Case Study: Migrating Microsoft's .NET Community Websites to Microsoft Azure
30 May 2014 • by Bob • ASP.NET, Azure, IIS
Have you ever wondered how much work is involved when migrating a traditionally-hosted production website to Microsoft Azure? If so, the following case study might be of interest to you:
Microsoft Azure Migration: Microsoft’s .NET Community Websites
Migrating Microsoft’s ASP.NET and IIS.NET Community Websites to Microsoft Azure
Here's a little background information on this migration case study: last fall Microsoft worked with two of it's hosting partners, Neudesic and Orcsweb, to migrate the www.asp.net and www.iis.net websites from a traditional web hosting scenario (e.g. websites hosted on physical servers) to virtual machines that are hosted in the cloud on Microsoft Azure. Here's what the web farm looked like before the migration:
After the migration, Microsoft had reduced both the hosting costs and the number of servers required by almost 50%. Here's what the web farm looked like when the migration had been completed:
There are a lot of people who helped make this migration a success - and there are far too many to name here - but I would like to say a special "thanks" to everyone at Neudesic and Orcsweb for making this migration process as painless as possible.
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/
How Much is that Lizard in the Window?
28 May 2014 • by Bob • Arizona
I was sitting at the desk in my office when I heard scratching on my window, so I opened my blinds and I saw this guy trying to get in.
For those of you who have never seen one before, this is a Desert Spiny Lizard, and apparently he was confused by the window glass. Based on the fact that the slats in my window blinds are 1.75 inches apart, that places the length of this big guy at somewhere between 10 and 11 inches in size.
I am reminded daily that living in the desert is kind of an adventure... 
Simple Utility to Calculate File Hashes
16 May 2014 • by Bob • Scripting, Visual Studio, Scripting, Visual Studio
I have to download various files from time-to-time, and it's nice when websites provide checksum hashes so I can validate that the file I just downloaded matches the version on the server. (ON a related note, I wrote a blog several years ago which showed how to create a provider for the IIS FTP service which automatically creates checksum files when files are uploaded to a server; see my Automatically Creating Checksum Files for FTP Uploads blog post for the details.)
In order to calculate hashes for files that I have downloaded, several years ago I wrote a simple command-line application for Windows which uses several of the built-in algorithms in .NET's System.Security.Cryptography. And while I realize that there are probably other tools that provide this same functionality, I have used this little utility for years, and I've had several people ask me for copies. With that in mind, I thought that it might make a nice blog topic if I shared the code with everyone. (Note: It's a really simple sample; the .NET framework does all the real work for this application.)
Without further fanfare, here's the source code. In order to use this code sample, you need to create a new C# project in Visual Studio and choose the Console Application template. When the new project opens, replace the template's code with the following:
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Text; using System.Security.Cryptography; class Hash { static void Main(string[] args) { // Verify the correct number of command-line arguments. if (args.Length != 2) { // Show the help message if an incorrect number of arguments was specified. ShowHelp(); return; } else { byte[] hashValue = null; // Verify that the specified file exists. if (!File.Exists(args[1])) { // Show the help message if a non-existent filename was specified. ShowHelp(); return; } else { try { // Create a fileStream for the file. FileStream fileStream = File.OpenRead(args[1]); // Be sure it's positioned to the beginning of the stream. fileStream.Position = 0; // Use the specified hash algorithm. switch (args[0].ToUpper()) { case "MD5": // Compute the MD5 hash of the fileStream. hashValue = MD5.Create().ComputeHash(fileStream); break; case "SHA1": // Compute the SHA1 hash of the fileStream. hashValue = SHA1.Create().ComputeHash(fileStream); break; case "SHA256": // Compute the SHA256 hash of the fileStream. hashValue = SHA256.Create().ComputeHash(fileStream); break; case "SHA384": // Compute the SHA384 hash of the fileStream. hashValue = SHA384.Create().ComputeHash(fileStream); break; case "SHA512": // Compute the SHA512 hash of the fileStream. hashValue = SHA512.Create().ComputeHash(fileStream); break; case "BASE64": // Compute the BASE64 hash of the fileStream. byte[] binaryData = new Byte[fileStream.Length]; long bytesRead = fileStream.Read(binaryData, 0, (int)fileStream.Length); if (bytesRead != fileStream.Length) { throw new Exception(String.Format("Number of bytes read ({0}) does not match file size ({1}).", bytesRead, fileStream.Length)); } string base64String = System.Convert.ToBase64String(binaryData, 0, binaryData.Length); Console.WriteLine("File: {0}\r\nBASE64 Hash: {1}", fileStream.Name, base64String); hashValue = null; break; default: // Display the help message if an unrecognized hash algorithm was specified. ShowHelp(); return; } if (hashValue != null) { // Write the hash value to the Console. PrintHashData(args[0].ToUpper(), fileStream.Name, hashValue); } // Close the file. fileStream.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", ex.Message); } } } } // Display the help message. private static void ShowHelp() {/> Console.WriteLine("HASH.exe <hash algorithm> <file name>\n\n" + "\tWhere <hash algorithm> is one of the following:\n" + "\t\tBASE64\n\t\tMD5\n\t\tSHA1\n\t\tSHA256\n\t\tSHA384\n\t\tSHA512\n"); } // Print the hash data in a readable format. private static void PrintHashData(string algorithm, string fileName, byte[] array) { Console.Write("File: {0}\r\n{1} Hash: ", fileName,algorithm); for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++) { Console.Write(String.Format("{0:X2}", array[i])); } Console.WriteLine(); }/>}
When you compile and run the application, you will see following help message when you specify no command-line parameters:
HASH.exe <hash algorithm> <file name> Where <hash algorithm> is one of the following: BASE64 MD5 SHA1 SHA256 SHA384 SHA512
When you specify one of the supported hashing algorithms and a filename, the application will display something like the following example:
C:\>hash.exe SHA1 foobar.zip File: C:\foobar.zip SHA1 Hash: 57686F6120447564652C20426F6220526F636B73
That's all there is to it. As I mentioned earlier, it's a pretty simple sample. ;-]
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/
Global Warming versus Common Sense
13 May 2014 • by Bob • Rants
I have to admit, I love a good conspiracy theory. But I need to explain what I mean by that - I don't actually believe conspiracy theories, but I love to read articles and blogs from people who do. I typically think that most of the people who believe various conspiracy theories are kind of insane, and therefore they are a never-ending source of amusement for me.
This brings me to one of the biggest conspiracy theories that's circulating the planet right now: Global Warming and Climate Change.
I thoroughly love watching the endless debates that inundate the blogosphere about these two subjects. The bulk of the Internet appears fall into one of two ideological camps: there are "Deniers" who think that nothing is happening, and there are "Chicken Littles" who think that the world is coming to an end. (I personally fall into the group of amused spectators who are constantly laughing at everyone else's reactions. And mark my words people - I am not laughing with you, I am laughing at you.)
With that in mind, let's look at some of the actual science. To begin with, the following new article offers up a dire prediction that the Antarctic ice will melt and the oceans will rise as a result:
This should come as a shock to the NASA scientists who were reporting less than two years ago that the Antarctic ice had reached an all-time high:
With conflicting articles like these making their way around the Internet, what's a poor armchair scientist supposed to believe? Fear not, for I bring you undisputed truth: ice melts. That's pretty much it. Your scientific takeaway should be this: unless the sun burns out, we're going to have ice in some places of the planet, and no ice in other places. The ice in some places will eventually melt, and some places where there currently is no ice will eventually get ice. If you've studied the history of this planet, then you already know these facts. If you haven't studied the history of the planet, then be quiet until you do. Period. End of story.
