https://www.bloodforge.com/Recent content on Bloodforge BlogHugoen-usSun, 23 Aug 2020 02:49:44 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2020/08/infinity-imperial-massage-chair-review/Sun, 23 Aug 2020 02:49:44 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2020/08/infinity-imperial-massage-chair-review/<p>I just got this massage chair. There weren&#8217;t too many reviews online, so I thought I&#8217;d list my thoughts. I&#8217;ll keep updating this as time goes on with my impressions.</p> <h3>Initial Imperessions:</h3> <ul> <li><span style="color: green">Good:</span> Chair is of really high quality.</li> <li><span style="color: green">Good:</span> The hardware of the chair is amazing with lots of possibilities.</li> <li><span style="color: red">Bad:</span> The software isn&#8217;t very good. Although the hardware of the chair can do so much, the software is poorly designed. In the auto modes, its not possible to turn off individual features. In the manual mode, you cannot setup complex sequences that are available in the auto mode. I&#8217;ll expand on this later.</li> </ul> <p>Other observations:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2017/09/bloodforge-has-a-new-home/Fri, 08 Sep 2017 00:00:36 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2017/09/bloodforge-has-a-new-home/<p>Bloodforge.com is now powered by&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/blogifierdotnet/Blogifier.Core">Blogifier</a>.</p> <p>Blogifier is a .NET Core 2.0 project. Because my previous webhost didn&#8217;t support .NET Core, I switched over to using&nbsp;<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">Digital Ocean</a>. I wanted to move to Azure, but since I didn&#8217;t way to pay more than $5 per month, that wasn&#8217;t really an option.</p> <p>This is also the first time in a very long time that my website is running on Linux. So far, so good.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2017/01/running-local-web-pages-in-cefsharp-wpf/Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00:27 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2017/01/running-local-web-pages-in-cefsharp-wpf/<p>I needed to create a program which will run a web page from the local file system. Using the WebBrowser control wasn&#8217;t really an option since that uses the Trident engine which didn&#8217;t support many of the things we were trying to do in the web page. I went with the latest build of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nuget.org/packages/CefSharp.Wpf/">CefSharp.Wpf</a>, but that doesn&#8217;t natively run local files, so it had to be modified. Fortunately, I found some posts on how to enable that feature (<a href="https://thechriskent.com/2014/04/21/use-local-files-in-cefsharp/">here</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/CefSharp.Example/CefSharpSchemeHandler.cs">here</a>) &#8211; however, the first link was for an older version of CefSharp, and the second link only works with static resource files. I ended up merging both concepts to get it to work.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2016/04/awesome-java-vs-net-video/Thu, 07 Apr 2016 00:00:21 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2016/04/awesome-java-vs-net-video/<p> I love .NET, but this video is really funny and well done. </p> <figure class="wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe title="Dot Net Vs JAVA Funniest Video Ever Must Watch)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mhllo1xQer8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure>https://www.bloodforge.com/2015/06/the-jquery-bloodforge-smoke-effect/Fri, 12 Jun 2015 00:00:10 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2015/06/the-jquery-bloodforge-smoke-effect/<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <fieldset><legend>Adjust the smoke in this post header</legend> <div class="smoke-adjust"><label for="smoke-color">Color</label> <input id="smoke-color" type="color" value="#000000"></div> <div class="smoke-adjust"><label for="smoke-opacity">Opacity</label> <input id="smoke-opacity" max="1" min="0" step="0.01" type="range" value="0.2"></div> <div class="smoke-adjust"><label for="smoke-speed">Speed</label> <input id="smoke-speed" max="200" min="1" step="1" type="range" value="50"></div> <div class="smoke-adjust"><label for="smoke-size">Particle Size</label> <input id="smoke-size" max="500" min="10" step="1" type="range" value="150"></div> <div class="smoke-adjust"><label for="smoke-density">Density</label> <input id="smoke-density" max="20" min="1" step="1" type="range" value="10"></div> </fieldset> <script> // <![CDATA[ /* Bloodforge Smoke Effect v1.4 Copyright (c) 2017 Filip Stanek (http://bloodforge.com) Based off code written by Johny Cornwell (http://www.blog.jonnycornwell.com/) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. */ <p>// A function to create a particle object. function Particle(context, canvasWidth, canvasHeight) {</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/11/thermostat-statistics-via-logs-for-honeywell-prestige-iaq-2/Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:00:23 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/11/thermostat-statistics-via-logs-for-honeywell-prestige-iaq-2/<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="500" height="415" src="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/energypreview.png" alt="" class="wp-image-186" srcset="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/energypreview.png 500w, https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/energypreview-300x249.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></figure></div> <p>I created a log viewer for my Honeywell thermostat. In addition to providing a much more friendly way of viewing log files, it aggregates logs over time allowing for some pretty neat analysis.</p> <p>The site is located at <a href="http://energy.bloodforge.com/">http://energy.bloodforge.com</a> (sorry, but this site isn&#8217;t active anymore)</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/10/updating-my-blogengine-net-blog-to-use-ssl-https-from-http/Tue, 28 Oct 2014 00:00:23 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/10/updating-my-blogengine-net-blog-to-use-ssl-https-from-http/<p>I’m using this post to document how I upgraded my blog for HTTPS.</p> <p>The first thing I needed to do was to get a SSL certificate. I really didn’t feel like paying for one, so I went with a free certificate from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.startssl.com/">StartSSL</a>. Their free certificates expire after a year (I wish it was longer), so I’ll need to do this again next year.&nbsp; But they work and… they’re free.</p> <p>After I got my p12 certificate above, I asked my web host (Arvixe) to set everything up. It took them about 2 days (it was the weekend though, so maybe it would have been faster if it was during the week). This was pretty much the easiest part since all I had to do was to provide them with the cert, and they got it installed and set up the correct ports for HTTPS.