Archive for December, 2009

Review of Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod

Overall Ranking: 8/10

The first book I purchased on my new Kindle was Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I bought it based on this review by Derek Sivers. On the whole, I liked it very much. In fact, I read it in one sitting. Here are my thoughts:

What the book is not:

  • A step by step manual for doing anything
  • A specific guide to doing anything
  • Case studies

What the book is:

  • A collection of generalized lessons learned from 20 odd years in the creative business
  • Extremely well written
  • Largely a collection of aphorisms, similar to the work of Eric Hoffer
  • Highly motivational

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Review of the Amazon Kindle

Overall Ranking: 10/10

This Christmas I succumb to pressure and purchase a Kindle. First thoughts

The Good

  • The clarity is superb
  • The Kindle screen increases readability slightly compared to the printed page

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A quick guide to prioritizing email

Estimated read time – 3 minutes
Estimated completion time – 20 minutes
Estimated payback period – 10 working days

I have had my current work account for seven and a half years. I signed up for many email newsletters and alerts over the past seven years. I did a quick check and found I had over 7,000 emails in my inbox in the past year alone. I also need to keep all of my work-related emails forever.

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Merry Christmas Everyone

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How to fix "The entry ‘ScriptModule’ has already been added." error

The Problem: The web application works just fine on the local machine, but when you upload it to the web server you get the error “The entry ‘ScriptModule’ has already been added.”

The Cause: It is a conflict between asp.net versions.

The Solution: Simply comment out the <add name=”ScriptModule” type=”System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35″/> line in the web.config file and you should be good to go.

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A surprise productivity tip – posture edition

Try this, I went through an abnormally focused period today and it seemed to be caused by a slightly different posture.

  1. Sit in chair normally with good posture, nothing special.
  2. Arch back slightly

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The wisdom of Tim Ferriss

If you know me personally, then you’ve heard me rave about the work of Tim Ferriss. I heard him give a talk about the release of the new edition of his book, the Four Hour Work Week. Here are some adages I thought were particularly powerful, and true, at least in my case

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How to create a fully validated asp.net calendar control

The Problem: You have to have a fully validated date box. The dates must be valid dates and there must be data entered in the field.

The Cause: Not a problem really, I wind up rewriting it slightly differently each time. I thought I would put a definitive version here.

The Solution: Use this code
<asp:TextBox ID=”tbDate” runat=”server” CssClass=”body” />
<ajaxToolkit:MaskedEditExtender ID=”meeDate” runat=”server”
TargetControlID=”tbDate”
Mask=”99/99/9999″
MessageValidatorTip=”true”
OnFocusCssClass=”MaskedEditFocus”
OnInvalidCssClass=”MaskedEditError”
MaskType=”Date”
DisplayMoney=”Left”
AcceptNegative=”Left”
ErrorTooltipEnabled=”True” />
<ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender ID=”ceDate” runat=”server” TargetControlID=”tbDate” PopupButtonID=”imgDate” />
<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID=”rfvDate” runat=”server” ControlToValidate=”tbDate”
Display=”none” ErrorMessage=”<b>Required Field Missing</b><br />You must supply a date”
SetFocusOnError=”true” ValidationGroup=”MainB” />
<ajaxToolkit:ValidatorCalloutExtender ID=”vceDate” runat=”server” TargetControlID=”rfvDate” Width=”300″ />

<asp:CompareValidator ID=”compVDate” runat=”server” ValidationGroup=”MainB”
ControlToValidate=”tbDate” Display=”None” ErrorMessage=”<b>Required Field Missing</b><br />You must supply a valid date”
Operator=”DataTypeCheck” Type=”Date” />
<ajaxToolkit:ValidatorCalloutExtender ID=”vceCompDate” runat=”server” TargetControlID=”compVDate” Width=”300″ />
<asp:ImageButton runat=”Server” ID=”imgDate” ImageUrl=”img/icon_calendar.gif” AlternateText=”Click to show calendar” />

That’s it!

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How to fix problem with intellisense in Visual Studio 2008

The Problem: For whatever reason Intelliense in Visual Studio shows up for standard asp.net web controls appears on some pages and not on others.

The Cause: Visual Studio is a tricky little program, I have no idea why this happened. I went though the web.config files, encoding, rebooted and still got no resolution.

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How to fix the Adobe Acrobat "Save As" error

The Problem: You attempt to save a dynamically generated pdf built from a website and get the error “The document could not be saved, a number is out of range”

The Cause: Incompatibility of settings between the version of Acrobat that created the pdf and the version of Acrobat that is being used to view the pdf

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