While I don’t quite understand how ASP.net master pages work, I did come across a client site using them. For some weird reason, Microsoft decided that if you were going to use master pages, they would go and wrap the entire page in an aspnetForm, preventing you from using your own forms on the site. Who’s the genius that came up with that idea?!

In any case, I  had to find a workaround so I could drop in a reservation form of my own. After a bit of digging, I found a simple solution using Javascript to essentially override the form actions.

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
function SubmitForm() {
var objForm = document.forms["aspnetForm"];
if (!objForm) {
objForm = document.aspnetForm;
}
objForm.__VIEWSTATE.value = "";
objForm.encoding = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
objForm.action = "http://www.yoursite.com/yourscript.asp";
objForm.submit();
}
// ]]></script>


Then, all you need to do is on your submit buttons/images/links, have it call the SubmitForm(); function.

The obvious downside to this is that you can only do one form per page unless you were submitting to your own script and ensure that you use unique field names… Not pretty I know, but it’s an option.

So I don’t know if this is something that I missed entirely in the documentation, but a while back, one of the drives in my NAS gave up on life and decided to stop working. Being the lazy person I am, and relying on the uber redundancy of RAID6, I left it for a few weeks (including the time after I purchased a replacement drive). In my defence, I lost the key to the drive trays and had to wait until a friend of mine could find me one. (To skip my long winded path to the end solution, just jump to the last paragraph)

In any case, today I swapped in the replacement and in an anti-climactic fashion, nothing happened. In fact, it didn’t even pick up the new drive. I feared that the NAS itself was dead and I would have to go through the painful process of getting a replacement and everything. None the less, I decided to would take a chance and reboot the unit. Luckily, this did the trick and while it still didn’t automatically rebuild the array, it now detected the new drive.

Checking the RAID configuration page, the only available option was to assign the new drive as a spare.

After some digging on the Thecus Forums, the only mention I found was indirectly through another person’s troubleshooting post where he mentions that setting the drive as a spare fixed his issue.

I was hoping to get some solid information that would support this, but I figured I had nothing to lose and at the very least, I’d have a RAID5 array with a hot spare to back me up.

9 hours later, I’m back up and running, and the RAID 6 array is healthy once again. It would have been nice if Thecus had some better documentation available, but I suppose piggybacking on a forum is better than nothing.

In short, if a drive in your RAID array fails, and if after replacing the drive it doesn’t automatically rebuild, just go into the RAID configuration screen and set it as a spare and the NAS will start rebuilding the array at that point.

The one thing I really hate about automatic Windows updates are the ones that require you to reboot and pester you with that annoying popup asking if you want to reboot now or later. Clicking Later only delays the inevitable and sure enough, you’ll see that popup a few minutes later asking you the same question.

Now what makes Windows think that if I clicked Later before that in just a few short minutes after, I’d change my mind? Why not trust that I will reboot when I’m good and ready?

I always wondered if there was a way to disable this, and while I didn’t find a direct solution, this little application is pretty much the next best thing and is good enough in my books.

Shutdown Guard pretty much does exactly what it says. It “guards” your Windows from being rebooted, shutdown or even logged off.

Any time one of those actions is attempted, Shutdown Guard will prevent it, and then pop up a little balloon in the task tray allowing you to continue the action if you want. Obviously ignoring the notification let’s you work on without any further disruption.

Compatible with Windows Vista as well, except the confirmation is much more in your face as shown in the developer’s wiki entry.

By now I’m sure everyone has upgraded to the latest FireFox but what most people night not know about is that FireFox3 was a long awaited release for those of us in photography. Why? Because FireFox3 added colour management to it’s list of features. A few browsers like Safari, and I believe Opera as well already had this functionality but FireFox now joins this elite few.

However, this functionality isn’t enabled by default and infact, there isn’t even an option to turn it on without going into the about:config page.

So here’s how you do it.

In the address bar of Firefox, type in about:config.
Scroll down to gfx.color_management.enabled. By default this is set to false. Double click on it to change it to true.
Restart Firefox.

