Chris May

Almost all of my friends have IPods, but I have held off. 

There are a number of reasons why:

1) ITunes:  It sucks.  I hate it.  My current MP3 player simply allows you to drag and drop the files you want onto your MP3 player.  No syncing, no problems.

2) User interface.  I know a lot of people think the wheel is really cool, but I think it overly involves the user.  Tell me what is wrong with up/down buttons before you redesign the interface to use a wheel.

3) Batteries.  As noted at http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.  The battery in an IPod can not be removed, and some say they start to fail after 18 months.

Well I came across a site called http://www.idont.com/, which went live today (before today it had some anti-ipod message up there). 

Turns out it is a site for the new SanDisk MP3 player.

The e200 (really catchy name... not) looks pretty cool, and might be worth me looking into more: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php

This weekend I went to see a band called Secret Machines, or The Secret Machines.  They seem to split the naming thing about 50/50 between using the "The" and not using it.

Anyway, they were playing a show at midnight at the Metro, which was kinda cool.  There was no opening band, so we got in around midnight and they came on around 12:20 or so.  I hate waiting hours for a band to come on stage, so that was as big plus.

It was crowded in there, but not too croweded.  When I saw 311 in the same place it was insane.  They couldn't have packed more people in there if they wanted to.

Secret Machines played most of the songs I know: they only have 3 CDs.  And, they did this cool thing at the end of the show they setup their guitar in some kind of loop and left it on stage with the strobe lights and fog machines going full blast as they exited the stage.  The loop continued for another 20 seconds or so before snapping off and the lights for the venue came on.  Pretty cool!

Microsoft has released LINQ CTP.

While it is not expected that this will become fully released until the next version of Visual Studio (2008?) it is not something bad to look at now.

This article from MSDN talks about custom databinding, but specifically it talks about the issues raised when you are trying to databind a custom collection to a datagridview.

Using a List<T> will work, but when all is said and done you lose some nice features such as sorting.

There are not many good examples of how to do stuff like this.  So the article below was all the more helpful when I was building a somewhat complex report.

http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/AdoNetForOopPart2.asp?df=100&forumid=258341&select=1482558&msg=1482558

I don't often need regular expressions, but when I do need them it is nice to have a page that gives you a quick index and even a place to test it out.

That is exactly what this page has:

http://www.quanetic.com/regex.php

keyword: regexp

Rob McLaws has this cool extension that lets you click on a folder and run a webserver from it.

The article, with some comments on alternative ways to do it, or ways to improve it can be found here.

http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/archive/2005/10/25/428422.aspx

From the page:

I've been doing some web development work again lately, and I haven't wanted to screw with setting up IIS on my virtual machine. The .NET Framework 2.0 comes with a built-in webserver, based on the old Cassini web server. So I wanted to be able to easily set up any directory to have its contents served up on an as-needed basis. The result is an addition to the Windows Explorer right-click menu, as shown below:

This is enabled by a simple modification to the registry. You can take the text below and dump it into a file named "WebServer.reg", and then run it, to immediately get the item in the context menu.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer]
@="ASP.NET 2.0 Web Server Here"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v2.0.50727\\Webdev.WebServer.exe /port:8080 /path:\"%1\""

There are a couple caveats to this tool, however:

1. The web server does not randomly assign a port number, so it has to be hard-coded into the registry.
2. The web server does not automatically assign a virtual directory, so it will always be "http://localhost:port"
3. A command prompt window will be spawned, and cannot be closed without closing the web server process.

Moving foward, there are a couple of options to fix these issues:

1. Someone who knows more about variables in the registry can help me fix issues #2 and #3
2. I can build a wrapper executable that solves all three problems
3. Microsoft can put in a DCR and fix it before it goes gold in a few days.

#3 is not likely, so I'd love to hear what you think. Hope this trick is useful.

'Dropdown1' has a SelectedValue which is invalid because it does not exist in the list of items.
Parameter name: value

This error has been a real pain to deal with.  I finally have a work around and a guess at the underlying problem, and because I see that people are having this same problem I thought I would do a little writeup about it.

