Tech Blog Discovery

Today, I stumbled upon Fabulous Adventures in Coding, an excellent technical blog written by Microsoft technologist Eric Lippert. (Although considering the bizarre behavior of the blogs at MSDN, its not all that surprising. Access a blog one way and they require you to create and account? Wha?)

Many of his posts are related to the internals of .NET, and several caught my eye. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but they’re going on my “to do” list:

• The Stack is An Implementation Detail, Part One
• The Stack is An Implementation Detail, Part Two
• The Truth about Value Types

Of course, if I’d been paying closer attention to Jeff Atwood, I would already know about Eric Lippert.

A Non-Techie Windows User Talks Microsoft Tablet, Testifies on the iPad Experience

 

 

Prolific blogger Mary Jo Foley, who writes the essential “All About Microsoft” blog, reports on the potential future of Microsoft Surface, the multi-touch display technology Microsoft introduced several years ago. Specifically, she discusses how it might be adapted to a tablet device:

 

Microsoft user interface researcher Bill Buxton told the Globe and Mail that he expects Microsoft to be offering three years from now a tablet device that will be like a slimmed-down mini Surface.

That sounds all well and good… except for the three years part.

Har har. She then goes on to describe her own (favorable) experience with the iPad.

I’ve used and continue to use my 16 GB iPad with 3G and wifi a lot. (In spite of AT&T’s overly pricey 3G data plans, I’m glad I got one with both, as wifi hotspots are still few and far between in many places.)I toss it into my purse when I am going out for a few hours and don’t want to pack up my laptop and lug it with me. I use it to surf the Web, check my mail, read books using the Kindle app, keep up with Twitter (via the Osfoora Twitter client, which I still like a lot more than Twitter’s own iPad client or other alternatives).

Not exactly a money quote, but read the whole thing if you’re considering taking the iPad plunge and want the Windows perspective.

PowerShell: Search, Replace Text in Files

#get a pipeline of files
gci -r -i '<filename pattern>' |
 #filter for the search pattern, don't want to needlessly update files
 #if there isn't a match
 ?{Select-String -Path $_ -Pattern '<match regex pattern>' -quiet} |
    %{
        #get replacement content
        $text = [io.file]::ReadAllText($_) -replace '<regex>', '<replacement>'
        #write back out to disk, ascii encoded if desired
        $text | out-file -enc ascii $_
    }

This post was inspired by this discussion.

Looks like I’m going to have to change the margins on the blog to show code snippets better.

Vistaprint to Launch Custom Embroidery

This is very exciting news. Vistaprint (my employer) announced today the acquisition of Soft Sight, Inc., and plans to launch custom embroidery in the first half of 2011.

Some info on Soft Sight:

Soft Sight has developed a sophisticated software capability for automatically rendering stitch patterns from custom designs uploaded to its website. Soft Sight’s innovative and patented automation systems enable an end-user’s embroidery artwork to be uploaded and embroidery designs to be instantly previewed and modified online. This drives its ability to provide high-quality custom embroidered products in low quantities at low prices.

Very cool! Can’t wait to see this.

Browser Tip – Make Text Bigger

If you find yourself squinting and want to make the text in your browser bigger or smaller, just hold down the control button and scroll your mouse wheel. One way makes it bigger, the other smaller. You can also use <ctrl> and the plus and minus keys to the same effect.

This works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Open Thread – Name this Blog

Trying to come up with some ideas for a better blog name. I want to keep the URL the same, but put a title on the blog that is a little better. Ideally, it won’t have “blog” in the title. The purpose is to be mostly technical (programming, technology, and the like), some random entertainment, and certainly no politics.

Yesterday, I saw a great blog title, “Dennis the Peasant”, a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here!”

So anyway, blog name. Suggestions?

Get Productive…

…at the Ultimate Productivity Blog.

You’re welcome!

Scott Hanselman: Tips on Managing Your Life

Scott gave the (a?) keynote at Oredev recently, and his talk was entitled “Information Overload and Managing the Flow.” It is heavily influenced by David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Considering the level at which he participates in social networks (Twitter, Blogging, etc), it’s interesting to hear him discuss how too much data coming in can really screw you up and cause you to “thrash to disc.”

What follows is some of the advice he offers to improve your effectiveness and efficiency.

