Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools 2013 adds "syntactic line compression" (think "Lossless 25% more visible lines for free")

The Visual Studio Blog - Announcing Update to Productivity Power Tools 2013

Today, we’re releasing an update to Productivity Power Tools 2013 on the Visual Studio Gallery. In this release, we fixed a number of customer-reported bugs and issues, and introduced a new feature called syntactic line compression.

Syntactic line compression enables you to make better use of your screen’s vertical real-estate. It shrinks lines that contain neither letters nor numbers by 25% vertically, allowing more lines to be displayed in the editor. Other lines are not affected.

Here’s an illustration of the same code before and after the feature is applied. You can see the extra lines you can get in the same space with no loss of content:

As with all Productivity Power Tools features, if you don’t like it you can turn it on and off in Tools…Options…Editor…

Now that's an interesting feature. We keep the whitespace yet also reclaim a little of our vertical screen space. Nice!

Game of Thrones travel via Kayak, book your carriage or ship today

technabob - Book Your Vacation to Winterfell Using Kayak

Now you can finally book that vacation to Winterfell you’ve been dying to go on. Or you can visit King’s Landing. Why not Pentos? Kayak.com will help you travel the Seven Kingdoms, since they have teamed up with HBO to help you get information on traveling around Westeros and Essos.

...

The ten cities you can travel between are:

• Kings Landing, Westeros (KLA)
• Oldtown, Westeros (OLT)
• Lannisport, Westeros (LPR)
• Gulltown, Westeros (GUN)
• White Harbor, Westeros (WHI)
• Winterfell, Westeros (WFL)
• Pyke, Iron Islands, Westeros (PYK)
• Tyrosh, Essos (YRH)
• Pentos, Essos (PEO)
• Braavos, Essos (BRV)

Now that's an awesome marketing play...

Pluralsight's way of saying thank you... Active Military and Vets can get one free month

Pluralsight - This Memorial Day, we thank our vets with free training!

Memorial Day is around the corner and Pluralsight would like to show our appreciation to anyone who has served our country or who is currently serving.

We are offering all U.S. veterans and active military personnel a month of free training. Please fill out the form below, and we’ll hook you up with access to 4,000+ hours of developer, IT and creative training for 30 days! Here’s to you!

And thank YOU Pluralsight...

The updates just keep a rolling...Visual Studio 2013.3 CTP 1 Released

Microsoft Downloads - This is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Visual Studio 2013 Update 3

Version: 2013

Date Published: 5/20/2014

File Name:

rm_Client.exe
rm_DeploymentTrial90.exe
rm_Server.exe
rtools_setup_arm.exe
rtools_setup_x64.exe
rtools_setup_x86.exe
tfs_express.exe
tfs_server.exe
VS2013.3 CTP.exe
vs2013.3.ctp1_rm_enu.iso
vs2013.3.ctp1_tfs_enu.iso
vs2013.3.ctp1_tfs_exp_enu.iso

By releasing periodic updates, we can enhance and expand Visual Studio to support the latest software development innovations for building and managing modern apps. For more information, see Visual Studio Updates and the Visual Studio Update KB Article.

PLEASE NOTE: This Community Technology Preview has not been subject to final validation and is not meant to be run on production workstations or servers.

For the Visual Studio update package: The recommended approach for upgrading Visual Studio on test workstations is installing the latest Visual Studio Update CTP on top of an RTM release or a previous CTP build of that Update. Visual Studio CTPs can be upgraded to a different build.

For full-upgrade packages (ex: Team Foundation Server, Release Management, Remote Tools): Do not install an Update CTP on a production server, as it will put the server in an unsupported state. Unlike with Visual Studio CTPs, installing a full-upgrade package CTP completely replaces the current release on the server with the CTP. Full-upgrade package CTPs cannot be upgraded to future CTPs or releases nor “downgraded” to a previous release.

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Description of Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 CTP 1

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP 1) on May 22, 2014. Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 CTP 1 includes the latest software updates, feature additions, and bug fixes.

