Bite my bytes

Links of the Week #35&36 (week 17&18/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:30:10 GMT

Two weeks edition due to strange times at Vidmar's house.

Development

How to easily parse HTML without RegEx - Using HtmlAgilityPack, that is.
Day-to-day with Subversion - Walkthrough of "first days" with a project on SVN. Nice tutorial for starting with branching and merging.
Expresso - Regular Expression Development Tool.
Introducing RockScroll - RockScroll extends the scrollbar in Visual Studio to show a syntax highlighted thumbnail view of your source.
Visual Studio 2008 certifications - Some tips and explanations about VS2008 certification. Not that I plan pursuing one any day soon...

Design

Icojoy - Some nice free icons.
Circular Icons - 100+ free 16x16 icons

Other

75 Skills Every Men Should Be Able to Do - I have some catching up to do...

Photography

ExifTool - THE (command line) tool for managing EXIF info in digital photographs.
ExifTool GUI - Windows GUI for Exif tool. Looks to me like it is from my contryman. Way to go!

Software

Community Clips - Free screencast recording app from Microsoft.
Opera Dragonfly (Alpha) - The foundations of Opera's upcoming Developer Tools. Like Firebug, only from Opera.

System

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - Free antivirus that has some nive reviews all over the web. Switched from Avast Home.
FIX: Windows Vista Folder View Issue - How to fix annoying feature of Vista.

Software Updates

Jobs

Links of the Week #34 (week 17/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:23:17 GMT

Due to special circumstances this weeks links are very light. More in a few days.

Local

T-2 snemalnik - Networked PVR on my IPTV provider. Sweet.

System

Redmond Path - Edit PATH environment variable in Windows GUI. Nice idea!
A handy PowerShell script to keep your Sysinternals Suite up to date - Similar to GetSysinternals.

Webdesign

7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design - Google Analytics and 6 more free web analytics tools.

Software Updates

Jobs

GetSysinternals 1.3

David Vidmar — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:36:29 GMT

I just published version 1.3 of GetSysinternals script to CodePlex.

Download:

GetSysinternals 1.3

Changes:

New tools:

Links of the Week #33 (week 16/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:38:09 GMT

Development

Raising events using extension methods - Interesting idea about code minimization when creating/raising/using custom events.
Common Solutions for T-SQL Problems - New SQL FAQ at MSDN Code Gallery.
10 Visual Studio Shortcuts You Must Know - Nice shortcut list for VS users. CTRL + . was new for me.
Migrating part of repository in SVN - Instructions on how to move just a part of a repository to another repository.

Humor

(The Customer is) Not Always Right - Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes.

Internet

Use Twitter To Stay On Top Of The .NET Programming News - A long list of .NET experts on Twitter. (Dr. T dunks again)

Photography

Fake model photography - Simple Photoshop tutorial on how to turn regular live-size object pictures to look like models. Here are my two attempts at technique.

System

Convert your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation - More info about converting Windows Server 2008 to Vista-like desktop system.

Software Updates

Jobs

browse | syndicate | post a job
ASP.NET Web Developer at Reflection Software, Woodridge, Illinois, US
Application Developers for Airborne Mobile, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Senior SQL Server DBA/developer Chicago at TUSC, Lombard, Illinois, US

Printing PDF documents in C#

David Vidmar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:46:33 GMT

I never though about it, but printing (not creating!) PDF documents from code without user intervention is not a trivial task. Nearly everyone has Adobe Reader or an alternative PDF viewer installed doesn't help a lot.

Let's look at the options:

Adobe has Acrobat SDK, you can use ActiveX controls to view the document, but there is no stable COM, ActiveX or even command line interface for printing documents without user intervention. User at least has to print a button.
There are pricey commercial components that promise this, but nothing free and handy.
There claims on web that you can do that using Adobe Type Library, but that's only possible if a client has Adobe Acrobat (the real thing, but free reader) installed, which is of course a serious limitation, show stopper even.
Starting Adobe Reader with command line switch is only possible with very old version of the Reader and it doesn't work with current versions,

But if you dig deep enough you will find out that there is a way to automate printing. By using DDE, of all things (if you don't know what DDE is, you probably didn't use a phone with a rotary dial, either).

