LINQ Project

The idea of the LINQ project is to make data manipulation part of the language constructs. Lets see these VB examples for LINQ:

The following examples associates the Customer class to the Customer table. Just adding the Column Tag before a field, maps it to a table column.

    <Table(Name:="Customers")> _

    Public Class Customer

        <Column(Id:=True)> _

        Public CustomerID As String

        …

        <Column()> _

        Public City As String

        …

    End Class

To access the database you do something like:

' DataContext takes a connection string

Dim db As DataContext = _
        New DataContext("c:\...\northwnd.mdf")

      'Get a typed table to run queries

      Dim Customers As Table(Of Customer) = db.GetTable(Of Customer)()

      'Query for customers from London

        Dim q = _

          From c In Customers _

          Where c.City = "London" _

          Select c

      For Each cust In q

          Console.WriteLine("id=" & Customer.CustomerID & _

              ", City=" & Customer.City)

      Next

You just create a DataContext and create typed object that will relate dot the relational tables. I think this is awesome!!

It is even nicer if you create a strongly typed DataContext

    Partial Public Class Northwind

        Inherits DataContext

        Public Customers As Table(Of Customer)

        Public Orders as Table(Of Order)

        Public Sub New(connection As String)

            MyBase.New(connection)

Your code gets cleaner like the following:

    Dim db As New Northwind("c:\...\northwnd.mdf")

    Dim q = _

        From c In db.Customers _

       Where c.City = "London" _

        Select c

      For Each cust In q

          Console.WriteLine("id=" & Customer.CustomerID & _

              ", City=" & Customer.City)

      Next

These project will start a lot of exciting posibilities. I recommed you have a look at’: http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/linq/

Thin Clients or Rich Clients

This is an old topic but I always like to give some thoughts on this idea.  I really think that in the future everything will run from the internet. Internet is becoming another basic need just as electricity, water, gas and telephone. The appearance of new technologies makes it easy to have Internet even in remote places like beaches and mountains.

Rich Clients have been defended because it was said that not a lot of interactivity could be produced by thin clients. It has also been said that powerful interfaces (with complex gadgets, etc) could be produced in a web interface. I think that Flash, and AJAX have shown that despite all believes it is possible. There are still more technologies that will come. But the easier deployment and the fact that you can use your web applications everywhere even from a cell phone in a taxi cub.

I also love phases like “If you ask an engineer the time, he'll tell you how to build a clock.”. Web interfaces are simple and easy to learn look at blogs like Jon Galloway http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2003/09/27/29446.aspx and Microsoft's Inductive User Interface (IUI) initiative it seams like more people is starting to think in this way.

ASP to ASP.NET

Migrating ASP to ASP.NET

Surpinsingly for me. I found that some friends were working on migrating an ASP classic site to ASP.NET. I was impressed to see that there are still sites in ASP classic at ALL!!!!

ASP.NET 2.0 provides so much improvements, you cannot even debug in ASP. ASP.NET 2.0 has better performance and easier to deploy. There is even Intellisense! These days is hard for me not assuming that all IDEs provide the developer aids like that.

Also migrating simple ASP classic code to ASP.NET is not that hard.

Let’s see a simple ASP classic page like:

<%

Dim objConn

Dim objRS

Set objConn = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)

Set objRS = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Recordset”)

objConn.ConnectionString = “DRIVER=(SQL Server);server=…”

objConn.Open()

objRS.Open “SELECT * from Items”, objConn

Do While Not objRS.EOF

     Response.Write CStr(objRS(“ID”)) + “ – “ + objRS(“Description”) + “<br>”

     objRS.MoveNext

Loop

objConn.Close

%>

Migrates easily to:

<%@ Page aspcompat=true Language=”VB” AutoEventWireUp=”false” CodeFile=”Default.aspx.vb” >

<%

Dim objConn

Dim objRS

Set objConn = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)

Set objRS = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Recordset”)

objConn.ConnectionString = “DRIVER=(SQL Server);server=…”

objConn.Open()

objRS.Open (“SELECT * from Items”, objConn)

