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April 2007 - Posts

Monday, April 30, 2007 5:04 AM

:) The name of what European capital is derived from the Greek word for wisdom?

Answer: Sofia, Bulgaria. It was named after the church of Saint Sofia in the 14 th century. Source: 2007 Calendar ‘The 365 Amazing Trivia Facts’
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Monday, April 30, 2007 5:02 AM

SYSK 339: Menus and Other Popups Without Any JavaScript

The other day I came across the following article by Eric Meyer -- http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/popups/demo.html . Basically, instead of using JavaScript, you use CSS to change an element style that results in some other element(s) appearing (e.g.
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments
Friday, April 27, 2007 6:36 AM

Knowledge is Power: Learn About What’s New in Windows Mobile 6

Check out this demo for an overview of new messaging, device management and security features in Windows Mobile 6 -- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fba4e943-9b9f-48c8-8195-1000d3398f3f&DisplayLang=en
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Friday, April 27, 2007 6:34 AM

SYSK 338: What SQL Queries Are Currently Running?

That’s easy -- just run the SQL statement below… select session_id , request_id , start_time , status , cpu_time , er . total_elapsed_time , substring ( st . text , ( er . statement_start_offset / 2 ) + 1 , (( case er . statement_end_offset when - 1 then
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
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Thursday, April 26, 2007 5:04 AM

:) When it comes to animals, what is a zorse?

A cross between a zebra and a horse. Here is a quote from http://www.geocities.com/zedonknzorse/basics.html : “Zebras, donkeys, and horses are all members of the family equus - Equines. They are all slightly different in genetic makeup, but still all
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 26, 2007 5:02 AM

SYSK 337: JavaScript – Should You Define Functions Inside a Prototype or Outside?

Yesterday’s post described three ways to extend an existing type. It occurred to me that there is one more, slightly different mechanism, for defining a prototype function… you can think of it as Method 2-b. Consider the following: function TestClass(param1)
Posted by irenak | 2 Comments
Wednesday, April 25, 2007 5:06 AM

:) Same Word, Same Language, Different Countries => Different Meaning

Q: In England, what’s the difference between a vest and a waistcoat? A: An English vest is what Americans call an undershirt; a waistcoat is what Americans call a vest. And I thought ‘football’ is the only word with different meaning in US and other countries?
Posted by irenak | 4 Comments
Wednesday, April 25, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 336: Three Ways to Extend a Existing JavaScript Type

Since I haven’t seen a clear and a relatively concise explanation on this topic, I decided to create this blog post… If you want to add a function (i.e. extend) to an existing type, there are three ways that I know of to accomplish this. For example,
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 5:04 AM

:) Software Development – A Picture That’s Worth 1000 Words

Note : If you know of the source or author, please let me know so I can give proper credit. Special thanks to Gabe Brown for forwarding this image.
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 5:02 AM

SYSK 335: What Causes Windows to Blue Screen?

Ever wonder what are the circumstances of when Windows blue screens? To my knowledge, if an unhandled exception occurs in kernel-mode code (e.g. a privileged device driver or the OS kernel itself), Windows considers it too unsafe to keep running, so it
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Monday, April 23, 2007 5:05 AM

:) Do birds have singing lessons?

Apparently… yes! W. H. Thorpe (University of Cambridge) was the first to demonstrate learning in birds by performing what is now considered to be a classic experiment, involving the isolation of male chaffinches (European songbirds) in soundproof chambers
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Monday, April 23, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 334: Great Tools from DomainTools.com

http://whois.domaintools.com/ has been my long term favorite domain lookup tool for things like blacklist status, IP location, registrar information, etc. , but now it has a lot more information including search engine optimization (SEO) score, number
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Friday, April 20, 2007 5:06 AM

Non-Tech SYSK: Get Current Traffic Conditions Along With Your Driving Directions

Did you know that http://maps.live.com/ now provides up-to-date traffic information shown using different colors (green, yellow, and red) to indicate traffic conditions along your route? Of course, you can remove it by clicking ‘Hide traffic conditions’
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Friday, April 20, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 333: What Query Plans Are Cached in SQL Server?

It’s well known that, to improve performance, SQL Server caches query execution plans in memory. But would you like to know what query execution plans are currently in the cache? The following query will yield that information: select substring ( st .
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
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Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:05 AM

:) What words were combines to give Intel its name?

