Re-geekification

Just in case this software thing doesn't pan out...

2007-09-19T22:42:00.001-07:00

I might just do alright in a stenopool. From the Typequick online typing test:Number of words typed: 208Test duration: 3 minSpeed: 69.3 words/min. (346 keystrokes/min.)Error penalty: 8Accuracy: 96.2%

Nerd Test

2007-09-11T08:43:00.001-07:00

Ah, it has been a while:

Good time to get geeky

2007-08-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for WindowsOf course now I have a dozen tools to download and try out. Sigh.[Listening to: Glenn Miller - Juke Box Saturday Night]

Recast. Rebrand. Regeekify

2007-08-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

Has it been a year already? Amazing. Scary. Sad. So sad.I suppose I should back up a bit.Just under a year ago I was promoted to my level of incompetance. Not that I mind, I rather enjoy the people side of things. I knew I would miss being a techie, but hey, progress is progress.Fortunately I was given the opportunity last May to review John Robbins' stellar new book: Debugging Applications

Tutorial - NHibernate and VS2005 - Part 1

2006-08-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

Back on track. Or at least I hope so.In part 1 my goals are:create a class Customer holding some archetypical customer fieldscreate a database with a single table Customerwrite enough NHibernate plumbing code to connect to this database andpersist an instance of the Customer class into the databaseNot terribly lofty, but achievable. I hope.Let's get started withcreate a class Customer holding

Tutorial - NHibernate and VS2005 - Part 0.1

2006-08-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, slight wrinkle. I spent the better part of the last 2 days just getting back into working order. My version of SQL Server 2005 wasn't getting along with my version of Visual Studio 2005. Specifically, SQL Server wouldn't connect. I figure I'd re-install, and from there things went downhill. After several uninstall/reinstall/repair cycles it finally dawned on my that my CTP of SQL

Tutorial - NHibernate and VS2005 - Part 0

2006-07-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe I'm just dumber than the average bear, but I just couldn't get NHibernate working.I tried several beginner level tutorials, but still nothing.Mind you I was trying the lastest alpha release (1.2.0 alpha 1).And I was trying to hook up to Access 2003 as a back end which adds it's own complexity.So, I figured I'd go back to First Principles. All of the tutorials use SQL Server 2005 which

Checking file contents using Subversion Hooks

2006-04-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

I found lots of examples of verifying checkin comments using Subversion commit hooks but nothing which showed me how to validate the contents of the file.In my case I want to make sure that I'm not checking in any unit test files that have classes decorated with [CurrentFixture]. FYI I use MbUnit for my unit tests.Using perl or shell scripts would be relatively easy but I wanted to do things the

del.icio.us killed my blog!

2006-04-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Ever since I "found" del.icio.us I have had nothing to blog about. Well, that and my never before heights of laziness.All of my old "ditto" blog entries ended up just getting tagged instead of blogged about. Not that there's really anyone who reads this (at least yet [fingers crossed]).I have however recently dusted off my compiler and fired up my last project. Naturally it has nothing to do

Rude AppDomain unloads

2005-10-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

Joe Duffy has a post on avoiding and surviving rude AppDomain unloads. This is a useful post and all, but the highpoints are the following 2 quotes:... if you piss SQL Server off by taking too long in one of your finally blocks (for example), it will get a tad snippyand:It uses a great method RuntimeHelpers.ExecuteCodeWithGuaranteedCleanup located in the System.Runtime.CompilerServices namespace

Sizing memory for virtual machines appropriately

2005-09-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Virtual PC Guy doles out some guidelines for appropriately sizing memory of virtual machines I had always (mistakenly) believed that I should be throwing as much memory at my VPC as possible. I have 1.5GB of which I have 1GB given to VPC. Prior to that I had 512MB with 256MB for VPC which was quite slow. Even with more memory I haven't noticed a huge performance gain. Perhaps I've just

Shared Services

2005-09-12T11:32:00.000-07:00

From Larry Osterman - a description of Shared Services and why they're important.I gotta play with this some day.Updated: Larry posted a second entry on a clever trick to debug shared services. In a nutshell:Split a shared service into it's own:C:\>sc config type= ownAnd put it back again:C:\>sc config type= share[Listening to: Black Sabbath - Trashed]

