Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit

Lost your MS Office activation key? Find it with this utility, recommended by a Microsoft MVP: Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit

Jeffrey rambles about Rx, .NET and programming in general. : Time flies like an arrow in Script#

Jeff Van Gogh of Microsoft demonstrates Reactive Extensions for Javascript (RxJS) and Nikhil Kothari's Script#

Jeffrey rambles about Rx, .NET and programming in general. : Time flies like an arrow in Script#: "Time flies like an arrow in Script#

As kouPhax requested this on the Rx forum, I decided to post a port to Script# of the Time flies like an arrow sample that ships with Rx for JavaScript.

Rx for JavaScript already ships with a binding for Script#, so that will make our lives a lot easier (you can find the binding in \Redist\ScriptSharp\RxJs.dll)"

How to share data between stored procedures

How to share data between stored procedures

Very cool article. Gives a table summarizing the methods.

Tsung

Tsung: "It can be used to stress HTTP, WebDAV, SOAP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP and Jabber/XMPP servers. Tsung (formerly known as IDX-Tsunami) is a free software released under the GPLv2 license.

The purpose of Tsung is to simulate users in order to test the scalability and performance of IP based client/server applications. You can use it to do load and stress testing of your servers. Many protocols have been implemented and tested, and it can be easily extended. WebDAV, LDAP and MySQL support have been added recently (experimental).

It can be distributed on several client machines and is able to simulate hundreds of thousands of virtual users concurrently (or even millions if you have enough hardware ...).

Tsung is developed in Erlang, an open-source language made by Ericsson for building robust fault-tolerant distributed applications.

Tsung is supported by Process-One"

Create a self-signed SSL certificate with IIS 6.0 Resource Kit SelfSSL

Create a self-signed SSL certificate with IIS 6.0 Resource Kit SelfSSL: "The IIS 6.0 Resource Kit version 1.0 was released 5/30/2003. It contains a utility called SelfSSL.exe for instantly creating and installing a self-signed testing certificate into IIS. The resource kit is freely downloadable from the Microsoft website. Although the tool is intended for IIS 6.0, it works just as well on IIS 5.1. It is so simple to use that no instructions are required beyond the pointer to the download."

[#LOG4NET-27] Rolling files on date/time boundaries doesn't support a maximum number of backup files. - ASF JIRA

A patch for deleting log4net RollingFileAppender files based on date.

[#LOG4NET-27] Rolling files on date/time boundaries doesn't support a maximum number of backup files. - ASF JIRA

Why won't my ASP pages work in IIS 6.0?

I still have to use Classic ASP at work, so I need this article.

Why won't my ASP pages work in IIS 6.0?

Introducing SelectorGadget: point and click CSS selectors

Danny Burkes showed this in a demo today.

Introducing SelectorGadget: point and click CSS selectors: "SelectorGadget is an open source bookmarklet that makes CSS selector generation and discovery on complicated sites a breeze. Just drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, then go to any page and press it. A box will open in the bottom right of the website. Click on a page element that you would like your selector to match (it will turn green). SelectorGadget will then generate a minimal CSS selector for that element, and will highlight (yellow) everything that is matched by the selector. Now click on a highlighted element to remove it from the selector (red), or click on an unhighlighted element to add it to the selector. Through this process of selection and rejection, SelectorGadget helps you come up with the perfect CSS selector for your needs."

Glimmer: a jQuery Interactive Design Tool - Home

I heard about this on April 29, 2009, but I'll blog about it now.

Glimmer: a jQuery Interactive Design Tool - Home: "Without having to touch a piece of JavaScript code, harness the power of the jQuery. With Glimmer: a jQuery Interactive Design Tool, easily create interactive experiences and use the tool to discover ways to add animation and other effects to your site in new and unexpected places. Glimmer is a Windows application which generates jQuery, XHTML and CSS. If jQuery is the “write less, do more” JavaScript library, then Glimmer is the “write none, do more” jQuery design tool."

Quick and Dirty Guide to Configuring Log4Net For Web Applications

This line of code is a gem:
private static readonly ILog Log = LogManager.GetLogger(MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);

Quick and Dirty Guide to Configuring Log4Net For Web Applications


My code:

private static readonly ILog Log { get; set; }

static ClassConstructor()
{
    Log = log4net.LogManager.GetLogger(MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);
    log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.ConfigureAndWatch(new FileInfo(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/log4net.config")));
}

The Kayak Framework: An easy way to speak HTTP with .NET

I'll have to look into this. It's like a thttpd for .NET/CLR.

The Kayak Framework: An easy way to speak HTTP with .NET: "Kayak is a lightweight HTTP server for the CLR, and the Kayak Framework is a utility for mapping HTTP requests to C# method invocations. With Kayak, you can skip the bulk, hassle, and overhead of IIS and ASP.NET. Kayak enables you to do more with less syntax, and is easy to configure to work in any way you care to dream up."

Integrating .NET and Erlang using OTP.NET - Nauman Leghari's Blog

When I get the chance to play with some Erlang again I'll have to give this a try: Integrating .NET and Erlang using OTP.NET - Nauman Leghari's Blog

Rich Internet Application Screen Design | UX Magazine

Great article!

Rich Internet Application Screen Design | UX Magazine: "Designing a rich Internet application (RIA) can test even an experienced design team. The hardest challenge is to blend Web and desktop paradigms to create a responsive and intuitive experience. Some paradigms that exist in the desktop environment are ill-suited for the Web, while many of the Web paradigms people are familiar with (paging, explicit refresh) are no longer necessary with RIA technologies like Flex and Ajax. As this space matures, we are learning more and more about which boundaries can be pushed, and which patterns transcend time and technology. While working on the book Designing Web Interfaces, Bill Scott and I explored hundreds of Web applications searching for these patterns. Armed with a crazy amount of examples, we distilled the patterns into six principles:

• Make It Direct
  
• Keep It Lightweight
  
• Stay in the Page
  
• Provide Invitations
  
• Use Transitions
  
• React Immediately"

Flapjax

Very, very interesting:

Flapjax: "Flapjax is a new programming language designed around the demands of modern, client-based Web applications. Its principal features include:

• Event-driven, reactive evaluation
• An event-stream abstraction for communicating with web services
• Interfaces to external web services

Flapjax is easy to learn: it is just a JavaScript framework. Furthermore, because Flapjax is built entirely atop JavaScript, it runs on traditional Web browsers without the need for plug-ins or other downloads. It integrates seamlessly with existing JavaScript code and other frameworks."

