Friday, January 19, 2007

Open Command Prompt Here Power Tool: CmdHere.exe

TimeSnapper: http://timesnapper.com/

Replace you regular command window with the Visual Studio 2005 command window by creating a bat file and adding this snippet:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"AutoRun"="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat""

 

The Parchment theme and the rest of the Visual Studio 2005 themes form: http://idehotornot.ning.com/

 

Others that I can't live without but you probably already know about:

NUnit, NAnt, MSBuild, Resharper, and SlickRun.

Friday, January 19, 2007 8:42:59 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 

<Disclaimer reason="I normally don't do these" exception="but its about programming languages" />

 

You are Lisp.  Very few people like you (Probably because you use too many parenthesis (You better stop it (Reallly)))
Which Programming Language are You?

Friday, January 19, 2007 5:28:26 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Sunday, January 14, 2007

If you are free tomorrow (Monday, January 15th) from 6-9pm make sure to come check out Miguel Castro at the Stanley Milner Library. He will be talking about designing applications for extensibility. As always there is also the chance to talk and network with your .NET developer peers before and after the event.

You can get a sneak preview of the kinds of things he will be talking about from his appearance on the Polymorphic Podcast. Also if you would like to study his code and presentation material before the presentation so that you understand it better you can view it at SteelBlue Solutions under the Downloads->Presentations link.

Sunday, January 14, 2007 8:33:10 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 

Say you have the following directory structure:

DirStructure

To compile all projects under the src directory you can use the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project DefaultTargets="Compile" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <ItemGroup>
    <ProjectFiles Include="C:\YourApplicationFolder\src\**\*.csproj" />
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="Compile">
    <MSBuild Projects="@(ProjectFiles)" />
  </Target>
</Project>
This will loop through all the folders and build each project file. Since MSBuild automatically resolves dependencies between projects, it will build everything in the correct order.
Sunday, January 14, 2007 6:12:42 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Thursday, January 11, 2007

Today I was inside an Air Canada plane that had its door open in -30 degree weather waiting to take off for 30 minutes when the following Air Canada recorded announcment came on over the speakers:

"Thanks for flying Air Canada, if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable please let us know."

Maybe they should have held off on that recording until the plane door was closed and the heaters were turned on!

Fun
Thursday, January 11, 2007 11:50:40 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Monday, January 08, 2007

The current project I am working on has been my first chance to work with .NET 2.0 in a real world environment and I have to say that I am really digging the generic list functions. Check out the hockey player class below:

public class HockeyPlayer
{
        private int number;
        private string name;
        private int age;
        private string position;

        public HockeyPlayer(int number, string name, int age, string position)
        {
            this.number = number;
            this.name = name;
            this.age = age;
            this.position = position;
        }

        public int Number
        {
            get { return number; }
            set { number = value; }
        }

        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }

        public int Age
        {
            get { return age; }
            set { age = value; }
        }

        public string Position
        {
            get { return position; }
            set { position = value; }
        }
}

An easy way of finding all draft eligble players (players over 18 year of age) in a list is to take advantage of delegates and the methods in the generic list class:

[Test]
public void ShouldFindAllDraftEligibleHockeyPlayers()
{
     List<HockeyPlayer> hockeyPlayers = new List<HockeyPlayer>();
           
     hockeyPlayers.Add(new HockeyPlayer(10, "Angelo Esposito", 17, "Left Wing"));
     hockeyPlayers.Add(new HockeyPlayer(9, "Andrew Cogliano", 19, "Left Wing"));
     hockeyPlayers.Add(new HockeyPlayer(10, "Jonathan Toews", 18, "Center"));
     hockeyPlayers.Add(new HockeyPlayer(24, "Sam Gagner", 17, "Right Wing"));
            
     List<HockeyPlayer> draftEligiblePlayers = 
         hockeyPlayers.FindAll(delegate(HockeyPlayer player)
                               {
                                    return player.Age < 18;
                               });
           
     Assert.AreEqual(draftEligiblePlayers.Count, 2);
}

The delegate method searches through the list and finds all draft eligible players, this saves you the time of creating a for loop to search through the list.

