Sandbox of Thoughts

Deviation Alliance

2010-06-15T08:57:00.001+03:00

Now I’m one of founders of a new blog initiative – Deviation Alliance. If you liked what you read here – you’ll like what we have there, at http://deviation-alliance.com. Also, follow us on Twitter! P.S. All my new posts will be available there and not here, sorry.

What Developer Needs From a Bug Report?

2010-06-11T12:32:00.002+03:00

Really – what information should be mentioned in a bug report? Yes, you know about these things with High, Highest, OurBusinessHasBeenDestroyed priorities and severities, everyone knows about them. But does anyone know what is really needed from a bug report? I had a nice time working as a QA engineer at the start of my career and I’ve learned some things that, combined with what I learned while

Windows Phone 7: Binding to ApplicationBar properties

2010-06-10T01:25:00.001+03:00

I’ve been playing recently with WP7 development and transitions in particular. In some cases you need to change your ApplicationBar with respect to some ViewModel properties. Edit mode or some NullPattern for bindable list may be good examples for such situations. I wish that thing was easy or obvious (if it is easy but I could not find it :)), but I had to work around this issue with

Organize Your Bookmarks

2010-06-08T11:46:00.001+03:00

I browse web on everyday rate, it’s a part of my professional education and I really praise the Web for opportunities it gives me. I surf through pages here and there and sometimes I find something really interesting I just have no time to read now or something that should be saved for later. That’s the case where bookmarks save the game. Bookmark is a simple tool that allows you to save a link

The Importance of Reading Books

2010-06-04T18:35:00.002+03:00

The title of this post may seem rather obvious, but believe me – it’s not obvious for many many many programmers all over the world. These people ignore books as a source of information and by this they basically slow down their professional development to turtle speed. I hope you’re not one of them! :) WHY do we need to read? From the primitive point of view, there are two ways to increase

Using AgileZen for your career management

2010-06-03T15:19:00.001+03:00

What is your career if not yet another project? It has it’s own iterations, goals, results. So why not manage it like a project and don’t leave it uncontrolled? I do recommend you doing so and use any project management tool for that. In this post I’ll cover basics of career management using AgileZen as a wonderful example of project management tool. Goals are main units of career management.

Book Review: The Back of the Napkin

2010-06-02T14:08:00.001+03:00

Due to my profession I often find myself explaining something to someone and more and more times I catch myself on grabbing anything I can draw with and start visualizing my ideas. It’s just much easier to explain if you have some visualization points you can easily roll back to – just pointing at them with your finger. All I knew about visualization was intuitive so it was really great to find a

jPageFlipper 0.9 released!

2010-05-19T08:19:00.002+03:00

Yesterday in the late evening I made my new project available as an open-source jQuery plugin. jPageFlipper is a page flipper implemented in JavaScript using HTML 5

Book Review: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies

2010-05-14T10:08:00.001+03:00

I like books about patterns. Really. They’re not about some silver bullets that can save people, they’re the essence of experience of people who are smarter than I am – and I like it. I like books about management. Not just project management, but bringing order into chaos – that sort of things. So what about book about management patterns? I just love it! Really, it’s wonderful. I could buy

A small test of HTML 5 canvas

2010-05-05T09:40:00.003+03:00

I just want to try whether I can post HTML 5 canvas tricks to my blog :)UPD: Nope, I can't :(

Expression Blend 4 RC Installation – “File is corrupt”

2010-04-26T10:25:00.001+03:00

I’ve downloaded Expression Blend 4 RC two times: from Google Chrome and from Download Master. Each downloaded executable behaves the same: it breaks on unpacking with an error “File is corrupt”. I’ve googled about it but the only case I’ve found was exactly the same case with Expression Blend 3 installation. The only possible reason for that error was low system memory. I’ve closed all apps

Opera in AppStore – What’s Next?

