PurpleFlux

The mysterious Validation of viewstate MAC failed

If you're getting this error and you're sure that you are not hosting your web app on a web farm, then this blog post has most of the information you need.

All that because someone decided it would be best to render some hidden fields at the end of the page rather than the beginning...how lame. Anyway I did not like any of the workarounds listed there, but I did find one which I do not particularly hate:
Adding

<meta http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="RevealTrans(Duration=0,Transition=0)" />

to your page will prevent the page from being used until it is fully loaded.

UPDATE
It turns out this only hides the content. The invisible content is still there and can be clicked. So it's not a foolproof solution, but it is an option. I no longer use this method.

Hamachi - VPN made easy

It was on my list of things to check out for quite a while now, and now I wish I had tried it out much sooner. Seriously, if you ever want to connect to remote computers, be it your home system while you're away or to your friend's computer, check this program out. Zero-configuration VPN make me happy. So what would you really use this for?
Well...

Continue reading "Hamachi - VPN made easy" [729 words]

Screencast, DebugCast

I was amused when I came across a DebugCast as a new variation on your average screencast.
I was going to write my post all about it, but while trying to find other DebugCasts I found a post that already said eveything that I had wanted to say and more - so if you are interested then go read Alex Barnett's post about DebugCasts.

del.icio.us screencast

Heard about del.icio.us but just haven't tried it?

If I had found this screencast about using del.icio.us before it would have been helpful. Another screencast about del.icio.us is slightly different and I even learned how to replace all instances of tag.

Seeing what cannot be seen

Check out this extremely interesting project at Stanford called Dual Photography. Basically they simulate a view from an angle where they have no camera but only a light source. It's more complex than that of course. The pictures are impressive but the video... I mean it was pretty neat up until the end... at which point my mouth was just wide open.

Continue reading "Seeing what cannot be seen" [75 words]

Floating point in .NET

Found a nice CodeProject article on Floating Point numbers in .NET. In case you don't want to read the article, the most important realization for me was that for financial calculations it is probably better to use Decimal numbers instead...

Links++

Check out zipdecode and don't forget to click the zoom button for full effect. Nice interface eh? Another nice one is the NameVoyager for baby names. Just start typing a name and watch it go. To fnish of the list...

Voices in your head (hypersonic)

In case you hadn't heard (ha), someone invented a sound system that is inaudable to others. So in review, sound seems to come from inside your head, and you're the only one that can hear it. Oh joy. Reminds me...

Paul Rademacher's Craigslist-GoogleMaps combo site

Wow. No really. Look at this picture to see what I mean, and then visit the site. Amazing, especially considering there isn't a google maps/satellite API out yet according to the blurb where I found it at google....

Surround-sound meet surround-video

When I took a virtual reality course at ISU I had the idea of creating a sphere covered with pinhole cameras. You could then project the data onto curved surfaces to view or process the data for 3D. But what...