teknohippy.net

If you use ASP.net masterpages then sooner or later you will have discovered that you cannot access your masterpage properties using Page.Master or simply Master.

Previously I have used the solution you see floating around a lot, that is to put the following in your content page aspx (assuming our masterpage is called Main.master):

<%@ MasterType VirtualPath="~/Main.master" %>

And the following in your code behind for example:

Master.BodyClass = "pgKeyboard";

It works fine, although for every new page you make you need to remember to add the MasterType declaration, which has always frustrated me.

So the other day I realised, obvious though it was once I had, that I could drop the MasterType declaration and simply cast the Master object to the correct type.

For example:

((Main)Master).BodyClass = “pgKeyboard”;

So if you can’t access your masterpage properties or methods, just remember you need to cast the Master object into your masterpage type.

My goal for the winter was to shoot more than 550 for a Porstmouth. My last 3 were all 546, and it was getting quite frustrating. Last night on the last day of the Winter season I finally did it with a 557.

I shot a 546 Portsmouth again yesterday night. That’s four in a row now. Shot six 7s, rather disappointing. Without them I’d have made the 550 Winter goal I set myself. Not much of the Winter season left now. Next chance is Monday evening, a little more concentration and we’ll get there.

During the aftermath of the footer hack, and becuase I’ve started to take fiction writing seriously, I’ve decided to split my blog into two. teknohippy.net is pretty much what it has been and anything about writing is now on http://iainmnorman.com.

Well I’ve learned my lesson regarding critical security updates. I’ve been running a couple of version behind the latest for months now.

I then spotted a whole bunch of 404s in Google’s webmaster tools. Really odd links that shouldn’t even exist on my site. So after investigating I discovered that my footer.php was full of spam links.

So I deleted them. Next time I checked they had come back. So I exported my posts as XML and ditched both the WordPress and the database. I then reinstalled the lastest version of WordPress and imported my posts. Next time I will upgrade when a security patch is realeased!

The only remaining problem is the damage done to my search engine listings, I have fallen off the map completely. Googlebot still hasn’t revisted my site since I repaired the damage, so who knows how long before things correct themselves, I have made a resumbission request just in case I’ve been blacklisted or something.

If like me you run an installation of DasBlog in a sub folder/app then you may run into this error message when you start using ASP.net 2.0 membership/role providers in the base app.

The SSE Provider did not find the database file specified in the connection string. At the configured trust level (below High trust level), the SSE provider can not automatically create the database file.

All that is required to fix is to add:

<roleManager enabled=”false”/>

to system.web in the DasBlog web.config.

As I’ve previously written about, I’ve been having some trouble with PayPal PDT ( Payment Data Transfer ) and Google Analytics e-commerce tracking.

If you’ve added Analytics to your PayPal thank-you page, and used PDT to get the data to be sent to Analytics and got that working nicely then you will have discovered that not every sale gets tracked, because not every shopper can be guaranteed to land on your thank-you page.

Now I’ve been doing some testing on an idea to get around this using IPN. The basic premise is this.

1. Google Analytics works through a request for __utm.gif from the Analytics server, to which is attached all the tracking information. 
2. On the page just before leaving for PayPal set the analytics script to local only.
3. Use url rewriting to hide a script behind your local __utm.gif.
4. Record all the details for the request for the local __utm.gif in a database, referenced to the session.
5. Send the session ID information through PayPal’s custom variable.
6. User finishes sale.
7. IPN script picks up sale, checks session ID and looks up the stored request.
8. IPN script rebuilds request and forwards to Google’s __utm.gif.

Now to test this before getting involved in databases and IPNs I just made two pages. One with Analytics set to remote, the next page with analytics set to local. Then I made a local __utm.gif just forward the request for the remote __utm.gif through a server side HTTP request.

Wait a day.

No joy, nothing showing up for the e-commerce tracking, or the visit to the second page, just the first page visits where the script was set to remote.

Then I fiddle for weeks trying to improve the request. Adding all the cookies etc. etc.

No joy.

So I took a look at the urchin.js file to determine whether or not the local request was being built any differently to the remote one. And it was. If you have a look through urchin.js searching for the local/remote variable (forget the name of it right now) then you’ll see that there are extra things appended to the end of the querystring for the remote call to _utm.gif. The extra stuff is the content of all the analytics cookies.

So I fiddle urchin.js and made a local copy that built the same request for remote and local, including all the cookie data. I had a couple of people hit the two pages and a day later…

Success, there is e-commerce transaction data, items, totals, everything in Analytics now.

I used different sources and the like for a couple of test and those have also come through. Even more surprising though is that where I have had other people test the two pages for me, their locations have been tracked and assigned to the e-commerce transactions correctly. Which I didn’t expect as it’s always the web server making that request, and it’s not moving around!

So that’s something to work on. I’ll keep you updated on the next stage of implementation.

This hasn’t been easy, so if any of this info saves you or your company time, then I am now shamelessly begging.

Gigajam have started a blog, one of the exiciting entries is that they have released all their TV shows online for free.

http://www.gigajam.com/news…

That’s over 6 hours of video lessons for guitar, bass, keyboard and drums.

It should be fairly easy for someone with programming experience to create their own “Plugins” to extend the AirClick. It runs on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, which means you can write plugins in any .NET capable language. Just add a reference to the actual AirClick.exe file, define that you are using the “AirClick” namespace, then create a derived class from the AirClick’s “Plugin” class. As you will see there will be several virtual methods you will have to define. These include accessor methods for the plugin’s name, author, description, executable name, and version. (NOTE: The only one of these attributes used at the present is the name, which appears in the AirClick menu. The others are to insure compatibility with potential future updates.)

To “tell” the AirClick software which button presses you are interested in knowing about, add a call to the “AddButton” method for each button press in your class’s constructor. Button presses are defined by an instance of the “Button” class. Here is a quick rundown of a Button’s constructor parameters:

ID - a unique integer ID given to the button. This ID is passed back also a paramter in the “Notify” method to tell a plugin which one of his buttons has been pressed.

Key - the button on the AirClick remote you want to know about. Values can be back, forward, play, voldown, or volup.

Modifier - a modifer key that must be held down along with the “Key”. Values can be back, forward, play, voldown, volup, or none.

Time - the number of milliseconds the “Key” must be held down in order to trigger this button press.

OnRelease - true if button is triggerd when it is released, false if it is triggered on push.

Name - short description of this button, such as “Play” or “Next Chapter”. (Presently not used, just there for potential future updates.)

ShowInMenu - whether or not this button’s name should appear in a list of this plugin’s functionality. (Presently not used, just there for potential future updates.)

Finally, the last thing you have to do is define the “Notify” method. This method is called by the AirClick software when a desired button press is found, and the ID of the found button pressed is passed to it.

There are a few more classes built in to more easily accomodate the making of Plugins. Their is the OSD class for using the AirClick’s on-screen display. It can display various combinatinations of strings, a progress bar, and generic player graphics. The player graphics are represented by the “DisplayGraphic” enumeration. The “Volume” class can get or set the system’s master volume, and the “WinMessages” class can send several different kinds of Windows messages to a windows with the given caption or class name. The messages it presently supports sending are “WM_APPCOMMAND”, “WM_APP”, “WM_COMMAND”, “WM_VSCROLL”, “WM_HSCROLL, “WM_SYSCOMMAND”, and “WM_USER”.

Once, you have built the plugin, just change the extension from .dll to .acp and place it in the AirClick’s “Plugins” folder. Restart the AirClick software, and it should appear in the AirClick’s menu.

Updated post: http://www.teknohippy.net/2008/03/04/paypal-ipn-pdt-analytics-tracking-getting-there/

Trying to track E-commerce transactions with Google Analytics (GA) and PayPal can be problematic.

PayPal has two ways of returning data to your server. Payment Data Transfer (PDT) and Instant Payment Notification (IPN).

PDT can be used to setup GA tracking by including the relevant GA scripts on a receipt page, processing the PDT data server-side and populating those scripts. Instruct PayPal that this page is your “return” page and when visitors return to it the e-commerce and goal data will be tracked.

