VS2005 Power Toys Pack Installer

CodePlex - Welcome to the Power Toys Pack Installer

"The Pack Installer is a tool that will let you see the latest Power Toys for Visual Studio, and other great developer oriented tools. It allows you to easily mark any tool or set of tools for download and installation, and streamline the installation process.

...

In addition to being a tool for us to help distribute the Power Toys for Visual Studio the Pack Installer is a great starting point for your own software distribution tool. Although the current version uses openly available files to download and install, the code could be easily modified to connect to a secure software repository instead.

..."

The JPK Experience - Pack Installer Feed Update

"The list of tools included by the Pack Installer has been updated this week to include some cool new updates to some popular tools.  Now included are:

• ILMerge 2.0.7.0102, this is an update from the 2.0.6 release
• XML Notepad 2007, this is an updated version of the XML Notepad 2006 utility.  This includes a couple of new features as well as a nice list of bug fixes.  More details can be found here.
• Resource Refactoring Tool Beta, moving up from our previous Alpha release, the Beta is a good step towards having a full 1.0 release.
• TFS Administration Tool 1.2, this updated release includes the ability to administer TFS installations configured to use only SSL." [Post leached in full]

I just found the cool Pack Installer project yesterday... It looks like a great way to keep my VS Power Toys up to date.

I usually don't blog about this stuff, but this is just too funny to skip...

KPMG in dispute over TV cartoon

"Two senior KPMG partners are embroiled in a bitter court battle in which they are accused of criminal breach of trust, perverting the course of justice and perjury.

Mick McLoughlin, head of global restructuring and recovery at the Big Four firm, and Allan Graham, partner, are facing the charges over their administration of EDI Realisation Limited, part of an animation group which owned rights to television cartoon characters the Butt Ugly Martians. ..."

The fact that a KPMG Member Firm (i.e. KPMG UK. I'm employed by KPMG LLP, US...) is in a dispute over "Butt Ugly Martians" made me laugh so hard I spit coffee all over my notebook.

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals [aka Data Dude] Samples CodePlex Project

CodePlex - Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Samples

"Samples project for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition 2005 for Database Professionals

Welcome to samples project for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals also known as "DataDude". The goal of this project is to share and collaborate on Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals related sample projects and sample code.

In order to put some organization in place we create five categories in which the samples have to fall, with the last one being our escape clause if it does not fit in the more explicit ones.

• Data generators
• Data distributions
• Test conditions
• Sample projects
• Miscellaneous: tools and other helpful item that make the live of DataDude easier

..."

A project I'll be monitoring...

The first items have already been checked in, which include some Test Conditions and a RegEx string data generator helper.

(via Data Dude - Need Samples?)

File Version Numbering Information to Amaze your Friends and Family With (or how to win at Geek-Trivia)

MSBuild Team Blog - Why are build numbers limited to 65535?

"...it's imposed by the operating system:

Binary version number for the file. The version consists of two 32-bit integers, defined by four 16-bit integers. For example, "FILEVERSION 3,10,0,61" is translated into two doublewords: 0x0003000a and 0x0000003d, in that order. Therefore, if version is defined by the DWORD values dw1 and dw2, they need to appear in the FILEVERSION statement as follows: HIWORD(dw1), LOWORD(dw1), HIWORD(dw2), LOWORD(dw2).

..."

MSBuild Team Blog - Fixing invalid version number problems with the AssemblyInfoTask

"The arrival of 2007 bought a flurry of e-mails to the MSBuild team from people having trouble with the AssemblyInfoTask. The symptom is simple to describe - the builds start to fail with the following error:

Error emitting 'System.Reflection.AssemblyVersionAttribute' attribute -- 'The version specified '1.0.70102.1' is invalid

The fix to get builds going again is to change the date format used to generate the build number to something other than the default "yyMMdd". The date formats are in Microsoft.VersionNumber.target, located in %program files%\MSBuild\Microsoft\AssemblyInfoTask, and there are two of them (one for file version and one for assembly version). You can use any format you want. Within Visual Studio we're now using 01MMdd. ..."

I was thinking of moving to a date based version number scheme too. I may have to rethink that... :|

TFS Administration Tool 1.2 Released

We > Me: Joe Morel's Blog - TFS Administration Tool 1.2 Released

"I'm happy to announce yet another release of the TFS Administration Tool, incorporating another code gift from a great community member.  This release of the tool adds the ability to administer TFS installations configured to use only SSL.

Thank you Oren--your help is much appreciated!

As always, you can download the newest version of the tool from CodePlex:

http://www.codeplex.com/tfsadmin" [Post leached in full]

If you're running TFS via SSL only this update is for you...