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/06/detailed-geothermal-analysis-in-cincinnati-ohio/Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:01 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/06/detailed-geothermal-analysis-in-cincinnati-ohio/<p>The following numbers are all in kWh, and for my single-family house that is about 2,000 square feet, plus basement. All heating is electric. My electric bills usually come in around the 17th to 20th of the month. In the data below, an October value is actually the usage from the second half of September to the first half of October.&nbsp;</p> <p>The data is current as of 5/24/2017. I&#8217;ll try to update this monthly.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/04/arronco-geothermal-installation-in-cincinnati-part-2/Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:44 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/04/arronco-geothermal-installation-in-cincinnati-part-2/<p>This is a follow-up article to my initial article about&nbsp;my <a href="//bloodforge.com/index.php/2014/04/18/my-arronco-geothermal-installation-in-cincinnati/">geothermal installation</a>.</p> <p>For the past couple days, Arronco was finishing up their geothermal installation in my house. The first day was spent on removing my existing unit as well as setting up the Byrant geothermal unit (GT-PB). The second day was spent on finishing up the GT-PB install, hooking up the tubes that run outside to the unit, attaching my water heater to the geothermal unit, and finally setting up my thermostat.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/04/my-arronco-geothermal-installation-in-cincinnati/Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:22 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/04/my-arronco-geothermal-installation-in-cincinnati/<p>It was time for me to replace my heat pump, and I got a few bids from local companies. I ended up setting on a geothermal system from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.arronco.com/">Arronco</a>.</p> <p>They came out yesterday to drill the wells where the tubes will go. The first thing to show up was the tubing, delivered by a local delivery company.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="575" src="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/WP_20140417_005.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-143" srcset="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/WP_20140417_005.jpg 1024w, https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/WP_20140417_005-300x168.jpg 300w, https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/WP_20140417_005-768x431.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure> <p> After that the Arronco geothermal truck showed up. </p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/03/horrible-experience-with-square-enix-and-digital-river-review/Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:31 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2014/03/horrible-experience-with-square-enix-and-digital-river-review/<p>It could have been worse, in that my order could not have arrived. It did arrive, although almost 1 month late and after I spent hours of my time on the phone with Digital River customer support (and many email threads).</p> <h4>Feb 10th, 2014</h4> <p>I pre-ordered Final Fantasy 13-3 Lightning Returns from the Square Enix online store, which is powered by Digital River. I had already heard of how bad Digital River can be due to their complete screw-up of the Ni No Kuni Collectors Edition. However, since that had happened about 1 year prior, I thought that they may have already fixed their problems.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2013/01/jquery-1-9-and-ui-1-10-tabs-with-cookies/Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:00:38 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2013/01/jquery-1-9-and-ui-1-10-tabs-with-cookies/<p>Seems like jQuery UI got rid of maintaining state with the latest implementation.</p> <p>Before, it pretty simple to keep state across page loads with jQuery tabs. This is one possible way to do it with the new code.&nbsp; Its still pretty easy, just a little different.</p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>$("#tabs").tabs({ activate: function (e, ui) { $.cookie('selected-tab', ui.newTab.index(), { path: '/' }); }, active: $.cookie('selected-tab') });</code></pre>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/10/windows-7-to-windows-8-upgrade-issues/Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:00:48 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/10/windows-7-to-windows-8-upgrade-issues/<ul><li>Requires 20GB of free space to upgrade</li><li>If CScript was registered as the default script host in Windows 7, it will be replaced by WScript. To fix this, run CMD with administrative privileges, and execute the following command: <br><strong><code>cscript //h:cscript //s</code></strong></li><li>Network printer settings were lost. Had to reattach printer.</li><li>IIS7 settings were lost. Virtual directories/applications were gone. Also, installed features were missing. I had to reinstall the server side includes feature using control panel, and I needed to redo the handler mappings in IIS so that they were processed by the module.</li></ul>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/08/aten-kvm-switch-cubiq-cs1642-monitor-switching-problem/Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:01 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/08/aten-kvm-switch-cubiq-cs1642-monitor-switching-problem/<p>For a while now, I had an issue with the ATEN KVM switch (dual-DVI) when switching between my Windows and Mac systems. One of the monitors would almost always not be detected after switching. Sometimes this also happened after restarting my computer. The solution would be to turn off the PC and restart, and I would keep my fingers crossed that the second monitor would now be detected.</p> <p>What I should have done is checked the ATEN website. They have a firmware upgrade for my particular switch. The only problem I had with the upgrade was finding a system with a serial port (I still don’t understand why ATEN would build a dual DVI KVM swicth with an upgrade cable that only connects to a serial port). After finding a Thinkpad notebook with a P3 inside and Windows 98 (it stil worked!), I did the upgrade.&nbsp; Since the upgrade, I have not had the issue come up again.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/08/my-fix-for-application-descriptor-file-cannot-be-parsed-in-cs6/Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:00:01 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/08/my-fix-for-application-descriptor-file-cannot-be-parsed-in-cs6/<p>I received the following error when trying to publish to Android and iOS from Flash CS6 (Air 3.2):</p> <p><strong>Application Descriptor File Cannot be Parsed</strong></p> <p>Searching for a fix yielded that my file is probably invalid, but this is not the case as I can run this project just file from another computer.</p> <p>Turns out that this problem came up because I was running my FLA out of a network location (i.e,&nbsp;<em>\\Server\path\</em>). Mapping the network drive to an actual drive letter fixed the problem.