While doing some Facebook Connect development, I found that the expected cookies were not being set when developing on localhost. To fix the problem, I added localhost.local to my hosts file (pointing at 127.0.0.1) and changed the settings for my Facebook application to use localhost.local as the base domain.
I’ve been doing some work with ASP.NET MVC but was having periodic issues with Visual Studio 2008 hanging (freezing / becoming unresponsive) when I tried to run my web application with debugging. The problem only occurred with a specific web project.
I tried deleting the Temporary ASP.NET Files (%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files) but that did not solve the problem.
I tried deleting the obj folder. No luck.
I tried waiting it out one evening. I eventually feel asleep and when I awoke sometime in the middle of the night, my web app was happily waiting for input and Visual Studio debugging was completely responsive. That proved to be a temporary salve.
The problem resurfaced again a few days later and I finally figured out the problem with my uncooperative debugger. I have a folder containing approximately 20,000 images that are not included in the Visual Studio web project but are sitting in a directory in the web site. I had turned on "Show All Files" in Solution Explorer to add some script files into the project. When "Show All Files" is off, F5 (Start Debugging) works like champ. When "Show All Files" is on, Visual Studio becomes unresponsive. In reality it is not "frozen" but simply taking a very long time to process those 20,000 image files.
Mystery solved.
While my buddy Jason Row was traveling home from the awesomeness that was TechDays Halifax 2009, Mother Nature invoked the Deflate() method on his tire.
How does a software developer change a car tire in the dark? By the light of his laptop screen of course:
Nice!
(BTW, Jason is currently job hunting if you know someone looking to tap into that creative thinking. You can find Jason on LinkedIn or contact him via his blog.)
If you’re heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the only sold out TechDays show in Canada (November 2-3, 2009), you might be wondering what to do when you’re not at the conference. Here are some suggestions:
Rogue’s Roost Brew PubThis is my favourite place to eat in downtown Halifax. The floors are sticky, the service isn’t great, but the chicken fingers and ale are wonderful. Make sure you get the honey dill dipping sauce with your fingers.
OK, you’d have to be nuts to go surfing in Nova Scotia in November. Of course the SurfDonkey boys are clearly nuts: http://surfdonkey.ca/.
Step 1: Watch http://baddad.tv/
Step 2: Wander around Halifax trying to recognize locations from the show. Good luck.
…and asking him repeatedly when the heck we’ll get another episode of Bad Dad. ;) [he looks like this: http://vimeo.com/2117659]
“Freak Lunchbox searches the world to find the weirdest, newest and hippest candy and pop culture items on the market.â€
How can you NOT visit this place!?
[Nearby Sweet Janes is also worth visiting.]
OK, I’m not sure exactly why you’d want to do this, but you could take the ferry over to Dartmouth just for fun (I guess).
This was someone else’s idea. I’m not officially endorsing it…
There is a Tim Horton’s in the ferry terminal. I suppose that’s something.
Climb Citadel Hill (National Historic Site)Worth the uphill climb, the Citadel’s stone fortress offers amazing views of the city and the harbor to its visitors. The view from the Citadel will show you the amazing architecture of downtown between the hilltop and harbor; the harbor’s mouth of wooded islands; and the naval dockyard under the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge, which connects Halifax and Dartmouth. Just 9 blocks from the waterfront, the Citadel has been restored to look much as the fort did in 1856.
http://www.halifaxkiosk.com/halifax-tour/Citadel-National-Historic-Park.php
Note: November 1 to May 6, the grounds are open but no services are available. Here some photos of the Citadel if you’re unfamiliar with it: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=halifax+citadel.
I’m giving a bonus session on the Interoperable Web Platform on Monday afternoon (4:20pm in the Servers, Security, and Management track room according to my info).
I’ll be covering some uber goodness like running PHP on IIS (I run 6 WordPress sites on IIS7 as well as http://tyny.ca), SuperPreview, the SEO Toolkit for IIS.
And my slides are gorgeous! Very few bullet points. You’ll definitely want to be there.
If there are other things happening, I will announce them via Twitter. Follow @derekhat or just watch http://twitter.com/derekhat and http://search.twitter.com/search?q=techdays_ca.
(photo credit: citadel)
As usual, Joel Spolsky hits the nail square on the head in his Oct 26, 2009 piece on the discrepancy between what Computer Science programs teach and what software developers need to know in the real world:
It is amazing how easy it is to sail through a Computer Science degree from a top university without ever learning the basic tools of software developers, without ever working on a team, and without ever taking a course for which you don’t get an automatic F for collaborating. Many CS departments are trapped in the 1980s, teaching the same old curriculum that has by now become completely divorced from the reality of modern software development.
Where are students supposed to learn about version control, bug tracking, working on teams, scheduling, estimating, debugging, usability testing, and documentation? Where do they learn to write a program longer than 20 lines?
