Chinh Do

.NET/C# Programming

• Thread synchronization: Wait and Pulse demystified. By Nick Butler.
• Use a shortened GUID for file names and request strings. ShortGuid - A shorter and url friendly GUID class in C#. By Dave Transom.
• Top Ten Tips to Using XPath and XPointer. By John E. Simpson.
• Client-side caching for script methods access in ASP.NET AJAX, by Jeffrey Zhao.
• A very nice two-part introduction to jQuery, by Rick Strahl.
• A COMPARISON OF MICROSOFT’S C# PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TO SUN MICROSYSTEMS’ JAVA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE. By Dare Obasanjo.
• Silverlight
  • Silverlight 2 End to End Tutorial: Building a Digg Search Client, by Scott Guthrie.
  • Fluid Canvas in Silverlight, by neo.
• WCF
  • Performance Improvement for WCF Client Proxy Creation in .NET 3.5 and Best Practices. By Wenlon Dong.
  • A comprehensive guide to using MsmqIntegrationBinding with MSMQ 3.0 in WCF. By Simon Evans.
  • If your WSE 3.0 Mutual Certificate Authentication web service runs very slowly, try setting establishSecurityContext to true.

PowerShell

• PowerShell Community Extensions has very useful cmdlets such as Get/Set-Clipboard, Write-GZip, Start-Process, Select-Xml and many others.
• John D. Cook’s PowerShell Cookbook has lots of useful PowerShell recipes.

Apps and Tools

• Microsoft Windows SteadyState (free) is great for maintaining public-access computers.

Other Stuff

• Anatomy of a malware scam - The evil genius of XP Antivirus 2008. By Jesper M. Johansson. If you’ve had to help your relatives and friends clean up after XP Antivirus 2008/2009, read this very detailed analysis of the malware.

A while ago I had been posting my Finds of the Weeks series and this is the continuation of that. Instead of weekly though, this series will be more of a “whenever possible” kind of thing.

General Programming

• Some code optimizations can actually slow down your app. Beautiful Code: False Optimizations by sernaferna.
• Quad core + 8GB RAM + Server 2008 with Hyper-V = A Great Dev Environment. By Craig Lussier.
• I started using JQuery a few months ago and it’s now my favorite Javascript library. Combine with Visual Studio 2008’s Javascript intellisense, and you have scripting nirvana.
• jqModal is a modal dialog plug-in for JQuery. Worked great for a project I was working on two months ago.
• Safari Books Online is a great online programming books service. For a monthly fee, you get to read several books using your browser. The browser interface is not great, but the price is much lower than actually buying the book.
• Randomly ordering an array is simple. That’s what I thought until I ran across Techniques for Randomly Reordering an Array (by Scott Michell).

.NET/C# Stuff

• Eugene Osovetsky explained a few peculiarities when consuming WCF services from Visual Studio 2003: Solving the “disappearing data” issue when using Add Web Reference or Wsdl.exe with WCF services.
• If you have a DataReader and don’t intend to read all records from it, call IDbCommand.Cancel before you call IDataReader.Close so that the rest of the unread records are skipped.
• Scott Hanselman: Assembly Fiefdoms: What’s the Right Number of Assemblies/Libraries?
• VS.NET Tip of the Day: Reusing C# Source Code Across Multiple Assemblies. By ShawnVN.
• Setting the log file location at runtime with a DOM configured log4net. By Keyley on Kode.
• WCF - Recommended Settings for Tracing and Message Logging. MSDN.
• WCF - Enabling Performance Counters. By Nicholas Allen.
• One of these days I’ll get back into Windows Mobile programming. Adjust Your Ring Volume For Ambient Noise, Chris Mitchell.
• Did you know ReSharper supports wildcards in its Go To Type dialog box? Joe White’s 31 Days of ReSharper series is a must read for ReSharper fanatics like me.
• Is image processing in C++ a thing of the past? Discover Enhanced Image Manipulation with GDI+ (by Tade Oyebode).
• DataContractSerializer can be used to deserialize WCF messages.
• Unraveling the Mysteries of .NET 2.0 Configuration, by Jon Rista.

Database

• Stefan Delmarco talked about the NEWSEQUENTIALID function in SQL Server 2005.
• Mutexes are fun: Application Locks (or Mutexes) in SQL Server 2005. Mladen Prajdic.

Windows

• Experiencing strange issues with your Windows (like dialog boxes that don’t show up)? You may be having a desktop heap issue. Try these articles:
  • Windows XP flakiness - solved. By Kevin Dente.
  • “Out of Memory” error message appears when you have a large number of programs running. Microsoft Support.
• If IE crashes when you try to open SharePoint documents, try this fix: regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OWSSUPP.DLL”.

