Recently, I wanted to use Google Talk plugin(comes along with installation of Google Talk) for Windows Media Player that sets the currently playing song as your status message(Wow! Why Yahoo! couldn’t think of something like that????). Now as long as I used to use MS Windows XP, it wasn’t an issue et all. But the problem started when I tried to used in WMP 11 on Windows Vista Home Premium that came bundled with my Dell Studio 15 laptop. As soon as I tried to enable the plugin, WMP would crash and I couldn’t understand why!!!

After a wee bit of Googling, I came accross this thread which actually explained the cause behind it. While you can obviously visit the thread for info, I’m including the steps, here, for your ease.

Basically, the problem is caused as Google Talk fails to properly register gtalkwmp1.dll. So what we need to do is register it manually.

• Goto Start > Run.
• type cmd and press Enter.
• type cd\ and press Enter in the newly opened Command Console Window.

cd "Program Files"
cd Google
cd "Google Talk"
regsvr32 gtalkwmp1.dll

• As soon as you hit enter on line 4, a window will show that the file has been registered successfully.
• Now re-enable the plugin from Windows Media Player and it should work smoothly (atleast it worked for me :) )

Links

http://groups.google.com/group/Finding-Solutions/browse_thread/thread/b07627597f49979e
http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46532

(Photo Courtesy: David Jeffery, University of Oklahoma)

As I was going through the weather information on IMD website, I came across Astronomy Information page. I clicked the link and it led me to Positional Astronomy Centre probably maintained by IMD, Kolkata. The section is quite informative and as I was going through it, I found a page containing information regarding Eclipses visible in India in the year of 2009. I just went through the page and found it to be quite informative. It has information regarding the visibility of upcoming TSE in July from different cities of India as well a dedicated table for information on cities falling along the totality path.

Hope you will like it.

Positional Astronomy Centre, IMD, Kolkata – Eclipses Page.

Since today morning, BSNL Broadband has been acting weird whereby few of the sites that I regularly visit or manage suddenly stopped working. The first time I noticed about this problem was around 10 AM today morning when I was trying to access my site hosted at byethost.com. Initially I thought this had to do something with bad DNS servers which BSNL is prone to and therefore, I switched to UltraDNS’s free DNS servers for this purpose. While the cause of the same is not found yet, below is the list of sites that I tried to access and found it to be not working

1. http://www.khagol.net (hosted on http://www.byethost.com)
2. http://www.8051electronicprojects.co.cc/ (hosted on http://www.byethost.com)
3. http://www.ultradns.com
4. http://www.cocomments.com

Will update as list grows….

Also, it seems the sites are blocked by BSNL itself..have a look at this tracert…

This one is for khagol.net

Tracing route to khagol.net [209.190.24.3]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    39 ms    40 ms    41 ms  117.198.160.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.
Trace complete.

Hope they do something about it.

Update (May 18)

The sites have become accessible but the quality seems little bit of degraded. The usual pings to a nearest server, I’ve known, have increased by 100 ms and varies heavily. Let’s hope everything will clear out ASAP.

As I had already hinted in my previous post, I was creating a program that would ease the process of creating extension for BlogEngine.Net. The advantage of this program is that you don’t really have to know everything about BlogEngine.Net Core. Most of the work is done by the program. The program automatically generates the code for settings including initializing it.

Please note that this program is not totally complete. The program generates very limited code and therefore I cannot say that it’s a complete solution. But as far as my needs were concerned, it did fulfil it.

So let me show you how this program works by showing you how to create an extension using this program. Before you start following the steps, let me tell you what the extension will do.

The extension will insert the HTML, you provide through settings page, at the bottom of the posts. So let me show you how to use this program by showing you to create a basic extension.

• Download the program from the below given link and extract the exe to the desired location.
• Run the program from that location.
• As you can see, the program is divided into three sections.

• Basic Info, Setting Details & Settings List
• Add the Basic Info as depicted in picture below

• Also add the Setting Details as given below.

• Now press Add button. The setting should get listed in the table given on the right.
• Again enter the Setting Details as given in the image below and press Add

• Now you should have basic information about your extension plus the settings you need for the extension listed on the right grid.

• That’s it. Now go to Action menu and click on Build Code.

• A window will open the core code which is given below.