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Important This update applies to Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS). Visual Studio and TFS installation mechanics are different. The Visual Studio update is an update that installs on top of whatever is already installed on the computer. The TFS update is a full layout that replaces whatever is installed on the computer. Before you try to apply the TFS update, make sure that you have a full backup of your current databases. If the TFS update installation fails, you cannot restart the update or roll back to the earlier version of TFS without performing a restore.

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Technology improvements

The following technology improvements were made in this release.

Debugger

• If you have more than one monitor, Visual Studio will remember which monitor a Windows Store application was last run on.
• You can debug x86 applications that are built by .NET native.
• When you analyze managed memory dump files, you can go to Definition and Find All References of the selected type.

IntelliTrace

• You can skip straight to the details of performance events that are exported from Application Insights to IntelliTrace.

Profiler

• The Performance and Diagnostics hub can open profiling sessions (.diagsession files) that were exported from the F12 tools in the latest developer preview of Internet Explorer 11.

Release Management

• You can use Windows PowerShell or the Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) feature to deploy and manage configuration data. Additionally, you can deploy to the following environments without having to set up Microsoft Deployment Agent:
  • Windows Azure environments
  • On-premise environments (Standard environments)

Testing Tools

• You can add custom fields and custom work flows for test plans and test suites.
• You can use Manage Test Suites permission for granting access to test suites.
• You can track changes to test plans and test suites by using work item history.

Visual Studio IDE

• CodeLens authors and changes indicators are now available for Git repositories.
• In Code Map, links are styled by using colors, and they display in the improved Legend.
• Debugger Map automatically zooms to the call stack entry of interest and preserves user's zoom preferences.
• You can drag binaries from the Windows file explorer to a code map, and then start exploring binaries by using Code Map.

Known issues

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Currently looking like a roll-up/catch-up/bug fix version...

Running code in a bunch of languages, just a couple clicks away, Compile Online

compileonline</>com

Compile and Execute your favorite programming languages online, click any of the following to proceed!

While I see the standard languages, like LOLCODE;

I don't see the great ones like Ook! :P

 

(via Dew Drop – May 20, 2014 (#1780))

Prefect for your next marketing-ware page - The New Age BS Generator

New Age Bullshit Generator

Namaste. Do you want to sell a New Age product and/or service? Tired of coming up with meaningless copy for your starry-eyed customers? Want to join the ranks of bestselling self-help authors? We can help.

Just click and the truth will manifest

Click the Reionize electrons button at the top of the page to generate a full page of New Age poppycock.

The inspiration for this idea came from watching philosophy debates involving Deepak Chopra. I wrote a blog post about it if you're interested.

After sitting through hours of New Age rhetoric, I decided to have a crack at writing code to generate it automatically and speed things up a bit. I cobbled together a list of New Age buzzwords and cliché sentence patterns and this is the result.

...You’ll get some profound-sounding nonsense here, too.

So, what is this for? Put it on your website as placeholder text. Print it out as a speech for your yoga class and see if anyone can guess a computer wrote it. Use it to write the hottest new bestseller in the self-help section, or give false hope to depressed friends and family members.

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Seb Pearce - On the New Age Bullshit Generator and parodying woo

Link to the Generator: http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
(Yes, it’s open source: GitHub link)

A while back, I was on a philosophy debate binge. Watching Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens annihilate their opponents with precision and wit is my idea of a good night in, and YouTube’s “related videos” are a deep, dark rabbithole.

...

Finally an awesome example of NLP. Some of these items are pretty cool sounding too. Best of all it's open source... :)

(via Beyond Search - Natural Language Processing Used to Serve Up Cynicism)

Now that's classic, Visual Basic [Classic] Tools for Visual Studio

Visual Studio Gallery - Visual Basic Tools for Visual Studio

Visual Basic Tools for Visual Studio is a language service extension for Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 allowing to work on classic Visual Basic projects within Visual Studio. It´s intention is to provide better development tools for teams which have to maintain legacy code, or working on migration projects. Right now the toolset is still under development and some valuable features are not available yet, but it could already worth it to try.

