Ignore folders in svn

This is copied from the helper file:

To ignore all CVS folders you should either specify a pattern of *CVS or better, the pair CVS */CVS. The first option works, but would also exclude something called ThisIsNotCVS. Using */CVS alone will not work on an immediate child CVS folder, and CVS alone will not work on sub-folders.

Install the source server for TFS Building.

In the book "Advanced windows debugging", a detailed process on how to set up source server for the visual sourcesafe building. But most people today are now using the Team system to mange the code and build system, and here is an excellent link about "Setting up the Source Server for TFS builds".

Good stuff.

Clear workspace in TFS

We have a couple of contractors who worked on our project before left. When they left, they didn't check in all the codes on their machine. I work on deleting some of the projects which have files checked out by them and are not used by anybody else now. I cannot do that because the TFS complains that some files were checked out by those contractors.

I googled around and found a simple solution in MSDN, the easiest way is to delete the workspace altogether:

Here is the exact command: tf worksapce /delete /server:servername workspacename[;workspaceowner].

The workspacename is normally the machine name.

MSDN link is here.

Web Testing

I have been helping our testers automate the test for our web applications, and right now, we are using VSTS testing and fiddler. Based on some information gathered from a post by James Avery, it seems I need check out some other options there, like WaitN, WaitN test recorder, also selenium, I guess my to do list will get much longer now.

And the biggest headache for our application is the lacking of automating testing, and since the application was developed by some other contractors originally, I am very cautions to change any code since there is no automatic verification.

AVIcode experience

I have been working on a project called "EarlyTrack" for the state of Ohio in the last 8 months, and the best thing I found is the "AVICode" monitoring tool installed on the production machine.

As a developer for the last 6 years, I understand that every application will have bugs in production no matter how much you test on your test environment. But when the user complains that they have ran into an issue, it is very hard to find what exactly goes wrong because of the challenge of recreating the exactly same issue. AVICode provides the exactly solutions for this kind of issue, it intercepts the exceptions thrown by the system and records very detailed information on what exactly happened in the cod when the bugs were triggered.

The most impressive thing is that if you installed the pdb(debugging database) file alongside the released binary file, every time a bug triggers, you can double click to get to the exact line of code which failed.

I'll take some screen shots later on..

Paint.Net

I used the Paint.Net to edit a couple of images today when I tried to edit the html template for my blog. I want to widen the content area, and have to edit a couple of gif files.

I have downloaded the paint.net before, but really didn't try it too much. It took me some time to get used to all those concepts if you haven't used any image editing software, but I have to admit it's a really powerful image editing tools if you cannot afford the expensive adobe Photoshop.

Check it here.

Changed the default blog template.

One thing I don't like the blogger is the limited selection of template. I am happy with the one I selected right now, but it gave too much margin to the sidebar, and leave main content area very thin. While it's fine at most times, I did run into a couple of awkward situations when I have to insert some images into the blogger. I have to resize the image to fit into the content area.

I start to play with the html templates codes, and a couple of places I have to edit are :

 

#outer-wrapper {
  width: 947px; (change from 847 px to 947 px)
  margin: 0px auto 0;
  text-align: left;
  font: $bodyfont;
  background: url(http://jianweisun.com/tile.gif) repeat-y; I also have to edit the original tile.gif to make it wider.
  }

#content-wrapper {
  margin-left: 42px; /* to avoid the border image */
  width: 863px; (change from 763px to 863px)
  }

#main {
  float: left;
  width: 560px; (change from 460px to 560px)
  margin: 20px 0 0 0;
  padding: 0 0 0 1em;
  line-height: 1.5em;
  word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
  overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
  }

 

#header-wrapper {
   width: 947px; (Add this line)
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  font: $pagetitlefont;
  background: #e0e0e0 url(http://jianweisun.com/top_div_blue_947.gif) This image is also needed to be widened.
    no-repeat 0px 0px;
  }

#header {
  width: 863px; (Add this line)
  margin: 0;
  padding: 25px 60px 35px 60px;
  color: $pagetitlecolor;
  background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac_blue/top_h1.gif) no-repeat bottom left;
  }

It looks pretty easy, but it takes me a couple of hours to figure out all those tricks.

Another google impressive product-google pin yin.

For people who don't type chinese , it may be a little bit hard to understand. A lot of chinese people had hard time to input chinese like me. It's not because there is no good input tools, I know, there are a few very good input tools available. But to use those tools efficiently, you have to be very good at "pin yin". A lot of people like me spoke a dialect which is far away from standard mandarin, which is most input methods are based upon. The following is a fuzzy logic that google uses to make sure those non-standard speaker could have a decent input speed.


For myself, I am terrible at mixing some of them, like those pairs (an-ang, en=eng).

Another good feature is that you can have google store your selection patter on the server, so, it can automatically retrieve your selection next time. A good example, when I type my name, I put jianwei, and it will put my name as the first choice, because it remembered my choice of the last time.


I am waiting for another impressive product from google...