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/07/remotes-suck-apple-to-the-rescue/Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:00:27 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/07/remotes-suck-apple-to-the-rescue/<p>I just got a Nexus 7 and it pretty much is inferior to an iPad in every sense expect for when watching TV. It would actually make a pretty good remote, assuming there was some decent software to use (I’m currently using TouchSquid, which is pretty crappy, imo).</p> <p>This got me thinking… supposedly Apple is making a bunch of displays that are about 7”. All the rumors seem to point to a iPad-mini or iPod Touch-maxi, but it would be pretty neat if it was actually a iMote or IRemote or iControl. Supposedly Steve Jobs said he figured out a way to control TV…</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/07/fl-text-tcmtext-and-tlftextfield-why-does-it-appear/Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/07/fl-text-tcmtext-and-tlftextfield-why-does-it-appear/<p>This is a note to self:</p> <p>Flash generates TCMText when a TLFTextField does not have an instance name.</p> <p>Flash Source:&nbsp;<a href="http://opensource.adobe.com/svn/opensource/flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/">http://opensource.adobe.com/svn/opensource/flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/</a></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/06/adobe-creative-cloud-subscription-for-business-catalyst-website/Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:57 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/06/adobe-creative-cloud-subscription-for-business-catalyst-website/<p>We recently got the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription at work, and I wanted to check out their web hosting plan – one of the features is hosting for up to five websites.</p> <h4>Step 1: Creating a Website</h4> <p>I’ve never hosted a website with Adobe (or, more specifically, Business Catalyst), so I wasn’t sure where to start.&nbsp; I looked around the website, and eventually found that there are three ways to create a website:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/05/samsung-focus-phone-battery-charging-bug-wp7/Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:29 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/05/samsung-focus-phone-battery-charging-bug-wp7/<p>The Samsung Focus appears to have a bug where if the battery is completely dead (as in, once its dead for a day, leave it in there for another week until it is completely discharged), the phone cannot charge the battery.</p> <p>I have been able to charge the battery by taking it out of the Focus and putting it in other Galaxy-class phones, which do not have this bug. Once the battery was charged up a bit, I was then able to power up the Focus and finish charging the battery.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/03/wp7-voice-to-text-seems-to-be-down/Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:58 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/03/wp7-voice-to-text-seems-to-be-down/<p>For the past few days, I haven&#8217;t been able to use the voice to text feature when searching on my Samsung Focus. &nbsp;It seems like Microsoft knows about the issue, but I hope this gets resolved soon. &nbsp;</p> <p>There is a thread about it already on&nbsp;<a href="http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/winphone/forum/wp7-wpfeatures/voice-to-text-not-working/de8dc044-1ec6-4900-8832-7cb195dd722c?page=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Microsoft Answers</a>.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/improving-google-page-speed-score-for-blogengine/Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/improving-google-page-speed-score-for-blogengine/<p>I was getting a&nbsp;72/100&nbsp;score from Google Page Speed, so I attempted to improve that a bit.</p> <p>I added caching to static resources via the web config, which raised my score by about 10:</p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;staticContent> &lt;clientCache cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="365.00:00:00" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".mp4" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".gif" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".htm" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".html" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".jpeg" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".jpg" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".js" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".png" /> &lt;remove fileExtension=".txt" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".mp4" mimeType="video/mp4" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".gif" mimeType="image/gif" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".htm" mimeType="text/html" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".html" mimeType="text/html" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".jpeg" mimeType="image/jpeg" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".jpg" mimeType="image/jpeg" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".js" mimeType="application/x-javascript" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".png" mimeType="image/png" /> &lt;mimeMap fileExtension=".txt" mimeType="text/plain" /> &lt;/staticContent></code></pre> <p>New page score:&nbsp;82/100</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/disqus-recent-comments-top-commenters-and-most-discussed-widget-for-blogengine-net/Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/disqus-recent-comments-top-commenters-and-most-discussed-widget-for-blogengine-net/<p>After I switched to Disqus comments, I noticed that my recent comments widget no longer worked.&nbsp;So I wrote a new widget that adds some JavaScript to the web page which includes the recent comments (and a few other options, if desired) when using Disqus.</p> <p>The widget is is available on the&nbsp;<a href="http://dnbegallery.org/cms/List/Widgets/DisqusCommentsSummary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blogengine.net gallery website</a>.</p> <p>Known issues<br>-The character limit when using the combination look doesn&#8217;t seem to be working.&nbsp;I need to look into this more, but right now it seems Disqus is ignoring the character count.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/new-comment-system/Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2012/02/new-comment-system/<p>The blog now uses a new comment system &#8211;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Disqus</a>.</p> <p>I upgraded to BE v2.5, and found various instructions on how to move to Disqus&#8230;&nbsp;<a href="http://surinder.computing-studio.com/post/2011/07/27/BlogEngine-Disqus-Comment-Count-Fix.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">including these</a>.