2010-04-15T11:26:00.001+03:00

So Apple has finally allowed some other browser to enter AppStore. What can be a result of this? When there was only one browser – it seemed fine. But when there are two of them – the third and fourth places are logical to come. The most probable candidate for next iPhone browser is Mozilla with their Firefox/Fennec. It is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform only but Mozilla mobile

Opera Mini Hits App Store

2010-04-14T11:54:00.001+03:00

Yes, Apple has allowed Opera to push their new mobile browser to AppStore. To be short: it’s AWESOME. Safari loses on every point I’ve checked for about half of an hour. Opera Mini is FAST, has a plenty of options, it can save pages locally and access them without Internet access. Go get it in AppStore for FREE!

Apple vs Adobe: Success Story

2010-04-13T20:24:00.001+03:00

These days only lazy keeps silent on the hottest ‘companies war’ topic: Apple has completely kicked Adobe out of iPhone/iPad devices. I won’t dive deep into this sole fact as you may read about it here and there: mashable.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-adobe/ billmackin.com/2010/03/can-apple-kill-flash/ The question is: how can this end? Let’s have a look at the best possible (but though

Windows Phone Development Follow-Up

2010-03-16T14:20:00.001+02:00

Yesterday at MIX 10 Microsoft has finally announced development details for their new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. So what do we know now? 1. We may use Silvelight OR XNA to build applications for WP7! Silverlight will be used mostly for business applications and simple games and XNA will be used for building heavy 3d games. 2. Development tools for Windows Phone 7 are absolutely and totally

MIX sessions I want to have a look at

2010-03-12T08:24:00.001+02:00

I’ve browsed all upcoming MIX sessions and chose several worth watching: Open Standards HTML5 Now: The Future of Web Markup Today The Mono Project SVG: The Past, Present and Future of Vector Graphics for the Web UX Design Fundamentals for Developers (and Other Non-Designers) Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology and Design Designing Rich Experiences for

Wonderful Microsoft Gears

2010-03-11T13:56:00.001+02:00

Picture provided by Victor Lazarevich: Guess, will this system work? :)

My small PowerShell presentation

2010-03-09T11:33:00.001+02:00

This is my presentation from Intetics internal workshop: Introduction To Power Shell

Using Push-Location and Pop-Location in PowerShell

2010-03-06T10:18:00.002+02:00

All popular shell environments have a wonderful tool named directory stack. It allows you to jump there and here in different directions and be able to return to some saved points. This feature really rules when you have to intensively work with command line. It’s really nice that PowerShell designers have implemented it with Push-Location and Pop-Location cmdlets. These cmdlets have standard

My PowerShell prompt

2010-03-05T09:52:00.001+02:00

Just wanted to share it :) function prompt{ $_locationStackDepthString = New-Object string ([char] '+'), (Get-Location -Stack).Count $color = 'Yellow' Write-Host '>> ' -nonewline -ForegroundColor $color Write-Host $(Get-Date -Format T) -ForegroundColor 'Green' -NoNewLine Write-Host " " $PWD.Path -ForegroundColor 'Cyan' Write-Host ($_locationStackDepthString + '>') -nonewline -

Using XmlPeek and XmlPoke in PowerShell

2010-02-18T09:23:00.001+02:00

and commands in NAnt are really useful when it comes to changing configuration files during your automated build process. But do we do when we need that functionality in PowerShell? I did not find any native implementation but it's really easy to implement your own. Here it goes: function xmlPeek($filePath, $xpath) { [xml] $fileXml = Get-Content $filePath

What is Windows Phone 7 Series for developers?

2010-02-16T10:16:00.001+02:00

Internet is buzzing all around about new Windows Mobile OS - Windows Phone 7 Series. Presentations are awesome, UI is nice and usable. At last Windows fans have something mobile to be proud of :) But what is this event for us, developers? As an iPhone user and .NET developer I was rather anxious to people who could write programs for their phones and sell them at market. But looks like things

What do I need from Internet Explorer 9?