Now stare in awe as your colour managed images appear the way they should!

UPDATE: The Daily Gyan has a great guide on other tweaks you can enable for FireFox3! Check it out!

I heard about Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope a few weeks back through their presentation at TED and today, I saw an article featured on the MSN website about it’s public beta finally released.

The WorldWide Telescope takes images from numerous sources such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and compiles them into a single user friendly interface allowing people of all ages to essentially fly though space and view planets and galaxies one would never normally see.

While the software may be in beta, it all runs quite well. It’s very similar to Google Earth in the way that the images are streamed to you as you require them which makes for a very lightweight application storage-wise but heavy on the internet connectivity and graphics requirements.

None the less, I highly recommend everyone check it out at least once and be sure to give the final a try whenever that may be.

In a press release, AT&T announced that on April 17th, select locations in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco will be sporting a new toy with their cellphone displays. A Microsoft Surface to be exact.

Initially the Surface will be used to display information about the cellphones for sale as well as display service area maps but AT&T hopes that in the future the Surface will allow users to drag ringtones, graphics and videos to the phones. Note that it says “the” phones suggesting the display models, and not a user’s phone… Perhaps just a way to cover their behinds in case the Surface doesn’t work out as they planned.

Store locations and images can be found on the AT&T website here.

This is a review long overdue. I recently purchased a bunch of Sanyo Eneloop batteries for my flash, and other battery operated devices (like my XBox controllers and wireless mouse and keyboard) and since I’ve had relatively bad luck with rechargeable batteries, I went and did some research on something that would make sure my Eneloops would be well cared for.

I had read about the MAHA-C9000 battery charger on the photography forum I frequent and everyone who had one had nothing but good things to say about it. So on their recommendations, I decided that I too would go out and purchase one. While it’s a little more expensive than your run of the mill charger, I figured that if I’m going to buy fancy/expensive batteries, I might as well make sure I protect my investment with something equally fancy/expensive.

I did some digging around online and for US customers, Thomas Distributing seems to be the best place to order from and in Canada, Paul’s Finest has the charger for the same price. While I don’t mind ordering online, I always want to see if I can get what I want locally since it’s just easier to walk in and pick it up instead of paying for shipping and all that. In Vancouver, only a small handful of places advertise it online but everyone had it for ridiculous prices (ranging from $90-$100CDN). In addition, no one really had an up to date site and just didn’t feel right.

Enter Vancouver Battery. While their price was $90 like most of the others, they at least appeared reputable and for me, warranted an email to check out if they would be willing to price match Paul’s Finest.

Danny, who I believe is the owner of the store, replied extremely quickly to my email and was right off, willing to price match any Canadian website which was great news for me. He wrote up an invoice for me and made sure it was available for me the next day in case he wasn’t around.

The next morning I headed out and met up with Danny who is a very knowledgeable and very friendly guy. They carry all kinds of batteries from tiny hearing aid batteries to notebook batteries to sealed lead acid batteries. Pretty much anything you could want

Their site may not always be up to date so I recommend emailing them to get latest pricing on whatever you require. I will definitely go back to Vancouver Battery the next time I need more batteries.

Stay tuned for a review on the MAHA-C9000!

Microsoft Office Live Workspace allows Office 2003 and 2007 users (with the workspace plugin available after you login) to store and share their files online from anywhere with internet access. The service is completely free to use and looks to be a pretty neat solution for people to manage project files with remote users or even just to use personally to gain access to stuff you might need at work or elsewhere.

Files can be grouped in Workspaces so that you can have multiple projects on the go at one time.

Looks to me like it’s Microsoft answer to Google Documents except with a direct tie to Office vs an online interface.

Update: So I had a chance to give this a go and while it’s great for a single user to access files between home and work, the plug-in needs a little work. I tried sharing a workspace with a friend and unfortunately, it appears that shared workspaces are not accessible through the Office plug-in. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this since to me it’s a pretty big missing component.