</p> <p>There was one problem, however. The instructions state that on post.aspx, JavaScript needs to change to the following:</p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;script type="text/javascript"> var disqus_title = '&lt;%=Post.Title %>'; var disqus_identifier = '&lt;%= Post.Id.ToString() %>'; var disqus_url = '&lt;%= Post.AbsoluteLink %>'; var disqus_developer = '&lt;%= BlogEngine.Core.BlogSettings.Instance.DisqusDevMode ? 1 : 0 %>'; (function () { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = 'http://&lt;%=BlogEngine.Core.BlogSettings.Instance.DisqusWebsiteName %>.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')&#91;0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')&#91;0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); &lt;/script></code></pre> <p> However, that is not accurate and will result in errors.  The correct code needs to reference Page, and not Post. </p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/11/change-combobox-background-color-in-as3/Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:32 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/11/change-combobox-background-color-in-as3/<p>I needed to change the background color of the text region of a flash combobox &#8211; using AS3 at runtime.</p> <p>Styles for some reason were not working.&nbsp; The solution was to directly address the textfield property and change its background color.&nbsp; Here&#8217;s an example:</p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>cbo.textField.textField.background = true; cbo.textField.textField.backgroundColor = 0xDEDE29;</code></pre> <p></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/11/using-qr-codes-as-signatures-and-avatars/Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:02 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/11/using-qr-codes-as-signatures-and-avatars/<p>Just created my new sig using Google&#8217;s QR code API (&nbsp;<a href="http://createqrcode.appspot.com/">http://createqrcode.appspot.com/</a>&nbsp;). &nbsp;It creates the codes with error correction (there are some settings that you can use to modify this), so its possible to actually delete a part of it and enter your own image/text in the middle of the QR code.</p> <p>I had to play around a little with my name in the middle. &nbsp;If it is not aligned properly on the QR code or if it covers the wrong area, the code won&#8217;t be recognized.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/10/network-issue-could-not-connect-to-whs-via-name-only-ip/Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:05 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/10/network-issue-could-not-connect-to-whs-via-name-only-ip/<p>Just ran into a strange issue after upgrading my home network. I got a switch that all devices in my home network are connected to (dumb switch &#8211; it al hooks up to a Cisco E2000 for ips). &nbsp;Anyways&#8230; after switching everything over to this new setup, I ran into two issues.</p> <p>First, my gigabit network was no longer gigabit, even though all lights on the switch indicated that it was gigabit. &nbsp;Network properties in connected computers also indicated gigabit speeds, &nbsp;but actual file transfers were at fast ethernet speeds.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/09/create-custom-ringtones-in-windows-phone-7/Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/09/create-custom-ringtones-in-windows-phone-7/<p>The first thing you&#8217;ll need to create a custom ringtone in WP7 is an MP3 file. &nbsp;This file must be 40 seconds or shorter (and 1MB or smaller in size). &nbsp;If your MP3 is too large, you can use a program like&nbsp;<a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>&nbsp;to crop it.</p> <p>After you have your MP3 file the correct size, you&#8217;ll need to open Zune and make sure that the MP3 is listed in your music collection. Find it in the collection, right click on the MP3, and click on &#8220;Edit&#8221;. &nbsp;This should bring up a window with the MP3 properties. &nbsp;The only real important thing here is that the genre of the song must be changed to&nbsp;<strong>Ringtone</strong>. &nbsp;See the image below.&nbsp;</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/09/submit-and-vote-on-features-for-windows-phone-7/Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:01 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/09/submit-and-vote-on-features-for-windows-phone-7/<p>Microsoft has setup a website where users can submit and vote on features they&#8217;d like to see in Windows Phone 7.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve submitted a couple features I&#8217;d like to see:</p> <ol><li>Treat the phone as a USB drive when plugged in to devices which do not have Zune installed.</li><li>Integrate with Ford SYNC&#8230;. I think its crazy that iPhones work with SYNC but WP7 devices do not.</li></ol> <p>You can vote on them here:&nbsp;<a href="http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/users/24151465-filip-stanek">http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/users/24151465-filip-stanek</a></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/08/flash-combobox-setstyle-works-in-test-debug-and-not-in-publish-swf/Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:46 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/08/flash-combobox-setstyle-works-in-test-debug-and-not-in-publish-swf/<p>I tried to customize the combobox ( AS3 ), and everything was working fine by using cbo.setStyle( &#8220;embedFonts&#8221; ) and cbo.setStyle( &#8220;textFormat&#8221; ) while testing the movie. &nbsp;However, when I published the SWF, the styles were no longer working.</p> <p>It seems like setStyle doesn&#8217;t really work properly for comboboxes for some reason. &nbsp;The solution was to apply the setStyle to the textField inside the combobox, and not to the combobox itself.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/08/new-option-for-fantasy-football-draft-software/Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:09 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2011/08/new-option-for-fantasy-football-draft-software/<p>There&#8217;s some pretty cool new software for fantasy football this year.&nbsp; It is designed for fantasy football draft parties (for up to 20 teams) to select their players via either a snake draft, or an auction draft.</p> <p>The draft software is called Prime Time Draft, and it was developed by folks at where I work. It is designed for Windows, and it really shines when you hook it up to a big TV.&nbsp;</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/11/switched-hosting-providers-from-discountasp-net-to-arvixe/Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:26 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/11/switched-hosting-providers-from-discountasp-net-to-arvixe/<p>I wanted to start using SQL Server. I was using&nbsp;<a href="http://www.discountasp.net/">DiscoutASP.NET</a>, and was paying $10/mo. If I wanted to add on SQL Server, it would have cost an additional $10 per month, brining the total to $240 per year, which was a bit more than I wanted to pay for hosting on a personal blog.</p> <p>I searched around and found a host named&nbsp;<a href="http://www.arvixe.