F# Web Tools | Projects | TomasP.Net

F# Web Tools | Projects | TomasP.Net

Looks interesting. There's a commercial product similar to this whose name escapes me at present.

Object Oriented JavaScript Class Library in C#/.NET Style - CodeProject

Object Oriented JavaScript Class Library in C#/.NET Style - CodeProject

This is a really good guide on C# coding style in Javascript! He shows how to make classes, public, private, event handlers, enums, etc. Smart guy!

Converting between Base 64 and binary in SQL Server 2005

Extremely cool because I'm futzing around with encryption inside SQL Server.

Implementing secure, unique “single-use” activation URLs in ASP.NET (C#)

I'm noting this because I might have to implement it.

Upgrade causes loss of f5 networks host plugin

Upgrade causes loss of f5 networks host plugin: "I need the F5 Networks Host Plugin (version 6020.2009.0202.1108) too, so I managed to install and tested it on Firefox 3.5.2 and it works well as far as I have tested it.
Why F5 Network didn't fix it, I don't know...
To install it :
- download the urhostplg.xpi file
- rename it in urhostplg.zip and unzip it
- change the version limit in 'install.rdf' file :
From :3.1.*
To : 3.5.*
- zip and rename to urhostplg.xpi
- drag and drop the .xpi on Firefox to install it"

Pushing to a Git repository using the wrong case causes peculiar behavior (maybe involves --forcing)

I was fetching from a Github repository while working at home, and I kept getting the following error:

Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.

From github.com:sidecut/Quest-Paperless

 + 22b4432...7d00da0 TRY-remove-LLBLGEn -> origin/TRY-remove-LLBLGEn  (forced update)

error: Ref refs/remotes/origin/TRY-remove-LLBLGen is at 7d00da03b4a76116ffbaf89a4b5f6d54aeba9810 but expected 22b4432207570926a71d969a7ff8da821bf68354

 ! 22b4432..cddedc1  TRY-remove-LLBLGen -> origin/TRY-remove-LLBLGen  (unable to update local ref)

As evident from gitk, the remote branch refused to advance farther, but I could continue to push to that branch from the office. (Notice the git fetch output mentioned a forced update. I don't remember, frankly, whether I pushed it in that way from the office

The culprit was hiding in plain site: the error message showed that the branch names that differed only in case:
TRY-remove-LLBLGEn
TRY-remove-LLBLGen

The solution? Dropped the branch TRY-remove-LLBLGEn and recreated it using the proper case:

git push origin :TRY-remove-LLBLGEn

git push origin TRY-remove-LLBLGen

Web Service Functional Testing - Tips and Tricks Login Security - soapUI

Web Service Functional Testing - Tips and Tricks Login Security - soapUI: "Before we look into the tests, we have to be aware of what we're looking for, so first let's state this; large part of hacking often is not about actually gaining access to a system, but rather exposing system behavior in order to be able to get access to it later. This means large parts of our testing is not about cracking the system, but rather expose behavior in your web service that exposes how it works. Our first Tip is an example of this."

Youssef Moussaoui's WCF blog : How to Change .NET Configuration Files at Runtime (including for WCF)

I gotta try this. This was brought to my attention by the wonderful blog The Morning Brew by Chris Alcock, a daily compendium of .NET news and product announcements. Chris is in the UK, so the news is available first thing in the morning for us Yanks before we've even gotten out of bed.

Youssef Moussaoui's WCF blog : How to Change .NET Configuration Files at Runtime (including for WCF): "How to Change .NET Configuration Files at Runtime (including for WCF)
One of the most common issues people run into with WCF configuration, and .NET applications in general, is that configuration files appear to be fixed. You only have one configuration file for an executable, and you can’t use different configuration files as your exe.config while the application is running. Of course, you can always shut down the application, change the configuration, and then restart it with the new configuration file, but that’s tedious and oftentimes undesirable. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to easily get around this limitation."

SharpTemplate � Xtreem Geek

Nikhilk (Script# author) himself pointed this out:

SharpTemplate � Xtreem Geek: "SharpTemplate is a HTML templating engine that seamlessly integrates with Script# to provide compile time, strongly typed, super efficient HTML templating capabilities for productive rich web application development.� Some of its advantages are listed below…

Converts HTML into C# that gets compiled by Script#
Benefits from strong typing for all variable / API references that occur within the HTML
Generated HTML templates are super efficient due to compile time pre-processing that helps avoid regex matching in JavaScript unlike many other templating engines
Familiar templating syntax (based upon Asp.Net)
If you are not already using some sort of compile time HTML templating with Script# then you must definitely give this a try and see the productivity boost for yourself.

SharpTemplate has Script# as its prerequisite.� It can work in VS2008, VS2010 and Visual C# express."

[ANN] DC ALT.NET – 1/27/2010 - Clojure

Maybe I should look at Clojure? It targets .NET! (Emphasis added in the quote below.)

[ANN] DC ALT.NET – 1/27/2010 - Clojure: "Simply put, Clojure is a dynamic general purpose programming language that targets both the Java Virtual Machine as well as the .NET CLR. This language, which is a dialect of Lisp, combines the ease of an interactive development scripting language with something that makes it stand out, which is a robust concurrency infrastructure. Parts of the concurrency story that are interesting is both a software transactional memory (STM) system as well as a reactive agent system much like the Mailboxes we’ve covered here in F#. What also makes Clojure interesting is that it is predominantly a functional language with a rich set of immutable data structures.

