Developer Cheat Sheets

Cheat Sheet Roundup - Over 30 Cheatsheets for developers

"Lets face it, unless you have a photographic memory, no developer can remember all the different functions, options, tags, etc. that exist. Documentation can be cumbersome at times, thats why I like cheat sheets. They are quick references that feature the most commonly forgotten things on a specific topic. You can print them out and hang them on your wall, or just keep them handy in your bookmarks for quick reference.

I have rounded up over 30 cheatsheets that developers might find useful. ..."

There are some interesting cheat sheets in this cheat sheet link list. From CSS and HTML to SQL to SVN to Google to ASCII Character codes and more...

Office 2003 Add-in: Desktop Language Settings

Download details: Office 2003 Add-in: Desktop Language Settings

"Overview
This download allows you to identify and change language, keyboard, and regional settings for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Office 2003 programs with a single tool. You can compare the settings of these programs and make changes as appropriate.

...

This program incorporates the functionality of tools such as:
Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings
The Language bar
Text Services and Input Languages
Regional Language Options "

I've been having in Unicode/Language/asian character set "fun" for the last few months. That makes this add-in sound interesting...

The downside is that this add-in is really just a wrapper/menu system for the related underlying Windows/Office applets. So while it's nice to have all the info on one form, there's no easy way to change all the settings at one time (i.e. convert all the system display/language/settings/etc from English to Japanese). You still have to go through each applet to make the given changes...

My Next/First Ad Sense Check Goes to Katrina Relief

Scott at Lazycoder has a great idea, one which I am going to shamelessly copy. "... For the month of september, any money I make off of the ads I’m going to donate to the hurricane relief..."

I'll tell you what. My next, which will be my first, check amount from Google Ad Sense will go to the American Red Cross. It doesn't matter if the check comes next month, or in the coming months. Also doesn't matter the amount of the check. I will donate the entire amount of my next(first) Ad Sense check. I'll donate the amount of the check, the day I receive it...

Google only cuts checks monthly and only when the amount is over $100. I've only got 20% to go to get that first check...

You can find my Ad Sense panel on the right side of my blog, down the page a bit. It's kind of buried, I know (I only added it to see if I could).

You'll have to trust me that when I get the check that I will donate that amount... But it's time for a little trust, isn't it?

Thank you

Related Past Post X-Ref:
American Red Cross -Donation

Excel XML Writer: Generating Excel Workooks without Excel

Generating Excel Workooks without Excel

"Why I wrote Excel Xml Writer
One day I found myself having to build a Web Application that one of the requirements involved generating a nice Excel Workbook that users could then play with. This required quite some styling and several other features that you can only do with Excel (like setting printer options and document properties).

...

Solution
Luckily ever since Office XP, Excel supports a new file format called Xml Workbook (or something like that), this allow you to create an Xml document that follows a certain schema and Excel will work as if it were the binary XLS format (though not all features at supported like Charts).

....

This is exactly what Excel Xml Writer is, just a simple object model that generates Xml following the Excel Xml Workbook schema. ...

...

Now, even better I decided to write a code generator tool so that you don’t need to write all the styling code and superficial stuff and just focus on the actual data. This tool allows you to open an Excel Xml Workbook that you have created in Excel, and it will generate the C# or VB.NET code that you can use to generate it. This means that you can create the skeleton with all the formatting options in Excel and then just generate the code. ..."

This sounds like a VERY cool C# component. The code generator is a great addition too. You can really tell when someone is using their own tools...

Make sure you also check out some of the cool things on Carlos's site. The CodeColorizer sounds nifty. Now if only I felt IP safe enough to post code...

(via Richard Dudley - August BADNUG Meeting - ExcelXmlWriter and Skinning DotNetNuke

Google Maps Pedometer

gmapPedometer

"... What is this?
This is a little hack that uses Google's superb mapping application to help record distances traveled during a running or walking workout.

Why?
As a runner training for a marathon for the first time, I found myself wishing I had an easy way to know the exact distance a certain course is, without having to drag a GPS or pedometer around on my runs. Looking at Google Maps, and knowing there was a vibrant community of geeks hacking it, I knew there had to be a way. So here it is.

Note that there's a reason this is called a pedometer. Considering that you have to choose all the points in your route individually yourself, it's probably not suitable for driving trips and the like. But I've found it suits my purposes pretty well for getting running distances. ..."

This is a cool Google Map hack/overlay. It lets you record/create a route, calculate the distance of that route and then print/permalink/tinyurl it.

For example, here's my "I need to walk around the building to think" route. And my "Must not... Must not kill... Jail is bad... Everyone has a place, even if it's only to exhale carbon dioxide for the plants..." route. ;)

(via Rod at the forum - Don't have a GPS Pedometer? Have a look at this on-line Hybrid.

Maxtor Shared Storage Plus - NAS for the home....

"....Computer hard drives eventually fill up with photos, MP3s, digital video games, documents and more. A shared storage drive frees up disk space on PCs and makes files more accessible to everyone on the network. Networking is richer when there's a shared storage drive at the heart of the system..."