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arvixe</a>. &nbsp;The price was absolutely excellent. &nbsp;The basic hosting package costs $5/mo, and it comes with 6 websites and 6 SQL Server databases. They also claim unlimited bandwidth and storage, although I&#8217;m not sure what it means. &nbsp;I am pretty sure that its not really unlimited, although I doubt they&#8217;ll complain about my little blog. &nbsp;The final price for Arvixe (I also got a static IP) was $96 for 2 years (that&#8217;s with a 20% off coupon, which can be found pretty easily using Google), with an additional $48 for a static IP for 2 years. Not bad, and way cheaper than what I was paying before.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/10/change-the-color-of-the-trendline-value-in-fusioncharts-v3-for-flash/Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:01 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/10/change-the-color-of-the-trendline-value-in-fusioncharts-v3-for-flash/<p>It seems like FusionCharts does not support changing the color of a trendline via the TRENDVALUES style application.&nbsp; The color always seems to default to the color of the trendline.</p> <p>The fix to this issue involves modifying the source of the XYPlotChart.as file (you’ll need the source for fusioncharts to be able to do this).</p> <p>Search the file for the following line (it should be line 1789):</p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>trendFontObj.color = this.trendLines &#91;i].color;</code></pre> <p> Right afer this line, paste the following code: </p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/09/finallly/Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:50 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/09/finallly/<p>Finally got Rank 1 in a diamond league (random 2v2)&nbsp;in Starcraft II.</p> <p>I realize rankings don’t mean much, but its still cool to get there.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="425" height="127" src="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sc2_badge.png" alt="" class="wp-image-87" srcset="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sc2_badge.png 425w, https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sc2_badge-300x90.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px" /></figure></div> <p></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/09/how-to-make-the-actionscript-3-0-as3-textarea-not-selectable/Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:00:56 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/09/how-to-make-the-actionscript-3-0-as3-textarea-not-selectable/<p>Here’s something I wasted like 45 minutes on, and it should be pretty trivial. I needed to make the TextArea component NOT selectable, yet still enabled (need the scrollbar to work).</p> <p>I started digging around the TextArea.as class, because no matter what I did in my code (such as myTextArea.textField.selectable = false; ), the TextArea was still selectable. It appears that when the TextArea calls the draw() or setSize() methods, it updates the text field in the TextArea to be selectable depending on whether the TextArea is enabled or not.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/04/logitech-harmony-1000-class-action-lawsuit-settlement-h1000/Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:05 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/04/logitech-harmony-1000-class-action-lawsuit-settlement-h1000/<p>Logitech has started to send out the replacement remotes (890) as part of their settlement in the class action (Arthur Fulford v. Logitech Inc. Class Action Settlement).</p> <p>Mine came in the mail yesterday on April 15th.&nbsp; It was a refurbished model, but everything seems good. It has already replaced the H1000 in my living room.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/04/intel-300gb-and-600gb-ssd-coming-soon/Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:44 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/04/intel-300gb-and-600gb-ssd-coming-soon/<p>Intel has a new&nbsp;<a href="http://www.intel.com/design/flash/NAND/tco_tool/demo.htm">Client IT TCO tool</a>&nbsp;available on their website, and according to the tool, new sizes of Intel drives are coming soon in capacities of 300GB and 600GB.</p> <p>I have an 80GB Intel SSD, and having something that’s 300GB in size would be sweet!</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/html5-or-flash-be-careful-what-you-ask-for/Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:06 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/html5-or-flash-be-careful-what-you-ask-for/<p>Ok, I’ll get straight to the point: There is a lot to dislike about many websites right now when it comes to how these websites generate revenue. On many sites it is hard to actually find the content you were seeking due to the huge amount of ads that get displayed. I’ve had my browser crash countless times due to poorly designed ads (generally, it is due to Flash ads, but it certainly can happen with JavaScript as well).</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/new-theme-for-bloodforge/Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:00:19 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/new-theme-for-bloodforge/<p>I updated the look of the site so it doesn’t look like the default BlogEngine.NET theme. I’m not a graphic designer, but I think it could have turned out worse. It does look best in the latest version of Opera/Firefox (and probably Chrome and Safari…).</p> <p>Hopefully IE will have support for border-radius and box-shadow soon… I’m not holding my breath though.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/updated-contact-page-now-with-a-recaptcha/Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:42 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/updated-contact-page-now-with-a-recaptcha/<p><em>This post is here for archival purposes only. The linked items are no longer available.</em></p> <p>I’ve added the reCaptcha to my contact page.  If anyone who has installed the reCaptcha wants to add it to their contact page, the files are available here.</p> <p>These are just the updated contact page files.&nbsp; You must have the reCaptcha already installed for these to work.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/new-and-improved-comment-system-for-blogengine-net/Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:02 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/03/new-and-improved-comment-system-for-blogengine-net/<p><strong>Update: When I switched hosting providers and upgraded BE.NET, I didn&#8217;t migrate the changes to the comment system to the newer version. &nbsp;This post describes my updates to version 1.x, but is no longer being used on my website.</strong></p> <p>BlogEngine.NET had a pretty decent commenting system, but it lacked some of the functionality I wanted in a comment system for my blog. So I decided to update it myself, which turned out to be a bigger deal than I thought it would be. Still, after a few evenings of work, I got my comment system. The following is a summary of the new additions.