On Threads and WinDBG|SOS

2005-09-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Yun Jin posted a series of articles on Thread, System.Threading.Thread, and !Threads that you can find here:Part IPart IIPart III[Listening to Sister Sledge - He's the Greatest Dancer][Ed: 7-Aug-2006 - Finally fixed goofy list formatting]

Thank you Scott for getting rid of those #$@#$! binding logs

2005-09-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

For months now I kept getting assembly binding info being dumped into my c:\temp directory for every .NET executable on my machine. As I use c:\temp for (surprisingly enough) temporary files it was getting quite aggrevating having to constantly delete all those .exe directories.I vaguely remember enabling this but I couldn't remember/find what I had done so I could shut it off.Fortunately, I

"Transactional" receive of nontransactional messages

2005-08-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yoel Arnon posts a useful technique on performing a "Transactional" receive of nontransactional messages. [Listening to: Ozzy Osbourne - Over the Mountain]

Magic Numbers for Debugging Memory troubles

2005-08-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

I got tired of searching for this each time I needed to so here it is -- the magic memory values when using the debug heap in Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, 2003 and presumably 2005.Culled from here and here.0xBAADF00D -- Allocated by HeapAlloc, not yet used by malloc0xCDCDCDCD -- Allocated but uninitialized0xFDFDFDFD -- No mans land. Surrounds allocated block0xABABABAB -- 2 words following allocated

Windows Message Hooking in .NET

2005-08-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

You just never know when you have to get down to the metal and observe/tweak/ambush the windows messages directly. Ben Wu shows us how with SpyWindowFinalizer. This also gives us a means to detect controls that are not being properly Dispose'd. [Listening to: Tripping Daisy - Piranha]

Xml Performance Checklist

2005-08-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Atsushi Eno gives an Xml perf checklist.Don't know how valid/relevent these all are but I've blogged it here for future reference.[Listening to: Crazy Town - Only When I'm Drunk]

Rico Mariani's Performance Tidbits : LogDump: CLRProfiler Log analysis tool

2005-08-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Performance guru Rico Mariani shares his CLRProfiler log post-processor which produces a very useful summary of perf stats.. In case you want to bypass the article (lazy lazy) you can jump to the source code directly. [Listening to: Led Zeppelin - What Is And What Should Never Be]

.Net Security Blog : The Simple Sandboxing API

2005-08-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've scooped referred to a post by Shawn Farkas, but here goes.The Simple Sandboxing API - A simpler way to set up a sandboxed AppDomain. In a nutshell he is updating his .NET v1.x method which I blogged about here, using a new .NET v2.0 overload of AppDomain.CreateDomain.[Listening to: Whitesnake - Give Me All Your Love]

[De]Serialization withToByteArray and ToStructure

2005-08-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

More snippets... I love snippets. From eicar (sorry, don't know his/her actual name) Home-grown [de]serialization: ToByteArray and ToStructure [Listening to: Janis Joplin - Piece of my Heart]

Omiting the Xml Declaration and the XSD and XSI namespaces

2005-08-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Scott Hanselman of The Ultimate Tools List fame posts together a useful snippet of code to Serialize an object while omiting the Xml Declaration and the XSD and XSI namespaces -- The XmlFragmentWriter. This snippet was cobbled together from Sairama, a platform engineer at Corillian and Daniel Cazzulino and, I'm sure, Scott too. I've always kinda' disliked the extra "baggage" but was waaay too

Simple harness to print exceptions in an app

2005-08-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

A nice little example from Mike Stall on building a simple harness to print exceptions in an app. Don't know if this will be useful, but it's definitely something I want to remember. So here it is. [Listening to: Elastica - Love Like Ours]

101 Samples for Visual Studio 2005

2005-08-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

A bunch of samples on MSDN for both C# and VB.NET.Can't remember who I got this from. My apologies.[Listening to: Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll]

ORACLE: Required permissions for v$mystat

2005-07-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

Long time: no post. Busy. Working. Travelling. Excuses. Excuses. Too many net resources point you to GRANT SELECT ANY DICTIONARY TO {user/role}' but I like a more granulated approach. If you want to give just enough permissions for a user to v$mystat; C:\> "sqlplus sys/passwd@tnsname as sysdba" SQL> GRANT SELECT ON v_$mystat TO {user/role}; [Listening to: Marilyn Manson - Apple of

Finding memory leaks without buying a memory profiler

2005-07-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

Another winner from Eran Sandler: Finding memory leaks without buying a memory profiler. [Listening to: Guns N' Roses - Rocket Queen]

Advanced .NET Debugging with PerfMon

2005-07-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

Fellow Blogspotter Eran Sandler gives a nice overview on some PerfMon performance counters, what they mean and how to use them to detect some common issues such as leaks, fragmentation and lousy (my word not his) allocation patterns. It's nice having this all in one spot. [Listening to: Ted Nugent - Free for all]

ORACLE: Enabling function-based indices (indexes?)