2010-02-12T08:35:00.001+02:00

That's a really interesting question. I did not use any Internet Explorer as my main browser before Internet Explorer 8. IE8 changed my mind a bit and I've been using it for about a month and a half. Why did I jump off: Tabs opened slowly Pages loaded slowly No nice CSS features like border-radius Misses some FireBug features (although see next p.1) Too large header bars (

Mock or stub?

2010-02-06T17:35:00.000+02:00

When I was just getting into unit testing the subject question was rather hard to me: it’s not actually obvious for a novice. The answer to it came from a unit testing book I think is very nice and useful - “The Art of Unit Testing” by Roy Osherove.Mock or stub?So what’s the core difference between mock and stub? The answer is: mocks can fail tests and stubs can not. You may think this minor

The Law of Leaky Abstractions

2010-02-03T09:06:00.001+02:00

The concept of leaky abstractions was introduced by Joel Spolsky in his blog 7 years ago, but it's not as widely known as it deserves. So here is the basic definition: All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky This simply means that if you're trying to hide something beneath your abstraction layer - it will almost always show itself up. These errors are hard to detect and have

Book Review: “The Passionate Programmer” by Chad Fowler

2010-01-31T16:53:00.001+02:00

I’m a huge fan of books and from now on I’ll write a review on each technical (or may be not) book I read. The first book reviewed will be a wonderful book by Chad Fowler: "The Passionate Programmer”. Actually, it’s full name is “The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development”. This is what this book is about – your career. Chad Fowler is a great programmer, Ruby

Joining your social bits in one service

2010-01-28T14:15:00.002+02:00

I'm using Twitter as my main way to express myself to other people. It's ultimately nice for sharing links and thoughts. However, I had also two other services that I could not synchronize with Twitter... since now.Welcome, here come the TwitterFeed! Wonderful tool for joining all your services into one:1. Google Reader - I share items time to time and now they are automatically reposted to

Fixing Twitter for Chrome with User JS

2010-01-10T22:15:00.002+02:00

I'm a rather conservative Twitter user and prefer web interface to all the others. The only thing in it that have been bugging me since I've started using it was impossibility of submitting tweet with Ctrl + Enter shortcut. And today I've fixed that (yeap, I'm damn proud of myself!) using User JS script for Chrome.Yes, it only fixes Twitter in Chrome and may possibly fix it in Firefox with

IronRuby LinkedIn Group

2009-12-18T08:20:00.002+02:00

IronRuby is in RC state and soon we'll all get a possibility to use it in our production environments. I can't predict the exact amount, but I'm absolutely sure it will conquer many developer hearts and build a nice Ruby .NET community.If you like IronRuby - JOIN LinkedIn community! Let's share our experience in using IronRuby!

Diving into RIA architectures with Flex as an example

2009-11-21T19:44:00.002+02:00

Now I have a need to dive into Flex architecture common structure and widely used patterns. Below goes the list of links I've found useful and interesting:Introduction to RIA architectureshttp://www.insideria.com/2008/02/understaning-the-architecture.htmlFlex Architecture Fundamentals in 4 partshttp://www.dehats.com/drupal/?q=node/32http://www.dehats.com/drupal/?q=node/33http://www.dehats.com/

Fixing IronRuby error when installing Rake

2009-11-20T09:08:00.003+02:00

I was trying to install Rake with IronRuby but was always getting the following error:>igem install rakeERROR: While executing gem ... (ArgumentError)After some Googling I've found the following article:http://unplugged.giggio.net/unplugged/post/Erro-ao-instalar-gems-no-IronRuby.aspxIt's not in English or in Russian so I had to ask Google Translate for help. The article stated that length of

Running IronRuby 0.9.2 with RubyMine 2.0

2009-11-19T09:08:00.010+02:00

Latest releases of IronRuby 0.9.2 and RubyMine 2.0 inspired me to make them play together. That's my first experience of running IronRuby in fully featured IDE so I was rather doubtful whether it will work or not.Here goes step-by-step manual:1. Download IronRuby 0.9.2 from here and install it.2. Download RubyMine 2.0 from here and install it. You may need a licence - grab it here.3. Run