Here is a sample code I used to print PDF files:

bool tryStart = false;
bool connected = false;
do
{
    try
    {
        // Connect to the server.  It must be running or an exception will be thrown.
        client.Connect();
        connected = true;
    }
    catch (DdeException)
    {
        // try running Adobe Reader
        System.Diagnostics.Process p = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
        p.StartInfo.FileName = "AcroRd32.exe";
        p.Start();
        p.WaitForInputIdle();
        // try this once
        tryStart = !tryStart;                            
    }
} while (tryStart && !connected);

// sucessfully connected?
if (connected)
{
    // Synchronous Execute Operation
    client.Execute("[DocOpen(\"C:\\Test.pdf\")]", 60000);
    client.Execute("[FilePrintSilent(\"C:\\Test.pdf\")]", 60000);
    client.Execute("[DocClose(\"C:\\Test.pdf\")]", 60000);
    client.Execute("[AppExit]", 60000);
}

Since .NET doesn't natively support DDE, I used free .NET library that was published on GotDotNet, which was moved to MSDN Code Gallery. The sample was not ported so it isn't available for download, which is a real shame. There is another .NET DDE library on CodePlex, which will work too.

Next best thing is an C++ article on CodeProject that inspired the code above.

Technorati tags: .net, C#, PDF, printing, print, DDE

Links of the Week #32 (week 15/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:13:24 GMT

Development

DocProject for Sandcastle - DocProject drives the Sandcastle help generation tools using the power of Visual Studio 2005/2008 and MSBuild.
6 free online editors for your asp.net site - A review of 6 xHTML editor controls.

Blogging

Wordpress Automatic upgrade Plugin - It does just what it say, and judging from reviews on blogs, it does it well.

Games

Bloxorz - Heavily addictive flash puzzle game. (found via non other than Dr.T!)

Internet

Password Generator - Different kind of password generator. Pretty!

Photography

Wedding Poses Checklist - Pro weddings photographers wedding posses checklist.
Your Best Friend's Wedding - 10 tips that will help survive shooting your first wedding.
hugin - Open source panorama photo stitcher.

Slovenia

Wordpress 2.5 Ĺľe govori slovensko! - Slovenian language files for Wordpress 2.5.

Software

ScrewTurn Software - Open source ASP.NET wiki engine.

System

WinSplit Revolution - Organize windows on your desktop with hotkeys.
Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS - I'm going to try Win2008 this week and this is a possible outcome.

Video

Adobe View Workshop - Learning to use my new video camera.
Tutorial for Converting AVCHD (mts) Files into HD mpeg 2 on Vimeo - It is a big shock when you first play with HD camera, when you learn you can't (yet!) just edit MTS files in video editing software. Here is one if the best ways to fix the problem.

Web design

Most Useful 50 CSS Tips And Tools For Webmasters

Software Updates

wapgUI

David Vidmar — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:42:26 GMT

I often create account (Jira, Subversion, FTP,...) so I need good password generator. For long time I used PC Tools Secure Password Generator web page with two presets and it worked. Except there was a lot of copy-pasting.

Lately I try to simplify my life so I had a "what if I could just..." moment and that instance the wapgUI was born.

It's a user interface for an ancient pronounceable password generator called APG, or in the case of Win32 port wapg.

Using AutoHotKey I can now press Win + S to start wapgUI which will display a list of 10 freshly generated passwords. I pick one (using enter or double click) and the password is copied on the clipboard for instant pasting where new password is needed.

Here is the AHK script I use for launching:

<#S::
    SetTitleMatchMode, 2
    IfWinExist, wapgUI
    {
        WinActivate
    }
    Else
    {
        Run, C:\Shared Folder\Tools\wapgUI\wapgUI.exe
        WinWait, wapgUI
        WinActivate
    }
    Return

The password strength, length and allowed characters parameters for wapg can be set in wapgUI.exe.file.