Obviously, if you look at the actual error message, there are cases when you can get this message and the problem is easy to solve.  e.g. you have a dropdown populated with EmploID values and you try to databind with: 

Value='<%# Bind("EmployeeName") %>

            '**** In my populate method
            Me.LocationsDropdown.DataSource = LocationAdapter.LocationsToAdapters(locations)
            Me.LocationsDropdown.DataTextField = "LocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute"
            Me.LocationsDropdown.DataValueField = "LocationId"
            Me.LocationsDropdown.DataBind()



'*************************************
'*************************************




    Private Class LocationAdapter
        Public ciLocationId As Integer
        Public csLocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute As String
        Public Property LocationId() As Integer
            Get
                Return ciLocationId
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value As Integer)
                Me.ciLocationId = Value
            End Set
        End Property

        Public Property LocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute() As String
            Get
                Return csLocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value As String)
                Me.csLocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute = Value
            End Set
        End Property

        Public Sub New(ByVal loc As Location)
            Me.LocationId = loc.LocationId
            Me.LocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute = loc.LocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute
        End Sub
        Public Sub New(ByVal Id As Integer, ByVal Desc As String)
            Me.LocationId = Id
            Me.LocationDescriptionWithActiveAttribute = Desc
        End Sub

        Public shared Function LocationsToAdapters(ByVal locations As List(Of Location)) As List(Of LocationAdapter)
            Dim adapters As New List(Of LocationAdapter)
            adapters.Add(New LocationAdapter(0, "--Location"))
            For Each loc As Location In locations
                adapters.Add(New LocationAdapter(loc))
            Next
            Return adapters
        End Function

    End Class

I never ever ever want to click on the "Help and Support" button in the WinXP start menu, but I frequently do when trying to click on something else (usually "Run...").

I found this info on http://www.winxptutor.com/hidehlp.htm

To remove the Help and Support link from XP Start Menu, try this:

• Right-click Taskbar, choose Properties
• In the Start Menu tab, click Customize
• Select the Advanced tab
• Uncheck Help and Support option.
• Click OK, OK and close the dialog

For Windows Classic Start menu, you may need to modify the registry directly:

• Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
• Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

• In the right-pane, create a new REG_DWORD value named NoStartMenuHelp
• Double-click NoStartMenuHelp and set it's value to 1
• Close Regedit.

This is a well known log analyzer application that can provide a nice web interface for viewing we stats.

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ 

In previous versions of VS.Net you could take a project and go File->Source Control->Add Selected Project To Source Control and you could simply add the project to your VSS provider.

Now in VS.Net 2005 (maybe caused by VSS 2005, or VSS 2005 over HTTP), if you follow this route you will end up with File->Source Control->Add Project to Source Control, and your project will be added with the following path:

$\MyProject.root\MyProject.

Thanks VSS, thanks a lot.  I really needed that .root in there.

To get around this problem, just add another existing project to VS.Net (creating a solution).  Now highlight the actual project you want to add and do:

File->Source Control->Add Selected Project to Source Control and all will be wonderful.

This is really funny!  I used to joke that I was going to write a book about this stuff, but this page about sums it up.

GirlSpeak to English Translator

Example:

She says                               English
---------                              -------
We need                                I want
Do what you want                   You'll pay for this later
We need to talk                      I need to complain

Some people I work with have no Macros menu under Tools in vs.net 2005.

I am still trying to figure this one out, but in the mean time you can access most of the features with the following shortcuts:

ASP.NET 2.0 has a added a bunch of extra spots in the page lifecycle for programmers to insert their logic.

The guys over at www.csharper.net have put together a great list of these events and some notes about them in applicable.

You can see the article here, or you can click through to my full article where I copied their table.

Many times you can have a database that has access to it restricted to SPs.  If the database is application specific, then there is a good chance that 1 user account will need to access all these SPs to run the application.

My friend Phil found and updated this script to run in SQL Server 2005 to generate the necessary code to grant execute rights to all SPs in a database for a given user.

SELECT 'GRANT EXECUTE ON ' + sysobjects.name + ' TO AccountName' + 

CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) 

FROM sysobjects 

WHERE type = 'P' and category = 0 AND name not like 'sp_%'

There are many times when I just want to run a query and send the results to someone in an excel spreadsheet.

