CallContext

A Few Updates

2008-09-05T13:22:30Z

There's been a few changes going on in my life lately. Firstly, let's get the biggest one out of the way: I've resigned from my current position at Axcess Consulting. It's all very amicable, and I hope to still help out in some small way in the future. The next big thing is, I've stopped travelling (as a consequence of the previous big thing). This means I'll have more time on my hands and will hopefully be able to get my teeth into some personal projects for the first time in a long time. The final...(read more)

Resharper 4.0

2008-06-02T06:41:22Z

ReSharper 4.0 has just hit beta! I have been using ReSharper for about a year now, and it is an awesome productivity boost. You can really concentrate on writing code, and let ReSharper take care of the little stuff, as well as some pretty major refactoring tools. At the moment, I can get a special 60-day trial key for ReSharper if you email me and let me know you want it! I can't help but suggest you try and buy this software. If you can only have one addin for VS, then this is the one....(read more)

iTunes and the store are amazingly infuriating

2008-05-24T00:53:20Z

I can't believe the pain I've been through up to now, and I'm still not finished setting up the first iPod! I'm starting to think the no-name brand USB MP-3 player's are where it's at. I honestly believe Apple's entire Windows testing of iTunes consists of installing the program on a clean Vista machine using an account with administrative rights. I have been through hell, and now they're insulting me by asking me to put my credit card details into my 9yo daughter's iTunes store account! There's...(read more)

Pimp your IDE

2008-05-14T01:51:15Z

This post has an awesome list of Visual Studio IDE enhancements! Just sticking it here for the BAS....(read more)

The most concise subversion usage post ever

2008-05-08T03:59:53Z

Bil Simser has written a great article on the day-to-day use of subversion. It explains everything from the initial set-up, through tagging, branching, and merging. His example uses a branching pattern called "Feature Branching". Another name for feature branching (and one you might be more familiar with) is "Development Branching". The idea is, any development work is done in a branch until such time as the work is considered complete and ready to merge back into the trunk. Release builds are done...(read more)

For those who know what it is

2008-04-21T01:20:05Z

ma78gs2h.rar...(read more)

Linq to SQL vs. NHibernate

2008-04-04T13:08:57Z

It finally clicked with me this afternoon while watching Luca Bolognese demonstrate Linq to SQL to the EMEA crowd. Linq to SQL (L2S from here on) is about the data. NHibernate is about the domain. At least as far as I understand. In the demo, Luca at first creates what would appear to the naked eye to be a domain object, but it's really just a very decent wrapper class DTO style object. He then goes on to say if you were doing anything remotely serious with L2S you wouldn't work that way. He then...(read more)

Stay away from the light!

2008-03-12T06:08:19Z

Another thing I like about Vista: when apps die, they kind of fade to a paler, washed out whiter colour. Makes me think they're heading for the light......(read more)

Fluent interfaces

2008-03-11T02:54:08Z

These are things I see popping up a bit these days. I like the way they expose their intent through the "fluency" of the language of the statements. For example, I've been used to writing asserts in my unit tests like so: 1: Assert.AreEqual("This thing", result); And I've just tried the fluent interface exposed by NUnit along with one of the provided methods of the string class: 1: Assert.That(result.Equals("This thing")); It achieves exactly the same result as the first example, but...(read more)

Coding standards

2008-03-10T06:34:34Z

I'm just reading Pete Goodliffe's Code Craft. I'm only at the beginning of the book and he's devoted a chapter to coding standards, reinforcing my own belief that good code presentation goes a long way towards good code. One of the things he neglects, I believe, is adding the reason why to each specific point of the standard. This might seem like a whole bunch of unnecessary nit picking, but here me out. I'm an inquisitive chap. I flat out refuse to accept anything anyone says as an absolute truth...(read more)