Having recently updated an ASP.net MVC web app from MVC4 to MVC5 and from .NET 4.5 to .NET 4.7.2 I was expecting Razor views (.cshtml files) to use the latest C# compiler, especially since at Properties/Build/Advanced option for the web project one read “C# latest major version (default)”. However that was not the case and […]

I’m often asked by friends and family to assist them on frustrating technical issues they can’t resolve by themselves. Thanks to remote access / support software like TeamViewer, this is a piece of cake nowadays. The solution to such problems isn’t always straightforward though. Just came across a Microsoft Word installation where suddenly the ...

Had just converted to target .NET framework 4.7.2 a Visual Studio solution full of 4.5 libraries, console apps and an MVC 5.0 (recently converted from 4.0) web app and all seemed to build fine, but then noticed that with web.config of the MVC web app open in the editor, it was showing lots of warnings […]

Based on Sam Holder’s answer at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7388475/reading-int-values-from-sqldatareader/54296026, just contributed an extension method for fetching Int32 values via ADO.net’s SqlDataReader, without jumping through hoops (aka first fetch column ordinal [number] by name, then fetching the int value passing the column ...

* AI business solutions: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/solutions/practice-areas/artificial-intelligence * AI platform: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/ai-platform/ at the section «Open and comprehensive platform» (scroll down) and see the three tabs AI tools/AI frameworks/AI related infrastructure * Azure (cloud) Machine Learning: ...

I got an older Lumia 930 phone (nice big display and 20MP camera, Windows Mobile 8.1 upgradeable to Windows 10, main shortcoming is that it doesn’t have microSD slot) on big discount the other day, but after upgrading it to Windows 10 I accidentally entered the wrong PIN code at login an it managed to […]

A colleague noticed earlier on today, that on the Chrome browser they were using, the search operator menu items of a jqGrid on a web app’s UI were jumping around on hover, making it practically impossible to select one.    Seems this had started occurring on that ASP.net MVC web application, after a recent update […]

If you need to customize the colors (or do more restyling) of validation messages in ASP.net MVC, the following snippet from a discussion on ASP.net forums should be useful: Add to Content/Site.css: /* styles for validation helpers */ .field-validation-error {     color: #b94a48; } .field-validation-valid {     ...

If you use Joomla! (CMS / Content Management System), you could switch to the free OpenStreetMaps instead of the recently-turned-much-more-expensive Google Maps, thanks to the OSModul extension for Joomla!: https://extensions.joomla.org/profile/extension/maps-a-weather/maps-a-locations/osmodul/ At the bottom of this page there is an example that ...

The other day I found how easy it is to use a Live CD/DVD (where packet writing occurs when adding stuff) instead of a Mastered one (where all is kept to be written when you close the disk) on Windows. It feels more like using a USB flash disk and should be more safe regarding […]

Just came across this validation error display in an MVC app I’ve recently started maintaining. The required input field validation seemed to not be localized, resulting in a mixed English and Greek (from the field’s Display name) message: Looking at the MVC model I noticed they were using [Required] attributes for the userName and password ...

Lately, I’ve got the task of maintaining/extending an ASP.net MVC web application that is using jQuery’s jqGrid for data grids on its UI. First thing I noticed was how confusing the search UI on the grid’s header was: Those symbols on the left-side of each column’s searchbox are for the type of search (e.g. contains, […]

Microsoft is suggesting to always use Named parameters with SqlCommands for security reasons (to avoid SQL injection exploits), but they haven’t thought of providing a property at SqlCommand to give you back the result SQL so that you can have your app log it without resorting to SQL Server for that logging. Found a solution […]

It seems VBScript (.vbs) script file’s DropHandler on Windows is broken regarding Unicode filenames, as described at https://stackoverflow.com/a/4366906/903783 A workaround suggested by user DG there (https://stackoverflow.com/a/13587850/903783) was to use a batch file to accept the dropped file, then pass the filename(s) to the VBScript script ...

Just came across the following case in C# that puzzled me momentarily, especially since the strings involved were long enough and the expression was broken on multiple lines: bool flag = true; string test1 = flag? "xa" : "xb"; string test2 = "x" + (flag? "a" : "b"); string test3 = "x" + flag? ...

  Researching how to solve a “You have been logged on with a temporary profile” message on a system set up to use a roaming profile (and after I had first checked/fixed the filesystem for errors which is the classic cause for that when using local profiles) I came across this article: ...

Quoting my comment from a discussion thread on the AMD Community website Actually the drivers back from 2015 that Microsoft serves for AMD laptop graphics adapters seem to make Windows 10 crawl (at everything, not just in graphics stuff). Installing the newest ones from AMD (in this case the beta driver) makes laptops work decently […]

Θαυμάστε παρακάτω ένα έγγραφο (από ΔΕΥΑ Αγρινίου, έτους 2015) που δείχνει το αίσχος με πολλές επιχειρήσεις ύδρευσης / αποχέτευσης που καταχρηστικά ορίζουν ως τριτεγγυητή για χρέη του ενοικιαστή προς αυτές τον ιδιοκτήτη ενός ακινήτου. Αναφέρει: Δηλώνω δε με την παρούσα, ότι είμαι υπεύθυνος εξ’ ολοκλήρου για την εξόφληση των λογαριασμών, σε ...

I just came across this strange thing on twitter: Received a notification that some “Virginia A. Osborn” liked a tweet of mine that was a) in Greek b) totally of a subset of Greek residents interest, highly unlikely it would have meant anything to a person with a foreign name. Then I saw that twitter […]

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have gone to extra lenghts to make the Windows Live suite of software go away, without anyone thinking that there were people who were using them and without offering file/project-level compatible replacements for user-friendly tools like Windows Live Movie Maker. Only Windows Live Writer was at some point ...

On Windows 10, Microsoft (they’ve acquired Skype some years ago) provide a Windows Store app for Skype, however Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps like that one don’t support older webcams (even the ones embedded in not-that-old laptops). Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t bothered to provide some frame grabber driver to bridge with ...

At ClipFlair Gallery, apart from opening a ClipFlair activity in ClipFlair Studio, downloading of an activity (.clipflair) file is also supported. However, because the component serialization file format of ClipFlair Studio is XML plus media assets packed in .zip archive (with nesting allowed, where components and whole activities can be placed in ...

I was looking for a way to show a hidden HTML element with just CSS (no Javascript) when mouse hovers over an anchor (say over a “more…” note), while at the same time also supporting touch-only (no mouse) clients, where clicking should show (and keep open) that same element. I ended up combining solutions and […]

Sometime ago, I was receiving errors 0x8e5e03fa and 0x800703fa on several pending updates at Windows 10’s Update pane (found at Settings / Updates & Security / Windows Update from the Start menu). The updates history wasn’t showing many more details, but could see Knowldege Base article numbers (KBxx) for some pending cummulative updates. ...

After doing sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade on an older Raspbian installation (at a 4GB SD Card), some corruption occured (probably due to lack of space, since I see newer NOOBS asks for an 8GB SD Card), making it unbootable. Would only show the NOOBS splash screen, but couldn’t boot into Raspbian. I just […]