Answer: Int egrated el ectronics. Source: The 365 amazing trivia facts calendar from www.pageaday.com
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 332: How To Register Custom Controls Once For All Web Pages

Did you know that since .NET 2.0 you can define register directives in the <pages> element in your configuration instead of using @Register directive on every page? It’s especially useful if you’re using a custom control(s) in multiple web pages.
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 5:04 AM

:) “To cure jealousy…

… is to see it for what it is: a dissatisfaction with the self.” – Joan Didion Source: 2007 Calendar ‘For Women Who Do Too Much’
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 5:02 AM

SYSK 331: How To Expose A Client-Side Event From Your ASP.NET Control

Consider the following scenario – you create your own calendar control and you’d like to raise an event when a date is selected (e.g. OnDateClicked)… and you’d like for the users of your calendar control to process the event using JavaScript on the client
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 4:35 AM

Knowledge is Power: Synthetic Antioxidants May Increase Risk of Death

The results of several studies on affects of synthetic antioxidants such as beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and selenium were published in American Medical Association journal. In summary: “We did not find convincing evidence
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 4:32 AM

SYSK 330: How To Use An Embedded Resource From A Sub-Folder

If you’re creating a custom client-side control by deriving from System.Web.UI.IScriptControl, you may want to embed the .js files into your assembly instead of having to deploy them to every web site that uses those controls (this is especially valuable
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments
Monday, April 16, 2007 5:04 AM

Brain Teaser #4: Solve This Math Word Puzzle

Each letter stands for a 1-digit number. No two letters may stand for the same number. Using pen and paper (i.e. not writing a computer program), find a value for each letter from the following set: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9. BAD + LET ------- OVER Answer
Posted by irenak | 5 Comments
Monday, April 16, 2007 5:02 AM

SYSK 329: AJAX.NET, WPF, Expression, IE Extensions and Other Hands-On Labs and Demos

Not going to MIX 07 this year? You can still download a number of videos, PowerPoint slides, scripted demons and hands-on labs on a variety of web development topics at http://visitmix.com/university/ .
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Friday, April 13, 2007 5:08 AM

:) How do nine-banded armadillos get across small bodies of water?

Answer: Either by gulping air into their stomach and intestines and floating across, or by sinking to the bottom of shallow water and using their claws to walk across. They can hold their breath for about six minutes. Source: The 365 amazing trivia facts
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Friday, April 13, 2007 5:07 AM

SYSK 328: The “Hidden” System Database in SQL 2005

If you just open SQL Server Management Studio and expand the System Databases node, you’ll see four databases – master, model, msdb and tempdb (just like in SQL 2000). However, SQL Server 2005 has a new system database called the ‘Resource’ database,
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
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Thursday, April 12, 2007 5:13 AM

:) White for unmarried men, red for hitched…

Did you know that on the tiny Taquile Island in Lake Titicaca (on the border of Peru and Bolivia), you can quickly figure out who’s OPP without sneaking sidelong glances at ring fingers. It’s all on the head, in the form of bright, complexly patterned
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Thursday, April 12, 2007 5:03 AM

SYSK 327: The Cost of RoundedCornersExtender From AjaxControlToolkit

More and more web sites are using rounded corners on spans (labels) and panels. And since AjaxControlToolkit makes it sinfully easy to do, before I start using it extensively, I decided to do some profiling to see the cost of that extender. Here is what
Posted by irenak | 4 Comments
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:08 AM

Knowledge is Power: Why You May Not Want To Give Your Name When Signing Up For a Store Loyalty Card

Supermarkets and pharmacies offer discounts when you sign up for their loyalty cards. But every time you swipe your card, you purchases are recorded for marketing purposes. These buying records are now being sold to life and health insurance companies,
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 326: How to Measure AJAX Control Initialization Time on the Client Side

Say, you’ve added a few extender controls to make your AJAX-enabled web site look very ecstatically appealing to the end users. And now you’d like to evaluate the cost of beautifying your site in such manner. Measuring the additional page size bytes is
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 4:54 AM

Brain Teaser #3

If you subtract a three digit number (all digits unique) from another three digit number whose digits are reverse of the first number, you end up with another three digit number consisting of same digits, but in a different order: xyz – zyx = zxy What
Posted by irenak | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 4:52 AM