That being said, it is an undeniable fact that the earth is getting warmer. Although it needs to be said that the global temperature is rising from one of the lowest temperatures that has occurred in the past several thousand years. 1,000 years ago the earth was considerably warmer than it is now, but 500 years before that it was cooler than it is now, and 500 years before that it was even warmer than it was 1,000 years ago. That's the way that our planet works: the earth heats up, then it cools, then it heats up again. This has been going on for millions upon millions of years. The questions with which we need to be concerned is how fast the temperature is rising, and what is causing the temperature to rise. Here's where I need to intercede once again: unless you are a scientist who is qualified to analyze these two questions based on the staggering volume of information available and years of professional research experience, then you need to be quiet and let someone who is qualified do their job.
As I mentioned earlier, we can easily see that the earth has gone through several demonstrable heating and cooling periods over the past several millennia. But there is one major difference between those periods and the present: we can now take detailed measurements of the process, and unfortunately the scientific world is filled with scientists who cannot agree on the severity of this new data. But what is far worse is that the media world is filled with reporters with nothing better to do than to create ominous predictions in order to drive traffic to their websites and thereby increase their advertising revenue. So we wind up with a situation where people can throw news articles back and forth all day long saying one thing or other without ever proving a valid point. Here's a perfect example:
As for me, the story gets better, because eventually the conspiracy theorists get involved. There are several theories out there, and they come from all sides. For example, there are some "deniers" who feel that all of this Global Warming stuff is a bunch of malarkey, and their position seemed to be reinforced when it was revealed that a lot of climatologists were faking their data. (It seems that some scientists believed that "The Ends Justify The Means," so they thought that it was acceptable for them to manipulate their data because "The World Will Eventually Thank Them." That may have been a noble cause in their minds, but unfortunately that's bad science.) Then there are the Global Warming proponents who believe that the real impetus behind the deniers is big business and the evil global corporate cabal who would sell their family members if it made a profit. (Unfortunately, there really are some people who are that heinous.) In either case, I love reading the theories from both sides of the argument, because it's not that simple. As a result, their competing theories bring me unending amounts of entertainment.
But at the end of the day, a few categorical facts remain in this debate:
- The average person is not an actual scientist, and is therefore unqualified to interpret the available data, so he or she is just repeating something they read. As I said earlier, these people need to either go back to school and study the subject in detail, or silence themselves because they're just adding useless noise to the debate. (Although I have pointed out in previous blogs that some people are just parroting whatever their political party of choice is saying, and those people look like idiots.)
- The actual scientists involved in measuring the data are fractured into opposing groups who think that either the sky is falling or this is a normal process which is nothing out of the ordinary. (And there are a host of other opposing theories, too.) These people are at least qualified to publish their findings in a place where the average person is free to read, (as long as these average people keep their unwelcome and uneducated comments to themselves).
- The earth is constantly changing as the continents move around, and as a result the global temperatures will be higher or lower than the present, weather zones will shift locations, volcanoes will erupt and spew greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, tsunamis will devastate coastal regions, the ice caps will shrink and grow, earthquakes will change the landscape, and sea levels will rise and fall.
The only constant in all of this turmoil is change. But unfortunately when change is detected within our current ecosphere and subsequently over-represented by the press, opportunistic knee-jerk reactions from bone-headed idiots are the inevitable result. To quote the great philosopher John Osbourne, "The media sells it, and you live the role."
There is one last thought which I want to leave you with: regardless of your views on Global Warming and Climate Change, we only have one planet - so we only have one chance to get things right. If we destroy the planet, then it's gone. Forever. Period. The Boy Scouts teach that you should leave a place in better condition than you found it. That's a good rule to live by, and it's pretty easy to implement in your daily life through simple actions: recycle as much as you can, turn off lights when you leave a room, pick a car with better gas mileage (or ride a bike when possible), etc. Even if it turned out that humanity had no impact on Global Warming or Climate Change, everyone should still do their part to cut down on pollution and make the world a better place; that's just good stewardship.
UPDATE (October, 2015): The following information is a perfect illustration of why climatology articles cannot be taken out-of-context by their title alone:
To summarize the article, NASA's monitoring of Antarctica has revealed that snow accumulation exceeds the loss of ice shelves; however, if you walk away with this single talking point without reading the rest of the article, you are ignoring the fact that NASA fully acknowledges that Antarctica is actually losing ice. So even though the frozen regions of Antarctica are increasing in volume, that does not mean that glaciers in Antarctica have ceased melting.
