What happened to my DataSheet view?

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This is what I was asking myself earlier this afternoon when I tried to use the datasheet view in one of the lists I was working on. I had a bunch of tabular data to update the list with, but when I clicked the 'DataSheet' view instead of getting nice columns and rows I got a message something like this instead:


"Sorry, DataSheet view is not available. We know why, but we will give you a very vague and generalized error and let you try and figure out what's wrong yourself"


I expected it had something to do with the 64-bit environment, and after a quick Bing search I found this Microsoft Support Article that described the problem and possible fixes. I chose to download and install the missing controls, and after a quick installer run (without having to reboot or restart IE) the datasheet view is once again available on my Dev box.

My new Sharepoint KB

I've started to organize all my links, references, How To's, and code examples into a single place.  We did this at the last place I worked (RMIC) but I wanted to make one that I can keep up with and always have no matter where I end up going.


It uses Wiki On A Stick to store all the information in a single file.  It's currently set to read only, and I'll be updating it hopefully on a regular basis.


Here's the link to the Sharepoint Knowledge Base

Security Trimming controls in Sharepoint 2010

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In prior versions of Sharepoint hiding and displaying controls, especially the built in navigation/search/quick launch and toolbars was problematic to say the least.


Working on a new site this morning we had a requirement to hide the new Toolbar in 2010, along with the entire navigation bar to display a custom application page with just the web parts that they needed.


At first glance you could remove the snippets in the master page, but there's a few things that I didn't like.  The major one is that the functionality is lost on the ribbon and navigation.  I did some Binging and found a new tag that allows you to control the display of web parts/page markup based on Sharepoint permissions. 



<



 



 



SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl ID="SPSecurityTrimmedControl1" PermissionsString="ManagePermissions" runat="server">


<!-- Markup to display/hide based on permissions -->




</



 



 



SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>


This snippet allows you to wrap any HTML/ASP markup and based on the PermissionsString either display or hide them.


Of course this works out really good in our project, if a user that has ManagePermissions goes to the page they see the regular ribbon and navigation, but if you do not it's all hidden.


Prusa Mendel Build - 1

This is the first post documenting the build of my first 3D printer.

I read a recent post on the RepRap blog describing how much easier it is to source and build, specifically the Prusa version. From what I understand this version is it's used only for 3D printing while the original Mendel can also be used for a CNC machine.

The first part was finding all the parts, probably the biggest change from a traditional Mendel is I purchased some molded parts instead of finding some parts that were printed. The other components or 'vitamins' took me about 3 days to find in stock over various suppliers.

Now it's a matter of waiting for all my shipments to arrive :)

First e-magazine that REALLY impressed me

I saw the Popular Science magazine on the front page of the app store the other day, and remembering how much I loved reading it when I was a kid I downloaded it. After spending 15 minutes flipping throughout the preview issue I promptly subscribed for a year.

The download of the first issue was fast (only about a minute or so) and then after a short bit of 'processing' (I think it was decompressing images and such) I was able to start reading it.

I'm totally in love with the format. It's quick and easy to navigate, every single page has full page graphics behind it that you tap once to see, tap again to see the article. Also a lot of the articles are 'see through' so you can see varying amounts of the images while reading.

Of course the one thing I love is that it is FAST, no delays or pauses, even when playing videos.

I highly recommend it to anyone who has an iOS device.

New Toys :)

Well Macsales had a garage sale again this weekend (basically it's an excuse to get rid of excess inventory, or just have a sale) and they had a deal on the 120gb SSD with the optical bay kit.


I've been thinking about getting an SSD for my Mac Pro, and also for my MacBook and decided to go ahead and get it.


It arrived this afternoon, and as usual the packaging was top notch along with the very nice detailed instructions on how to disassemble my Mac Book (along with quite a few other laptops from Apple, about 25 I saw) and had everything swapped out in short order.


A quick session with Carbon Copy Cloner and then I ran some seat of the pants tests timing various tasks on the laptop before I switched to the SSD and ran the tests again.  Here's a quick run down of what happened. (this is a two year old MacBook unibody aluminum).


Task Hard Drive Time SSD Time


Cold Boot 54 Seconds   39 Seconds
Login 11 Seconds   5.7 Seconds
Virtual Box Program 14 Seconds   2.2 Seconds
Startup VM 3:04   1:26
Equinox 6 (astronomy) 14 Seconds   4 Seconds
Safari 1.7 Seconds   Instant (couldn't time it)


So overall I'm extremely happy with the SSD, and I'm looking forward to getting one installed on my Mac Pro as well. 

Web Part connections the easy way (sort of)

I'm working on some connected web parts on my latest project, and I was trying to find a good example on how to connect them in SharePoint 2007.  All the examples I found seemed overly complicated to just pass a value between two web parts.


I then stumbled on this article that describes the minimalist approach to connecting web parts, clean, simple and robust what more could you ask for?


Connecting Web Parts