Features
"Add storage easily and share files, photos, music and videos
Back up the data on networked PCs to one location
Exclusive SimpleView™ feature provides quick backup and storage status for all users
Exclusive MediaRetriever™ plays back digital photos, music and video to networked home entertainment systems. (Requires PnP certified Digital Media Adapter, DMA)
Access files from any networked PC
Easy installation - automatic network configuration
Easy browser interface to assign privacy levels for shared folders
Drag and Sort™ file organization
2 USB ports let you add shared printers or extra drives
100Base-T / 10Base-T Ethernet connection"

200, 300, 400, 500GB 7200 RPM Home NAS/drives with a browser admin interface.

Sounds pretty cool and something I can use. Since my wife's PC has the biggest drive, we store most of our shared stuff there. But she has a habit of turning it off (usually when I'm in the middle of copying up 2GB ISO images)...

I really like the fact that these drives have the USB 2.0 ports on them, allowing for future expansion.

I'll have to put this on my x-mas/tax refund list...

(via Scott Kuhl - Home Network Storage

American Red Cross -Donation

American Red Cross Donation

Seeing the devastation of Katrina, I feel that I HAVE to help. How I can I stand by and do nothing?

I can only give $500 right now. I really wish I could afford more...

My heart goes out to all the victims (all except the rat bastard looters, may you rot in hell... And you look so clever making your funny faces for the TV camera, idiots. You really need to have your genes removed from our gene pool).

Anyway, I hope this helps in some way...

SyncToy v1.0 Released

Download details: SyncToy v1.0

"... We listened to your feedback. SyncToy was released as a beta in early August 2005. We collected feedback from the discussion forum on the Windows XP Professional Photography web site, from the customer feedback survey in the product (to access the online survey, open SyncToy and select Help, then select Customer Feedback), from a large number of professional and hobbyist photographers at Microsoft, and from various world-wide forums, sites, reviews and blogs on the web. Most of you (55%) asked for the ability to type in a UNC path to select a folder. We added this feature between the beta release and the current v1.0 release. Features we added in response to customer feedback include:

The ability to type in a UNC path;

Support for longer folder pair names and ability to widen the left pane to see those longer names;

The ability to support the maximum length for folder paths, and documentation was added to the help file about how to set up a share to be able to sync deep folder pairs;

Better handling of the difference in precision between NTFS and FAT timestamps;

More discoverable link to the help file for information on how to schedule SyncToy using the Windows XP Task Scheduler;

Support for 800x600 screen resolution;

Added a warning for users if the selected action will take some time to complete;

Added brief explanations of the actions in the user interface;

Improved behavior when choosing folders to include or exclude when there are large numbers of folders involved;

Improved support for accessibility modes."

The cool SyncToy has reached 1.0.

I've played with it a little, but ran into a couple things. Things that look like have been addressed (the long file path related issues).

Time to give it another try...

Related Past Post X-Ref:
SyncToy v1 White Paper

The .NET Developer Community Program (DCP) from Telligent

Alex Lowe : Announcing the .NET Developer Community Program

"... Today, we are announcing our brand new .NET Developer Community Program (.NET DCP). The .NET DCP will allow community sites built around .NET to make use of our Community Server software and all Telligent made add-ons at no cost. All sites that wish to participate in the .NET DCP will have to adhere to a set of requirements (listed below) and will have to be reviewed by folks on the Community Server team. We feel that the bar is set at an appropriate height and many .NET community sites will qualify so we encourage you to take a look at the information below and let us know if you are interested.
What is the .NET Developer Community Program?

The .NET Developer Community Program provides Community Server technology to anyone who wishes to build a .NET focused community site. The program provides you, the developer, with all the tools needed to build an attractive and highly functional community site.

The .NET Developer Community Program entitles the community owner to the following software:
Community Server (Community License)
Enterprise NNTP Server
Enterprise FTP Server
All other existing add-ons
Future add-ons produced by Telligent

...

What are the requirements for gaining access to the .NET Developer Community Program?

The following must be true:
You intend to run a publicly accessible community site
Your community site is a non-profit venture
Your community site is focused on Microsoft/.NET technology

..."

Wow. That pretty much rocks. What a cool move by Telligent...

Now if MS were to provide free/very cheap web hosting of this tech from Telligent, now THAT would be offically really cool!

Quote From My Son

My father asked my son if he was excited about school starting.

“No,” my son said, “Only parents and preschoolers are excited about school starting.”

LOL, that’s my boy!

He starts the sixth grade on Wednesday…

New/Updated MSDN Subscription Site

Have you seen the MSDN Subscriptions site yet? It rolled out this weekend and looks very cool (now that it is really working… this weekend, during roll out, things were a little hinky).

The new Subscriber Download is also very cool. The new ToC treeview is nice, much faster in loading. The Search is a nice feature too.

Best of all, doing a test download of the latest SQL 2k5 CTP rocked. Let’s this performance continues…

Installing Windows on a SATA Hard Drive...

Installing Windows on a SATA drive without the bloody F6 floppy

Jeff Key provides a little info and some links for installing Windows to a SATA hard drive (without playing the floppy game)...

I don't have any SATA drives yet, but I'm thinking that I will soon so I'll might need this info...

In the comments, there's a link to nLite, http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html, which looks pretty cool too.