What I Do For A Living
29 April 2014 • by Bob • Random Thoughts
It seems that I have always had a difficult time explaining to people what I do at Microsoft. It's not that I'm unsure about what I do - the details of my job have always been crystal-clear to me and I love what I am doing. It's just that I can't find a way to explain things in a way that doesn't result in blank stares from anyone who isn't a geek. (This problem isn't limited to me, though; my non-technical wife simply responds "I have no idea what he does" when someone asks her what I do for a living.)
Here's a perfect example: when I was a Program Manager on the Internet Information Services (IIS) team, people would often ask me what I did for Microsoft, and I would reply with something like, "I help design and implement the web publishing protocols for Microsoft's web server."
Other Person: [Blank Stare]
I would attempt to remedy the situation by adding, "You know, I design Microsoft's implementation of Internet technologies like the File Transfer Protocol, WebDAV, and the FrontPage Server Extensions."
Other Person: [Blank Stare]
In a sometimes-futile effort to salvage the conversation from complete disaster, I would interject, "You like to use the Internet, right? Well, your computer is on one side of the Internet, and my team helps build the other side of the Internet. That's kind of what I do."
That comment would usually be met with a slight spark of recognition, which was sometimes followed by a half-muttered, "That's nice."
At one time or other during my tenure as a Program Manager on the IIS team I was responsible for a smattering of disparate technologies; things like FTP, WebDAV, FPSE, FastCGI, PHP, URL Rewrite, IIS Express, Log Parser, etc. Most of those technologies garnered little to no interest for the average person, and many of my coworkers found them pretty boring as well. Just the same, I personally found every one of those technologies completely fascinating. (Why else would I spend eight years trying to get just one new command added to FTP?)
A couple of years ago I left the IIS program management team and I joined the writing team which is responsible for documenting Microsoft's ASP.NET framework; and if you have to ask what that means, then you are probably not interested in the answer.
Still, people would ask me what I do for Microsoft, and I would try to explain my job with statements like, "I document the Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) for Microsoft's ASP.NET."
Other Person: [Blank Stare]
I would try to nudge the conversation along by saying things like, "I help people write web code."
Other Person: [Blank Stare]
Skipping ahead in the conversation, I would usually make a last-ditch attempt by stating, "Let's say you wanted to create a website; if so, you might read something that I wrote in order to help you get started."
Sometimes this remark would illicit a hint of acknowledgment, but usually I just got another blank stare.
This leads me to a few days ago. My wife and I were at dinner, and a waiter asked me what I did for a living. In the back of my mind I started to say something like, "Well, these days I'm documenting a set of APIs that Java programmers will use with Microsoft Azure technologies [blah blah blah]..."
But what actually came out of my mouth was, "I could explain it to you, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want me to. Trust me."
I like that answer. I think I'll stick with it in the future. :-)
Cleaning Up Your Windows System When QuickTime Has Screwed Up Your Media Settings
11 April 2014 • by Bob • Scripting, Windows
So here's the deal: I don't use anything from Apple. I have no iPod, no iPhone, no Mac, etc. I buy all of my MP3s through Xbox Music and Amazon. :-] Because of this, I have had no real need to install iTunes or QuickTime in years.
But unfortunately it seemed that I had to install either iTunes or QuickTime at one time or other, mainly because some of my digital cameras recorded video in QuickTime *.MOV format. But over the years I learned to detest both iTunes and QuickTime because of the undesirable ways in which they modified my system; both iTunes and QuickTime would remap all of media settings to open in their @#$% player, which I didn't really want in the first place.
Now that Windows supports the *.MOV format natively, and I can easily convert *.MOV files into something infinitely more useful and universal like *.MP4 format, I really never see the need for installing either iTunes or QuickTime.
However, just the other day I installed a new video editor (which shall remain nameless) and it quietly installed QuickTime on my system. I presume that this was to make it easier to import files in *.MOV format into the video editor, but I was pretty upset when I discovered that QuickTime had been installed. What's more, I was angry when I discovered that QuickTime had once again messed up all of my media settings.