Do While Not objRS.EOF

     Response.Write (CStr(objRS(“ID”).Value) + “ – “ + objRS(“Description”).Value + “<br>”)

     objRS.MoveNext

Loop

objConn.Close

%>

These are the task to do:

1. Remove SET
2. Any method in ASP.NET requires its parameters to go inside parenthesis
3. ASP.NET does not have default properties so elements as objRS(“ID”) must be changed to objRS(“ID”).Value and objRS(“Description”) to objRS(“Description”).Value
4. you must add the aspcompat=true property to the page because of the apartment threading issues
5. You should change statements like Dim objRS to Dim objRS as Object it is not an error but it will help you make your code more clear.

You can also download the Migration Assitant from ASP to ASP.NET from:

http://www.asp.net/DownloadWizard.aspx?WizardTarget=AspToAspNetMigrationAssistant

Starting with the internationalization bla bla (Part Two)

Open  the Visual Studio IDE. And Start a Windows Forms project. And then create a simple Form. Add some labels and buttons and set their captions. Once you do that and finish the initial creation of the form, go to the properties pane and change the Localizable property to true and assign the desired value in the Language property. The Visual Studio designer will save the changes in additional resource files whose names will look like <FormName>.<culture>.resx

Once you finish the texts, sizes, positions for the first culture and save it. The IDE creates the resource file for that culture. If you want to create a resource file for another language just change the Form property and assign the text for this new language.

You can not only assign personalized translations for each region but also the position and size of components. This is useful because in some languages the buttons might need to be bigger because the labels could be bigger.

All this work is supported by the .NET resource managers. System.Resources.ResourceManager class.

I recommend you also using String Resource Tools like the ones at: http://www.codeplex.com/ResourceRefactoring

These tools makes it even easier the task of moving all your strings to resource files:

Taking an application to the whole world (Series 1 of 3)

Recently I was asked by some fellows some help to make a new version of their VB6 application in Spanish, but at the end we end up migrating the application to VB.Net and taking advantage of the .NET internationalization features.

VB6 did not provided and out-of-box support for multiple cultures, but the .NET framework provides the developer with utilities to create applications that allow users in multiple regions use their applications according to their “Culture”.

The .Net Framework is able to handle different cultures. These “cultures” are used to localize certain aspects of the application for particular geographic zones.

When an application is not created with any cultural considerations it is said to use a Neutral Culture. It implies that independent of the machine configuration it will behave and display components in the same way.

The Culture is assigned automactically using the machine settings or it can be altered programmatically. You can use the property System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture for that purpose.

Cultures have two elements: language and region. For example for Argentina where Spanish is spoken la culture will be es-AR (es is for Spanish: ESpañol and AR for Argentina)

If no information is found at all for an language then the neutral culture is used.

The information for user display is handler in assemblies usually called “satellite assemblies” which are loaded depending on the culture of the environment where the application is executed.

Is .NET hotter that Java

Invoke a WebService that needs Windows Authentication

Passing client credentials to a Web service using Windows authentication

Sometimes a Web Service is under a configuration that requires Windows Authentication. It is not a problem for .NET, all you need to do is set your environment to send the client credentials.

1. First Create a Reference to a Web Service:

To do that just go to the references of your project and add a Web Reference. Type the URL of your web service. This will find your Web Service Reference and you can update it. This will generate the proxy code you need to access your webservice.

If you try to call your webservice with a call like:

WebReference.MyService pService = new WebReference.MyService ();
pService.doStuff("A", "B");

You’ll get a HTTP 404 forbidden access exception.

Now to send the user and password to call your service write some code like the following:

WebReference.MyService pService = new WebReference.MyService ();
pService.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user", "password");
pService.doStuff("A", "B");

You can also send the domain name as part of the parameter to the NetworkCredential class:

pService.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user", "password","domain");

It will be even better to have your user and password not in your code but in the configuration file for your program. You can then use the AppSettings class to access those properties.