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/blogengine-net-recaptcha-0-93-installation-instructions/Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/blogengine-net-recaptcha-0-93-installation-instructions/<p><em>EDIT: These post exists for archival purposes only. The linked files are no longer available.</em></p> <p>These installation instructions now apply to version 0.95</p> <p>First, the linked ZIP file contains the updated files for installing the Recaptcha control.</p> <h4>UPDATES:</h4> <ul><li>Version 0.95 – Changed initial loading method to fix error that occurred in certain cases in IE. If upgrading from 0.94, you only need to replace the Recaptcha.cs file.</li><li>Version 0.94 – Logging fixes</li><li>Version 0.93 – Added logging.</li><li>Version 0.92 &#8211; The recaptcha will no longer get focus after it has been loaded. Install procedure is unchanged from version 0.91.</li><li>Version 0.91 &#8211; Changed the way that Recaptcha is verified.&nbsp; It should no longer be possible to bypass the recaptcha by manually executing JavaScript on the page.</li><li>Version 0.9 &#8211; Initial Version</li></ul> <h4>Quick Installation</h4> <p>First, back up your files in case you need to revert for any reason. If you have not modified any of the BlogEngine files, you can extract the ZIP linked to above and place all of the files into their proper locations ( the unzipped files should contain a folder structure ). There is no need to recompile.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/looking-back-bloodforge-several-years-ago/Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/looking-back-bloodforge-several-years-ago/<p>I’ve known about the <a href="http://www.archive.org/">Wayback Machine</a> for a while, but for some reason, I never visited the site – until today. It was such a strange feeling seeing what <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bloodforge.com">Bloodforge looked like</a> back in 2001, and being able to see how it progressed over the years (the site was up since 1999 actually, but there is no record of that in the archive).</p> <p>I’ve actually pulled up some items from the archive. One of those is the logo that you can see at the top-left of the page.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/blogengine-net-recaptcha-0-91-installation-instructions/Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/blogengine-net-recaptcha-0-91-installation-instructions/<p><strong>NOTE: THESE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS HAVE BEEN UPDATED:</strong> To get the latest version, follow the instructions located at: <em><strong>NO LONGER AVAILABLE</strong></em></p> <p>First, the linked ZIP file contains the updated files for installing the Recaptcha control.</p> <p>UPDATES:</p> <ul><li>Version 0.92 &#8211; The recaptcha will no longer get focus after it has been loaded. Install procedure is unchanged from version 0.91.</li><li>Version 0.91 &#8211; Changed the way that Recaptcha is verified.&nbsp; It should no longer be possible to bypass the recaptcha by manually executing JavaScript on the page.</li><li>Version 0.9 &#8211; Initial Version</li></ul> <p><strong>Quick Installation</strong></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/async-recaptcha-for-blogengine-net-1-6/Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/async-recaptcha-for-blogengine-net-1-6/<p><strong>The instructions on this page are no longer valid for the latest version.</strong></p> <p>I really am getting sick of the spam that is appearing on this blog, so yesterday I decided to implement Recaptcha for BlogEngine.NET. I had three main goals:</p> <ol><li>Easy to implement – as any control, it needs to be pretty trivial to add it to an existing blog instance</li><li>Configurable via the Extensions panel – I really like what BlogEngine has done with their ability to edit extensions, so I wanted the control to be configurable in this way</li><li>It had to be asynchronous – when a user posts a comment, I don’t want the whole page to refresh</li></ol> <p>The final solution is pretty close to what I had in mind.&nbsp; The extension is a single file that needs to be inserted into the ‘/App_Code/Controls’ folder.&nbsp; In addition, two lines of code need to be added/modified in the ‘/User controls/CommentView.ascx’ file.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/disabling-comments-for-blacklisted-ip-addresses/Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2010/02/disabling-comments-for-blacklisted-ip-addresses/<p>I was reading through the discussions on Codeplex for Blogengine.NET, and a user (ALBsharah) had an interesting idea for controlling spam: if we can already determine that a user is blacklisted based on the IP, do not even give them the ability to post new comments.&nbsp; The thread is available&nbsp;<a href="http://blogengine.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=85678">here</a>.</p> <p>Making this change to BE is relatively simple.&nbsp; The first change was actually creating a function which would return whether the user is blacklisted.&nbsp; Comment moderation methods seem to be located in the CommentHandlers.as file in the BlogEngine.Core project. All of this code was actually already written in another method ( ModeratedByRule ), I just needed to extract that code out of that method, and modify that method to use the new code – I hate having code that does the same thing in two different places.&nbsp; So, where before the function looked like the following:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/09/extract-formatted-text-from-excel-cell-with-c-rich-text-format/Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:25 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/09/extract-formatted-text-from-excel-cell-with-c-rich-text-format/<p>I was writing an application that needed to convert text in a cell in an Excel workbook to HTML. It is fairly trivial to get formatting for the entire cell, but each individual character in the cell could have different formatting itself, so I needed something more specific than cell-level formatting info.</p> <p>At first, I started using the&nbsp;<strong>Excel.Range.get_Characters( pos, len )</strong>&nbsp;method to get info out of the cell.&nbsp; The code would loop through all characters, get them one by one, and check the formatting.&nbsp; For example:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/05/something-is-seriously-wrong-with-our-airlines/Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/05/something-is-seriously-wrong-with-our-airlines/<p>Today I was reminded exactly of why I hate flying.&nbsp; A couple months ago, I purchased a ticket to fly to Krakow, Poland.&nbsp; I live in Cincinnati, and it is not possible to have a direct flight into Poland.&nbsp; The best you can do from CVG is a one-stop flight.&nbsp; I really wanted as few stops as possible, so I paid $1360 for a ticket with only one stop ( Chicago ). I could have saved myself $600 on the ticket and bought a multi-stop ticket for around $700, but I just wanted the trip to be as quick as possible.