You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Tuesday, Nov 8, 2005, 9:44 PM in The Spout
Have I missed anything?
I've noticed that various prolific bloggers feel the need to tell me that they're going to stop blogging for more than 24 hours. That's one of the things I love about RSS readers: no matter how long someone goes away, so long as I'm subscribed, I here their every utterance.
On the other hand, what I've come to hate about RSS readers is that nothing gets by me. Keeping track of absolutely everything was exhausting, so I went cold turkey. I've been off #R since I repaved my machine a coupla weeks ago. I still surf to slashdot.org about once/day, but that's it. No Scobelizer. No Don. No Ian. No Dilbert or Gizmodo or any of the 100s of other items in my OPML that I can't even remember. No RSS reader of any kind.
So far, I'm enjoying the extra time on my hands. Have I missed anything?
Tuesday, Nov 8, 2005, 5:37 PM in Tools
Using VS05 to build .NET 1.x apps
Jomo Fisher has put together a list of steps to take when you want to use Visual Studio 2005 to continue to maintain your .NET 1.x applications under the .NET 1.x Framework.
Sunday, Nov 6, 2005, 12:35 PM in Oslo
11/10 PND Topic: What does MDD mean to you?
I haven't been able to hang out at the Portland Nerd Dinners in forever, but it's on my calendar for 11/10 and my topic is "what does model-driven development mean to you?" I've been doing a ton of experimentation lately and I'm especially interested in how folks deal with a client-model, e.g. data binding, linq, etc, that expects client-server and a middle tier that exposes a service endpoint.
Friday, Nov 4, 2005, 10:32 PM in Tools
Generics Q: Best way to convert a string to a T?
What's the best way to implement the following semantic (feel free to change the signature)?
bool ConvertFromStringToT<T>(string in, ref T out) {...}
I'd like to be able to call it like so:
int x = 452;
double y = 77.7;
ConvertFromStringToT("123", ref x); // x is now 123
ConvertFromStringToT("abc", ref y); // y remains 77.7
I came up with a solution that relies more than I'd like on run-time behavior rather than compile-time behavior, which is why I'm asking.
Friday, Nov 4, 2005, 3:08 PM in .NET
WinFX in the BackRow
Casey Chesnum has put together what is probably the first real WinFX app: a Media Center "light" app that looks damn cool. Check it out.
Monday, Oct 31, 2005, 7:41 PM in The Spout
What's a group of geeks called?
Sloth of bears.
Army of ants.
Murder of crows.
Tribe of monkeys.
Embarrassment of richest.
What about geeks? Conference? Shy? Intelligence? Slather?
P.S. this site on collective nouns has a bunch of fun ones. I think I like "smack of jellyfish" best...
Saturday, Oct 29, 2005, 12:36 PM in The Spout
Testing ASP.NET 2.0 port of sb.com
Pay no attention to the may behind the curtain...
Thursday, Oct 27, 2005, 9:01 PM in Tools
Scraping old versions of VS05 off your system
If you read the ReadMe.htm from the Visual Studio 2005 setup, you'll see a detailed list of up to 23 things to uninstall in the right order (plus 2 notes if you have trouble).
To solve this problem, Dan Fernandez posts about a VS05 uninstall tool that worked wonderfully for me.
Thursday, Oct 27, 2005, 11:58 AM in Tools
VS05 Has Shipped! Wahoo!
Wednesday, Oct 26, 2005, 10:37 PM in The Spout
The Most Amazing Consumer Experience
I just had the most amazing consumer experience and I just had to share it.
I was looking for the local Mom & Pop computer store in my area and I stumbled across www.puzzlecomputers.com. His site doesn't mention a store, but I left him a message asking if he could upgrade my computer or point me at the local Mom & Pop. Not only does he do that kind of work, but he came to my house, picked up the two computers I wanted to use as parts, e.g. case, RW-DVD, HD, etc, recommended and purchased the new motherboard, CPU, memory and quiet power supply, put them all together (including modifying my old proprietary Dell case to fit), brought the whole thing back to my house and then spent another hour installing another HD I had lying around. The specs on the parts were 1GB of RAM (upgradeable to 2GB), 2.8GHz AMD processor and ABIT motherboard with all the trimmings.
The whole thing, parts, labor, delivery, etc. cost $400. Plus, he hauled away the extra parts so I don't have to look at them. And when the drivers didn't install right away, he was available for phone support.
Highly recommended. I wish all my consumer experiences were like this one!
Wednesday, Oct 26, 2005, 4:33 PM in Fun
I'm all ready for 9th grade
| You Passed 8th Grade Math |
 |
Monday, Oct 24, 2005, 9:16 PM
PDC05 Sessions Online
Mike Swanson and the folks that made this possible, you guys rock!
"If you were unable to attend the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 (PDC05) in Los Angeles this year, never fear; 209 breakout sessions, panels, and symposia are now available online. Each session includes a video of the presenter, a navigable index of the content, the PowerPoint presentation itself, and video of any demos. We'll be hosting this content for free, for anyone, for six full months."
Monday, Oct 24, 2005, 5:42 PM in .NET
WF Activity Context
Here. The one where I find more WF activity instances than I expect.
Monday, Oct 24, 2005, 5:40 PM in .NET
Typed WF Communications Details
Here.
The one where I finally figure out how to get wca integrated with my WF VS projects in a sane way.
Monday, Oct 24, 2005, 2:21 PM
Petzold on "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?"
I'm really loving having Mr. Petzold in the blogesphere. His latest essay has the following abstract:
Visual Studio can be one of the programmer's best friends, but over the years it has become increasingly pushy, domineering, and suffering from unsettling control issues. Should we just surrender to Visual Studio's insistence on writing our code for us? Or is Visual Studio sapping our programming intelligence rather than augmenting it? This talk dissects the code generated by Visual Studio; analyzes the appalling programming practices it perpetuates; rhapsodizes about the joys, frustrations, and satisfactions of unassisted coding; and speculates about the radical changes that Avalon will bring.
It doesn't end the way I expected it to. Fun stuff.