I.M.Possible » Tech Stuff

Bill Gates’ Vision on Zero CO2 Emission by 2050

Johan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:23:50 +0000

This is an interesting talk by Bill Gates about his vision to reduce the amount of emissions in order to stop the Earth rising temperature.

The basic idea lies on the above simple algebraic equation. It is obvious to say that in order to reduce the amount of , one of those factors has to be close to zero. But which factor can we realistically reduce? and how is that even possible?

Watch this video for more detailed views!

How to download MMS streaming video

Johan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:27:48 +0000

MMS (Microsoft Media Server) is Microsoft's streaming protocol used to transfer data in Windows Media Services. Since this streaming data is meant to be played in client-side streaming application, it is not an obvious thing to do if we intend to download/save the streaming video to our local drive.

There are several ways to do it, but I just found downloading MMS streaming video using VLC media player is easy, straightforward and free:

Get the streaming-media URL
This seems obvious. But just in case you have difficulties getting the MMS streaming URL, you can open the webpage where the streaming video is embedded using Firefox, and then click the menu Tools -> Page Info.You can get the embedded media URL as at the following picture:
Launch VLC Media player, and then click on File -> Open Network Stream...
Select the "HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS" option, and specify the URL.
On the advanced options section below, check "Stream/Save" and click "Settings..." button.
On the Outputs section at "Stream output" window, check "File" option, specify the file name, and check the "Dump raw input."
Click OK to close the "Stream output" window
Click OK one more time to start downloading the streaming video

I hope this is useful to those who want to save the streaming video and to watch it later.

SharePoint Web Part Custom Properties

Johan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:27:27 +0000

In my current project, I am creating a SharePoint web part that simply renders a custom .NET User Control from a certain location. I want the user to be able to configure the User Control's properties through the Web Part properties. Therefore I followed the MSDN instruction on how to create a web part with custom properties. However, somehow the custom properties just doesn't show up.

So, after scratching my head for a couple of hours (not literally), I found something that, I think, was not accurately specified:

Personalizable attribute needs to be specified
Use WebBrowsable instead of Browsable attribute

This is the code-snippet that works for me:

[Category("Custom Properties")]
[DefaultValue(true)]
[Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared)]
[WebPartStorage(Storage.Shared)]
[FriendlyNameAttribute("Include lists")]
[WebBrowsable(true)]
[XmlElement(ElementName = "IncludeLists")]
public bool IncludeLists { get; set; }