The content types are deployed using a solution but that’s where the automation ends.  However, this is where Powershell steps up to the mark.  With Powershell we can quickly automate just about anything in SharePoint.

Here’s the script I can up with:

$web = Get-SPWeb http://www.example.com
$list = $web.Lists["TargetList"]
$list.ContentTypes | ForEach {
    $_.Name = $_.Parent.Name
    $_.Update()
}

Finally, however, I have been able to get my website back online.  Luckily I made a backup of of the website before the old site was cancelled, so it’s just been a case of uploading all the files and running a stack of SQL scripts to get the blog set up again.

Hopefully I wont be needing to move hosts again any time soon as Encaptured.net is operated by a good friend of mine: Shane.

Public Sub AttachToWebServer()
   Dim process As EnvDTE.Process
   For Each process In DTE.Debugger.LocalProcesses
       System.Diagnostics.Debug.Print(process.Name)
       If (Path.GetFileName(process.Name).ToLower() = "w3wp.exe") Then
           process.Attach()
       End If
   Next
End Sub

I should point out that in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 you will need to run Visual Studio as Administrator, or disable UAC.

For recycling purposes,  plastics are divided into 7 different categories that are numbered 1 to 7.  In Guernsey at present, we are only recycling categories, Nos. 1, 2 & 6.

Inclusion of the wrong kind of plastic into the recycling bins, can lead to the whole batch becoming contaminated and refused in the market place.

How to recognise plastics Nos. 1 & 2

The number 1 or 2 is embossed or printed within the recycling triangle usually on the underside of the item. (see below for more details). Any other number in the triangle means it is not currently recycled here and must not be put into the recycling bins.

Sometimes the plastic category is identified by the letters only; PET, PETE or RPET for No. 1;    or HDPE or PE for No. 2.

A recycling symbol on its own without any indication that it is a 1 or 2, cannot currently be recycled in Guernsey.

Examples of Plastic No.1.

Also known by the letters PET; PETE (short for PolyEthylenTerephthalate) or RPET.(Recycled PET)

Plastic drink bottles are almost all No. 1. (PET; PETE; RPET)

Because of its recyclabilty and value, manufacturers are increasing the use of this type of plastic so you can now find many other containers are No. 1.

Examples include Rachel’s yogurt pots (but none of the other yogurt ranges) to Guernsey Herb packets, to the plastic insert in some chocolates, mince pies, and biscuits.  Even the protective plastic covering on some non-food packets, such as batteries, gardening accessories etc can sometimes be No. 1.

Supermarkets are increasing their use of No. 1 for some food items….. remember to wash before recycling.  Sometimes the lid and base of a 2 part punnet, such as used for strawberries, can be different plastics with only one half  being No. 1.  Some food trays can be Plastic No.1 such as used by the Cook Shop in the Lower Pollet.

The only way to know for sure is to check your packaging, particularly on the base, to look for the recycling triangle with the correct number or appropriate lettering.

No. 1 (PET; PETE; RPET) is the highest grade of plastic and achieves the best price at the market place. If it becomes contaminated with less valuable plastics the whole load can be rejected.

Examples of Plastic No.2.

Also known as HDPE or PE ( short for High Density PolyEthylene)

These are generally the type of bottles or containers used for cleaning products.  Shampoos, conditioners, suncreams, liquid soaps, weed-killer, detergents, silicone sealant tubes, roll-on deodorants etc.

Again, the symbol is usually on the base of the container and will be a 2 within a triangle and / or the letters HDPE or simply PE.

Always look for the correct symbol.  No symbol → no recycling.  If in doubt, leave it out!

Examples of Plastic No. 6.

Also known as PS ( short for PolyStyrene packaging).

These are the clean, often large, (white) pieces of packaging that surround your new television, washing machine etc.  Take to Chouet recycling point or Longue Hougue Recycling Facility.

Beware of imitations – not all packaging that looks like polystyrene is polystyrene.

Polystyrene food trays and cups contain a plastic coating and should not be put in the recycling bins.

Plastic bags.

Take to Checkers.  The C.I. Co-op in Grande Marche, St Martin accepts transparent polythene bags.

Best of all, avoid accepting plastic bags whenever possible.

Hansa sells OnyaWeigh reusable gauze bags for weighing veg. etc.

In addition………

Commercial quantities of other plastics such as polythene or seed trays can also be recycled locally.  For further information contact Mayside Recycling: 247599.

To migrate the project I simply zipped the solution folder and copied it across to the destination machine, unzipped and opened in Visual Studio.

However, when I came to build the SharePoint solution file using the Tools -> WPSBuilder -> Build WSP, I got the following error in the output window:
“Offset and length were out of bounds for the array or count is greater than the number of elements from index to the end of the source collection”

When Googling the the error message the only result was on the WSP Builder CodePlex site and was about 64bit versions of the Cablib.dll assembly.  As neither of my machines is 64bit I figured this wasn’t the issue.

I’m not sure exactly what was causing the problem but this was the solution:

• Open the project folder in Explorer
  • Delete the bin folder
  • Delete the obj folder
  • Delete the wsp file in the project folder.
• Re-open the project in Visual Studio
  • Compile the project
  • Build the WSP (Tools -> WPSBuilder -> Build WSP)

After this everything was back to normal.

