VS2010: When I Build You (the Visual Studio 2010 song)
I came across this awsome song just now and wanted to share it with you (there is a little PHP rant in there that makes the icing on the cake 
)
By the way, according to ScottGu’s series of blog posts about VS2010 and .Net 4, Beta 2 isn’t too far away.
Climate change – the last argument you’ll ever need
This is a silver bullet that can end all debate on whether or not the global climate change is human-made or not and whether to take action or not.
The essence of the argument is a simple worst case/best case matrix that shows the consequences of action vs no action on the climate changes being real or not.
See this video and then forward it to everyone you know. Me – I am no gambler so I am betting on column A to minimize my risk…
General: Missing web controls in toolbox – fixed!
Today I had a real “WTF” moment! Since I reformatted my laptop and installed Vista and Visual Studio 2008, I have been unable to install any web controls. That is, I had no problems with the installation, but the controls never showed up in the toolbox. After a couple of weeks I finally found the source of the problem: My mouse. My freakin’ mouse!!
It turns out that there was a driver problem with some of Microsoft’s wireless products that interfered with Visual Studio. Missing toolbox items was one of the problems, unstable intellisense was another. Unplugging the mouse fixed everything just like magic…
According to this knowledge base article, the fix has been available for over a year, but it sits quietly and anonymously in the optional update list, waiting for someone to understand what the hell it fixes. The name of the update that saved the day (week, year, you choose…) is: “Microsoft HID Non-User Input Data Filter”
I owe a huge THANK YOU to the guys at Developer Express. Thanks Vito!
General: Circle of Interest
Paul Stowell (via Fredrik Kalseth) blogged about his Circle of Interest, and I thought I’d follow up with my own.
Here is a description of the three categories:
Core
These are things I enjoy, care about, and follow as much as I can. When news breaks in these areas, I try to stay on top. I like to think I’m an expert in some of them, and have strong opinions on the rest.
Non-core
I find myself working with these things, or have a minor interest in them, but tend to follow announcements occasionally. I have opinions and will probably complain if I don’t like certain aspects of them, but I’m not about to start evangelizing them.
I don’t care
The only time I spend in these things is to decide whether I care or not. I don’t really use them.
And here is my circle of interest:
Blog tip: Windows Live Writer with source code formatting plugin
EDIT: This is no longer an issue since I moved to WordPress. The original post can be found here, and the source code below is formatted using the built-in code formatter in WordPress.
I am blogging about software development. Invariably, my posts will contain some kind of source code examples, be it XML, XAML, C#, VB, SQL or whatever. My two first posts here included a lot of <span style=”margin-left: 15px”> or <pre> or the likes. Not too productive…
As I had a feeling that I wasn’t the only nerd on BlogSpot, I had a feeling this problem would already be solved, so I turned to my all-knowing friend, Google. And sure enough, she knew. I found Steve Dunn’s plugin for Live Writer that does just that.
So on I went and installed both Microsoft Live Writer and Steve’s plugin, and this is the first post using these tools for publising. Here is a couple of sample source codes:
C#:
[TestMethod]
public void TestThatEqualPromoInfoObjectsReturnEqualsIsTrue()
{
PromoInfo info1 = new PromoInfo();
info1.PendingAccountID = 1;
info1.PromoID = 1;
PromoInfo info2 = new PromoInfo();
info2.PendingAccountID = 1;
info2.PromoID = 1;
Assert.AreEqual(info1, info2);
}
XML:
<compilation debug="true"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Transactions, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System.Configuration, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/> <add assembly="System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/> <add assembly="System.Xml, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> </assemblies> </compilation>
Not too shabby…
Various