In all of this misery is one saving grace: QuickTime has the decency to preserve your original settings. I am assuming that the backups are for when you uninstall QuickTime and attempt to reclaim your system from being hijacked by Apple, but just the same - that little nicety allowed me to fix my system with a little bit of scripting.
So without further introduction - first the script, and then the explanation:
Const HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT = &H80000000 Const strQuickTimeBAK = "QuickTime.bak" Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:" & _ "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}" & _ "!\\.\root\default:StdRegProv") objRegistry.EnumKey HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, "", arrSubKeys For Each objSubkey in arrSubKeys If Len(objSubkey)>2 Then If Left(objSubkey,1)="." Then objRegistry.EnumValues HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, _ objSubkey, arrEntryNames, arrValueTypes If IsArray(arrEntryNames) Then For i = 0 To UBound(arrEntryNames) If StrComp(arrEntryNames(i), strQuickTimeBAK, vbTextCompare)=0 Then intReturnValue = objRegistry.GetStringValue( _ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, objSubkey, strQuickTimeBAK, strEntryValue) If intReturnValue = 0 Then intReturnValue = objRegistry.SetStringValue( _ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, objSubkey, "", strEntryValue) End If End If Next End If End If End If Next
Here's what this script does: first the script enumerates all of the keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and looks for file extension mappings, then it looks for mappings which have been modified and backed up by QuickTime. When it locates file extensions which have been modified, it copies the value which was backed up into the default location where it belongs.
All-in-all, it's a pretty straight-forward script, but it sucks that I had to write it.
FTP ETW Tracing and IIS 8 - Part 2
09 April 2014 • by Bob • Batch Files, ETW, IIS 8, Log Files, LogParser, Scripting, Troubleshooting, FTP, IIS, IIS 8, LogParser, FTP
Shortly after I published my FTP ETW Tracing and IIS 8 blog post, I was using the batch file from that blog to troubleshoot an issue that I was having with a custom FTP provider. One of the columns which I display in my results is Clock-Time, which is obviously a sequential timestamp that is used to indicate the time and order in which the events occurred.
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At first glance the Clock-Time values might appear to be a range of useless numbers, but I use Clock-Time values quite often when I import the data from my ETW traces into something like Excel and I need to sort the data by the various columns.
That being said, apart from keeping the trace events in order, Clock-Time isn't a very user-friendly value. However, LogParser has some great built-in functions for crunching date/time values, so I decided to update the script to take advantage of some LogParser coolness and reformat the Clock-Time value into a human-readable Date/Time value.
My first order of business was to figure out how to decode the Clock-Time value; since Clock-Time increases for each event, it is obviously an offset from some constant, and after a bit of searching I found that the Clock-Time value is the offset in 100-nanosecond intervals since midnight on January 1, 1601. (Windows uses that value in a lot of places, not just ETW.) Once I had that information, it was pretty easy to come up with a LogParser formula to convert the Clock-Time value into the local time for my system, which is much easier to read.
With that in mind, here is the modified batch file:
@echo off
rem ======================================================================
rem Clean up old log files
for %%a in (ETL CSV) do if exist "%~n0.%%a" del "%~n0.%%a"
echo Starting the ETW session for full FTP tracing...
LogMan.exe start "%~n0" -p "IIS: Ftp Server" 255 5 -ets
echo.
echo Now reproduce your problem.
echo.
echo After you have reproduced your issue, hit any key to close the FTP
echo tracing session. Your trace events will be displayed automatically.
echo.
pause>nul
rem ======================================================================
echo.
echo Closing the ETW session for full FTP tracing...
