Technology
Programmatically applying themes to Sharepoint subsites
So as I’ve discovered, one of the many differences between MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 is that WSS does not allow you to change the theme of any or all of the subsites from the GUI.
This has to be done programmatically, and we opted to use Powershell to do it. Here’s the code:
#Application of a given theme to a Sharepoint site and all sites beneath it
#First, load the Microsoft.Sharepoint objects into the Powershell space
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load(“Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral”)
#Open the target Sharepoint site (Replace oursharepointsite with your respective URL)
$site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite(“https://oursharepointsite”);
#Open the top level web
$siteweb = $site.OpenWeb();
#Enumerate each subsite in the allwebs collection, and apply the chosen theme to each one
foreach ($spweb in $site.allwebs)
{
write-output ($spweb.theme + ” ” + $spweb.title);
$spweb.ApplyTheme(“YourNewTheme”);
$spweb.Update();
#Write the name of the new theme as confirmation that the change was applied
write-output ($spweb.theme + ” ” + $spweb.title);
}
#Clean up
$siteweb.Dispose();
$site.Dispose();
Favorite Android applications
Following the theme of my favorite iPhone apps, I should keep an updated list of my favorite Android apps.
At the time of this writing, I’m using an HTC Eris on firmware 2.1.
I’m now using a rooted HTC Incredible, running 2.2.
- Angry Birds (I’m a sucker)
- ASTRO File Manager
- Barcode Scanner
- Craigsnotifica
- Evernote
- Google Reader
- Google Voice (Replacement for Verizon’s visual voicemail. And it’s FREE!)
- LauncherPRO
- Metal Detector (lame)
- Pandora
- Pingdroid (installed 1/15/2010)
- PDAnet
- Qik
- Ringdroid
- ROM Manager
- Scanner Radio
- SetCPU
- Shazam
- ShootMe
- Swype Beta
- TasKiller (useless)
- TeamViewer
- The Weather Channel
- Trillian
- TweetCaster Pro (replaced with Twidroyd)
- Twidroyd
- Vampires Live
- What the Doodle!?
- Widgetsoid
- WordPress (duh)
Google Reader now available on Android!
This just keeps getting better all the time!
I’ve been using gReader on my HTC Incredible for some time now, but it appears as though Google has finally released their official app for Reader on Android! WOO!
It’s on the Market, but this QR is quicker:
The Dell Studio 15 doesn’t have activity lights!
Dell, you lose BIG points for this one. If you look closely at the pictures for the Studio 15 lineup, there are no activity lights on the chassis whatsoever. No Caps Lock, no WiFi, no hard drive (HDD), nothing. There’s a charge indicator and a power light, as well as a light to tell you when the webcam is on, but that’s it. Who in their right mind builds a laptop without these things?!?!
Now, as a side note, you can turn the power light (on the right side of the chassis, the ring around the power button) into the hard drive activity indicator by pressing Fn+H on the keyboard. But still. That sucks.
Excel 2007 woes – hidden rows and cell references
So let’s say you’re working in Excel 2007. You’ve got a workbook with many worksheets inside, and you need to create a cell reference from one sheet to another. But what happens if you have hidden rows in the sheet you’re referencing from?
Depends on how your options are set. One of the things I noticed is that if you have the Lotus 123 compatibility options selected, Excel will not only unhide the hidden rows in the sheet you’re referencing, but it will also not hide them again.
It should be mentioned that this behavior is not enabled by default, but if you should run across it, here’s how to turn it off:
Click the Office Button -> Excel Options. Click the Advanced section, and scroll all the way to the bottom. Uncheck Transition navigation keys, Transition formula evaluation, and Transition formula entry.
Did you find this information useful or helpful? If so, buy me a cup of coffee. 
Favorite iPhone Apps
A post to be updated over time…
Currently using 3.0.1 under a jailbreak.
Favorite Themes:
- Illumine (pictured)
- Glasklart
Favorite Addons:
- Five Icon Dock (pictured)
- SBSettings
- OpenSSH
- PrivaCy
- Winterboard
Favorite Apps:
- iBlacklist (Cydia)
- GV Mobile (Cydia)
- MobileTerminal (Cydia)
- MxTube (Cydia)
Business Intelligence Development Studio… you suck.
Way to go, Microsoft… hiding shit from me.
So as part of this new database development project I’ve been working on, I’m having to normalize and unwind an unwieldly Excel sheet that’s chock full of intermixed data within the same columns. Values, ranges of values, integers, currency, percentages, and text. Yeah.
As part of the conversion process and figuring out what algorithms to write to unwind the data, I’m using the Visual Studio 2005 Business Intelligence Development Studio to run my data conversion and SQL population tasks. One of the things that’s SERIOUSLY irritated me from the get-go about this tool is that the Excel OleDBConnection object flat out ignores data, or gives its own interpretation as to what it thinks a certain column’s datatype is. (STUPID.) This ended up throwing errors that wouldn’t even output to the specified errorOutput columns – just to a dialog box that said it gave up. In short, it wasn’t able to convert from the datetimestamp datatype from Excel to the datetime datatype in SQL.
I showed this to my resident data warehouse SQL guru guy, who was having a similar issue with a project he was working on. Apparently, there’s a not-so-well-documented “feature” in the OLEDB connection string (used in BIDS) whereby if you append the value IMEX=1 to the end of it, it forces the data flow task to read all intermixed data as a string. Dates, integers, strings, whatever. (Verified by connectionstrings.com). The Data Conversion step in my workflow task FINALLY started behaving normally and doing what I asked it to to – including throwing data into the correct external columns and everything in my test table. WOOHOO!
Now the fun of trying to figure out how to un-wind the cluster of integer strings and values in my dataset. *Sigh* Any cursor gurus out there? 
The Craft of War : Blind
As an avid WoW geek, and CGI aficianado, I found the following video absolutely amazing. It came through an RSS feed this morning, and after a little bit of digging I found that it’s made by a guy named Percula Craft. Though it’s been posted across the net on Vimeo and YouTube, it seems to have stemmed from HERE.