Quick tip: custom lists are a great way to store data about a business process or operation that doesn’t necessarily fit in a standard list. They can be used to store virtually any type of data, that makes sense in list form. For instance, you might record the configuration details of all the switches on your network. They’re especially helpful in that by enabling versioning on a list, you can create an audit trail of when things changed. Critically, though, when something changes, you’re likely to want to know why. Therefore, when someone changes an item, you might want to insist that they add a comment to quickly describe the change they have made, and why.

If like me you found that your previously perfectly working Canon IP5200R wireless printer is broken after upgrading to Snow Leopard - don’t worry, there’s (now) an easy fix. The long and the short of it is - in 10.6 they included an old version of the Canon printer driver. Useful, huh?

These tips are for UK based people - if you’re elsewhere, you should find the appropriate place on the Canon website to get the updates.

One of the major selling points of SharePoint is the power of workflows. Designing very basic sequential workflows in Sharepoint Designer 2007 is a very straightforward task using the workflow designer wizard. But unfortunately straightforward is the key word here, as you are limited by the functionality available to you in SharePoint Designer. Simple tasks (e.g., update an item, send an email, etc.) are doable, but, for example, you can’t do any string manipulation other than building “dynamic strings”. So even creating a suitable subject line to an email can require a complicated collection of variables and such like. SPD workflows are also very much “single use” - i.e., they start, they run, they finish. They can wait and so on, but complicated business logic is pretty difficult to program. At that point, you’ll need to get involved with Visual Studio. That’s not without its difficulties, however, and as someone coming from a Visual Studio software background, creating workflows can be a minefield. Certain expectations you may have with Winforms just go completely out the window.

A few tips/hints from my experience in working with the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor to create line of business (LOB) application definition files for use in Sharepoint MOSS 2007.

1. Create a _SpecificFinder method - b_y default, BDC DE doesn’t create a SpecificFinder method. You’ll need one for use in Sharepoint. More here.
2. Wildcard search - When creating a Finder method (for use with e.g., a Wildcard search) make sure the wildcard character is defined - which is done in the very topmost node of the tree (i.e, the LOB node.) Without it you might find the query runs, you just get no results. Where you’re using SQL Server, the Wildcard character by default is %.
3. Multiple Finder methods - You can create multiple filters on a single finder method, just make sure you specify default values and update your e.g., SQL select statement so instead of e.g., where name like @name you change it to where name like @name and date_create > @date_create_gt… etc.
4. “Provided stream is invalid” - If you get this error “The provided stream is invalid (not of type IDataReader, IEnumerable or IEnumerator). Parameter name: rawAdapterEntityInstanceStream” first thing to check is that your return parameter is the last one physically specified in your file.. i.e., you can have multiple in parameters, but the return parameter has to be last in the list. The way to fix this is export your application definition file (to XML), then manually adjust the order of the parameters, then reimport to BDC DE.
   4a. Note: If you make manual changes to your ADF file and want to reimport to BDC DE, you have to delete the original definition from BDC DE first.

For reference, there’s a really good series of articles on basic BDC stuff, right about here.

As a fully-fledged Apple fanboi (as the idiots would call me), I was waiting with great anticipation for the iPhone to arrive in my area. In mainland UK, the iPhone is locked to o2, but here in Guernsey, we have three mobile carriers (none of which are o2) so there was a long, long wait for them to arrive here. And when they did, they were by no means official - that is, the two carriers offering them are importing them certain European countries for sale unlocked, and I’m reasonably sure Apple has little to no idea about it. As I was on the waiting list, I was one of the first to get my hands on one.

I’d needed a new phone for ages, as the ghetto orange Sony Ericsson I had been using was both a) a girl’s phone and b) a lesbian one at that. Not to mention totally beaten to hell and displaying typical “old phone” behaviour in randomly turning off when it ballywell felt like it. Not a good look. When the iPhone arrived here, it was a no-brainer to get one. And, as it turns out, I really had disengaged my brain in getting one.

Ahh, the pressures of being a cricketing supergod. Perhaps not.

But still, it’s always nice to get written up in the paper. ESPECIALLY when they get your name right. (Third time lucky.)

Quick hint: if you’re having trouble getting wireless backups on Time Machine and an Airport Extreme working, then try this - I had the same problem and fixed it for me. Plug the USB drive in to your Mac and using disk utility, veryify and repair the disk not the actual partition. Alternatively, remove all existing partitions from your drive, and then recreate the necessary partitions for your backup scenario. It seems that if you only verify / repair the partitions then the Airport Extreme won’t necessarily mount the drive properly (meaning you can’t use it as an Airdisk, and you can’t use it with Time Machine.)

OK, so it’s nothing major, but I got a small mention on the sport section of the BBC website, as part of its coverage of the Channel Islands Cup, in which I am playing, for PKF Wanderers.

The standard of cricket we play in Guernsey is very good and it’s right that the BBC monitor the CI Cup. Wanderers this year have an excellent chance of winning it, and it would be a fantastic achievement to do so. The semi-final last week was washed out, so we’ll try again this weekend. We’re strong favourites to win, which will most likely set up a final with arch-rivals (and Guernsey-based) Cobo who are unbeaten in all forms of cricket this season.

You may find you get the following problem when trying to stream music to multiple speakers. Streaming to either local computer OR your airport express works, but when you try to stream both, you get an error message that looks like this:

“An error occurred while connecting to the remote speaker ‘speaker_name’. An unknown error occurred (-3256).”

This is most likely caused by a firewall issue. If you’re running Tiger, then there’s a fix here. If, however, you’re running Leopard, then it’s a little different: