jtlabs.net:/blog$

Visual Studio Debugger Running Slow

jtv4k — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:05:09 +0000

Over the past few days, one of my C# projects started debugging unusually slow. “What could be the cause?” I asked myself. It could be any number of things. I recently upgraded to Windows 7. Along with the upgrade, I changed to x64. I’ve marched along the forced upgrade path to IIS7. Any and all of these things could be causing a slow down. So what did I do? What any good techy does in hopeless situations: I Googled.

There were lots of tips and suggestions. I tried them all, one by one with no success. One of the more complete threads I found is over at visualstudiodev.com.

Robbie writes:

As an update, I found an even better fix so you dont’ have to lose any functionality in VS 2008. This also drastically improved performance (response time) for me in SQL server management Studio. In Internet Explorer 7…

Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Security Node->Uncheck ‘Check for publisher’s certificate revocation*’

Once I did this, like magic, VS 2008 works great even with ‘Enable the Visual Studio hosting process’ checked and SQL Server Management Studio’s response time was almost immediate. It is a good day! My theory is the corporate network I am in is blocking certain ports (out of my control), and thus certain ‘behind the scenes’ requests are timing out, causing the delays.

This didn’t work for me, but it looks like it helped a lot of people. I’d suggest trying it out. At the very least, it will cut down on come unnecessary traffic.

Debugging still ran painfully slow. It often took 20 seconds to half a minute to load all my assemblies before even attempting to step through code. Back to Google.

This time, I came by a fairly limited Stack Overflow response. No answer was selected as correct, but one had enough votes to make a read worthwhile:

You may need to delete all your breakpoints—note that you need to click the “delete all breakpoints” button (or use Ctrl-Shft-F9), NOT just delete them one by one. If Visual Studio has mangled your solution settings the latter will not work. You may need to add a breakpoint first, in order for this to work (clever, eh?).

If worst comes to worst, you may need to delete your .suo file and let Visual Studio start a new one from scratch. Note that you will lose your personal solution configuration settings, however (only for this solution, not any others). However, you may want to move/rename the file temporarily until you determine whether or not this is the problem; that way, you can always move it back. I have seen some online resources recommend deleting (moving/renaming) the .ncb file as well.

I tried it. Success! Who would have thought removing all breakpoints (adding some if you have none) would rebuild the solution file? I was rather upset to have lost my carefully crafted hundred or so breakpoints, but the speed increase makes up for the loss in spades.

Visual Studio 2010 and Emacs

jtv4k — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:21:14 +0000

I’ve posted about this issue before in previous versions of Visual Studio, which received a very helpful response. The newest version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 didn’t ship with emacs support. This was later remedied by Microsoft with an emulator. Great.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very happy about the emacs support. I was happy enough, in fact, that I upgraded to the new Visual Studio. Even so, the emulator isn’t perfect. There are a lot of things broken. Notably, the expected behavior when pressing Enter or Tab.

Emacs doesn’t support auto-line indenting (at least out-of-the-box). Indenting happens depending on the language file loaded, any custom settings, etc. Microsoft emulated this behavior. When hitting Enter in VS2010, a newline appears and the cursor sits contently at the beginning of line point. I find this rather irritating!

To fix this, I had to settle on breaking a few other things (more on that later).

Tools ->Options… -> Keyboard
Under “Show commands containing:” type “EmacsBreakLineIndent”
Click “Edit.EmacsBreakLineIndent”
Select “Text Editor” under “Use new shortcut in:” (if not already selected)
Highlight where it says “Press shortcut keys:”
Press the Enter key on your keyboard
Click “Assign” and “OK”

Done. That solves most formatting issues (in the code editor, there are issues editing HTML and Javascript).

Another annoyance is emacs keybindings with snippets. They don’t work. I haven’t figured this one out yet. If I do, I’ll be sure to post back.