2005-06-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

I was happily using function based indices to provide case insensitivity like so:CREATE UNIQUE INDEX MyIndexName ON MyTable ( LOWER (SomeColumn) ASC);Worked like a charm. The uniques was case insensitive and the normal query like:SELECT blah, foo, barFROM MyTableWHERE LOWER(SomeColumn) = LOWER (:bindparam);was happily using the index.Until one day at (naturally) a client site, one of my

Enabling the "Shut Down" option in Windows Server 2003

2005-06-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Once again I spent way too long trying to figure out how to allow my non-administrator user the ability to shutdown windows. Strangely enough Google was of little help. I guess the terms "shutdown", "enable", "user", "dialog" are too vague?By default a normal user only has log off username in the list of options when you hit shutdown from the start menu. Just so I don't have to search for this

Assert.IsEqualGraph -- Comparing object graphs

2005-06-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

Keith Brown over at PluralSight has a useful method to Assert the equality of 2 object graphs: Assert.IsEqualGraph. I have a couple other quasi-useful Assertion type methods that I'll post here (if I ever get around to using the stupid computer again that is.) [Listening to: Ozzy Osbourne - Over the Mountain]

Dumping XML content while reading it from a stream

2005-05-31T09:01:00.000-07:00

Oleg Tkachenko posts a nice nugget on Dumping XML content while reading it from a stream. Since I'm a logging junkie this strikes home.[Listening to: Marilyn Manson - Apple of Sodom]

ORACLE: displaying initialization parameters

2005-05-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

Pulled from here and here.Thinking I was clever I created a little parms.sql which will pull out all matching initialization parameters from the v$parameter table. Of course I find out that there's a built in way of doing this:C:\> sqlplus someuser/passwd@tnsname[snip]SQL> show parameter spfileNAME TYPE VALUE------------ ----------- ------------------------------spfile

Of Performance and Peanut Butter Sandwiches

2005-05-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Rico Mariani (certainly in my top 5 blogs lists ever,) gives some tips on Narrowing Down Performance Problems in Managed Code which border on instantly useful recommendations. Cool.[Listening to: Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs]

ORACLE: Permissions for SQL Analyze

2005-05-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

To run SQL Analyze, the user requires the SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE:C:\> sqlplus system/passwd@tnsname[snip]SQL> grant SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE to theuser;Grant succeeded.If you want to use the index recommendation feature you'll need more privileges. You could grant DBA but I hate doing that, so enable each one independently:C:\> sqlplus "sys/passwd@tnsname as sysdba"[snip]SQL> grant SELECT ON SYS.CDEF$

ORACLE: What is the difference between & and &&?

2005-05-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Culled from here.What is the difference between & and && in a SQL script:"&" is used to create a temporary substitution variable that will prompt you for a value every time it is referenced. Example: SQL> SELECT sal FROM emp WHERE ename LIKE '&NAME';Enter value for name: SCOTTold 1: SELECT sal FROM emp WHERE ename LIKE '&NAME'new 1: SELECT sal FROM emp WHERE ename LIKE 'SCOTT' SAL------

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I?

2005-05-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

I normally don't post the results of these (although I must admit that I participate in every one) but I just couldn't resist:I am an Asteroid.I am a drifter. I go where life leads, which makes me usually a very calm and content sort of person. That or thoroughly apathetic. Usually I keep on doing whatever I'm doing, and it takes something special to make me change my mind. What Video Game

ORACLE: Creating tablespaces

2005-05-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

Scooped from here:Normal a.k.a. Permanent a.k.a. Datacreate tablespace {TABLESPACE-NAME} logging datafile 'C:\path\relative\to\oracle\server.dbf' size 32m autoextend on next 32m maxsize 2048m extent management local;Temporarycreate temporary tablespace {TABLESPACE-NAME} tempfile 'C:\path\relative\to\oracle\server.dbf' size 32m autoextend on next 32m maxsize 2048m extent management

