'Draws a horizontal line
Dim line As New FarPoint.Win.Spread.DrawingSpace.LineShape
line.Thickness = 3
line.Width = x
line.Height = 1 'if you don't specify it, the line will do weird things
line.Top = x
line.Left = x
line.ShapeOutlineColor = Color.FromArgb(x, x, x)
fpspread.ActiveSheet.AddShape(line)

Please note that the line.Top is calculated from the top of the header. If you scroll down, it’s still calculated from the header (which may be screens away). Use ActiveSheet.AddShape(line, row, column) to set a starting reference point.

First of all, as far as I can tell, the Prometric exam has 50 questions and there are only 50 questions in their question pool. The questions I got on my second try are the exact same as on my first exam.

2, it’s hard to pass by just studying Microsoft’s Implementation Guide available for free. While all the topics from the exam are touched upon in the guide, it doesn’t cover the full scope of the exam. For instance, almost 1/3 of the exam is on how to prepare and USE Outlook for CRM. The guide hardly talks about it. What’s useful, however, in the guide are the requirement lists. Every time you see a list in the guide, memorise it!

I also made use of uCertify’s practice exam. Somewhat disappointed. While it does give insight about the exam’s scope and about 1/3 of the questions are almost exam same in the exam, it pretty much misses out completely on the topics of Email and Outlook. It doesn’t feel carefully prepared either. Often time, it asks which requirements are needed to install, you’re baffled by the ‘right’ answer and while rereading the implementation guide, you realise that while it copied the answer choices from the guide, it didn’t specify in the question that you’re trying to install onto a cluster etc, missing the point of the question. In brief, lots of copy paste and it feel like it’s prepared by a secretary rather than an engineer who took the test. At least I got my money back.

What saved me on the exams are those PDF sharing sites that have small free demos of practice tests other companies are selling. For instance, on Scribd, all the results on the first page are ACTUAL questions from the exam and with all these companies combined, you got about half of the answers of the 50 question exam which you just have to memorise. Between this and the implementation guide, you have no reason to fail or pay for anything.

Here’s a copy of  their code. Just change _roles and _fields to the fields’ names that you want to disable for _roles. Flip it around and enable it only for those users by changing line x to false.

Put it in your form’s onLoad event at Customization->your entity->Forms and Views->Form->Form Properties->Event, OnLoad->Edit

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var _roles = ['roleX','System Administrator']; //array of security roles name
var _fields = ['name', 'accountNumber']; // array of field schema names to disable
UpdateFields();
 
function UpdateFields() {
    var oXml = GetCurrentUserRoles();
    if (oXml != null) {
        var roles = oXml.selectNodes("//BusinessEntity/q1:name");
        if (roles != null) {
            for (i = 0; i < roles.length; i++) {
                for (j = 0; j < _roles.length; j++) {
                    if (roles[i].text == _roles[j]) {
                        for (k = 0; k < _fields.length; k++) {
                            try {
                                document.getElementById(_fields[k]).Disabled = true;
                            } catch (e) {
                            }
                        }
                        return;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return;
}
 
function GetCurrentUserRoles() {
    var xml = "" +
<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>" +
"<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">" +
 
GenerateAuthenticationHeader() +
 
" <soap:Body>" +
" <RetrieveMultiple xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">" +
" <query xmlns:q1=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/Query\" xsi:type=\"q1:QueryExpression\">" +
" <q1:EntityName>role</q1:EntityName>" +
" <q1:ColumnSet xsi:type=\"q1:ColumnSet\">" +
" <q1:Attributes>" +
" <q1:Attribute>name</q1:Attribute>" +
" </q1:Attributes>" +
" </q1:ColumnSet>" +
" <q1:Distinct>false</q1:Distinct>" +
" <q1:LinkEntities>" +
" <q1:LinkEntity>" +
" <q1:LinkFromAttributeName>roleid</q1:LinkFromAttributeName>" +
" <q1:LinkFromEntityName>role</q1:LinkFromEntityName>" +
" <q1:LinkToEntityName>systemuserroles</q1:LinkToEntityName>" +
" <q1:LinkToAttributeName>roleid</q1:LinkToAttributeName>" +
" <q1:JoinOperator>Inner</q1:JoinOperator>" +
" <q1:LinkEntities>" +
" <q1:LinkEntity>" +
" <q1:LinkFromAttributeName>systemuserid</q1:LinkFromAttributeName>" +
" <q1:LinkFromEntityName>systemuserroles</q1:LinkFromEntityName>" +
" <q1:LinkToEntityName>systemuser</q1:LinkToEntityName>" +
" <q1:LinkToAttributeName>systemuserid</q1:LinkToAttributeName>" +
" <q1:JoinOperator>Inner</q1:JoinOperator>" +
" <q1:LinkCriteria>" +
" <q1:FilterOperator>And</q1:FilterOperator>" +
" <q1:Conditions>" +
" <q1:Condition>" +
" <q1:AttributeName>systemuserid</q1:AttributeName>" +
" <q1:Operator>EqualUserId</q1:Operator>" +
" </q1:Condition>" +
" </q1:Conditions>" +
" </q1:LinkCriteria>" +
" </q1:LinkEntity>" +
" </q1:LinkEntities>" +
" </q1:LinkEntity>" +
" </q1:LinkEntities>" +
" </query>" +
" </RetrieveMultiple>" +
" </soap:Body>" +
"</soap:Envelope>" +
"";
 
var xmlHttpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
    xmlHttpRequest.Open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx", false);
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", " http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/RetrieveMultiple");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
    xmlHttpRequest.send(xml);
    var resultXml = xmlHttpRequest.responseXML;
    return (resultXml);
}

Theory: If my CRM exam studyage served me right, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM is composed of 3 parts. The application layer producing the business logic, the data layer interfacing with SQL and the async service layer doing stuff like workflows on the background (a bit like SQL agent). If the first 2 break, you won’t get your CRM site at all. When the async service layer breaks, it’s a bit more subtle like in this case.

Diagnosis: The most important part is to intercept at least some form of error output and determine what’s wrong with the system. You need to turn on your tracing function for CRM as described here. The look at your web log and your async log, typically at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Trace.

Possible Causes:

• First, be sure to update your CRM software. At the time of the writing, the Update Rollup 11 is the newest
• Check your IIS web.config file. Make sure critical parts required for the async service are there. Make sure for instance that the <System.Workflow.ComponentModel.WorkflowCompiler> section is there to allow the workflow compiler to use basic CLI classes like String and Object etc.
• If your CRM site is initially installed in port 5555, changing it after in IIS Manager won’t affect the async service. Therefore, if you change it to port 80 or do anything else to change the URL for accessing your CRM site, you won’t be able to access the async service. Check your trace to confirm your initial setting.

To use VPN for domain network access only

1. Right-click your VPN connection and choose properties.
2. Go to Networking tab and open your TCP/IPv4 item
3. Click on Advanced…
4. Uncheck “Use default gateway on remote network” and click OK

Now, only relevant traffic goes through VPN

But in this case, it’s not too bad. You can use pyOBD, an Python open-source project. You just need some packages from MacPorts

sudo install py26-serial
sudo install py26-wxpython

Download and unpack the source code. And run directly with

pythonw pyobd

p.s. you need X11

When something goes wrong and you run out of memory on Mac OS X, the system puts your existing applications to pause to prevent the system from becoming unstable. After taking care of the problem and freeing more memory, you might notice that the applications you had are still frozen. To unpause them, find their PID using ps and use the kill command to revive it (irony)

kill -CONT 111

Of course, 111 here is replaced with the PID you found with ps

All over the Internet, people seem to be suggesting to use the TF.exe tool to do it. It’s typically under

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio x.0\Common7\IDE

but it sucks donkey ass. A much better tool to use is Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server Power Tools which are available for free for both the 2008 and 2010 versions of Team Explorer. The interface can be seen above.

It turns out, it is possible to achieve almost the same effects in Windows with the use of 2 tools.

• AutoHotkey -  lets you run scripts triggered by hotkeys anywhere in Windows
• Console – is a terminal app that lets you run a custom shell with no title bar, no borders, transparency etc.

Follow these steps to get it working:

1. Download Console and put it somewhere (ie. C:\Program Files\Console2\)
2. Make sure it’s in your %path% system environment (Right-click My Computer, Properties, Advanced system settings, Advanced, Environment Variables)
3. Run it, go to Edit -> Settings. Change the settings to suit your taste
   • Change your shell to PowerShell at C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe for Windows 7 and change your startup dir
   • Change the window size columns to take up most of your screen
   • Windows fonts suck, try Andale Mono or Monaco
   • Make sure initial position is at 0, 0 and always on top
   • Under Appearance -> More…, make sure it has no menu, no toolbar, no caption, not resizable, no border, no taskbar, no tray icon for minimal footprint
   • Set your transparency
4. Download AutoHotkey and install it
5. Download this script to your Startup foler, change the hotkey to what you want to use in the script. It is initially Ctrl-`
6. Run the script and press your hotkey
7. Boom, you got a terminal at your fingertip

Sources: [1] [2]

The easiest way to solve is to remove the restriction against the particular file

Right-click the file and open properties and click unblock.