LogMan.exe stop "%~n0" -ets
rem ======================================================================
echo.
echo Parsing the results - this may take a long time depending on the size of the trace...
if exist "%~n0.etl" (
TraceRpt.exe "%~n0.etl" -o "%~n0.csv" -of CSV
LogParser.exe "SELECT [Clock-Time], TO_LOCALTIME(ADD(TO_TIMESTAMP('1601-01-01 00:00:00', 'yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss'), TO_TIMESTAMP(DIV([Clock-Time],10000000)))) AS [Date/Time], [Event Name], Type, [User Data] FROM '%~n0.csv'" -i:csv -e 2 -o:DATAGRID -rtp 20
)
When you run this new batch file, it will display an additional "Date/Time" column with a more-informative value in local time for the sever where you captured the trace.
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The new Date/Time column is considerably more practical, so I'll probably keep it in the batch file that I use when I am troubleshooting. You will also notice that I kept the original Clock-Time column; I chose to do so because I will undoubtedly continue to use that column for sorting when I import the data into something else, but you can safely remove that column if you would prefer to use only the new Date/Time value.
That wraps it up for today's post. :-)
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/
FTP ETW Tracing and IIS 8
08 April 2014 • by Bob • FTP, IIS, IIS 8, LogParser, IIS, IIS 8, LogParser, ETW, Troubleshooting, Scripting, Batch Files, Log Files
In the past I have written a couple of blogs about using the FTP service's Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) features to troubleshoot issues; see FTP and ETW Tracing and Troubleshooting Custom FTP Providers with ETW for details. Those blog posts contain batch files which use the built-in Windows LogMan utility to capture an ETW trace, and they use downloadable LogParser utility to parse the results into human-readable form. I use the batch files from those blogs quite often, and I tend to use them a lot when I am developing custom FTP providers which add new functionality to my FTP servers.
Unfortunately, sometime around the release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 I discovered that the ETW format had changed, and the current version of LogParser (version 2.2) cannot read the new ETW files. When you try to use the batch files from my blog with IIS 8, you see the following errors:
Verifying that LogParser.exe is in the path... Done. Starting the ETW session for full FTP tracing... The command completed successfully. Now reproduce your problem. After you have reproduced your issue, hit any key to close the FTP tracing session. Your trace events will be displayed automatically. Closing the ETW session for full FTP tracing... The command completed successfully. Parsing the results - this may take a long time depending on the size of the trace... Task aborted. Cannot open <from-entity>: Trace file "C:\temp\ftp.etl" has been created on a OS version (6.3) that is not compatible with the current OS version Statistics: ----------- Elements processed: 0 Elements output: 0 Execution time: 0.06 seconds
I meant to research a workaround at the time, but one thing led to another and I simply forgot about doing so. But I needed to use ETW the other day when I was developing something, so that seemed like a good time to quit slacking and come up with an answer. :-)
With that in mind, I came up with a very easy workaround, which I will present here. Once again, this batch file has a requirement on LogParser being installed on your system, but for the sake of brevity I have removed the lines from this version of the batch file which check for LogParser. (You can copy those lines from my previous blog posts if you want that functionality restored.)
Here's the way that this workaround is implemented: instead of creating an ETW log and then parsing it directly with LogParser, this new batch file invokes the built-in Windows TraceRpt command to parse the ETW file and save the results as a CSV file, which is then read by LogParser to view the results in a datagrid like the batch files in my previous blogs:
@echo off rem ====================================================================== rem Clean up old log files for %%a in (ETL CSV) do if exist "%~n0.%%a" del "%~n0.%%a" echo Starting the ETW session for full FTP tracing... LogMan.exe start "%~n0" -p "IIS: Ftp Server" 255 5 -ets echo. echo Now reproduce your problem. echo. echo After you have reproduced your issue, hit any key to close the FTP echo tracing session. Your trace events will be displayed automatically. echo. pause>nul rem ====================================================================== echo. echo Closing the ETW session for full FTP tracing... LogMan.exe stop "%~n0" -ets rem ====================================================================== echo. echo Parsing the results - this may take a long time depending on the size of the trace... if exist "%~n0.etl" ( TraceRpt.exe "%~n0.etl" -o "%~n0.csv" -of CSV LogParser.exe "SELECT [Clock-Time], [Event Name], Type, [User Data] FROM '%~n0.csv'" -i:csv -e 2 -o:DATAGRID -rtp 20 )
Here's another great thing about this new batch file - it will also work down-level on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008; so if you have been using my previous batch files with IIS 7 - you can simply replace your old batch file with this new version. You will see a few differences between the results from my old batch files and this new version, namely that I included a couple of extra columns that I like to use for troubleshooting.