RSS Bandit 1.3 - Recovering disappearing menus and toolbars

2005-05-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'm using RSS Bandit 1.3.0.29 (although I've seen this problem in earlier versions of 1.3 as well.) Occasionally all the menus and toolbars just disappear on me. The Feed Subscriptions tab, Search Tab and Feed Details Tab are still there but nothing else.The bigger problem seems to be the fact that I can't find anywhere to right click to bring up the toolbar customization dialog to make them

Give your DLL a dedicated config file - level 300

2005-05-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Palermo has some sample code on how to give your DLL a dedicated config file. This is just as useful as a sample of how to throw together an app domain. [Listening to: Down - Stone the Crow]

XML Documentation

2005-05-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

Alan Dean is posting a series on using XML Documentation:Part 1: The OverviewPart 2: The DetailPart 3: Complex Tables.I've always been a fan of XML Documentation, but the coolest bit for me are the undocumented tags (like ) and the undocumented switches in a cref attribute in .Nice job Alan.[Listening to: Jethro Tull - Broadsword]Update: Change title to reflect the series, not just

ORACLE: Using ROWNUM or SORT with UNION

2005-05-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

[Pulled from dbforums]If you want to use ROWNUM or SORT across the results of a UNION:SELECT *FROM ( SELECT employee_id, last_name, first_name FROM EMPLOYEES UNION SELECT department_id, 'DEPT', department_name FROM DEPARTMENTS)WHERE ROWNUM < 100ORDER BY last_name;* I realize this is a brutaly contrived example, but hey, whaddaya expect?** I have no idea how this performs.

ORACLE: Tidbits

2005-05-02T09:36:00.001-07:00

I'm starting to read up on Oracle and figure the beast out. Naturally the first thing I do is to subscribe to the I Hate Oracle Club (IHOC). I'm still trying to figure out a way to order the mug or T-Shirt.I figure I'll post whatever little tidbits I come across that I found useful. Mostly so I don't have to remember them myself.[Listening to: Static-X - Cold]

Encrypting app.config configuration sections in Whidbey

2005-05-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Pulled from That Indigo Book: A nice easy way to encrypt an app.config (or web.config) configuration section. It's the little things.[Listening to: Lisa Loeb - Dance with the Angels]

Catching up

2005-05-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

It's long past time I started making my way through the "To Blog" queue. Here goes nothing...

Setting up a Development Environment with Virtual PC / Virtual Server

2005-04-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

Armand du Plessis rebuilds his development environment using Virtual PC/Virtual Server. It sounds useful enough to blog here to trigger my failing memory when I might be tempted to do the same. [Listening to: Nickelback - Where do I Hide?]

Primer to ConnectionStringBuilder in ADO.Net v2.0

2005-04-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

Sushil Chordia puts together on the new ADO.NET 2.0 ConnectionStringBuilder class. Definitely a time saver (and maybe a trial-and-error eliminator.) Primer to ConnectionStringBuilder in ADO.Net v2.0 [Sushil Chordia] [Listening to: Rage Against the Machine - Guerilla Radio]

Keep your Main simple

2005-03-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

Jason Clark, over at Wintellect has a nice post on why you should keep your Main entry point nice and simple. Even better, he gives you a juicy boilerplate to use. [Listening to: Oysterhead - Owner of the World]

Book: Customizing the Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime

2005-03-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

Just found a reference to a potentially very useful book from Chris Sells here: Customizing the Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime by Steven Pratscher. This sounds like just the stuff I'd be looking for (at least once I got off my butt and did something.) [Listening to: Flybanger - When are you? (Gonna Die)]

Access Control List Editing in .NET

2005-02-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

From the March 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine, Keith Brown gives us a UI to Edit Access Control Lists .NET. Boy, just for the sake of displaying ACLs this thing rocks. [Listening to: Godsmack - Forgive me]

XSLTO -- XSLT's in C#

2005-02-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

This is cool enough to break me out of my non-blogging-funk: XSLTO -- XSLT-like processing using C#. That definitely seems neat. Found via Craig Andera. [Listening to: Sarah McLachlan - Witness]

Throwing, catching, and a little bit of paranoia

2005-01-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

Joe Duffy is paranoid. And by the looks of his blog entry Throwing, catching, and a little bit of paranoia I might be a little more paranoid too, especially around security sensitive code. In a nutshell, despite your best intentions a perfectly valid .NET app can get code between an exception in your method and your finally block. Yikes! [Listening to: Eminem - Til Hell Freezes Over]

