Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility up. Click ‘New… Continue reading Importing AVCHD movies to iMovie
Invoking remote executables with Powershell
The Powershell Invoke-Command script is very powerful for automating the deployment of software built in a Continuous Integration process. However, I just ran into a bit of new syntax when trying to invoke an executable on the remote box when specifying arguments.
How to be one step ahead of UK Roadworks
Elgin is a UK government website that lists any roadworks currently underway or planned for the near-future. It’s custom-search option allows you to hand-draw an area and create an email or RSS notification; allowing you to be one step ahead on your commute!
XAuth
Meebo, the web-based IM service, have proposed a new standard called XAuth. Using a new feature of HTML5, similar to cookies, an authentication token is stored in ‘LocalStorage’ within the browser. Therefore this will only work with modern browsers (IE8+, Safari4+, Chrome3+, FF3+). You can see a demo of Meebo’s proposal at http://www.meebo.com/xauth and also there’s… Continue reading XAuth
Would Twitter’s user model help combat email spam?
As Twitter grows, so the number of potential spammers to my daily tweet stream increases. Twitter’s user model is the saving factor in all of this ‘noise’. It prevents me from being overwhelmed and could have important advantages over existing legacy internet services like email. In this blog post I’ll look at whether other internet… Continue reading Would Twitter’s user model help combat email spam?