Shane Cotee's Blog http://www.shanecotee.com/blog Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:17:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Kuler – The Ultimate Online Color Tool http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=15 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=15#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:16:37 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=15 At some point along the road, nearly all of us will need (or want) to find a color that goes well with another color. Or maybe we need a whole group of “harmonious” colors. Enter Adobe’s Kuler color tool.

Kuler uses Flash to help you create color schemes derived from a base color that you can specify yourself via Hexadecimal, RGB, and other color codes. Totally priceless when it comes to choosing colors in a web design. Plus, it’s free. Check it out: Adobe Kuler

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=15 0 Object doesn’t support property or method ‘fullCalendar’ http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=17 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=17#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:57:53 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=17 I fought with this for a couple of hours today, while working in an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Telerik MVC controls. It worked the last time I checked, and I was scratching my head as to why in the world it wouldn’t work with all of the proper scripts in place.

The answer was that my Telerik MVC UI Extensions were older than my FullCalendar, so the Telerik ScriptRegistrar was calling jQuery 1.5.1 after I had manually loaded 1.5.2 in the head of the document. I updated my Telerik controls and did some preventative maintenance to stop this from happening again. At the bottom of my Master page (before </body>), I disabled Telerik’s ScriptRegistrar from managing jQuery anymore:

<%= Html.Telerik().ScriptRegistrar().jQuery(false).jQueryValidation(false) %>
</body>

Then I kept my traditional <script> calls to jQuery in the <head> section of the Master page. Everything is back to normal, and I can now get on with my life. Hope this helps someone.

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=17 0 Cookies Not Working in Firefox? http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=16 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=16#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 00:26:43 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=16 If you use Firefox and suddenly find yourself having to re-enter your username and password for websites that used to “remember” who you were, you might have encountered the same bug I just battled with for a while. Here’s the fix:

For Windows Vista (and probably Windows 7) users, open My Computer and browse to C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random characters].default . Make sure Firefox is closed and delete cookies.sqlite. I also deleted prefs.js, but that might have been unnecessary. Try it out and you should be good to go.

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=16 0 The Mysterious World of Web Design… Explained http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=14 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=14#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:43:28 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=14 After about eight years of building websites, I’ve decided to share a few tips and secrets that I wish I had known about earlier. It’s easy to become intimidated by the sheer volume of technology available in this field, so I figure I’d do my good deed and post a summary of what I’ve learned about this monstrous topic.

Section 1: XHTML and CSS

For those who are total noobs when it comes to web design, the first step after learning basic computer skills is to become familiar with the rules of HTML and CSS. Take a college class from a reputable teacher to get the best start here. I was lucky enough to start learning HTML before CSS was widely used, so everything built up in a natural order as I mastered HTML and then moved to CSS and then server-side programming. Don’t let the massive amount of options in the latest CSS standard (CSS 2.1) throw you off before you really get to know the ins & outs of HTML (and ultimately XHTML, which isn’t too far off from HTML — it just borrows some rules from XML and results in stricter, cleaner code). When you feel comfortable with the concepts of XHTML, you’ll be ready for the world of CSS, which will greatly simplify your life as an HTML coder.

Once you’re to the point of being able to create simple pages in simple text editors like Notepad, it’s time to move on to the professional level: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. It may also be worth your while to take a class on Dreamweaver or at least look around for guides online and spend lots of time at the Dreamweaver Developer Center.  Students can pick up Dreamweaver from various online vendors at quite a discount.

Section 2: Graphics Design

Ultimately, graphics design is almost as important as coding when it comes to websites. Let’s admit it — a website that looks like a Word document from 1993 is not going to make any company or organization look reputable.  You need to spend some serious time in Adobe Photoshop to get the hang of it and make a decision: Do you want to focus more on layout or code? You can do both for a while, but it’s much more efficient to split the work with at least one other person who balances out your skills. In my situation, I pay a talented designer create my web layouts, then I take care of everything els Even if you have a designer handling the Photoshop side of things, you need to be familiar with Photoshop to be confident you can (at least) make minor changes on your own. Look into a college class and/or online resources to get yourself up to speed on Photoshop CS3, which is also available at a huge discount to students.