Basically if you don’t already know, snippets are quick auto-fill type things that help compete common tasks. If you begin typing “for” and auto-complete shows a snippet icon, hit tab twice to see what it’s suppose to do. You can try it, at least, with default keybindings since it work work with emacs.

I’ll see if Microsoft Connect can shed some light on this issue and post back. (Vote here is you’re interested in getting this fixed.)

Empty Trash on Mac OS X without Secure Empty Trash

jtv4k — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:08:26 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of emptying the trash on my laptop. There’s really nothing too important on it anyhow. But this evening I felt like a little new year cleaning would be appropriate so I clicked the only option I had: “Empty Securely”. To my surprise, I had about over 200k items to be deleted.

It took about two hours before I finally gave up. There’s nothing important in my Trash, I just want the free space. Enter Terminal.

It’s pretty simple to remove most empty files quickly.

Open
```
Terminal
```
(Applications / Utilities / Terminal.app)
Type:
```
cd /Users//.Trash
```
Ensure that you’re in the correct directory by typing:
```
pwd
```
Type:
```
rm -rv *
```

Make sure to replace with your logged in user name. If you don’t know you’re user name, you can get a list of all users by typing: ls /Users/

You’ll see a list of files fly by! It’ll go much faster than securely emptying the trash.

That’s it! Enjoy the free space!

Please note: This does not do a “secure delete” and only removed the file record. All the data is still there so anybody with enough know-how can recover the files.

Also, you’ll only be deleting files for your own user account. You can delete from other accounts … so long as you have access.

Steam sucks — cripples good games

jtv4k — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:03:25 +0000

I was shocked and delighted today when I found an ad on cnet.com for Sid Meier’s Civilization 5 (who says nobody clicks on ads)! Who know it came out about two weeks ago? I didn’t.

I’m not somebody you would call a “gamer,” but I do enjoy my fare share of strategy games. I’ve been a long time fan of the Civilization series, spending many nights playing well past bed time.

I had to run right out and buy it! I’ve spent so many countless hours enjoying the franchise, I couldn’t begrudge the developers $49.99 (+tax). Once home, I quickly made dinner and booted up my computer. In goes the DVD and … nothing.

It turns out the game uses Steam. Ok. I try to install, but it won’t work until I’ve configured my router. Of course. If I weren’t highly educated in computers, I don’t know how I would get this thing to install! For those curious, a port list is available on Steam’s site. Plug those ports into your router and it should begin.

Of course, it will only work when the Steam servers aren’t overloaded. Great.

I sat clicking furiously for a single download slot to open! It doesn’t make sense to download a game install when I purchased a physical DVD. Sure, everyone has the internet, but this type of thing only works if the gaming system doesn’t suck!

About an hour later, it finally begins downloading — and it takes 4 hours to complete. Mind you I have pretty fast internet, and it still takes four hours. Steam definitely fails. The network usage seemed to bounce frequently between 400 and 600KB/s. That all seems fine and well, except I need to download 4.5GB of data. Oh yeah, and it keeps pausing the download.

Why is this game so hard to install? If I hadn’t opened the package, I would return it.

I understand the rationale behind Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, but I don’t see why they should be so draconian that it must cripple the software I PAID for. Heck, at this rate it would be easier to pirate (and cheaper)! I feel for the developers — I do. They need to protect themselves from piracy by creating ridiculous DRM systems like in Steam. Maybe, if they charge me for their time, and I charge them for my time (you know, the time it’s taken me to make the installer work), we’ll break even and I won’t owe a cent! Although, that works out to be the same cost as piracy — I might as well go that route (it’ll be faster).

All I can say is this game better be worth it. The Civilization series is an amazing brand — it’s a shame the execution smears the product’s good name.

Blocking old versions of Subversion using WebDAV

jtv4k — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:18:37 +0000

I recently needed to block older clients from our corporate Subversion repository. It turns out merge history (which was introduced in SVN 1.5) isn’t stored property in older clients and can really be reliably counted upon from 1.6.6 and up. We had a requirement to mark 1.6 clients (earlier than 1.6.6) read-only, and deny earlier clients (1.5.x and earlier) all together.

