I watched Godzilla Final Wars the other night with my son. He thinks Godzilla is cool! Hopefully I’m not raising him to be too much of a nerd

I grew up watching Godzilla movies in the theatre during 70’s and have been hooked ever since. I was a huge Godzilla fan as a kid. If only we had a VCR back then so I could have taped the creature features.

Godzilla is definitely a love hate thing. Either you see a guy in a suite or you see a giant monster trashing everything in sight. I’m still a kid at heart, so I still see a giant monster. It is not as magical as it was back in the day, but I still love it.

What I really enjoyed about Final Wars is that it pulls out all the stops and throws in every campy idea including aliens, bad acting, tons of monsters, and a ridiculous story line which make for a good Godzilla flick

I gave Godzilla Final Wars 7/10 on IMDb.

Here are some highlights of the film:

You have to love how Godzilla gets hit with a blast like the following:

Then he is standing there in an enormous crater He’s one tough customer!

I love how the Hollywood Godzilla makes an appearance in the film only to end up at the end of a bit of atomic fire

I like to call the Hollywood Godzilla Giguana. It certainly looks more like a giant iguana than Godzilla.

Many kaiju make appearances in Final Wars. Some of the contestants include Gigan, Anguirus, Kamacuras, Kumonga, Ebirah, King Caesar, Mothra, Rodan, and Hedorah. Some of them are shown below.

I thought the latest kaiju, Monster X, was cool.

You have to love the alien’s shades.

I love the M. Bison look!

Godzilla taught his son well.

Ever since my cousin told me to listen to Metallica’s …And Justice for All some 20 years ago I’ve been a metal listener. I remember when I first listened to the album, I couldn’t stand it. My cousin advised me I needed to listen to it many times before I came to a judgment. At first my ear could not pick up the speed and sound of the music. Gradually it started to slow down and the music started make sense. Before I knew it, I realized this music rocks

I imagine metal is a bit like beer, it is an acquired taste for most people. Actually, I suppose for most listeners it is the proverbial nails on the chalk board Metal is certainly music living on the fringe. I believe this genre of music is misunderstood and, if given a chance, stands strong on its own merits. It has a power and energy that is unmatched in the music world. After you acquire a taste for metal other music seems to lack a little something.

It is not that metal is the best and everything else sucks. I enjoy the full spectrum of music genres. Certainly music is a completely subjective experience, but missing a little metal in your diet might deprive your ears of some much needed noise.

I normally listen to music while coding. For years sleep apnea made it hard for me to push through the day, so listening to music helped me to keep me going and stay focused. I couldn’t exactly listen to Enya and keep alert Metal is a bit of an aural caffeine.

So I suggest starting out with Metallica’s …And Justice for All. Listen to the album at least 5 times. If it doesn’t start making sense then maybe metal just isn’t for you :-(

My son and I watched Astro Boy this evening and we both really enjoyed it. As of writing this blog entry Astro Boy has a rating of 6.4/10 on IMDb. It seems like many people really dislike the film. Personally I found the story engaging and a bit sad in many ways. A father creating a robot to replace his dead son is a bit heart wrenching.

The plot line involving the villain probably could have been better, but I think the rest of the story was engaging for adults and kids.

After watching Astro Boy my son excitedly stated we should buy it After all, guns popping out of Astro Boy’s butt was a highlight not to soon be forgotten and I”m sure will often be recounted in the days to come

I give the movie 8/10.

I received the error Compiler Error CS1548 Cryptographic failure while signing assembly from a Visual Studio 2008 build after modifying a project to sign the assembly with a strong name from an existing key file.

I had a similar issue when trying to create a strong name key file on a different machine.  I created a blog post about an error creating a strong name key file from Visual Studio or sn.exe. It ends up adding the security rights mentioned in my other blog post fixes this issue as well.

To solve the issue on Windows 7 you can add modify permissions to your user for the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys folder. Please see my other post for more information.

I’ve been using a nice FireFox Greasemonkey script to number my Google search results.

I originally found the Google search results numbering script on the blog More Than Scratch The Surface. The Google search results script can be found on userscripts.org.

I was trying to create a strong name for an assembly in Visual Studio from the project properties using the dialog:

After clicking OK I received the following error message: The operation could not be completed. Access is denied.

I then tried from the command prompt using sn.exe and received the same type of message: Failed to generate a strong name key pair -- Access is denied.

I found the following blog post Create Strong Name Key - Access Denied Error, but it applies to Windows XP. I searched around for a RSA\MachineKeys folder and found three different locations but it seems the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys is the magic place.

I gave my user the following permissions on the MachineKeys folder and then I was able to sign my assembly

When I changed the permissions on the folder it complained I could not change permissions on the files in the folder, so I cancelled out of the application of the file permissions. It looks like I’d have to take ownership of the existing files in order to change their permissions which I decided not to do at this point.

I hope this helps

I needed some code to determine if an ASP.NET MVC view exists. For a particular controller I’m dynamically determining the view to return by name. I looked at the source code for ASP.NET MVC and figured out how views are found and came up with the following code:

public ActionResult Page(string viewName)
{
   ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, null);

   if (viewResult.View == null)
   {
      throw new HttpException(404, "404 - View Not Found");
   }

   return View(viewName);
}

This function is a member of a controller class. I wanted to check if the view exists and return a HTTP 404 result if the view is not found. There is likely a better way to wrap up the call in a helper function, but this illustrates the principle.

There may be another or better way to do this, but this works for now and hopefully might help someone else as well

After importing my color scheme from Visual Studio 2008 into Visual Studio 2010 I found a problem with the color used to highlight references. The background highlight shows up on the text under the caret for things like variables, functions, classes, etc. and any text that is a reference.

I created a short video to show how to deal with this issue.

The setting in Visual Studio 2010 is under the Tools…Options menu.

Go to Environment… fonts and colors… Display item Highlighted Reference and change the item background.  If you want to get rid of the Highlighted Reference color then choose an item background of Automatic.

I hope this helps someone

I’ve wanted floating code windows in Visual Studio for a long time now. Visual Studio 2010 now supports it I created a short video showing floating code windows in Visual Studio 2010 release candidate 1.

I haven’t played Starcraft in forever and decided to play it again. I went out and bought a copy which surprisingly is still in the store given its age. I was a bit worried about being able to get Starcraft to run on 64 bit Windows 7 but I found a solution on Youtube from JimmyRogain that works for me.

I thought this solution was very insightful. Nice fix

I’m running Starcraft on 64 bit Windows 7 using a batch file like the one described in the video. I’ve included a sample batch file you can download from this link. If you are running 64 bit you’ll need to change the path to Program Files (x86) or change the path to your installation directory.

I hope this helps Happy crafting

EDIT:

These are the compatibility settings I use for the starcraft.exe file.

I haven’t tried the various permutations, but what is pictured seems to work for me.

I was working on a Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet and I wanted an image to popup for a cell. I found a number of sites listing a solution, but they only explained it in text so I thought I’d do it with some images and a video to make it clear. It is a bit confusing.

The first step is to add a comment for a cell.

Delete out the comment text.

Right click on the comment border and select the Format Comment… menu item.

On the Format Comment dialog choose the Colors and Lines tab. Then from the Color drop down list choose the Fill Effects drop list item.

From the Fill Effects dialog choose the Picture tab and click the Select Picture… button.

Choose the image file you want to use as the cell comment background and click the Insert button.

Now click OK on the remaining open dialogs and when done you should see the comment background showing the image you chose.

Please be mindful of the image file size as this image will make your Excel spreadsheet that much bigger.

I’ve created a video tutorial about how to add a popup image as well.

I hope this helps