This is pre-release software which is not intended to be used in a live operating environment. The software is licensed "as-is" and you bear the risk of using it.

What´s in the box?

The extension adds the VB-CLASSIC menu item to the development environment; this menu allows to load classic VB workspace- and project-files and offers quick access to the extension´s options. This is not a converter nor another VB6 upgrade wizard. The import tool creates a new solution and MSBuild compatible projects. The project system synchronizes all changes made to a project with the corresponding VBP file; this allows to use this toolset in parallel with the Visual Basic 6 IDE.

Project System and Editor

The package registers a new language service supporting Visual Basic 6 projects and code files. It integrates with the solution explorer and the code editor having support for syntax highlighting, basic outlining (allows to expand/collapse methods, properties and types) as well as navigation bar support.

Project Properties Designer

The project properties designer works directly on VBP files (MSBuild project files have only been introduced due to compatibility issues). The current version allows to display and edit a subset of classic VBP project settings (will probably be extended in future versions).

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While I had a production app in every version of VB Classic (well except for VB for DOS... remember that?) and while I personally feel the MS dev community needs to let it go (Really folks, "It's dead, Jim..."), I thought this extension very cool...

Now this is a post title, "Teaching Relative Estimation by Throwing a Cat"

Scrum Alliance - Teaching Relative Estimation by Throwing a Cat

A quick and fun exercise that will help you teach relative estimation

I'm a big fan of relative measurements in software development. However, when teaching this idea, I've noticed that many developers who are used to estimating work in hours or days find it difficult to switch to using story points as the relative measurement of complexity. Many times I've heard comments like, "We use story points -- and one point is eight hours."

Old habits die hard

It's always challenging to learn a new habit and break an old one. Therefore I was constantly looking for a good exercise for my Scrum training that would let people compare work items without calculating effort. The ideal solution should be quick, usable with Planning Poker, and -- most important -- fun.

Hans Solo's Millennium Falcon and Mike Cohn's dog and zoo points

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Throwing the cat -- what you should expect?

Things always get most interesting when you end your list with the cat from the title of this article. (If you have an avid cat lover in your audience, you might opt for a squirrel instead.)  ...

...

You might be wondering why we don't estimate how far you can throw objects. The reason is twofold. First of all, distance describes an effect -- the business value of throwing, not the complexity. And second, it's one-dimensional, so people can switch back to the unit measurement, where one point equals one meter.

Now when a family member asks how your day was, you can say, "We had a heated discussion at the office about throwing a cat!" Be sure to have fun -- and if you've enjoyed this exercise, let me know!

..."

Really, I just loved the post title.. :)

400 billion... The Wayback Machine now has more pages than there are stars in our galaxy (and here's how they manage that)

High Scalability - A Short On How the Wayback Machine Stores More Pages than Stars in the Milky Way

How does the Wayback Machine work? Now with over 400 billion webpages indexed, allowing the Internet to be browsed all the way back to 1996, it's an even more compelling question. I've looked several times but I've never found a really good answer.

Here's some information from a thread on Hacker News. It starts with mmagin, a former Archive employee:

...

..."

How awesome is that? If you're interested in the story behind the storage/indexing/etc used by the Wayback Machine, read this...

V3 ERDM Diagram gets more IG (Information Governance)

EDRM - New EDRM Diagram Emphasizes Information Governance

SAINT PAUL, Minn. – May 19, 2014 – EDRM, the leading standards organization for the e-discovery market, today announced the release of Version 3 of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) diagram. Originally published in 2006, the framework is a popular tool used by legal professionals and others involved in e-discovery to help clarify processes and expectations among project stakeholders.