Software, Tools, etc.

• If you have a Linksys WRT54* router, I highly recommend loading Tomato firmware. I have been using it for about 6 months now and it’s so much better than the built-in Linksys firmware. Tomato’s QOS works great to make sure my Vonage phone line remains usable at all times.

PowerShell

• Ben Pierce posted a series of very useful PowerShell command-line demos: Demo1 (Administering Windows), Demo 2 (Administering Servers in bulk), Demo 3 (How do I Know Which Class to Use), Demo 4 (Administering Hyper-V).

Something Different

• World War is a very nicely done digital animation by Vincent Chai. My son can watch it for hours.
• Your browsing history can be used by any web site out there to guess your gender. Using your browser URL history to estimate gender, by Mike on Ads.
• Humans can fly (video).
• A fascinating into the human mind: The Interpreter (Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?). By John Colapinto.

If you are a subscriber to my blog, you may have noticed that I have not been posting my more “Finds of the Week” in the last 2 months. Well, I was a little busy with the month-long Euro 2008 tournament in June, plus a couple of new games (Crysis and Medieval Total War II). Finally the Olympics in August finished me off.

I am going to turn this series into a periodic (as in longer than weekly :-)) Interesting Finds series from now on.

Oh, if you want to know… Crysis is ok. Very good graphics and requires a hot rod box but gameplay is just ok. I am more into realistic squad-based shooters. Medieval 2 is very addictive.

.NET, C#

• I can’t believe I didn’t know about ThreadStaticAttribute. While searching for more information on it, I ran across this interesting article on MSDN Magazine: Scope<T> and More (Stephen Toub) that talked about the use of ThreadStatic in System.Transactions.
• 10 Tools Which I Left After Using VSTS 2008. By joycsharp.
• NDepend - deep code metrics. By John-Daniel Trask.

Programming, General

• Windows Vista and Server 2008 bring us Transactional NTFS. Find out more with Enhance Your Apps With File System Transactions. Jason Olson, MSDN.
• 10 reasons why SQL Server 2008 is going to rock. By Angry Hacker.

PowerShell

• I am finding more and more things I can do with PowerShell everyday. The other day I had to “touch” a file… two lines is what it takes:

  PS C:\Users\Cdo\AppData\Local\Temp> $f = ls testFile.txt
  PS C:\Users\Cdo\AppData\Local\Temp> $f.LastWriteTime = new-object System.DateTime 2007,12,31
  PS C:\Users\Cdo\AppData\Local\Temp> ls testFile.txt
  
      Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::C:\Users\Cdo\AppData\Local\Temp
  
  Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
  ----                -------------     ------ ----
  -a---        12/31/2007  12:00 AM          8 testFile.txt
  
  PS C:\Users\Cdo\AppData\Local\Temp>

Something Different

• Euro 2008 Official Match Ball - special production film [video]. Yes, I was a little obsessed with Euro 2008.

I am finding more and more things I can do with PowerShell everyday. The other day, I had to “touch” a file… one line is what it takes:

(ls testFile.txt).LastWriteTime = New-object DateTime 1991,12,31

Programming

• Lighten up, you’re having fun. Says Kyle Baley.
• Sergio Pereira shares tips on how to get more work done: Automation FTW.
• Green tests != proven code. By Derik Whittaker.
• "k" explains deadlocking with The Parable of the Bathroom.

.NET/C#

• ASP.NET MVC Source Code Now Available. By Scott Guthrie.
• Patrick Smacchia: I want non-nullable types in C#4.
• Why Convert.ToInt32 Might be dangerous. DevMuse.
• FormatWith 2.0 - String formatting with named variables. By James Newton.
• How to: Optimize the memory usage with strings. Dot Net Facts.
• Dan Rigsby demonstrates a technique to grayout an image in .Net.
• Discover Mighty Instance Management Techniques For Developing WCF Apps. By Juval Lowy.
• Good introduction to ASP.NET MVC from Chris Tavares: Building Web Apps without Web Forms.

PowerShell

• PowerShell 2.0 has script debugging! Bart de Smet has more on his article: Windows PowerShell 2.0 Feature Focus - Script Debugging.

Programming

• Very good tips to gain a better understanding of your Project Managers: 10 things Project Managers wish Developers understood. By Frank Kelly.
• Jakob Nielsen’s Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes point out some common design problems that can be easily avoided.
• What’s your favorite code search engine? Learn to search for code better with one of these 5 Great Code Search Engines!. By David Knight.