ToolTip with Images

The Tooltips that comes out of the box for winforms do not support images on them. This is a simple class that allows you to add Images and Text to your ToolTips

using System;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Drawing;

namespace CustomControls

class ToolTipWithImage : Control

private Image _img;

private Control _ctl;

private Timer _timer;

string _imgfilename;

string _tiptext;

public String TipText

get { return _tiptext; }

set { _tiptext = value; }

public String ImageFile

get

return _imgfilename;

set

if (_imgfilename == value)

else

_imgfilename = value;

try

_img = Image.FromFile(_imgfilename);

this.Size = new Size(_img.Width + 70, _img.Height);

catch

_img = null;

public ToolTipWithImage()

this.Location = new Point(0, 0);

this.Visible = false;

_timer = new Timer();

_timer.Tick += new EventHandler(ShowTipOff);

public void SetToolTip(Control ctl)

ctl.Parent.Controls.Add(this);

ctl.Parent.Controls.SetChildIndex(this, 0);

ctl.MouseMove += new MouseEventHandler(ShowTipOn);

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)

if (_img != null)

e.Graphics.DrawString(TipText, this.Font, Brushes.Black, _img.Width, 0);

public void ShowTipOn(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)

if (!this.Visible)

this.Left = _ctl.Left + e.X + 100;

this.Top = _ctl.Top + e.Y;

this.Visible = true;

public void ShowTipOff(Object sender, EventArgs e)

this.Visible = false;

To use it just do something like

ToolTipWithImage timg = new ToolTipWithImage();

timg.TipText = "Hello";

timg.ImageFile = @"C:\Hello.gif";

Safe Migration to VB.NET

Creating a Scheduled job in ORACLE

This is easily done with the Oracle 10g interface, there is a nice article that explains that in at this address

However sometimes you don't have access to the Administrative UI. Is there another way to create or schedule jobs?

Sure just use the he DBMS_SCHEDULER package.

There are several things you should do:

1. GRANT CREATE JOB TO MYUSER;

2. ALTER SYSTEM SET RESOURCE_LIMIT = TRUE;

3. Create Scheduler Program:

BEGIN
   DBMS_SCHEDULER.CREATE_PROGRAM(
      program_name=>'MYUSER.PROGRAM1',
      program_action=>'begin
         INSERT INTO TABLE1
         SELECT * FROM TABLE2;
         end;',
      program_type=>'PLSQL_BLOCK',
      number_of_arguments=>0,
      comments=>'Loads a table from another',
      enabled=>TRUE);
END;

BEGIN
   sys.dbms_scheduler.create_schedule( 
      repeat_interval =>   
         'FREQ=DAILY;INTERVAL=2;BYHOUR=18;BYMINUTE=0;BYSECOND=0',
      start_date => 
         to_timestamp_tz('2006-11-22 US/Eastern', 'YYYY-MM-DD TZR'),
      comments => 
         'Schedule for periodic loads',
      schedule_name => '"MYUSER"."DOLOADS"');
END;

AJAX in ASP.NET

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Beta 2 (formerly code-named “Atlas”) is now available for download.

ASP.NET AJAX allows creating great responsive interfaces. I think this framework was previously called “Atlas” you might even find a document on the site describing how to migrate your Atlas applications to this release. http://ajax.asp.net/files/Migration_Guide.doc

Recently I reviewed the samples at http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/. These are some of my impressions:

Accordion

à à

AlwaysVisibleControl

Animation

I t allows to add effects to pages, the examples popups a region. You can do a lot more.

CascadingDropDown

This is very simple a common scenario where the combo box values depends of what you select on another combo.

CollapsiblePanel

It adds an widget to the panel that allow it to collapse.

ConfirmButton

Just for the typical are you sure!

DragPanel

Cool!! It lets you create windows that you can drag around.

DropDown

Add a nice style of menus

DropShadow

Mmm just add a shadow to your panels

DynamicPopulate

:/ it just like a way to generate something in the server with ajax. I really don’t get it a lot.

FilteredTextBox

Client side validations

HoverMenu

I think is handly is a way to display additional info for web page element and only show them when needed

ModalPopup

I like this!! It really lets the user focus on what you want

MutuallyExclusiveCheckboxes.