Accessibility Domains and you

2005-01-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

Jeff Key of SnippetCompiler fame posts a nice overview of Accessibility Domains. I.e. just what code can has access to a given class/method/member given it's accessibility modifiers (private/internal/public). [Listening to: Placebo - Black-Eyed]

Limiting Profiling to particular blocks of code

2005-01-17T10:06:00.000-08:00

Richard Wurdack (a.k.a Angry Richard) gives a quick intro to the profiler api and the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Profiler namespace to help Limit the Data Crunch from Trace Profiling. This might help to prevent drowning in trace data. [Listening to: Limp Bizkit - Outro]

One hand washing the other - Clarke Scott

2005-01-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

You never know when you're going to need a favour, so here goes nothing... Clarke Scott is asking for help to market his CRM software application for SME businesses by increasing his Google rating. More power to you. [Listening to: Natalie Imbruglia - One More Addiction]

Customizing Quickwatch in VS.NET debugger for custom classes

2005-01-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, it's been a while. I could spout off about being too busy or on vacation but basically I'm just too lazy. Anyhow, in the laziness vein, here's a post that I want to keep around in case I'm looking for it later: Customizing Quickwatch in VS.NET debugger for custom classes. I remember this sort of feature from VS6 but since I could never remember what the file was... [Listening

An ongoing Introduction to MSIL

2004-12-16T15:51:00.000-08:00

Just stumbled across this excellent Introduction to MSIL by Kenny Kerr. It kinda' makes my brain hurt... but in a good way. [Listening to: Static-X - Cold]

Your personality summarized in 26 links.

2004-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

An intriguing meme found on KC Lemson's blog. lear the address bar in your browser, type in every letter of the alphabet, and list out what is the first URL on the history list. No cheating now... A - http://www.adtmag.com/blogs/devcentral/ - Developer Central Blog. B - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml - 20th Anniversary edition of the HitchHiker Adventure Game. C - http://

Cheapskate alert: Free XSLT1.0/XSLT2.0 and XQuery1.0 Processors for Windows

2004-12-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

Altova has put together a collection of free tools for the Xml/Xslt/XQuery folks out there. Found via Oleg Tkachenko. WooHoo! [Listening to: Disturbed - God of the Mind]

XmlPreCompiler / XmlSerializerPreCompiler

2004-12-01T14:39:00.000-08:00

Like most people I have struggled too often with XmlSerializer. Mathew Nolton wrote a UI wrapper around Chris Sells' XmlSerializerPreCompiler called XmlPreCompiler. This should help some. [Listening to: Faster Pussycat - Slip of the Tongue]

Nine Tips to Enterprise-proof MSMQ

2004-11-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

A slightly older (but still useful) link on DevX by Michael Jones: Nine Tips to Enterprise-proof MSMQ. It deals with performance and reliability (usually at odds with each other.) [Listening to: Crazy Town - Only When I'm Drunk]

Saying No to .NET Remoting

2004-11-25T08:46:00.000-08:00

I haven't gotten there yet (or anywhere recently, but that's another issue) but here's some tips from Chris Hewitt about which gives some guidance/recommendations on various distributed communication technologies: Saying No to .NET Remoting [Listening to: Weezer - Jamie]

15 Seconds : 10 Steps to a Successful Versioning and Deployment Strategy for .NET

2004-11-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

A very useful set of guidelines for versioning, deployment and security from Michele Leroux Bustamante, originally found in this blog entry: 10 Steps to a Successful Versioning and Deployment Strategy for .NET [Listening to: Eminem - Kids]

Guidelines - a hidden feature for the Visual Studio Editor

2004-11-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

A neat little VS gem from Sara Ford: Guidelines - a hidden feature for the Visual Studio Editor. Kinda cool. Definitely one of those "My Visual Studio is better than yours" things. Found via the VSEditors blog [Listening to: KoRn - Dead Bodies Everywhere]

Deterministic Finalization

2004-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Updated: Changed title to reflect the series instead of just the first article I just stumbled across Andy Rich's blog (I can't remember which blog I got it from -- apologies to the author.) In it he has an excellent series on Deterministic Finalization:Deterministic Finalization I - a primer for CLR DisposeDeterministic Finalization II - The C++ DF ModelDeterministic Finalization III -

