So, I have spent much of this weekend trying to sort out my mother-in-law's wired broadband connection via the BTHomeHub router. Not fun.

After a lengthy chat with their tech support they've decided to send someone out to inspect the network fault.

In the mean time, 'to get the internet to work', I've told the in-law to unplug the router and plug it back in, and then repair the LAN connection.

To make things easier I've created a batch file (on her desktop) which repairs the LAN connection automatically for her at the double click of a button.

I thought I'd record the .bat file here for my future reference and incase others might want do to the same.

@echo off
ipconfig /renew
arp -d *
netstat -r
netstat -rr
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns
pause

Just open notepad and type in the above. Save the file with the .bat file extension and then just double click this file to repair your LAN.

So, one of the things I love about developing Swing forms in Netbeans is the Inspector 'Navigating Window'. This window lets you navigate all the controls on a form via a lovely hierarchical tree view.

Here is how it looks in the Netbeans IDE:

The other day I found the Visual Studio equivilent. It's called the Document Outline Window. I was so happy. You can select this window from View> Other Windows> Document Outline. Like so:-

And this is how it looks:

It's so good... You'll never have to hunt for a control again... enjoy...

Years went by with me safely avoiding regular expressions. They were such happy times. Then twice this year I was forced to make its acquaintance. But it was a good thing - maybe even the best of things - because now I no longer feel a tingle in my bottom when I see it in our source. I thought I'd lay down what I've learnt, for my reference should more years come between us, and in case it can help others find their way into the arms of this barbed stranger without drawing as much blood or curse.

The following was tested using the .NET framework and the static method System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(String, String). To ensure the entire strings are wholly matched my usage is:

VB.NET:

If  Match(searchText, searchPattern).Length = searchText.Length Then
 ' Matched
Else
 ' No match
End if

The Formatted Telephone Number

Consider this list of user-entered numbers. Let's say, of this list, H is the only valid number.

 A: AbcH0W_BOThemy84kies
 B: 01543 MWC66
 C: 8
 D: 91543278966
 E: 01543278966 
 F: 0145355 56 544 144
 G: 01543 1231981 
 H: 01543 278966

As a first cut lets only accept string C (a single number).

Pattern:
 [0-9]

Tokens described:
 [	...start of character list...
 0-9	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ]	...end of character list

Now let's accept C, D & E(all multi-digit numbers without spaces)

Pattern:
 [0-9]+

Tokens described:
 [	...start of character list...
 0-9	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ]	...end of character list
 + 	...one or more of the previous token ([0-9])

Now let's accept C, D, E, F, G & H (all numbers including those with spaces)

Pattern:
 [0-9 ]+

Tokens described:
 [	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
  	...or a space...
 ] 	...end of character list
 +  	...one or more of the previous token ([0-9 ])

Now let's accept  E, F, G, H (all numbers, including those with spaces, beginning with 0)

Pattern:
 ^0[0-9 ]+

Tokens:
 ^  	Start of string...
 0  	...must be 0...
 [	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
  	...or a space...
 ] 	...end of character list
 +  	...one or more of the previous token ([0-9 ])

Now let's accept G & H(all multi-digit numbers beginning with 0 containing exactly one space and ending with numbers)

Pattern:
 ^0[0-9]+ [0-9]+$

Tokens:
 ^	Start of string...
 0 	...must be 0...
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 +  	...one or more of the previous token ([0-9])
   	...followed by a space
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 +  	...one or more of the previous token ([0-9])
 $ 	...end of string.

Now let's accept H (all numbers beginning with 0 followed by exactly four numbers then exactly one space then exactly six numbers)

Pattern:
 ^0[0-9]{4} [0-9]{6}$

Tokens:
 ^	Start of string...
 0  	...must be 0...
 [  	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {4}  	...exactly four of the previous token ([0-9])
   	...followed by a space
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {6}  	...exactly six of the previous token ([0-9])
 $ 	...end of string.

Useful Misc

The next example is given as it includes useful operations I couldn't include in the above sample without killing its simplicity. This includes:-

• specifying ranges of character frequency e.g. xxx to xxxxxxx
• Regex operators e.g. ^ + [ .
• longer strings such as CAT, Bat, Coffee (character groups)
• ranges of characters e.g. D-K

Consider these, highly fanciful, currency-esque, strings:

 A: X:GBR_£100.23p +17.05
 B: Y:USA_$1981.01c =1.99
 C: X:USA_$56.03c -0.23
 D: D:GBR_£1.00p +0.50
 E: X:GBR_£956.21p =0.211
 F: X:USA_$6000.00k +29.02

Pattern:
 ^[X-Z]{1}:(GBR|USA|EUR)_[£\$][0-9]{2,6}\.[0-9]{2}[cp]{1} [=\-\+][0-9]{1,2}\.[0-9]{2}$

This Regex pattern will match the first three strings.

Tokens:
 ^	Start of string...
 [   	...start of character list...
 X-Z  	...any letter between X and Z in alphabet...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {1} 	...exactly one of the previous token ([X-Z])
 : 	...followed by an semi colon
 (  	...start of list of character groups...
 GBR 	...this character group...
 | 	...or...
 USA 	...this character group...
 | 	...or...
 EUR 	...this character group...
 ) 	...end of list of character groups
 _ 	...followed by an underscore
 [   	...start of character list...
 £ 	...a pound sign
 $ 	...or a dollar
 ] 	...end of character list 
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {2,6}	...between two and six of the previous token ([0-9])
 \.	...followed by a full stop
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {2} 	...exactly two of the previous token ([0-9])
 [   	...start of character list...
 c 	...a c
 p 	...or a p
 ] 	...end of character list 
 {1}  	...exactly one of the previous token ([cp])
   	...followed by a space
 [   	...start of character list...
 =  	...an equals sign...
 \- 	...or a minus sign...
 \+ 	...or a plus sign...
 ] 	...end of character list
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {1,2}	...between one and two of the previous token ([0-9])
 \.	...followed by a full stop
 [   	...start of character list...
 0-9  	...any number between 0 and 9...
 ] 	...end of character list
 {2} 	...exactly two of the previous token ([0-9])
 $ 	...end of string.