Not that sexy but useful in some cases when you have several check boxes options and some contradict the other.

NoBot

This control avoids entries by automated processes (BOTS)

NumericUpDown

The name says it all

PagingBulletedList

I have never needed this but looks nice

PasswordStrength

Nice. It gives feedback to the user indicating if his/her password is good enough

PopupControl

Nice!! It adds popability to any control. You can use it to make data entry easier

Rating

Jejeje Starts rating control

ReorderList

Is a list where you can drag the items to reorder them and the datasource will be updated

ResizableControl

Great! Resizable images and text containers. I suppose it can be also applied to other things.

RoundedCorners

:/ not very exciting just adds rounded corners to panels

Slider

Slider controls

TextBoxWatermark

Displays a message in a textbox before the user enters some text. After he enter the text the message disappears.

ToggleButton

Modifies checkboxes to use images

UpdatePanelAnimation

Adds effects to panels things like fade and Collapsing and background changes

ValidatorCallout

Very nice

MSBUILD

MSBuild

Microsoft has develop the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild). This is the new build platform for Microsoft and Visual Studio. It is an XML configuration (very similar to other build tools like ANT) It allows to orchestrate and build products in build lab environments where Visual Studio is not installed.

It is a great aid with other tools like CruiseControl.NET, relation that I will further elaborate in other posts.

The following is very simple MSBuils script

This sample shows the basic structure of an MSBuild. This is a very basic script maybe not very useful, but general scripts will be made up of Several Targets, Properties and some dependencies between them.

Properties

To define properties just define your tags inside a <PropertyGroup> Tag. If you want for example to define an OutputPath property just do something like:

<PropertyGroup><OutputPath>.\bin</OutputPath></PropertyGroup>

And to use it just reference it as $(OutputPath)

Groups of files

You can specify groups of files with the ItemGroup tag

<ItemGroup>

<File_Image Include="$(OutputPath)\Image.jpg"/>

<cs_source Include=".\*.cs" Exclude=".\Foo1.cs" />

</ItemGroup>

And you will reference them like @(File_Image) and @(cs_source).

Dependencies between Targets

<Target Name="CreateOutputPath" Condition="!Exists('$(OutputPath)')">

<MakeDir Directories= "$(OutputPath)"/>

</Target>

<Target Name="FooCompilation" DependsOnTargets="CreateOutputPath"

Inputs=" Foo1.cs"

Outputs="$(OutputPath)\Foo1.exe">

</Target>

J2EE and .NET Integration

Coverage Tool for C#

VB.NET to C# Comparison

    Usually in .NET you end up writing code either in VB.NET or C# depending on your clients preferences.
   So you usually end up in a situation where you know how to do something in C# but do not remember the syntax in VB.NET or viceversa.
 Well I found the following article and I'm copying it here (I had some problems with the link so I decided to copy it).

I want to make clear that I DID NOT WROTE THIS because I do not want to take credit for other peoples work. and it was taken from http://www.harding.edu/USER/fmccown/WWW/vbnet_csharp_comparison.html

"This is a quick reference guide to highlight some key syntactical differences between VB.NET (version 2) and C#. Hope you find this useful!
Thank you to Tom Shelton, Fergus Cooney, Steven Swafford and others for your contributions. "

Win32 APIS to .NET

Here are some specific advantages of MC++:

• The best performance of generated IL code because of both optimizations of the generated IL and less IL generated (as discussed in the previous section). This is specifically because MC++ is the only .NET compiler with a full optimizer back end, which is pretty much the same one that is used by the unmanaged compiler.
• MC++ is your language of choice if you want full control of the .NET environment:
  • Allows one to use all seven levels of CTS member access. C# allows only six.
  • Allows direct access to interior gc pointers, useful in a whole class of system applications such as system and .NET utilities.
  • Offers explicit control of expensive operations like boxing.
  • Supports multiple indexed properties on a type, unlike C#.
• MC++ is currently the only managed language that allows you to mix unmanaged and managed code, even in the same file. This leads to several other points:
  • Allows a developer to keep performance-critical portions of the code in native code.
  • Gives seamless access to all unmanaged libraries, such as DLLs, statically-linked libraries, COM objects, template libraries, and more.
  • Leverages existing investments in C++ programming skills and legacy C++ code.
  • Porting unmanaged code to .NET: MC++ allows you to take existing unmanaged code and compile it to managed code (with the /clr compiler switch and IJW).
  • Gives the ability to port code at one's own rate rather than re-write all at once.
  • Provides the easiest way to add .NET support to your existing native C++ Windows applications, by allowing you to bridge the gap between the two environments with as little work on your behalf as possible, and with the lowest performance penalty.
• MC++ is currently the only language that allows some form of multi-paradigm design and development with full support for generic programming and templates. This can lead to more options and better designs and implementations.

