More Team Foundation Server Voodoo

After finally getting TFS installed I went to create my first project under it and was greeted with a new lovely error message:

TF30004: The New Team Project Wizard encountered an unexpected error while initializing the Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Reporting plug-in.

Explanation
TF30171: The Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Reporting plug-in used to create the new team project could not be initialized and returned the following error: TF30224: Failed to retrieve projects from the report server. Please check that the SQL Server Reporting Services Web and Windows services are running and you have sufficient privileges for creating a project..

After alot of googling and reading the primary solution came down to reinstall Visual Studio 2008 SP1 again which I put off figuring there had to be a less voodoo solution to this but eventually broke down and tried it. Surprisingly that fixed THIS problem and then immediately I was confronted with ANOTHER problem.

Trying to view the created project on Windows Sharepoint the first thing that shows up is:

An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)
Cannot create a connection to data source ‘TfsOlapReportDS’. (rsErrorOpeningConnection)
For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors

More google hoop jumping which buried deep down in this post on How do I fix the TfsOlapReportDS user problem? I saw a comment from MattPil29

I had the same problem which was not solved by the “Allow log on locally” fix until I removed the same account from “Deny log on locally” !!!!

So I fixed that with:

NTRIGHTS -u TFSSERVICE -r SeDenyInteractiveLogonRight

Finally I have a successfully created Team Foundation Server project!

Flash CS4 Publish to Gif file sucks

So today I had to convert a swf flash movie I made for an advertisement to an animated gif file so it could be added to an email newsletter and when I’d publish it using Flash CS4 it was just epic… fail. The fading/transparency effects would flicker massively, shift between colors that didn’t even exist in the movie then when text would appear it just turned into a giant blob of black smear in my image.

How very useful…. NOT.

Luckily I found a program that just saved my day E.M. Magic Swf2Gif I also tried a similar product from Aleosoft, Aleo SWF GIF Converter. I’m not sure if this was related to the fact the Aleosoft is a limited functionality trial (watermarks output images) but the resulting quality was substantially lower than E.M. Magic Swf2Gif. So if anyone else has issues with their Flash CS4 Gif publishing looking horrible I recommend taking a look at E.M. Magic Swf2Gif.