`using Microsoft.Net;`

From imaginary friend to split bloginality

pdbartlett — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:12:00 GMT

In the very unlikely event you're subscribed to my "old" 'blog then this will not be news to you, but here goes anyway:

Well, much as I have enjoyed my time 'blogging over at the 'dojo, I've decided it's time to start posting here again. My reasons are as follows:
The 'dojo is a .NET-related site, and though no-one has complained I'd prefer to post my off-topic stuff somewhere else
I'm in good company in adopting this approach: Sam Gentile no less, and Geekdojo's very own Adam Field
Now that I'm working for Google I'd really like to get to know the products as well as I can
The only reason I initially left was the lack of an RSS feed, which has long since been added
So from now on I'll do most of my 'blogging right here, but continue to post anything .NET-related over on the 'dojo as well. I have some WPF stuff that should hopefully be in a fit state to share pretty soon.

And as ever, I'll try to post a bit more frequently. Honest!

So thanks to Ryan and everyone for making feel so welcome here, and hopefully I'll get around to posting that WPF stuff sooner rather than later.

me @ google.com

pdbartlett — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:10:00 GMT

After a week getting used to life in the London office, I'm now in Mountain View for my orientation, and it appears I'm in very good company. I get the feeling this is going to be a very interesting job...

Stuff

pdbartlett — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:51:00 GMT

A bunch of miscellaneous stuff:

I don't recall who put me onto this, but I'm enjoying Jessica Hagy's amusing/insightful diagrams over at indexed
I've been impressed by the WPF-based reader that Conchango have put together for the Daily Mail newspaper here in the UK (via Tim Sneath)
I've also taken a look at Channel 4's new "4oD" (4 on Demand) service, but have yet to try out any of the freebies
Gadget-related:

I have just got a pair of Sennheiser PCX250 headphones, which seem pretty good so far
I have a Linksys NSLU2 on order, which looks like a fun piece of kit
and I'm thinking about the Terratec iRadio as well, but I guess I'll wait a little...

And I'm in the middle of downloading the latest Orcas CTP, of course (I probably should have gone for the VPC-based version straight-away, especially now VPC2007 is free to download, so I might end up grabbing that as well and deciding later which to go with)

Idea of the day #3: Developing software with Alf, Bert and Charlie

pdbartlett — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:09:00 GMT

Well, it's been rather a long time since the previous installment in this mini-series - almost two-and-a-half years in fact - so I hope this one is worth the wait...

In the project I've been working on I've struggled with naming components. People either inferred too much from the names, or they ceased to have the correct meaning as time passed, or a combination of the two. And just to make it worse other teams complained no end if we kept changing them. In the end we started using code names, with no real meaning at all, and that seemed to help a bit.

What I'd like to propose today is taking this one stage further and using people's names. The examples in the title are taken from the puzzle books of my youth, but there is precedent as well in the naming of hurricanes and other strong winds. The advantages I see are:

Like with other code names, people cannot lazily infer meaning but must take at least a cursory glance at the code and/or documentation, which is likely to give a much more accurate idea of what a component does
Components will start to acquire a "personality", so that people are better able to judge where functionality really belongs
Another aspect of that personality is that it ought to be more apparent when to "retire" a component and "hire" a new one as opposed to "retraining" an existing one

Am I going completely mad, or might there be something in this? Has anyone tried anything similar? Either way I might give it a try sometime...

Outlook 2003 calendar annoyance

pdbartlett — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:36:00 GMT

I like my calendar in "work week" view, but when I press the "Calendar" button from a meeting request, Outlook does the following:

Switches my calendar to "day" view
Leaves it like that

The first of these is just about defensible, as arguably it's easier to see what's happening. Though in fact I often end up switching back to "work week" view in order to see if I can shuffle things about.

The second is just plain rude.

Rant over, for now at least... But if anyone (Adam maybe?) knows of a way to stop this happening then I'd be more than happy to be educated.

News, news and more news

pdbartlett — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 02:29:00 GMT

Well, things have been a bit hectic for me over the past few weeks, so a few pieces of news have been building up:

I've accepted a job with Google here in London, and unless there are any major disasters will be starting in mid-March
I've finally got broadband!
It snowed a couple of weeks back, so here's the obligatory photo

Anyway, that's it for now, but I'm sure there'll be more to report soon enough...

