Endians don’t have anything to do with bit order

Posted on July 14, 2010 by admin

This might sound silly to even note, but “endianness,” a common term in programming and computers which has to do with the order of information, is only related to bytes. Not bits.

If you have a two-byte object – a word in some languages – it might something like… 

AB CD

The above is in big endian form. Read from left to right, stored from right to left. Big endian is basically english.

CD AB

Little endian would read and store it like it is above – the bytes are going from right to left. This is like reading manga or other asian comics – though you read the panels from right to left, the words themselves are not transposed. It would not be “DC BA,” because endian does not refer to the individual bits, but the byte order.

Posted in programming | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

mspdb80.dll was not found

Posted on July 7, 2010 by admin

Presumably you’re trying to do some sort of C++ compilation or debugging. I got this message when trying to open a .dll file with dumpbin.

To fix it, double check your path variable. You should have the SDK in there somewhere, specifically pointing at the directory with devenv preferably. Here’s the way I handled it:

New environment variables:
psdk = C:\program files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\PlatformSDK
vs2005 = C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\

Append path environment variable with:
.;%psdk%;%vs2005%;%vs2005%/Common7/IDE

Don’t worry if you get multiple slashes in a row, Windows will take care of that. You should be able to run those files now since Windows CMD will be able to find the necessary DLL by looking in all of the paths.

[Reference = http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressinstall/thread/2a3c57c5-de79-43e6-9769-35043f732d68]

Posted in error, microsoft | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Presentation tip: Look at the audience

Posted on June 30, 2010 by admin

I see even seasoned presenters and VPs do this – if you’re addressing a crowd and you allow questions, make sure not to focus the answers to the askers.

When someone asks a question, repeat the question for the audience, then answer to the audience. If there’s a camera, look at that. Look at the asker at the end of the response, certainly, and once in a while in the middle. Do not stand by him, do not talk directly to him, do not take forever on something the rest of the audience won’t care about. Show some appreciation to the asker, but focus on the whole audience.

Otherwise the audience will just take this opportunity to play Words with Friends.

Posted in language, presentations | 1 Comment

Ir, a highly irregular spanish verb

Posted on June 29, 2010 by admin

“Ir” is one of those words you’ll hear about if you’re trying to learn Spanish as the “only exception to a rule.” The exception is that its conjugated forms bear no relation at all to its infinitive or gerund forms, which are crazy-different from each other too, not to mention its past-tense look. In short, it’s a weird word.

Below is a list I found of all of its forms. The most important part is that the root word is “ir,” which conjugates to (yo form) “voy,” and is (yo form) “fui” in the past tense. You can probably conjugate it – or conjugate it enough – from there.

Oh, and it means “to go.” That’s important too.

Infinitive (infinitivo) to go: ir

Gerund (gerundio) going: yendo

Participle (participio)gone: ido

Present indicative (presente del indicativo) I go, you go, etc.: yo voy, tú vas, usted/él/ella va, nosotros/as vamos, vosotros/as vais, ustedes/ellos/ellas van

Preterite (pretérito) I went, you went, etc.: yo fui, tu fuiste, usted/él/ella fue, nosotros/as fuimos, vosotros/as fuisteis, ustedes/ellos/ellas fueron

Imperfect indicative (imperfecto del indicativo) I used to go, you used to go, etc.: yo iba, tú ibas, usted/él/ella iba, nosotros/as íbamos, vosotros/as ibais, ustedes/ellos/ellas iban

Future (futuro) I will go, you will go, etc.: yo iré, tú irás, usted/él/ella irá, nosotros/as iremos, vosotros/as iréis, ustedes/ellos/ellas irán

Conditional (condicional) I would go, you would go, etc.:yo iría, tú irías, usted/él/ella iría, nosotros/as iríamos, vosotros/as iríais, ustedes/ellos/ellas irían

Present subjunctive (presente del subjuntivo) that I go, that you go, etc.: que yo vaya, que tú vayas, que usted/él/ella vaya, que nosotros/as vayamos, que vosotros/as vayáis, que ustedes/ellos/ellas vayan

Imperfect subjunctive (imperfecto del subjuntivo) that I were, that you were, etc.: que yo fuera (fuese), que tú fueras (fueses), que usted/él/ella fuera (fuese), que nosotros/as fuéramos (fuésemos), que vosotros/as fuerais (fueseis), que ustedes/ellos/ellas fueran (fuesen)

Imperative (imperativo) go: ve (tú), no vayas (tú), vaya usted, vamos or vayamos (nosotros/as), id (vosotros/as), no vayáis (vosotros/as), vayan ustedes

Note: The preterite conjugation is the same as that of the verb ser. The context typically will indicate which verb is being conjugated.

[Reference: http://spanish.about.com/od/specificverbs/a/conjugation_ir.htm]

Posted in language, spanish | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Error: Cryptographic Failure While Signing Assembly

Posted on June 28, 2010 by admin

If you’re upgrading your version of Visual Studio – particularly from VS2003 to VS2005 or above – you might see this message in C# files that are signed with a “strong name.” In VS2003-, the assembly file was set in AssemblyInfo.cs. The failure is generally because the path is changed in the project you’re updating to (especially if you’re adding a directory step, as you might when adding an x64 branch to your project).

The solution is to use the new method of “strong name” signing added in VS2005. Right-click on the project and go to its properties, and manually set the keyfile under the Build tab. It should be the last item on the bottom – you might need to scroll down a bit. Point to the assembly file you want to use and C# will use that specific file for every variation of the project, even if you have a few different configs (Release|x64, Debug|Win32, etc).

VS2005 will let you know that you should do this, too, by saying that the old method is deprecated.

Posted in microsoft, visual studio, x64 | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Error: An attempt was made to load an assembly with an incorrect format (or) “sgen.exe” exited with code 1

Posted on June 28, 2010 by admin

This happens, generally, when you update a project to add a new 64-bit build, or transition a project over to a new workspace/solutionl.

To fix, right-click the project, go to Properties, Build, and (at the bottom) set Generate serialization assembly to “Auto” or “Off” instead of “On.” This prevents it from being serialized, which means we can’t get this error. According to MS, what this does is reduce performance to some extent:

“The XML Serializer Generator creates an XML serialization assembly for types in a specified assembly in order to improve the startup performance of a XmlSerializer when it serializes or deserializes objects of the specified types.”

Other users say that this just reduces its performance on the first-run. On successive runs, it will speed up.

Posted in microsoft, visual studio, x64 | Tagged , | 1 Comment