The big problem with this is that PayPal users do not have to return to the receipt page, even if you’ve turned on the auto return feature. The pause before redirecting is very long and many people just abandon on the PayPal pages.

IPN on the other hand will always get triggered. The problem is it calls a script on your server from PayPal’s server-side scripts. This means your IPN script never runs in the users browser and so the GA JavaScript is never executed and no tracking will happen.

Now at it’s heart all the GA script really does is assemble a call to an image on the GA servers, __utm.gif to be more specific. Appended to this request is a lengthy querystring with all the information for Analytics to log.

It should therefore be possible to capture users info or the actual __utm.gif querystring on the page just before leaving for PayPal, temporarily store this in a database against the users SessionID, and pass the SessionID to PayPal as a custom pass-through variable.

The easiest way to collect the querystring from the pre-PayPal page is to set “_userv = 2;” in the tracking code. This means that __utm.gif will be requested from both the Analytics server and your server. Trap the call to _utm.gif with some server-side script and you’ve got the whole querystring very easily, as well as the corresponding SessionID.

The user is now off to PayPal to complete their transaction.

Then in your IPN script, lookup the SessionID and recover the __utm.gif querystring, change the utmp path variable for the path of the reciept page and then use your server-side script to make an http request to __utm.gif.

This will then at least track and goal reporting will work. The IP address will be wrong but the rest of the data will be correct.

More complex is building the querystring for the  __utmSetTrans() call. I’ve had a look into what’s sent and a separate call is made to __utm.gif for the transaction and each item within it.

I suppose it would be possible to set _userv to 0 and only have a local __utm.gif request on the checkout page. Then the Ecommerce tracking data could also be included. All the script hiding behind the local __utm.gif needs to do is record all requests when visitors hit the checkout page. It can pass on the actualy request for the tracking (but not the transaction), when it happens. Then in the IPN script the tracking request path can be rewritten and replayed, followed by the transaction requests. Sounds like it should work.

I guess I should go make it happen and test it!

TV series teaching you to play Guitar, Bass, Keyboard and Drums, availvable now for free. As seen on the Musicians Channel on Sky UK.

read more | digg story

I’m bored of accidentally closing the IE tab or window that Pandora is running in. So I took a couple of minutes out to make PandoraPlayer, it’s just a web browser control that opens Pandora and sits nice and quietly hidden in the system tray.

Download PandoraPlayer Alpha 1 (44KB)*

*requires Microsoft .net 2.0. Use completely at your own risk, it’s alpha after all.

The new Winamp skin is actually usable! I’ve always hated the modern skin and so have not installed it for who knows how long, preferring the classic sking and it’s darker colour.

Well I’ve just installed Winamp 5.0 and thought I’d try out the new Bento skin. The good news is it’s actually usable! Woo! Well done.

I’ve picked up a copy of SharpMT and this is being posted with my SPV E650.

The SPV e650 or HTC “Vox” has appeared in the April Orange catalogue.

http://www.msmobilenews.com/content/view/1769/35/

I emailed orange about the new SPV e650

They replied:

Thank you for your Email

The SPV E650 is due to be lunched on our network during April, however, this date is subject to change. Please keep visiting www.orange.co.uk for further on this handset.

So that’s the latest info I have. Very wooly as usual.

Tara Sydney Willow, born 10:38am today, weighing 3.74kg.

In a recent CVG interview, David Braben talks about the next version of Elite. Confirmation that Elite IV (No better name exists publically yet) is not vapourware as some have been saying.

Obviously they’ve not been listening to David and the passion with which he speaks of a future Elite.

Elite will be Frontier’s next big next-gen game after the political thriller The Outsider ships. The Outsider is going to be a game that breaks a lot of new ground in gameplay and immersiveness, ideas and technology that is required to make Elite what Braben dreams it could be.

Also confirmed is that the next incarnation of Elite will be a single player game at first, with a small LAN based multiplayer element. Followed later, after more development and technical advances, by a proposed Massive Multiplayer Online version of the game. Something that a lot of Elite fans have been fantasising about for many years.