Windows Developer Tools Day

pdbartlett — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:28:00 GMT

(Via James Avery) In order to celebrate this important event (more details here), I though I'd call out my free developer tools list, which I've neglected a bit recently but still has a lot of really useful stuff.

Check it out, and post about your own favourites (or add a comment about them here...)

SlickRun to Windows Desktop Search shortcut converter

pdbartlett — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:47:00 GMT

As well as changing my 'blogging setup I've also switched from Google Desktop Search to WDS, for a trial period at least. As WDS has shortcuts it seemed like an opportunity to have one less process running by importing my SlickRun shortcuts. As I have "quite a few" of these, and laziness is invariably the real mother of invention, I wrote a small app to automate the task:

Windows Installer for app only - Qrs2WdsSetup.msi
ZIP archive of entire VS solution - Qrs2Wds.zip

It's only a quick hack, so don't expect to much elegance in either the code or the "user experience". And as ever install at your own risk, etc., etc.

This would have been a whole lot more difficult were it not for Alvaro Mendez's excellent AMS.Profile class library, which saved me from the fun of P/Invoking the PrivateProfile APIs for reading and writing INI files (not to mention remembering how they actually work!), so my thanks go to him.

Enjoy!

<META-INF>
To continue the theme of my last post, in this one I've used the excellent "Insert Box.net file" plugin, and also Flickr4Writer after I got a bit confused midway through a Live Writer OnScreen session...
</META-INF>

My new blogging setup

pdbartlett — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:09:00 GMT

I'm now trying out Google Reader as an aggregator, and have installed a few Live Writer plugins (courtesy of wlwplugins.com) as you can see below:

For this post I've used the del.icio.us plugin and the OnScreen utility.

I'll let you know how it goes, but it's not looking too bad so far...

Happy New Year!

pdbartlett — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:25:00 GMT

I've just read in Ryan's post that the 'dojo lives on, so I:

would like to thank Brian very much for his generosity; and
will try really hard to regain some of my lost zeal for posting

I'm currently playing with WPF, so hopefully that might help out with #2.

So a somewhat belated Happy New Year to you all, and here's hoping this is one resolution I can keep...

A few helpful tools

pdbartlett — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:55:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks I've come across a few things that have made my digital life easier (apologies for the lack of specific attributions, but I'm sure Mike Gunderloy and Scott Hanselman must feature somewhere):

Firefox Extensions Backup Extension (FEBE): damn useful if you want Firefox to look and feel the same on multiple machines, or spend a significant amount of time repaving them
PortableApps: a set of useful free apps that run directly from a USB stick or other portable media, plus a convenient way to manage them
Sysinternals Suite: a whole bunch of really useful utilities, now available in a single download

Is there anything other people have spotted that's slipped under my "cool tool" radar?

Omea products now free

pdbartlett — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:12:00 GMT

(Via Jason Haley) These seemed pretty good when I looked at them some time back, but not good enough for me to part with any cash (not much comes into that category!). However, now they're free so I don't have to...

http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/download/index.html

Handy little XML/XSLT app

pdbartlett — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:03:00 GMT

I've been doing a little XSLT recently (more on why another time...) and came across this handy little (free) Windows app:

http://www.xmlcooktop.com/

Enjoy!

Code sharing - is that a misnomer or what?

pdbartlett — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:48:00 GMT

Why is the inter-airline arrangement called code sharing when the one thing that isn't shared is the flight code?

Answers on a postcard, or the back of a sealed down envelope, ...

Hardware upgrades

pdbartlett — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:55:00 GMT

I've just bought an HP W19 19" widescreen TFT, which looked too good a bargain to miss for £149 from PC World.

My pre-historic Radeon 7200 isn't able to drive it at optimal (1440x900) resolution (though I'll see whether a driver update helps), but even so it's looking pretty good.

On the less glamorous but oh-so-useful front I've also just bought a 1+6 master/slave power strip for £9.99 from Tchibo, which saves all that fumbling about behind the desk to find the power switch.