26 February 2010

guacamole recipe, central mexican styled

Colibri's Guacamole, from Jonathan Kakacek


1.5 avocado
1 to 1.5 Tablespoons of each
-onion chopped
-jalapenos chopped
-cilantro
-tomato

teaspoon of salt or to taste
.5 tsp 1.5 lime (juice, cut in half, use fork to poke and squeeze/twist)

mix in a folding action and tah dah


19 February 2010

Locking down Actions in SharePoint 2007 like Edit in Datasheet, Export to Spreadsheet

Among the many requests we get to compose or decompose some of the basic functionality built into SharePoint 2007 - we get this one a lot.  For some very valid business reasons, Edit in Datasheet or Export to Spreadsheet (Excel / Access) violate some of the metadata rules or workflow customizations that may affect metadata.  I think this is due to the lack of robust field level security tied out to the users or groups in SharePoint.  It's not too hard to build this into SharePoint (most serious web applications have field level security), and I've even helped build field level security into a few widely employed web applications. So maybe its due to something else.  Either way, to disable the functionality, you basically gut SharePoint's webservices from the set of users you want to lock it down for.

  1. Go to [your site] > Site Settings > Permissions > Permission Levels


      1. Note: to do this for a single list, break permission inheritance at the list, then apply the new Permission Level to the Groups or Users that you want to restrict

  2. Add a permission level or click on an existing permission level (to copy to a new permission level as a template)
  3. Remove the following permissions from the list

  • Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.  (To stop the people from linking to the list with Access, etc.)
  • Use Client Integration Features - Use features which launch client applications. Without this permission, users will have to work on documents locally and upload their changes.  (To remove Edit in Datasheet. This also removes Export to Spreadsheet)

There are other ways involving the javascript jquery library that I'm not as fond of here. Doug Ware from Elumenotion wrote up a few choices, and is on point with his write up.

18 February 2010

Upgrading custom sharepoint 2007 workflows in progress

From what research I've done, it seems safe to upgrade (via solution deployment) previously associated, deployed, and running SharePoint 2007 Custom Workflows (developed in Visual Studio) that are In Progress.

The two key areas why I think this works is to do with the content that SharePoint hydrates each time a workflow moves into and out of memory.  In old-fashioned programmer speak, the program section and data section are saved with each instance of a workflow.  In current lingo, I understand Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) is used to represent SharePoint workflow objects in XML thereby allowing the instances of all the data objects and the program code to be streamed into and out of memory in perpetuity.  If you think about how challenging this is to accomplish, you'll understand why I really respect this aspect of SharePoint, and how it adds to the awesomeness of skill displayed by their development team. 

Caveat emptor: dehydration and rehydration saves many things about the state of the workflow and the code of the workflow, but there could be nonserializable objects that your workflow may depend on that can change whilst the workflow is dehydrated (out of memory/not running).  e.g. SPList is nonserializable.  Worst case scenario, you'll have to prepare the business users to restart broken workflows.

Read more details on this in Chapter 9 of David Mann's awesome book Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System - Using workflow in SharePoint and Office 2007 to enforce and enhance business processes. I highly recommend this book for developers doing custom development on SharePoint Workflows.  It's very well written, and a fun read (which is always tough with a deeply technical book).


10 February 2010

Dhal with Spinach recipe

Dhal with Spinach by Juliana Madan (my mamma!)


1 cup of any kind of dhal -- cook in pressure cooker with the following
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cumin
1 chopped tomato
2 Jalepenoes sliced
You may need 1 or 1 & 1/2 cups of water to cook.
After 10 mins or slow turn off & let it cool
Add 1 or 2 bunches of chopped spinach into cooker & simmer till cooked.

For seasoning
Heat 2 TBSP oil
Add 1 tsp mustard seeds-- when they pop crackles add the following ingredients to the oil
2 red dry chillies
1 onion chopped
Pour on top of cooked dhal
Add coriander leaves for garnish



06 February 2010

Ribs recipe

Sandhya Chib's Famous Ribs


1 c chopped onion
2 tbsp olive oil
Few dry red chillis (break them in half if you really want the heat)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 c white vinegar
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1/3 c soy sauce
1/2 c chilli sauce
Heat oil. Fry chillis. Add onion, fry 5 mins, add rest of ingredients, bring to boil. Remove from heat, pour over ribs, bake at 350 for one hour. Baste couple times. Turn up to 500 at end and brown for two mins.