[ Currently Playing : Shampoo Suicide - Broken Social Scene - Half Nelson (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (04:07) ]
Monday, January 08, 2007 1:57:07 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [1]  | 
Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Sorry D'Arcy but I got this in my email today. I attribute it to my unique ability to take Nabob coffee and make it taste like its Starbucks.

------------------------------------------
Dear Steven Rockarts,


Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2007 Microsoft® MVP Award!


The Microsoft MVP Award is our way of saying thank you and to honor and support the significant contributions you make to communities worldwide (or just at work). As a recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award, you join an elite group of technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing your real world expertise with users and Microsoft.  Microsoft salutes all MVPs for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success everyday.  To learn more about the MVP Program, visit: www.microsoft.com/mvp.


Your extraordinary efforts in Making coffee every morning at the office and making it PERFECTLY during the past year are greatly appreciated. The benefits you will enjoy as a recipient of the MVP Award are outlined below.
--------------------------------------------

The secret to achieving this MVP status is actually to go above and beyond in the coffee making newsgroups and forums. Its not actually about making coffee.

Fun
Wednesday, January 03, 2007 5:24:47 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Sunday, December 31, 2006

I just finished watching a great presentation by Mark Russinovich on malware removal. This is a must watch if your family sees you as the go to computer tech support. Check it out here.

Sunday, December 31, 2006 10:32:29 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Saturday, December 30, 2006

Last week, a trial version of the Opera web browser was released for the Wii. I was able to successfully control my mouse on my laptop using a bluetooth adapter and today I found a media center has been released for the Wii by Red Kawa.

I installed the media center and found that the music functionality does not yet work on the media center, its no big deal because I was planning on using it for movies/tv anyway.

Converting the videos takes about 20 min with the Red Kawa Wii Video Converter, a couple of games of Wii Sports Tennis should make that go by quickly.

Apparently you can combine the Red Kawa converter with Videora and it will automatically download and convert Bit Torrent RSS feeds for you. The downside is that Videora is not free but there are other programs out there that can do the same thing.

Once you have your video converted you use the Wii browser to access the media center and play your videos. It works pretty well but the Wii browser controls never go away so you have to deal with them while watching your videos.

I would be very impressed if Nintendo built its own media center and made it available for download from the Wii Shop Channel. Hopefully Nintendo provides a better experience.

Saturday, December 30, 2006 9:25:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Friday, December 29, 2006

I've been tagged by D'Arcy, so here we go with 5 things you may not know about me.

1 - I originally went to school to be high school teacher majoring in history. As part of my curriculum I took a programming course which I enjoyed more than teaching so I decided to take my current career path.

2 - I love hockey (maybe thats a bit obvious). I grew up playing and I still play today. I played against a couple of guys that are in the NHL today but no one really special. I also think that Steve Yzerman is the best all around player to ever play the game, and don't say Gretzky was better because all he could do was score goals, his defensive game was WEAK!

3 - I am a big fan of Tennis but have never really played. Maybe thats why I am addicted to Wii Tennis. My ranking is 2034 (pro is 1000).

4 - Like D'Arcy I grew up on Macs. I didn't get my first Windows machine until I was 18.

5 - I am a big supporter of dropping Africa's debt and providing them with cheap drugs for treatment. I am a proud Canadian but I think it is embarrassing that Canada originally authored the promise that all G8 countries should contribute 0.7% of their GNP to Africa in 1969. Yet,we have failed to meet that goal despite budget surpluses. 4 countries that are not members of the G8 and with weaker economies than us have met that goal. We are being embarrassed on the world stage.

I will now tag Catherine, Jean-Paul Boodhoo, James Kovacs, Dave Woods, and Kyle Bailey. Sorry, again sorry.

Friday, December 29, 2006 9:43:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [3]  | 

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