Creating a partially-trusted AppDomain

2004-11-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

Peter Torr expands on a set of blog entries from Shawn Farkas with: Creating a partially-trusted AppDomain. I'm going to keep collecting these links until I either get it, or give up on it. I put the odds about even on those two. [Listening to: George Clinton - Play That Funky Music]

An Enhanced Version of the Sandboxed AppDomain

2004-11-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

More from Shawn Farkas: An Enhanced Version of the Sandboxed AppDomain which puts together his posts on creating an AppDomain with a limited set of permissions and creating a StrongNameMembershipCondition [Listening to: Motley Crüe - Teaser]

Introduction to MSH (a.k.a Monad)

2004-11-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

From Jon Udell: An Introduction to MSH. I looked at this a while back but I didn't spend much time to figure it out. Maybe I'll have to now. [Listening to: One Minute Silence - Brainspiller]

MSDN error on VS2003 while running as non-admin

2004-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

I've recently dropped my main XP user down to the "average schmo" level like I should (and like I have in my primary development VirtualPC image.) When I tried to pull up the help on anything the installation wizard for VS2003 would pop up, eventually failing with this error: Error 1606.Could not access network location wwwroot$: Unable to get security info for this object. In case anyone else

CreateProcessAsUser

2004-10-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Any blog entry that includes usage instructions of use in rare circumstances and with caution deserves a link. K. Scott Allen's sample code / wrapper around CreateProcessAsUser [Listening to: Iron Maiden - Caught Somewhere in Time]

Easily Creating a StrongNameMembershipCondition for an Assembly

2004-10-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Another gem from Shawn Farkas: Easily Creating a StrongNameMembershipCondition for an Assembly [Listening to: Electric Light Orchestra - Turn to Stone]

Creating an AppDomain with limited permissions

2004-10-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Shawn Farkas has to be on my top 10 list of bloggers. His blog entries and snippets are awesome and (eerily enough) tend to be right along the lines of stuff that I'm going to need. How does he know what I'm doing? Hey Shawn, that isn't you hanging around in the bushes outside my office window is it? Without further ado: Creating an AppDomain with limited permissions. [Listening to: Eartha

More Performance Tidbits for library writers

2004-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

More Performance Tidbits for library writers from the performance guru Rico "measure first" Mariani. At some point either they'll figure out a way to really profile in a VPC image or I'll have to knuckle under and install VS2005 on my host PC. 'Til then, my head is firmly in the sand. [Listening to: Alice in Chains - Junkhead]

Getting the Current Permissions in a Named Permission Set

2004-10-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

Shawn Farkas posted a snippet on Getting the Current Permissions in a Named Permission Set. I like snippets. Snippets are good. Long live snippets. Does it make sense for me to define my own Named Permission Set for my service? Don't know yet. Haven't spent enough time looking. [Listening to: Kittie - In Winter]

Programatically changing file permissions

2004-10-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

I'm back to implementing some permission related unit tests that I balked at earlier. It took me a bit of time to find how to remove all permissions from a file. Since I don't want to have to go through this again I'll post it here. Basically I'm pulling what I found in Keith Brown's absolute must read wiki: The .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security in How to program with SIDs into a

Boost XmlSerializer usability and performance by using strongly-typed serializers

2004-10-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

A short but sweet bit on how to Boost XmlSerializer usability and performance by using strongly-typed serializers from Daniel Cazzulino of Mvp.Xml fame. [Listening to: Delerium featuring Sarah McLachLan - Silence]

Number Formatting in .NET

2004-10-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

An overview of Number Formatting in .NET via Kit George of the BCL Team. I too have spent far too much time looking for the right format string on MSDN. This is a step in the right direction. [Listening to: Rage Against the Machine - The Ghost of Tom Joad]

Nifty VS2003 tips for breakpoints and the "Find" combo box

2004-10-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Roy Osherove shows a few really nifty tricks: Advanced debugging tips and stuff you never knew about the "Find" combo box [Listening to: Faster Pussycat - Babylon]

Programmatic .NET ACL Definitions

2004-10-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Another awesome security related code tidbit from Michael Willers: TaskDriven Working with ACLs on files. I'm already subscribed to his feed, but I somehow managed to miss this gem when it came out fresh. Much thanks to Jeff Newsom from Thinking Out Loud for reposting the link that actually made it past my forehead. [Listening to: Soundgarden - Pretty Noose]

