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13
Aug

Must Do: View The Coastline From The Deck Of Q1

Q1 is the world’s tallest residential tower, and is located in the heart of Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. Standing at 322.5 metres tall it is also the tallest building in Australia, the second tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere and the 27th tallest building in the world (however when it was originally built in 2005 it was the 20th tallest building in the world — as noted by several plaques found around the edge of the Observation Deck (QDeck).

The QDeck is located 230 metres above sea level, on the 77th floor of the 80 story high Q1 building, and is open to the public 7 days a week from 9 am until 9pm (Monday — Thursday) or Midnight (Friday and Saturday). *18+ Identification required on Friday and Saturday nights. Even at 77 stories the express elevator to the QDeck only takes a supposed 42 seconds — it is fast, but there does seem to be bit of a delay between the elevator saying it’s reached the appropriate floor and the elevator actually stopping at the floor.

The view from the observation deck undoubtedly has one of the best, if not the best, views of the Gold Coast. With full 360 degree views of the surrounding area, from the highest vantage point there is a lot to see. The only “problem” is that this view, at $19 per person, does come at a slight premium and don’t be surprised if your food and/or drinks cost a little extra at QBar.

Even with the somewhat pricey admission I would recommend visiting the deck of Q1 at least once. For those of you afraid of heights, fear not as the deck is more of a ‘room’ as it fully enclosed by large glass panels; to keep you safe and secure.

Continue Reading For A Map To Q1 On The Gold Coast

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27
Jul

Must Do: Explore Girraween National Park

Girraween National Park is located approximately 260km south-west of Brisbane (see map after break) and is home to numerous large granite boulders, many of which are precariously balancing on top of the granite covered landscape. Some of the more notorious balancing formations include the Granite Arch, The Sphinx, and Turtle Rock — all easily accessible by various length walking tracks.

The park covers 118 square kilometres (~45 square miles) and consists of 10 walking tracks, spanning a total of 17km, ranging from class 2 to class 4. The tracks that we decided to take were Dr Roberts’ Waterhole and Underground Creek. Both of the walks start a short drive from the main Information Centre and camp grounds — the start marked by a small car park. A couple hundred metres down the track the path split in to two, one direction leads to Dr Roberts’ Waterhole the other to Underground Creek.

Although there was plenty of water at Dr Roberts’ Waterhole, unfortunately that is about all that was there — well that, trees, and granite boulders. The signs promised an abundance of wildlife, from frogs to birds… but all that we got was nothing except the distant call of birds. Perhaps all of the locals are hibernating during the cooler winter months? Trying our luck with Underground Creek, we were once again slightly disappointed — with the “underground” creek merely being a section of mountain where the granite boulders have fallen over the creek creating an underground section. None-the-less the granite structures are still an amazing site.

For us the best part of the park was the camping. Located a sort walk/drive from the main Information Centre are two camping grounds; Castle Rock camping area and Bald Rock Creek camping area. Castle Rock camping area is an open, flat area with more of a communal tent placement suitable for larger groups. The only separation was for the caravans, with large trees and foliage separating the parking spaces, followed by another large area for additional tents. Wood-fired barbecue places were also available at various locations in the camping area. Bald Rock Creek camping area on the other hand is a hilly, segregated camping area with what appeared to be less area for caravans. This camping area also allowed for cars to be parked right next to the individual camp, which also had its own wood-fired barbecue available. A few of the large camp spots also sported a set of wooden park bench and table.

While not one of my favourite must do’s Girraween National Park is certainly a good weekend away and definitely worth a visit, although I would recommend choosing one of the different walking tracks during a warmer season. If you do choose to go during the cooler months then a warm sleeping bag and thick warm clothing is a must. As a bonus, the camp grounds do provide gas heated hot showers (which are on a timer system to conserve water consumption), toilets, and drinking water (must boil first).

