Skype - Ultra High CPU Usage

The past few days I've noticed that my office laptops Skype was permanently sitting at +- 90%+ CPU usage. Since I use Skype for work, not using it was not exactly a viable option, and restarting it (And updating to the latest version) didn't help.

I did, however - Find a solution!

1.) Download Process Explorer

2.) Run it

3.) Right click on Skype, and click "Properties"

4.) Click "Threads" (Ignore the potential message about something not being up to date)

5.) Sort by CPU usage by clicking the 2nd tab from the left twice.

6.) Find that a single thread is using all the CPU (For me it was Skype.exe+0x705c although it's also known to be Skype.exe+0x7074)

7.) Click the offending thread, and click  "Kill"

Skype's CPU usage will drop to what it's meant to be (0% average for me), with no visible side effects.

Seems like Microsoft have some threading bug with Skype that's existed for awhile :)

Copy.com VS Dropbox.com

I recently got suggested a new Cloud Storage service - Copy

After testing it for about 5 minutes, I give it the following review :)

1.) 15GB Default Storage - Awesome!
2.) The Desktop app seems awesome (Although the 45MB download is a bit overkill) - It's also native x64!
3.) Files can be direct linked - Which is awesome!
4.) HTML files are served as type text/plain intead of text/html- This is a critical fail on Copy's behalf.

Whilst the first 3 are awesome, the 4th is a critical failure, and so I will stick to Dropbox :)

New IRC Client - AdiIRC

Whilst searching around for an IRC client with a native x64 build (Curse you mIRC ;D), I stumbled across AdiIRC.

TINY IRC Client (1MB) that's coded in C#, and 100% Free :D
 
I'd highly recommend it :)

How do I get started programming games???

By reading this fantastic guide by Tommy Refenes - That's how :)

JavaScript - Regex to format currency

A simple way to format currency! Given a number, format it to a currency-esque format.

number.toFixed(decimalPlaces).replace(/(\d)(?=(\d{3})+\.)/g, "$1,");

Sample:


Symbol (EG: R, $):
Number (EG: 1234567.50):
Decimal Places (EG: 1, 2, 3 - Probably 2):

Handler "PHP53_via_FastCGI" has a bad module "FastCgiModule" in its module list

I found this error after installing PHP on IIS, and attempting to browse to a local .php page.

Do the following to fix it.

1.) Go to Add / Remove Programs
2.) Click "Turn Windows features on or off"
3.a.) Open "Internet Information Services"
3.b.) Open "World Wide Web Services"
3.c.) Open "Application Development Features"
3.d.) Tick "CGI"
3.e.) Click "OK
3.f) Wait for it to complete.
4.) Attempt to go to your php page again.

\o/

A Quote

Online ASP.NET ViewState Decoder

I was looking for one of these, and it took me awhile to locate - Maybe someone will find it useful :)
 
Link: Here

XNB Decompressor

Whilst messing around with some XNA .XNB files, I wanted to see if I could extract any useful information from them.

A bit of googling later lead me to an archive with several files, and this!

Whilst it keeps the files as the ".xnb" format, it decompresses them allowing you to pull some info using a basic text editor :)

Thanks to the XeNTaX forum for the link :)

3D JavaScript is weird...

3D JavaScript is weird...

An object can ONLY be collided with if it's in the scene, even if you're only using the object collection as collision reference.
The problem is that an object can only be collided with if it's of type geometry , which normal .obj's aren't.

Now, for the fun part!

Rendering a textured object is significantly faster than rendering an object with a mesh, so, whilst you could just use textured mesh's and render those, this is slow as heck.

And how do you get past this dilemma... ?

Add both the object AND the mesh to the scene, and hide the mesh's. Since they're technically there, they can still be collided with, and since they're invisible, they don't use rendering cycles ;D

Result: 60 FPS with full collision ♥

Javascript - Reverse a string

--> <--

Javascript - Regex to remove all special chars from a string, leaving letters and numbers.

--> <--

How to block ads from websites

As you probably see below this post (If it's the latest) and on the right of the page under the "Site History", I have added some ads.

But fret not - For this post shall include how to remove ads such as these! \o/

1.) Download and install Adblock for Firefox, Chrome, or Opera - If you're using IE... Download Chrome ^_^
2.) Subscribe to the recommended filter list - Should be called 'EasyList'
3.) Enjoy an ad-free experience :D
4.) Example With Adblock Installed: Click Me :D
Note: Some of the items in the image (Pencil, Spanner, Etc) only appear for me since I own the page ^_^

Create a SQL Database using an existing MDF File

If you have an MDF file, and you need to create a SQL Database from it using code, do the following:

USE [master]
GO
CREATE DATABASE [insert_database_name_here] ON 
( FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Data\fileNameHere.mdf' ),
FOR ATTACH ;
GO

SharePoint 2010 CAML Query Nuance In C#

Whilst playing around in SharePoint with pulling data from lists (Which requires a wonderfully syntactically obscene language known as CAML Query), I found that my query simply refused to filter out data.

string camlQuery = @"
   <Query>   
      <Where>
         <Eq>
            <FieldRef Name = 'Title' />
            <Value Type='Text'>" + chosenIndex + @"</Value>
         </Eq>
      </Where>
   </Query>";
SPListItemCollection items = myList.GetItems(camlQuery);

Seems simple, enough - Right?

Not quite...

Turns out, if you include the <Query> tags in your CAML Query, the entire thing gets blatantly ignored! No errors - It just selects everything o_O

To fix this problem, simply remove the <Query></Query> tags from your statement, and everything will work as planned...

Note: Thanks to manoli.net for the formatting code :D