Upcoming Changes to System.Xml in .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2

2004-10-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

Dare Obasanjo provides an overview on the upcoming changes to System.Xml in .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2. [Listening to: Collective Soul - All]

The Osherove.Interception framework

2004-10-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Roy Osherove presents his Osherove.Interception framework. I'm not entirely convinced of how I would use this (or even if I should) but it definetely deserves looking into despite his use of the word automagically. Ugh. I had previously blogged about it here as it pertained to unit testing. [Listening to: KoRn - Blind]

Another keeper from MbUnit: AssemblySetUp/TearDown

2004-10-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

Now that I've installed the latest MbUnit from TestDriven.NET I can make use of the TestFixtureSetUp and TestFixtureTearDown support in MbUnit (+ Assembly Setup and TearDown). This has greatly simplified my code. In each of my test fixtures I used to have to have a SetUp method which calls a static initializer from another class to initialize my log4net stuff:public class MyTests { [SetUp]

Loading an assembly from a "working directory" at design time

2004-10-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Steve Maine may have just helped me out of a problem that I didn't even know I had yet: Loading an assembly from a "working directory" at design time. Since I plan to load user assemblies I would've fallen over this eventually. Now I'm prepared... Or at least I've lost my excuse of not being prepared. [Listening to: Collective Soul - The World I Know]

An exercise in implementing a domain-driven design

2004-10-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

Steve Maine runs through a set of articles (Part I, Part II and Part III) doing an exercise in DDD (Domain Driven Design). Not sure if I'll jump on the bandwagon, but it looked interesting enough to persist here. [Listening to: Limp Bizkit - 9 Teen 90 Nine]

VS2005 Export Template Wizard

2004-10-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Craig Skibo details the new VS2005 Export Template Wizard. This seems to be a great way to provide out-of-the-box wizards to allow customers to customize your app. [Listening to: George Clinton - The Shagadelic Austin Powers]

Unofficial NUnit Extensibility Framework (MbUnit too)

2004-10-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Roy Osherove puts together another creepy cool unit testing extension to both NUnit and MbUnit. Introducing: Unofficial NUnit Extensibility Framework - make your own test attributes easily! First the automatic database rollback feature, now this. Too cool. I echo Jonathan's sentiment: this belongs in TestDriven.NET [Listening to: Stone Temple Pilots - Sin]

System.Security.AccessControl

2004-09-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

Valery Pryamikov might have just saved me a bunch of spelunking through MSDN2 (which is still pretty raw.) I had reached a point where I wanted to start adding permission related unit tests, but I quickly got lost in beta documentation with no examples. I started going through Keith Browns excellent wikibook: "The .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security" but quickly realized that I should

A couple links on MSMQ Processing

2004-09-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Wallace McClure posts a couple of articles on MSMQ stuff: MSMQ processing of a stringMSMQ Processing of multiple pieces of data I haven't gone through them in any detail, but they look useful enough that I post it here so I don't lose them. [Listening to: KoRn - Blind]

An alternate to MbUnit's CurrentFixture

2004-09-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Now that my library of MbUnit unit tests is growing it's becoming a non-trivial amount of time to run them, something that I'd rather avoid when doing a very tight red/green/refactor loop. To speed things up I've been using the CurrentFixture attribute like so: [CurrentFixture] [Test] public void DoSomeTest() { ...and the associated property of the AutoRunner in main: public static void Main (

VS2005 Beta1 - Source doesn't match IL while stepping through DLL

2004-08-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

I am having the weirdest problem. I have a unit test .EXE which exercises my code which lives in a .DLL assembly. However, the code that the debugger is stepping through doesn't match what's actually happening. For example, say I have this:1: public bool Load (XPathDocument doc) 2: { 3: using (new LogIndent (log.Info, "Load")) 4: { 5: if (doc == null) 6: { 7: log.Warn ("doc

Enabling CodeWright 7.x / VS.NET 2003 synchronization

2004-08-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

After upgrading my version of VS to VS.NET 2003 at work I was missing the Add-in required to synchronize files between VS and CodeWright. After a bit of spelunking here's what I found. The add-in menu is completely controlled by the registry. First, register CWVS7Adin.dll as you would any COM dll. Then, save this to a .reg file and import it.