Hot New iPhone Game – Gem Shock

 

For those of you that come to our blog regularly, you would know that we have never done a game review before. This isn’t because we don’t game or because we have anything against game reviews themselves, but it is more because games are usually so well covered by other sites that anything we would say would be totally redundant.

It is with pleasure, however, that I bring our readerships attention to a great new game that I have heard about and been playing.

Gem Shock is one of those extremely simple but yet extremely addictive games. It really reminds me of Tetris in its sheer simplicity and potential for addiction. It is great.  Manoeuvring your Gem through the electrified walls while pushing yourself to race against the clock and fighting to get that steady hand you need to win  really is stupefyingly fun!

The game is only $0.99 and is a hoot. Check it out on the itunes app store today and have a go at it…I sure haven’t regretted my purchase!

Here’s a link for the so inclined – Gem Shock:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gem-shock/id463681052?mt=8

DNS Issues with Server 2008 R2

RFC 2671.  This shouldn’t mean much of anything to most of us. This RFC Code, however, can literally mean hours and hours of frustration and troubleshooting if you have created a Server 2008 R2 domain.

Developed in 1999, Extension mechanisms for DNS aka eDNS, were designed to allow for increased functionality of the DNS protocol. They were also critical to the implementation of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). Nevertheless, the protocol hasn’t really caught on and there are still thousands of devices – even ones produced today – that are not really fully compliant with the standards laid out in RFC 2671.

Naturally, the Internet itself is a inter-connected network that is literally running on loads of old and obsolete equipment.  So, it comes as no surprise that there are going to be a few problems arising from the fact that Windows Server 2008 R2, when set up as a DC with the DNS role installed and set to perform recursive lookups, has this extension to DNS enabled by default.

Not everyone, fortunately, will have issues with this as there are of course DNS servers out there that will respond properly to this type of query and respond with the IP address requested. However, if you happen to be running DNS queries against one that is non-compliant, you will end up with extremely patchy Internet service for your whole domain.

To check if this is an issue for your domain, you are going to have to run a few tests.

Open network monitor, and look at the DNS queries that you are getting. If they look like the picture below, you are probably encountering this issue.

The fix, luckily, is very simple.  Simply disable eDNS and re-enable it at some point in the future when acceptance of this protocol is a little higher.

Open up a cmd prompt and elevate it (right click on it and run it as an administrator). Then run the following command.

dnscmd /config /EnableEDNSProbes 0

This should take effect immediately.

I sincerely hope that this helps a few of you out there that are just starting to deploy Server 2008 R2 now that SP1 is out.

Cheers!

Matt

Outlook 2010 Auto Complete Cache Corruption

A while back, I had written a fairly complete article on restoring the Outlook auto complete cache and working with .NK2 files.  Well, just when we thought that we could all return home in a victorious Napoleonic march, our enemy defeated, our pals down in Redmond reminded us all of Waterloo.

Outlook 2010, has completely done away with .NK2 files and has unfortunately replaced it with a system that seems far from bulletproof. My recent experiences, along with thousands of others on the net, suggests that the new system is rather prone to corruption and cannot be easily fixed.

But first, in a bid to dispel some of the misinformation out there, let me briefly go over how the new system works.

Users first using Outlook 2010, or syncing it to an active sync device are immediately going to notice a new set of contacts called suggested contacts that has been auto created upon opening a new mail account.  Inside, they will quickly notice that it is populated with email addresses of people whom they may not even remember having contact with. One soon realizes that this is a contact list that is being generated based on emails that have been sent out and incoming emails that do not have a proper contact in Outlook.  This idea, actually, seems to make a lot of sense as it is an easily backed up way of managing all of those contacts that were previously stored in the Auto complete cache’s .NK2 file.  It would be easy to come to the conclusion that this is the same thing as the .nk2 cache and this is what populates it. This, however, is wrong.  While it does store similar information, there is in fact a new .dat file that has taken the place of the venerable .NK2 file, but now has a GUID attached to it that is,ostensibly,l generated based on characteristics of the profile.  Apparently, this file can be transferred around just as was done with .NK2 files, but you would have to rename it with the exact same corresponding GUID for it to work. Definitely, not as slick as the simple renaming it to the name of the profile as in previous versions of Outlook. This won’t, however, be an issue if you have transitioned to Exchange 2010 as the file is actually stored on the Exchange server and synced back down to the client allowing for your auto complete cache to follow you as part of a new profile on a second computer.  Again, this is a great idea if it weren’t for the apparent instability of the file itself.

I have been able to find very little information on the causes of the issue, and nothing at all from Microsoft, but it appears that this file syncs itself back to the Exchange server upon closing Outlook. However, if for some reason, Outlook does not close cleanly, it appears to cut short the write of this data which subsequently corrupts the file. It is at this point extremely difficult to correct the situation. 

The file is located at %appdata%\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\RoamCache  and will be the file labeled Stream_Autocomplete_<GUID>.dat. As I stated, I have yet to come across anything that immediately fixes the issue in all cases, but here are a few things to try.

First, to verify that you are having the issue in question, you will a.) have an auto-complete cache that isn’t working and b.) a Stream_Autocomplete file that is 0 bytes in size and stays that way despite adding data to the autocomplete cache during a session. With this issue, your cache will work during the duration of Outlook being opened, but then when you close outlook and reopen it, all of the data is lost. 

Anyway, here are some methods that are known to work.

