Getting to grips with EPiServer

A week ago I was in London for a 3 day training course for EPiServer CMS.

I really enjoyed the course and learning about the CMS, it looks like EPiServer could be one of the best commercial CMS's out there.

It comes with integration packages for Visual Studio which make using the features a doddle and I'm looking forward to using it on some projects in the future.

Watch this space for any tips and tricks I pick up along my way.

The Pixel Chicken

I just found out that my mate Liz has buggered off back to Australia without somuch as a good bye! The cow!

So anyway, I thought I'd link her up... If you're reading this, you're based in Sydney and you're looking for a top class interactive designer / developer then give Liz a shout and check out her blog over at www.pixelchicken.com.

Liz, next time try saying good bye ;)

Book Review : ASP.NET 2.0 Step by Step

Just over a month ago I moved in with Smithy, during the expected packing and unpacking I came across a book that I bought close to 3 years ago when I started working at twentysix Leeds and was forced to learn .NET.

The book is "ASP.NET 2.0 Step by Step" from the Microsoft Press which and I've got to say, my initial opinion was not a good one, after getting just over half way through, I became disenchanted with and put to one side. I have since spent the last 8 months looking high and low for it, and even accusing my co-workers of losing it for me :S (sorry guys) as I found a desire to finish it.

My first attempt at reading the book was not a good one. I was coming from a solid 5 years of scripting things like Lingo, ActionScript, JavaScript and most importantly PHP; I was struggling with the structured and strict way that ASP.NET works when compared to (loose and, dare I say, sloppy) PHP pages. It also seemed a bit wordy for my liking. Some of my favourite programming books are the O'Reilly cookbook series which give you examples based around short, concise scenarios.

So, armed with my now solid 2 years of experience with C# and the .NET Framework I picked up the book again, found my old bookmark still stuck in at the end of chapter 13 and decided to have a little flick.

It just so happened that the next couple of chapters concerned subjects that have been on the agenda quite a bit recently, namely the caching of data and output within a web application.

These two chapters give a good introduction and now, with just over two years experience with C# and the .NET framework I find these chapters to be just enough to get me going on a subject. I now know how and where to look for further information on a subject from my time searching the usual places.

Having re-read the first 13 chapters I take back most of what I thought about it in the first place and can see that my original lack of enthusiasm for the book was not down to the book, but due to my inexperience with ASP.NET and all its in's and outs. I actually love this book now as it gives you insights into many of the key tools that you might use day to day in a ASP.NET web app.

Good book, get it read!

The ASP.NET Singleton, Singleton classes for ASP.NET

This is a little trick I learned recently. I had a situation where I needed to use a static class in one of my ASP.NET web apps. I wanted it to provide functionality on a per-user basis, but when I put this in to practice I got some funny results and then I realised the obvious. Static classes are shared throughout any single instance of a .NET application, and each website runs within it's own w3wp.exe process, as a self contained application. This explained the funny behaviour.

So I did a little digging around and found the following code, which adapts the singleton pattern to store the instance in a per-user manner.

Each user is assigned an HttpContext for thier time visiting an ASP.NET web application. This Context object allows you to store objects.

So a classic Singleton might look something like this

class Singleton {
  
    // private instance field
    private static Singleton _instance;
  
    // public read-only instance property
    public static Singleton Instance {
        get{
            if(_instance == null){
                _instance = new Singleton();
            }
          
            return _instance;
        }
    }

    // private constructor
    private Singleton() {
        // constructor logic here
    }
}

All we have to do is to replace the private field for an Item in the HttpContect object, like so...

class Singleton {
  
    // public read-only instance property
    public static Singleton Instance {
        get{
            if(HttpContext.Current.Items["SingltonInstance"] == null){
                HttpContext.Current.Items.Add("SingltonInstance", new

Singleton());
            }
          
            // cast the item to a singleton because it is stored as a generic object
            return (Singleton)HttpContext.Current.Items["SingltonInstance"];
        }
    }

    // private constructor
    private Singleton() {
        // constructor logic here
    }
}

Working from home

So this Sunday I ran in the Horsforth 10Km race and finished in 46mins, not my personal best but it was a hilly course so it was always going to be difficult achieving that, and to boot I had pulled my left knee a little bit in training the Tuesday before.

This little pull has turned into a full blown injury which sees me working from home today and tomorrow and with a physio appointment 1st thing on Thursday.

Working from home has for a long time been a nightmare of mine. Simply because I do not (or did not) possess enough self dicipline to put in a full and productive days work. Until now!

I used to work part time at a University and then, in my "spare" time work on a few freelance bits and pieces, which seemed like a chore and I would always have to work late into the night to get to a point where I had achieved enough *work* for the day.

But I'm setting the record straight today. I was up at 7am with Smithy (mainely because I had a doctors appointment to get to) and then when I got back I was straight to the laptop and into the working. Had 40 mins for lunch and then more working. It feels good, this home working lark...

Luck I've got another day of it tomorrow then!...

Racing Time

Next Sunday sees the 24th Horsforth 10Km race which I will be running in.

I’ll be racing against some of my workmates, James, Tom, Jen and Sarah. So there should be some good fun and I’m looking to beat my most recent time at the Great Yorkshire run last month in Sheffield where I posted a time of 45:45 for 10Km.

How to uninstall Adobe AIR on Windows

Here's some linkage for how to uninstall Adobe AIR on windows.

Download the latest installer and then from the dcommand line give it some of this

AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -uninstall

Thanks to flashmech for the original post (http://blog.flashmech.net/2008/05/this-is-how-you-uninstall-adobe-air/)