C#.NET

• Scott Guthrie provided an extensive First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2.
• Circular references with WCF: solved a different way. By Ruurd Boeke.
• Bored with nothing to read? Check out Jon Skeet’s C# and .NET articles and links. Lots of good stuff to peruse.
• Keith Brown’s Security Briefs: Limited User Problems and Split Knowledge discusses WCF services running under normal user accounts.
• WCF - Securing your WCF service. By William Tay.
• WCF - Fundamentals of WCF Security. By Michele Leroux.

.NET Tips & Tricks

• Did you know you can give threads any names you want (MSDN)? The names are extremely useful when it comes to debugging time:

  

• System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory will create all directories and subdirectories as specified by the path parameter. No need to write code to create each directory in the chain. Just do this:

  Directory.CreateDirectory(@"c:\MyApp\Env\Dev");

• System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName returns the directory name from a fully qualified file name.
  

Powershell

• Round-robin game scheduling algorithm in Powershell. By Scott Hanselman. Check out my C# 2.0 algorithm in the comments section.
• Mitch Denny wrote How To: Host the PowerShell Runtime.
• Use Powershell array expression syntax @(…) allows you to force a scalar return value to be wrapped in a array, if it’s not already in an array. I learned about this the hard way while trying to figure out while Get-Childitem sometimes returns an array and sometimes a scalar. Bruce Payette wrote more about it here.

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC

• I needed a way to stream music and other media to my Windows Mobile phone (Samsung SCH-i760) and all the PCs around the house. Orb seems to be the answer. I’ve only had it running for a few days but it seems to be working great. I can stream music and photos (have not tested videos yet) to any PC in the house or anywhere on the net. I can also listen to my entire music library on my i760 phone anytime, anywhere through Verizon Wireless’s unlimited (with a catch… not to exceed 5GB) EDVO connection.

  

• I am a Google Mobile guy, but Yahoo! Go for Windows Mobile also looks very cool. I downloaded it to my Samsung SCH-i760 a few days ago. I am still checking it out but here are a few things I like:
  • Nice and responsive interface.
  • Built-in RSS Reader.
  • Street and satellite maps.

    Here are a few screenshots:

    

    

     

Software and Tools

• You can configure Notepad++ to always use spaces for tabs/indentation. The option is a little hidden. It’s in Settings/Preferences/MISC, under Tab Setting:

  

Something a Little Different

• Alien Prank Goes Bad (video).

.NET Programming, C#

• HTTP Programming with WCF and the .NET Framework 3.5 is a good article covering HTTP endpoints in WCF 3.5. By Justin Smith, MSDN Magazine.
• WCF Load Test is an open source tool that can generate unit tests from WCF trace files.
• Source Code Outliner PowerToy for Visual Studio 2008 is now available. Via James Lau.
• Good tips on interview techniques from Dustin Andrews: Why doesn’t anybody ask me to code a unit test in an interview?
• Throw away that mouse and go mouseless with ASP.NET 2.0. Suprotim Agarwal.
• Quake 3 Arena Ported to .NET Managed C++ VS 2008! Greg Dolley.
• Add support for OpenID to your ASP.NET app. Mads Kristensen posted his OpenID implementation.
• How to Create a Database Object Programmatically in Enterprise Library, Painfully? Yang’s .NET Zone.
• Miked Esjardins shared his experience contributing to an open source project.
• Andy shared first hand tips on being a developer during a recession.
• Firefox is a developer’s best friend. According to Mohsin.

Powershell

• [Tip] Option Explicit in PowerShell. Sharar Gvirtz.

Software and Tools

• Yahoo Implements OpenID. Michael Arrington, via Techcrunch.
• Microsoft Expression Encoder is my new tool of choice to perform batch compression of digicam movies. Batch processing is handled very nicely, especially on my new Quad Core PC. I used to use MeGUI/x264 before, but it was just taking too much time to work through the various bugs and issues.

  

• If you use OneNote, check out the OneNote 2007 PowerToys. John Guin.
• Speakeasy’s Speed Test is my favorite bandwidth tester:

  

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC

• Scott Hanselman posted a nice list of mobile-friendly web sites.

Something Different

• The FT liveblogs the Societe Generale conference call, via Marc Andreessen.

It’s 2008. Happy New Year!

Tips and Tricks

• I can’t believe I didn’t know about this Visual Studio command before: File.OpenContainingFolder. Asmita A Wankhede mentioned it, but he left a few important details out. By default, this command does not have a shortcut, so you would have to assign one to it (try CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+O). Also, the "item" that this command works on is the currently opened item in the editor, not the selected item in the Solution Explorer. See my Visual Studio tips article for instructions on how to create new shortcuts (section 3 - Make New Shortcuts).
   
• Aaron Lerch shared a tip on how to use Powershell to perform search-and-replace on an entire folder hierarchy.