Section 3: Server-Side Programming

You can only get away with copying and pasting the same website layout for multiple web pages for so long, until one day you find yourself editing 15 files to make a single change to the header or footer of every page (Dreamweaver’s Find And Replace can do wonders in that kind of situation, but don’t let that fool you). Or maybe you’ll be asked to create a custom page that a client can edit through a database of some sort. There are lots of examples like this where server-side code is a requirement. PHP is a great language to start with, because it’s a fairly simple language that isn’t as strict as others. It’s also open source, which means zero cost and tons of free tools and help available online. Dreamweaver makes a good PHP editor, but php-editors.com has lots more info on that topic.

I don’t recommend ColdFusion, because it’s expensive and not very popular with many big companies for a variety of reasons.

The most powerful tool I’ve found for creating server-side code is ASP.NET. You can choose between VB.NET and C#.NET, and there are no problems with using both within one project. Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express Edition is a free, but thorough editing tool with a notable feature called Intellisense, which is a technology similar to what Dreamweaver uses when you’re typing code. A menu pops up with likely choices for what you’re about to type, and in the massive world of ASP.NET, it’s priceless. The downside is that the visual designer (think Design View in Dreamweaver) isn’t nearly as good as Dreamweaver, and the FTP side of things is super clunky.

Section 4: Summary and Recommendations

It takes a large investment of time to learn everything involved with Photoshop, XHTML, CSS, and a server-side technology. The toughest part for me was learning the ins and outs of ASP.NET, but the payoff is tremendous. If you decide to go the same route, you’ll have to choose between VB.NET or C#.NET first and foremost, and I recommend C#.NET for reasons I’ll not go into here. VB.NET may be easier to learn, but it’s not as thorough and won’t open your mind to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) like C# can.

Here is the most efficient path I’ve found for creating high-quality, flexible websites:

  1. I’m not as much of a visual artist as I’d like to be, so I’ve partnered up with a graphics designer who has a knack for color harmonies and design theory. If you have to or want to handle this part yourself, take Design, Typography, and Photoshop classes. You’ll be making professional-grade designs in no time. Also visit Adobe’s Kuler website for an amazing shortcut to finding colors that work well together. Consider subscribing to Before & After Magazine to learn tons of useful design ideas.
  2. Learn Dreamweaver like the back of your hand. It’ll save you uncountable hours in the long run, even if you graduate to using Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio to create dynamic websites.
  3. Learn PHP. It will come up some time in your career, and you’ll be glad you have at least a basic understanding of it on several levels. Most notably, it makes it easier to learn new languages afterwards, because it’s based on programming concepts that echo through nearly all of the main languages out there.
  4. Learn C#, ASP.NET, and Visual Studio (a.k.a. Visual Web Developer). The learning curve is horrendous on this part, so consider taking some classes if they’re available. There were none available for me locally, so I bought lots of books and experimented my way into a decent comfort zone. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with running Dreamweaver and Visual Web Developer at the same time to work on one website — in fact, it could be the most powerful combination of development tools ever made.
]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=14 0 Add Games to Windows Vista Business Edition http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=13 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=13#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:07:26 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=13 At first, I thought Vista Business Edition came with no games at all, being geared towards the work environment and all. Luckily for you Solitaire and Minesweeper fans out there, that’s not true. Here are the steps to bringin’ the Windows games back:

Start > Control Panel > Classic View (on the left-side menu) > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off (on the left-side menu) > and put a check mark in Games. Done!

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=13 0 A Better Way to Play MKV Files on the PS3 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=12 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=12#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:15:46 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=12 Since MKV2VOB has been updated, this post is obsolete. I can now recommend it for converting MKV files for the PS3. Download it at http://www.mkv2vob.com.

More good news for Playstation 3 owners. While mkv2vob was a step in the right direction, I found another page that uses a new set of tools to accomplish the same task with even better results (reliable seeking, more consistent conversions, etc.). Check it out at the Playstation.com Forums.

To simplify the process, here are the direct links to the files you’ll need:

Since these apps are updated constantly, I highly recommend you follow through the guide and visit each page individually.

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=12 0 SQL Server 2005 Express: Automated Backup Solution http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=11 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=11#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:20:41 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=11 Since the stripped-down Express version of SQL Server 2005 doesn’t include a tool to automate backups, I recently had to find a way to reliably backup my databases each day.