Version 3 of the EDRM diagram offers significant updates, primarily to express the importance of information governance (IG) as a key piece of the electronic discovery process. The new model is as follows:

The leftmost item in the model has been renamed “Information Governance” and its shape has been changed from a rectangle to a circle. These edits better align this diagram with EDRM’s Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM). The adoption of a circle also is meant to show that every well-managed e-discovery process should start and end with sound information governance.

..."

Look, it's my day job, you know, the one that pays the bills? So sometimes I have to blog about day job related stuff (that and I've been following this project since 2005). This diagram is one such thing. Since it came out, it's become a standard part of any EDD/ESI presentation, vendor display and part of the vernacular. Any change, even a small, is news of note...

 

Related Past Post XRef:
There's a new eDiscovery diagram in town... "Electronic Discovery Best Practices" at EDBP.com

Time ENF? "ENF, a New Standard for Managing Native Files"
PII Problems in the Public Enron Data Set (aka "Industry Ouch")
And even more Enron (PST’s that is) We’re talking 107GB, compressed, of data…
EDRM Enron Reference Data v2 now available
Need a ton of email data (10’s of gig’s)? Need it in PST form? Need it to be public data? Want to look behind the curtain into Enron? The EDRM Data Set Project is for you…
EDRM - Electronic Discovery Reference Model

What is 14 sessions, 21 hours and free? The Exam Prep Sessions from TechEd North America 2014...

Speaking of content to catch on the Channel 9 Windows Phone App...

Born to Learn - Now Available On Demand: Exam Prep Sessions from TechEd NA 2014

Whether you attended TechEd North America 2014 or not, all the Exam Prep sessions are available for you to watch anytime, thanks to our friends at Channel 9. Catch them all here.

For ease of reference, here's the list of Exam Prep sessions in the order they were presented during TechEd NA. Enjoy!

14 sessions, 21 hours'ish, all free...

Channel 9 goes wild for Windows Phone 8

Channel 9

Windows Phone 8 application for the Channel 9 web site (accessible at http://channel9.msdn.com) provides a way to browse, rate and view videos on a variety of developer and consumer topics.

One of my favorite Microsoft places (Gee, I don't know why that is! lol) now has an official WP8.x app. Read the posts, view the videos, see the shows, attend the events on-demand, its l there...

Vectoring in on the perfect set of Windows/Windows Phone app logo's. Just add one SVG and Vector

David Washington - Create logos for Windows and Windows Phone with one SVG

In a previous post, How to make an app logo that doesn’t suck, we talked through the importance of using vector graphics for your logos to maintain fidelity as they are scaled up to higher pixel density screens. We used a tool that I wrote called Vector to then export the logo to all the different required sizes and scale factors.

Since I wrote that post, Microsoft has announced universal Windows apps for Windows and Windows Phone that you create one app that can be published for all Windows devices.

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Vector now exports Windows and Windows Phone images

So I took the feedback to heart and updated Vector so it can now export all 42 potential images for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1. You can take all the images that are exported, drop them in you Visual Studio shared project, and call it a day.

Go get it now and go make logos for both Windows and Windows Phone that don’t suck!

Vector

Description

Vector is for Windows and Windows Phone app developers. Use it to automatically create images for tiles, splash screens, and all other images required from your app from one scalable vector graphics (SVG) file. Simply choose an SVG file, place it on your tile with multi-touch or your mouse and export all of the images. Vector also exports all the images for devices with high pixel density screens. Exports up to 42 images from one SVG file!

Exported images from one SVG:

Features

• Create tile images from one SVG automatically

• Export all scales for high pixel density screens

• Preview different tile colors

• Use multi-touch or mouse to place the image

• Use settings to choose which images to export

• Auto-center images

• Supports Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone tiles

Besides his awesomely titled post, How to make an app logo that doesn’t suck, this utility is a must have for Win/WP App dev's. I mean do you really want to generate 42 different versions of the same image? (of course, as soon as I wrote that, seems like Microsoft should be able to do that for you... given a SVG, generate the images, but one thing at a time I guess... ;)