Use remote desktop connection faster with PowerShell

2009-11-18T10:04:00.009+02:00

We have more than ten servers in our production network and all of them are accessible via RDC. The problem is that to connect via RDC you have to specify public IP and not local network nice name like "prod-01" or "prod-db-01". I had not bothered about it till I had a need of connecting some of them several times a day. To solve this problem I wrote a PowerShell script that takes nice name of

Use PowerShell to determine MS SQL table used data space

2009-11-16T13:47:00.002+02:00

Yet another issue to be solved: we have SQL Expression installed at our branch server and it allows only 4Gb per table. So - what's the solution? Of course, PowerShell!Right click on database - "Start PowerShell". (Note: I do NOT know how to enter MS SQL mode from normal PowerShell). And now we can have some magic with our database! The following script shows databases that are too heavy and can

Enlarge your Build System!

2009-11-13T20:38:00.002+02:00

http://www.jameskovacs.com/blog/ReleasingPsakeV100PsakeV200.aspxhttp://www.protosystem.net/post/2009/04/08/Using-PowerShell-in-the-build-process.aspxhttp://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/08/30/on-psake.aspxRake? NAnt? NO!!!!!!!!!!!PSake? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!What is it? Ha! Powershell-based build system. DSL for tasks, easily integrated with PS script

That's only 9th message!

2009-11-13T15:54:00.002+02:00

Yeap. This message is only 9th message I have in this year. Compared to 158 messages from last year it seems a bit... small? :)I should definitely write more.

Delete all MSMQ queues at some PC with PowerShell

2009-11-13T13:32:00.002+02:00

We have a small issue at one of our production servers. Once something generated ~10K queues with Guid-like names. Since then they were not deleted as there was a problem: standard MSMQ manager doesn't allow deleting several queues at once.What to do? Powershell, of course! :) Here goes the script:[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Messaging")[System.Messaging.MessageQueue]::

What do we need to use IronRuby?

2009-09-26T09:19:00.004+03:00

This post is an answer to Jimmy Schementi's Twitter question:jschementi: Time to start building real #ironruby and #ironpython websites: what content (other than the obvious get/learn/etc) would you like to see?I'm not going to speak about creating new applications, I'm going to describe a switch of existing ASP.NET application written in C# to IronRuby. Let's have a real-world example. I'm

Resharper doesn't see assemblies from GAC

2009-08-28T14:51:00.001+03:00

Just set SetLocal reference property to True. It will copy this library to /bin folder and it will be parsed by Resharper.

Twitquake!

2009-05-28T00:04:00.000+03:00

Looks like Twitter is twitquaking right now - it is accessible time to time and has some problems with twitting.Sad!

Back online!

2009-05-24T18:32:00.002+03:00

Here I am :) From today and further on I'm returning to blogging here.P.S. BTW, I'm now at Twitter and StackOverflow too :)

NAnt HowTo #4: How To Create And Use Custom NAnt Task

2009-01-19T09:46:00.002+02:00

new class named OK, let's start. What is a NAnt task? Formally, it's a class that extends NAnt.Core.Task class from NAnt.Core.dll assembly located in your NAnt installation folder. As any class it will be placed in an assembly, and this assembly is the way you interact with NAnt. So, let's get it! The following steps describe how to create a simple HelloTask task. 1. Create new project Create

ASP.NET MVC impressions

2009-01-16T08:34:00.001+02:00

It's awesome! As a fan of Ruby on Rails I can tell you: ASP.NET MVC is f*cking awesome!

