May 2006 Blog Posts
After posting my problems with the XML serializer yesterday, Scott Hanselman blogged a possible solution for the bug and a further explanation of what to look for in the serializer. Now I'm not one to quibble here with whether or not the .NET 2.0 serializer \ xsd.exe should be intelligent enough to figure out that the generic case for serialization should appear last in a series of if statements or whether I've been riding my luck with the .NET 1.1 serializer for the last sixteen months, and thus whether or not it counts as a bug, but I was happy...
Scenario : I have a multi-project solution which has just been migrated to VS2005. I rebuild the whole solution successfully (plus a few warnings about obsolete methods of calling and signing assemblies) and everything continues to work as normal. I make a few changes to remove some of the obsolete methods and recompile. The solution now exhibits the serializer bug described in ‘Migration Woes Part 2’ but only in the release build. Debug build continues to work fine. I finish removing obsolete calls from the solution and the serializer bug is now present in both debug and release builds. By...
Scenario: We upgraded one of the XML servers we run to .NET 2.0 recently and started noticing a problem with its serialization of response messages. We have boiled this problem down to a problem the XML Serializer has with a schema <choice> group containing an element with no content model. In our case, it looks like this.
<element name="epp" type="epp:eppType" />
<complexType name="eppType">
<choice>
<element name="hello" />
<element name="greeting" type="epp:greetingType" />
</choice>
</complexType>
The .NET 1.1 framework serializes a greeting element correctly
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<epp xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:epp-1.0">
<greeting>
<svID>Test</svID>
<svDate>2006-05-04T11:01:58.1Z</svDate>
...
Groan. Is there no end to it?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon is writing a new six-issue Buffy mini-series for Dark Horse Comics. The first volume is due out in October. A Dark Horse spokesperson has confirmed to ICv2 that the new series chronicles events that happened to Buffy and her friends after the conclusion of their televised adventures and will function as a “Season 8” to the highly popular cult hit TV series that ran for seven seasons…
[Via Warrenellis.com]
[Update: I've actually started reading Season 8 now. It's pretty good actually]
Looks like the staff at my parent’s local hospital having been taking the piss recently - and I don't mean urine samples.
The Queen Mother Hospital’s (Margate, UK) server was down for two days because it was stuffed with illegal music, movie and software downloads. While the server was down X-rays had to be processed using film. (cont...) [Via Torrentfreak]
I tried this last night and it chose to unpack the hotfixes and the like onto the same partition on the external hard disk. Once finished unpackiing, it simply stopped saying it could not continue but without giving any reasons. Even the log was a bit useless - the corresponding entry read, "The patch installation could not proceed due to unexpected errors". But the fix is simple. Copy the service apck to your internal hard drive, switch off the external disk and install it from C:. Works fine then.
No real connection here - just a clear out of the nice links in my in-tray.
SQL Server 2005 Links
SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 : http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp1.mspx
SQL Server 2005 Books Online April 2006 : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=be6a2c5d-00df-4220-b133-29c1e0b6585f&DisplayLang=en
SQL Server 2005 Webcasts : http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx
Laughs
Colbert on Bush : http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/30/1441/59811
Mel Gibson is bonkers : http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=52393&highlight=&sid=3186070f604487084ab75c756951b53c
A proper google mashup : http://beermapping.com/city-beer-maps
Coding
Ten Things I Hate About Websites : http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=463946&rl=1
Bad Code Spotters Guide...
It's been a while but our director \ producer has finally made available the video (Windows Media File only) we made for the 48 hour movie challenge last summer. It's not perfect, but it's none too shabby. Have a look and let me know what you think.
Movie
Set Photos