Suppose you have a datetime of the form “2010-05-08T23:41:54.000Z” and you want a local datetime object

import pytz, dateutil.parser
utctime = dateutil.parser.parse("2010-05-08T23:41:54.000Z")
localtime = utctime.astimezone(pytz.timezone("Canada/Eastern"))

Boom

And then, I was slacking off while studying for my final and out of nowhere I found PyInstaller‘s explicit support for PyQt and its recent support for the mac. And after trying, almost everything works out without much of a kink. Credit goes to ChrisWayg who produced an amazingly complete and up-to-date set of instructions to follow. I’m merely telling how my application did using his instructions (April 2010) and hopefully doing my part to draw more attention to the excellent PyInstaller.

My Application

A PyQt application to help photographers apply custom watermarks in a manual but in an assisted way.

Uses:

• PIL 1.1.7
• Qt4 4.6.2
• PyQt4 4.7.2
• SIP 4.10.1

All from MacPorts on Python 2.6.5, OSX 10.6.3.

Prepare PyInstaller

PyInstaller is kinda special in that it’s not installed anywhere. It’s just a bunch of Python scripts that work on stuff in place. While you’re at it, read the manual.

svn co http://svn.pyinstaller.org/trunk ~/PyInstaller

Or put it somewhere you want.

Then you need to build the bootloaders. If you’re making PyQt applications, you probably have XCode already. Anyway, you need it.

cd source/linux
python Make.py
make
cd ..
python Configure.py

Making your Application

So far, PyInstaller has a problem of not showing your application at the front when you run it. You can fix it in your own code by adding

form.raise_()

right after

form.show()

with “form” being whatever you called your instance of MainWindow().

Like with py2app, you gotta first make a “spec file”.

python Makespec.py --onefile /path/to/YourApplication.py

This will make a YourApplication/YourApplication.spec file in your PyInstaller folder.
To make it work on mac, add

import sys
if sys.platform.startswith("darwin"):
    app = BUNDLE(exe,
                 appname='WhateverYouWantToCallIt',
                 version=1)

at the bottom.

For my application, it made 70 files inside the .app file on default. –onefile makes it more neat and 3 times smaller in size! but it does make it a bit slower. If you care to make it as fast as possible, leave out that option but you have to fix a bug yourself.

Finally, build the application!

python Build.py YourApplication/YourApplication.spec

This will make your application and leave a YourApplication.app in your PyInstaller folder.

Fix the Application

Put your own nice icon on the application. Copy your graphic, right-click your application and choose Get Info, click the icon and paste the graphic.

Open the content of your application, open Contents/Info.plist, uncheck “Application is background only” and save. If you’re using a plain text editor, change LSBackgroundOnly to false.

There is only one last problem to deal with on mac. You have to copy the qt_menu.nib file.

locate qt_menu.nib

to find it. If you use MacPorts, it’s probably somewhere like /opt/local/libexec/qt4-mac/lib/QtGui.framework/Versions/4/Resources/qt_menu.nib

Copy it to your YourApplication.app/Contents/Resources

Boom, you can double click your application and it will run!

Ok, one last problem, I swear. When you run, it shows 2 icons on the dock… pretty ugly. This hack can fix it, but it’s not perfect as it leaves junk on your computer. Hopefully PyInstaller can address it soon.

Conclusion

The program is beautiful! You don’t have to worry about your Python plug-ins, your 64-bitness, anything (mostly). It just works. I have yet to figure out how to make 32-bit binaries on 64-bit systems and how to make upx work properly to reduce executable size. I’m currently running at 32mb for an application that really should be 1mb. But then again, it’s packaging a whole new GUI framework that doesn’t exist on the target computer with the application. Consider Skype (yes, it’s infinitely more complex than my thing), it is still 43mb.

There’s tons of ways of doing this. You can embark on a quest to find the meaning of Pythonic or take this method that’s relatively simple:

def a():
    if not hasattr(a, "b"): a.b = 0
    a.b += 1
    print a.b

Calling a(), you’ll get 1, 2, 3, …

Note attribute ‘b’ of ‘a’ does not exist until you declare it for a first time. My main preference here is that ‘static’ variables used this way does not spill onto the rest of your code. Also, it’s clean, no classes, no data structures.

WARNING: No route found for IPv6 destination :: (no default route?)

You definitely don’t want to see it every time you run the script you built with Scapy. To get rid of it, simply add

import logging
logging.getLogger("scapy.runtime").setLevel(logging.ERROR)

before importing Scapy to suppress all messages below error messages

Then people tend to use

If (Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName == "devenv")

which works fine if you call it once but inside a key user control’s initialiser, it may be called hundreds of time and cause a massive memory leak. Currently, the ProcessName string never gets freed and fills up memory very fast. Instead, save the process name in your own global variable when the program starts and check against

If (MyProcessName == "devenv")

instead.