NAnt HowTo #3: How To Run NUnit Tests From Your Build File

2009-01-05T08:39:00.002+02:00

This post continues my NAnt HowTo series. In previous posts I've covered topics of compiling your project and splitting your build file. Today I want to tell you how to run NAnt unit tests from your NAnt build script. First of all you may notice that main NAnt distribution has TWO NUnit tasks: nunit and nunit2. First one is designed to work with NUnit 1.0 and second one with NUnit 2.2. This

NAnt HowTo #2: How To Split Your Build File

2008-12-30T08:34:00.002+02:00

Let's assume you have a large build file with many-many targets, properties, etc. After some time it becomes pretty hard to support and extend it. What can we do? As for me, the best option here is to split your build file to several pieces. Below goes an example on how you can do this. My default.build file: <

NAnt HowTos

2008-12-29T08:26:00.001+02:00

Lately I had to dive into NAnt and I'm going to post here several posts on some simple NAnt questions.

Things to complete

2008-12-24T13:39:00.001+02:00

Here goes the list of things I want to complete in the nearest future: Master ASP.NET MVC Become senior software engineer at next internal attestation Dive deep into .NET attributes programming Master JQuery

How to become a better specialist?

2008-12-24T12:12:00.001+02:00

Work with those who are smarter and more professional than you. This is a modified quote from some chess book and it applicable to literally any profession. Applying this statement to my profession (I'm a .NET developer if anyone could have forgotten that ;)), you can become better much faster if you work with someone more qualified than you. I've been working with two nice developers for almost

Sharp Architecture

2008-12-24T11:40:00.001+02:00

Do you want to become a better developer? Try this project. Yes, just download it and read the code. Comments are marvelous, design is outstanding. I love it. I've picked several tricks and two absolutely new libraries/approaches for myself. Although it's designed to use with ASP.NET MVC beta you'll easily grab NHibernate code as it was designed not to depend on view framework. Just try it

ASP.NET Form Autocompletion

2008-12-23T13:45:00.001+02:00

Our customer was really interested in enabling autocompletion feature for registration page. I've searched a lot, I've found a huge number of pages describing how to turn it off and (at last!) only one page about how turning it on. All magic is hidden in AutoCompleteType property of asp:TextBox. You can read about it in details here but in a nutshell this field allows you to specify what

Two wonderful articles on using NHibernate with ASP.NET

2008-12-22T22:55:00.001+02:00

Old one. New one.

Google Backstabs Microsoft

2008-12-19T13:44:00.001+02:00

Dirty move from Google.

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1

2008-12-18T12:17:00.001+02:00

According to a friend of my friend, IE8 RC1 has been accessible for Microsoft partners a month ago :( And seems like: No standards Slow JavaScript Security problems 17 in ACID3 I hope it was very old build. VERY old. =(

Leaves Bugs System

2008-12-18T08:13:00.001+02:00

Are you satisfied with Bugzilla? My answer is NO. I know it's has many nice features but I'm absolutely disappointed with it's UI. How could anyone create such a crap?! It's unusable and usually I spend up to 10 minutes to search for defects assigned to me for some specific iteration. I saw nice solutions, but all of them had some drawbacks that made me drop using them off. One of these

Web Developer Wish List

2008-12-18T07:42:00.001+02:00

Nice article on what you may ask for Christmas :) My choice is office chair - together with other 55 people who voted the same. View wish list

IE 8 coming soon!

2008-12-18T07:41:00.001+02:00

Or at least it's release candidate :) That would be a great Christmas present! Read here

New Live Writer

2008-12-17T00:02:00.001+02:00

Could you image what could be better for blogging than Microsoft Live Writer? Earlier I could not, but now I see how I was mistaken :) And the answer is... Live Writer 2009!!!! Actually, this is just a release candidate, but the list of improvements looks fine: Support for YouTube Support for Flickr Spellchecking for some more non-English languages Support for Digg Support for

Chrome vs IE 8 Beta

2008-12-16T23:55:00.001+02:00

This article shows that IE8 Beta loses the battle to Google Chrome. I think that it's mostly because of BETA in IE 8 name and Google Chrome has recently dropped same suffix. Hope IE8 wins =)

Ruby-based barmen DSL

2008-12-16T23:29:00.001+02:00

It's wonderful! Just have a look at this sexy code: drink 'Screwdriver' do serve_in 'Highball Glass' ingredients do 2.ounces :vodka 5.ounces :orange_juice endend I like it! And you? ;)