The Clojure site is the best place to get started which includes the language features reference, basic tutorials, screencasts and more. For those who wish to get Clojure working on the CLR, there are great instructions at the Git repository for ClojureCLR. In the future, I’ll cover more of the language, but these two references should be enough to get you started."

DotNet JQuery (DNJ) : new features in version 0.4.0

DotNet JQuery (DNJ) : new features in version 0.4.0: "This articles describes new implemented features in version 0.4.0 : Client events, 3rd party extensions and resource management"

Wow. I will have to check this out.

Check Out the Newest Additions to the Control Gallery!

Check Out the Newest Additions to the Control Gallery!: "Download a free newsletter generator, a professional user dashboard toolkit, and a free image resizer in recent additions to the ASP.NET Control Gallery."

Maybe the dashboard will work for Vendor Web?

Subversion seems to be losing favor among version control users : Jeffrey Palermo (.com)

Was I right or was I right? I adopted Subversion back in '04 or so, and Git in the fall of '07 after playing with Mercurial a bit.

Subversion seems to be losing favor among version control users : Jeffrey Palermo (.com)

Introducing the Hipster PDA | 43 Folders

Introducing the Hipster PDA | 43 Folders

I'm gonna look into this.

Eureka! SoapExtension problems solved! - Jan Tielens' Bloggings

This guy had my same problem. I'm recording this here for posterity's sake.

Eureka! SoapExtension problems solved! - Jan Tielens' Bloggings: "Maybe you've read my post about the problems I had while using a custom SoapExtension class. Thanks to an anonymous reaction, I found the sollution!! I was testing the webservice by using the default test page from Internet Explorer, but the testpage in IE uses the GET protocol, not the SOAP protocol. So there was nothing wrong with my code (I started believing I really sucked ;-), I only had to make a very simple test application. Thanks again to the person who submitted this tip!"

ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Exception Handling Advice for ASP.NET Web Applications

ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Exception Handling Advice for ASP.NET Web Applications:

Excerpt:

"The Crib Notes

My advice for handling exceptions in an ASP.NET application can be boiled down to the following guidelines: Create and use a meaningful custom error page. In general, do not catch exceptions. Let them bubble up to the ASP.NET runtime. Some cases where catching an exception makes sense include: When there is a plausible way to recover from the exception by performing some alternative logic, When a peripheral part of the application's workflow throws and exception and that exception should not derail the entire application, and When you need to include additional information with the exception by throwing a new exception that has the original exception as its inner exception. Log all exceptions to some persistent store and use email (or some other medium) to notify developers when an exception occurs in production. Consider using ELMAH or ASP.NET's built-in Health Monitoring system to facilitate this process. Read on for a more in-depth look at these suggestions."

How to Make Your ASP.NET Third Party Component 10x Faster > Web/Cloud Applications Development Platform > White Papers

How to Make Your ASP.NET Third Party Component 10x Faster > Web/Cloud Applications Development Platform > White Papers:

I wonder how well this works. I tried making a control using Visual WebGui, but it was extremely expensive to load up a hundred of them on one page (yes, that's my requirement).

"The following document will explore the basics of enhancing 3rd party ASP.NET components performance by leveraging the Empty Client (an ASP.NET extension) pipeline.

1.1�What is the Empty Client?
This architecture is an emerging open source methodology which offers a different approach to architecting, developing and deploying AJAX applications. In order to shed some light on this methodology, we will compare it to the classic Thin and Thick (also referred to as Fat or Smart) client approach and to traditional AJAX structures. Empty Client offers a new balance between the Thin and Thick client approaches and a new channeling of the AJAX calls."

Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths: "ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for."

How to commit in Git when there are "suspicious patch lines" with trailing whitespace

Try the following:

1. Stage desired files using "git add" or "git add -p" or "git gui" or "git citool" etc.
2. Use "git commit --no-verify"

Actually, was this really worth a blog post? Since this blog acts to augment my memory, I guess it does.

Dynamic LINQ - Development With A Dot

Dynamic LINQ - Development With A Dot: "Included with Microsoft's .NET samples, which you can get here lies an hidden gem: a set of method extensions for IQueryable and IQueryable that allow execution of lambda expressions specified as strings, which is handy if you want to generate expressions dynamically."

ASP.NET 2.0: Playing a bit with GridView "Sort Grouping"

ASP.NET 2.0: Playing a bit with GridView "Sort Grouping":

Thank the Lord!

"I am on bit experiment mood today, so I did a little tryout to see what it requires to add so called "sort grouping" into GridView. E.g when you have tabular data in GridView and you sort it based on some criteria, you'd want to better express those distinct items, based on which the grid is sorted. Here's a few screenshots of what I did, to demonstrate what I mean."

A few ASP.NET 2.0 GridView Sorting Tips and Tricks

A few ASP.NET 2.0 GridView Sorting Tips and Tricks:

From an old Scott Guthrie blog post from 2006. This seems to be exactly what I need to revamp the GridView that I'm working on! I'm also having good results with GaiaWare.

"I saw a few interesting posts today that talked about ways to implement some sorting tips and tricks with the ASP.NET 2.0 GridView:

Mike has a nice post that walksthrough how to implement custom bi-directional sorting with the GridView. Souri uses a similar approach to implement multi-column GridView sort semantics.

