Hosting a WCF Service Library Project in IIS 8.0, Windows 8.0, .Net 4.5

It sounds like it should be trivial: Create a WCF web library and host it in IIS. Surely lots of people need to do this, and it will be easy in a fairly modern version of Visual Studio like 2012? Well, I did not find it easy despite reading a Step-by-Step book (Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation by John Sharp, 2007), lots of blog posts and MSDN articles and so on.  Of course, in fairness, the book was quite old compared to my development environment, but in several respects it still seemed quite current.

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TED Talks: What FACEBOOK And GOOGLE Are Hiding From The World – YouTube

TED Talks: What FACEBOOK And GOOGLE Are Hiding From The World – YouTube.

This is worth being aware of.  People have a tendency to pay more attention to the things or ideas that confirm beliefs that they already hold (Confirmation Bias), so if you imagine your search results, or news feed, or similar being biased to show you stuff you already ‘know’, you may be happy with the results, but you may never be challenged to see other beliefs, or, in some circumstances… facts.

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Upgrades Upgrades Upgrades

Have you ever changed something in your home and at work, expecting life or work to be much better afterwards, and then found yourself on a path of being forced to make several other changes – just to get the promised improvements to actually work, or to get back old functionality that mysteriously disappeared?

I have certainly experienced this myself on many occasions; but today I want to talk about one specific instance following an upgrade to new large monitors; I recently bought new monitors that support a higher resolution than I have ever used before: WQHD or 2560 x 1440. Continue reading

Intentionally Bad Usability

We normally expect and look for simplicity in the use of a product. If it is difficult to use, we might exhibit frustration, not buy it again, or similar.  As a possible example, I was recently given a small pack of anti-histamines from Canada.

Initially I was baffled by the blister packs; they appeared to be strongly resistant to pressing the tablets through the foil backing.  It took a moment to understand that there is an extra step necessary with these packs, which I had not previously seen with packs in the UK:

A partially-used blister of Anti-histamine tablets

A Partially-used Blister-pack of Anti-histamine Tablets

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Another Keyboard to Dishwasher Experiment – Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000

Today I wanted to report on my latest experiment; using a dishwasher to help me clean a Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000.  There are many posts on the internet about this, and after some research, I decided to give it a try, as I had just inherited my keyboard from work.

First decision was; How much should I dismantle the keyboard?  Some people have tried running the whole keyboard through the dishwasher, but this typically seems to be followed by letting it dry for days afterwards, and involves some risk because the electronics get wet.  Some suggest stripping the electronics out of the keyboard, and washing all the rest.  I decided to prise off the key-tops and dishwash those, but leave the main frame safe and dry. Continue reading

Spammer Templates

Although I generally consider email spammers – especially phishers – pretty evil, it is occasionally enjoyable to receive a spam email or comment which demonstrates how dumb they can be.  In this case, I received a comment on this blog which demonstrates nicely how some messages are created.

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