Connecting to SQL08 on Windows 7 from a remote machine

I’ve got both a desktop and a laptop running SQL08 Developer Edition on top of 64 bit Windows 7 which until today, did not play nicely together. I could not get a remote connection from Visual Studio or SQL Management Studio to the other machine nor could I make an ADO.NET connection. Every attempt to connect resulted in a lengthy delay followed by a message such as the following from SQL Management Studio when trying to register the server:

“Error connection to [machine name]”

“A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while estblishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 1909”

The black art of splitting a Subversion repository

Here’s the scenario; you have a Subversion repository that has been doing some multitasking. For whatever reason (convenience, laziness, ignorance), the one repository was used to store multiple projects and having now seen the light you want to split it out into separate repositories. This is entirely possible but it takes a bit of work and in many cases, quite a bit of trouble shooting (the kind you won’t normally find in the SVN books). I’ve done this a number of times recently and learnt a lot in the process so I thought I’d capture this info so that hopefully others can avoid some of the pain I’ve been through!

I’ve been undefined!

Just in case anyone has passed by in recent days and noticed the Twitter panel on my blog displaying tweets that are, well, inconsistent with my normal tweets, fear not! It seems the geniuses behind the Twitter webpart for the Blogger engine have made a small mistake in the JavaScript variable department.

In short, it appears an undefined variable is somehow inserted into a JSON request URL to Twitter and unsurprisingly, the Tweets of an undefined user are being requested. Surprisingly enough though, someone has actually decided that “undefined” is, for some reason, a sensible enough Twitter username to actually use on what appears to be a fairly active basis.

So here we are; undefined (AKA “Adam” based on his website) has unintentionally hijacked my blog’s Twitter feed! From his recent tweets it seems pretty obvious Adam has received quite a bit of attention from people confused by his sudden appearance on their blog. After all, the Blogger gadget in question is the one Google recommends for redisplaying Twitter feeds so I imagine there are a large number of people, inevitably often not technical, who are wondering what the hell is going on. It’s also clear based on Adam’s tweets he’s having a lot of trouble getting through to Google.

Building the ultimate virtual office

I’m fortunate enough to work in a role which allows me to spend of lot of time talking to people in all sorts of places around the world on a daily basis. As much as I enjoy this varied communication, it plays absolute havoc with your working hours. It’s not so bad speaking to folks in the Americas (I’m a morning person!) and that works well for them but throw in a country somewhere between Sydney and New York and you always end up with a pretty inconvenient time for at least one or two parties.

All this has led to me spending a lot more time taking calls from home in part because of the odd hours but also because it allows me to work in an environment without the usual disruptions you get in an open plan office. On top of the usual work calls and out of hours business, I’ve found myself spending a lot more time researching and playing with emerging technologies lately, all of which has me spending more time in this environment. Given this, I decided to set out and build what for me is the ultimate virtual office. A lot of time and research went into getting everything setup just right so I thought I’d share the results in the hope that other people might find it a useful reference.