Have you seen this?
I don’t know about you, but the thought of three “razor” sharp pieces of metal vibrating right next to my carotids just doesn’t say “Buy me.”
.Text and overriding Request.ApplicationPath
I’ve been experiencing technical difficulties at this site lately. For a while last week, I’d get DNS timeouts for http://www.jasonkemp.ca, then it would work again, then fail again. Then it would come up again, but this time with ASP.NET application errors. Now I think I have it working again and I shouldn’t get errors, but I’ve had to hack the .Text settings in order for my blog to work: if you mouse over any of the links that .Text generates (Home, Contact, Entry titles, etc) you’ll notice they don’t point to http://jasonkemp.ca anymore, but to my host’s generated default URL (well, it used to, before I fixed it, read the Update)
I’m no expert in DNS, so this might be way off base, but for whatever reason, over the last week, it seems http://www.jasonkemp.ca doesn’t point to an IP address anymore, but to another URL. Does this always happen? Is there a way to make it go back to what it used to be? I hope so; I can’t go hacking away at .Text for at least another month to fix it for real, with all the Imagine Cup stuff. I think the site just doesn’t work right if every self-referential link points to a different site. Do any of my three readers know of a way to fix this, without reprogramming .Text? 🙂
Also, let me emphasize that this is in no way a criticism of .Text, just that I know what it’s doing when it inserts those links and that would be how I would work around the problem if I had the time to spend on it.
[Update]
Looks like .Text held the answer after all. With the help of our Imagine Cup web expert, Tyler, he explained what was happening: it turns out, IIS is returing my host’s generated url in Request.ApplicationPath, not jasonkemp.ca, like it was, I assume, last week, since this whole thing was working. While he explained that, I downloaded the config file to see if there was anything in there that was off. There wasn’t, but then I saw that you can override the Host and Application entries that .Text needs to run. You can add the entry in the ConfigProvider tag, like so:
<ConfigProvider type = “Dottext.Common.Config.SingleBlogConfig, Dottext.Common” cacheTime = “120” Host = “jasonkemp.ca”/>
Since I have my blog at the top level, (I have no choice) I don’t use the Application entry. So ignore that DNS stuff. That was my ignorance. This is the real thing you want to see, and hopefully Google will point to this, if this problem happens for others.
[Update]
Welcome to Imagine Cup
Today, I got my Imagine Cup welcome package in the mail. Some fun stuff: a travel guide to Brazil, and Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook, theSpoke pens. Fun, fun stuff. Also included is how we compete, our itinerary, etc. The welcome package makes this whole trip a little more tangible; my excitement (and anxiety) is starting to rise.
Coincidently, we also got word on the pools for the judging at the event. We’ll be competing against Belgium, Germany, Italy, China, UK, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia in the first round. You can go here for the details. There is a remark that the judging is a lot like the judging at American Idol.
Does that mean we can expect a Simon Cowell-type judge? 🙂 I don’t know how I’d like that. I enjoy his honest, open critiques when he speaks to others, but to me, he’s an asshole!
Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2005
When I first heard about VS 2005 Team System, I got a little jazzed about being able to do Unit Testing, and run FxCop right inside the IDE. But then it kind of dawned on me that it was only going to be in Team System, and the 15 different versions of Team System weren’t going to replace the current 4-5 versions of Visual Studio, merely supplement them. Now I’m kinda bummed. Why should only big enterprises and giant software teams get the benefits of unit testing?
That’s why I’m joining this petition. If you think Unit Testing is important I encourage you to join too.
Unit Testing support should be included with all versions of Visual Studio 2005 and not just with Team System.
The Confusion – A Review
The problem with a book of great length is that you’ve spent so much time with it, once it’s over, you miss the characters and want to know what happens next. I have just finished reading The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. I was a little unsure about Quicksilver, the first book in the trilogy: I was led to believe that this trilogy was to be about the feud over the invention of the calculus. I happen to find the history of mathematics very interesting on its own, so when I started Quicksilver that’s what I was expecting. And after Cryptonomicon I was expecting something in that vain, only with all the trappings of late seventeenth century. What I’m hinting at here is that I was a little disappointed with the first book.
Now that I have just finished The Confusion, I think I have to re-evaluate Quicksilver. I now see that Stephenson is writing about the Newton/Liebniz controversy, but that to write solely about it would be to ignore a much larger, and more interesting, tale, the Scientific Revolution. I have read all Stephenson’s major works, and I suppose I should have had more faith in his storytelling. The Confusion has all the stuff you’d expect from a Stephenson novel: great characters; a sprawling, ambitious plot that he patiently unfolds; and the always enjoyable diversions to explain whatever he wishes. Admittedly, the diversions in the first two-thirds of the Baroque cycle aren’t nearly as entertaining as in Cryptonomicon. Nevertheless, the exploits of Eliza and, of course, Jack Shaftoe have held my rapt attention for last few weeks.
If you have read any of Stephenson’s previous works, or are interested in the period (1660 – 1713), I recommend the Baroque cycle (of which, Quicksilver and The Confusion are the first two parts). If you are involved at all with computers, you have to read Cryptonomicon
Now I need only muster the patience for October and the final installment….