Teemu then has a cool post that shows how to implement 'sort grouping' where you can sub-group/band row values within the GridView:

Hope this helps,

Scott"

Deployment of DHTML Visual WebGui application with different extension than the standard .WGX > Web, Cloud Applications Development, Deployment

Deployment of DHTML Visual WebGui application with different extension than the standard .WGX > Web, Cloud Applications Development, Deployment & Migration Platform > VWG Rich Internet Applications Tutorials


Posted using ShareThis

jQuery Performance Rules

Very useful! Here are the rules, with my personal favorites highlighted in bold:

1. Always Descend From an #id
   
2. Use Tags Before Classes
   
3. Cache jQuery Objects
   
4. Harness the Power of Chaining
   
5. Use Sub-queries
   
6. Limit Direct DOM Manipulation
   
7. Leverage Event Delegation (a.k.a. Bubbling)
   
8. Eliminate Query Waste
   
9. Defer to $(window).load
   
10. Compress Your JS
    
11. Learn the Library
    

Git Recipe for magical, mysterious end-of-line problem with Git status

Ok. I really don't understand this. Occasionally file operations will result in Git complaining that some files are different when nothing apparently has changed. This weird recipe seemed to fix the problem in a way that I do not understand.

Problem
git diff shows the every single line of the file as changed, but git diff -w (i.e. ignore all whitespace) shows the file as changed, but shows no lines as changed.

Solution
1. Type this command to temporarily turn off CRLF automagical conversions:
git config core.autocrlf false; git config core.safecrlf false

2. Refresh the view in Git gui. There will be no changes indicated anymore.
3. Type this line to temporarily turn CRLF automagical conversions back on:
git config core.autocrlf true; git config core.safecrlf true
4. Possibly repeat more than once, staging and un-staging in the mean time. Like I said, it's a mystery.

NOTE: I've only done this once. I haven't tested it multiple times. I'm just posting it here for posterity's sake in case I need to try this recipe again.

Debugging classic ASP web application with Visual Studio 2005

A must-have resource at my current employer.

Your Top Links about Web Site/AJAX Performance Performance, Scalability and Architecture – Java and .NET Application Performance Management (dynaTrace Blog)

Contains a list of AJAX frameworks. Dunno if there's an implicit endorsement here; it does seem to be non-Microsofty. This might be an interesting place to check out AJAX frameworks.

A generic way to find ASP.NET ClientIDs with jQuery - Rick Strahl's Web Log

A generic way to find ASP.NET ClientIDs with jQuery - Rick Strahl's Web Log: "I’ve been using a small hack to deal with the ASP.NET naming container morass that is so prevalent in client side development with ASP.NET. Particularly in Master Pages all server control IDs are basically munged because the master page place holders are naming containers."

At the end of the article is this gem that might help me optimize the Vendor Web page:

"ID lookups in a document are among the fastest lookups the DOM can perform."

A Quick Reference Guide to Microsoft Technologies (Cheat Sheets) | SolidDotNet.com

A Quick Reference Guide to Microsoft Technologies (Cheat Sheets) | SolidDotNet.com: "While working as a developer we all face some syntax problem , So in order to reduce that same redundant syntax search effort everyday Technology people had compiled very good single page handy sheets which contains syntax and common features of each technology which is also known as Cheat Sheets, And i think every developer should have them.

These Cheat sheets are normally one-page reference guide"

Inversion Of Control, Single Responsibility Principle and Nikola’s laws of dependency injection - VusCode - Coding dreams since 1998!

Inversion Of Control, Single Responsibility Principle and Nikola’s laws of dependency injection - VusCode - Coding dreams since 1998!: "Inversion Of Control, Single Responsibility Principle and Nikola’s laws of dependency injection

Today I stumbled upon the stack overflow question regarding using DI frameworks for classes with many dependencies where the example given and couple of answers have reminded me about a subject I want to post for a long time....

And the 3 questions related to this example are:

1. How to avoid passing those common but uninteresting dependencies interfaces to every class?
2. How do you approach dependencies that might be used, but may be expensive to create?
3. How to build object graph of MyClass considering the fact that any of those dependencies can have their own dependencies etc."

Installing Debian Testing from Netinst or Business Card

1. Install Debian kind of minimally, i.e. without Desktop. (I still did "standard install".)
2. Reboot.
3. Edit the apt configuration to point to testing:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list
:%s/lenny/testing/g

4. Save the file.
5. Run the following command to update the apt sources after aptitude update:

aptitude update

6. Run the following command to upgrade the system to testing:

aptitude safe-upgrade

7. Run the following command to install the desktop environment:

tasksel install desktop

8. Optional: run tasksel install again for file server and web server, which I need in my scenario for Git.

10 Tools to learn any foreign language for free

I actually found this on Twitter. http://twitter.com/analomba/status/4787514073

Foundations of Programming Ebook

I quote:

"I'm excited to finally release the official, and completely free, Foundations of Programming EBook. This essentially contains all 9 Foundation parts including a conclusion and some typical book fluff (table of content, acknowledgement and so on). A number of spelling errors were corrected, along with some small technical changes and clarifications - largely based on feedback, so thanks for everyone who provided it! Otherwise it's exactly the same as what's been posted here over the past several months.
Download it from http://codebetter.com/files/folders/codebetter_downloads/entry179694.aspx

Download the CodeBetter.Canvas Learning Application to see the foundations applied in practice:http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/archive/2009/09/01/canvas-gets-a-spark.aspx
 

If the above link fails, you can also get it from http://www.openmymind.net/FoundationsOfProgramming.pdf

You can also download the raw .docx file fromhttp://openmymind.net/FoundationsOfProgramming.docx"

200 Page Manual on Inversion of Control (plus or minus 199)

How to IoC in 10 minutes. Ok, realistically this might take a couple of hours, but whatever.

I'll put "dependency injection" here too so the blog search, if it ever gets fixed, will find it.

Functional Programming for Everyday .NET Development

From MSDN Magazine, October 2009.

Object Hydrator - .NET test data project

This looks pretty cool. I discovered it through The Morning Brew blog, I think.

"Project Description
This project allows you to pass custom POCO's to it, and have it return an instance of the class populated with randomly generated data.

So basically, you create a class and decorate the property with the name of a Generator you want to use. Pass the object to the Generator and it returns it filled with data. The idea behind it is to use it to replace a database call to use in your UI. "

Diffuse

Cool new (to me) diff/merge tool. Can merge any arbitrary number of files! How many other diff/merge tools can claim to do that?