For more information on Girraween National Park (and other parks) visit the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management page:  http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/parks/girraween/

Continue Reading For Map From Brisbane To Girraween National Park

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11
Jun

Alan Wake Music Video: War — Poets of the Fall

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4
Jun

Impersonating Any User On SharePoint

Generally when a SharePoint web part, or similar custom code, is running on SharePoint the active SPContext will either be impersonating the current user’s account, or the guest account (if enabled). This means that all of SharePoint’s security is maintained when accessing lists, items, etc. However; there may be some instances when you want the custom code to be able to access items (or lists, etc) which the current user does not have access to without actually giving the user direct access to these particular items. Fortunately this is a pretty easy task to achieve and can be achieved in a number of ways.

Method 1) Using elevated security.

This method takes advantaged of the Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity static helper methods, in particular the RunWithElevatedPrivileges method. The objective of this method is to execute code with full control regardless of the users delegated roles. Example:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() =>
                                         {
                                             // Code running with full control
                                         });

Or for a single method call you can omit the curly braces:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() => /* Call method with full control */);

The most important thing to note here is that any SharePoint context objects that have already been instantiated outside of the elevated security blocks does not have full control, even if referenced from within the elevated security blocks. This means that you can not simply call SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() => SPContext.Current.ListItem.Delete()); and expect it to work if the current user does not have permission to the delete the current list item, instead you must instantiate a new SPSite object within the elevated security blocks and then delete the list item. For example:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() =>
    {
        using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID))
        {
            using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(SPContext.Current.Web.ID))
            {
                SPList list = web.Lists[SPContext.Current.List.ID];
                SPListItem item = list.Items[SPContext.Current.ListItem.UniqueId];
 
                item.Delete();
            }
        }
    });

Now when the above code runs is should not have any problems deleting the current list item, even if the current user does not have permission to delete the item.

Method 2) Impersonating another user.

This is another simple method which involves instantiating a new SPSite object running under a different context to that of the invoking users’ context. To achieve this when we are instantiating the new SPSite object we simply pass in the SPUserToken of the user we wish to impersonate. For example, we could run under the system account:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID, SPContext.Current.Site.SystemAccount.UserToken))
{
    // code here
}

The thing to note with this method is that the user being impersonated needs to have permission to perform the actions specified.

The UserToken is available from SPUser objects. So prior to creating the new SPSite object you would need to find the user object for the user you wish to impersonated, or otherwise have some way of reference the user’s token.

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6
May

Google Chrome: Faster Than Lightning

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14
Apr

Adobe, Stop Killing My Internets!

I am not sure if it just me, but lately it seems that Adobe Flash Player is becoming more and more unreliable, and causing my web browser (be it Chrome, FireFox and/or I.E. — I prefer Chrome, although I wish it supported ICC profiles like FireFox) to constantly crash.

Has Adobe Flash Player Caused Your Browser To Crash?

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As Adobe Flash is widely used it, unfortunately, is not practical to completely remove it from your machine; however there are a few simple tools which let you automatically block Flash from loading unless you white-list the site or click on the flash to play it. This technique is also great for preventing those annoying Flash ads that popup in your face (Although some of them do look pretty cool)!

Continue Reading To Find Out How To Stop Adobe Killing Your Internets!

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9
Apr

Gumnuts Farm Resort

Gumnuts Farm Resort is a horse riding resort, among many other things, situated on 140-acres in Canungra, QLD which is found in the Gold Coast hinterlands, approximately 70km south-west of Brisbane. Owned by the Webster family since 1985 the farm started as riding school for children during the school holidays and has since come to be a full fledged farm stay, offering outback experiences for Australian and Japanese couples, families, tour groups, school camps, and holidays camps.

Although the farm has quiet a few activities, including cow milking; boomerang throwing; whip cracking, shooting, Cattle & Dog Shows and 4WD tours, the main focus of the farm is the horse riding tours. The horse riding tours range from half day tours to full day rides and includes all gear (and horses of course) required. According to the Gumnuts MySpace pages the farm has approximately 25 horses at their disposal; however unfortunately when we visited we were not given appropriate horses.

During our visit we were fortunate to have been the only people staying at the farm for the weekend, another couple was suppose to be arriving but did not show. Greeted by a very friendly group of Japanese farm hands we were quick to get started with the horse riding. Having only ever ridden a horse once prior to the farm stay it was fair to say that my horse riding skills were lacking, and as such I would have expected to have been given a fairly relaxed, calm and slow horse which I could feel comfortable upon… this was not the case.

