Just a quick note to say that I have just written and released a tutorial on getting C# .Net v2 to work with an Oracle database. It has its own page which is here.
Oracle and C# Tutorial Posted
April 19th, 2007The Solution for Oracle ODAC Installation Errors
April 8th, 2007During the last week, I’ve attempted to install Oracle Data Access Components 10.2.0.2.20 several times, and to describe it as a headache would be an understatement. I think that a number of the problems I experienced may have been caused by my computer’s registry being a bit of a manky state, possible historic installs of things like their development suite, and so on.
Anyway, this post is intended as a note-to-self of the problems I encountered and the eventual solutions; most of which I did find on the web but somehow the final puzzle pieces evaded easy web-search finds. And again, because I have recently tried to stop my normal usage of an Admin level account, this may have contributed further problems - it certainly added hassle factor to the whole process.
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More Idiotic Dialogs
April 7th, 2007Last year I wrote about dialog boxes and the annoyances they bring (Stopping the Proceedings for Idiocy). Recently, I’ve been greatly affected by a couple of really, really annoying dialogs; and they’re not even warning of really important things that you have or haven’t done… they are simply asking you if you are sure that you want to leave the application or website!
Apparent Synchronicity - and more on Licensing
April 5th, 2007In a strange turn of fate, my post of a couple of days ago on software licenses (’What Rights do software developers have‘) appears to coincide with a Jeff Atwood post about licensing. As they are both dated the same, the casual observer would assume that (as I make no secret of reading his blog) that I had echoed his sentiments in my own way, without reference to him.
What Rights should Software Producers Have?
April 3rd, 2007I’ve recently been developing a software tool, and started researching ‘Terms and Conditions’ that I might like to apply to the product. In the process, I found the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and this link about End User License Agreements (EULA).
More on that DataGridViewComboBoxCell Error
March 24th, 2007Yesterday (or earlier this morning) I wrote about a Visual Studio DataGridView error that had me banging my head against a brick wall for a while. This post covers some more of the possible solutions in a little more detail.
DataGridViewComboBoxCell Errors in Visual Studio 2005
March 24th, 2007Another fairly hard-core post on .Net today, so if you don’t program in C# .Net, you can probably ignore this! Recently, I have started playing with integrating databases into C# for the first time. I’ve done a little bit of data binding before, but I’ve never used the DataGridViewControl until this week.
SETI and Free Computer Resources
March 19th, 2007I’ve recently upgraded my main computer workstation to Windows XP (I know! Cutting Edge!) and in the process realised that at last I could update my system to use Intel Speedstep technology. The upshot of this is that my dual processor machine now looks like a quad processor in Windows, as (to cover the issue somewhat vaguely) the speedstep technology introduces two command ‘pipelines’ into each processor. I’m a bit hazy on the exact details.
BT - Incompetent or Lying?
March 8th, 2007I recently received a letter from British Telecom (BT) thanking me for signing up with their online billing service. They wrote: “We recently sent an email to XXXX@XXXXXXXX to welcome you to the service. Unfortunately, the email was returned to us undelivered”.
The only problem is; I have never signed up for online billing! And it is no surprise that the email address they are using is bouncing the emails, because it is nearly 6 years since I closed that account!
Making a Help File to be Used Online and for Compiled Help
February 13th, 2007Today I’ve been playing with the idea of creating a set of help pages suitable for display in a website I am creating, but also to enable the same information to be used to create a compiled help file, such as you might find installed with any Windows application.