This Old Code

Recently I have decided that I have a typing problem(not because of Steve Yegge’s rant.).  Sure I can touch type at a fair rate in word a outlook but when it came to code I will hit my keys of despair, I suck with the number row.  A fact I blame on an over reliance of my keyboards 10.  In order to solve this problem I have committed to spending half an hour a night at http://sense-lang.org/typing/ practicing a self made number row drill. 

Like riding a bike, I found that after my first night of drills I could once again remember which finger belonged to which key.  Now I am mostly struggling with the fact I drilled on a none ergonomic keyboard at home, but use a split key ergonomic keyboard at work.  It seems that in order to be truly proficient one needs to drill on the same keyboard use day in and day out.  Its almost amazing how the slight arrangement differences can really slow you down.

Of All the PDC announcements a couple small announcements from the BCL team have excited me.

.NET 4.0 will have BigInteger, support for Memory Mapped Files and best of all File System enumerations.

With file system enumerations we will no longer have to iterate an unknown sized array.  we can now iterate over an IEnumerable.  This will mean less memory consumption and faster data access since we no longer need to load all the directory info into a single array.

I have spent the past couple of days verifying my web application on windows 2008.  One issue that has plagued me is gif files were not served.  At first I thought this might be an access right issue since my program is installed under program files.  But after adding every imaginable access right to this vpc still no gif would be served. Next I thought it might be caching so I disabled that, but still no image would be served.  Finally  it turns out that when I installed iis I did not install the static content option.  which prevents my .js javascript files and images from being served.

Just remember if you run into a control that does not support ToolTipService(). ToolTip you can always create a invisible boarder around the control.  And you can use that border to display your tool tip.

From the channel nine screen cast Silverlight - Handling HTML Events in .NET Code by Mike Taulty

Void OnLoaded (object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    HtmlElement element =
        HtmlPage.Document.GetElementById("MyButton");
    element.AttachEvent("onclick", (EventHandler)MyHandler);
}
void MyHandler( object sender, EventArgs args)
{
    //Do something.
}

After installing silverlight tools for  visual studio

I receive the following error message in visual studio 2008 Preview

Derived method 'OnApplyTemplate' in type 'System.Windows.Controls.GridSplitter' from assembly 'System.Windows.Controls.Extended, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' cannot reduce access.

I have a solution that when compiled under the IDE all of the projects build with no issue.  However when compiled with msbuild, I receive the following error message “error BC30201: Expression expected. ” on line 506 and 238 of a vb.net project.

line 505 If Counter => e.NumberOfItems Then
line 238 If Counter => e.NumberOfItems Then

I made a typo with => it should be >=.   But why does it compile under the IDE?  If I format the the document then the IDE corrects the typo.  So this looks like another example of vb not compiling the code I wrote.

There seem to be a movement that would like to sell you on the idea of social networks marketing( The Power of Web 2.0 in Your Hands ).  But before you shell out the cash and join the social network revolution.  I think you should read Particle Physics, Mortgage, and Unconventional Advice .   My opinion, if your passionate about your work and love talking about it, blog.  The rest will come naturally.

Firefox 3 makes a call to your anti virus software to scan your down loaded file.  This typically results in a double scan or an unnecessary scan when you trust the download source.

There is no intuitive way to disable this feature but thanks to gHacks I was able to find a configuration setting for this feature.

You can navigate to about:config in Firefox and double click the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone to set its value to false.  No more time wasted scanning the file.

What I find disturbing is that Lloyds is storing the password in plain text in their database and employees have access to that account data.

read the story at bbc