Requirements:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
  • Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express
  • Windows Task Scheduler
  • Some sort of text editor (of course)

Backup Walkthrough:

  1. Either skip to the shortcut below, or specify your own backup script by preparing a normal (manual) backup in Management Studio Express. Right-click your database, highlight Tasks, then click Back Up. On the Back Up screen, look for the Destination section and click the Disk option. Then click Add on the right side. In the Destination window, click the elipsis (…) and browse to the folder you want to store the backup. Type a name for the backup file, and don’t forget to include “.bak” in the name you type, because it won’t be added automatically. This simplifies things quite a bit in the long run. For example, the resulting destination should look like “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Backup\dbname.bak”. Clicking the Script button at the top of theAs a shortcut, you may also copy the script for a below, replace the three references to “dbname” with your database name, and save it as a .sql file:

    Full Backup, Retaining Previous Backups:

    BACKUP DATABASE [dbname] TO DISK = N’C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Backup\dbname.bak’ WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N’dbname-Full Database Backup’, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10
    GO

    (To overwrite all previous backups, change the “WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT” part to “WITH NOFORMAT, INIT” — recommended for use at least once in a while to avoid massive backup sizes.)

    Differential Backup:

    BACKUP DATABASE [dbname] TO DISK = N’C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Backup\dbname.bak’ WITH DIFFERENTIAL , NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N’dbname-Differential Database Backup’, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10
    GO

  2. Create a new text document in your backup folder. This will soon be the batch file that Windows Task Scheduler can run to create our backup(s).Put this code in the text document:sqlcmd -S LOCALHOST\SQLEXPRESS -i dbname_backup.sql -o dbname_backup_log.txtReplace dbname_backup.sql with your backup script’s file name and make sure the batch file and SQL file are in the same folder!
  3. Save the text document as “sql_backup.bat” (include the quotation marks to force your text editor to save it as .bat and not .txt). Run the batch file to make sure your database is backing up correctly.
  4. Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks. Double-click Add Scheduled Task, click Next, click Browse, then choose the batch file you just created. Choose your scheduled times and you’re good to go.
]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=11 0 Super Easy FLAC > WAV and WAV > FLAC Conversion http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=10 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=10#comments Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:40:03 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=10 If you ever need a quick way to convert a FLAC file to or from WAV, it couldn’t get any easier. Some genius created a super-simple frontend called FlacDrop for drag-and-drop FLAC encoding and decoding. Just unzip the program, run FlacDrop.exe, and drop your FLAC or WAV file(s) into the small program window. That’s it. You can access the program’s options by right-clicking in the window.

You can find FlacDrop on SourceForge’s FLAC page and many other lossless audio sites.

I found this out when preparing my music for a high-fidelity music download service called MusicZeit. Highly recommended!

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=10 0 New Ambient/Electronic Samples on MySpace http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=9 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=9#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:47:32 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=9 No software-fixing advice this time… Today I added six song excerpts to my Entide MySpace page. Check them out and keep in mind the album will be for sale online in the next couple of days.

More info at Entide.com.

]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=9 0 Fix for Vista’s USB Driver Bug http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=8 http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=8#comments Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:57:12 +0000 Shane Cotee http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?p=8 Sometimes when plugging in a flash drive, an old USB mouse, or similar devices, Vista can’t find the drivers in its own driver store and begins searching online. The process takes a while and is usually a waste of time.

There are two ways around the problem, but I believe any permanent solution is up to Microsoft (Vista SP1, please?).

  1. Cancel the “New hardware found” wizard, right-click My Computer, choose Manage, and click Device Manager. Find the device(s) with a yellow error icon, right click, and choose Update Driver. Tell it to look in C:\Windows\System32 and include subfolders. The driver should install fine. If not, look to the manufacturer to find the driver software. This is a quick fix, but the problem is likely to occur again the next time you plug the device in.
  2. Click Start, then choose Run. type “C:\Windows\inf” and hit Enter.As a side note, you’ll need to tell Windows Explorer to show hidden files, if you haven’t already done so. Inside any Explorer window (such as the one that was just opened), hit Alt on the keyboard to bring up the classic Windows menu, click Tools, then Folder Options. Go to the View tab and change the “Hidden files and folders” option to “Show hidden files and folders.”
    Scroll down to INFCACHE.1. We need to delete the file, but the Users group doesn’t have permission to delete it by default. Right-click INFCACHE.1 and choose Properties. Go to the Security tab and click the Users group, then click Edit. Add Modify permissions and click OK. A confirmation box will appear about changing permissions on a system folder, on which you can safely click Yes. Click OK on the Security page and delete the file.Though this isn’t necessarily a permanent fix, it seems to help with a lot of Vista driver issues that I’ve run into.
]]> http://www.shanecotee.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=8 0