Saturday, January 24, 2015

Magnetic Hill – Black Rock South Australia

If you like to experience nature’s amazing things it has to offer, one place you should not miss is the magnetic mountain in Black Rock South Australia. What is interesting in this place is that natural (magnetic) forces will take your car up the hill without the engine power.

Normally if you switch your car off, put it to neutral while at the middle of a hill and release the brake, your car will start moving downhill, but in this mountain your car will start moving up the hill. When I read about the place prior to my visit I thought it is a illusion in the eye. But after visiting the place I got amazed by seeing the way it moved my vehicle up the hill. To experience this I would encourage you to visit this mountain.

Magnetic Hill is located about 260 km from Adelaide and will take about 3 hour 30 minutes. The road to the magnetic hill is a unsealed road, but you can use a 2WD car to reach there.

Until you visit Magnetic Hill your self, enjoy me travelling up the hill while my engine is off.

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Monday, January 05, 2015

Harben Vale Cherry Farm – Balhannah South Australia

If you like Cherries like me, another orchard you should visit is Harben Vale Cherries in Balhannah SA 5242. Located on Altmanns road, this orchard is about 100 hectares and produce Beef cattle, Potatoes and Cherries. This is a family owned farm which was with Altmann’s family for some 160 years.

They have started growing Cherries for about 10 to 12 years now and has a very open rural outlook rather than the steeper more traditional areas around Lenswood. You will find ample free parking in the property. This orchard has about 8 main Cherry varieties grown in 3 Hectares. Picking is easy since the trees are well trained and you can easily pick Cherries without using ladders.

Cherry season is a short 2 month period normally from December to January each year. Produce might even finish before the end of the season depending of the number of people visiting farms, So always call or check their web site before visiting. Current farm managers, Wayne and Julie Altman are very friendly people and they would be happy to help if you contact them.

When visiting, it is better to wear shoes in which you can easily walk on grass. Since it will be summer, hats are also recommended. Buckets will be provided to all visitor groups to pick Cherries into so you do not want to take anything for collecting what you pick. At the time I visited, they did not charge any admission fee and one kilo of Cherries were sold for $ 5. These prices can always change so I recommend you to check with the owners before picking since whatever you pick, you should buy. Since these Cherries are fresh you can keep them for few weeks without any problems, if you freeze you may even be able to keep them for few months. But I like to consume them within 2 – 3 weeks from picking.

Address : Altmanns Road, Balhannah 5242.
Phone : 04 3900 1962
EMail : wjaltman@adam.com.au
Web : http://harbenvale.com/

 

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Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Microsoft.Ace.OLEDB.12.0 Provider Not Registered

Recently while trying to import some data from Excel onto SQL on a new machine I got the following error at SQL Server Import and Export Wizard Step 2. After doing some searching found the solution is to install Office 2007 Data Connectivity Components System Driver.

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If you need to  get it fixed use the following link to get it from Microsoft Download Center.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23734

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Finding Number of Records in SQL Tables

By using the following query you will be able to get all the tables with at least one record in the selected database. It will be handy when you needed to get an idea of the number of records in a database. This uses two SQL Server system views, namely SysObjects and SysIndexes.





  1. SELECT sysobjects.name AS [Table Name],
  2.         MAX(sysindexes.rows) AS [Number of Records],
  3.         sysobjects.crdate AS [Created Date],
  4.         sysobjects.refdate AS [Referenced Date]
  5. FROM sysobjects
  6. INNER JOIN sysindexes ON sysobjects.id = sysindexes.id
  7. WHERE sysobjects.xtype = 'U' -- Filtering all the User Tables.
  8.     AND sysindexes.rows > 0 -- Getting all the tables having at least one reoord.
  9. GROUP BY sysobjects.name,
  10.     sysobjects.crdate,
  11.     sysobjects.refdate
  12. ORDER BY 2 DESC -- Ordering by the number of records in table.




 

Above query will bring the following results on the Northwind database.

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Friday, November 01, 2013

Resetting Windows XP Mode

Recently I had a problem using Windows XP mode simply because the password for Windows XP mode was not working.This can happen when Windows XP mode password was changed in Windows XP Mode or when the Windows XP Mode was created from another user account to the one currently logged into the physical machine.

One way to fix this is by opening Windows XP Mode Windows Virtual PC Settings and deleting saved credentials. But in my case there were no saved credentials so my button was disabled.

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Second way to fix this is by uninstalling Windows XP Mode and reinstalling it.

Third way is a quicker way to do this by simply cleaning the virtual machine files in folder “C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines”. Make sure you are only deleting the files relevant to Windows XP Mode.

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Then when you relaunch Windows XP mode, it will say that some of the required files are missing and will prompt to create a new environment. When you press “Create New” it will start the wizard to create a brand new Windows XP Mode.

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If it generates any errors, you should try deleting the virtual machine file found in “<User Folder>\Virtual Machines”clip_image002[7]

After finishing the wizard you will get a new Windows XP Mode.

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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

HTTP Error 404.13 – Not Found – The request filtering module is configured to deny a request that exceeds the request content length.

Request Filtering

I recently got this error in one of my applications. When troubleshooting, I found my application is configured to have the default value of 30000000 Bytes for the content length, which was not sufficient for me in some of the file uploading functionalities.

Simply adding / increasing the number in the configuration file corrected this error.

Request Content Length in Bytes.

Default Value – 30000000 Bytes (~28MB)

Maximum Value – 4284229877 Bytes (3.99GB)





  1. <system.webServer>
  2.   <security>
  3.     <requestFiltering>
  4.       <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="100000000"></requestLimits>
  5.     </requestFiltering>
  6.   </security>
  7.   ...
  8. </system.webServer>




 

To obtain more information read this article.

Friday, June 07, 2013

Ruston’s Roses – Renmark South Australia

If you like to enjoy visiting the Australia’s largest Rose garden then you need to travel to Renmark in South Australia. The place is named Ruston’s Roses, they maintain a Rose garden of 50000 bushes in 4000 varieties. I have been there in off peak season but there were few flowers blooming so I expect it will be full of flowers in season.

To make it an interesting place for everyone Ruston’s got a small car museum as well. Till the ladies enjoy the garden gents can enjoy the cars on display. Not to mention the gift / souvenir shopping possibilities at the place. When you are tired after all that you can enjoy a light meal from the restaurant.

You will find plenty of places to park your car freely. The place is pram and disabled friendly and in off peak season admittance is free. In peak season I think they charge $5 for an adult entry. Visiting them wont be a big issue since they are open everyday of the year from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Find out more by contacting them.

Address: Ruston's Roses, Moorna Street, Renmark SA 5341.
Phone: 08 8586 6191
EMail: anne@rustonsroses.com
Web: www.rustonsroses.com

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