All posts by : MarkAllanson.Net

1 of 16 | Windows Vista (Build 5536, Pre-RC1) Camera Support - I have been using Windows Vista full time since they dropped the Pre-RC1 build last week. So far, so good. I had a welcome surprise this evening though when I plugged my EOS 350D into the computer and Vista recognised it straight away and let me pull down photo’s into the new Windows  Photo Gallery. It  doesn’t sound all that fantastic, does it. About 2 weeks ago when I bought my iPod and Camera connector I had switched the camera over to using the Print/PTP protocol over USB as this is the protocol required to pull photos down to the iPod from the camera directly. I had inadvertantly left the camera in this setting, and thought about this as soon as I had plugged the camera into the compu......

2 of 16 | iPod + Camera Connector = Notebook -   With all the travel restrictions that are currently in place when flying out of any UK airport at the moment, the thought of trying to get a big backpack full of Notebook, SLR and accessories into the cabin as hand baggage is a bit daunting. The width of a backpack would definitely exceed the 160mm restriction currently in place. Now, I normally take my notebook on vacation travel (Ie, travel where I want to just chill out and do very little) with me for a couple of reasons: Refill my iPod Shuffle when I want some new tunes. Offload images from my camera’s memory card. I generally don’t do the following things: Try and hook up anywhere that has net access - I really couldn’t care less ......

3 of 16 | Links for 2006-08-07 [del.icio.us] - 15 Seconds : SQL Server 2005 XQuery and XML-DML - Part 1 Great overview of the XML support in SQL Server 2005. Good as a reference guide. ...

4 of 16 | Links for 2006-05-15 [del.icio.us] - David Boschmans Weblog : Service activated workflows in IIS 7 A post pointing to a few articles about hosting WF inside IIS7, and activating them directly from web services without needing to write much (if any) glue code. To read later. ...

5 of 16 | Links for 2006-05-10 [del.icio.us] - Sowmy Srinivasan's WCF Blog : WCF Serialization Programming Model An overview of Service and Data Contracts in Indigo/WCF ...

6 of 16 | Links for 2006-03-22 [del.icio.us] - Using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Documentation on the new drop of WinFX and Atlas that allows Atlas applications to consume WCF services. ...

7 of 16 | Links for 2006-03-11 [del.icio.us] - HTML Validation: Choosing a DOCTYPE A list of HTML Doctype strings and a small description of each. DevGuru XML DOM Node Object ...

8 of 16 | Clarion XML Primer - Note: This post was originally written about 3 years ago (my XML knowdledge is significantly better now, I promise) but always stored as a draft, never finished nor published. In fact, I forgot it existed until I switched over to WordPress and imported all my Movable Type entries into WordPress. Given I have not used [...]...

9 of 16 | Project Post Mortem - Since July last year I have been working on the design, development and testing of a project designed to provide wireless data access to field workers for a resources client. My role was primarily focussed on the design, development and performance/resilience testing of the EAI solution in Microsoft BizTalk 2004 and our own custom made Resequencer software. This part of the project was initially planned as being a migration from BizTalk 2002 to BizTalk 2004, however as almost anyone tasked with this type of work has learned, there is no point in migrating from one to the other without redesigning your messaging system to take advantage of all the new bits that BizTalk 2004 gives you. We wen......

10 of 16 | Xml Schema Editor refreshed in Whidbey - Thank you Microsoft! After having to write and modify large schema xml files by hand due to the fact that the VS.NET 2003 Xml Schema Editor was so, so, so horrendously slow, Whidbey has refreshed the Xml Schema Editor in the following ways:Fast. Redraw of elements is quick. (as opposed to being so slow you could watch the redraw in progress bit by bit)Xml Schema Overview. This is like the Pan & Zoom window that comes in Visio. Excellent.Partial Redraw when scrolling using the Xml Schema Overview. Elements that come into view are drawn in a minimilistic fashion until you stop zooming, making the scroll very quickLeft Rooted Tree. This is much nicer than the Top Rooted version in VS.NET 2......

