Tech
Programming, gadgets, IT stuff
So I volunteered again for a .NET user group monthly meeting – this time I’m presenting a whole session on getting information into and out of Second Life using .NET on the server-side. If you can make it along on Saturday 27th at 12pm SLT, you may learn something about the following (agenda still to be confirmed!):
It's all about the data - storing data from SL externally, using external data in-world
What can you store?
What can you get in-world?
How can you get data into and out of SL - HTTP, XML RPC.
The basics of...
I've been totally swamped with all sorts of projects recently, including hacking with OpenSim code, building a SharePoint deployment solution, building content for then hosting another fantastic event on Second Life, hosting Code Clinics on Microsoft Island every Wednesday, and watching Bob the Builder (we love BBC iPlayer).
From the recent code clinics I've had requests for some links and follow-up materials, so catching up on the past few weeks here's what I've got (it's not an exhaustive list, sorry, but I'll try to keep more notes following meetings in future!):
Data Access tricks - the Using statement
This one generated a fair...
Over the past week I've made some great progress on my OpenSim experiment. For starters, I've got my server configured in Grid mode, and I have all four of the main servers running on SQL Server. This did require a bit of development - the inventory server was quite broken for SQL Server, so James and I fixed the code and submitted a patch, but the good news is that this means it'll be in a better state for the rest of you from now on.
If you're committed to switching from SQLite as much as possible then I would recommend...
I've just been through two days of pain trying to get content deployment to work from an internal authoring site, authenticated against Active Directory, to a live site that is Internet-facing (hence allows anonymous access), and has a forms authentication user store. It's more of an admin nightmare than a developer task, but as I've found over many months, working with SharePoint as a developer involves a lot of the admin side of things too. This blog post is a guide to a proof-of-concept, and not meant for a live production environment.
So, what can I share with you that...
Over the past few weeks I've taken a big leap into the world of Open Source development and started messing around with OpenSim, the BSD licenced 3D virtual world based on Second Life, but reinvented from scratch using C#. It's an immense project that's been in development for a while, and it's starting to look pretty good.
Getting hold of OpenSim is relatively easy, especially if you're a developer and have used Subversion before. Grab the latest code, run the pre-build tool, build the solution and you're just about ready. Make sure you run the correct exe for your system (64bit...
Handy tip that James pointed out the other day - my Virtual PC machine console window keeps disappearing (perhaps thinking that I have an external monitor plugged in). You can see it on the task bar, but clicking on it doesn't bring it to the top of the pile on the desktop, so, how do you get it back on your main screen? In the following order: alt space m any arrow key move the mouse Hey presto, the window snaps to under your mouse cursor and you can drop it wherever you like. Very handy and...
April 26th is the day for your diary; all our preparation work finally gets load tested to the extreme as we host the Heroes Happen Here launch event for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on Second Life. We're getting three extra islands for launch day so we can make the event run as smoothly as possible for all the attendees, and there'll be much partying and some freebies for those who come along to the island. Before that happens, I'm travelling to Orlando for 3 days (figured I'd need jet lag before a major...
I've been having fun getting objects in Second Life talking to a database on my dev server using .NET code, so I thought I'd share the magic with those of you who are interested.
For the SecondLife bit, I'll use the llHTTPRequest object to request data from my external source. The real-world bit is some ASP.NET code running on a development server. In order to understand how this code works, you need to understand the underlying structure of a HTTP request. If you've not done anything like this before, here's a quick dive in.
Each time you view a web page with...
I've recently become involved with the .NET user group on Second Life, which (for those of you who've not yet tried it), is a great way to meet people from all over the world in a 3D virtual world. I've been a resident on there for a while now, but I'm only just starting to really make the most of it, and it's a real buzz. Last weekend, the Microsoft Visual Studio Island on Second Life played host to a talk on Silverlight by Todd Anglin from Telerik. Members of the user group, represented by Avatars in this virtual world,...
I had a bit of trouble installing .NET 3.5 recently. My machine had decided to install some Windows Updates at the same time as installing .NET 3.5 and I think the combination of the two caused the entire machine to fall over in a heap. One by one all my applications stopped responding, including ctrl+alt+del, so I resorted to hitting the Big Reset Button, but this left my 3.5 install in a very broken state. It wasn't installed and it couldn't be installed - each time I tried, Setup threw an exception.
I looked through all the installed programs, trawled through all the...
I had an interesting bug to fix this week, discovered in the context of a SharePoint application, but that equally affects anyone producing content for display on the web. The client I've been working with recently has been having trouble displaying marketing images from a SharePoint picture library. Given that the picture library in question was customised quite heavily (to include custom columns) as part of the solution I've been working on, my first assumption was that there was an error in the provisioning code. The library in question was working perfectly with many of their images - photos of...
I recently turned off Vista User Account Control on my laptop. I'd left it on because I figured I'd give it a go and see whether I could fit in to the new Vista way of doing things. It was when I was clicking "OK, OK, Just Get On With It" on almost every dialog that I realised that this was not a good idea. One of those popups was a Windows Firewall message and I'd not looked to see what I'd just let through.
I'm actually behind a myriad of firewalls and natty things here, so Windows firewall isn't...
It's been a hectic few weeks - my first contract has been a case of diving in at the deep end and pulling together some fun SharePoint stuff on a project with a very pressing deadline. Phase 1 is now complete, so what have I been up to, and what have I learned?
1. If you import a bunch of users from Active Directory, you can create a MySite for each user before they log in using the following code:
SPSite parentSite = new SPSite(_siteUrl);
UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(ServerContext.GetContext(parentSite));
foreach (UserProfile p in profileManager)
{
if (p.PersonalSite == null)
p.CreatePersonalSite();
}
2. When developing features...