Includes wapg binaries by Adel I. Mirzazhanov and famfamfam silk icon.

Download:
wapgUI 1.0 (with wapg.exe)

Source code:
wapgUI 1.0 VS 2008 C# source code

History:
1.0 (12th April 2008) - Initial release.

Technorati tags: password generation, wapg, apg, UI, GUI, security, utility

Free software for Nokia Symbian phones

David Vidmar — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:07:36 GMT

Following one of most popular posts on this blog about Free Software for Nokia 6600, this is some more free titles, collected by Robert:

Tools

Calcium - Slick calculator.
S60SpotOn - Handheld torch.
Tasky - Task manager.
Y-Browser - File manager.

Information

Mobile Weather - Weather forecast application.
Papyrus - Time management. ($19.95!)

Games

S-Tris 2 - Tetris.

You can find a more software in lists on N95 blog and Lifehacker.

Links of the Week #31 (week 14/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:36:33 GMT

Blogging

CodeColorizer - Another code highlighter Windows Live Writer plugin.
Copyscape - Search the web for copies of your page content.

Development

Code Converter - Convert VB to C# or C# to VB.
CSS Message Box collection - Sweet CSS message box collection.
WindowsHookLib - Hook the mouse, keyboard and the clipboard system wide.
Building a VS2008 Styled Grid with the ListView and DataPager Controls - Another great looking ASP.NET data grid skin.
Visual Linq query builder for Linq to Sql

Local

Precenimo cene - General products price comparison for Slovenian stores.

Photography

CHDK - Custom firmware for Canon digital cameras. Whoa! Love this. Unfortunately I own G5 and 400D which are both not supported.

Software

Inssider - It's like NetStumbler, but works also on Windows Vista.

System

nLite - Trim down your Windows XP install.
"Window Vista SP1 File Removal Tool" AKA "how to recover disk space after Vista SP1 installation" - A tip: the tool is in C:\Windows\System32.

Web

Google Email Uploader - Upload your email from Outlook & co. directly to Google Apps accounts for easy migration.

Software Updates

Mono 1.9
Xobni - Goodbye, Organize Tab
VLC Media Player 0.8.6f
DAEMON Tools Lite 4.12.3
Opera 9.27
IcoFX 1.6
ImgBurn 2.4.1.0
PrimoPDF 4.0.1
Pidgin 2.4.1
Major Update to Personas for Firefox
PerfectDisk for Windows Home Server - Now With Console Integration
AutoHotKey 1.0.47.06

Jobs

Links of the Week #30 (week 13/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:49:43 GMT

Development

32feet.NET - Personal area networking technologies (Bluetooth, IrDA,...) .NET open source library.
Online Regular Expression Testing Tool - Sweet online as-you-type RegEx tester.
Set the brightness of a Laptop through VB.NET - I tried to update Fader Screensaver, but it doesn't work for me.
The Agile Elevator Speech - S/he wants to know what this agile stuff is all about. You have 30 seconds... go!
Experience new Silverlight skins - I didn't even know there is such thing a Silverlight skin. That MIGHT be due to the fact, that I haven't even looked at Silverlight yet. ;)
Computus - Calculation of the date of Easter.

Blogging

Using Pepperjam Network with Google AdSense

Design

Crystal Clear - Free Crystal Clear icon set.

Local

cyberport.de - Excellent online electronics shop.

Photography

Add your own buttons to Picasa, upload photos all over the Web

Software

Adobe Photoshop Express - Free online version of Photoshop.
FavLoc - Firefox add-on that adds Save to menus in right click menu. Super useful.
Bluetooth Proximity Lock - Bluetooth Proximity Lock Utility. Quite basic, but it is promising.

System

GParted -- LiveCD - Free partition editor in form a live CD.

Web

WOWIO - Free Books + Free Minds - there is also Programming section.