#region Using

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using BlogEngine.Core;
using BlogEngine.Core.Web.Controls;

#endregion


[Extension("Adds a signature text at the end of the post.", "1.0", "Mayank Raichura")]
class Signature
{
    #region Declarations.
    private static ExtensionSettings settings;
    private static Post post;
    #endregion

    public Signature()
    {
        InitSettings();
        Post.Serving += new EventHandler<ServingEventArgs>(Post_Serving);
    }
    private void Post_Serving(object sender, ServingEventArgs e)
    {
        post = (Post)sender;
        if (post == null)
            return;
        settings = ExtensionManager.GetSettings(GetType().Name);
        //Settings should be retrieved after this...
        string sigSignature_Text = settings.GetSingleValue("Signature_Text").ToLower();
        bool sigRestrict_to_single_post = bool.Parse(settings.GetSingleValue("Restrict_to_single_post").ToLower());

        //End Settings Retrieval
        e.Body += "\n<!-- Signature extension by Mayank Raichura -->\n";
        e.Body += BuildHTML(sigSignature_Text, sigRestrict_to_single_post);
    }
    string BuildHTML(string sigSignature_Text, bool sigRestrict_to_single_post)
    {
    }

    private void InitSettings()
    {
        {
            ExtensionSettings initialSettings = new ExtensionSettings(GetType().Name);
            initialSettings.IsScalar = true;

            string htmlHelp =
            "<strong>Signature Text:</strong> The HTML that will be injected at the bottom of the post. You can even insert javascript.<br />"
            + "<strong>Restrict to single post:</strong> Check this if you want to restrict signatures to full post view only.<br />"
            ;


            initialSettings.AddParameter("Signature_Text", "<br /><br /><strong>Signature Text</strong>", 50);
            initialSettings.AddParameter("Restrict_to_single_post", "<br /><br /><strong>Restrict to single post</strong>", 50);


            initialSettings.AddValue("Signature_Text", "Regards<br />Mayank Raichura");
            initialSettings.AddValue("Restrict_to_single_post", true);

            ExtensionManager.ImportSettings(initialSettings);
        }
    }

}

• Please observe that all the major work has been done by the program. In normal case, the only code you will need to modify will be the BuilHTML function which is currently empty. Ofcourse you can write other functions and call them in BuildHTML. But what’s best is that you don’t have to go through the API for the extension.
• Now to maintain brevity I’m not going into how to implement the Restrict to full post feature but will directly to insert the signature to the post. Infact, it’s a piece of cake in here.

string BuildHTML(string sigSignature_Text, bool sigRestrict_to_single_post)
{
	return sigSignature_Text;
}

• You are done. Copy the code to a text file, save it as a .cs file and copy it to your extensions directory in ~/AppCode/Extensions/ and your extension should be visible in the extensions page.

Possible Enhancements

• Add support for DataTable (Non-Scalar) Settings
• Add support for other events like Page.Serving, Comment.Serving and many more
• Save/Load project.

A/N: This extension is no where near a full-blown program to create extensions of all kind. But I’ll keep updating it as and when I find time to add extra features.

BlogEngine Extension Base Class Creator.zip

Your comments & reviews are always welcome…..:)

Before, you start wondering what is Google Friend Connect, I suggest you to visit this site. Once, you are through with the knowledge of what is Google Friend Connect, you should be knowing about what Social Bar is. Yes, it’s a widget that can be installed onto your site and then lets you create your own site community without the headache of programming, registering and managing user and all that.

So what you up to this time, eh?

Well, I have created an extension that further eases the installation of this Social Bar. All you have to do is register your site with Google Friend Connect and get yourself a Site ID. After that, once the extension is installed, it will show the Social Bar whenever a full post is served. Combined with the Google’s Commenting feature, your blog will become a breathing community.

The Social Bar

 Comment Widget

Community List

Join/Login

So what does this extension exactly do?

As this extension was created for my personal needs, it may not be totally useful to you and you may not agree with me on how I use Google Friend Connect’s Social Bar. Now that we have an understanding let me tell you what this extension does. This extension inserts the Social Bar code into each post(single post only) served i.e. when you are viewing the full version of the post. Currently, the Social Bar is shown at the bottom of the page because that’s how I like it. As, the Social Bar implements the commenting feature (isolated to the page currently being visited), it eliminates the need of internal commenting system.

How to insall this extension?

• Download the extension from the bottom of this post.
• Extract the GFCSB.cs and upload it to your BlogEngine.Net’s ~/App_Code/Extensions folder. If your blog isn’t hosted on root, please change the path as needed.
• Also, you can install the rpc_relay.html and canvas.html to the root(~/) of your site or you can download and install them when you setup your site with Google Friend Connect.
• Goto Settings and select Extensions tab.
• Look for Google_Friend_Connect_Social_Bar under the Name column and click on Edit link on the same row. 
• In the next page, change the Site UD to your own Google Friend Connect’s Site ID. Please note that if your code is not valid, an empty bar will appear but I cannot guarantee what will happen on your site.