It’s relatively easy to do in the apache.conf file.
This goes somewhere in the global directive space:
# Check to see if we're subversion, and if we are grab the version SetEnvIf User-Agent SVN\/([0-9\.]+) svnVersion=$1

# Completely block old clients SetEnvIf svnVersion ^1\.[0-5]\..+ svnDeny

# Deny write access to pre-1.6.6 clients SetEnvIf svnVersion ^1\.6.[1-5]$ svnLock

Drop this in your Location directive:

# Some deny rules Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=svnDeny

Done!

Visual Studio 2010 without Emacs

jtv4k — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:07:45 +0000

I have to admit that I like Visual Studio. Well, ok, I like Visual Studio 2008. The newest version (2010) sucks!

For some reason, Microsoft thought it was a great idea to re-write the entire back-end. As such, they dropped things with “low popularity” for “higher priorities.”

How rediculous!

What, exactly, am I so angry about? Emacs key-binding support. It’s gone! Microsoft, if you don’t have the time to invest to make a product at least as good as your last version, don’t re-write it. My team works almost exclusively with Visual Studio 2008 (which I rather like) but we will not be upgrading to 2010. Why? Because I’m stubborn. I’ve been a developer for a long time now, and I like emacs. Simple, yes?

According to Microsoft, emacs key-bindings were less of a priority than pretty gradients and a new icon style (don’t even get me started on the lack of a standardized backwards comparability format).

I say to you Microsoft, that if you want the several hundred thousand dollars that my department is willing to spend on a newer version of Visual Studio, you’d better pay a developer some cash to do something your products have done in the past. Until then, we’ll keep our money.

UPDATE

Check out Ray’s comment below for an extension.

Ditching GoDaddy, using NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

jtv4k — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:29:09 +0000

I’ve been using GoDaddy for years. When I started using them many moons ago, they offered cheap hosting and domain registrations in what was a generally expensive market. I purchased my first .COM and .NET domain for ~$3.95 each. Years later, all GoDaddy hosts is advertisements for their useless or misleading products.

All I want is three things:

Domain registration for cheap
Privacy or proxy domain registration
Variable DNS

Seems simple, right? GoDaddy offers all three things I mention above, but the domain registration cost has been rising recently and the Domains By Proxy service they own is expensive and buried in controversy. At least their DNS works as expected.

When it became time to renew one of my domains, I decided it was time to give GoDaddy the boot.

I did all the things expected of one when one wants to find a new registrar. I scoured the web for forum posts, blog entries, and reviews of registrars. After many hours of searching, I narrowed my search down to two companies: Name.com and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. Ultimately, after reviewing both services further, I went with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET (NFSN).

I like simple. NFSN is has a painfully simple dashboard, free account creation, and very easy pricing. They work slightly different than most hosting companies (for a lot of reasons). Yes, they are a hosting company, but that doesn’t mean I have to pay to have them host anything at all. Domain registrations are about average in terms of cost ($8.59 as of this writing), but I love their policy statement. Their private domain registration service proudly announces that it privatizes domains! Though this may seem a given, DomainsByProxy fails at what it is suppose to do for $19.95 a year! For only $0.01 a day, they provide a mailing address, email, fax, and mail inbox for my domain. They assert that, short of a court order, my identity will not be revealed. In short, they say they do their job. A quick Google search shows no complains.

Ideally, I wanted free private registration, but $0.01 * 365 = $3.65. Add that to the cost of the domain, and I’m only paying $12.24 a year for domain registration and domain privacy. That’s about $15 less than GoDaddy for the same services! Darn GoDaddy and their useless upsells.

I’m now one day in to my service (it took about 2 hours for the full transfer to complete–I have another tirade about that), but it’s doing what I expect!

Josh Gabriel pres. Winter Killers – Deep Down

jtv4k — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:41:30 +0000

I had such a hard time finding this song that I thought I’d provide a download for the masses here. Hopefully it doesn’t stir up any issues; it’s a great song.

