I saw in my feed reader a posting that announced the release of the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools extension that was available in the Visual Studio 2010 Extension Manager. At first glance I thought it was the Power Tools extension that I’ve been using for a while. However, this is a totally separate extension that adds some very awesome features. Note that they go into a lot of detail on the enhanced document tab feature but although this is neat and useful, it’s not really in my top 3 features. I’ve emphasized my 3 favorite features. Document Well [...]
In the OData specification, the $format parameter can be passed on the query string of the request to tell the server that you would like the response to be serialized as JSON. Normally, to get JSON-formatted data, you have to specify "application/json" in your "Accept" header. The query string feature is handy in situations when it’s not easy or possible to modify the request headers. Unfortunately, if you try to pass $format on a WCF Data Services query, you will get a response that looks like: <error xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata"> <code /> <message xml:lang="en-US"> The query parameter ‘$format’ begins with a system-reserved [...]
May 112010
This confused me for a minute. But once I realized what was going on I felt like a dolt. $Query = $UriBuilder.Query if ($Query.Length > 1) { $Query = $Query.Substring(1) + ‘&’ } $UriBuilder.Query = $Query + $KeyValuePair Access to the path ‘C:\Windows\system32\1′ is denied. At C:\Blah\Blah.psm1:366 char:32 + if ($Query.Length > <<<< 1) { + CategoryInfo : OpenError: (:) [], UnauthorizedAccessException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : FileOpenFailure
May 082010
To celebrate the upcoming finale of LOST, I threw this thing together in Silverlight 4 using Expression Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010. I also used a trial of Goldwave 5 to work on the sound effects. I’ve included the source code so you can take a look around. This is an example of a pretty barebones MVVM app without the “M”. Some of the techniques I used were XAML storyboards, a simple state machine, semi-transparent overlays to simulate lighting, MediaElement to play audio files, ViewBox to stretch a portion of the view, TransitioningContentControl, etc. just to name a few. [...]
I find it very frustrating sometimes to get something to build in Blend. Like many developers, I have a "Me.dll" that contains a lot of commonly used classes, custom controls, etc. As you might expect, this DLL often takes dependencies on other DLL’s that must also then be referenced. In Blend, this can be a pain in the butt because the Silverlight assemblies are scattered into 3 main locations: %ProgramFiles%\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\Silverlight\v4.0 %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Toolkit\Apr10\Bin It gets to be pretty frustrating pointing blend to these various paths to find System.ServiceModel.dll or something. You can make this a lot easier without [...]
May 022010
Came across this while browsing Google Reader… via Ted Dziuba: Why Engineers Hop Jobs People in my generation have a very low tolerance for bullshit, and software engineering, in general, is a very high bullshit career. If you couple that with the standard load of bullshit you would get from a non-technical Harvard MBA type boss — like many CEOs that you find trying to get rich in Silicon Valley by hiring some engineers to “code up this idea real quick” — it’s no wonder that a good engineer will walk off the job after his one year cliff vesting.
Apr 282010
I am not much of a religious person. I went to catholic school from Kindergarten through 10th grade (and plan on sending my son), all of my grandparents were religious, and my aunt is a Franciscan nun. Having said that, I came across this moving piece by my friend Rob Bushway and figured I would share it. The Bushways are a great example of a close knit family and his is a story of perseverance, no matter what your faith is. RobBushway.com via A Little Bit About Me.
Apr 072010
Okay, I get the idea but come on… Talk about verbose errors. I guess it’s better than “Argument out of range.” Custom tool warning: There was a validation error on a schema generated during export: Validation Error: Wildcard ‘##any’ allows element ‘Account’, and causes the content model to become ambiguous. A content model must be formed such that during validation of an element information item sequence, the particle contained directly, indirectly or implicitly therein with which to attempt to validate each item in the sequence in turn can be uniquely determined without examining the content or attributes of that item, [...]
PowerShell Team has announced FxCop rules for cmdlet authors. List of rules AcceptForceParameterWhenCallingShouldContinue AllCmdletsShouldAcceptPipelineInput CallShouldProcessOnlyIfDeclaringSupport DefineCmdletInTheCorrectNamespace DoNotAccessPipelineParametersOutsideProcessRecord DoNotCallCertainHostMethods DoNotUseConsoleApi FollowCmdletClassNamingConvention OverrideProcessRecordIfAcceptingPipelineInput ParameterShouldHaveConsistentTypePerNoun UseCredentialAttributeForPSCredentialParameter UseOnlyApprovedCharactersInVerbsAndNouns UseOnlyStandardVerbs UsePascalCasingInVerbsAndNouns UseRecommendedParameterTypes UseSingularNouns UseSingularParameterNames UseSwitchParameterInsteadOfBoolean
I wanted to post this last night but I did not have an internet connection. The best part about being a developer is that when software drives you nuts, many times you can do something about it that mere mortals cannot. That’s the case with TweetDeck. I love it but I am sick of having to move windows around to keep it in view. I have a wide screen so I wanted to dedicate a band of space to it, much like how the Vista sidebar worked. When I maximize other windows, they should not obscure the taskbar or TweetDeck. [...]