Disadvantages of Managed C++

• C++ is a more complex language than C# in both its syntax and areas where one could get into trouble. Since MC++ follows the C++ paradigm of "explicit is good", some MC++ constructs may seem really ugly. For simpler types of applications, and with certain types of developers, it may make more sense to use C#.
• Managed C++ code is non-verifiable, since C++ can perform unsafe operations. The implication of this is that MC++ code may not run in restricted environments that will not run code that is non-verifiable.
• Some minor features of the .NET platform are not supported yet, such as Jagged Arrays.
• IDEsupport is currently lacking, compared to other managed languages, since there's little or no designer support (but Everett will change this).
• "

Utility to Patch XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<PatchesInfo xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">>

 <!-- Sample Patch -->

  <Patches>

    <Patch forAttribute="false">

      <Type>Apply</Type>

      <Content>

       <![CDATA[  <ADDEDTAG/>]]>

      </Content>

      <XPathLocation>//MyData[@name='Entry1']/MyAttribytes/Attribute[@name='Att58']/Annotations</XPathLocation>

   </Patch>

    <Patch forAttribute="false">

      <Type>Comment</Type>

      <Content>

        <![CDATA[** This part with be put on top of the comment entry ** ]]>

      </Content>

      <XPathLocation>//MyData[@name='Entry1']/MyAttribytes/Attribute[@name='Att59']/Annotations</XPathLocation>

    </Patch>

 
using System;

using System.IO;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Xml;

using System.Xml.Serialization;

using System.Diagnostics;

namespace XMLPatcher

{

    // Set this 'Customer' class as the root node

    // of any XML file its serialized to.

    [XmlRootAttribute("PatchesInfo", Namespace = "", IsNullable = false)]

    public class Patches

    {

        /// <summary>

        /// Default constructor for this class

        /// (required for serialization).

        /// </summary>       

        public Patches()

        {

        }

        [XmlArray("Patches"),XmlArrayItem("Patch",typeof(Patch))]

        public System.Collections.ArrayList patches = new System.Collections.ArrayList();

    }

    public class Patch

    {

        // Set this 'bool' field

        // to be an attribute of the root node.

        [XmlAttributeAttribute]       

        public bool forAttribute = false;

        // By NOT specifing any custom

        // Metadata Attributes, fields will be created

        // as an element by default.

        [XmlElement]

        public string Type;

        [XmlElement]

        public string Content;

        [XmlElement]

        public string XPathLocation;

    }

    static class XmlPatcher

    {

        public static void Patch(string patchFilename,string inputFilename,string outputFilename)

        {

            Patches p = new Patches();

            XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Patches));

            TextReader reader = new StreamReader(patchFilename);

            p = (Patches)serializer.Deserialize(reader);

            reader.Close();

            XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

            doc.Load(inputFilename);

            foreach (Patch patch in p.patches)

            {

                if (patch.forAttribute)

                {

                    if (patch.Type.Equals("Change"))

                    {

                        XmlAttribute node = doc.SelectSingleNode(patch.XPathLocation) as XmlAttribute;

                        node.Value = patch.Content;

                    }

                    else

                        if (patch.Type.Equals("Apply"))

                        {

                            XmlAttribute node = doc.SelectSingleNode(patch.XPathLocation) as XmlAttribute;

                            XmlDocument temp = new XmlDocument();

                            temp.LoadXml(patch.Content);