Some interesting links

2008-12-16T08:54:00.001+02:00

It Oxite as good as it's claimed to be? According to this well-proved article, it's not and, moreover, it will hurt ASP.NET community. How your team goes agile? Our team tries to be agile but it's not a one-second process and it takes some time to adapt from previous techniques to agile methodology. That's why I really like articles about other agile teams as I can pick some interesting

Best text editor for Windows I've ever seen

2008-12-15T08:39:00.001+02:00

Yes, that may sound too promising but whatever. I tried it and it's sexy. Nothing wrong, everything is extremely cool. I love it. So, what is it? What is this wonderful sexy text editor? Here it goes: Intype. Check it here. Snippets are sexy, UI is sexy, logo is sexy. It's SEXY!

Ruby is FAST!

2008-12-10T08:54:00.001+02:00

That's what I'm talking about. Ruby 1.9 is almost five times faster comparing to Ruby 1.8.6. Isn't it great? Perhaps this fact will make me turn back to Ruby from Python and will help me making my decision on platforms I use. I'm aiming to have two platforms by my hand and for my purposes. The first one is definitely .NET - the one I'm going to use for large enterprise solutions. The second one

The power of shell

2008-12-08T07:58:00.001+02:00

Finally I've found some time to download and have a look at PowerShell - Microsoft replacement for it's old-ugly-non-usable command line prompt. And all I can say is GREAT! It's absolutely wonderful in it's might! Predefined aliases make it look like *UN?X shell and make it more usable. Also take a look at PSTOOLS tool from Mark Russinovich - another great set of tools. As for me, I really like

Calling .NET libraries from IronRuby

2008-12-05T08:11:00.001+02:00

In my recent post on IronRake I've used the following task to demonstrate the power of IronRake: task :default do require 'mscorlib' require 'System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' print System::Guid.NewGuid().ToString() end And now I can tell you that everything is much simpler that that. Don't use "require" plus

John Lam Talk on PDC

2008-12-05T08:02:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I started viewing IronRuby video from PDC by John Lam. It's marvelous! I did know Ruby is a powerful language, I did know .NET is a powerful framework but I could not imagine how powerful IronRuby will be! I recommend this video to anyone interested in IronRuby, you'll see many interesting things there.

Python 3 released

2008-12-04T09:39:00.001+02:00

You can download it here. Recently I've been diving into Python 3 rc3 and I can say that I like it. It is not as verbose as Ruby is but it's much simpler and _faster_. You know, I mean, FASTER. So my choice is using Python for some lightweighted websites (e.g. for my freelance tasks) and IronRuby for some huge websites.

Running IRake

2008-12-04T00:12:00.002+02:00

This post will show you how to setup and run irake and feel incredible power of great tool written in great language that runs in great framework. NOTE: in this post I assume all paths are correct and you can write 'rake' instead of 'd:/ruby/bin/rake'. First, download IronRuby alpha 2. Unpack and have a look what we have. In /bin folder we have some executables, including iirb and irake. We're

IRake works!!!

2008-12-03T10:43:00.001+02:00

YAHOO! Later on I'll post here how to make it work and feel power of IronRake.

Upcoming Add-on-Con at Mountain View

2008-12-03T07:59:00.001+02:00

According to this page IE 8 developers will possibly make crossbrowser extensions creation as simple as it could be. Nice move, actually. Hope this aspect of extension creation will be treated by extension creators just like web developers treat writing crossbrowser websites. This means most good Firefox extensions will be fortunately ported to IE 8 and users will be able to switch to the latter

Fowler on Rake

2008-12-02T08:55:00.001+02:00

A quote from wonderful article: So far I've found rake to be a powerful and easy to use build language. Of course it helps that I'm comfortable in ruby, but rake has convinced me that a build system makes sense as an internal DSL to full-blown language. Scripts are a natural for building stuff in many ways, and rake adds just enough features to provide a really good build system on top of a

Python 3.0 rc3

2008-12-02T08:26:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I've installed release candidate #3 for Python 3.0. My expectations were high enough and as with all high expectations I did not find what I was intended to find. 'self' in method signatures is still there, for example :( I'll continue my investigations by all my enthusiasm has gone. Another not very good news is that Python actually doesn't have anything like Rake. Yes, it has some

Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

2008-12-01T11:41:00.001+02:00

Yes! I've got it! Hurray! So, now I'm thinking about my second step towards ergonomic workplace. Will it be new mouse, trackball or something else?

