Regular Expression Designer

I don't know about you but I'm not a big fan of the trial and error when dealing with regular expressions luckily today I managed to find a tool to help out.

Wires from the Sky

Wires from the Sky
Originally uploaded by Korich

On my way to work there was a large pile of wires and tubing in the middle of the road, they where damp so they have been there during the night. I asked the people who worked in the workshop below where we live if they knew where they where from but no one did.

Do you have any where they came from?

Sorry about the picture i took it using my crappy cellphone, and when I got home someone have tided it up.

Using a custom database for ASP.NET Membership

I needed to use a custom database for my membership and roles in an ASP.NET service it took me a little while to sort out in the web.config so I thought that I would post my web.config here just in case anyone wants to copy it. just replace the words in square brackets with the correct values.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration >

 <appSettings/ >
 <connectionStrings >
  <add  name="ApplicationConnectionString"
   connectionString="[ConnectionString]"
           providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" / >
  <add name="MembershipConnectionString"
  connectionString="[ConnectionString]"
  providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" / >
 </connectionStrings >

 <system.web >

  <compilation debug="true" / >

  <authentication mode="Forms" / >

  <membership defaultProvider="SqlMembershipProvider"  >
   <providers >
    <clear / >
    <add name="SqlMembershipProvider"
     connectionStringName="MembershipConnectionString"
    applicationName="AssetManagement"
    type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" / >
   </providers >
  </membership >
  <roleManager enabled="true" >
   <providers >
    <clear / >
    <add connectionStringName="MembershipConnectionString"
    applicationName="AssetManagement"
    name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider"
    type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" / >
   </providers >
  </roleManager >
 </system.web >
</configuration >

Oh and to add the tables you need to your database use the following command from the command line replacing the words in square brackets with the correct values;

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\[Framework]\aspnet_regsql.exe –E -S [Server] -d [DatabaseName] -A mr

Here is some more info on aspnet_regsql.exe.

CTRL + ALT + DEL on Remote Desktop

I was having trouble today drying to can a servers password when I remembered the reason it was not working was because I was using the wrong command(this may have taken half an hour). So kids remember when you want to use "CTRL + ALT + DEL" on a Remote desktop it is actually "CTRL + ALT + END".

Watch out for Zombies

Keep an eye out for zombies this summer.

Good Bye Paid Hosting

I have been paying for web hosting for over 3 years and as of this post I will be paying for hosting no more.

It occured to me a little while ago that the only thing I am really using my paid hosting for is my blog and email. While there are plenty of good blog hosting solutions (blogger.com, wordpress.com), I hadn't however found anyway to manage my email with the same control as paid hosting, that was until I found Google Apps.

What is Google Apps you may ask, well Apps is basically a way to assign google services to your domain name. The services that Apps currently supports are:

• Start Page - Google Start Page(ig)
  
• Email - gmail.com
  
• Calendar - Google Calendar
  
• Docs and Spreadsheets - Google Docs
• Chat - Google Talk
  
• Web Pages - Google Page Creator

Why may you ask should I use google apps when I can just set up a gmail account and have all that anyway?
The answer is pretty simple- all these services are run under your domain name. This means that you can set up users and they will have an email address at your domain (ie pete@yourdomain.com) and a document store at your domain as well.

You can even host your own webpage with Google Pages.

Gremlin in the System

The site is back, I got a really large amount of traffic and my webhost shut down my site so that the rest of the websites on the Server still worked
I have moved the gallery to flickr to make the site work faster lets hope it works.
It would of been nice fot them to tell me that they were planning to shut down the site tho.