SYSK 325: How To Tell Which UpdatePanel Issued a Page PostBack

If you have multiple UpdatePanel controls on a page, and your Page_Load has a lot of data retrieval and rendering logic, you may want to know exactly which UpdatePanel is being updated, and execute only relevant code segments to optimize performance.
Posted by irenak | 5 Comments
Monday, April 09, 2007 5:08 AM

:) Start Your Day with a Smile (#2)

One person says to another: “I’ve been travelling so much, I reach for the seat belt when I sit down at the movies.” Source: 2007 Calendar For Women Who Do Too Much
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Monday, April 09, 2007 5:07 AM

SYSK 324: WPF Grid Sorting Without Any Hardcoded References

Not sure why, but all grid sorting examples I’ve been coming across have at least something hardcoded – be it the sort column name, the data source display member, or something else. Also, the samples I’ve seen create a member variable to hold the information
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Friday, April 06, 2007 6:30 AM

Knowledge is Power: To Sell or To Rent My House? Calculator provided…

I created an application that allows you to calculate and compare the future estate value given two scenarios: Sell a house and reinvest the proceeds at a fixed percentage for specified number of years and re-investing earned interest Keep the house,
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments

Attachment(s): InvestmentCalculator.exe.zip
Friday, April 06, 2007 6:21 AM

SYSK 323: Financial Functions IPmt, Pmt, FV Implemented in C#

Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll exposes a number of very useful financial functions, but, as far as I can see, there are no such functions in C#. Of course one can simply reference Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly, especially since it is relatively light and,
Posted by irenak | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 05, 2007 5:08 AM

Words of Wisdom: Outlook on Life

“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty”, -- Doris Day. Moral: How we look at something often determines what it is. Source: 2007 calendar For Women Who Do Too Much
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Thursday, April 05, 2007 5:07 AM

SYSK 322: RemoveChars Function For Your Utilities Assembly

Can you think of a case where you’d like to remove more than one character from a string? Some examples include '\r' and '\n' as a carriage return + line feed, or '$', ',' and ' ' for currency data entry fields… Of course you could call string.Replace
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments
Wednesday, April 04, 2007 5:05 AM

Brain Teaser: Solve This Math Word Puzzle

Each letter stands for a 1-digit number. No two letters may stand for the same number. Find a value for each letter from the following set: 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. ASK + GAVE ------- USED Answer is here . Source: http://www.edhelper.com
Posted by irenak | 4 Comments
Wednesday, April 04, 2007 5:04 AM

SYSK 321: Outstanding demonstration of Tablet PC usage

Check out this 5 minute video clip of the technology that was the result of a joint project between Microsoft and MIT, released as the Physics Illustrator for Tablet PC. Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7eGypGOlOc Physics Illustrator Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56347faf-a639-4f3b-9b87-1487fd4b5a53&displaylang=en
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:07 AM

:) Did You Know That Some Insects That Don’t Need Males To Reproduce?

It’s true -- Carausius morosus, also known as the 'common', 'Indian' or 'laboratory' stick insect, are all female and reproduce by parthenogenesis, i.e. without mating. The eggs laid by the females hatch without being fertilized by males. As the name
Posted by irenak | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:03 AM

SYSK 320: Binary vs. xml serialization performance

In my post SYSK 315 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/irenak/archive/2007/03/27/sysk-315-generic-functions-for-object-xml-serialization-deserialization.aspx ) I shared two generic functions for serialization and de-serialization of any object to/from xml. Reader
Posted by irenak | 3 Comments
Monday, April 02, 2007 3:57 AM

Knowledge is Power: Why It May Be Unwise To Give Away An Asset That Has Substantially Appreciated in Value

The short reason is that when an asset is given away, rather than inherited at death, IRS uses two different valuations of the asset when calculating gift tax and capital gains tax. Follow this example: an elderly couple wants to transfer the title on
Posted by irenak | 0 Comments
Monday, April 02, 2007 3:50 AM

SYSK 319: How to Get an Advanced Warning Before You Click on a Link that Navigates to a Malicious Web Site For Free

Recently, I have learned about a product called LinkScanner from Exploit Prevention Labs. You can use it in two ways to be advised in advance (i.e. before you click on a link) if the site you’re about to visit is known for having exploits, hacked pages,
Posted by irenak | 2 Comments
 
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