You can easliy copy the and past the results, but you don't get column headers, and you lose formatting in many cases.

Dinakar Nethi has a good article about how to directly import the results of a query into excel.

I just used his method and it worked great.

I think this is pretty cool.

Check out the image below.  Then use the link below to open up just the image in a new browser window.

Resize the image (make it smaller) to see the secret message.

secret.gif (139.54 KB)

"Refactor!" has the ability to turn your fields into public accessible properties, but it kinda sucks because 1) you have to do it 1 at a time, and 2) the naming convetion is all wrong. 

For example if you have a private integer called myInt then your property will be MyInt1.  Not exaclty what I am looking for.

So I updated my 2002 macro for creating these properties.  It should allow you to follow a variety of naming conventions "m_XXX", "ciXXX", "strXXX" etc.

Just include the macro below, then just highlight your private fields, and run the macro.

   ' highlight the private properties
    Public Sub AddClassProperties()

        Dim oTextSelection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveWindow.Selection
        Dim iLinesSelected = oTextSelection.TextRanges.Count
        Dim colPropertyList As New Collection()
        Dim iIndex As Integer
        Dim oStart As EditPoint = oTextSelection.TopPoint.CreateEditPoint()
        Dim oEnd As TextPoint = oTextSelection.BottomPoint

        'Create an Undo context object so all the changes can be
        'undone by CTRL+Z
        Dim oUnDo As UndoContext = DTE.UndoContext

        'Supress the User Interface. This will make it run faster
        'and make all the changes appear once
        DTE.SuppressUI = True

        Try

            oUnDo.Open("Comment Line")

            Dim sProperty As String
            Dim sLineOfText As String

            Do While (oStart.LessThan(oEnd))

                sLineOfText = oStart.GetText(oStart.LineLength).Trim
                '*** do some kind of simple check to make sure that this line
                '*** isn't blank and isn't some other kind of code or comment
                If (sLineOfText.IndexOf(" As ") >= 0 And ( _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Public ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Private ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Dim ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Protected ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Friend ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("ReDim ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Shared ") >= 0) Or _
                    (sLineOfText.IndexOf("Static ") >= 0) _
                    )) Then

                    sProperty = oStart.GetText(oStart.LineLength).Trim.Replace(" New ", " ").Replace("()", "")

                    colPropertyList.Add(sProperty)
                End If

                oStart.LineDown()
                oStart.StartOfLine()

            Loop

            If colPropertyList.Count > 0 Then

                For Each sProperty In colPropertyList
                    Call InsertProperty(sProperty)
                Next

            Else
                MsgBox("You must select the class properties")
            End If

        Catch ex As System.Exception

            Debug.WriteLine(ex)
            If MsgBoxResult.Yes = MsgBox("Error: " & ex.ToString & vbCrLf & "Undo Changes?", MsgBoxStyle.YesNo) Then
                oUnDo.SetAborted()
            End If

            Return
        Finally

            'If an error occured, then need to make sure that the undo context is cleaned up.
            'Otherwise, the editor can be left in a perpetual undo context
            If oUnDo.IsOpen Then
                oUnDo.Close()
            End If

            DTE.SuppressUI = False
        End Try


    End Sub

    Private Sub InsertProperty(ByVal sProp As String)
        Dim oTextSelection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveWindow.Selection
        Dim sMember As String = sProp.Substring(sProp.IndexOf(" ")).Trim
        Dim sDataType As String
        Dim sName As String
        Dim i As Integer
        Dim iAscVal As Integer

        i = sMember.IndexOf("(")
        If Not i = -1 Then
            sMember = sMember.Substring(0, i)
        End If

        i = sMember.IndexOf("=")
        If Not i = -1 Then
            sMember = sMember.Substring(0, i)
        End If

        sDataType = sMember.Substring(sMember.IndexOf(" As ") + 1)