This handy password re-call feature was removed from MacOS X Snow Leopard.  Once you entered a password in the wifi connection dialog box you couldn’t go back there to retrieve it.  This is probably a security measure, as it didn’t require the user to enter a password to get at the wifi password.

Well, I have just figured out how to get at them again.  All the wifi passwords are stored in your Keychain.  You can access the information using the Keychain Access application that is located in /Applications.

You need to look in the System keychain, there you should find all the AirPort network passwords for all the wifi networks you have connected to.  Just double click on the one you want to see and click the “Show password” checkbox.  You will be prompted to enter your administrator password before being shown the wifi password in plain text.

Enjoy

A Local Meal

Every once in a while I manage to pull together a meal that astounds me.  I tweeted on Sunday with a picture of the meal in question.  What was really special about this meal was the sheer lack of food miles that went into it.

• Razor clams
  • These were the heart of the meal and were freshly picked from the beach only a stones throw from my parents’ house.
  • They had a dressing of rocket – from my parents’ garden, garlic – from my parents’ garden and zest of lemon – bought but my parents’ do have a lemon tree!).
• Mashed potatoes
  • Potatoes – from my parents’ garden.
  • Butter & milk – from the local dairy.
  • Chives – from my parents’ garden.
• Carrots
  • Carrots – from my parents’ garden.
  • Cooked in olive oil – not local, and butter – from the local dairy.
  • Glazed with honey – from my parents’ bee hives.
• Little Gem squash
  • Squash – from my parents’ garden.
  • Parmesan, salt & pepper – shop bought.

This was the first time I’ve been out collecting razor clams and didn’t really know what to expect but it was as easy as pie.  I’m not really a big shellfish person but the razor clams were really tasty.

The plan for the next low spring tide is to go collecting razor clams at Grand Havre and, as the tide comes in, head up the beach to go raking for cockles.

Whilst I was waiting I did what I normally do with my spare time and whipped out my trusty iPhone to catch up with Google Reader/Podcasts/Twitter/games.  I’m sure you can imagine my joy to find that there is a wifi access point at Target which is open to the public.  I’m sure you can also imagine my devastation to find that, once connected to the wifi network I couldn’t access the internet.

I spent the next 20 minutes playing around with the iPhones wifi settings, MobileTerminal and Safari trying to access the wireless router to see if I could “fix” it.  Result:  FAIL!

So here is a plea to all companies that require customers to sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for you to get a job done:  please, Please, PLEASE, if you’re going to tempt us with an open wifi access point, please follow through and provide access to the internet.  It really doesn’t cost that much and we’ll be much happier to come back next time!

Microsoft may have hit the nail on the head with Bing.com.  Whilst I think the interface could do with a bit more thought, the features are spot on.

Unfortunately Safari browser on MacOS is tied to Google.com as the search provider.  Change the search provider requires changing the source code of the application… or Glims – a nifty Safari plugin.

Once Glims is downloaded and installed, open the Safari Preferences and under the Glims tab select “Search Engines”.

You then need to add a new search engine with the following settings:

For the copy-paste folks out there, the url should be: http://www.bing.com/search?q=#query#

You can drag-drop the Bing search engine to the top of the Glims search engines list.  Also, select Bing from the search engines drop-down in the search box of a Safari browser window.

I’m not sure if this is required for it to work, but you may need to set your Bing.com region to being the U.S.A.: http://bit.ly/42kg8

For work, I’m using a Windows 2008 Server virtual machine for doing all my SharePoint and .Net development on.  As it has got all of the cool stuff I’m working on, it is also the machine that I use to demo what I can do to clients.  Recently I’ve had a bit of a serge in the number of clients wanting to see Nintex Workflow 2007 (NFW2007) for SharePoint.

One of the cool features of NWF2007 is the whole Lazy Approval system, whereby users don’t have to go into SharePoint to approve to decline requests, they can just reply to the notification email with “approved”, “declined”, “ok”, “yes”, “no” or any other recognised word as the first line of the email.  In or to demonstrate this I need to setup and email system on my local machine.  The SMTP (sending) side of things is easy as it is built in to Windows 2008.  However, POP3 is a bit of a problem.  Previous version of IIS had a simple POP3 service but that has been dropped in IIS7.  The Microsoft way would be to install Exchange Server but that is a little too heavyweight for what I am trying to acheive.  Luckily a company called Visendo provides a free solution to plug the gap.  So now I can demo Nintex notification features.

Another feature I also wanted to demonstrate was setting up Active Directory accounts and then using those new accounts.  Nintex has got actions that allow you to interact with Active Directory but to then do anything usefull with the account required modifying xml config files and restarting the Visendo service.  But Nintex can call web services, so I’ve created a web service that has an AddAccount and DeleteAccount methods to update the Visendo configuration and restart the service.

Download:

I’ve made the source code for this web service freely available should anyone else want to have this sort of functionality: VisendoSMTPService.  The code is written against .Net 3.5 and is provided “as is” with no sort of warranty and is most definitely NOT recommended for live systems.  The code is released under a BSD License.