What is ID3 V1?

ID3 is a specification that describes how users can append music related metadata to a file (commonly MP3 Files).  The metadata includes:

• Title
• Artist
• Album
• Track number
• Genre
• Comment
• Year

The ID3 tag occupies the last 128 bytes of the music file and starts with the string "TAG".  Media players typically ignore the tag when the file is played, however some older players play a small burst of static. More...

Introduction

This article provides an ASP.NET Gravatar control that allows you to add Gravatars to your .NET enabled sites easily.

If you are using a framework, such as Joomla for your website, there might already be a plug-in available (http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement). More...

Introduction

Whilst working in India, I had to persuade our development team why we should pair program and what benefits it is currently giving our UK Teams. Here are a few of my thoughts used to persuade our development team, enough to give it ago.

Pair programming is where two developers work on the same machine. One person is the driver, the other the navigator. The driver performs the coding whilst the navigator is continually reading, spell-checking and reviewing the driver’s code; continually offering input and thinking through problems. More...

This small article aims to explain what the decorator pattern is and how it could be applied in C#.

One of the Object Orientated principles is “open for extension and closed for modification”. The Decorator pattern stays true to this principle because it allows you to add extra functionality to existing objects without making any code changes. More...

For some reason my "Generate Local Resource" disappeared from the Tools menu in Visual Studio 2008. To correct this follow these steps:

1. Go to Tools > Customise > Commands Tab
2. Select the Tools Category on the left
3. Rearrange Commands > Select the "Add..." button
4. Select the "Tools" option on the left (in Categories list box)
5. Under commands select "Generate Local Resource"
6. Select the Ok button then close the remaining windows.

After adding the command back to the tools menu, it appeared Greyed out. If you open an ASPX page and select Designer Mode, it will become active!

DavidKiff.co.uk has undergone a radical new re-write so it’s now easier to update and runs on a sturdy SQL Server backend rather than the old Access one!

I hope you like the new look!

WCF "Your process does not have access rights to this namespace"

This is the error message I received when starting a WCF service in windows vista. The problem is down to Vista security restrictions (UAC) not allowing applications to open ports (start listening on a port).

There are a few ways to resolve this issue:

1. Run the WCF host with administrative rights (not recommended) by right clicking your .exe and selecting “run as administrator”.
2. Use netsh.exe to allow a user to start listening on the port(s) you specify:
   “netsh http add urlacl url=http://+:8080/ user=COMPUTERNAME\USERNAME”

This example allows the username specified to start listening on port 8080 with any IP address or hostname.

To find a list of commands run “netsh http”.

Domain Users: Replace “COMPUTERNAME” with the name of your domain.

I have spent an hour trying to work out why the session start was not firing within my global.asax file! It turns out that I was adding it to a pre-complied application!

Don't make my mistake!

A few people have asked me how to create a crumbline based on the URL, for example:

www.mydomain.com/Hello_World/MyPage.aspx
www.mydomain.com/DotNet/Examples/FirstExample.aspx

The first one should display:
Home > Hello_World > MyPage.aspx
Second should display:
Home > DotNet > Examples > FirstExample.aspx

Here is a method for doing so:

Right- click within the system tray (near the clock)

1. Select properties from the context menu
2. Check the “Hide inactive icons” checkbox
3. Select the “Customise” button
4. Under “Low Disk Space” select “Hide” for the behaviour
5. Select Ok and you are done. No more alloying messages!