Visual Studio 2010 is released today so I thought I'd download it from the MSDN site and have a look. Of course, so is everybody else in the world and the download is crawling. Thinking there must be a way to get it quicker, I turned to google and found this site, which must be Tip of the Decade. I've gone from 7hrs remaining at about 20KB/sec to 336KB/sec and 1hr left!

Credit goes to http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/11/20/speed-up-and-download-faster-from-microsoft-msdn-downloads/

In order to speed up the MSDN application downloads, the developers or subscribers need to make sure that the web browser will always connect and access to US-located servers. Following the following steps to achieve this:

1. Edit the HOSTS file located at %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts by using Notepad or any other text editor (make sure that you have Administrator Rights when using Vista with UAC turned on).
2. Add an entry to the HOST file for the global US Microsoft server: 207.46.252.185 global.ds.microsoft.com
3. In Internet Explorer, add https://global.ds.microsoft.com to the list of Trusted Sites (located in Tools > Internet Options > Security > Trusted Sites).
4. In Internet Explorer, always allow cookies of https://global.ds.microsoft.com regardless of privacy policy by going to Tools > Internet Options > Privacy, and click on Sites button. Enter the URL (https://global.ds.microsoft.com) to Address of Website and click on Allow button.
5. If the download has already begun and half way through, suspend the MSDN download and select or activate “Place application shortcut on the desktop” in the Microsoft File Transfer Manager Options in order to resume later.
6. Open command prompt and run the command “ipconfig /flushdns” or simply reboot the computer
7. Start Microsoft File Transfer Manager from the desktop to resume download from MSDN.

I received a phone call today from HSBC. Let me rephrase that, I received a phone call today from somebody who claimed to be from HSBC.

As an IT professional, security is always at the forefront of my mind, so when asked to supply details like my date of birth etc., I was more than hesitant to give these out. I politely declined and told them that as I couldn't be sure of who they were, I did not want to answer, unless they could prove to me that they genuinely were HSBC. He wouldn't do this as he "didn't know if he was speaking to the correct person so couldnt divulge any information" which left us in a bit of a standoff.

I've experienced this with other establishments before, and it strikes me that there is a simple solution. When I set up my online banking, I created a password which I use for online/telephone banking authentication. Surely, the easy way around this would be for them to allocate a password/passphrase from their side, and then quote this to you when they call, this way you know it's them you're speaking to* and not some scammer. The password/phrase wouldnt be anything sensitive, just something to prove they were who they said. I realise this is another thing to remember, but it would be worth the effort for piece of mind.

Anyway, the call ended and I hung up and checked the number in google, it does appear to be a HSBC number, but when I called them on their main line and asked what the call was about, there was no record of any outstanding calls which leads me to believe either a) It was a scam, or b) HSBC don't know what their other departments are doing, neither of which fills me with confidence.

Surely this would be a no brainer to implement and stop any risk of fraud?

* Unless, they've been hacked and have all of your details, in which case you're screwed anyway!

It always makes me laugh when I buy something new and see how dumbed down the instructions are. After getting a new replacement Viewsonic monitor today, I saw this one which is the best I've seen in a while!

How stupid do these people think we really are? :)

It's been a while since my last blog entry. Work has been even more hectic than usual but hopefully over the worst!

I stumbled across this today and thought it was worthy of posting here :) It brought a smile to my face after a hard day at work!

Just before 1:00am in the morning UK time, I was playing on PGR 4 on the XBox 360 when all of a sudden, I heard a loud roar and the whole room appeared to shake for a couple of seconds. As we've had a lot of high wind lately, I initially thought that this might have been a strong gust. I had a look out of the window back and front and it seemed very eerie and still outside, no sign of any wind at all.

I thought nothing more of it and went back to play on the XBox. I guessed that I'd probably imagined it as I was getting tired by this point. I just started to play again when in walks my wife (who looked like she'd seen a ghost!) "What was that?" she said.  After I realised I hadn't imagined it, we initially thought it could have been an explosion or a plane crash. I looked outside again, and by this point, half of the street were out in their dressing gowns staring around in disbelief! That's when I realised it had been an earthquake.

We we're both a little shook up and we went downstairs and put TV on and sure enough, breaking news was that an "Earth Tremor" had been felt across many parts of the UK. It later was revelead that the epicentre had been near Lincoln and it measured 5.2 on the richter scale.