.NET, C#, Programming

• Derik Whittaker’s article on Things to think about if you want to be a consultant lists some questions to ask and things to be aware of if you are thinking about becoming a consultant or contractor.
• I need to start using Log4Net soon at work and Emanuele Bartolesi’s walk-through on how to use Log4net in your ASP.net application will come in handy.
• Dare Obasanjo asked a thought-provoking question: Does C# 3.0 Beat Dynamic Languages at their Own Game?
• Aaronontheweb made 8 Bold Predictions for Web 2.0 in 2008. One of the predictions is that Google will have its first failure in 2008. I thought Google Answers was it.
• If you are learning WCF, check out Michele Bustamante’s That Indigo Girl. Via Is This Thing On.
• If you have done or are planning to do automated GUI testing, check out Automated GUI testing - Is it worth it? by Mladen Prajdić.
• Bruce Eckel wrote about the The Mythical 5% of top developers and shared tips on how you can be part of that exclusive club.
• For Oracle developers, ODAC 11g has been released. Via Mark A Williams.
• If like me, you have heard about SubSonic but don’t know much about it, Kent Sharkey’s Introduction to SubSonic (Dotnetslackers) provides a quick primer.

Software And Tools

• Did you know that something called Robocopy (short for Robust File Copy, not Robot Copy), is the new XCOPY? It’s a standard tool in Windows Vista and is also available as part of the Windows Resource Kit. Via Don Box’s Spoutlet on Pluralsight.

  

• I recently tried and liked GhostDoc very much. It’s a free Visual Studio add-in to help write XML documentation comments. Roland Weigelt wrote a nice intro article on GhostDoc on DotnetSlackers here.
• SyncBackSE is a great folder synchronization utility. It has tons of features… maybe even a little bit on the bloated side. It costs $30 for a single license. If you just want something simple, Microsoft’s free SyncToy may do the trick for you.

   

Gadgets

• From CES, it looks like Blu-ray will be the winner of the HD format war. No, the war is not completely over, but this was the landing at Normandy… so to speak. The loss is just too great for the HD-DVD camp to recover.

And Now, Something Different

• Richmond’s Lunar New Year Festival is on Jan 27.

Here are this week’s finds:

.NET, C#, Programming

• ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview is out (ScottGu). This includes the ASP.NET MVC Toolkit.
• Mikhail Arkhipov announced a new version of the Visual Studio Spell Checker add-in. I have not used this before but it’s next on my install list.
• Kyle Baley’s article Refactoring by rote, or "How to have a ReSharper Orgy!" is an entertaining read. You’ll probably learn some things from it too.
• Another interesting post from Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror): Sorting for Humans : Natural Sort Order.
• Mark Willams shared a technique on how to create a variable In-List with ODP.NET.
• Eric Lippert takes us on another fabulous adventure in coding: Immutability in C#. The series has 5 parts so far. Read them here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.
• Paul Nielsen shared his experience designing and implementing a 35K TPS SQL Server database in 10 lessons from 35K tps. Highly recommended.
• If you are new to Subversion like me, check out Subversion and TortoiseSVN tips and tricks from Vidmar.net.
• Where Are All the Qualified Programmers? by Scott Westfall is an interesting take on the supposed programmer shortage in the U.S.
• Gary Barber’s article 10 Signs You Are Working Too Much reminds me of some of my past projects.
• Jim Wilson has put together a nice list of Firefox Extensions for web development.
• I am still eagerly waiting for the upcoming release of the .NET Framework source code (ScottGu). The immediate reason is that I want to create a class like List<T> but allowing only unique items and having a Contains method that "approaches an O(1) operation" like Dictionary<T>.ContainsKey().

Software and Tools

• SgmlReader is an XmlReader API over any SGML document including HTML and OFX for example. HTML is an SGML grammar, so you can use this tool to convert HTML into well-formed XML. I started to use this for my current project last week and it’s been working great so far.
• Gmail Associate Product Marketing Manager Robby Stein wrote about 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about. I love the "Archive and next" shortcut and "Filter messages like this" features. 

  

• Also from the Official Gmail BLog, Dave Cohen announced the cool new label colors feature. 

  

• Iris open source syntax highlighter supports over 460 syntaxes. It has a web interface here.

  

• PowerTab, from Marc van Orsouw (PowerShell Guy), is a great "intel
  Technorati Tags: dotnet,c#,powershell
• lisense" add-in for PowerShell.

And Now, Something Different

Here’s a Christmas tree made out of Heineken beer bottles. I took this picture last December at the Imperial Hotel in Hue, Vietnam, while vacationing there. Click on the picture for a larger version.