If you're like me, there are times when you need some ambient music to keep the right brain happy when you're doing a lot of left brain intensive work like debugging, researching a problem, or cranking out code. In light of this, I thought I'd share one of my favorite internet radio sites that helps keep me going even during those inevitable late nights that plague us developer-types, http://www.di.fm/.
This site operates just like a radio station only it has a variety of music your wouldn't typically find on the airwaves, minus annoying DJs, and has minimal commercial interruption.
To use the site, be sure to scroll down the page to where you see the Radio Channels section. At that point, you'll start to see all the channels that they have to offer. Once you've found the type of music you want to listen to, click on either the 24k, 32k, or 96k button and it'll start streaming audio to your default player. Naturally, the higher value, the better the signal quality at the expense of more bandwidth usage.
My recommendations are Trance and Chillout, but there are plenty of options for you guys to choose from. If you're at work, just be sure the IT guys are cool with you sucking up some of there precious bandwidth...
I recently experienced some woes with updating a .dll in the Microsoft Download Cache, C:\Windows\Assembly\Download, that I've finally been able to resolve. Anyway, I thought I'd share my experiences to help any of you guys who might be encountering a similar issue. Here are some details to clarify...
Problem:
I had just completed some changes to a custom library, .dll file, that gets downloaded from our website to the client's download cache directory, C:\Windows\Assembly\Download, when I discovered that an older version of the file was continurously being loaded every time I tried to access the site as a client. This continued to occur despite the fact that I'd updated our website with the most recent revision of the file. In case you're curious, our website loads that .dll file onto the client so that it can communicate with the client's laser hand-scanner, a device used to read bar-coded information into controls of our site.
Root Cause:
An older version of the .dll file is continuously being loaded every time I access the appropriate page because the file has been cached to the client's local temporary internet files folder.
Solution:
Here are the steps that I used to effectively resolve this issue:
Please note: all these actions take place on the client which happens to be using IE 7
- Open Internet Explorer and click Tools -> Internet Options
- Under the General tab, click on the Delete button located in the Browsing History section
- Click the Delete files... button located under the Temporary Internet Files section
- Click Yes to delete all temporary Internet Explorer files
- Click Close
- Click on the Settings button located in the Browsing History section
- Click on the radio button that reads Every time I visit the webpage and make certain the disk space specified is greater than the file being loaded (you can change this back to it's original settings after the client has downloaded the new file if you aren't comfortable w/ this change)
- Click OK, click OK
This action will allow a new version of the .dll file to be loaded onto the client when he/she accesses your site.
Optional:
If you also wish to clear out the Download Cache directory, C:\Windows\Assembly\Download, on the client and start over fresh, you can perform the following actions:
- Open a Visual Studio .NET Command Prompt (can be either 2003 or 2005, but I just happen to be using 2005)
- It's located under Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt on my system, but could be different for yours
- Type gacutil /cdl and hit the Enter key
This action will effectively delete all existing files currently located in the Download Cache directory.