In talking to people today, it has amazed me how few actually noticed it. Obviously, I was awake so I was more likely to, but I'm sure it would have woke me had I been a sleep. It was the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. I can't even begin to imagine how awful it would be in a stronger one.

This was something I imagined I would never experience, so if we can have an earthquake in England, who knows, maybe it'll be Boro's year in the FA Cup! (something else I thought I'd never experience!)

If you've read my previous post, you will have seen how I recently discovered a way to post a picture from Flickr, directly to my blog, using the MetaWebLog API.

I promised that I'd write up how do this, so here you go. It's fairly straightforward to do and should only take a couple of minutes.

Step 1

Go to http://www.flickr.com/blogs.gne, logging in if necessary. You should see a screen like the one below:

Click "Set up your blog" to continue

Step 2

When asked for the type of your blog, select MetaWeblogAPI enabled blog and click Next.

Step 3

Enter the appropriate details for your blog. The API endpoint is the base URL for your blog with metaweblog.axd added to the end, so if my site is http://www.tumelty.com/blog/, I would need to enter http://www.tumelty.com/blog/metaweblog.axd

Remember to add the directory if your blog is not in the root of the server. 

Step 4

Confirm that the details are correct. If you get an error at this point, check the URL you entered and your username and password. Remember that these should be the ones you use to log into your blog, not your Flickr username/password.

If everything looks good, click "All Done" and you're done! 

Step 5

This screen should confirm that your blog has been successfully added. You can now play about with the templates, or choose one of the preselected templates.

To post an image to your blog, open it up in Flickr, and click "Blog This" in the toolbar. 

Hope this is useful! 

Yorkshire Dales
Originally uploaded by paultumelty

I was on Flickr today and I noticed that there was a feature which enabled you to send a picture to your blog.

Metaweblog was one of the listed compatible API's and I know this is what is supported to enable Windows Live Writer to work, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Hopefully this will work!

EDIT: It did! and I'll be posting an article explaining how to set this up soon... 

If you are familiar with Wikipedia, you may have seen the random article link which selects a random page from the many thousands. This small extension does something similar.

At the moment this just renders a hyperlink which points to a randomly selected post.  I hope to update this soon and turn it into a templated control so you can specify how the control is rendered and instead of using a plain hyperlink, maybe use an image or button, or whatever else you can think of

To install and use the extension, simply upload the file into the app_code\controls folder and insert the following code into your site.master page

<blog:RandomPost ID="RandomPost1" LinkTitle="Random Post" runat="server" /> 

You can download the file below:

RandomPost1.0.zip (836.00 bytes)

You can see the control in use in the left hand navigation bar just before the file download stats. 

Here's another really simple extension for BlogEngine.Net. This one allows you embed your xbox live gamercard into a post by simply typing the following (without the spaces near the [])

[ xboxgamercard:gamertag ]  -  Replace gamertag with your gamertag

The result looks like this :-

To Install, copy XboxGamercard.cs into the app_code\extensions directory.

You can download the extension below: 

XboxGamerCard1.0.zip (868.00 bytes)

In my short time using BlogEngine.Net, I've been amazed at the number and quality of the extensions and plugins that have been developed by the community. When I originally downloaded the software, I saw the ones listed on the site, a google search turned up a few more, and reading blogs from Mads and Al helped me find more.

I realised that there wasn't a centralised location for all these extensions anywhere, so I decided to make one.

Currently there 60 extensions listed and I'll be adding to these as I find them. If you spot one that isn't on the list, send me a mail, or leave a comment below and I'll add it on.

Last Updated: 25th February 2008

BlogEngine.Net Embedded Media Extensions

Extensions that allow media files to be embedded/played in a post or page.

BlogEngine.Net Navigational Extensions

Extensions that make navigation around your blog easier

BlogEngine.Net Syndication/Social Bookmarking Extensions

Extensions that allow you to submit blog entries to Social Bookmarking sites

BlogEngine.Net Statistical Extensions

Extensions that enable you to get stats about your blog

BlogEngine.Net Anti-Spam Extensions

Extensions to blog Spam on your blog

BlogEngine.Net Widgets

Widgets to add to your blog

BlogEngine.Net Hyperlink Extensions

Extensions which make it easier to link to external sites

BlogEngine.Net Admin/System Extensions

Extensions which help you to manage your site

BlogEngine.Net Input Extensions

Extensions to convert input into different formats

BlogEngine.Net Miscellaneous Extensions

Other Extensions

Incidentally, I'm using the toolbox extension built by Danny Douglass to automatically build my list. You can find out more about it here