Tom Hall's Blog

Bermuda Sunset Wallpaper

2010-10-04T09:49:29Z

I thought I’d share another Bermuda photo turned desktop wallpaper. This was taken on my last night from the Fairmont Hamilton Princess, a stunning sunset :)

Check out my other photos of Bermuda on Flickr

Bermuda Desktop Wallpaper

2010-09-01T19:39:09Z

I’ve recently been away on (a much needed) holiday to Bermuda, and whilst there I managed to completely relax and disconnect from everyday life and get into something I’ve been missing for a while – photography! I thought I’d share one of my pics that I’ve touched up and made into a desktop wallpaper, its specifically for 1440 x 900 – just click the image for full size :)

Bored or interested, take a look at my collection of photos from Bermuda on Flickr

ReSharper Stuck Loading Assemblies in Visual Studio

2010-03-10T12:41:52Z

Sometimes ReSharper (4.5) will get stuck ‘Loading Assemblies’ for a specific solution and this causes Visual Studio fall over (not responding), the only way out is to end the devenv.exe process, from here, you are trapped – going around in circles – great!

A way out:

Launch Visual Studio (not the solution)
Tools –> Add-in Manager
Untick JetBrains ReSharper 4.5 and click OK
Open your solution
Right click the solution in the Solution Exporer –> Clean Solution
Tools –> Add-in Manager
Tick JetBrains ReSharper 4.5 and click OK
Done! (most of the time!)

Failing this, you can try deleting files with the following file extensions within your solution:

.suo
.resharper
.resharper.user

YouTube Introduces HD Modes

2010-01-21T08:28:49Z

It looks like YouTube overnight introduced a new mode of HD on its web player… Users can now view in 360p, 480p or 720p, and I’m guessing depending on the video uploaded, 1080p would be available too. Cool!

I realise my screenshot of the actual video is not exactly great!
[great tune though – Plan B – Stay too Long]

Merry Christmas 2009

2009-12-26T10:34:21Z

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Connect to SQL Azure using SQL Server Management Studio 2008

2009-10-25T23:04:11Z

SQL Azure is now in CTP and for those who have received an invitation to test it out, you might be wondering how you can manage your databases via SQL Server Management Studio…. Here’s a few steps to do it:

Set up your SQL Azure server and Administrator Username via https://sql.azure.com/
On the SQL Azure website under Firewall Settings ensure you check “Allow Microsoft Services access to this server” and add your IP address to the IP Address Range
Open SQL Server Management Studio
Close the “Connect to Server” dialogue and click “New Query”
In the “Connect to Server” dialogue box type the server name provided via the SQL Azure website, e.g: <servername>.database.windows.net
Select Authentication to SQL Server Authentication
Your username is the Administrator Username you set up in this format: <username>@<servername>
Password is obvious?

From here you can run as much T-SQL as you like :)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Released

2009-10-19T20:52:53Z

Today (19th October) Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released – with brand new branding – we say goodbye to our multi coloured figure of eight and hello to a swish purple figure of 8! :)

What’s new with the SKU’s, well, Team Foundation Server is now available for x86 and x64 systems, and it seems that Team Suite Edition is now Ultimate Edition…

Download is available to MSDN Subscribers today:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

General availability is 21st October.

Community Server Spam

2009-09-30T09:46:39Z

If like me you use Community Server as your blogging engine, you may find that your blog suffers a ridiculous amount of spam blog comments!? (Or is that just me?!) Well, I had left the blog unattended for just over a month due to being busier than usual and I found almost 3000 spam comments…. So, time for action!

You are probably aware that “Community Server support a robust rules engine based SPAM tool” which appears to be completely useless! This so-called can be found under your blog’s advanced configuration under the “Comment SPAM” header – it doesn’t really appear to provide much configuration at all…….

Enter “Manage Spam Blocker” – this is located at the Site Administration of Community Server: Site Administration > Content/Site Security > Manage Spam Blocker

In here you should have a number of rules available, all of which by default are disabled(!), enable IP Frequency, Forbidden Word Blog Spam (configure with words of your choice) and any others and away you go – sort of – it works, but its not fantastic, you will still get some spam….

Moved servers

2009-08-26T22:40:00Z

Hoorah… I have just switched servers and all has gone well – hence this post! :)

I was hosted with eUKHost, on a Windows Shared Hosting package which is exceptionally good and great value for money. However, I require more flexibility, and whilst eUKHost offer Hyper V VPS Hosting, a better option arose which was to do a server share with a friend and colleague of mine, Chris, who runs Monexa Systems, check out the website to find out more about what he has to offer.

As ever I’ve got some plans to do stuff with the blog and the website… Lets see what materialises!

Photo Sharing via Mobile

2009-08-09T20:22:36Z

Practically all social media websites feature photos, and some are entirely based upon photos… So this tells us one thing, photos are important!

If you have a camera phone, then its likely that you’ll have taken some photos and really wished you could have uploaded the photo to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter there and then… Well now we can do that using email. Most phones are equipped with an email client, and Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter (Twitpic) provide a secret email address for every user to send their photos to… Resulting in the photos appearing on the website straight away – to get your secret email address, visit the following URL’s:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mobile/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/
Twitter: http://twitpic.com/upload/

If you want to send your photos to all three (or more) addresses in one go, then set up a contact named “Social Media” and enter each email address followed by a semi colon ;
This will mean you send one email and your photos appear on X number of social networking sites at the same time!