Software Updates

Jobs

SQL Server DBA at the United Way of Connecticut, US - Connecticut, Rocky Hill
Software Engineer — Microsoft .NET C# at Bid2Win Software, US - New Hampshire, Portsmouth
Take 2 Chicago Mid Level .NET Developer at Walsh Construction, US - Illinois, Chicago
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[Book] LINQ in Action

David Vidmar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:53:43 GMT

It's been a while since I reviewed a book on this blog. It's also been a while since I last read through a technical/software development book and wanted everyone know what I think about it. Last week I picked up a copy of LINQ in Action for my work and for three snowy morning I flipped pages.

When I first started reading about LINQ and playing with it I got a feeling LINQ is HUGE. That regular developer that doesn't have a lot of time to learn will need years to conquer the art of all that is LINQ.

But after reading LINQ in Action I realized this is not the case. The book systematically explains LINQ and since you probably already know something about LINQ fills the gaps. It's fast to red, has a nice flow. First it covers the basics, then explains about LINQ Objects, followed by LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML and closes with a nice wrap-up. On books homepage you will find extra chapter dealing with LINQ to DataSet.

What I missed in the book is more about using LINQ in three-tiered designs. There are just a few statements about this in the book and few lines in sample code. What I would like to see is a chapter on how to use LINQ when there is WCF service in application design. I know it's a painful subject, but some guidelines would still be nice.

More info:

Book's homepage
Sample code
Bonus chapter 14 - Working with LINQ and DataSets (update: direct links to PDF don't work. Visit home page and access them from there)
Sample chapter 1 and chapter 3 (update: direct links to PDF don't work. Visit home page and access them from there)
Buy on Amazon.com
Buy on Amazon.de

Technorati tags: books, linq, linq in action

Free DNS Report alternatives

David Vidmar — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:11:11 GMT

Everyone that runs a web server or even a site needs to run a DNS check from time to time. For a long time I have been a happy user of a site DNSstuff.com. But couple of months ago they started charging for their main check called DNSReport.

For few queries a month I'm not willing to subscribe for $80 a year, and I'm certainly not alone.

Finally I have done some research and tried to find alternatives. Here are the results with ratings, where 10/10 is what DNSReport gave us.

CheckDNS.net - 7/10 - Sample

Clear design, errors and warning are nicely visible. Quite fast too. Too bad it check for only basic stuff.

ZoneCheck - 6/10

AJAXy. Only reports error and/or warning. Had a batch mode for multiple domains and desktop program which I don't want to even try. DNS test should be available anywhere anytime.

intoDNS - 8/10 - Sample

Simple, powerful, web2.0-ish. Results are almost identical to DNSReport, it's just that the explanations are not that concise. For example, it says my SOA REFRESH is not ok, but I don't get any recommendations on how to fix it.

Network Tools - 5/10

Only stand alone tools, not DNSReport- like check. Trace and ping are nice though.

pingability - 7/10 - Sample

Solid report, too bad it is terribly hard to read.

iptools.com - 4/10

Similar to Network tools, it only has standalone tools, but no big all-round DNS test. Boring.

DomainTools - 2/10 - Sample

Too simple. Only lists DNS entries.

Free DNS Report - 8/10 (scam?) - Sample

The report looks remarkably similar to that of the original, but the site looks terribly like a scam. I'm kind of scared to enter my domain name in there. If this is real test, please pimp it up a bit!

you get signal - not rated

Doesn't really belong on the list, but it is a nice tool anyway. I use it for port forwarding tests and reverse IP domain check.

My pick is intoDNS. If I need a second opinion, I'll go for CheckDNS.net or pingability. For port scanning and trace router I like you get signal the best.

Technorati tags: dnsreport, dnsstuff, dns, tcp, ip, free

Links of the Week #29 (week 12/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:02:04 GMT

Development

ASP.NET MVC Source Code
Hawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor - Hawkeye is the only .Net tool that allows you to view, edit, analyze and invoke (almost) any object from a .Net application. Whenever you try to debug, test, change or understand an application, Hawkeye can help.