Diffuse: "Diffuse is a small and simple text merge tool written in Python. With Diffuse, you can easily merge, edit, and review changes to your code."

Why Git?

Why Git? - great article by Ayende @ Rahien, with a very good discussion that follows. Also it's fairly recent -- 19 days ago.

Yet another Git versus Mercurial article

This one's well-written and the comments that follow are not shrill but intelligent. The author claims that Git is like MacGyver, while Mercurial is James Bond. (A commenter claims that Git is more like the A Team, but hey.) One commenter does a great job describing the attitude of the Git community towards Windows users. In a word, contempt. The thing is, I'm a power user who loves Git, and when I first examined it back in the fall of 2007, it just seemed like a better project for Windows. I'm wondering if I should reevaluate.

Dotnet Version Wiki

Dotnet Version Wiki: "The original data for this list was taken from Tom Glover's site , where you can download a tool (Free DotNet VersionCheck Utility) that automatically identifies what versions of the framework are installed. Tom kindly donated this existing list to seed this wiki.

Another resource you should be aware of is the CTP Build Finder which is based on some data that Brad Abrams and friends put together into BuildXml.xml . This data file links CTP releases of a few major products, showing compatible products, and is the data source that drives the CTP Build Finder..

Another list of service pack version numbers, Aaron Stebner's WebLog ."

How XML Threatens Big Data : Dataspora Blog

How XML Threatens Big Data : Dataspora Blog

Fascinating article. He talks about why XML is philosophically wrong for huge datasets ("Big Data"). I found this article while looking through an HR-XML blog.

"We had a deadline to meet (and, mon dieu, a 35 hour work-week). So we changed course. We hacked our Perl scripts to emit a flat tab-delimited format — “TabML” — which was bulk loaded into Oracle. It wasn’t elegant, but it was fast and it worked.

Yet looking back, I realize that XML was the wrong format from the start. And as I’ll argue here, our unhealthy obsession with XML formats threatens to slow or impede many open data projects, including initiatives like Data.gov.

In the next sections, I discuss how XML fails for Big Data because of its unnatural form, bulk, and complexity. Finally, I generalize to three rules that advocate a more liberal approach to data."

The truth about HR-XML

One guy says it's a bunch of BS. Another guy says it's a fig leaf to cover up for lack of interoperability. Finally, there's a former member of the HR-XML consortium who has some things to say about it.

Here's an older post by the same author: HR-XML Integration in Human Resources Software.

Overview of WCF from Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN)

Overview of WCF -Great article with links to articles on interoperability, which is something I've got to worry about with these legacy web services.

How to: Migrate ASP.NET Web Service Code to the Windows Communication Foundation

How to: Migrate ASP.NET Web Service Code to the Windows Communication Foundation -This is a comprehensive, 19-step procedure that's a bit more detailed than this post and also blessed by Microsoft.

creativeUI - How To: Create a Web Service with WCF

creativeUI - How To: Create a Web Service with WCF -- Seemingly quick and dirty explanation.

Converting ASMX to WCF Web Service - Stack Overflow

Converting ASMX to WCF Web Service - Stack Overflow: "I need to upgrade our web services to use WCF instead of ASMX. If the signatures of the web services stays the same, will existing clients that already call the ASMX service have to change anything on their end? Is there anyway to still use WCF but not force them to change anything?"

The answer is simple. I tried it and it worked. I did have to change the server binding config to be the custom binding created by svcutil.exe. But since that utility creates the configuration, it's basically a cut-and-paste job.

Configuring AnkhSVN revisited

Turns out they got rid of the Tools/AnkhSVN menu option. It's now integrated all over the place. The configuration I was looking for is in Tools/Options/Source Control. Never mind that I spent several hours hunting down the configuration by reading source code. Arg!

Configuring AnkhSVN 2.1.7141.181 when the configuration dialog does not appear in Visual Studio

For some reason my Visual Studio does not display a menu option to configure AnkhSVN 2.1.7141.181, so below are the registry settings to configure it to use TortoiseSVN. But first, a list of the settings.

Setting Name	Description
MergeExePath	Path of the executable used for merging, including all arguments.
DiffExePath	Path of the executable used for diffing two files, including all arguments.
PatchExePath	Path of the executable used for applying a patch, including all arguments.
InteractiveMergeOnConflict	If true, launch an interactive merge on a conflict. Default value is false.
FlashWindowWhenOperationCompletes	If true, window flashes when operation completes. Default value is false.
AutoAddEnabled	If true, new project files are automatically marked for adding to Subversion. Default value is false.

Following is a .reg file containing registry settings to use TortoiseMerge for all diff, merge, and patch operations:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AnkhSVN\AnkhSVN\VisualStudio\8.0\Configuration]
"DiffExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /base:\"$(Base)\" /mine:\"$(Mine)\" /basename:\"$(BaseName)\" /minename:\"$(MineName)\""
"PatchExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /diff:\"$(PatchFile)\" /patchpath:\"$(ApplyToDir)\""
"MergeExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /base:\"$(Base)\" /theirs:\"$(Theirs)\" /mine:\"$(Mine)\" /merged:\"$(Merged)\" /basename:\"$(BaseName)\" /theirsname:\"$(TheirsName)\" /minename:\"$(MineName)\" /mergedname:\"$(MergedName)\""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AnkhSVN\AnkhSVN\VisualStudio\9.0\Configuration]
"DiffExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /base:\"$(Base)\" /mine:\"$(Mine)\" /basename:\"$(BaseName)\" /minename:\"$(MineName)\""
"PatchExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /diff:\"$(PatchFile)\" /patchpath:\"$(ApplyToDir)\""
"MergeExePath"="$(HostProgramFiles)\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoiseMerge.exe /base:\"$(Base)\" /theirs:\"$(Theirs)\" /mine:\"$(Mine)\" /merged:\"$(Merged)\" /basename:\"$(BaseName)\" /theirsname:\"$(TheirsName)\" /minename:\"$(MineName)\" /mergedname:\"$(MergedName)\""

Here is the file AnkhDiff.Tools.cs that contains all the settings. Look for the functions GetDiffToolTemplates(), GetMergeToolTemplates(), and GetPatchToolTemplates().