Domain Driven Design in the essence

2008-12-01T09:05:00.001+02:00

Here goes a small article on the essence of DDD. Being short - dive into the domain, be a part of it. Do not mess with implementation details, think higher. Understand the domain as much as you can.

Compiler warnings as errors

2008-11-30T22:55:00.001+02:00

Do you treat compiler warnings as errors? NO?! How could you? =( Read how to do that

Ruby is... Visual Basic?!

2008-11-30T22:45:00.001+02:00

Did you know that Ruby was a codename for a prototype form generator? And did you know it was bought by Microsoft and later on evolved into Visual Basic language? Wikipedia

Microsoft NEK 4000

2008-11-28T13:03:00.001+02:00

Seems like you can't find this wonderful keyboard in Minsk shops. What a pity =(

IronRuby alpha 2!!!

2008-11-27T13:02:00.001+02:00

YAHOO! Wonderful present from IronRuby creators :) Looking forward to try irake...

Microsoft Live Calendar

2008-11-27T09:14:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I played a bit with Microsoft Live Calendar. Looks like a brother of Google Calendar, a very close one. Really, they have very much in common, though Live Calendar is much younger. I don't know of any API for it, but soon I'll have to investigate them - we've started a project of synchronizing studies schedules with GCalendar and LCalendar. Hope we'll move as far as our ambitions are :

Joke :)

2008-11-27T08:55:00.001+02:00

Is it true that server with Windows 7 can be easily restored by showering it with a bottle of 7Up? :-P

ASP.NET Chart Control

2008-11-26T09:25:00.001+02:00

After so many years of third-party implementations we have it! Native asp:chart control that will be shipped with ASP.NET 4.0. Read about asp:chart

Nice browsers comparison

2008-11-25T11:50:00.001+02:00

You can view results of other browsers and test your own!

Entity Framework, how could you? :(

2008-11-25T09:11:00.001+02:00

Yeah, that's it. Entity Framework has shocked me in the morning. I tried to wrap some legacy code with nice EF function and everything seemed to work fine - model browser showed me stored procedure and it's ObjectContext analogue. But the trick is that it existed only in EF XML mapping, not in C# code =(. After some googling I've found something very frustrating: Function import code will not be

Microsoft Live Reader

2008-11-24T14:05:00.001+02:00

Why - I do ask you. WHY? Why Microsoft has such a beautiful tool like Live Writer and have no tool for RSS reading? Yes, Live Mail includes some tools for reading RSS but I'm really looking for online solution. Once again - WHY?!

WebMail Notifier

2008-11-24T13:56:00.001+02:00

Lately due to my interest in Microsoft new products I've been extensively using Hotmail. It's a pity they can't send incoming letters to GMail and each time I had to visit hotmail page and check for new messages manually. GMail had no such problem as I've been using GMail Notifier for a while. Today I thought of same Firefox add-on for Hotmail. Little googling - and see what I've got: WebMail

I hate XSLT xsl:for-each!!!

2008-11-24T13:31:00.001+02:00

I've spent almost an hour trying to find out what's wrong with this xslt file. All I needed was to display list of items each at new line. I've tried simple newlines, concatenated newline with "." in body of "value", added empty xsl:text elements with newline inside, tried , tried - nothing worked!!! And these methods worked fine outside the xsl:for-each element, but inside it...

