Archive for the ‘Updates’ Category
Some of my blogs written in the last 3 months have been lost by my hosting provider.
Since I kept getting similar things happening I lost interest in my blog at the time.
Now I’m back and I’m working on a new DNS server to be used in conjunction with a Windows Hosting Control Panel I’m putting together for Windows Server 2003/2008.
A couple of weeks ago another chap named Aaron asked me if I had done a copy of the PageRank code but this time in VB.Net
I said I’d take a look because the versions out on the Internet that he had seen didn’t work. Well this evening I found the time to do the VB.Net version.
I started by manually converting my C# code to VB.Net – bear in mind I haven’t worked in VB.Net for over 2 years now. When the conversion was complete I found that VB.Net was converting and handling integer types slightly differently to C#.
When my code failed to work I resulted to using a free online C# to VB.Net conversion utility on devfusion. The conversion was pretty much word for word what I had put and still didn’t work.
I then went through the process of stepping each iteration and for-next loop until I found the cause of the differences in values being retured. Turns out in the end it was simply the “integer division” operator that I needed to use in place of the standard division operator.
So here it is: go to download pagerank tool code in VB.net and C#
Also bear in mind this is .Net v2 code – I haven’t tested it on previous versions of VB.Net
If you use this in your code or on your website, I’d appreciate you linking back to my website.
Enjoy
A few months ago I started having trouble with my hosting provider. This started off with short bits of downtime which you attribute to updates and essential maintenance – no problem.
Then things got more serious and I noticed that the hosts had been having hardware and software issues and not correctly restoring my sites, access passwords and databases.
At this point I started to look elsewhere.
I decided that after using lesser-known companies for the last few years I would use xyz – a big name who offered exactly what I thought I wanted. They offered .NET2 hosting with MS-SQL.
Initially I kept my old hosting account live (and I’m glad I did).
Things didn’t get off to a good start with the new hosting company.
Firstly I couldn’t use SQL Management Studio to access my database but was instead forced to use some pathetic web-based system which made creating databases a complete pain.
Importing data was even worse as in order to import data on their system you had to either import a CSV file from your PC (which means it must be small or the script times out and import fails). Or you could upload a backup or Access database for import.
If you upload a file, sometimes it doesn’t show for hours and other times it shows straight away (I put this down to vetting or some such human interaction on xyz ’s part).
In order to import a backup it must use the same or earlier file reference (or version). Using SQL 2005 myself I found this a struggle. The alternative is importing a MS-Access file which means a load of conversion problems from the off – no thanks!!
So I am not currently using the MS-SQL service from xyz in any meaningful way (which was my main reason for choosing them as a host).
Then I come to using .NET and hosting multiple domains.
Let me just say having spent ages faffing about with ways to do this: it’s not worth it.
The icing on the cake is if you take a look at xyz.com (I am forced into using xyz.co.uk) you can see that US developers are getting a much better deal for their money: vastly bigger storage and huge bandwidth allocations in comparison to the UK version (hosted in Germany by the way).
Just found out something else today. As a windows hoster, I cannot set (in the control panel) my default page!
So what have I learnt from this experience?
1. Not to use xyz for Windows hosting of multiple sites using .NET and MS-SQL.
2. Their control panel is great for day to day stuff.
3. Their email service is great and I haven’t got a problem with it.
4. Not to try and get any useful response from their support department.
Please note this is a rant on my behalf and not a generalised slating of xyz. If you want a generalised slating of xyz then just have a look in Google. xyz are not popular with windows hosters.
If you want to know who xyz are then get in touch. Since this is a personal blog site I’m not gonna name them on here.
I’m always looking for ways to improve the websites I develop for people and my new interest is Silverlight.
Microsoft table this as:
“Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”
It’s only in it’s early stages yet but it has the workings of being a very useful and powerful tool. There are many things I have noticed that it cannot currently do simply but it should be noted that companies like Adobe/Macromedia have been working of presentation technologies for the web for a good few years now.
Once of the main limitations in the current versions of Silverlight are the lack of input controls such as simple textbox entry and webcam support. It seems that initially the technology has it’s focus on presentation of pre-made content and will couple quite nicely with Windows Media Server.
So if you are looking for a method to deliver content such as videos with a delicious and simple to create interface then look no further than using Silverlight. Adobe currently has a massive lead in this field but if Microsoft can eat into it like they have eaten into Search Engines and search features then there’s a good chance that in 1-2 years even the most die-hard Flash developers will be considering Silverlight.
I think the current strength of the Silverlight offering is it’s integration with Visual Studio that will allow C# developers and the like to vastly improve their content presentation. Lord knows that techies do not make the best-looking things.
I’ll be initially looking at using Silverlight to stream videos from a Windows Media Server but I hope that when the newer versions of the Framework become available they will integrate webcams and use input to a useful and intuitive level.
You can’t really say something is platform and browser-independent if you can’t give the user the same experience across the board. My reason for saying this is that some techies are getting excited about Media encoding with Silverlight when it’s not natively a part of the package. For me the two need to go hand in hand before I will recommend using Silverlight over Java or Flash media gathering when I know that my users may not be on Microsoft platforms.
It looks good Microsoft so please don’t wimp out on us. This could be the start of something great
The code for calculating the distance between points that I have posted in C# was based upon the work published at: http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html
Anyone interested in this should also look for a downloadable list of UK postal OUT codes which is freely available (If I find the link then I will include it here).
All these things can be put together with something like Google Maps API to display routes, POIs and locations.
Welcome to the new blog for Aaron Reynolds
Here you will find things relating to Internet technologies that I deal with on a regular basis.
Most of the blogs will contain C# code that I have used to solve a problem, other things will be related to some server technologies and fixes that I have needed to implement or had difficulty finding information about on the web.
Many times I have found the solution to a problem in someone else’s blog. Now I intend to share the experience I have as I develop web sites, web services and windows apps in and out of the work-place.