Links & Source:

The code I used in testing the above Regex can be found here.

Derek Slager has a great online tester here.

And easily the best Regex resource on the web is here.

Earlier this year I completed the OU course M253. It is a mandatory course for the Computing degree I'm going for. The course title is: Team working in distributed environments. It was a short course, worth only 10 points but, like I've said, I had to do it.

It was awful. It was so bad it actually moved me to post a review of the course - something I hadn't done up until now. To make sure my review wasn't too emotive I left it for a few months. I think enough time has passed now so I have finally posted it. It was, naturally, a pretty negative affair and whilst I've tried to be constructive I wasn't really expecting it to be become 'published' - as it were.

So fair play to the OU. They did stick it on the course's website. Here it is:

Here at the OU there are a few student blogs which have a first entry along the following lines:

Cool, I have a blog. This is my first go at a blog. Is anyone actually reading my blog? What is a blog?

So here's a quick, 350 word, intro for first time OU bloggers.

Part I What is a Blog?

What is it?

A blog is a collection of articles, called posts, catalogued with tags - words which relates to an article. An article can - and usually does - have many tags. The same tag can - and should - be applied to multiple posts.

What do I write about?

A post can be about growing beards, hoeing allotments, racing bats, eating salt, tuning cars, tuning forks, packing bags or going nuts. If you can spell it, blog about it.

What are comments?

Readers of posts can leave public comments. Though conversations do naturally occur in these comments I personally think some off topic conversations detract from a blog's/post's impact. We have forums and emails for natter.

What about RSS?  

Readers can be alerted to new posts by subscribing to a blog. This is done via RSS. Find a blog you like. Click the RSS button and be taken to the RSS page. This - most likely text-only - web page is a version of the blog which RSS systems can read. Copy the URL address for this web page and then add it as a new RSS feed to your reader of choice. I use Outlook or Thunderbird but there are tons of other clients.

Adding a RSS feed in Thunderbird:

Adding a RSS feed in Outlook:

Part II How do I keep track of reader's comments?

You will note your blog has two RSS feeds. You lucky devil. The first one is for the blog - for punters - and the second is for the comments. Just subscribe to this 'comments' feed and, like any normal feed, you will get alerts for every new entry.

Part III Is anyone reading my blog?

The way I keep tabs on the traffic is via Google's Feedburner. It is a wonderful application which 'plugs into' any blog. So plug it into yours. It keeps counts of views per post, your subscribers and tons more good stuff. Just go to http://feedburner.google.com and follow the instructions. All you really have to do is paste your RSS address.

So, my Virgin Media set top box makes me scowl, and here is why because:-

We have Google and it lets us get at pretty much any information in the world, in baby seconds, and all it asks us to do is enter some words in a text box. It is so fast that I suspect if it took ten times as long people would still use it. It is so good that I often find myself entering a website name into Google in favour of hunting through my bookmarks or browser history. Typing "OU" and hitting enter, for example, is about as quick as I can get, or need, when I want to visit the OU website.

We have mobile telephones with a genius text entry mechanism to enable us to write text using just twelve or so keys. Not just clipped text - like teenage girls insist upon - but any passage of text we desire. Except, of course, paragraphs. We can't do them. Well, we can, but it's expensive. And boring. This grammatical martyr aside the language remains intact and full of vim.

Virgin Media, Sky et al... have ten tons of program listings. The remote controls, they give us to command them, have about six buttons per finger. And yet it takes me forty five minutes to establish Poirot is not on. Come on  o' guardians of TV providings. Have you learnt nothing from these technologies? Let us search on program meta data. Just give us a chance...

P.S. Whatever happened to the 'previous channel' button on remote controls? The very first remote control we owned had this button, and about the next eight tellies did too. Not anymore though. It was mighty useful and now it's gone. Just like Gamesmaster.

So my exams are over for the year and this is my first weekend of no OU work. Real nice. The exams went well – I hope – no real problems except I was horrified to see a question in the M359 (Relational Databases) exam regarding views and inserting records into views. Ooof! And I was dismayed that the invigilators spent all their time looking down with their heads buried in paper work. It took an absolute age to get their attention for extra paper and string. Not good...

Spirits remain high though so I thought I’d squirt out a positive note about the OU (having knocked out a couple of negatives ones). It goes way back to my first OU year and M150 (Computing and Information).

To illustrate the importance of symbolic representations and how complex data can be elegantly presented the course introduced a map created by Charles Joseph Minard. The map charts Napoleon’s less than successful 1812 wrangle with Russia. The map is notable because it shows a wealth of information including the army’s direction, location, density, size and the outside temperature during the retreat.

Any developer who has had to create a user interface for some prickly information will know what a battle it is to simplify complex data input or to display complex business information. Especially if you’re unlucky in MI building a report with time on the Y axis, cholesterol level on the X axis, grouped by animal type and hair colour for the first pancake day of each decade etc... Every time I encounter a tricky bit of UI design I always think of this map and its ambition. Simply, whatever design I end up with I always know that Minard would have done it with less controls, less labels and exposed more information.

So thanks to the OU for showing us this map.

So, I've been wondering. Of all the cupboards, and shelves, we have in our kitchen why is it only the fridge that gets a light?

Do we need a light in our fridge? Generally speaking my kitchen light goes on if I'm in the kitchen at night. It illuminates all the cupboards just fine...

Is this fun?