When putting these into the registry by hand, make sure to change all single quote with a double quote. (There must be code in AnkhSVN that already does this.)

5 ways to answer managers' unfair software test, QA questions

5 ways to answer managers' unfair software test, QA questions: "About 20 years ago Tom DeMarco defined the unfair software question with his article, Why does software cost so much?. DeMarco claims it is not a question at all, but an assertion or a negotiating tactic. These questions also come up in software testing. Here are a few of my favorites:

'Why didn't QA find that bug?'
'Why is QA always the bottleneck?'
'Why do we have so many bugs?'
'What can we do to improve throughput from QA?'
'Are we done testing yet?'

Taken at face value, these may appear to be fair questions. But let's look at the assertions that are hidden inside of them:

'QA should have found that bug.'
'QA is the bottleneck.'
'We have too many bugs.'
'Testing is taking too long.'
'Testing should be finished by now.'"

Can't connect to F5 Firepass using OneCare

This was really irritating until a coworker mentioned that he couldn't connect with OneCare. All my previous Google searching was for naught.

"I found a solution that worked for me. In One Care, select Change Settings. This will open the Windows Live OneCare Firewall Advanced Settings. Select Ports and protocols tab. Then, select Add... this will open the POrt and Protocol Information page. Enter a Name in the Name text box. I entered "F5 VPN Port". Select TCP from the TCP or UDP drop down control. For port range, enter: 44444 to 44444. For the Connections, select: Outbound. For Scope, select Internet."

How to create a global error handler for your application

From Microsoft. Reminds me to include things like Request.Form and Request.QueryString in the log. Interestingly, they also include Exception.TargetSite and Exception.Source, which I hadn't considered before. Both might be useful.

10 best practices for successful project management | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com

10 best practices for successful project management 10 Things TechRepublic.com: "Given the high rate of project failures, you might think that companies would be happy to just have their project finish with some degree of success. That’s not the case. Despite the odds, organizations expect projects to be completed faster, cheaper, and better. The only way that these objectives can be met is through the use of effective project management processes and techniques. This list outlines the major phases of managing a project and discusses key steps for each one."

How to display an assembly in the "Add Reference" dialog box

How to display an assembly in the "Add Reference" dialog box: "When you are developing a class library, you may want Visual Studio .NET to list your library in the Add Reference dialog box on the .NET tab without the user having to browse for it.

This issue is not resolved if you install your assembly to the global assembly cache, because the Add Reference dialog box is path-based and does not enumerate the components from the global assembly cache."

Use Case/Project Management Stuff

Some musings/notes.

OpenUP -- their developer and tester stuff is cool. Also the risk management, and the prioritization (like kanban). The Powerpoint was very good.

Use Case structure -- see the wikipedia article for things to include.

Alistair Cockburn's points:

• Structure use cases with goals.
  • Non-functional requirements can be attached to goals.
• Goals have levels - high, low, overarching, short-term detailed, etc.
• Include Stakeholders and Interests - helps separate the wheat from the chaff
• Levels:
  • Brief - 2-4 sentences, for instance in a spreadsheet cell
  • Casual - a few paragraphs
  • Fully dressed - long template, include stakeholders, minimum guarantees, postconditions, business rules, performance constraints, etc.
• Alternative behaviors are more important than the main scenario!! For instance, they reveal subtle requirements.
• Do not use UI elements!
• His resources, templates, etc.

Long use case structure, probably for the detailed view:

• Name
• Version
• Goal - very important
• Summary
• Actors
• Precondition
• Triggers
• Basic course of events
• Alternative paths -
• Postconditions
• Business Rules
• Notes
• Author and Date

Iconix Process in a nutshell

Iconix talks about Robustness Analysis

Shrinking ViewState when using dynamic controls in ASP.NET

"For 'static' controls (meaning controls declared in your .ASPX page) the ViewState carries VERY little overhead, if any at all. Though for Dynamically Created controls the situation is a bit different. Very often when you create Dynamic Controls this is a three phase run:

• Instantiate the Controls
• Set its values
• Add it either directly or in-directly to the Page object

"IF you follow the EXACT same steps in the given sequence as the above list, then your ViewState object will be SIGNIFICANTLY reduced in size! This is also true for ALL WebControls and not only Gaia Ajax Widgets.

"The reason is that when your dynamically created Controls are being added to the page object then its complete lifecycle will execute which means that among other things the ViewState 'IsDirty' flag will be set to TRUE. When the ViewState IsDirty flag is set to true, then all properties you modify afterwards will have its values stored in the ViewState object. If you however set those properties BEFORE adding the Control to the Page object then the ViewState will not be dirty for those properties and values."

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows: "Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows"

http://www.connectionstrings.com/

Is what it says. Cool!

dave^2 = -1: An introduction to the SOLID principles of OO design

He makes this stuff more comprehensible than Robert Martin, who is the creator of the acronym.

dave^2 = -1: An introduction to the SOLID principles of OO design: "I would be very hard pressed to go passed [sic] Robert 'Uncle Bob' Martin's SOLID principles as the single most useful tool for helping me with OO design. Some people seem to have a natural talent for OO design and thinking, and have an innate understanding of these principles without requiring the SOLID formalism. I, on the other hand, find them indispensable.

"Unfortunately the names used in the somewhat-cryptic 'acronym of acronyms'[1] don't exactly lend themselves to being easily learned (Bob Martin and Scott discussed how this came about on a Hanselminutes episode on SOLID, which is well worth a listen). I thought I'd post my interpretation of the principles as a refresher for myself, and as an introduction for anyone trying the learn the terminology."

Visual WebGUI: Web UI Development - RIA Platform / Framework

Very, very cool! A few bugs, but it's open source!

