VSTO general installer error 8007007E

If you are getting a "VSTO general installer error" with an error code of 0x8007007E while trying to install A VSTO Office add-in a possible reason is absence of the VSTO runtime.

Download the VSTO Runtime here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=140384

Obviously, you need to make sure your deployment VSTO installer detects/installs the VSTO Runtime before trying to install the add-in or you may have this issue popping up here and there throughout your installation base.

premake: Great cross-platform development tool for desktop apps

Great cross-platform development tool for desktop apps

https://premake.github.io/

How to obtain security clearance for UK gov jobs

Good concise explanation: http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/careers-advice/security-clearance/How%20to%20obtain%20security%20clearance

Regarding YouTube video monetization

Money from youtube video monetization is not that great. If, based on the article below, we take an average of 3.5 USD per thousand views that gives us 3,500 USD per million views.

Major music stars do not have more than an average of 50 million views per major hit. So someone like that would have earned about 200K USD over years of the hit being on youtube. That is not much considering the popularity of the media.

So, what are the chances of making significant money out of youtube as an individual video producer/uploader? Slim, very slim I would say.

Ref: https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-do-people-make-from-YouTube-videos-with-1-million-views

Some testimony here: http://www.imponderablethings.com/2013/10/how-much-youtube-paid-me-for-4-million.html

Bye bye Western Union transfers via Banco do Brasil

Bye bye Western Union transfers via Banco do Brasil's Internet banking. Basically the Brazilian crisis is forcing the government to try and limit the money trickling out of the country. Of course protectionism is exactly what has made Brazil such a failure of a country for centuries but obviously people there don't get it.

Here is what the bank replied to my enquiry:

"Fotios,

Em atenção à sua manifestação registrada no Serviço de Atendimento ao Consumidor do Banco do Brasil, protocolo número 40483226, informamos que devido a alteração da regulamentação tributária, as remessas para o exterior, via canais de autoatendimento, ficam limitadas a ordens do tipo Swift para constituição de disponibilidade no exterior (transferência de mesma titularidade), sobre as quais não incide imposto de renda. As demais ordens deverão ser realizadas através de uma agência do Banco do Brasil. Ressaltamos que essas remessas estarão sujeitas à incidência de Imposto de Renda Retido na Fonte e demais encargos, conforme legislação vigente e tabela de tarifas do Banco do Brasil.

Prestadas essas informações, reafirmamos nosso compromisso com o melhor atendimento e permanecemos à disposição para quaisquer outros esclarecimentos.

Conheça os nossos canais de atendimento. Copie e cole o seguinte endereço no seu navegador: www.bb.com.br/atendimento

Equipe BB Atende"

EDIT (22/03/2016): The service is back online alas offering slightly different options. Works fine though! :)

Computer setup for IT Freelancers

I've been freelancing for the past 4-5 years and I am currently making 6 figure USD net doing it. The main reason I can maintain this type of cash flow year-round is working on multiple projects plus keeping a short-list of good long-term paying clients happy.

One of the main challenges I've had in managing multiple very-demanding software projects at the same time is QUICKLY switching between them and I don't mean the mental boot time required for each switch; I mean setting up the complete dev environment for each one each time you need to do/check something bearing in mind that the complete environment for this type of projects is not simply an editor and a couple of auxiliary apps in the background. I am talking 5-10 active windows (depending on project) that need to be consulted at the same time in order to make progress.

So, how do you do this EASILY? Doing it manually is too time-consuming and irritating, writing scripts that do it is also annoying because the setup changes quite often and using a Virtual Machine per project, although a better solution, stumbles on various performance and hardware access/compatibility issues - especially if some projects involve low level API access or driver work.

I have concluded that the best way to do this is to have multiple physical machines and use one for each major project you are working on (currently in the process of implementing this type of setup). I typically work on anything between 3 and 5 concurrent projects and although 5 laptops would be ideal, practically speaking 3 laptops should be enough. Laptops would be connected to my desktop (wireless mouse & keyboard plus external Hi-Res monitor) via a quality KVM switch.

In case someone is wondering, I would use laptops and not desktops for this setup because of space requirements plus the ability to take some project's laptop with you and work on it while away for a couple of days - longer times away would require packing your best laptop and working on multiple projects on it in absense of a better solution.

Now, if you couple this solution with 1) a good online source code management solution like https://bitbucket.org/ and 2) a good local data backup solution (like http://www.duplicati.com/) , you have the core of a good office computer setup for IT freelancers.

So, three laptops all connected to your WiFi based LAN, a NAS box where Duplicati clients on each laptop save daily data backups, your code and other important project files also remotely committed on bitbucket and then fast switching between them using your KVM switch. Simple, redundant and efficient.

.NET remoting

.NET remoting, although an old technology, is a fast, robust, reliable and very easy to use way to instantiate new, or access already instantiated objects, in a different/remote .NET based process.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973857.aspx