[ Josh Gabriel presents Winter Kills - Deep Down ]

They say, they say
We should have known better than to
fall so deep down, deep down
into this rabbit hole we found

and i was thinking
on the long way down here
no life, no light, no sight. no sound down here
hold my hand now
eyes closed don’t stop down deep
into this pool of regrettable situations
pitch black
think back to the last time
that we were happy

losing my senses
lost in my head
i am nothing, and no one
and nowhere at all
i am thoughtless and i fought this on my own

this is the wrong way
this is the long way down
this is the wrong way
this is the long way down
this is the wrong way
this is the long way down
this is the wrong way
this is the long way down

from these midnight walls
sinister faces rest a gaze on me
and in this darkness
foolishly i run
this is the wrong way
losing my senses
lost in my head
i am nothing, and no one
and nowhere at all
i am thoughtless and i’ve fought this on my own (and i’m sinking….)
on the long way down here
no life, no light, no sound, no sight down here
hold my hand now
eyes closed don’t stop, down deep
into this pool of regrettable situations
pitch black
think back to the last time
that we were happy

from these midnight walls
sinister faces rest a gaze on me
and in this darkness
foolishly i run
this is the wrong way
losing my senses
lost in my head

Michael Jackson Dies; Twitter Fails

jtv4k — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:54:36 +0000

In other news today, Michael Jackson is reported as dying at age 50. It’s very sad, but neither his death nor his ownership of the Beatles’ music is the topic of this post (although hopefully with his death, the latter will be transferred to somebody who plays well with Apple, Inc.).

Michael Jackson: Trending

After TMZ reported his death, Twitter immediately became abuzz. I (of course) tweeted after becoming aware. Apparently millions of others did too as his name (and the Micheal spelling as well) appeared on Trending Topics. I clicked on his name and five seconds later there were 8000+ tweets waiting for me to read.

Soon after Twitter complete failed. See my post Twitter Stumbles for more thoughts on the happy Twitter whale.

It’s a sign of our time that when celebrity news happens, Twitter fails. When major earthquakes or political elections occur, Twitter can handle the load just fine. Go figure.

Either that means we (as a society) need to worry less about celebrity gossip and more about politics, or Twitter needs to update their systems to handle celebrity gossip.

Of course the irony of both a celebrity and Twitter dying (even if one only for a few moments) at the same time does not escape me. Farrah Fawcett also died today. It’s a bad day to be a celebrity–or Twitter. Does the parallel mean Twitter, too, is destined to die the death of a celebrity? It has its ups and downs, is constantly in the public eye, and in major need of some good PR.

Ah parallels. Fun for all, indeed.

Visual Studio 2008 and Emacs

jtv4k — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:23:27 +0000

I’m starting to use Visual Studio after years of disuse. It’s amazing to see all the improvements that have gone into Visual Studio since version 5! As a programmer who prefers working in a terminal window (I like the dark colors), being impressed by a GUI is something significant–especially since I’ve gotten used to using Emacs!

Yes, it’s true. I am a die-hard emacs fan. When an editor does not have emacs emulation (or faulty emulation like Komodo), I’ll do what I can to return to my great love: the terminal.

After installing Visual Studio 2008, I was pleasantly surprised. There is an Emacs emulation mode in Visual Studio 2008!

Tools > Options… > Environment > Keyboard

Under “Apply the following additional keyboard mapping scheme,” select “Emacs.” Hit OK and done!

I tried the kill ring (C-k and C-y), and it worked as I would expect in Emacs. Very cool. They were pretty ingenious with the mark region too (C-). It begins highlighting of text in the editor.

Almost immediately, though, I found a problem. The tab key no longer works on new lines. The proper functionality would be new lines indenting to the appropriate place based on previous context. But no, it only works on lines with current text. Pressing does not indent automatically! What were they thinking?

Deal breaker for me.