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/01/deleting-comments/Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:26 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2009/01/deleting-comments/<p> If you leave comments on my blog for the sole purpose of providing links to your own blog, those comments will be removed.  I have no problems with people linking back to their own site in a comment, but if you do that, at least attempt to stay on topic. </p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/11/flexible-autocomplete-suggested-words-code-for-text-input-fields-using-javascript/Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:11 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/11/flexible-autocomplete-suggested-words-code-for-text-input-fields-using-javascript/<p><em>This post was written a long time ago, and since then many other great solutions have come out to accomplish this task. I have kept my post for historical reasons, but the files are no longer available and the code on the page is no longer functional.</em></p> <p>As I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve seen on many websites, displaying suggestions while a user types text into a text field has become quite popular. However, I was rather disappointed with the solutions I&#8217;ve found out there. The solutions I&#8217;ve found had any combination of the following problems:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/10/c-priority-queue-implementation-for-silverlight/Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/10/c-priority-queue-implementation-for-silverlight/<p>While writing some code for Silverlight, I realized that Silverlight does not include a PriorityQueue implementation in their libraries.&nbsp; I searched around, but I couldn&#8217;t find any code that I thought was decent, so I wrote up something pretty quick.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll be testing this some more in the near future, but for now, I think it has the basics.&nbsp; This should be fairly quick for large collections, as the enqueue is logarithmic, while the dequeue is pretty much as fast as it can be.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/10/very-nice-and-flexible-file-upload-control-with-progress/Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:10 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/10/very-nice-and-flexible-file-upload-control-with-progress/<p>I needed a pretty quick way of displaying file upload progress in a ASP.NET project.&nbsp;In the past while working for a different employer, I&#8217;ve written my own code from scratch, and it was a complete pain in the ass.&nbsp; Fortunately, after doing a bit of searching, I&#8217;ve ran across an open source control that works great.&nbsp; The control is called NeatUpload and can be found at this URL:</p> <p><a href="http://www.brettle.com/neatupload">http://www.brettle.com/neatupload</a></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/08/server-side-includes-ssi-adding-a-blank-empty-line-to-html-page/Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:13 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/08/server-side-includes-ssi-adding-a-blank-empty-line-to-html-page/<p>While creating a page that used server side includes, I ran into some very strange behavior.&nbsp; Right before each SSI, a blank line would appear on the page.&nbsp; It didn&#8217;t have anything to do with margins or padding.&nbsp; It was just like an empty line appeared right out of nowhere, messing up the layout.&nbsp; First, I thought it was some problem with IIS and SSI, but I couldn&#8217;t find anything there.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/08/using-loadvars-sendandload-instead-of-webservice-when-calling-web-services-with-flash-actionscript/Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:19 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/08/using-loadvars-sendandload-instead-of-webservice-when-calling-web-services-with-flash-actionscript/<p>I&#8217;ve ran into issues using the WebService object in Flash.&nbsp; The thing is incredibly buggy.&nbsp; In certain cases, it works just fine, but in other cases, it flat out does not work. In my last case, the web service loaded perfectly fine (onLoad was called), but the PendingCall would not return anything.&nbsp; The onFault method was never called after I invoked my web service call, but the web service never returned either.&nbsp; Examining the outgoing messages from Flash (using HTTP headers in Firefox)&nbsp;revealed that Flash was never even attempting to call the web service.&nbsp; Flash did correctly acquire the crossdomain.xml file (which allowed access from all domains), and it did load the WSDL.&nbsp; But, for whatever reason, it did not call the web method like it was supposed to.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/can-electronic-drums-be-classified-as-drums/Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:02 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/can-electronic-drums-be-classified-as-drums/<p>We had a rather silly argument at work today.&nbsp;A co-worker claimed that electronic drums are not drums, but something entirely different.&nbsp;Now, I generally don&#8217;t post about all the silly arguments we have at work (there&#8217;s a new one every day it seems), but this one just is way over the top in my mind.</p> <p>My first method of argument was, basically, that the term &#8220;electronic&#8221; (or electric, I consider those to be the same in this particular context) is simply an adjective that describes something.&nbsp; So, just like all red robins are a subset of robins, electronic drums are a subset of drums.&nbsp; However, this was not satisfactory, and the co-worker brought up the term &#8220;straw man&#8221;.&nbsp; He stated that a straw man is not actually a man.&nbsp; Fine, I&#8217;ll give him this, although it is certainly a rather weak argument since the context must be entirely different for this to be valid.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/njoy-electronic-cigarette-review-part-2/Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:22 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/njoy-electronic-cigarette-review-part-2/<p>It has been 6 days since my&nbsp;<a href="http://bloodforge.com/post/nJoy-Electronic-Cigarette-Review-Part-1.aspx">nJoy Electronic Cigarette Review (Part 1)</a>. My biggest complaint in that review was the price of the refill cartiges.&nbsp; Thanks to some help from very kind people at the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/electronic-cigarette-reviews/602-njoy-review-13.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">e-cigarette-forum.com</a>, I found out that e-liquid (smoke juice, whatever you want to call it) is actually available for purchase.&nbsp; A couple sites that offer it, such as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.epuffer.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ePuffer</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://e-cig.