Web UI Development - RIA Platform / Framework: "Developing new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) has never been so fast and simple due to Visual WebGui's drag & drop, near zero coding Development Experience. The rapid web development well suited for building small applications UI in a matter of hours as well as very complex and large applications in a very short time. Visual WebGui allows you to use your existing .NET skills and development patterns since it is based on proven desktop & web technologies. It simplifies web development by flattening the development process into a single layer and empowers front-end design with an intuitive visual WYSIWYG Form designer which lets you use any WinForms, ASP.net and Silverlight controls."

Microsoft StyleCop : Introducing StyleCop on Legacy Projects

Microsoft StyleCop : Introducing StyleCop on Legacy Projects: "In this article I’ll describe a technique for doing a slow, staged rollout of StyleCop over your existing codebase. This technique has been used successfully by multiple teams within Microsoft, allowing them to adopt the tool in a controlled manner without generating a lot of noise up front. The general idea is to enable the tool for all of your solutions, but disable the tool from analyzing all pre-existing C# files. This provides the following advantages:"

Peter Van Roy: Programming Paradigms for Dummies

To quote Lambda the Ultimate:

This chapter gives an introduction to all the main programming paradigms, their underlying concepts, and the relationships between them. We give a broad view to help programmers choose the right concepts they need to solve the problems at hand. We give a taxonomy of almost 30 useful programming paradigms and how they are related. Most of them differ only in one or a few concepts, but this can make a world of difference in programming. We explain briefly how programming paradigms influence language design, and we show two sweet spots: dual-paradigm languages and a definitive language. We introduce the main concepts of programming languages: records, closures, independence (concurrency), and named state. We explain the main principles of data abstraction and how it lets us organize large programs. Finally, we conclude by focusing on concurrency, which is widely considered the hardest concept to program with. We present four little-known but important paradigms that greatly simplify concurrent programming with respect to mainstream languages: declarative concurrency (both eager and lazy), functional reactive programming, discrete synchronous programming, and constraint programming. These paradigms have no race conditions and can be used in cases where no other paradigm works. We explain why for multi-core processors and we give several examples from computer music, which often uses these paradigms.

The concurrency stuff looks interesting.

40+ Essential Front End Web Developer Cheat Sheets | tripwire magazine

There's a ton!

24 JavaScript Best Practices for Beginners - Nettuts+

Though it says for beginners, it's not a bad refresher.

Steve Smith and SOLID

Since I missed Steve Smith's presentation at the last .NET SIG, and there is nothing posted (yet), here's a link to the SOLID principles that he was talking about।
[6/22/09 update: here's the link to his presentation.
And a link to Uncle Bob.]

Rio by Vice Magazine

Ask any self-respecting carnivore what to eat in Rio, and they’ll tell you about the rodizios. A rodizio is more than just a meal, it’s an elaborate battle of wits between you and the doe-eyed service staff, as they waft meat under your nose. You indicate your desire to stick or twist with a doublesided card; green meaning “feed me” and red meaning “get away from me, peasant.” Also, when in Rio, don’t forget to find a juice bar, and ask for an açai smoothie. It might look like something Barney the Dinosaur would leave in the toilet, but the Amazonian berries served with ice eradicate all traces of a hangover you got from drinking too much Brahma beer in approximately 30 seconds.



For a true carioca sleeping experience, head in search of the notorious love motels. Paid by the hour, motels are as ubiquitous and well-frequented as churches, with each one even given an individual star rating for their level of service. For a dollar or two per hour, you get your bog-standard plastic sheets and herpes on tap, but if you want to quite literally splash out, the five-star deluxe motels have heart-shaped water beds, sex harnesses, a hot-tub fit for a futebol team and gimp-suits on room service.



Forget hanging out, spend as much time and money as you can buying as much cheap tat as you can get. It’s best to avoid the enormous identikit shopping malls, and take to the streets if you want some weird stuff. Also, look out for the dudes selling racks of bootleg funk carioca CDs. The thrift shops of Lapa are the place to go for the Bonde Do Role look. You can also put together a nice collection of vintage Playboys, which, if you’re lucky, will have had just one careful owner.



In the south zone, there’s a small handful of underground clubs, such as Moo, Dama De Ferro and Fosfobox where you can join an invariably tattooed and bisexual crowd in watching big name DJs or, if you’re really lucky, Madoninha. She’s a blonde dwarf who sings literally translated renditions of Madge classics, such as “Como uma virgem. Oh!” If you want to learn more about “ginga”, the fluidity and movement of Brazil, watch the short film Movimento at brahma.com

Quality Circles and Communication -- brief synopses

Useful information for my job.

Very important point regarding the essence of Kaizen (emphasis added):

Much of the success of Kaizen came about because the system encouraged many small-scale suggestions that were cheap and quick to implement. They also came from shop-floor employees - who had a detailed appreciation of the benefit each change might make to the process concerned. By implementing many small improvements, the overall effect was substantial.

Their communication link has the following important point on communication, which point may have been missing from the communication team project charter:

Co-ordination of departments, teams and groups - e.g. making sure that marketing, production and administration know what each other is doing, when and why

GridView custom paging and sorting

If only I'd known about this page last December!

Multiple IE Versions revisited

I wrote a while back about installing multiple versions of IE on your computer. Since IE 8 came out, I went back to the site to see if it had been updated. It hadn't, but a commenter on the site posted this link: http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm

I haven't tried it yet, however.

Using Script# with ASP.NET

Random notes on this topic.

• Follow instructions here on wiring up the control, specifically the parts about implementing IScriptControl, and overriding OnPreRender() and Render(). However you *must* make one crucial change, or else you'll break ALL javascript on the page.
• You must change this line as follows:

Before:

    var descriptor = new ScriptControlDescriptor("namespace.class", this.ClientID);

After:


    var descriptor = new ScriptControlDescriptor("namespace.class", someOtherControl.ClientID);

The problem is that user controls do not, per se, have an associated HTML control, so it's necessary to place the control's contents inside a Panel. If you do try to create a descriptor using "this", the un-handled error resulting from the $create() call on the client will cause all page-initialization-related Javascript that runs after that point to fail, thus breaking the page in a big way.

