I installed Microsoft's Powertoy "Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP" but that failed with a "cannot load image" message. I was at wit's end. Until ...

Finally, I discovered that Microsoft's Live Photo Gallery that is part of Vista and Windows 7 and that does suppot CR2 RAW files was available for Windows XP. Download it here: http://download.live.com/photogallery and then uncheck all the vile software you don't need. Et voila, CR2 RAW support from your explorer in Windows XP.

Whew. That only took me about 2 hours to fix.

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I consulted the Event viewer, but that only yielded the following message.

Log Name: Application
Source: MSSQL$SE2008R2
Date: 1-6-2010 12:38:43
Event ID: 17120
Task Category: Server
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: [censored]
Description:
SQL Server could not spawn lazy writer thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="MSSQL$SE2008R2" />
<EventID Qualifiers="49152">17120</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>2</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-06-01T10:38:43.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>7660</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>censored</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>lazy writer</Data>
<Binary>E042000010000000130000004400540041003000300035003400360030005C0053004500320030003000380052003200000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

After checking the internet for a solution, I came up with none. I decided to check the SQL Server Log file and it contained the following line.

I/O affinity turned on, processor mask 0x00000002. Disk I/Os will execute on CPUs per affinity I/O mask/affinity64 mask config option. This is an informational message only; no user action is required.

I them remembered that I had tried to assign CPU2 to handle I/O requests. Since the only way to remedy something that goes wrong and which you haven't got a clue about is to retrace your steps, my next step would be to undo that setting. But the SQL Service wouldn't start and the -I command line option didn't work.

I started SQL Server manually as described in this MSDN article: How to: Start an Instance of SQL Server (sqlservr.exe). I specifically used the -f option to make sure SQL Server would start with as little configuration as possible.

SQL Server started and I launched my Enterprise Manager and checked the "Automatically set I/O affinity mask for all processors".

I then closed the Enterprise Manager, quit the command prompt and started the service. Life was peachy again.

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A few weeks ago, I decided to check out where all the World of Warcraft Phishing attempts came from. I quit WoW quite a while ago, but I keep getting "notification" messages. I did a quick check of the headers and found out that the mails are being sent to the exact same mail address I used to register with Gamersloot.net.

I have a long standing policy to create specific mail addresses for every site I register on. This allows me to track back spam to the originating site and it worked well for Gamersloot.net.

So, besides the Goldselling activities and the "take-the-money-and-run" activities, they also do Phishing - trying to steal passwords from the people they rip off.

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FCB::Open failed: Could not open file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\DATA\mastlog.ldf for file number 2. OS error: 5(failed to retrieve text for this error. Reason: 1815).

FCB::Open failed: Could not open file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\DATA\master.mdf for file number 1. OS error: 5(failed to retrieve text for this error. Reason: 1815).

Additionally, when trying to change settings from the SQL Server Configuration manager, I got the following error.

You have until 1% to log off. If you have not logged off at this time, your session will be disconnected and any open files or devices you've opened may loose data. [0x80070d59]

The solution was to enter the Services control panel, locate the SQL SERVER (EXPRESS) service, pick the Log On tab and check "Log on as Local System Account".

That got the job done. It's running now.

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You won't be able to add additional storage. In a its cheapest form, it has 16GB of storage. That cannot be expanded. Think how many pictures and music you currently have on your netbook or laptop.

It won't play music on the web. Last.FM, Facebook, YouTube, Hyves, MySpace and a myriad of other websites use Flash to let you listen to music. "The best way to experience the web" is as a deaf person.

You won't be able to connect to network or USB printers. This rules out the iPad as a business tool. Unless you absolutely never have to print anything out.

You won't be able to connect to external storage devices. You won't be able to connect to your Network Storage or other laptops - Windows, Mac or Linux.

It has no camera, so there won't be any videochat. Almost all current netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam. And you won't be able to add an external webcam because, you guessed it, no USB support. There's also no mention of a microphone so even skyping won't work. Oh, and there's no USB support so no USB microphones either.

It won't play video on the web. Sure, it will have its built-in YouTube app, but since it doesn't have multitasking, that means you will have to stop browsing and watch the movie. When the movie is finished, you'll have to start the browser again. Manually. That's acceptable for a Smartphone, but not for a tablet. And you certainly won't be able to watch MySpace video. Or Vimeo. Or Blip.TV. All of which are very good and valid video sites with extremely good content.

There's no easy way to type text on the tablet. And you can't add a USB keyboard. Because it has no USB. So don't expect to type long mails to your mother - which you could just Skype if you had a webcam. Or even a built-in microphone.