Related Past Post XRef:
TFS Permission Manager 1.5 Released
TFS Permission and Administration Tools
TFS Administration Tool

Virtual PC 2007 RC Released

Scott Woodgate's OutBursts - Happy New Year - Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate ready for download

"Version 6.0.142 is now on the connect site. Go get it.

The Release candidate includes one new feature, PXE boot.  In addition it address a number of issues including installation on Windows 2003 as a host; Audio in Vista; DVD support for Vista installation; binding to wireless network cards etc."

Downloading it now...

CABpedia - Composite UI Application Block (CAB) wiki

CABpedia

"Welcome to CABpedia, a place to share knowledge and ideas about the Composite UI Application Block created by the patterns & practices group at Microsoft, and related resources. I set this site on August 5, 2006, so it's very new. Please feel free to contribute your own content.

The vision I have is pretty simple. I'd like this to become a place for both new and experienced users of CAB. New users should be able to jump in and learn how little parts work without reading all the documentation. And at the same time. As your experience grows, it should also be a place where you can find cool things you can do with CAB.

..."

I think I need to block a bit of time and play through the stuff on the Where to Start page...

(via Infragistics DevCenter - FAQ:Getting started with CAB)

Related Past Post XRef:
Thinking about Composite UI App Block & Smart Client Software Factory Again...

Infragistics - Installing NetAdvantage for .NET on Windows Vista

FAQ:Installing NetAdvantage for .NET on Windows Vista

"Summary

Starting with NetAdvantage for .NET 2006 Volume 3 for CLR 2.0, Infragistics supports the use of NetAdvantage on the Windows Vista operating system (currently only the 32-bit version). There are a number of points to consider, however.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 (and older) are not supported for use on Windows Vista. Because of this, all NetAdvantage for .NET CLR 1.x installs are also not supported on Windows Vista. You may still install the standalone version of AppStylist on Vista.

To successfully install NetAdvantage for .NET, User Account Control (UAC) must be disabled. This setting is enabled by default. Steps to disable UAC are provided below. To our knowledge, you may again enable UAC once the installation is complete, without affecting the behavior of the NetAdvantage for .NET toolset.

If you've installed Internet Information Services (IIS) on Windows Vista, you must edit the system registry prior to running the NetAdvantage installer, whether for AppStylist or for NetAdvantage for .NET CLR 2.0.

IMPORTANT: Also note that additional setup is required to run the ASP.NET Samples Browser in Vista, especially if you are using IIS 7.0. Please refer to the "Related Articles" section for more information.

..."

Since I'm NetAdvantage user this info may come in handy...

Essential SQL Server T-SQL Date/Time User Functions

Jeff's SQL Server Weblog - Essential SQL Server Date and Time Functions

"I've posted some variations of these before, but here they all are in 1 easy package:  The essential date and time functions that every SQL Server database should have to ensure that you can easily manipulate dates and times without the need for any formatting considerations at all.

...

create  function DateOnly(@DateTime DateTime)
-- Strips out the time portion of any dateTime value.
returns datetime
as
    begin
    return dateadd(dd,0, datediff(dd,0,@DateTime))
    end
go

create function Date(@Year int, @Month int, @Day int)
-- returns a datetime value for the specified year, month and day

...

create function Time(@Hour int, @Minute int, @Second int)
-- Returns a datetime value for the specified time at the "base" date (1/1/1900)

...

create function TimeOnly(@DateTime DateTime)
-- returns the only the time portion of a date, at the "base" date (1/1/1900)

...

create function DateTime(@Year int, @Month int, @Day int, @Hour int, @Minute int, @Second int)
-- returns a dateTime value for the date and time specified.

...

Part II:  Introducing TimeSpans to SQL Server
With those functions in place, we can add two more that will give us further flexibility when working with dates and times: The concept of a "TimeSpan", very similar to what is available in the .NET framework.

..."

I re-intent the "get Date only from DateTime" wheel to darn often. Hopefully posting a version here will help me find it in the future (assuming I remember I posted it... I'm getting old now...  ;)

eXPired

Michael Howard's Web Log - eXPired Poster Available!

This made me laugh... I can't say my home office can be certified yet, but I'm working on it...  ;)

(via this.Pose() - eXPired)

Windows Sidebar Gadget Development Tutorial

OdeToCode - Developing Gadgets for the Windows Sidebar

"In this article we will develop a new gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar. The gadget pulls images from Flickr.com to display on the desktop.

...

In this article, we'll take a look at developing gadgets for Windows Vista using DHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. We'll introduce the object model, and security aspects of gadget development. By the end of the article we'll have built a real gadget. You can download the code / gadget from OdeToCode

..."

This is a cool and complete article on creating a Sidebar gadget for Vista.

Related Past Post XRef:
Vista Sidebar Gadgets - Beyond the toy zone...