Microsoft PDC schedule using LINQPad

In my reading this morning I ran across a couple posts, (by Bill McCarthy and Jim Wooley) showing how to use the XML feed that Microsoft has released of the 2010 PDC videos.  Pretty cool stuff using VB.NET LINQ to XML.

I wanted to try it out, but I didn’t really want to fire up Visual Studio and create a project.  Then I remembered LINQPad, a very nice tool working interactively with LINQ.

I copied the code from Bill’s post, then pasted it into LINQPad and set the Language dropdown to “VB Program”.

Then pressed F5 to run it and out popped the session.html file onto the my desktop.

MIX 2010 Videos

I've been watching the MIX 2010 Videos.

At this point my favorite is the Build Your Own MVVM Framework session by Rob Eisenberg. Rob was very well prepared with an excellent sample application that enabled him to provide technical content in a clear and concise manner.

Manually sync Active Window with Solution Explorer in VS.NET

Really nice...and simple...VS.Net macro for sync'ing your active window with the selected item in the the Solution Explorer window.

Locate File in Solution Explorer – Visual Studio Macro

Think I'll keep an eye on Brian's blog from now on. He has several nice macro's that can make development a little easier.

Devlink 2009

Attended Devlink again this year (4 years running now). Excellent conference and well worth the $100.

Came away with several "nuggets" that I can apply directly to my work. I'll probably write a few post with my thoughts in the future.

Useful Info: Is that Poison Ivy?

 

In the last month during our family vacation we were outdoors and found several vines growing around the trees in the area.  We wondered if it was poison ivy since we’re all allergic.   From my boy scout days (many years ago) I remembered that poison ivy has 3 leafs.  Looking around we found many things with 3 leafs and none of it looked the same.

So, we came up with the rule.  Don’t touch anything with just 3 leafs.

Anyway…fast forward to today.  I was looking for recall information on the FDA.gov web site and ran across a page provide all the details you need on Poison Ivy.

Things that stop DVDBurn from working

For burning ISO images to DVD I use the dvdburn utililty that comes with Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit

It works great almost all the time, except when it can’t get exclusive access to the drive.  I’ve seen this caused by the following:

• Symantec Anti-virus is running (I don’t know if other anti-virus package have the same problem)
• Windows Media Player is running
• Microsoft Virtual PC (and probably Microsoft Virtual Server) is running.

Simple conflict management with TortoiseSVN

I love it when I learn something completely on accident and I love it when an application works the way it should.

I was working with Visual Studio.Net (with the VisualSVN add-in).  I needed to update my local working copy and when I did I received several conflicted files.  In the past I would use Windows Explorer to locate the files based on their status icon and resolve each conflict slowly and tediously.

Today, I thought it would be nice if the the update dialog would sort based on the “Action” so the Conflicted files would be sort together.  I clicked on the header row and what do you know.  It worked!  “Cool” I thought.

Then, more on a whim than really expecting something I right-clicked on one of the conflicted files.  The context menu popped up and I was greeted by another nice surprise.  I could easily resolve the conflicts from this dialog!  I didn’t have to find the files.  In fact I could easily resolve by taking “mine” or “theirs”.  (Which is what I did most of the time anyway)  Awesome!

I’ve known TortoiseSVN was great, but it continues to surprise with the thought they’ve put into the product.