Internet

network-tools.com - It's not DNS stuff, but it might come in handy.

Photography

How to create High Dynamic Range images using Photomatix - HDR tutorial
How to Create Professional HDR Images - Another HDR tutorial for Photoshop.
Noise Ninja - Noise reducing Photoshop plug-in. $35 for home use.

Software

Creative Docs .NET - It's like Paint.NET for vector images.
DVD Flick - Burn near any video file to DVD. Open source.

System

The Ultimate Developer Rig

Web

How to install and use ASP.NET CMS umbraco - Detailed instructions on how to install Umbraco (ASP.NET, free) CMS.

Software Updates

Jobs

Rustici Software (scorm.com) Software Architect, US - Tennessee, Nashville
Senior Software Developer at Proto Software, US - New York, New York
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Safari for Windows is terribly broken

David Vidmar — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:27:05 GMT

It's one thing to force a software on people, but it's even worse when that software isn't working very well.

When Apple Update offered me to install Safari, I said to myself "why not?". It's been a while since I gave Safari a spin, so it would be time to give it another shot.

At first, I was delighted. It's fast, displays fonts like newspaper. It's, different, it makes me want to buy a Mac! (I guess that was Apple's plan in the first place!)

But my fascination didn't last long. While I played with the plan that I would use Safari for my Gmail and have it open all the time, and only use Firefox for surfing, I checked RAM consumption.

Looks like Safari has a terrible memory leak. Everyone knows Firefox is a memory hog. But in just few minutes, Safari manages to occupy more memory that Firefox running not-stop for couple of day.

I bet some people will try to convince me, that it's all Windows/Microsoft/Bill's fault. :)

Technorati tags: safari, apple, windows, bug, memory, leak, appleupdate, apple update

Links of the Week #28 (week 11/2008)

David Vidmar — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:15:51 GMT

Development

MSDN Code Gallery - This is CodePlex's sister site to publish samples, snippets, instructions and everything else that is not a complete project.
Unified SCC - Another SVN client that integrates with Visual Studio. The company is also working in semantic file diff program that looks very promising. Check out screenshots.
FluidKit - Open source WPF component library.
MonoDevelop 1.0 has been Released - MonoDevelop, The alternative IDE for .NET/mono development has reached most important milestone in any app's life - 1.0. Congratulations.

Software

Upload, Compress, Save, Detach and Delete Microsoft Outlook email attachments with DetachPipe - This Outlook add-in automatically saves attachments on your disk and removes them from your email while attaching a link to file on disk. (Lite $19.92, Pro $29.95)
AdSense Tracker Gadget - AdSense tracker for Google sidebar.

Design

Most used CSS tricks - Excellent list of CSS tricks for non-masters. Dr.T, strikes again!

Fun

Best Firefox extension ever - This might offend someone, but I see it as a great prank. If you find this on your machine some day - it wasn't me!

Internet

PdfMeNot.com - Online PDF viewer for the guys that brought us bugmenot.com. Read more in next Monitor.
Keeping up with Google Apps - RSS feed for all Google Apps updates.
AdSense-friendly privacy policy sample for AdSense publishers to use - Google requests that you include privacy policy on your site if you publish ads. This is a nice template you can use to do that. I will, when I find the time.

Local

Prodam domeno torrent.si - Very interesting domain name torrent.si is for sale. No offers yet.

Software Updates

Firefox 3 beta 4 - Still missing some critical plugin compatibility updates: Google Toolbar, dotCOMplete, TabMix plus. So no upgrade for me yet.
DAEMON Tools Lite 4.12.2
FileZilla 3.0.8
CDBurnerXP Pro 4.0.024

Jobs

Senior C# WinForms - .NET 3.5, WPF, WCF, LINQ through Peer Placements, Sydney, Australia
Systems Engineer at Eyewonder, Atlanta, Georgia, US
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