For those of you who think the absence of Flash is good because "you browse with Flash turned off anyway". That is not entirely true for most. Most run with a Flash blocker which allows them to turn Flash ON every once in a while to experience additional content on a website. But you don't even have that choice. There is no Flash. And I highly doubt that it will have HTML5 video support.

So there. No iPad for me. I'll stick to my Acer Netbook for couch surfing.

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It often happens when reading bulk information that dates get treated as text to minimise the amount of conversion errors on the import. I have seen a lot of intricate algorythms to verify the validity of such a string as a date. I have seen people cutting it up by explicitly searching for the separator, storing each part in a different variable, rearranging those variables and then convert the amalgamated strings into a new string which, hopefully, yields a date. I've seen code where the dates get split up, stuck in a table and then rearranged with selects. I believe there is an easier way which simply reads as follows.

 
SET dateformat dmy
 
SELECT 'It''s a date, cap''n!'
FROM tblImport
WHERE ISDATE(someDateField) = 1
 

By using "set dateformat dmy", we tell SQL Server to analyse any possible date by assuming that first part of any date is the day of month, the second is the month and the last part is the year. There are drawbacks, however. You must use either a hyphen or a slash as a separator. You cannot use concatenated date strings or other separators such as periods or blanks.

Still, for us in continental Western-Europe, this solves a lot of problems when reading from bulk imports.

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IF @pCode = 'AA' or @pCode = 'AB' or @pCode = 'BA' or @pCode = 'XY'
	SET @actionType = 'single'
ELSE
	SET @actionType = 'combined'
 

You can recode this to SQL to make it more readable.

The second option will be slower - about four times slower - but on my stone-age development system, it still performed 20000 iterations in under 200ms. That's 100000 comparisons per second.

 
SELECT
	@actionType = 'combined'
 
SELECT
	@actionType = 'single'
WHERE
	@pCode in
		(
			'AA',
			'AB',
			'BA',
			'XY'
		)
 

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It's weird, because nowhere on the uservoice.com website is your mail address actually displayed or linked. So, either someone who participates in the tweetdeck uservoice discussions had a virus, or uservoice.com has had a privacy leak and all the mail addresses in their database are now being spammed. The latter seems likely because of the high amount of spam I'm getting, which could indicate that spammers believe this address to be recent and valid.

I would like to hear from other people who've had their spam count increase dramatically over the past few weeks and if they can determine why.

Edit: At least 1 other person is experiencing this: http://twitter.com/bjq/status/1784497230

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In 2003, I applied for a job through Computer Futures. They have kept that information on file for over 6 years without a follow-up call. Any decent recruitment center would have either stopped using that information or place a follow-up meeting to make sure the data is up-to-date. More on the legality of keeping data that long in the last paragraph.

In the meantime, I keep getting job offers that do not concern me. I got job offers for developing in languages or environments that I never worked with and that certainly weren't ever mentioned in my resume. I got job offers stating that the candidate had to live in close vicinity to the offices - which were halfway across the country for me. I got job offers that didn't even mention a job offer, just a description of the company they were "recruiting" for.

I have asked to be removed from their systems several times over the past year. I have done so by writing to the call-center agents that mailed me, by writing to the e-mail address they mentioned in their e-mails and by writing to info@computerfutures.nl. I kept getting mails.

Today, I called them and the person answering the phone couldn't tell me why I hadn't been removed from the system, even though I had used the mail address mentioned in their mails for about four times. Upon asking to be removed, I was told that "I will make sure that you will no longer receive our e-mails". That's not what I asked. I wanted to have my information removed from the system. The call-center agent replied that "I will block everything that I can block". He could not affirm that my data would be permanently deleted. He also wouldn't confirm that they never had face-to-face interviews or that they screened persons by a real-life interview. When I pushed, he asked me if I wanted to have my e-mail removed or if I wanted a discussion. I told him that the latter would be nice since I had some questions about the way they treated me and my privacy to which I got blown off with a "I don't have time for this". Well, thank you! Just another confirmation that Computer Futures doesn't care about you as a person.

Itmight  also be useful to add that Dutch Law states that data concerning job applications should not be held longer than one year after which they have to be destroyed. It looks like Computer Futures is breaking that law. Not only that law, but they're also breaking the OPTA rules which state that everyone should have the right to know what personal data is being kept by an organisation and should have the right to ask for immediate removal of this data from any databases and archives that this organisation stored his or her data in. So, I'm filing complaints with the appropriate government institutes. It'll take time and effort, but that's how tired I am of Computer Futures.

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Anyway, if you're looking for the MSHTML library, it's a COM reference and it's actually named "Microsoft HTML object library". You need to put using mshtml; in your project to be able to reference it.

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