The horse that I had been given was named King. He is a standardbred Gelding, with a stubborn nature and scares easily. The ride started off well, with four of us trotting along the main road, but then King decided he had had enough and decided to turn around to go back home. After some persuasion he turned back around on track and continued on our journey… that is until a car passed us and gave King a fright, sending him in to a gallop. Luckily I was able to quickly bring him to a quick stop, before being thrown off. This was the first, but not last time this occurred. In the end we decided that it would be best just to turn around and go back to the farm.

After arriving back at the farm we proceeded with the rest of the activities on our schedule; milking the cow, boomerang throwing, whip cracking, and shooting. The friendly staff were kind enough to let us take our time and enjoy each of the activities at our own leisure. Included in the farm stay were 3 meals (lunch, dinner and breakfast) which were nothing fancy, but editable meals cooked by the farm hands. During the evening, after having completed all of the activities we had free roam of the farm, taking in the beautiful areas and getting some nice photos during sunset.

A great bonus of the farm is that it is extremely close to O’Reilly’s in Lamington National Park, for a significantly cheaper price than staying at the O’Reilly resort. All in all Gumnuts Farm Resort is a cheap and fun way to get back in touch with  nature, but is more suited for larger tourist groups then a couples/family get away.

See Additional Photos From Gumnuts Farm Resort.

Read moreRead more

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4
Apr

Unable To Instantiate TRIM Database: 80040154

I recently came across this error while attempting to connect to TRIM 6 R2 via the TRIMSDK: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {8A354548-6BCB-11D3-B273-00A0C9FC3DC0} failed due to the following error: 80040154.

This was a little alarming because it was using the same data adapter as a few other TRIM projects, which were working fine; the only difference between the project was that this particular project was a WPF application, and all of the other applications were ASP.NET applications. This particular application had also previously worked fine, the only change was that I had been upgraded to a 64-bit environment.

After a bit of playing around and research I discovered the TRIM SDK will not connect under a 64-bit process.

Workaround:

  1. In Visual Studio, right-click your project and go to Properties (last item).
  2. Select the Build tab.
  3. Change the Configuration option to All Configurations.
  4. Change the Platform Target to x86.

This will ensure that your application will only run under an x86 architecture, and will be able to connect to TRIM even on a 64-bit host.

Looking at the QuickSpecs for TRIM 7 it is being based on a 64-bit architecture and therefore this issue should be eliminated come TRIM 7 (in addition to some SDK enhancements and UI integration tools).

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17
Feb

Oracle 06413: Connection Not Open (x64)

Having changed to a 64-bit development machine at work recently I ran in to an Oracle error while trying to generate files using CodeSmith. This error was ORA-06413: Connection Not Open. Assuming it was a connection string error, as I had not ran this particular generation in some time and it was likely that the server or username/password had changed, I proceeded to test the connection from SQL Developer. Success!

After ruling out that the connection was indeed valid I did a quick Google search for the error message. After a few clicks I discovered a very well known (has been around for a few years) Oracle issue; When executing an Oracle command from an application with parentheses or equals — ‘(‘ or ’)’ or ‘=’ — in the path then the specified error message is thrown.

In this particular case CodeSmith had been installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\CodeSmith\ which was causing Oracle to fail. The quickest work around was to simply move CodeSmith from the Program Files (x86) path e.g. in to C:\CodeSmith\. However; there is a patch (5383042) for Oracle 10g, which I believe is also applied to Oracle 11G.

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16
Feb

Australian Internet Filter: What Can I Do?

What is it?

The Australian Federal Government is introducing a mandatory ISP-level filtering of all Refused Classification (RC) rated content. This means all websites (or part-thereof) which have been refused classification under Australia’s classification laws will be blacklisted.

See the Electronic Frontiers Open Internet website for more information.

What can I do?

The simplest thing you can do is sign the EFA’s online petition.

Additionally you can contact your local member of parliament or contact Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Take Action!

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