Sarcasm

Landing pages for the patient administration system:

CSC, we love you too.

Noah PC desktop is sad

So, how do you feel about having to install all these different bits of software on the Noah PC?

Config for getting GitHub going at work that I always forget

GitHub, you make me so :/

How to set proxy:

git config --global http.proxy http://user:password@proxyname:port

How to unset proxy:

git config --global --unset http.proxy

Stop the 'fatal: unable to access 'https:github.com/[whatever]/' : SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate::

git config -- global http.sslVerify false

If you give people options they will choose the wrong one

We started with a tick icon and it was rejected because people might get confused thinking a tick means you're in the office, not on leave:

These options were then presented:

1. A cross, like you know, a calendar date crossed out:

2. A generic exit icon:

3. The head of Macho Man Randy Savage:

They did not pick the Macho Man.  They didn't pick Macho Man!!!

There was a problem starting C:\Program

 

I've had this a few times recently when trying to uninstall something from Control Pannels -> Uninstall or change a program.

The uninstall is trying to run something in program files and is choking on the space in the path. So the problem is coming from a path somewhere which doesn't have quotes around it. Bunch of rookies.

How to find what the uninstall is actually running? It's in the registry. Depending on whether it is x86 or x64 it'll be in one of these locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

In each of those locations there will be a heap of folder. Go through them till you find the one for your application - you can check the DisplayName value for this.

When you find the application you are trying to uninstall locate the 'UninstallString' value

This will look something like:

RunDll32 C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\11\50\Intel32\Ctor.dll,LaunchSetup "C:\Program Files (x86)\InstallShield Installation Information\{0363D88C-A222-4715-AE00-76AC8DB8C377}\setup.exe" -l0x9  -removeonly

It needs to have quotes around path directly after RunDll32.  Like this:

RunDll32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\11\50\Intel32\Ctor.dll",LaunchSetup "C:\Program Files (x86)\InstallShield Installation Information\{0363D88C-A222-4715-AE00-76AC8DB8C377}\setup.exe" -l0x9  -removeonly

You can either update the registry setting and run the uninstaller from the control panel window again or just take the updated string and run it from a cmd window.

Webstock 2014, was all like, weeeeeeee.

http://www.webstock.org.nz/14/

Prepare yourself for basic facts:

• two day conference for around $1000, couple of (optional) days of workshops beforehand for additional $$ 
• heavily design focused - this is not a technical conference. You get the good stuff like motivation, inspiration and entertainment, but you prob won't learn new skills or hear about new technology.
• single stream, so no hard decisions for you over what to see.
• there is free ice cream.
• occasionally there is free beer, but it is too hard to get because the line is ridiculous. But it's craft beer anyway, so don't be too upset.

Some of the presentations I particularly liked were:

• Tom Loosemore talking about UK govs digital plans - trashing a whole lot of existing stuff that isn't working, getting a good work culture, a team that has the power to change things, making products that people want. 
• Dan Saffer - microinteractions. Little basic things that applications do, how they can impact the user experience & be memorable or disastrous.
• Charlie Todd - Improv everywhere. The stuff these dudes do is pretty funny so this was very entertaining.
• Sha Hwang - When it's out just go watch it.

There are some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/webstock06/

My rating, I give this conference 5 custom fonts out of a possible 5 custom fonts.

I sure do like bullet points.

SSIS vs Oracle - Something bad happened but no one's telling you what

Trying to run an SSIS 2012 package that accesses an Oracle database through ODP.net.  It works when running the package through Visual Studio, but fails once deployed with the error:

The type initializer for 'Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleConnection' threw an exception.

Ok, something bad happened. There may be an internal exception here, but I guess SSIS isn't going to tell us what it is.

This is complicated by the fact that every installer that Oracle has ever built is pretty much rubbish.

Did it install correctly?
Can't the installer tell me some sort of 'success' or 'failure' rather than just closing?
Is that an information message or an error message?
Where did all the files go?
What do I currently have installed?
Why is there no entry in the install/uninstall programs control panel?
Why is it getting so confused over x86 and x64?
What files is it actually trying to use?
Why are we still using .bat files for an install it's not 1996 anymore?

Why can't I uninstall this, the uninstaller does nothing!?

Apparently the error is sometimes related to x64 trying to access x86 and vice-versa. I had some type of ODP.net installed from months ago, but wasn't sure what version or whether it was x64 or x86. Couldn't figure out how to find that info out. I tried installing both x64 and x86 versions of ODP.net but due to the installers was unable to tell if they installed correctly and still had the above error anyway.

What did work was when executing the deployed package from the SSIS server you can tell it to use the 32-bit runtime:

So I dunno. I guess this means I have the x86 version of ODP.net installed. This is A Good Thing To Know.