Email Advice

1. Don’t check email in the morning
2. If you respond, they will respond
3. “If you are the fastest responder to a problem, you will get all the problems. Don’t put energy into things you don’t want more of”
4. Use blogging instead of email.
5. Don’t use email for writing a book. 5 paragraphs is too long.
6. Have a separate inbox for mail you’re cc’d on. It’s less important. Likely not urgent or an action item.
7. GTD folders:
   1. @Action
   2. @Blog
   3. @Podcast
   4. @Read
   5. @Reply
   6. @Waiting/Follow Up

(At one point, he says, “Now I can Google . . . with Bing . . .” LOL.)

Focus Techniques

• Use personal Scrum sprints
• Use the Pomodoro Technique: using an egg timer, do only one thing for 25 minutes. Keep track of your own internal interruptions, which allows you to introspect, to be aware of what you’re doing.
• Limit yourself to a single “news” (as in NEWS) feed. If 9-11 happens again, you’ll hear about it.
• Use aggregators: engadget, boingboing, lifehacker. [Ed: and Reflective Perspective]

Finding the Leaks

1. RescueTime will automatically track your behavior (websites mostly) and give you graphs of all the time you’ve wasted. Cool.

Organization Tools

• 43 Folders. Straight out of GTD. Read the book.
• Sync to paper. DIY Planner, Hipster PDA, PocketMod.
• Evernote. Take a picture with your phone, sync to Evernote, search for text in the pictures later.
• Remember The Milk. “The best replacement for todo.txt” That’s a major endorsement.

Summary

• Audit & sort your sources
• Schedule work sprints
• Turn off distractions
• How are you triaging your inbox?
• Consider you personal toolbox

Nice job, Scott. Thanks for the tips.

Economics of Publishing

This Week In Tech, episode 184, has a very interesting discussion on what’s going on with content distribution. In particular, the fate of newspapers, the impact of the Kindle and what Amazon’s plans might be, and the economics of book publishing.

Using External .NET Config Files in a Windows Service

The .NET platform provides an easy way to configure your .NET application using an xml configuration file. At design time, the file is named “App.Config”. When you build your project (console application, Windows service, etc.), the file is renamed to the form [ProgramName].exe.config. The file is deployed in the same directory as the executable. At runtime, the file is automatically picked up from the current directory by the Configuration class.

The single App.config file works pretty well for simple stuff, but at some point it gets unwieldy and you want to separate the configuration into separate files. For example. log4net and Spring.NET both provide mechanisms for using external config files. In a normal deployment scenario (e.g. a console application), it just works.

Often, trouble arises when combining these external configuration files with a Windows service deployment. The built-in configuration classes seem to locate the main config file well enough, but the external files cannot be located. They are attempted to be loaded from %SystemRoot%\System32. Why? This is the location of the net command, which is the host process for the service. I suspect the implementers of the external configuration files refer to the CurrentDirectory of the process, instead of the file location of the executable module.

You can fix the problem by setting the CurrentDirectory of the process:

<!–
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg\lang1024\noproof1252\uc1 \deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0\fprq1 Envy Code R VS;}}{\colortbl;??\red0\green0\blue0;\red227\green213\blue193;\red64\green0\blue128;\red1\green0\blue1;\red46\green83\blue209;\red48\green95\blue182;\red37\green146\blue65;\red163\green21\blue21;}??\fs24 \cb2\highlight2 \cf3 var\cf0 \cf4 process\cf0 \cf5 =\cf0 \cf6 Process\cf5 .\cf4 GetCurrentProcess\cf0 ();\par ?? \cf3 if\cf0 (\cf4 process\cf5 .\cf4 MainModule\cf0 \cf5 !=\cf0 \cf3 null\cf0 )\par ?? \{\par ?? \cf3 string\cf0 \cf4 newFilePath\cf0 \cf5 =\cf0 \cf4 process\cf5 .\cf4 MainModule\cf5 .\cf4 FileName\cf5 .\cf4 Substring\cf0 (\cf7 0\cf0 ,\par ?? \cf4 process\cf5 .\cf4 MainModule\cf5 .\cf4 FileName\cf5 .\cf4 LastIndexOf\cf0 (\cf8 @”\\”\cf0 ));\par ?? \cf6 Directory\cf5 .\cf4 SetCurrentDirectory\cf0 (\cf4 newFilePath\cf0 );\par ?? \}}
–>

   25 var process = Process.GetCurrentProcess();

   26 if (process.MainModule != null)

   27 {

   28     string newFilePath = process.MainModule.FileName.Substring(0,

   29         process.MainModule.FileName.LastIndexOf(@”\”));

   30     Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(newFilePath);

   31 }

If you like, you can put this code into the OnStart method of your service. But you might need the info before that. In that case, put the code as early as possible.

 

Credit goes to Jose Joye, who posted this idea back in 2005.