11 of 16 | Xml Schema Editor refreshed in Whidbey - Thank you Microsoft!After having to write and modify large schema xml files by hand due to the fact that the VS.NET 2003 Xml Schema Editor was so, so, so horrendously slow, Whidbey has refreshed the Xml Schema Editor in the following ways:Fast. Redraw of elements is quick. (as opposed to being so slow you could watch the redraw in progress bit by bit)Xml Schema Overview. This is like the Pan & Zoom window that comes in Visio. Excellent.Partial Redraw when scrolling using the Xml Schema Overview. Elements that come into view are drawn in a minimilistic fashion until you stop zooming, making the scroll very quickLeft Rooted Tree. This is much nicer than the Top Rooted version in VS.NET ......

12 of 16 | Project Post Mortem - Since July last year I have been working on the design, development and testing of a project designed to provide wireless data access to field workers for a resources client. My role was primarily focussed on the design, development and performance/resilience testing of the EAI solution in Microsoft BizTalk 2004 and our own custom made Resequencer software. This part of the project was initially planned as being a migration from BizTalk 2002 to BizTalk 2004, however as almost anyone tasked with this type of work has learned, there is no point in migrating from one to the other without redesigning your messaging system to take advantage of all the new bits that BizTalk 2004 gives you.W......

13 of 16 | Back into my PalmOne Tungsten E + Rss - So, whilst preparing to go to Barcelona last week I decided to fire the Tungsten E back into life (haven`t touched in at least 6 months) so I could install the brilliant Metro for a bit of navi-help. As it turns out I didn`t get around to syncing Metro, and lived without it (not enough time to sync), but I was once again wowed by how nice the screens are on the current gen PalmOne devices. The font is so smooth and readable. So. I had to find a use and get back into the PDA thing, despite what Russell is preaching about the death of the PDA. I have had, and hated an Orange SPV E200, although I have never extensively used a Symbian based phone, I am thinking my next may be a Symbian. Anyway ......

14 of 16 | Cleaning up your Xml Serialization output - Serialization is a great thing, except when you can`t get it to do what you want it to do. Case in point: I was serializing a small class that was going to be farmed off to a logger, which took the data and stored it in a logging database sitting on SQL Server. If you have ever done any serialization before, you will know that when you use the System.Xml.XmlSerialization.XmlSerializer to serialize a class you get a number of artifacts in the resultant xml, something along the lines of that below: (note I was serializing a class called ContextItem) .cf { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 8pt; color: black; background: white; border-top: silver 1pt solid; padding-top: 0pt; border-left: navy 2p......

15 of 16 | Biztalk Blogs Aggregation - Last Updated 08/09/2004The RSS feed was for aggregation was getting very large (almost 1 meg), so the feed now only publishes the latest 20 items to the site, and size has dropped to about 200kb, much more managable. I`ve started searching for Biztalk related blogs recently given that it is now my primary focus at work. I found a few and decided to make use of Addy Santo`s excellent Blogwave to create an aggregated version of the weblogs I have found. Effectively this creates something similar to Longhorn Blogs, an aggregated site on a specific topic. So. You can point your aggregator to my "Biztalk Blogs" aggregation which is updated every 30 minutes (so long as I leave my workstation on a......

16 of 16 | Biztalk 2004 Training - On Sunday I`m jetting off to Chicago for a Biztalk 2004 training course from IMG. I`ve been maintaining an existing Biztalk 2002 implementation for a while now, and have just been recruited to help a transition to Biztalk 2004, so its time to go on some formal training as there are currently no books available anywhere! I have WiFi in my hotel room so will be contactable via email and will be on MSN Messenger at various times over the week. If anyone wants to get together for dinner drop me an email, i`m staying at Club Quarters, Wacker at Michigan (75 E Wacker Drive), near the river on the Magnificent Mile. Training venue is One IBM Plaza.......