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Finds of the Week – January 20, 2008

January 21, 2008
Chinh Do
Dotnet/.NET - C#, Gadgets, HDTV, Programming, Technology, Windows Mobile / Pocket PC
0 Comments

.NET, C#, Programming

ScottGui made the long awaited announcement: .NET Framework Library Source now available.
Roy Osherove raised a attention grabbing question: Dependency Injection – Is it relevant beyond unit testing?
From the folks who brought you Best C# Blogs, a List of best C# Web Sites. By Tim Martinn/DevTopics.
Sandcastle January 2008 Release Available. Via John Mandia.
James Carr’s TDD Anti-Patterns is a fun and enlightening read on of Test Driven Development.
It’s possible to write your own ASP.NET Web Service help page. Shahed Khan has the details.
Tobias Hertkorn posted a great tip on how to measure memory consumption of objects in C# right in the code.

Software and Tools

Jeff Atwood shared the Top Five Browser Shortcuts Everyone Should Know. I didn’t know about the middle mouse button browser shortcut. Very useful.
Reading Nazmul Idris’ post on Microsoft OneNote 2007 prompted me to try it myself…. and I loved it. It’s a great application to keep track of notes, journal entries, work logs, etc. It’s going to be an essential app for me from now on.

I especially like offline mode support for USB flash drives. You can keep your Notebooks on a flash memory card. OneNote automatically synchronizes its local cache with the flash card when the card is inserted. When not inserted, you can still work on the local cached copy.
What I don’t like: no VBA macro support. One of the first thing I tried was pressing ALT+F11 to bring up the VBA IDE… nothing happened. A quick search in Online Help confirmed my sinking feeling: no VBA support. Supposedly, you can write add-ins.

Windows Mobile/Pocket PC

The coolest applications on the Windows Mobile platform, by Mike Riley.

Gadgets

Scott Hanselman did a extensive review of Verizon FIOS TV.

Something different

Watch dolphins blowing circles made of air bubbles.

Finds of the Week – December 13, 2008

.NET, C#, Programming

Bill Gates showed a video at his CES keynote speech about what his last day at Microsoft may be like. View the video on YouTube.
Slate’s article "We’re Watching You, Slacker" is an interesting read on a research study on peer effects. Via The Old New thing.
Anis Uddin Ahmad shared a tip on how to avoid POSTDATA resend warning from the browser.
The Visual Basic Team released a whole bunch of performance statistics comparing Visual Studio 2008 vs 2005. Short summary: Visual Studio 2008 is faster, sometimes a lot faster.
I learned from Sara Ford that the File.OpenContaingFolder command I wrote about last week is actually available by default in Visual Studio 2005/2008 from the context menu for each file tab:
Stephan advised to use the "money" data type to store currency amounts instead of doubles. For good reasons.
From .NET Tip of the Day: there is a configuration setting for .NET’s SmtpMail class to drop outgoing messages to a folder. Great for testing.

Software & Tools

Cpu-z is a cool little freeware application that provides information about your CPU. Here we are looking my brand new quad-core CPU.
Service Pack 1 Release Candidate for Windows Vista is available for public download. Maybe I’ll install it.
If you need a folder/file comparison/diff tool, try the SourceGear’s DiffMerge, now free. Via WebLog of Ken Cox.
Windows Vista has a very useful but hidden Copy as Path feature (Via Luke Foust). In Windows XP, the Send To X Powertoy used to provide this feature.

And Now, Something Different

I enjoy doing graphics design now and then. Here’s a cover I did this past weekend for the Richmond Vietnamese Association’s annual Tet (lunar new year) magazine issue (click image for full-size):

How to Open Containing Explorer Folder in Visual Studio

I think this is useful and not well known enough to warrant its own blog post.

Did you know that there is a Visual Studio command called File.OpenContainingFolder? Asmita A Wankhede wrote about 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).

This works with both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.

Finds of the Week – January 6, 2008

January 6, 2008
Chinh Do
Dotnet/.NET - C#, PowerShell, Programming, Software/tools, Tips
4 Comments

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.

Finds of the Week – December 30, 2007

I have been a little bit busy this past week enjoying the holidays and playing some of my old favorite games like Rome Total War and The Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

No big news in .NET world this week. We are still waiting for the .NET framework source code to be released.

Here is a screenshot from the game Rome Total War:

And this is from Oblivion:

Happy New Year!