        For i = 0 To sMember.Length - 1
            'iAscVal = Asc(Mid(sName, i, 1))
            iAscVal = Asc(sMember.Chars(i))
            If iAscVal > 64 And iAscVal < 91 Then
                sName = sMember.Substring(i)
                Exit For
            End If
        Next i

        sName = sName.Substring(0, sName.IndexOf(" As ") + 1).Trim

        If sName.Length = 0 Then
            MsgBox("Unable to process the class property: " & sMember & ".  This is usually caused by an incorrect naming convention (e.g. not cxName)")
            Return
        End If

        sMember = sMember.Substring(0, sMember.Length - sDataType.Length).Trim

        With oTextSelection
            .MoveToPoint(.ActivePoint.CodeElement(vsCMElement.vsCMElementClass).GetEndPoint(vsCMPart.vsCMPartWhole))
            .LineUp()
            .EndOfLine()

            .Text = "Public Property " & sName & "() " & sDataType
            .NewLine()
            .Text = "Return " & sMember
            .StartOfLine(vsStartOfLineOptions.vsStartOfLineOptionsFirstText)
            .StartOfLine(vsStartOfLineOptions.vsStartOfLineOptionsFirstColumn, True)
            .Copy()
            .LineDown(False, 3)
            DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.Paste")
            .Text = "Me." & sMember & " = Value"
            .LineDown(False, 2)
            .NewLine(2)

        End With

    End Sub

Update1: When using code that you cut and paste from here, you might need to first paste it into Word or Wordpad.

Update2: When using this macro, you need a space (new line) between the last private field variable and your end of class line.

This is a pretty good list of freeware utilities for all kinds of applications:

http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-freeware-utilities/index.html

I have seen lots of posts from people in the newsgroups trying to figure out what the deal is with the new config options in .net 2.0.

The main reason people run into problems is due to MS making a number of changes, including changes between the beta and the RC product, resulting in different answers based on how early you encountered the issues.

You can still do things the way you did with .Net 1.x.

       <appSettings>

              <add key="MyKeyName" value="somevalue"/>

       </appSettings>

and then you can access it with:

Dim myvalue As String = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Item("ConnectionString")

However, if you try this, VS.Net will warn you:

This method is obsolete, it has been replaced by System.Configuration!System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings

It is important to note that the "!" above indicates that the fully quallified class listed, is located in the System.Configuration assembly, which of course you have to add to your project. 

So unlike previous versions, you need to manually add a reference to System.Configuration in order to make this new call.

Now, .net 2.0 and vs.net 2005 have teamed up to offer a new option for storing user settings which may seem more complicated at first if you don't know exactly what you are doing.  In the project properties you can select a "Settings" tab where you are able to modify application settings, which are in turn stored in app.config.  These settings can either be "User" settings, or "Application" settings. 

Application settings are stored in the app.config (or web.config), and are read-only.  User settings have a default value that is stored in the app.config, but your application can overwrite these default values as needed, and the users settings will be stored in:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\<Company Name>\<appdomainname>_<eid>_<hash>\<verison>\user.config. (non roaming)

OR:

%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\<Company Name>\<appdomainname>_<eid>_<hash>\<verison>\user.config (roaming)

The other nice feature of the 2.0 way of accessing these settings is that the settings are saved as a specific type from a wide collection of available types (String, System.DateTime, System.Drawing.Color, System.Guid, Bool, StringCollection etc) and when you access them from your code they are available in intellisense.

This may seem like it isn't important, but it means you can't mistype a setting key, or accidently try an invalid cast from one of your settings.  Also, storing a collection was a real pain in 1.x.    Now you can create a collection quickly and it will be added to the user settings like this:

   <setting name="MyCol" serializeAs="Xml">

        <value>

            <ArrayOfString xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

                xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

                <string>I am first</string>

                <string>second</string>

                <string>me third</string>

                <string>I am number four</string>

            </ArrayOfString>

        </value>

    </setting>

Pretty nice!

To access these properties you have 2 different ways depending on if you are using VB.Net or C#.

For VB.Net you use the "My" namespace and access it like this:

Dim mySetting As String = My.Settings.MySetting

For C# you access these settings through the "Properties" object

       string mySetting = Properties.Settings.Default.MyUserSetting;

That's it!