Thoughts on Ruby

2008-11-24T10:51:00.001+02:00

Not actually mine, but anyway, mine are similar. Read not mine thoughts As for me, Ruby minuses are: It's slow No native threads support It's slow Minor bugs that sometimes mess me up It's slow So these are five minuses of Ruby (it's speed deserves three minuses, for sure) and I don't know if IronRuby will fix these but I really hope to see that. P.S. Dear kirindave,

Fresh Books

2008-11-24T08:52:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I had a chance to visit a bookshop. That was nice :) First I grabbed some fantasy books and then I've noticed familiar 'Addison-Wesley Signature Series' book cover. It's rather thin though it's very good:This book covers different topics on continuous integration and gets user acquainted with the de-facto standard for continuous integration: Cruise Control. I'm really looking forward to

Haha, Google Analytics is down

2008-11-21T09:13:00.001+02:00

It's first time I see this message but I'm really disappointed with it: >>>>> An Error Has Been Detected Please try again. Thank you for your patience. <<<<< =(( Seems like Google is not that stable

This is my test post with Windows Live Writer

2008-11-21T08:54:00.001+02:00

Wow! I like it :) Clean and easy install and wonderful textpane with your blog style. Also it supports pasting code from Visual Studio - and that's one of reasons I've decided to switch to this software. Actually it's not built-in and accessible via this plugin but whatever :)

IE8 features

2008-11-20T17:28:00.002+02:00

Here's short summary of IE8 features announced at Microsoft Developer Days in Minsk:1. JavaScript improvements: a. Totally rewritten Garbage Collector - performance gain b. String operations improved - performance gain c. Collections operations improved - performance gain2. Development improvements: a. JavaScript debugging b. On-fly changing of literally anything at the page c. JavaScript

Visual Studio 2010 will have WPF UI!!!

2008-11-20T16:55:00.002+02:00

Yeap!According to information presented for developers at Microsoft Developer Days, user interface of Visual Studio 2010 will be completely rewritten in Windows Presentation Foundation!Perhaps, it will even have a ribbon :)P.S. In CTP text editor selection background is _sexy_ :-P

Tabs or Spaces?

2008-11-19T21:00:00.004+02:00

Do you use tabs or spaces to indent your code structures? I was a huge fan of spaces but recently had a chance to review code written with tabs visualized in Visual Studio. It looks great! :)Just try it! To show white spaces in Visual Studio use 'Edit > Advanced > View White Space' menu item. Use 'Edit > Advanced' menu to tabify or untabify selected lines - really cool feature when you are

One day left

2008-11-19T08:36:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow I'm going to visit nice 'Microsoft Developer Day in Minsk' event. As for me, the most interesting topics will be VS 2010 and Windows 7. Hope I'll not be disappointed with it ;)P.S. I'll possibly post here some photos from this event.

Windows 7 most discussable topics

2008-11-18T07:40:00.002+02:00

Here you can find an interesting article about five most talked-about Windows 7 features. According to this article, they are:modified UAC (yeap, much more customizable drive-me-crazy-popups)new taskbar (finally we can sort icons at taskbar. Perhaps, the larger step taken from Win 3.1 :))HomeGroup - now it will be much easier and secure to share your folders, view Mary's shares, etc.Libraries -

First step to ergonomic workplace

2008-11-17T13:37:00.001+02:00

Yeah! Just added THIS to my wish list: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

Microsoft Developer Days in Minsk

2008-11-17T10:31:00.002+02:00

It's coming!!!On thursday I'm going to visit this event and make a short photoreport about it. Really looking forward to Windows 7 presentation.

San Francisco Guest

2008-11-17T10:23:00.000+02:00

Wow :)Recently someone from San Francisco has visited my blog. Nice to meet you, American guest :)P.S. I love Google Analytics :D

Great movies

2008-11-17T10:13:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I had a chance to view Wall-E and Max Payne movies. Both are great!

Microsoft free e-books

2008-11-14T13:58:00.001+02:00

Wow!These are cool:Programming Microsoft LINQIntroducing Microsoft® Silverlight 2, Second Edition Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5Preview and download