Not All Files Can Be Embedded

Quite a lot of helper files needed for average applications are best stored as resource. This way separation of data and code is kept on logical level but everything gets stored in one executable so nothing can be lost.

In order to make some file resource only thing needed is selecting “Properties” from context menu and setting “Build Action” to “Embedded Resource”. Reading this from code is equally easy (assuming program is called MyProgram and resource file is called Test.txt):

Stream myStream = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("MyProgram.Test.txt");

It is easy as it can be and I was very surprised when I could not get this to work. I added file “File.hr.xml” to project and I embedded it correctly but GetManifestResourceStream method returned null for it. Documentation says that this can only happen when resource is not there and this was impossible in my case.

In order to confirm this I looped through all resources I had embedded:

foreach (string name in Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames()) {
    Debug.WriteLine(name);
}

To my surprise documentation was correct, my file simply wasn’t there. However, in my bin folder there was subfolder named “hr” with “MyProgram.resources” file inside.

Then it hit me. Problem was in multi-dotted extension with valid language code as first part. These files are understood by Visual Studio as being language specific and reading them from another culture is not possible (ok, it is possible but not easy).

Since I really wanted this resource to be available regardless of localization, solution was simple. I just renamed file to “File-HR.xml” and it magically appeared in resource list.

Cleaning Up

What to do if your script needs to kill all processes that it started? Just kill everything that has same parent as your current shell ($$):

#!/bin/bash
…
kill `ps -ef | awk '$3 == '$$' {print $2}'`

Chain of Fools

Microsoft always took pride in maintaining compatibility. One guy decided to test just how upgradeable Windows were going from Windows 1.01 to Windows 7.

P.S. Do notice that there is no Windows ME. Repressed memory perhaps?

Do Not Analyze Me

I like using Google Analytics for tracking statistics. Those statistics read like porn to guy who loves numbers. There is only one problem with them - they count every visitor. That would also mean that my administrative tasks are skewing numbers. We cannot have that!

In order to disable logging own visits we need to check what exactly Analytics’ code does:

<script type="text/javascript">
  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-4401313-2']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();
</script>

Code is pretty simple and only place where any action can possibly happen is in line 7 where we see ga.js script. Depending on whether our page is http or https those URL’s are http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js and https://ssl.google-analytics.com/ga.js respectively. As soon as we disable those two servers our own visits will not be logged.

Since we cannot disable servers as such we need to do next best thing and disable them in our part of universe. There is nice file called “hosts” situated in “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc” (or in “/etc” for *nix systems). In this file we can override any DNS resolution and assign any IP address to any host name.

File format is quite simple and I will not explain it here. It is enough to say that we just need to append two lines (after adding write permissions, by default this file is not writable by normal user):

···
127.0.0.1	www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1	ssl.google-analytics.com

These lines are just forwarding any call to Analytics servers to our own computer. Since we do not have Google’s infrastructure it is pretty safe to assume that all requests will go nowhere. And that also means that computer with this “fix” will not be recorded by Google Analytics.

P.S. Modifications to “hosts” file are great way to annoy somebody in office who left computer unlocked.