                            node.AppendChild(doc.ImportNode(temp.ChildNodes[0], true));

                            //doc.RemoveChild(node);

                        }

                        else

                            if (patch.Type.Equals("ApplyAllElements"))

                            {

                                XmlAttribute node = doc.SelectSingleNode(patch.XPathLocation) as XmlAttribute;

                                doc.RemoveChild(node);

                            }

                            else

                                Debug.Fail("Invalid path type for an attribute");

                }

                else

                {

                    //For elements

                    XmlNodeList elements = doc.SelectNodes(patch.XPathLocation);

                    foreach (XmlElement element in elements)

                    {

                        if (patch.Type.Equals("Apply"))

                        {

                            XmlDocument temp = new XmlDocument();

                            temp.LoadXml(patch.Content);

                            element.AppendChild(doc.ImportNode(temp.ChildNodes[0], true));

                        }

                        else if (patch.Type.Equals("Remove"))

                        {

                            element.ParentNode.RemoveChild(element);

                        }

                        else if (patch.Type.Equals("Comment"))

                        {

                            XmlComment comment = doc.CreateComment(patch.Content + "\r\n" + element.OuterXml + "\r\n ********");

                            element.ParentNode.ReplaceChild(comment, element);

                        }

                    }

                }

            }

            doc.Save(outputFilename);

            Console.WriteLine("File " + inputFilename + " has been patched. Results in " + outputFilename);

        }

    }

    class Program

    {

        /// <summary>

        /// Reads a Patches document. This document has the following form:

        /// <Patches>

        ///   <Patch xpath="...">

        ///     new xml

        ///   </Patch>

        /// </Patches>

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="args"></param>

        public static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            XmlPatcher.Patch(args[0], args[1], args[2]);

            Console.WriteLine("File " + args[1] + " has been patched. Results in " + args[2]);

        }

    }

}

Returning cursors in Oracle

I recenlty had a hard time trying to return some cursos and used them in Excel.

The problem is that Excel does not understand ref cursors. There are a couple of links in Microsoft. In general you have to use a special ODBC query syntax and create a package ????

This is an example, I just copied from Microsoft

      DROP TABLE DATA1;

      CREATE TABLE DATA1
       (ssn     NUMBER(9) PRIMARY KEY,
        fname   VARCHAR2(15),
        lname   VARCHAR2(20));

      INSERT INTO DATA1 VALUES(555662222,'Sam','Goodwin');

      INSERT INTO DATA1 VALUES(555882222,'Kent','Clark');

      INSERT INTO DATA1 VALUES(666223333,'Sally','Burnett');

      COMMIT;
      /

      CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE packData1
      AS
          TYPE tssn is TABLE of  NUMBER(10)
          INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;
          TYPE tfname is TABLE of VARCHAR2(15)
          INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;
          TYPE tlname is TABLE of VARCHAR2(20)
          INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;

        PROCEDURE GetData
              (param1 IN      Date,
               ssn    OUT     tssn,
               fname  OUT     tfname,
               lname  OUT     tlname);
      END packData1;
      /

      CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY packData1
      AS

      PROCEDURE GetData
            (param1  IN    Date,
                   ssn     OUT   tssn,
                   fname   OUT   tfname,
                   lname   OUT   tlname)
      IS
        CURSOR data1_cur IS
                   SELECT ssn, fname, lname
                   FROM Data1
                   WHERE param1 < current_date;
           percount NUMBER DEFAULT 1;
       BEGIN
           FOR singledata IN data1_cur
           LOOP
                   ssn(percount) := singledata.ssn;
                   fname(percount) := singledata.fname;
                   lname(percount) := singledata.lname;
                   percount := percount + 1;
           END LOOP;
       END;
       END;
       / 
      
To call it you write in Excel something like {call packdata1.GetData('01-JAN-2005',{resultset 70000, ssn, fname, lname})}      

{call packdata1.GetData(?,{resultset 70000, ssn, fname, lname})}    to use parameters.

The microsoft links are:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q174679

http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/174981

Easy way to start developing webparts

Expading or Shrinking your disks