File Size On Disk: The Next Generation

Several trillion years ago I wrote an OWL-based C++ application (yeah, that's the Borland [now Embarcadero] Object Window Library, a fondly-missed object-oriented wrapper around the Windows UI that put MFC to shame, now maintained in open-source as OWLNext) which I meant as a personal tool to try to find out where the disk space on a drive was being used; I called it Disk Inspector.  It served me well for quite a long time.  But that application is now not behaving well on recent versions of Windows and seems to be creating Windows Data Execution Prevention errors upon execution .

So I've been meaning to update the application, preferably in C#, but the framework just doesn't offer tools with which to determine disk usage accurately enough.  Googling tonight has yielded this gem: http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/.  The source code is available, and I fully intend to snarf it to re-create Disk Inspector TNG (or something less silly) in C++... but now... what UI framework in C++?  Do I p/invoke it from .NET?  Scary.  Do I learn whatever VS2010's C++ UI normally uses?  I can't imagine doing so.  Download Turbo C++ (if we can still do that) and use VCL again?    What to do, what to do...

[Update 7/15/2011]

What to do?  Why, you lazy bugger, just keep googling for free software that does what you want it to do; in this case, use Disktective.  (Cheater pants.)

Long Web Service String Parameters (As For XML Strings) Too Long

While testing a web service client which was calling a method which returned a string value (intended to contain XML), I got the following error:

The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader.

I was able to get around this by changing my app.config file's entry for the binding as, well, described in the error message (from 8192 to 819200):

Windows Update Hammering Your PC Too?

So there's an ancient laptop in the kitchen we use primarily to stream music during breakfast and to run BOINC.  For the past couple of days, even given its age and small memory, it took it nearly a billion years to start its first application.  The hard drive was completely maxed out, and Task Manager noted that wuauclt.exe was taking up a HUGE chunk of memory.  I've just noticed on the other laptop the same massive performance hit, also while wuauclt.exe was chewing up the system.  I seem to recall that wuauclt is the Windows Update Automatic Update Client... what the heck is the problem here?  Can't wait until they take care of that...

Through The Self-Looking Glass

Why Blog?

Not so long ago I had no sense of the necessity of dumping a diary into the already-overloaded-with-the-inane searchable web.  I don't know that I do fully, now, either.  But as the CTO and co-founder of the social networking site for educators edWeb.net, it certainly seems appropriate for me to have a blog (or, at worst, inappropriate for me not to have one!).

The vast majority of things I'll throw up here... spewing forth my congealed thoughts, as it were... are going to be the weird, bizarre, and painful hurdles I'll have leapt through while in the throes of software development.  The arcane and poorly documented will be what fill these "pages".

However, I have also been slowly brewing my thoughts on a non-tech page... my top 20 albums (yes, I mean CD's, for all you kids under 25 out there).  Pride, vanity, and pleasure mix well on that kind of post.

So... a deep breath, and into the digital microcosmic representation of the trajectory of one particle slowly meandering around underneath the ocean of air on this tiny rock!

Forgive me.