1. Delete the auto-cache data through the provided menu interface provided in Outlook.  To do this,

1. In Outlook 2010, Click the File menu and Select Options.

2. In the Outlook Options window Click the Mail tab.

3. Scroll down roughly halfway until you see Send messages. Uncheck the Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines box.

2. The second method is to manually delete the file mentioned above. Make sure and close outlook before you do this, as it will have a lock on the file and prevent you from doing so otherwise.  This method is really the same as what happens above, but some people have actually reported that the file did not delete as it was supposed to from the GUI.

3. Rename then whole Roam Cache folder and reopen outlook.

4. Disable cached exchange mode and try methods 1,2, or 3 above and repeat until the file starts to grow in size.

And please, if anyone else has any more information on the actual root cause of this, please comment below so we can all get through this.  There are many possible culprits, but I suspect that over time we will find that it is one particular add-on or program that is causing the vast majority of cases.

Cheers!

Calgary’s Premier IT Provider

We’re back! Recently Paul and I have been busy with other projects and have let the content on the blog slide a little…we promise we will be better in the coming months.

With this hiatus, there have been a lot of things underway, but I wanted to take a moment to just point out something that is near and dear to my heart and well worth mention.

SysGen Solutions Group, Calgary’s premier IT and network support provider, recently underwent a transformation getting a new look, logo and slogan.  The launch of this new theme better showcases SysGen as Calgary’s leading provider of personalized IT support and everyone is brimming with excitement over the look.  I love it and I think you will too.

“Support Beyond the Network” is now the company’s new mantra, and I would just like to invite anyone in the Calgary area reading this to browse on  over to  http://www.sysgen.ca and check it out! 

Congratulations SysGen!

Easy URL Rewriting With ASP.NET Routing

URL rewriting is a great way to avoid the problems typically associated with the standard .NET way of building web apps.  Take this typical URL, for example:

http://www.site.com/displaycategory.aspx?category=tools

Most ASP.NET solutions wind up having URLS that look like this.  It works, but there are problems with these types of URLs:

• They’re long and ugly.
• They make things look complicated and scary to typical end users.
• They don’t let power users understand and navigate the site through modifying the URL.
• Search engines don’t like them
• Inner workings of your code are exposed, which could lead to security issues.
• URLs are tied to the specific implementation

What you really want is to have that same web page handling requests, but accessed through an URL like this:

http://www.site.com/categories/tools

There are two great tools in the ASP.NET world to rewrite URLS: The IIS URL Rewrite module, and the System.Web.Routing functionality built into the framework.  Unfortunately, they both have serious drawbacks.

The URL Rewrite module snaps into IIS and lets you configure rewriting without touching any code.  It’s worth researching this tool a bit, because depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, it might suit your needs exactly.  But, it does suffer some serious drawbacks for .NET developers:

• The URL Rewrite module must be installed on the server.
• Visual Studio is not aware of URL Rewrite.
• URL Rewrite doesn’t work with the ASP.NET Development Server built into Visual Studio; you have to build and debug your application through IIS.
• You can only configure rewrites through the limited URL Rewrite scheme; you can’t write code.

ASP.NET Routing doesn’t suffer from these drawbacks, but while it’s far more powerful, it’s also far more complicated to set up.  It does require code changes, and when used in the traditional manner, it requires each page in your site to be rewritten to use the Routing architecture.  This means a lot of work.  But, there’s a very easy way to harness the power of Routing and use it much like you would the URL Rewrite module.

Enable routing for your application

The first thing you’ll need to do is map a page route within your application.  This is done through code.  The Global.asax class contains a method called Application_Start which is run whenever your application starts, so it’s an ideal place for this.  Find this method, and add this code:

// Register routing
System.Web.Routing.RouteCollection routes = System.Web.Routing.RouteTable.Routes;
routes.Ignore("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapPageRoute("Generic Routing", "{page}/{*id}", "~/routing.aspx");

There are three important arguments to the MapPageRoute call: a friendly name for the route you’re adding (call it whatever you’d like), the format of the URL that’s going to be caught, and the path to the ASP.NET page you’d like to handle matching URLs.  In this example, we’re going to catch URLs of the style used as an example at the top of this page, but you could easily change this to work with an MVC pattern or anything else you need.  Of course, you’re not limited to just one mapping, but that’s all we need for this example.  The asterisk is used to indicate that the {id} part of the URL pattern could contain slashes. The call to .Ignore prevents requests to WebResource.axd from being caught by your routing.

Build your routing pages

Now, add a page called “routing.aspx” to your project, and add this code to Page_Load:

// Get routing data
string page = (string)this.RouteData.Values["page"];
string id = (string)this.RouteData.Values["id"];

// Transfer to appropriate page
if (page == "categories")
    Server.Transfer(string.Format("~/displaycategory.aspx?category={0}", id));
else if (page == "titles")
    Server.Transfer(string.Format("~/displaytitle.aspx?title={0}", id));

You can see what’s going on here: the code gathers the values that were used to built the URL, checks to see which page should handle the request, and then forwards the request on the the proper page.  In this example, we also remap requests to URLs like this:

http://www.site.com/titles/ExampleTitle

From this point forward, you can configure as many rewrites as you’d like through this one little bit of code.  Because this is code, though, you can modify this to suit whatever needs you may have.  If you wanted, you could even write this to draw data from an XML file so you don’t need to touch code to edit your URL mappings.

Really, this is the best of both worlds: easy to configure, drop-in URL rewriting that will work with any existing solution that doesn’t require anything to be installed, works with Visual Studio, and lets you write code wherever you need a bit more complexity.