Miscellaneous

Looking back on the past couple of years as a freelancer

It's coming up to the 2 year mark since I resigned from my full time job and went into freelancing / owning my own businesses. After many years of working as an employee, a contractor and doing small bits of freelancing on the side I probably thought that switching to freelancing would be a bit easier than it ended up being, which is part of why I wanted to write a little about my experiences. There's plenty of material out there offering freelancers helpful tips or things to avoid - this post is similar to many of those, but it's...

posted @ Friday, January 08, 2010 12:27 PM | Feedback (3) Filed Under [ ASP.NET Notes/Domino Web Development Miscellaneous Me ]

“Veolia Transport apologises...”

There’s nothing like getting a text alert from the Auckland train service which reads “Attn Passengers. Major delays on Network. Please find alternative transport” on a Friday afternoon to make me glad to be working at home a lot right now (and especially today). Tags: NZ

posted @ Friday, April 17, 2009 5:52 PM | Feedback (1) Filed Under [ NZ Miscellaneous ]

Remove trailing characters (and a small rant)

Often when coding I’ll search for a snippet of code to avoid reinventing the wheel. Code re-use is good, right? From now on, whenever a search like that ends up sending me over to experts-exchange.com (which is a signup, members only site that shows the question text for all to see but masks the answers to entice people to sign up) I’m going to make an effort to write up a free version of  the answer here. I really dislike that site, because all hits from there are a complete waste of time for a non member....

posted @ Wednesday, July 09, 2008 2:50 PM | Feedback (6) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous SQL ]

How to recognise a good programmer

A lot of these are common sense, nonetheless How to recognise a good programmer is worth a read if you’re someone involved in the hiring process. The author uses the subtitle "How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy", but it’s relevant to technical people too. If you take one thing and one thing only away from the article, then it should be reinforcement of the value of passion in anyone who works with computers.

posted @ Friday, June 27, 2008 11:43 AM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

SQL Profiler templates

Way back when I was using the 2000 version of SQL Profiler I would always apply a filter to restrict my profiling by database id. On busy servers it’s simply the only way to fly. When I moved to using the SQL 2005 version of profiler I was quite shocked to find this option wasn’t visible. I did a bit of searching, but found nothing, and was in a hurry to get my profiling done - so I gave up. Whenever I’m using profiler there’s usually a...

posted @ Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:29 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous SQL ]

New Technical Preview of Live Writer available

Grab it here. The UI looks a bit more polished in a few places, and they’ve added some improved support for those who publish images and video frequently including support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others). The inline previewing looks incredibly useful. Here’s hoping it works on my 64 bit XP box at home.

posted @ Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:13 AM | Feedback (1) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

jsvi

jsvi is a JavaScript version of VI. Looks scarily useful. Tags: JavaScript , VI

posted @ Wednesday, May 07, 2008 12:44 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

PlayTech Home Server Reviewed

PlayTech Windows Home Server Reviewed in New Zealand PCWorld by Tentacle Software's own Sam Wood. Helping New Zealand rank well at number 2 on the global WHS World Cup standings are a wide range of home servers from local system builders. One of these systems, the PlayTech Home Server which is a AMD Athlon X2 4600+ processor based system, is reviewed in the May issue of New Zealand ‘s PC World. The review is authored by Sam Wood, a member of the WGS community and author of the great WHS Disk Management...

posted @ Wednesday, April 30, 2008 7:52 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

What to expect from Windows XP SP3

Not much, apparently. Tags: Microsoft,Windows

posted @ Tuesday, April 22, 2008 6:17 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

Yahoo - Simple text editor

I've used FCKEditor and CuteEditor - and in most cases they were more complex than what I needed at the time. Simple Editor from Yahoo looks just right for online applications which only need basic formatting (which lets face it, is most of them).

posted @ Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:11 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Miscellaneous ]

Full Miscellaneous Archive

About me

My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a Developer, Consultant and Writer based in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.

I also have about 14 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.

I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services, and Ignition Development.

Bethells Beach, located in sunny West Auckland, New Zealand


Subscribe

Subscribe to this feed


Search


Popular Content

Troubleshooting WebResource.axd

The .NET 2.0 framework changed the way clientside JavaScript is delivered to the browser. Previously, ASP.NET 1.1 used the aspnet_client directory whereas now 2.0 uses WebResource.axd.

Published on October 8, 2006

Microsoft AJAX Extensions: Sys.Debug is null or not an object

One of the breaking changes which was made with the 1.0 release of the Microsoft Ajax Extensions was the renaming of the 'Debug' class to 'Sys.Debug' for reasons of compatiability with other frameworks. Breaking changes like this can often be a source of frustration..

Published on May 22, 2007

Simple ASP.NET Character Counter

A textbox character counter is a pretty simple piece of functionality, and there's a lot of different ways to apply one to your application. The following method is nice and simple, and can be done using only clientside JavaScript if required, or combined with server side code in order to create a more dynamic effect

Published on December 4, 2006

Simple ASP.NET Character Counter - with Master Page Support

A quick update to my previous character counter article adding some changes for those using it with Master Pages.

Published on February 7th, 2009

Adding Tooltips to Gridview Headers

As the title says, this is a very simple but dynamic way of achieving tooltip text on a header column. It's not overly flash, but it's lightweight and quick to implement.

Published on April 15, 2007

SQL Server Web Report Viewer Issues on Windows 2008 Server/IIS7

A fix for another AXD related issue, this time with the SQL Server Web Report Viewer Control which was being served up via IIS7 on a Windows 2008 server.

Published on June 2, 2007
Updated on April 10, 2008


Archives

March, 2010 (3)
February, 2010 (6)
January, 2010 (12)
December, 2009 (13)
November, 2009 (11)
October, 2009 (12)
September, 2009 (12)
August, 2009 (2)
July, 2009 (7)
June, 2009 (12)
May, 2009 (9)
April, 2009 (9)
March, 2009 (9)
February, 2009 (8)
January, 2009 (7)
December, 2008 (6)
November, 2008 (7)
October, 2008 (9)
September, 2008 (12)
August, 2008 (9)
July, 2008 (6)
June, 2008 (24)
May, 2008 (13)
April, 2008 (16)
March, 2008 (8)
February, 2008 (10)
January, 2008 (1)
December, 2007 (14)
November, 2007 (11)
October, 2007 (11)
September, 2007 (13)
August, 2007 (11)
July, 2007 (5)
June, 2007 (15)
May, 2007 (11)
April, 2007 (9)
March, 2007 (9)
February, 2007 (10)
January, 2007 (8)
December, 2006 (18)
November, 2006 (11)
October, 2006 (14)
September, 2006 (9)
August, 2006 (10)
July, 2006 (4)
June, 2006 (4)
May, 2006 (6)
April, 2006 (3)
February, 2006 (6)
January, 2006 (10)
September, 2005 (2)
August, 2005 (4)

Post Categories

ASP.NET
AJAX
Amusing
NZ
NZ Trains
Notes/Domino
Visual Studio
Web Development
Miscellaneous
Me
Rugby
C#
SQL


Twitter