GWT Designer, ScriptSharp, Ext JS

Some AJAX things I've been eyeing. Microsoft AJAX just isn't good for certain things, although it's nice.

• GWT, of course. Now 1.6 is in beta.
  
• GWT Designer -- $99 purchase, or $59/year.
  
• Script# - a .NET answer to GWT. Not many widgets, but works with Ext JS (!) via the extsharp project. Was on Codeplex, but removed. Speculation is that MS will integrate it into Visual Studio at some point. Here's a good video/powerpoint presentation on getting started. Helps to navigate your way around the bugs.
  

Asp.Net Session Timeout control

Works with AJAX too.

This is pretty cool. It truly is just something you drop onto the page and configure.

http://weblogs.asp.net/latishsehgal/archive/2008/08/29/asp-net-session-timeout-control.aspx

The blog post describes an important change, but he documents it rather poorly. The changes he describes must be made to the “Timeout.js” script.

Free AJAX progress spinner graphics

How cool is this?!

NYTimes: Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy

History happens in slow motion. This article looks like it's eerily foreshadowing the future. We go about our lives, worried about the situation around us, but the world is the same for the most part. After 9/11, everyone talked about how everything would change, yet the world continued as it did before. Irony did not die. But I think that the changes happening now will dwarf the post-9/11 changes that everyone was predicting at the time.

From The New York Times:

Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY

With unemployment at 8.1 percent, some economists believe that a wrenching restructuring is under way....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/business/economy/07jobs.html

Building Composite Data Bound Controls in ASP.NET

Describes how to build a CompositeDataBoundControl, overriding CreateChildControls() and so on.

Useful Visual Studio shortcut keys

I didn't know about "match brace," i.e. Ctrl-].

How to determine iPhone firmware version

This didn't work for me. Brought up tons of diagnostics, but no version.

"How do I find out what firmware version my iPhone is?

You don't actually need to know this in order to unlock your iPhone with us, as our software works with all current iPhone firmware versions, but to check yours - simply dial *3001#12345#* then press the call button, compare your Modem version to the table below to find out your firmware version:

1. 04.04.05_G - OTB 1.1.4 iPhone
2. 04.03.13_G - OTB 1.1.3 iPhone
3. 04.02.13_G - OTB 1.1.2 iPhone
4. 04.01.13_G - OTB 1.1.1 iPhone"

ASP.NET AJAX partial update does not work with xhtmlConformance tag in web.config

What a pain! I spent hours troubleshooting this.

I converted a .NET 1.1 application to .NET 2.0. The web.config had this section:

  <system.web>
    ...
    <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/>
    ...
  </system.web>

When I removed the xhtmlConformance tag, it began working again.

Temporal Data Techniques in SQL

Timestamps, holidays, etc., written by a member of the SQL-92 standards committee. Maybe coulda used this at Rockwell!

THE PALM PILOT AND THE HUMAN BRAIN

Interesting...

Part I.

and Part II.

Jeff Hawkins' web site is here: http://www.onintelligence.org/

Microsoft Naming Conventions

"The general format for a namespace name is as follows:

<Company>.(<Product>|<Technology>)[.<Feature>][.<Subnamespace>]

For example, Microsoft.WindowsMobile.DirectX."

Economy Made Few Gains in Bush Years

"President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges."

And yet there are those who will worship Dubya until the day they die. How can you take seriously any supposedly religious person who believes that Dubya was sent by God? Maybe he was sent by God to punish us for something -- like to punish us for voting Republican.

Developing a use case document, looking for guides or software to help

On StackOverflow.com, someone asked about a good reference guide and templates for writing use cases. The person with the best answer talked about Alistair Cockburn, and mentioned this document as well, which I haven't read yet: http://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/functreq.pdf

Goodbye Tangled Cables, Wrap the iPod Earphone Cord Neatly

I got an iPhone 3G on December 4, so this is invaluable to know.

My first WSCF web service project. Contract first, code later.

We're using WSCF (Web Services Contract First) 0.7 at work, and this guy published a review of an earlier version (0.5). He loved it except for the following, which might be different in 0.7, but I haven't checked yet:

"So far using WSCF for building the web service is quite a success. But I did not use it for building the consuming client. My main problem was that every roundtrip of the contracts requires deploying (plain copy) the generated wsdl and the accompanying schema's to the client code. Instead I created just a server project which included the contract schema's. One clean and independent project. As all info needed by a consumer of the service is in the wsdl all the consuming client application needs is a reference to the wsdl. Which is exactly what add web reference in VS does. Having updated the service all I need to do in the client project is Update Web Reference. However, the proxy generated by WCSF does offer some nice extra's. It returns the data (when the option in the wizard is set) as a collection, the VS web reference just sees an plain array. I also have to set the service endpoint (the URL with it's location) by hand. The latter is something I'll have to do anyhow, as it will be read from a config file. And I can live with the arrays as a trade off for a cleaner development process. This is a point where WSCF could be improved."

LINQ support on .NET 2.0

Oh thank god!!!

I'm working in a shop with ancient servers which run only .NET 2.0, so this is a wonderful thing to know about. Woo hoo!

Here's what he has to say:

1. "Create a new console application
   
2. Keep only System and System.Core as referenced assemblies
   
3. Set Copy Local to true for System.Core, because it does not exist in .NET 2.0
   
4. Use a LINQ query in the Main method. For example the one below.
   
5. Build
   
6. Copy all the bin output to a machine where only .NET 2.0 is installed
   
7. Run"
   

[Update Apr 2 2009: This didn't work for me because our server was using .NET 2.0 without SP1. Instead, I used the excellent LINQBridge.]

Gizmodo's 20 Essential iPhone Apps

Some cool shite.