Fallout New Vegas

I've rented New Vegas this weekend gone and have been playing it a lot since. It is so similar to Fallout 3 which incidentally I have not finished all the side quests yet.

I don't know what it is with this game, because the shooting is not great, especially if you're not using VATS, graphics are poor-ish, dialog animations are so last century and I just can't stop playing it. Must be the story, it's just so good and there so much to explore it's incredible.

Create a custom New Item form for SharePoint Custom Lists

You do not have to use the built in New Item form that you get when you want to add new item to a SharePoint list. You can create a specially formatted form for instance with fields grouped and various layouts. To achieve this you need to have SharePoint designer installed (free from Microsoft) and the how from below.

I had to do this four times now in the past couple of years or so and every time need to remind my self the steps. So here it is:

1. Create your custom list with all the columns you need.
2. Using SharePoint Designer open the site containing the custom list you want to create a new "New Item" form.
3. Browse to the custom list web part under Lists folder.

Manipulating applications window from .NET application

One of my colleagues was "hacking" a third party application by placing his own .NET application partly over it, at the specific coordinates. To do this he needed to be able to find third party application and set its window position and size on the fly from his .NET app. So I coded a DLL for him.

First I needed to find the window:

public static bool FindApplicationByWindowName(string AppName)
{
int bRtn = 0;

foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcesses("."))
{
try
{
if (p.MainWindowTitle.ToString().ToLower() == AppName.ToLower())
{
bRtn = p.MainWindowHandle.ToInt32();
}
}
catch { }
}
return bRtn;
}

Exporting Active Directory security group members to text file

One of the bosses asked me for a list of users in a security group just now. Thinking too high of the M$ management console I thought I can just copy and paste all members but I was wrong. So had to learn a new command on the good old command prompt:

dsget group "group distinguished name (DN) i.e. CN=Sales\\ Latin America,OU=Distribution Lists,DC=microsoft,DC=com..." -members >> filename.txt

and ta-da, all members popped up in the text file called filename.txt!

Portal 2 on Valentine's Day

It is really encouraging to see Valve has invested into making this Portal 2 trailer for Valentine's Day. It could mean that they are dedicated and hard working, or just desperate to get some publicity, or maybe both.
I really enjoyed Portal. It is a clever little puzzle game built around a very simple idea. Get from A to B using a portal that you can place in almost any surface. Portal 2 will have co-op mode hence the which is what the trailer is aiming to bring forward:

The King's Speech

I finally went to see The King's Speech last night in the nice art deco cinema in Ulverston. There were surprisingly a lot of people in the audience, no doubt some of them for the second time. Most of them in their sixties though and only a few in their thirties or forties. If it weren't for numerous Bafta and Oscar nominations I would most likely not go to the cinema to see it. Much rather wait and watch this kind of film at home on the DVD.

There was a lot of talk about this film in the media for quite a while now, so I was hoping it is not going to disappoint. The opening 10 minutes of the film were a good sign. King George about to give a speech couldn't have been shown better. When you think about the whole film there isn't really a huge plot in it. There's no action, CGI or sex scenes either. What this film was about is character development, from start to finish. Directing is very good but the film would have been a total failure if it wasn't for brilliant acting all around, especially Colin Firth playing King George VI, Geoffrey Rush playing his speech therapist Lionel Logue and Helena Bonham Carter playing Queen Elizabeth.

Mass Effect second play through

Finished my second Mass Effect play through :D. Managed to get few more achievements in the process which is always a nice bonus. I'm not sure if I should start playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood next, continue playing and finish Dead Space (I'm half way through) or jump onto Mass Effect 2 for the second play through and bunch of DLCs that I'm yet to start playing... Might do all at the same time :D

Need a new flight bag

Need to get a new flight bag before April and I want to make sure it is the last one for the next ten years or so. It is a pain that each airline can set their own rules for hand baggage so I'll have to go for something smaller, not to close to the typical size limits.
Here's British Airways allowance as of February 2011:

ADELE

Almost every new Adele song listen to I find myself in the "wow" state. There is something in her voice that makes most of her songs sound that extra notch better than the average songs we get to hear these days. I hope she continues like this. Brilliant voice and some very nice songs. Here's her in the BBC Radio1 Live Lounge:

Mass Effect assignments

I've played Mass Effect for over 40 hours and I just found out that some assignments you need to discover yourself. I thought the game will present them as you progress through the story.

Got to the last mission and I had no assignments left undone, so I was not sure I'm going to get some of the Ally achievements for finishing most missions with a specific squad member. So I decided to explore some of the planets that I thought I've not explored yet and bingo! found bunch of assignments in Nepmos.

Back to blogging

A long time since my last blog post so consequently a lot happened since. I'm starting to get that urge to blab to myself on the open again so decided to come back to dreri MIX and start blabbing again.

I was trying to find a solution to a problem on SharePoint 2007 today and could not remember it because it has been a long time since I last had to deal with it. I wished I had put something down somewhere so I could now remind myself what I did. Hopefully will have the time and dedication to publish more and more of different things I have to do work-wise just for me as a record and on odd occasional help someone as well (as a bonus :)).

I've been using twitter a bit more recently, mainly for gaming. I will try and link this blog with it so the two can work together -

I will also try and link or copy game related posts from here to Gaming For Fun, former Jolly Roger. The site has changed a lot since I last posted here. Not as busy as it was in the first 6 months or so but still going.

I hope this time I'll stick to blogging and it won't be yet another thing that I intend to do and get sidetracked. I can't count the number of times I decided to do something and before I knew it, I'm off to something different.