Live Writer Code Formatter Plugin

I briefly tried one code formatter back in January & it didn’t work very well.  I found this update blog post & will try again sometime.

Using VS 2008 & 2010 On The Same Code

A StackOverflow thread indicates incompatibilities in VS 2008/2010 solutions, projects, app.config’s & WCF Service References.  Links to a tool to switch back & forth between 08/10.

More related threads:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio-2010+visual-studio-2008

URL Rewriting

From Joannes Vermorel's blog:

Do not break URLs: When migrating your web pages, it's important to include the proper redirections. I have been using UrlRewritingNet, a nice open-source URL rewriting tool. UrlRewritingNet is very convenient to migrate ASP.NET pages because ISS does not intercept the requests even before they hit the ASP.NET machine.

From Scott Guthrie’s blog:

The most common scenarios where developers want greater flexibility with URLs are:

1) Handling cases where you want to restructure the pages within your web application, and you want to ensure that people who have bookmarked old URLs don't break when you move pages around.  Url-rewriting enables you to transparently forward requests to the new page location without breaking browsers.

2) Improving the search relevancy of pages on your site with search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live.  Specifically, URL Rewriting can often make it easier to embed common keywords into the URLs of the pages on your sites, which can often increase the chance of someone clicking your link.  Moving from using querystring arguments to instead use fully qualified URL's can also in some cases increase your priority in search engine results.  Using techniques that force referring links to use the same case and URL entrypoint (for example: weblogs.asp.net/scottgu instead of weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/default.aspx) can also avoid diluting your pagerank across multiple URLs, and increase your search results.

http://www.google.com/search?q=.net+url+rewriting

MSDN: Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries

Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries

The design guidelines for developing class libraries are for library development that extends and interacts with the .NET Framework. The goal of the .NET Framework design guidelines is to help library designers ensure that their users reap the benefits of API consistency and ease of use by providing a unified programming model that is independent of the programming language used for development. It is strongly recommended that you follow these design guidelines when developing classes and components that extend the .NET Framework. Inconsistent library design adversely affects developer productivity and discourages adoption.

These guidelines are intended to help class library designers understand the trade-offs between different solutions. There might be situations where good library design requires that you violate these design guidelines. Such cases should be rare, and it is important that you have a clear and compelling reason for your decision.

Extensibility, Exceptions, Asynchronous Design Patterns, etc.

Scratch

About Scratch

Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

Initial article:  Kid-friendly programming app an unfortunate casualty of Apple’s new app policies  :-(

How to Use altChunk for Document Assembly

From Eric White’s Blog.  The link.

Merging multiple word processing documents into a single document is something that many people want to do.  An application built for attorneys might assemble selected standard clauses into a contract.  An application built for book publishers can assemble chapters of a book into a single document.  This post explains the semantics of the altChunk element, and provides some code using the Open XML SDK that shows how to use altChunk.

Instead of using altChunk, you could write a program to merge the Open XML markup for documents.  You would need to deal with a number of issues, including merging style sheets and resolving conflicting styles, merging the comments from all of the documents, merging bookmarks, and more.  This is doable, but it’s a lot of work.  You can use altChunk to let Word 2007 do the heavy lifting for you.

Coding Horror: So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)

Jeff Atwood is in fine form today.  ;-)

Despite my misgivings, email is the cockroach of communication mediums: you just can't kill it. Email is the one method of online contact that almost everyone -- at least for that subset of "everyone" which includes people who can bear to touch a computer at all -- is guaranteed to have, and use. Yes, you can make a fairly compelling case that email is for old stupid people, but let's table that discussion for now.

From So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)

P.S. Good solutions in the comments.

Missing a Meeting Due to Volcanic Ash? Check Out These Tools

Snipped from http://webworkerdaily.com/2010/04/19/missing-a-meeting-due-to-volcanic-ash-check-out-these-tools/

While in some cases a face-to-face meeting is an absolute necessity, sometimes you can get by using technology. If you’re grounded this week, give these apps a try — they’re all available for very low cost (and some of them are free).

• Skype – For a quick teleconference with a few participants, VoIP service Skype is great. You can use a webcam for video calling, and the latest versions of the software enable screen sharing. The basic Skype service is free, and the client software is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and many mobile devices.
• Dimdim — For larger meetings, you’ll need a more robust web conferencing tool than Skype. My personal favorite is Dimdim, as it’s got a great feature set for a good price. Other tools available include WebEx and GoToMeeting.
• SocialText — Corporate social networking tools are useful for communicating with colleagues and keeping them up-to-date with what you’re working on. SocialText is very full-featured (it’s kind of like Facebook for businesses), but there are other, simpler tools, such as Yammer and present.ly.
• 5pm — A good project management tool can go a long way toward keeping stakeholders informed about the progress of a project, reducing the need for update meetings. I like 5pm as it’s well-designed, but other good options include Basecamp and Wrike.
• OffiSync — The latest version of OffiSync (a nifty little program that allows you to sync Office documents using a Google Docs account) allows for document co-authoring — which means that two or more people can work simultaneously on the same document. While it’s never going to be as good as being in the same room with your co-workers, if you need to collaborate on a document remotely, it’s worth trying. Free.
• Tungle — Need to reschedule your meeting? Free app Tungle will help you find a time that’s convenient for everyone.

Nearby Welding Instruction

Maybes via http://www.google.com/search?&q=welding+bowie+md 

• Total Welding & Contracting
  2841 Belair Drive, Bowie - (301) 262-9517

• Jones Certified Welding
  4911 Lottsford Vista Road, Bowie - (301) 306-0915

From http://www.google.com/search?&q=maryland+welding+class

• http://www.earlbeck.com
  8204 PULASKI HIGHWAY BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 21237
  10792 TUCKER STREET BELTSVILLE, MARYLAND 20705
  
  http://www.earlbeck.com/School%20Pictures/What_to_expect-training.pdf
  
  ”This one on one training is done at an hourly rate of $35 plus materials used.  This training is available Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment, subject to available booth space. Please contact Don Hodges at 410 687-8400 or email at dhodges@earlbeck.com for scheduling.”

Text-Processing .NET Language Research

• 11-statement SNOBOL program
• MSDN Magazine article
• MSDN Programming Languages for the .NET Framework
• Wikipedia List of CLI languages
• dotnetpowered Language List
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_programming_language
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language
• http://www.rebol.com/
• http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Component_Frameworks/NET/
• IronPython
• Boo
• stackoverflow Why is Perl the best choice for most string manipulation tasks?
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/string-manipulation+.net