Archive for March, 2006
I’m improving the installer for a web application. It’s a windows installer. It needs to register a MIME type with the server. This is important to do, since Windows 2003 server will not serve unknown Mime types. (Neither will Windows 2000 after the Lockdown tool has been used).
WMI is the preferred mechanism for diddling IIS settings, but it turns out you can’t rely on WMI being installed. So we need to user ADSI, the underlying technology.
ADSI is a maze of little automation objects, all poorly documented. There’s plenty of documentation. It’s just that most of it is pointless drivel. Undocumentation as some have called it.
The ADSI incantations necessary have been recorded by wizened elders.
Unfortunately these incantations need to be converted to C++ in order to work inside an installer. There is a heavy bias against using script in installers. Partly because script may not be installed, or if it is installed, it’s a lower version than we require. So a hardened C++ version is needed.
In case anyone needs to know, here is how to tweak ADSI to add a mime-type to IIS from C++. It’s not pretty - being a frankenstein monster of cut-and-paste snippets from various places.
Continue Reading March 13th, 2006
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Brother Erik and slightly pregnant Beate painting the ceiling of their soon-to-be bedroom.
March 12th, 2006
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Brother Erik and slightly pregnant Beate painting the ceiling of their soon-to-be bedroom.
March 12th, 2006
Pretty mindblowing episode. Totally changes the tone of the series. Full of delicious, dripping irony. Wonder if Time and Rolling Stone would still call it “the best of television” after this bang.
(and damn it - no new episodes til after summer! Arg!)
Oh, and a huge amount of respect is due to Ron Moore and his podcasts. He manages to say something interesting or educational about the evolution of each episode. It’s like having a DVD commentary to the episode. Brilliant stuff, and he obviously has a sense of humor about the whole thing, although how he manages to find the time to do this is baffling.
March 11th, 2006
Pride and Predjudice. Ok - I’ll cop to not having read the book or seen the BBC series. This is the Readers Digest version. It’s the Baz Luhrman paced version. Any dull sequences have been excised in order to keep the film tearing along like a runaway train.
The melodrama still plays well. The characters stand out even more strongly because they are never away from the screen for too long. The only problem is that the Bennett sisters (apart from our heroine, Ms Bennett) can blend together. You absorb the information that one of them has run off with Keira Knightly’s crush, but you can’t quite put your finger on which one is now missing.
Donald Sutherland is brilliant as her old father, and the wry humor keeps the audience from getting drenched in melodrama.
Matthew Macfadyen is quite dastardly as Darcy. I couldn’t put my finger on where I had seen him before, but with a little help from IMDB he was the taciturn spy in Spooks.
March 7th, 2006
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Time for the annual cabin trip. The past month has been filled with business trips, colds, and wintery lethargy; so my form sucks more than usual. A little trip of barely an hour left me wiped out. It’s twelve below out there and the sun shining through an overcast sky.
Beautiful as always.
March 3rd, 2006
A cute feel-good movie based on a true story. Anthony Hopkins plays the naive, harmless old fool with a motorsikkle that goes insanely fast. It’s a road movie — it’s the journey, not the destination that matters, although in this case the journey is kinda predictable and a bit over-long, and the destination makes you forget about the journey to get there.
The characters are all amiable. Maybe everyone was like this in the early sixties, but I fear they are more caricatures than real characters. They help Hopkins on his way to the desert racetrack. Each little encounter is cute, but after a while they feel a bit repetitive. Once the racing starts, the gears shift and the audience wakes up again. The sensation of speed is awesome. Makes the Star Wars pod-race seem like a stroll around the park.
March 1st, 2006
