Solar Eclipse 2009 Video - June 21st 2009

I went to see the total solar eclipse in Turkey back in 2006 and it was awesome with perfect weather conditions! I would tell anyone that given half a chance they should get to see one at least once in their lives! Id love to see another and as soon as one is within a decent travelling distance im all over it.

There was one that passed over Asia in the early hours but its taken me a while to find decent footage of it. Looks like they had a bit of cloud just at the wrong time but still you make out the corona etc..

So if you want to see a video of the event here is the site where i found it!

Enjoy!

Error: Lightbox is 'undefined' when using Lightbox from Flash on IIS

Today I came across an issue with Lightbox (the javascript image gallery) and after ages of trying to find out what it was everyone seemed to be saying the problem was in the JavaScript and how it was called.

The thing that made me think otherwise was the exact same website was working perfectly on another server which was Linux. After looking around the code I noticed the lightbox file was called lightbox++.js

Every time you clicked on an image in the gallery I got the Error: Lightbox is 'undefined' and in FireFox - 'Lightbox is not defined.

On a hunch i tried entering the path in the lightbox.js file into the address bar and IIS said the file didn't exist! I then had a lightbulb moment.

IIS doesn’t seem to like the + character in the lightbox++.js file name and wouldn’t serve up the file so I renamed to lightbox.js and updated the reference in the calling page and bingo! It works fine.

So if you get the Error: Lightbox is 'undefined' message and are using a Windows server and IIS then don't use + in the file name!

Visual Studio 2010 Release Date and VS2010 Video Training

Visual Studio 2010 is currently at the Beta Test stage but already the excitement to the release date is growing. The actual official Visual Studio 2010 release date is still to be announced but it is currently expected to ship early in Q1 of 2010.

If you are looking to get ahead of the game and get to grips with some of the new features of Visual Studio 2010, then I highly recommend you head over to LearnVisualStudio.Net. As always, LVS have stayed with the latest cutting edge technologies and have already produced their first series of training materials for Visual Studio 2010 to get its members up to speed quickly.

In the first series there are 6 videos providing around 2 hours of video based training. The topics they cover are:

• Visual Studio 2010 .Net 4.0 Language Enhancements


• Visual Studio 2010 C#4.0 Specific Language Enhancements


• Visual Studio 2010 ASP.Net 4.0 Web Forms Routing


• Visual Studio 2010 ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 Binding


• Visual Studio 2010 ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 Observer

There is plenty there to whet the appetite and more are being produced as we speak. If you are not a member of LVS and would like to know more please ask any questions in the comment box below.

Here is the link for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta download.

As soon as the official Visual Studio 2010 Release Date is out I will put together a blog post about it.

So what are you looking forward to most in Visual Studio 2010?

Personally, I am very keen to check out the Microsoft Dublin component. If you have read any of my posts on Windows Workflow Foundation you will have seen the hassles I had in hosting the workflows. Well, Dublin is a component of Oslo (Microsofts new modelling framework), and it will be offered as a free tool shipped with VS2010 to enable you to host and monitor Workflows and WCF services.

If Dublin takes away a lot of the pain I went through with hosting Workflows in IIS then I will gladly look at using Workflow Foundation again. Since I first used it I have steered clear. Fingers crossed its all its cracked up to be.

Microsoft Windows 7 Release - Amazon Are Taking Pre-Orders of Windows 7

Amazon have just put Windows 7 for sale on a pre-order basis! Its officially released on 22 October. I've put the links to the various versions and stores for your convenience:

For you guys in the US:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium



Microsoft Windows 7 Professional



Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate




For everyone here in the UK here are the Amazon UK Links:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium E



Windows 7 Professional E



Windows 7 Ultimate E