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There is one last thing which I would like to mention in closing: I realize that it would be much easier on everyone if Microsoft simply released a new version of LogParser which works with the new ETW format, but unfortunately there are no plans at the moment to release a new version of LogParser. And trust me - I'm just as depressed about that fact as anyone else. :-(
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/
Brain Teaser Spoiler Alert
28 March 2014 • by Bob • Rants
I keep seeing people repost this annoying little image to their Facebook pages with a question that asks "How many squares do you see?":
First of all, I find these kinds of brain teasers annoying, and the fact that this image shows up every few months or so is only adding to my pre-existing dislike for this particular distraction. What's more annoying, however, is watching the debate that inevitably unfolds with regard to how many squares are displayed.
With that in mind, I will ruin this for future generations by stating that it contains 40 squares, and I created the following animation which shows where that number comes from:
With that in mind, please make the madness stop and just say "no" to posting useless brain teasers.
Personalizing Removable Drive Icons for Windows Explorer
22 March 2014 • by Bob • Windows
Like most people these days, I tend to swap a lot of removable storage devices between my ever-growing assortment of computing devices. The trouble is, I also have an ever-growing collection of removable storage devices, so it gets difficult keeping track of which device is which when I view them in Windows Explorer. The default images are pretty generic, and even though I try to use meaningful names, most of the drives look the same:
By using a simple and under-used Windows feature, I have been personalizing my drives so that they have meaningful icons in Windows Explorer that will be displayed when I plug them into any of my computing devices:
Here's how this works - you just need to store two files in the root folder of each removable drive, both of which will be discussed in more detail later:
autorun.inf- which defines the icon to useicon.ico- which is the icon/image to use for the drive
Creating the Autorun.inf File
The autorun.inf file defines the icon that will be used in Windows Explorer, and its syntax very simple:
[autorun]
icon=icon.ico
Paste the above code into Windows Notepad and save it as autorun.inf in the root folder of your removable drive.
Creating the Icon.ico File
This part is a little trickier because you have to find an image and convert it to an icon. I find all of my images by using http://images.bing.com/ to search for a particular removable drive - see http://tinyurl.com/mztbald for an example. What I am looking for is a specific image for the removable drive that I am using, and if I can't find a specific image then I will look for a generic image that works. The following image illustrates that idea:
Once I have an image, I need to convert it to an Icon file. To do my conversions, I use AveIconifier 2.1 by Andreas Verhoeven, which you can download through the Internet Archive at the following URL:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060613232414/http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/Aveicon.zip
When you open the application, it will prompt you to drag and drop a PNG file into it.
If you were only able to find a JPG or GIF file, don't worry - you can open the image in Windows Paint and click File -> Save As -> PNG Picture to save it as a PNG image:
Once you drag a PNG image into AveIconifier, you can drag out the ICO file that you will need to rename to Icon.ico and save that the root folder of your removable drive.
Click the following image to see what a completed icon that was created with AveIconifier to show looks like.
Hiding the Autorun.inf and Icon.ico Files
One last thing that I do is optional, which is to hide and protect the autorun.inf and icon.ico files. To do so, open a command prompt and change directory to the root of your removable drive, then enter the following commans:
attrib +r +h +s autorun.infattrib +r +h +s icon.ico
These two commands will make the files as read-only, hidden, system files, which should normally prevent you from seeing them when you open your drive in Windows Explorer, and it should prevent them from being accidentally deleted.
Viewing the Changes
After you have saved both the autorun.inf and icon.ico files to the root of your removable drive, you will need to eject the drive and re-attach it to your system in order to see the effects. But as you can see in my earlier illustration, personalization of the drives makes them much easier to identify.
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/