• You can also change the Div Tag ID. Since, IMO, it’s used just to differentiate one div tag from other  div tags, when multiple Google Friend Connet’s widgets are used, if you are only using this extension i.e. no other widgets installed, you won’t need to change it(at least worked for me:)).
• Allow Anonymous Post. as it’s name suggests that you can decide if you want to allow only people who join your community to comment or any one who visits your site(they don’t have to join your site to post comment).

Possible Updates

• Allow you to change the position of the Social Bar(Top or Bottom).
• Change the text of the default text ( “- Let me know about your thoughts –“)
• Possibly allow the poster to post YouTube links

All this features are actually supported by Google Friend Connect and if you are good at playing with C# files, it shouldn’t be too hard to modify the code to suit your needs. I’ll just provide this facilities who don’t know anything about programming yet want to use it.

Download here

GFCSB.zip

Hint for next post: Have you ever thought of a program that makes creation of BlogEngine.Net’s extension, a piece of cake?

Due to some issues on my hosting server, my site went down for almost 12 hrs. After talking with my reseller, the issue has been resolved and the site is now running smoothly.

I’m currently experimenting on Google Friend Connect’s Social Bar and also trying to create an extension for the same. So, you might get a glimpse of it here and there on the site. Not to worry about that

Update: I'm currently working on a program that would ease the process of scheduling tasks for you. The details of the program is available here. If you want any new features, now is the time to ask for it. Just leave your feature request as a comment or send me a message with “Feature Request: Broadband Scheduler” as subject via Contact and I'll let you know if it would be possible for me to do it or not.

This post in actually extension to my previous post and therefore I’ve included only steps you need to follow.

Previously, I didn’t have Windows Vista^TM so I didn’t knew how to work with it. But my Dell Studio 1555 came preloaded with Vista Home Premium and so I had a go wit it.

Windows Vista uses Task Scheduler 2.0 which is far more better than the older 1.0 which came with Windows XP. While, there are lots of blogs and websites that enlist the features of Task Scheduler 2.0, the best I liked is the ability to change your Windows Account password without affecting your scheduled tasks.The reason I like this is because last month, when I was using Windows XP, I’d scheduled my tasks to run at different times. As you very well know, in Windows XP Task Scheduler(even if you don’t know just accept it), you need to provide your account password while setting up a task. If you change your Windows Account password, the password saved by Task Scheduler will eventually cause Bad Authentication and thus the tasks won’t start. This is not the case in Task Scheduler 2.0. Here, it Credentials Manager to store passwords and so there is no need to change password for each task. Secondly, it uses XML based Job Files that helps sharing of tasks across computers, that’s what I’ve done.

Now, as we have some preliminary information of Task Manager 2.0, we are going to use it’s Import Task feature. Please follow the steps as below

• Download the zip file and extract it to a safe location.
• Go to the directory where you extracted files using Windows Explorer
• Open Connect 2 Internet.xml in any text-editor(I prefer Notepad++)

• Go to Line 47 and you will find three space-separated values enclosed between <Arguments></Arguments> tag.
• Replace the connectionname with your Dial Up connection name(mine is BSNL), username with your BSNL username and password with your BSNL password.
• Save the file and close the editor.
• Open Task Scheduler from Start / Control Panel / System and Maintenance / Administrative Tools

• Select Task Scheduler Library from the left pane and click on New Folder on the right pane.

• Enter “BSNL Broadband” (you can choose different name or even skip this and previous step) and press OK.
• Now select the newly created folder from left pane and click on Import Task from the right pane.

• Navigate to the folder where you extracted the task files, select one of the task files and then press Open.

• A Create Task will be created, pre-loaded with task details from the Job File. Unless you want to play around with it, just press OK.

• Your task is created successfully.
• Repeat the above 3 steps for all the downloaded files.

• Please note that I’ve only provided tasks for Connecting, Disconnecting and Shutdown as the software needs will be different for each user.
• But if you wish to learn, there is abundant information available on Internet on how to Create Task in Task Scheduler 2.0. All you have to do is Google :p

BSNL Broadband Automation in Vista

I’ll be available on Internet during day time now……as BB limit has been reset now…..SUL