Ellis Web

Hot Computer = Slow Computer

I have had a Dell Latitude D830 laptop for the past couple of years. Core2 Duo, 2.5 Ghz, 4GB RAM, Vista64. In the beginning it was flying. Fastest computer I have ever had. But then as the months went by, it started to slow. Recently, performance has been horrible. Looking at the system resource, memory was OK. But sometimes in Visual Studio I had to wait for the IDE to catch up with what I had typed (running Firefox with 20 tabs, Visual Studio 2008, Outlook, Excel and Sql Management Studio, but I used to have no problem with all of them open at the same time).

After some Googling, I saw that the first thing to check in my case would be the system temperature. If the system is overheating then the processors cant run to their full potential. And lo and behold, when I lifted up the laptop, there was dust all over the Fan intake (and the laptop was so close to the desk that even with it clean hardly any air would get in). So I cleaned off the desk and underside of the laptop, and propped up the back of the computer (I knew that I would get some good use out of this). Downloaded and installed Speed Fan and watched all of the core temperature numbers drop. Computer performance immediately went up. (I also took off the keyboard and checked to see if there was a buildup of dust inside the fan, but it was clean. Ran the fan diagnostic and it was ok as well). The computer is still running hot (still something to work on), but I have definitely learned my lesson – high performance laptops really suffer in the heat. Keep them cool!

Posted in Misc | 1 Comment »

Vaccines, MMR and the Withdrawn Lancet Study

A single study published in 1998 in the prestigious medical journal Lancet led to a large reduction in the rate of vaccinations in UK with MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine and consequent increases in diseases and number of deaths preventable by this outstanding vaccine. The reduced rate of vaccination stimulated by this publication spilled over to many other developed countries and to vaccines besides MMR.

In the years following publication, this work could not be duplicated by any other research group. It also became apparent that there was a conflict of interest in that the senior author of the paper had accepted funding from a lawyer who files lawsuits for damages on behalf of families of vaccinated children, including the published study.
As a result, most of the co-authors of that paper withdrew their designation as co-authors.

Now, Lancet has finally withdrawn the paper (with a short and hard-to-understand statement that seems to avoid mentioning the real controversy). Better late than never. However, it might be that no other publication has been as damaging to the field of vaccines and to public health as this one – now officially discredited.

Please pass this note along to anyone you know who is afraid of vaccinating themselves or their children, with any vaccine and especially with MMR vaccine. As quoted in this article “”It’s very easy to scare people; it’s very hard to unscare them.”

(The above was sent to me by my father, who has worked in the Vaccine industry for the last thirty years. Not the normal fare for this blog, but I thought that it is worth sharing, especially considering how Mumps outbreaks are back in the news. And since billg did just pledge $10 billion to vaccines through his foundation, the topic is almost tech-related).

Posted in Misc | No Comments »

One More Important Question Answered on Yahoo

Well, I’m glad that that one is finally all cleared up.

Posted in Misc | No Comments »

Connecting to Excel and Access Files using .Net on a 64-bit Server

If you are trying to query a MS Excel (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsb) or MS Access (.mdb, .accdb) file on a 64-bit server and are getting one of the following error messages:

• The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine.
• The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine.

Then it is necessary to install 2010 Office System Driver Beta: Data Connectivity Components on the server (the reason for this is the old Jet4.0 drover does not exist for 64 bit, and the ACE driver needed to read the newer formats is not installed by default). If you are using a version of Windows with UAC enabled, be sure to do this as Administrator.

After installing the components, use the following connection string formats (from the page linked-to above):

• Using OLEDB, set the Provider argument of the ConnectionString property to “Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.14.0”. Example: “Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=Path_To_File”
• Using OLEDB and connecting to a Microsoft Office Excel file, add “Excel 14.0” to the Extended Properties of the OLEDB connection string defined in the previous bullet point.
• Using ODBC:
  • Connecting to Microsoft Office Access (.mdb or .accdb): set the Connection String to “Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};DBQ=path to mdb/accdb file”
  • Connecting to Microsoft Office Excel (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsb): set the Connection String to “Driver={Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls, *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xlsb)};DBQ=path to xls/xlsx/xlsm/xlsb file”

Posted in Code, c# | 4 Comments »

Fixing the “circular file references are not allowed” Error in ASP.net

If you get the “circular file references are not allowed” error in an ASP.net Website Project and you do not have any controls that have any obvious circular references, what does the error mean and how do you fix it?

See this blog post from Siderite Zackwehdex as well as this MSDN forum post: by default, in a Website Project, ASP.net compiles one dll per folder in an ASP.net project. So if you have the following setup:

/folder1/Control1.ascx > References Control2
/folder2/Control2.ascx > References Control3
/folder1/Control3.ascx

This means that the folder1 dll will reference the folder2 dll which will again reference the folder1 dll, causing a “circular file reference”.

Ways to fix it:

1. Rearrange the layout of your controls (or masterpages) to remove the circular references (normally this will mean moving one control to another folder – in the example above, move control2 to folder1). This is the preferred solution.
2. Use batch=”false” in the compilation tag of the web.config file. This will cause a new dll to be created for each control/page in the site. This should fix the error but is really lousy for performance, so it should be avoided (especially on production sites).

(This has happened to me a couple of times already, so posting it here as a reminder to myself for the next time).

Posted in Code, asp.net | 2 Comments »

Viewing Emails by Conversation in Outlook

I have been yearning for some time to have a gmail-like Conversation view in Outlook. Currently you can group by Conversation. However, this view will only allow you to group the emails in one folder (and if you can’t combine emails you have received with emails that you have sent, a conversation view is not worth much). However, by setting up a Search folder, you can get around this restriction:

1. Set up a Custom Search Folder, set to include all messages that are in any of your mail folders (including Sent). You can get to this with File > New > Search Folder or Ctrl + Shift + P. There are also good instructions for this at HowToGeek.
2. Click on the new Search Folder, and then go to View > Arrange By > Conversation.

That’s it. It works pretty well, though it does rely a bit too much on using the subject as the thread/conversation identifier (which is fine when you have a unique subject, but not fine for generic subjects). Hopefully this will be improved in 2010 (though as of now, initial reports are not good). Still, in many ways it is far superior to the regular inbox view (and unlike Gmail, you can still maintain a different grouping method in your inbox, and apply technologies like Sorting which for some reason are still beyond Gmail’s capabilities).

Posted in Misc | No Comments »