Testing mail functionality in code using external mail servers has always been a hassle. If the mail manages to dodge antispam and various other mischievous services, it'll probably take several minutes to receive. On our Exchange servers it'll typically take 10-15 minutes before a locally sent mail actually arrives back in my inbox. We can do better! Papercut and smtp4dev are both applications that'll emulate a remote SMTP server on your local machine. Instead of actually sending the mail onwards like a normal SMTP server, they'll simply catch the mail and notify you. This means you'll receive the mail...

Access denied errors are not uncommon when deploying new websites / features that interact with the filesystem. While it might work in local testing, it suddenly doesn't anymore when deployed. Using Process Monitor I'll show how to easily debug these issues. I've made a very simple web application project with a Default.aspx file that has the following codebehind code: using System; using System.IO; using System.Web.UI; namespace FileWritingWebsite { public partial class _Default : Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { File.WriteAllText(@"C:\Test.txt", "Hello world!"); Response.Write("Done!"); } } } After deploying this to my webserver we receive the archetypical access denied error: In this case it's rather obvious where the error stems from,...

On numerous occations I've had a need for synchronizing directories of files & subdirectories. I've used it for synchronizing work files from my stationary PC to my laptop in the pre-always-on era (today I use SVN for almost all files that needs to be in synch). Recently I needed to implement a very KISS backup solution that simply synchronized two directories once a week for offsite storing of the backup data. While seemingly simple the only hitch was that there would be several thousands of files in binary format, so compression was out of the question. All changes would...

I've finally succumbed to creating a Twitter account. My gut instinct doesn't like Twitter, but on the other hand, I do see some possibilities. I don't know. As the ol' Cain would've said: Stay a while, and listen!

I will be attending JAOO this year, I'm looking forward to a packed calendar in excitement: It's a tough decision, choosing which sessions to fit into the available slots. There are several slots where I'd love to watch multiple sessions. I look forward to meeting a lot of people, colleagues and friends. Conferences are superb for developing ones network. I like the multitude of technologies and areas that are covered at JAOO, Java, JavaScript, .NET, virtualization, architecture and so forth. I'd love to see some more DBA related sessions though (especially MSSQL 2008).

I've had my Vista PC running for quite some months now without problems, as well as Adobe Acrobat Professional and Adobe Photoshop. But not anymore... Yesterday I plugged in the Zune that I bought on a trip to the US in january. I got the installer / driver software from zune.net. During the installation the installer requested me to update my Zune firmware, which I did. Everything went smooth. I then left my PC for some hours to go to work. When I got back I was shown a dialog saying that my hardware configuration had...

So, tell me, do you notice anything unusual in the picture below? For a month or so I've used my computer with the Windows Start menu at the top. Am I crazy? Most likely. I started out doing it on my home computer (on all monitors), while keeping the start menu at the bottom at work. Honestly, it is feels quite weird and wrong in the beginning, and I was constantly throwing my mouse southwards just to realize that my work had been for nothing, as the Start menu was actually up north. I really couldn't impose...

Is your name William? Do you normally write mails with the subject "Re: hi"? Are your mails usually 11,304 characters in length? Guess what, you're a spammer! I present to you, an article containing a textual analysis of about 15,000 spam mails. Before you ask, what can these numbers be used for? Good question, I'm open to suggestions! The following numbers are based on 15,073 spam mails in total. Naturally demographics will play a part, such as my interests, part of the world and so forth. Let me give you the 5 word tour of myself: Denmark, male,...

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