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">e-cig</a>; however, both were out of stock (after researching this some more, I found out that e-cig.com has temporarily suspended shipping due to the Olympics and tightened security for sending liquids &#8211; they&#8217;re based in China).&nbsp; Well, fortunately, we have eBay, and I was able to purchase my very first bottle of the liquid.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/njoy-electronic-cigarette-review-part-1/Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:49 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/07/njoy-electronic-cigarette-review-part-1/<p>A week or so ago I ordered the nJoy electronic cigarette.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve tried to quit smoking before, and although I had no problems stopping (apart from the 1-2 day nicotine withdrawal), I&#8217;ve always felt like starting up again because the thing I was really addicted to doing was the action of smoking.&nbsp; Well, over lunch one day I heard someone talking about electronic cigarettes, so I decided to look it up.&nbsp; The fact that these seem to be relatively harmless (no tobacco, tar, carcinogens, etc.) was very appealing, and I could fulfill my desire to actually inhale something. In the past, I&#8217;ve tried nicotine patches (I actually got poisoned from one), but as I pointed out before, the thing I miss most when I stop smoking is the actual action of smoking, not the nicotine itself, so, needless to say, the patch didn&#8217;t work.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/06/ie8-and-ajaxcontroltoolkit-visibility-bug/Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/06/ie8-and-ajaxcontroltoolkit-visibility-bug/<p>Well, I finally downloaded IE8 to see how some of the sites I&#8217;ve worked on behave.&nbsp; Most things work just fine, however, I did find a pretty significant problem with the AjaxControlToolkit.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve been using the Tab control quite a bit, and I noticed that, when switching between tabs, the new tab was not showing up.&nbsp; The old tab was hiding, though&#8230;&nbsp;</p> <p>Debugging has led me to the setVisible method located in &#8220;Common/Common.js&#8221; in the AjaxControlToolkit.&nbsp; Specifically, the problem existed in the following code:</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/06/using-javascript-methods-in-c/Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/06/using-javascript-methods-in-c/<p>I ran into a weird problem today.&nbsp; I needed to escape a string in c# in such a way as to be able to unescape() it later with JavaScript into the original string.&nbsp; JavaScript has an escape() method that is able to do this, but since I&#8217;m writing the code in C#, I can&#8217;t really access that method.&nbsp; At first, I looked into HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode() and the HttpServerUtility.HtmlEncode() methods, but those are not equivalent to JavaScript&#8217;s escape() method.&nbsp;</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/microsoft-jscript-runtime-error-null-is-null-or-not-an-object/Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:49 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/microsoft-jscript-runtime-error-null-is-null-or-not-an-object/<p> Programming JavaScript can be fun, but sometimes when I get errors like this it can get a little frustrating&#8230; </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="527" height="235" src="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/jserror.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-24" srcset="https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/jserror.jpg 527w, https://www.bloodforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/jserror-300x134.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 527px) 100vw, 527px" /></figure> <p> It happened on the following line, where the variable &#8216;o&#8217; was null: </p> <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>o.onmousedown = Drag.start;</code></pre> <p></p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/flash-standalone-installer-for-internet-explorer-ie-msi/Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/flash-standalone-installer-for-internet-explorer-ie-msi/<p>I&#8217;m not sure why Adobe makes it so hard to install the flash player with a MSI.&nbsp; By going to adobe.com and clicking on the &#8220;Get Flash Player&#8221; link, it will direct you to a page that automatically will attempt to install Flash in IE.&nbsp; I needed a MSI because I needed to install Flash on a machine with restricted internet access.&nbsp; Fortunately, even though they don&#8217;t advertise it, you can get a standalone installer for IE as well&#8230;</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/vista-sidebar-gadget-transparent-backgrounds-and-font-color/Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/vista-sidebar-gadget-transparent-backgrounds-and-font-color/<p>We&#8217;ve had a request from a client to build a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.  The background on the gadget is to be somewhat see-through.  So I&#8217;ve played around with gadgets, and noticed that when I make a semi-transparent background on the gadget, the font color gets all messed up.  For example, I wanted white text on a blue background with 50% opacity, and the font appeared blueish, even though it was supposed to be white.  If I turn off the opacity on the background, the font becomes white, but as long as there&#8217;s opacity, the font is messed up.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/ajaxcontroltoolkit-is-undefined-javascript/Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/ajaxcontroltoolkit-is-undefined-javascript/<p>I got this annoying error recently in a website I&#8217;ve been working on.&nbsp; It worked perfectly fine locally, it worked fine after uploading to the web server on my machine and other machines in the lab (various browsers).&nbsp; Then, it turns out, it doesn&#8217;t work on (one of) the client&#8217;s machines.&nbsp; Of course, I&#8217;m unable to replicate the error locally.</p> <p>I looked around and it seems the first solution was to clear the cache.&nbsp; A lot of people said that Ctrl+F5 works, others said they needed to manually clear the cache and then restart the browser.&nbsp; Well, neither of those worked.</p>https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/and-bloodforge-is-up-again/Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:20 +0000https://www.bloodforge.com/2008/05/and-bloodforge-is-up-again/<p>Well, after a few years of doing absolutely nothing with this site, I&#8217;ve decided to bring it up again.&nbsp; Not sure what I&#8217;m going to use it for yet, but I think I&#8217;ll be posting some annoying bugs I&#8217;m running into along with other information that probably no one in the world really cares about.&nbsp; But its fun.&nbsp;</p> <p>Also, amazingly, a few days after I activated this domain again, I&#8217;ve noticed some people already visited this site&#8230; at first I thought it was some random stuff, but these visits were from South Bend, Granger, etc&#8230; strange, but neat at the same time.</p>